This conversation with Dr. Joe Martin is an interview about survival, failure, and what it actually means to become a man when no one ever showed you how. Joe grew up in Liberty City, Miami — one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country — lost nearly everything he built by his mid-thirties, and then met the one person who changed the trajectory of his life. He now runs Real Men Connect, an organization devoted to mentoring men.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio.
Dr. Joe Martin is an award-winning international speaker, author, educator, and the founder of Real Men Connect. He grew up in Liberty City, Miami, earned his doctorate before the age of 30, became the youngest professor to teach in the state of Florida at age 24, and has spoken for more than 750 businesses, organizations, churches, colleges, and schools. He was voted National Speaker of the Year by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities. He hosts the Real Men Connect podcast, which became the number one rated podcast on iTunes for Christian men.
Real Men Connect is Dr. Joe Martin's organization devoted to mentoring and building men spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. The organization offers coaching, community groups, online resources, a podcast, and a program called the Real Men 300. The name comes from a John Wesley quote about 300 committed men being enough to change the world. Joe's goal is to recruit and develop 300 men who will then go teach others.
The Real Men 300 is the core training program inside Real Men Connect. It is built around five areas of a man's life: his relationship with something bigger than himself, his connection to other men in a huddle, his community or team, his coaching relationships, and his commitment to counseling. Joe created a spiritual checkup assessment that measures men in these five areas. The program provides coaches, counselors, and teammates so men do not have to find those resources alone.
The spiritual checkup is a five-minute online assessment Joe created that measures a man's emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being across five areas. It does not ask about income or career. Joe reports that eighty percent of the men who take it score average or below, which he says reveals how many men are quietly struggling. The assessment is available at myspiritualcheckup.com.
Liberty City is a neighborhood in Miami, Florida, known for high levels of poverty and violence. Joe describes it as the setting for the video game Grand Theft Auto and the neighborhood where the rap group Two Live Crew originated. Joe says he buried six friends by the age of 16 and that drive-by shootings on his school bus happened multiple times a year. He did not meet a white child until he was 12 years old and did not know South Beach existed until he left for college.
I had two or three friends text me after hearing Joe speak at an event. Every one of them said the same thing — best speaker they had ever heard. I hear that kind of thing occasionally, but not from multiple people about the same person in the same week. My audience is largely men, and a lot of what Joe talks about — building a team around you, asking for help, not trying to do everything alone — lines up with things I have been learning in my own life. I wanted to sit down with him and hear the full story.
Joe calls his story rags to riches to ruin to redemption. Four words, four chapters. The way he walks through each one is something I cannot recreate in text. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
Joe's mother was a teenage mom. She had two kids by the time she was 17. His father left. His grandfather died when Joe was 10, and after that his mother stopped cooking meals for her children. Joe describes a childhood defined by violence, hunger, and fear — he told people the only thing he wanted to be when he grew up was alive. The details of what happened inside his home between the ages of 12 and 15 are part of this conversation, and Joe tells them with a directness I would not do justice to here. Listen to that section in his own voice.
Joe barely graduated high school. He got rejected by at least 30 colleges. The reason he went to college at all is one of the more honest admissions I have heard anyone make on this show, and it made me laugh because of how plainly he says it. What happened his first semester at a community college in Niceville, Florida — 17 credits, straight A's — comes down to one word. Joe names the word in the episode, and it is not the word I expected. Worth hearing in his own words.
By his late twenties, Joe had a six-figure income, a doctorate, multiple books, a home, and a family. He had figured out how to ask experts for answers on everything — buying a house, starting a business, writing a book. There was one thing he never thought to ask about because he did not know it was missing. That gap is the center of this entire conversation, and the way Joe connects it to professional athletes, to his own marriage, and to a pattern he now sees in almost every man he works with is the part of the episode I keep thinking about. Listen for it.
There is a story in this episode about a man named Howard who teaches indoor suspension at the worst middle school in Miami. How Joe met him — through Howard's college-aged son buying a book at a speaking event — is unlikely enough. What Howard showed Joe when he picked him up at the airport and drove him back to Liberty City at night is the moment that changed everything. I am not going to try to retell what Howard said in front of that house. Joe tells it the way it should be told. Watch that section in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
Joe has a framework he uses with men that starts with swimming and ends with lifeguards. It is simple enough to explain in a sentence, but the way he layers it — climbers, runners, fighters, fakers — and then turns it back on the men sitting in front of him is what makes it land. I have a wrestling background, and when Joe connected his analogy to the wrestler mentality of handling everything alone, I felt that one personally. The full version is in the episode.
Joe's story is not the kind you hear summarized at a luncheon and feel like you got it. There are moments in this conversation — what his son Kendall said to him about his daughter Faith, what happened the first time Joe called Howard on the phone, what Joe told a real estate agent as a broke 18-year-old — that only work when Joe is the one telling them. I am glad he sat down with me for this one.
I walked away from this conversation thinking about my own life and the men around me. I think a lot of people listening will do the same. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio.
Howard Mintz · Micah Mintz · Kendall Martin · Faith Martin · Tanya Martin · Jane Wilcox · Allen Iverson · Michael Jordan · Michael Vick · Nick Saban · John Wesley · Two Live Crew
Dr. Joe Martin is the founder of Real Men Connect and creator of the Real Men 300 program. He grew up in Liberty City, Miami, earned his doctorate before age 30, became the youngest professor to teach in the state of Florida at 24, and has authored or coauthored nine books. He has spoken for more than 750 organizations and was voted National Speaker of the Year by the Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities. He hosts the Real Men Connect podcast and is based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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