Imperfect Mens Club

Every man reaches a point where he stops and asks: what's next?The Imperfect Men's Club is a weekly podcast for men in transition. Men navigating midlife reinvention, identity collapse, divorce, career loss, or any season of life where the old answers stop working. Fathers. Founders. Men figuring out what's next.Hosted by fathers, founders, and advisors Mark Aylward and Jim Gurulé, every episode is built around the IMC Flywheel, a framework covering the Five Arenas of Life with Self-Awareness at the center: Worldview, Relationships, Money, Life's Work, and Well-Being. Progress or breakdown in one arena affects every other. That's the whole point.These are conversations about personal accountability, self-discipline, emotional maturity, limiting beliefs, and masculinity without posturing. The kind men avoid until something forces the conversation.No edits. No music. No commercials. No guests. Just two men with lived experience having the conversations that actually matter.The impe

Imperfect Mens Club is a education podcast hosted by Mark Aylward & Jim Gurule, with 164 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Mark Aylward & Jim Gurule hosts Imperfect Mens Club, a education show with 164 episodes published.

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  Episode #31

  Nostalgia Might Be Lying to You About the Good Old Days

  Aug 13, 202632 minS5

  Season 5, Episode 31: Self-Nostalgia Is Lying to You Overview This week, Mark and Jim dig into why the past always looks better than it was and why the future always looks worse than it will be. They call it declinism, the tendency to remember the past as better than it actually was and expect the future to be worse than it's likely to be, and they connect it directly to worldview, one of the five areas at the center of the IMC Flywheel. Jim breaks down the difference between self-reminiscing and self-nostalgia, reminiscing is the action of recalling your past, nostalgia is the emotion attached to it, and Mark ties it back to his own weekend at the first Aylward Family Reunion, where thirty six cousins and a father closing in on ninety eight years old made the conversation personal fast. The conversation moves from the 24 hour news cycle and how it manufactures pessimism, to the idea of a secondary male figure, a mentor or father figure outside your own dad who shapes who you become. Mark tells the story of Paul, the business mentor who pushed him toward entrepreneurship, and Jim shares a story about a young man who found his real compass in his grandmother's husband, Joe. This episode is about self-awareness, identity after growing up, and why investigating a belief matters more than accepting it at face value. Key Themes 1. Declinism and Why the Past Always Looks Rosier Mark reads the definition cold, declinism is remembering the past as better than it was and expecting the future to be worse than it will likely be, despite living in one of the most peaceful and prosperous times in history. Jim connects it to the 24 hour news cycle, calling most of what passes for news an entertainment machine built to keep people anxious and glued to the screen. 2. Self-Reminiscing vs Self-Nostalgia, Action vs Emotion Jim lays out the distinction that anchors the episode, reminiscing is a cognitive act, deliberately recalling and reviewing your own experiences, while nostalgia is the emotion that gets attached to those memories. Mark admits his own Little League home runs have grown from two hundred feet to three hundred feet in his memory, a small, honest example of how nostalgia edits the record. 3. Why Context Changes Everything You Remember Mark pushes the conversation past definitions into responsibility, arguing that looking back without the context of the conditions, expectations, and culture of that time turns memory into a pedestal instead of an honest account. He applies it to how people size up hard periods of history, and to how easily a person can put an old version of their own life on a pedestal it never earned. 4. The Secondary Male Figure Who Shapes a Man's Identity Jim tells the story of a 22 year old family friend who cared for a grandfather he barely knew through the man's final months with dementia, and who came out of it naming a different man, his grandmother's husband Joe, as his real compass for what a man is. Mark matches it with his own story about Paul, his first business mentor, the man who cracked open the idea that he could build something of his own instead of working for someone else. 5. Investigate Before You Accept Anything at Face Value Mark traces this instinct back to being sixteen and telling his father he was struggling with his faith, and getting back four words that stuck with him for life, question everything, that's how you learn. Both hosts land on the same closing point, if something matters enough to have an opinion about, it matters enough to investigate before you decide what you believe. Why This Episode Matters If you've ever caught yourself thinking things used to be better, or dreading where the world is headed, this episode names exactly what's happening in your head and gives it a word. It's easy to let a bitter, over exposed news cycle and a rose colored memory do your thinking for you instead of doing the harder work of investigating what's actually true. This is exactly why The Imperfect Men's Club exists, honest conversation about the parts of being a man that nobody hands you a manual for, from self-awareness to who shaped you when you weren't looking. If this episode gave you something to sit with, share it with a guy in your life who needs to hear it too. Listen, Subscribe and Review Apple Podcasts: {Insert Link} Spotify: {Insert Link} Website: {Insert Link}

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  Episode #23

  Self-Compassion at a Stoplight: Why Jim Let a Stranger Go

  Aug 6, 202632 minS5

  Season 5, Episode 30 Overview In this episode, Mark and Jim work through the self-hyphen word for the week: self-compassion. They open by drawing a line between compassion aimed outward and self-compassion aimed inward, and argue the second makes the first possible. Jim shares the story that inspired the topic: a hit-and-run at a stoplight where the other driver, an uninsured man driving back to Oregon to see his kids, admitted everything and never made an excuse. Jim had to decide whether to call the police and take away the one thing the man had left, or let him go. Mark reads the working definition he pulled together for the show: self-compassion means treating yourself with kindness and warmth during hard times instead of harsh judgment, built on three parts, self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. The two hosts trace how rebuilding confidence after divorce and other hardship starts with this same internal shift, and Mark connects it to his own experience with shame after his divorce and how personal accountability after setback can turn into self-punishment if compassion never enters the picture. The conversation moves through the psychology of self-compassion, how it lowers stress and shifts brain activity away from threat defense, and closes on common humanity as the cure for isolation. Mark shares a second story, about a neurodivergent tenant whose cluttered front yard he chose to tolerate once he understood the full picture, as a live example of the same principle at work. Key Themes 1. The Three Core Elements of Self-Compassion: Kindness, Common Humanity, and Mindfulness Mark reads the definition he curated ahead of the episode: self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness and warmth during hard times instead of harsh judgment. He and Jim break it into three parts. Self-kindness means being gentle with yourself instead of angry when you fail. Common humanity means recognizing that suffering and mistakes happen to everyone, not just you. Mindfulness means seeing your painful thoughts clearly without hiding from them or blowing them out of proportion. Mark ties self-kindness directly to how a person treats others, telling Jim that part of the reason he was kind to the driver is because he has learned to be kind to himself first. 2. Jim's Stoplight Decision: Choosing Grace Over Punishment After a Hit-and-Run Jim tells the full story that sparked the episode. An uninsured driver rear-ends him at a stoplight, then pulls over and cooperates with every question Jim asks, license, registration, phone number. The man's registration is expired, he has no insurance, and he's driving ten hours back to Oregon after dropping off his kids. Jim has to decide whether to call the police, which would mean the man loses his car and possibly never sees his kids again, or let him go. Jim chooses grace, deciding the man's honesty and circumstances mattered more than getting paid back. Mark frames this as self-awareness in action, the pause between getting hit and reacting that let Jim ask questions instead of assuming the worst. 3. How Self-Compassion Lowers Shame and Rebuilds Confidence After Failure Mark and Jim walk through the psychological impact of self-compassion in sequence: it removes shame, lowers self-pity, and builds empathy. Mark speaks from personal experience, describing the shame that shows up after getting fired or going through a divorce, the instinct to ask what did I do to deserve this. He distinguishes shame from guilt, noting shame serves a purpose but becomes destructive when it doesn't move a person forward. This is where rebuilding confidence after divorce and other hardship actually starts, not with motivation, but with lowering the self-judgment that keeps a man stuck in the story of his failure. 4. Common Humanity as the Antidote to Isolation and Online Cruelty The hosts connect common humanity, the idea that your flaws connect you to other people instead of separating you, to the isolation they see growing everywhere, accelerated by screens and social media. Mark points out that people say and do things online they would never do face-to-face, because there is no real human being in front of them to be compassionate toward. Jim ties this back to the show's tagline, the imperfection is the perfection, and both agree that real-world interaction, the kind that put Jim face-to-face with a stranger at a stoplight, is what reminds people how universal struggle actually is. Why This Episode Matters A lot of men who've been knocked down by divorce, job loss, or failure treat themselves worse than they'd ever treat a stranger. They confuse self-punishment with personal accountability after setback, as if staying angry at yourself is proof you're taking the failure seriously. This episode names that pattern directly and offers a different path. Confidence isn't rebuilt by beating yourself up longer or harder. It's rebuilt by extending yourself the same grace Jim extended a stranger at a stoplight, honest acknowledgment of what happened, without turning it into a life sentence. This is exactly why the Imperfect Men's Club exists, to give men a place to talk through the parts of leadership after loss that nobody teaches in a boardroom. If this episode hit home, share it with a guy who's been carrying more shame than he needs to. Listen, Subscribe and Review Apple Podcasts Spotify Website

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  Episode #29

  Self-Fortitude: The Choice No One Can Take From You

  Jul 30, 202631 minS5

  Season 5, Episode 29: Self-Fortitude: The Choice No One Can Take From You Overview Mark and Jim spend this episode on self-fortitude, the inner strength that lets a man handle whatever life throws at him without folding. They open with a hard truth about character and childhood, then work through the Amor Fati mindset, the Italian idea that things happen for you instead of to you, and the victim mindset it replaces. Mark reads a working definition of self-fortitude and the two of them build the rest of the conversation around it. The conversation moves through family patterns and how a man breaks the chain his upbringing hands him, then lands on four pillars: endurance, self-reliance, emotional regulation, and internal locus of control. Jim tells the story of a friend who fought a business partnership dispute for fifteen years and eventually won, and Mark tells the story of staying calm in the moment his daughter broke her arm. Both stories anchor the same point: fortitude is built in the reps nobody sees, not in the moment everyone's watching. This episode speaks directly to men navigating personal accountability, resilience after hardship, and the discipline it takes to stop waiting for permission to move forward. Mark and Jim aren't selling toughness for its own sake. They're making the case that the response to hardship is always a choice, and that choice is the whole game. Key Themes 1. Amor Fati: Choosing 'For You' Over 'To You' Jim introduces Amor Fati, the idea that a hardship is either something that happened to you or something that happened for you. The victim mindset treats a setback as an unfair attack and breeds resentment and helplessness. The Amor Fati mindset treats the same event as a custom built challenge that teaches something or redirects the path. Jim ties this to his own experience watching a years-old idea finally become possible once the technology caught up, and Mark ties it to how he coaches people in his work who limit themselves before they ever try. 2. Breaking the Chain: Family Patterns Aren't a Life Sentence Mark walks through his own family, four kids raised by the same mother, two who let her insecurities shape their adult lives and two who didn't. He's direct that breaking a generational pattern is a choice, not an easy one, since the pattern is wired into character by the time a man is grown. Jim connects this to how a parent's emotional response becomes a child's default response, using Mark's own daughter as the example a few themes later. 3. The Four Pillars of Self-Fortitude Mark and Jim work through four components of self-fortitude one at a time. Endurance, or grit, is the stamina to keep going after the initial motivation is gone, illustrated with Wim Hof and David Goggins. Self-reliance is independence from outside validation, summed up in Mark's line that you should never take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. Internal locus of control is the belief that you're responsible for your own reactions, not a victim of circumstance. Jim adds his own frame from coaching high school athletes: your body gives out first, then your mind, and what's left to win on is your heart. 4. The Power of the Pause: Regulating Emotion in the Moment Mark tells the story of his daughter breaking her arm a second time and his own instinct to go quiet and calm instead of reacting. He traces this back to his father, a fighter pilot trained to do nothing for a beat when an engine catches fire, so training can take over instead of panic. Mark teaches this pause professionally now: take a breath before you walk into a room, before you pick up the phone, before you hit send. Jim agrees the pause is one of the highest leverage habits in the whole conversation, since it's available before every single reaction a man makes. Why This Episode Matters A lot of men are quietly waiting to feel ready before they take responsibility for how they respond to hardship. This episode names that stall directly. Mark doesn't let excuses or circumstance off the hook, whether the hardship is a legal fight, a broken family pattern, or a kid who needs a calm parent in a crisis. The point isn't that hardship shouldn't hurt. It's that the response to it is always a choice, and most men never stop to notice they're making one. This is exactly why The Imperfect Men's Club exists. Mark and Jim aren't handing out a five step plan to toughness. They're modeling what it looks like to sit with a hard question, tell the truth about your own family, and choose the harder response on purpose. If this episode lands for you, send it to a guy who needs to hear that the response is still his to choose. Listen, Subscribe and Review Apple Podcasts Spotify Website

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  Episode #28

  Self-Talk. The Voice in Your Head Isn't Yours

  Jul 23, 202630 minS5

  Season 5, Episode 28: Self-Talk. The Voice in Your Head Isn't Yours Overview Mark and Jim open this episode of The Imperfect Men's Club Podcast with a hard look at self-talk, the internal, largely subconscious dialogue that drives most of what a man does, thinks, and feels. Mark and Jim explain that the subconscious mind runs somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of all human behavior, and that a large piece of that programming gets set between birth and age five, shaped mainly by a child's relationship with his mother. The conversation moves through the IMC Flywheel, the five areas of profession, money, health, relationships, and worldview that surround self-awareness at the center. Mark and Jim use that lens to unpack why so many men feel confused about identity, masculinity, and their role with women today, and how the differences between men and women, once treated as something to be worked out through honest conversation, got turned into an argument somewhere around the 1960s and never really got resolved. They introduce two concepts pulled from research on the subconscious mind. Self-parenting, the idea of becoming your own internal mother instead of waiting on external validation, and self-stagnation, the state of staying stuck in familiar patterns even when those patterns cause real unhappiness. Mark also draws on his own experience helping men rebuild their identity after divorce to show what it looks like to recognize a pattern, forgive the parent who passed it down, and still refuse to let that pattern run the rest of your life. Key Themes 1. How Self-Talk Runs 95 Percent of What You Do Jim opens with the idea that 80 to 90 percent of human thought and behavior comes from the subconscious mind, and Mark pushes that number closer to 95. Both agree the conversation you have with yourself, the one running constantly under the surface, is the most important conversation of your life. The episode treats self-awareness as the first move: you cannot change what you refuse to notice. 2. Why Your Mother's Relationship Still Runs Your Subconscious Jim walks through research showing the brain gets wired between birth and roughly age five, largely through the relationship with the mother. Mark connects this to his own life, from his grandmothers to his mother to his daughters, and both hosts agree this isn't about blaming women. It's about recognizing where the programming came from so a man can decide whether to keep it or change it. 3. Self-Parenting: Becoming Your Own Internal Mother Mark reads a definition of self-parenting: taking on the role of your own internal mother instead of waiting for someone else to provide the compassion, boundaries, and support you didn't get growing up. Jim frames it more bluntly as growing up and taking responsibility for your own thoughts. Both versions point to the same conclusion. At some point a man has to stop outsourcing his own stability. 4. The Difference Between Men and Women Isn't a Debate Mark argues that men and women are genuinely different, and that difference should be celebrated rather than flattened into sameness or turned into a fight. He traces the confusion back to the 1960s, when he believes the real conversation between men and women never actually happened, it turned into a rebellion instead. Jim adds a story from an all-women AI event in San Francisco that reinforced the same point: distinct strengths, not competing threats. 5. Self-Stagnation and the Choice to Break the Chain The episode closes on self-stagnation, staying stuck in comfortable but harmful patterns instead of growing. Mark shares how he handled his own mother's inherited insecurity: he empathized with where it came from, but he still called her on it rather than excusing it. That's the line the episode draws for every man listening. Understanding your programming is not the same as being controlled by it. Why This Episode Matters A lot of men carry a version of confidence, anxiety, or shame that was never actually theirs to begin with. It got handed down before they were old enough to have a say in it, and most never stop to ask where it came from or whether they still want to keep it. That confusion shows up as feeling unmoored after a divorce, uncertain about how to relate to women, or stuck repeating the same patterns year after year without knowing why. This is exactly the territory The Imperfect Men's Club exists to walk through. Mark and Jim don't offer a fix. They offer a way to look at the pattern honestly, understand where it came from, and decide what to do about it going forward. If this episode gave you a new way to think about your own self-talk, share it with someone who needs to hear it too. Listen, Subscribe and Review Apple Podcasts Spotify Website

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  Episode #27

  From Self-Reflection to Self-Analysis: The Work Nobody Wants to Do

  Jul 16, 202631 minS5

  Season 5, Episode 27 From Self-Reflection to Self-Analysis: The Work Nobody Wants to Do Overview Mark and Jim open this episode of The Imperfect Men's Club podcast with another entry in their series of self-hyphen words, this time tackling self-analysis. Mark reads a working definition: self-analysis is the systematic practice of examining your own behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and motivations, distinct from self-reflection because it pushes past noticing a pattern into deciding what to do about it. The conversation is sparked by Jim's recent family trip to Cambria, California, near San Simeon, where he started building a timeline of his Swiss-Italian ancestors using birth certificates, baptism records, and immigration history. That personal research becomes the spine of the episode. Jim and Mark connect family history and ancestry directly to self-awareness, arguing that understanding where your parents and grandparents came from, what they lived through, and what they believed explains a lot of the subconscious behavior men carry into adulthood without ever examining it. Mark shares two contrasting stories about his own mother and father, using them to illustrate how the same hardship can produce very different outcomes depending on whether someone chooses accountability or victimhood. The episode ties self-analysis back into the IMC Flywheel, with self-awareness at the center and worldview, relationships, and money all shaped by inherited family patterns. Mark and Jim close with a practical challenge for listeners navigating identity after loss or midlife transition: track down the legal documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates) that anchor your family's real story, and get an older relative on camera before that history disappears for good. Key Themes 1. Self-Analysis vs. Self-Reflection: Why Noticing Isn't Enough Mark draws a clear line between the two: self-reflection is asking what's going on and what you should be considering, while self-analysis is deciding which of those things you actually have control over and want to invest energy in. He frames self-reflection as diagnosis and self-analysis as the action plan that follows it, warning that self-analysis without a stopping point can become its own form of avoidance. 2. How Family History and Ancestry Shape Self-Awareness Jim walks through his own research into his Swiss-Italian great-grandparents, explaining how dairy farming, immigration timing, and the Great Depression shaped his family's relationship with money and work. Both hosts argue that most people are running on subconscious patterns inherited from grandparents they may never have met, and that self-analysis without historical context is working with incomplete information. 3. Victimhood Is a Choice, Even When the Grievance Is Real Mark shares a personal story contrasting his mother, who he says was raised in an emotionally difficult home and carried resentment toward men for the rest of her life, with his father, who faced comparable hardship growing up but responded with humor and optimism. Mark and Jim agree that even righteous grievances don't excuse staying stuck, and that assigning blame to someone else forfeits any ability to act. 4. The Documents That Unlock a Real Family Story Jim gives a concrete starting list for anyone wanting to do this work themselves: birth certificates, baptism records, marriage certificates, and death certificates, since each carries a verified date and place that family memory alone tends to embellish or lose. He notes that before easy access to records, family stories were often exaggerated or simply inaccurate, and that legal documents are the fastest way to stitch together an honest timeline. 5. Get Them on Camera Before the Story Is Gone Mark recounts having his daughter film her grandfather telling stories from his chair, and admits he wishes he had more footage and photos of his own parents. Both hosts land on a simple action item for listeners: sit down an aging parent or grandparent with a camera running and just ask them about their life, before that firsthand account is lost. Why This Episode Matters Plenty of men reach midlife carrying behaviors, fears, and money habits they never chose and can't fully explain. This episode gives them a way to trace those patterns back to something real instead of guessing, and a reminder that understanding where a pattern came from is not the same as being excused from doing something about it. This is exactly the kind of honest, unfinished conversation The Imperfect Men's Club exists for: no therapy jargon, no easy answers, just two guys working through what self-awareness actually requires. If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with a guy who needs to hear it. Listen, Subscribe and Review Apple Podcasts: Spotify: Website:

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