Brett Snodgrass tells us why he created Iron Deep and how it will change your life as an entrepreneur. Tune in and learn how you can be part of this community!
Have you ever felt like no one gets you as an entrepreneur? No one understands or knows the struggles you deal with on a day-to-day basis? I created Iron Deep to help these entrepreneurs and businessmen who feel like they have no one. Whose lives are filled with busyness, stress, and angst. Go check out IronDeep.com and learn how to become a part of this amazing community.
I'm going to do a solo tour for you guys. I have not done this in a while. I'm super excited. I get to talk to you. Get to have a casual conversation with you all. Before I get into the show and the topics that we're going to cover, I want you guys to go over to YouTube and subscribe to the Iron Deep channel. That's our new organization, Iron Deep. Check out our website at IronDeep.com. See all the things that we're doing over there. It's brand new. This is a new venture for me. I'm super excited to pour into you to mend the businessmen of faith. I'm excited about what God is doing in the kingdom, in the marketplace.
I don't have a guest on this episode. I have not had a casual conversation with you all in a while. I'm super excited to tell you about what God is doing in the kingdom of my heart and this new organization, Iron Deep, what we have coming up, all the things that I've been doing behind the scenes, what God's been tweaking my heart, and what's going on. Thank you for joining. I want to start with some of the highlights of what we're doing with Iron Deep and with what God's doing in my heart and my life.
If you have not heard of this new organization, Iron Deep, I want to define exactly what it is. We are starting a community. This is a men's community for business owners and business leaders who have that desire for more intimacy with the Father and a deeper connection and relationships with other like-minded men.
What I have found is that number one, business owners and business leaders already feel alone. It’s the truth. We already feel alone because we feel like no one understands us. No one quite gets us. They don't understand why we're so driven. Why can't we clock in and clock out, work a 9:00 to 5:00 job, not continuously be driven, do projects, try to succeed, and try to achieve? That's the way God designed us. That's the way God designed me. That's the way God designed you and it's okay.
If you check our Enneagram, we're big 3’s or 8’s and we're driven individuals. Some people don't understand that and it's hard to find. If you do find it, you typically go to a mastermind group that is business-related. You're talking about business. You're talking about succeeding in your business, making more money, the culture of your business, how you can scale your business, and how you can get freedom out of your business, as I did a couple of years ago. That's what you talk about. You talk about business.
Vice versa, if you want more faith, talk about God and some of those different things that God's laying on your heart, be vulnerable, lay it out, take the mask off a little bit, and talk about some of the problems that you're going through, the inner deeper depths of your soul, you might find that in a church or a small group. Again, you go there and you have that group, which is awesome, which is much needed. Sometimes again, you can't relate because you're the business owner, you're driven, and it's hard to find groups that match that inside of the church.
I saw this big need and I'm like, “I'm lonely. I have some business guys that I love to hang out with and talk about business guys. I have some personal friends that I love to hang out with, but I wanted to put those two together. Let's have a businessmen organization that wants to be driven and talk about business stuff, but also want these other areas of our life to be fulfilled, especially with the foundation of that intimacy with the Father and some of these other areas of life that we want to be fulfilled in.”
That's where Iron Deep is born. It's this men's organization that we have formed. If you go to the website, IronDeep.com, it is men seeking more than success. There's a quote that I heard a few years ago that rocked me to the core. If you go to the website again, DL Moody said this. He created the Moody Bible Institute. If you ever heard of Moody Radio, he started some of that stuff, an amazing man of God in history. He said that our biggest fear should not be failure. It should be succeeding as something that doesn't matter.
I had to take a step back and I was like, “Am I doing the things that God's calling me to do? Am I succeeding in the things that matter in life, even the smallest thing? Am I impacting people's lives? If I look at my sphere, how can I be the most impactful?” I was like, “I'm around business guys all the time who are sometimes miserable. They have everything that the world offers them, yet they're miserable. They're unfulfilled. They're unhappy. Their home lives, if you look inside the windows, are a mess.” I'm not saying that mine's perfect. It’s broken as well, but that's a different story. I'll do the best I can leading my home. If you start to look at their soul, they come to a season of their life and they're lost.
That's what Iron Deep was born out of. I'm super excited to bring this to you guys. If you guys are interested in more information on this new organization, Iron Deep, go to IronDeep.com. Our first event is called the Iron Deep Men’s Awakening. What is that? Why are we starting with this? We're starting with this three-day event in the Rocky Mountains of Utah. Totally undistracted, unplugged, and very intentional.
We're inviting a max of 30 men to this retreat. We rented out a 26,000-square-foot log cabin. It's the largest log cabin in the world. It's in the Rocky Mountains of Utah, about an hour out of Salt Lake City. It beds max 30 people, has 30 beds. We're inviting 30 men to this event. It's called the Men's Awakening and we are digging deep.
This is going to be a different type of feel than what you're used to. If you're used to going to this business networking, this business REIA, this mastermind for investors, whatever it is, this is going to be different. If you're used to going to church and hearing people sing and listening to a message, this is going to be different than that. It's going to be amazing. It's called the Men's Awakening. It is from September 25th through the 28th of 2022. I'm super excited. We have about 26 people coming right now. We got about four spots left. If you're interested, go over to IronDeep.com and apply.
We're going to be digging deep. It's going to be taking the masks off, getting a little real, getting a little raw, and figuring out who we are in Christ because that's our foundation. Everything through our organization is going to flow through that lens, through the eyes of the Father and God. We're going to go through that lens. If something's wrong in your life, we start back at this foundation.
If you're having some trouble in your marriage, your parenting, or your kids, we can work on that stuff and we will, but we start here. This is the foundation. What is your intimacy like with God? What is your relationship like with Christ? Are you spending time with Him? Is He close to you? Is He a distant Father or is He an intimate Father that you're spending alone, undistracted, intentional time with?
This is what we're going to be digging into. It's going to be a deeper encounter with the Father and a deeper relational development with other like-minded businessmen. I don’t know about you, but I go to some of these events and we talk about business and we talk about some cool stuff. It's awesome and it has helped me out so much. This one, we're going to get a little real.
What are the things that you don't want to talk about, but you need to talk about? You need to be radically honest with yourself and with other people in a safe environment to share these things. “I'm going to be radically honest. I'm struggling over here. There are certain areas of my life I'm struggling.” I want a safe space to be able to talk about that. Honestly, I start to look around and I don't have a lot of that.
That's what Iron Deep is. That's where we're starting with this Men's Awakening. Go over to IronDeep.com again. Check out our retreat, the Men's Awakening, from September 25th through the 28th of September 2022. It's $1,500. People say I'm a businessman. I like to make money. I like to scale businesses, buy businesses, and own businesses. I do that and flip houses. I do all that stuff but this is not a moneymaker for me.
I love to make money, but I'm like, “This is where we're starting.” $1500, which includes your lodging and your food. You got to get there. We'll pick you up from the airport, take it from there, shuttle you to the lodge, and hang out. It's going to be an amazing time. As you know, flying into the Rocky Mountains, spending $1500 for all your food and your lodging, you can't even do that. It's super cheap, honestly. I want to impact men as they live.
Check that out. There's going to be an ongoing brotherhood mastermind community after that. This is what I've been digging into. This is the foundation of this retreat. After that, if you're interested, this is where it all starts. This is the foundation. You have to go to this retreat to be a part of the brotherhood community. If it's a good fit, and you're like, “I was rocked at this retreat, transformed, and changed.” This retreat alone will change your life. If you want more of that, if you want to walk alongside this community, with these guys, then we're going to have this brotherhood mastermind type of community.
What I found is people who go to this retreat get this mountaintop experience and then they say, “All right.” The organization says, “We'll see you. Maybe we'll do this again sometime.” We're not going to do that. We're inviting you into this community. Through that, we're going to have events. We're going to be walking with you. There's going to be some accountability. There's going to be small group Zoom calls. We're going to be digging into some of these areas of life that we want to grow in. We're going to be drawing out your roadmap to fulfillment. That's the biggest thing.
I believe the foundation of a fulfilling life is to have that relationship with God. Eventually, you're going to reach a season where you're rocked and you're going to have this tragedy and loss, and you're like, “What do I do with all that?” You have to have that solid foundation with the Lord to have a fulfilling life. I truly believe that. We're going to draw out this roadmap for fulfillment and we're going to be walking with you through that. That's what the ongoing mastermind brotherhood is all about. It has to start with this retreat.
We're doing some videos. We're doing some media. Again, go over to our YouTube channel. We've started to come out with creative videos. Not a lot of people know about these yet. We came out with only three so far. I did a video about the Mexican Fisherman Parable, which was an amazing parable. I did 2 other presentations or 2 other videos.
One was on Pride, which is the cancer of the soul. If you have something wrong in your life, I believe it starts with pride. If you have sin in your life, addictions in your life, it starts with that, the great sin. CS Lewis called it the sin of pride. It's like thinking that you want to be God. This was the devil's big sin. Why is the devil the devil? Why is he in hell with all of his demons? Why did God cast him out of heaven? It’s because he wanted to be God. How many of us want to have total control of our lives? We want to be God. We're mad and angry because we're not God. Every sin, every vice starts with that pride.
I did a video on Humility. Again, the opposite of pride. I believe the greatest virtue in your life is humility. If you want to be a better man of God, study how can you be more humble. It's one of those things. It is such a tough thing because you can't force it. As entrepreneurs, we're super driven and we're like, “I’m going to push through and be more humble. I'm going to take out all my masculinity and aggression. I want to be more humble. I want to force it.”
You can't do it. You can't force humility. You got to wake up every single day. Every single day, you have this prideful flesh battling in that war with your soul, with your spirituality, and your spiritual soul. You got this battle inside of you. You got to wake up every single day on your knees and say, “There is a God and I'm not Him. How can I serve Him and love and serve other people?” That is the start of a humble heart.
Also, go to the website. We have blogs coming out each and every month. We're getting started with this. On these topics, I have a book that's coming out, which is probably the hardest thing I've ever done. This 2022, I started writing a book. I hired a writing coach. I was going to hire a ghostwriter because businessmen hire ghostwriters and they delegate it out. I hired this writing coach and she's been amazing, awesome. I can refer her if you're interested in writing a book. She walked with me through writing out. I have the rough copy so far. One of the hardest things in my life ever is writing a book, getting that out, and feeling like you're a complete failure writing it.
My book is coming out at the beginning of 2023. That's what we're shooting for. It's about the secret war within a driven man. This is what I'm talking about. There are so many internal things that I'm dealing with, that you're dealing with. This book is unraveling this war that we have inside of ourselves as driven businessmen. I did it in an allegory way. If you think of other allegories, The Shack was an allegory, which is an amazing book if you haven't read that. It's this allegory story, fictional type, but has these non-fiction elements, spiritual elements in it.
If you think of The Chronicles of Narnia, I'm not comparing myself to CS Lewis. I'm a first-time author and first-time writer, but did it in an allegory sense and took this character, Nolan Banks, through this journey. He had this battle, this internal war inside of him. Having everything that the world offers, the man still feels empty. He goes on this journey. It's pretty awesome. I got that coming out soon. Not sure what the name of it's going to be, but again, something about the secret war within a driven man. That's going to be awesome. I got that coming out.
If any of the things that we're doing resonate with you, go over to IronDeep.com and contact me, possibly. You can apply for our community on IronDeep.com. You can send me an email at Brett@IronDeep.com. If you're interested in the book or in more videos, I'd love to hear your feedback on what we're doing. I've heard a lot of great feedback and it's been amazing. It's like, “I love what you guys are doing. It’s so awesome.”
If you want to be a part of it, go there. If you know someone who needs this, that you're looking, “Man,” and you don't even know. That's the thing. We see people around us and they're battling. They have this war inside of them and they have this addiction going on. They're looking at pornography. They're drinking themselves to death. They're working themselves to death. They go home and sleep on the couch and they're unhappy and miserable. They're not fulfilled with their life. This is what we're trying to do.
What is the map that we can help walk you with? You have to have a community of guys to walk with. If you look around and be like, “I got this thing going on and I can't tell anybody about it,” apply for our community. If you're like, “I got everything that money can buy and I'm still blah. What is wrong with me?” This community is good for you. Go over to that, Brett@IronDeep.com. You can email me or go over to IronDeep.com and walk through that.
The last thing I want to talk about is I'd like to hear from you. I started to brainstorm and ask a lot of questions. I love to hear from my audience about what are the areas of life that you would love to grow in to have that fulfillment of life. If you started to look at your areas of life, what areas do you want to consistently grow in? They feel like, “If I could grow here and here, this would reach more fulfillment for me.”
We're working on this. We're working on an assessment of what a fulfilled life looks like for a business leader, a man. We're going through these different areas of life. We've talked about that foundation. These are the areas that I've come up with so far, but I want to hear from you. What are those areas that you would like to grow in? Number one, your relationship with God. Everything starts from your relationship with God and start to ask questions like, “How do you assess a fulfilling, intimate relationship with God? Are you doing that?”
Here are some of the questions that we came up with. How much are you spending time in the Word of God? How much are you studying Him? If you want to have an intimate relationship with someone, you have got to study them. The closest relationship we have on this earth is with our spouse. If I want an intimate relationship with her, I have got to know her. I have got to study her and research her. What does she like? What does she dislike? How can I honor her, love her, and respect her in a way that she wants to be loved? How do I please her? How do I do all of that? I got to know her.
One of the best ways to know God is to spend time in the Word. How much are you spending time in the Word? How much are you talking to God? Again, prayer, but how much are you talking to Him? Do you have an active faith community? Some people would say, “I got a faith community. I go to church, things like that,” but it's not even what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about this. Do you have an active faith community where you can sit down with a couple of other people and be you, let out everything, whatever you got going on, whatever you looked at, whatever you're struggling with, whatever you're addicted to, can you lay it out and be like, “I want to be real and this is me. You're still going to love me no matter what and not judge me and can I do that?” Do you have that? If you don't, then I don't think that you have an active faith community. Do you feel close to God?
There have been times when I'm like, “God is this intimate Father. I could get to sit with Him. I get to be with Him. I get to walk with Him. He is so close and He is speaking to me. He is imprinting things onto my heart. He is talking to me. He's showing me and revealing things to me and He is so intimate.” There are other times I'm like, “I don't know. We're on different planets. I don't even know Him at all. He's not close at all. I haven't talked to Him in forever. I haven't studied Him in a long time and He's this distant thing.” Are you feeling close to God? These are some of the questions that we're trying to assess.
1) That is the foundation of a fulfilling life is your relationship with God. 2) Your relationships on this earth. It starts with your family. If you're married, start with your spouse. What is your relationship like with your spouse? You can go with some of these same questions. How connected do you feel with your spouse? How connected do you feel? Are you best friends? Are you playful? Do you laugh together? How regularly are you physically intimate with your spouse?
That's part of it. God created sex. I'm going to say that. God created sex on the air for you. It’s the most intimate thing that you can do with one another. When you get married, you are one flesh. You cannot do that with anybody else. You can do that with one person for the rest of your life. Have that intimate bonding time that you can't do with anybody else and God wants you to do it. That's why He did reproductive, multiply the earth through sex. He wants to you go and multiply the earth. The only way you can multiply the earth is if you have sex with each other.
He makes it so pleasurable. He could have made it like, “This is terrible and it's painful,” but he made it pleasurable because he wants you to have sex with your wife. How much are you intimate with your wife? How much do you date your wife? How much do you date your spouse? Are you taking her out? Are you pursuing her? How much do you get away with your wife? Are you on the same page with her?
These are questions to men. They're asking for the community. Are you on the same page? Does your wife support you? Do you support her? Do you have a vision? I'm sure that you do because if you're tuning in to this show, you're probably some visionary and have a vision for your life. How much are you doing that? How much does your wife support that vision? It’s what I'm saying. Your wife has a vision. How much are you supportive of her vision?
These are the things. A relationship starts with your marriage and your kids. I'm asking questions about kids. How much time do you spend with your kids? How often do you spend one-on-one time with your kids? I heard from somewhere that they don't allow the husband, the father, or the mom to spend one-on-one time with their kids because they want equality. I'm like, “That is a bunch of Crapola mixed in a bag, mixed in a toilet, diarrhea all over the place.” That's crap.
I have four kids and some of the best times are when I get with them one-on-one and spend time. I'm going to try to spend every quarter at least half a day or a day with each child and to spend that time with them. How well are you leading your kids spiritually and your wife? Do you support your kids' interests? I got four kids. I got one boy. He is a replica of myself. He loves risk, adventure, playing sports, and playing with balls. He loves all of that stuff. I'm like, “Let's get it. Let's do it. Let's go out, go adventure, risk, ride on things, fish, and all this stuff.”
My other son is not like that. He wants to build things, an engineer. He's a chess player. He's looking at stuff and he's like, “What can I create with this and build with this?” I'm like, “That's not like me.” Sometimes I feel like I'm supporting my other kid's interests more than this kid's interests. I'm like, “I want to connect with this son, too. I want to be involved and supportive of his interests.” Instead of being like, “That's cool, but why don't we go play ball?” No. “I want to be with you. I want to support you. You're not like me and it's okay.” No more on this tangent, but how well are you leading and supporting your kids?
Again, this is the assessment of this fulfilled life and then relationships beyond your family. Some people make their family an idol. Their family is everything to them. I've even seen that, “Family is everything.” I'm going to say, “Family is good. I love family, but I'm going to tell you that's not everything.” Some people are going to bash me and write Brett@IronDeep.com. Be like, “Whatever, man. Family is everything.” I'm going to tell you it's not.
The first thing, a relationship with your God is everything. If you're putting your family on this pedestal, they're going to let you down. They're going to mess up. They're going to make mistakes. You're going to be on this rollercoaster ride. If you get a foundation on the rock, the promises of God that never fail you, then that's the foundation of who you are.
Anyways, your friends. This is the stuff. We're going to help guys with their relationship with God, with their relationships in general with other guys. that's where Iron Deep comes from. I'm going to go through these other ones fast. Your health. I see some guys are killing it in business and they are sick, whether physically sick or mentally from all the anxiety, all the stress. They're depressed. They're drinking themselves to death. They're mentally sick. They don't have time to work out. They don't have time to be active. They're fat.
I'm sorry for saying that, but I struggle with that. I'm like, “I am sick sometimes. What is wrong with me? If I don't have my health, what do I have? All I'm thinking about is, how can I be healthy?” If you're sick, you got the flu, you're puking, and you're throwing up, all I can think about is how can I get healthy? Yet, we go through life, we're getting sicker and sicker, and we're eating all this crap and processed stuff. I'm like, “I got to get healthy.” This is what we're going to help guys with their health.
Vocation. This is where it comes in. We’re going to help guys with their business, with their vocation. Are they making a lot of money? Are they doing well? Are they living out their purpose? Is this what God's calling them to? If it's not, then let's take a step back. Maybe you can change it, maybe you can’t. Let's talk about it.
Leadership. We're helping guys be better leaders. That's across the board. One of the things this season of my life is, how much am I impacting and contributing? How much am I impacting people's lives? If I'm in my own little world, making my own little money, got my own little bank account, I'm good all there and I watch Netflix all day, I'm like, “That's a bunch of crap.” How much are you impacting the kingdom?
I hate the word retire and guys that go off, fish, and play a bunch of golf, and in their own little world. I'm not saying that's bad and you like doing that, that's fun. I'm like, “If you're not impacting and contributing to people's lives, then you're missing it.” You're like, “Why am I unhappy?” It's because you're missing it. You have got to impact people's lives and how much you contribute to people's lives, especially when we get to certain seasons of our life.
Another one is freedom. How much freedom do you have? I always talk about financial freedom. This is a business. We like to have financial freedom and time freedom. We want to be able to do these things to live out our purpose. Now, this is not the seminar of like, “I don't want you to do anything and I don't want you to work.” No. If you love your job and you love to work, if I asked a group of business guys, “Who loves to work?”
I love to work. I love to work towards something, but there's a different type. If I love what I'm doing, I'm living up to my purpose, my work, and this project and I love it, I'll do it all day. If I'm over here grinding on something that I hate, it's different. How much time freedom do you have? How much money freedom? We talked about contribution and impact.
These are some of the things. I got a relationship with God, relationships in the world, in general, your family, health, your vocation, your leadership, your freedom, and then how much are you contributing and impacting people's lives? These are the things that we're going to be assessing guys with and drawing out this roadmap at Iron Deep and helping guys in these areas of life.
Our goal is to never be perfect. We're always going to be consistently growing towards these. We're never going to be 100%. We're never going to get an A+. It is a lifelong journey to inch our way through life towards more fulfillment in these areas of life. Pick one. What are you most challenged with? Is it your marriage? Is it your parenting?
It all starts with your relationship with God. If these other areas are suffering, you start there. Maybe it is business. Maybe you're like, “I have an amazing relationship with my wife and my kids, but I need to make some more money. Maybe I need some more time. I'm super strapped for time.” You need more freedom. Maybe you want to continue to grow as a leader. Maybe you need to impact more. You're in that season of impact.
Whatever it is for you, again, this is what we're doing with Iron Deep. Go over again to IronDeep.com. Apply if you're interested in the community. Check out what we're doing on our videos on the YouTube channel, Iron Deep. Love to see you at the retreat. As I said, we got about four spots left. Check that out if you're interested in the retreat.
I'm super excited for this. I'm super excited to walk with you if you're interested in this. God’s doing these amazing things in my heart each and every day. This is what I love. This is my calling. This is my purpose for the next 20 to 30 years of my life. If I could do anything at all, pour into men, be better fathers, be better husbands, be better businessmen, and be better leaders. Let's impact the kingdom. Let's kill the darkness. There is so much of it out there. We need strong leader-men that can get crap done to take a whole and advance in the kingdom. This is where it's at.
A lot of the other things are letting us down. We can't rely on the government. The church, I love dearly, but especially in Western culture right now, we're on this cycle. We go, we consume, and that's it. I don't see a lot of fruit in people that are sitting and listening to messages. Where's the fruit? That's what Jesus is going to ask us at the end of this all. I'm like, “You believe in Me, but where's the fruit? Where are the people that came with you? Are you by yourself? Are you coming in the doors by yourself? Where's the line of people coming with you that you poured into, the impacted?”
This is where we got to go. If you're interested and want to be around some guys that their hearts are passionate about mission and living life on mission, this is where to go. IronDeep.com is where you start. Thank you so much for tuning in to the show. This is it. This is my solo tour, Brett Snodgrass show. If you guys want me to sing a song or do a rap, I feel like I've gone through a lot. I rambled a lot, but thank you so much. I love you from the bottom of my heart. I want the best for you. Thank you for being a fan. Thank you for being a follower of Jesus Christ. If you are, if you're not, then I'd love to chat with you about that. God bless you. We'll see you soon.
Thank you so much for checking out the Iron Deep. If you liked this, slam on that like button. If you liked it, hit the subscribe button here. Remember to leave us a comment and let's mingle in the comment section, you all. Here at Iron Deep, we strive to create content for middle-aged businessmen that involves identity, purpose, and legacy, all with a foundation that's rooted in Christ. Check out our website at IronDeep.com to apply to be a part of the Iron Deep Brotherhood community. I'll see you next time.
