Investing In Yourself: Develop Self-Awareness And What It Takes To Become A Better Person

Natan: I am, very much so.

Toby: This is going to be a fun one for me because Natan and I actually sit on a board together called King’s Ransom and we do work around the world. I’ve known him for years. You’re going to learn about what he does to transform men and make them better men, which is this faux pas thing nowadays. You’re in this world, Rabbi. What you have had is feedback from others about training men to become better men.

Natan: That’s a very interesting question. I have more pushback from men than I do from women. I have women, wives, daughters turning around and saying, please, please take my husband, take my son, and do something with them. I’m like, I can’t do something with them. They need to do something with them, but let’s try.

It’s very interesting because men are more worried about the process, the transformation, and the hard work involved, than the women who are really looking forward to it and wanting that to happen in their lives. When the men trust that process, incredible things do happen.

Toby: We’re going to get there. Here’s what’s so interesting. Your background, just laying the foundation of what you do, who you are, so people get to know you.

Natan: My name is Natan Alexander. I was born in Sydney, Australia. That’s where the funny accent comes in. I’m married to a South African, which makes the accent even more funny. We’re blessed with four children. We’ve been married 20 amazing years. We live in the land of Israel in Judea.

I’ve been an educator my whole life working for the community, working in schools, working in adult education. For the past few years, I decided to do my own thing and take all of the skill sets that I have in education, in protection, which we can speak about, and actually give them to the world rather than keep them inside a specific community that’s employing me. The world is much bigger than that and needs a lot more. I’m a man of education at heart. That’s what I do. I’m a marriage counselor, a whole lot of different things that we put into what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Toby: And then you have your organization. It’s called Leader of the Pack, correct?

Natan: Correct.

Toby: What are you doing specifically there? And then I want to share a couple of stories. I want to hear some from you, but I also want to share one that I heard.

Natan: Leader of the Pack started in 2018. These were the brave men that decided to jump in 2018. As you can see, I think there are 14 men there. We’re now in eight countries around the world. The response has been massive of men that want to improve and become better men.

Where did it come from? I’m a marriage counselor. I saw that a lot of the world is helping and supporting women through their issues, their skill sets in marriage, in the ways to succeed in the workforce, and all these different things. The men have been left behind.

I’ve got a theory why we’ve been left behind, which is that the last generation and the generation before, the men will put in leadership. Men misunderstood what leadership is. They thought leadership meant power. They used the positioning of power to get what they want, when they want, and how they want.

Women are pushed very much—I’m talking in general, obviously—to the side. Then the feminist movement started, which I truly believe in its core was absolutely correct. Like, hold on a second, we need a voice. We were both created equally in the eyes of our maker, but the men decided to forget that because they were in all the positions of power instead of responsibility.

This generation went backwards. The women dove forwards. I’m not going to get political over here. But the men, in order to adjust, decided that they needed to sit down, be quiet, and give over all of these important positions not only in the workplace, but in the home as well, in the communities, the churches around the world. Also, the men are stepping back or if they see the preachers, they’re preaching to the women rather than the men. There are many men that feel uncomfortable going to religious services.

The men took a seat. They sat down and shut up. I believe that it is our responsibility (in this generation) to say, hold on a second. This is one big misunderstanding. Leadership means responsibility, not power. Therefore, women, we need you to allow us back into a position of responsibility because responsibility means that we will work harder, we will fight harder to protect you, we will make sure that we’re up earlier than our families.

Are we going to bed later than our families? Not because we are playing stupid video games, but because we’re taking responsibility and fitting into our daily time with our family and our kids, taking them to school, working, spending time on ourselves as men growing, dating our wives. All of those things together means responsibility, not power.

I decided to start this group called Leader of the Pack which has grown into a brotherhood of men that are really becoming responsible men in their lives. As we started saying, their wives are turning around and going, oh, my goodness, I can’t believe the peace in our home is so much more tangible because these men are not lost. We have men getting promotions that have been working in industries for 15–20 years and stood still the whole time. Now they take responsibility. All of a sudden, they’re getting promotions.

We have children hanging out with their dad who used to be so unapproachable. Until the Leader of the Pack, we taught how to communicate with your child, how to listen to your child, how to guide your child. That’s where it comes from. This is a 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week project to really change the world.

Toby: I’m going to play devil’s advocate here a little bit, just turn this around, and say, somebody’s listening to you going, oh, that’s religious indoctrination. Or hey, we’re stepping back decades. First off, is this a religious thing or is this a more secular thing?

Natan: It’s a brilliant question. I’m a rabbi. I’m a Jewish Orthodox rabbi. The vast majority of people that are in the Leader of the Pack are actually Evangelistic Christians. It hasn’t been easy. I’m not a man that believes in going the easy road. It’s very easy for the Jews to stick to the Jews, Christians to Christians, the atheists to atheist, and the Muslims to Muslims. That’s not the way I believe things should be.

I think that as men, we were created equally in the eyes of God. Therefore, there should be space for Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, everybody together. In fact—I’m being very honest—some people have left Leader of the Pack because I’m not boxed-in enough. They’re like, hold on a second. It’s either Jewish, or it’s Christian, or it’s atheist. How can you pray with people who are not in the same religion as you? I’m like, I think that’s going back to the basics. I think that’s exactly what we need to be.

Men are fighting on the streets, in politics, and stabbing each other in the back in business. We’ve got enough against each other. It’s time that we create a safe place for all men, whatever you believe. For sure, the basis of what I do is biblical. There’s not much more I’m passionate about in life than what I believe is God’s word. I’m very much broader in what that is than many other religious leaders would be.

Toby: If there was somebody who’s looking at this program saying, what are you actually teaching me, maybe it’s a wife who says, this is something that I think my husband would really like. Maybe you’re a man who’s sitting here saying, I just want to be a better person. What are these different skill sets? I know for a fact that you’re a counterterrorism expert and that you do a lot in the world. There’s a certificate over your shoulder, I believe, that is a counterterrorism certificate.

This is your training. A lot of times, you’re working in protection. I know that you’re trained in the United States and all that stuff. But is some of that crossing over? What is somebody going to get if they join this group? What are the skill sets? What are the things that you’re going to be working with them on?

Natan: The way I like to base this, we’re going back to Biblical basics. King David both wrote songs and was also a warrior. I believe that for me, that is the perfect mold of a man, a man who has his skill sets to relate to spirituality, emotions, commune communication, and all those things that need to be in order to build a safe home, a safe emotional home, that our wife, our children could relate to us, can confide in us, and can have a safe space with us.

At the same time, I believe that as Jordan Peterson says, a man needs to be able to be dangerous because unfortunately—it’s not just now but through the generations—there’s always been physical and spiritual attacks against people. It’s not just the Jews, although we get it more than many other people that have been physically attacked.

In our training, we do both. In fact, we have two events going on in March. The first one was called the Main Event, which is far more focused on learning those communication skills, those emotional skills, creating networking and trustworthiness between the brotherhood. The same week, we flip over from the 19th to the 22nd, there is this Stand Up which is absolutely focused on physical training. We spent hours and hours on the range.

I teach Krav Maga, which is Israeli self defense. Most importantly, we actually teach very practical skill sets. This isn’t like, hey, we’re going to Texas, we’re going to shoot on the range, and get all greasy like men. We actually run through that as well, but we run through real scenarios that can happen.

For example, in the last Stand Up, I taught the men how to run downstairs. I’m also a volunteer firefighter. Has anyone ever thought or taught the children, how do you run down a flight of stairs in a rush without falling? Being quick is important. But if you’re going to fall over and break an arm, you’re going to slow down.

Just a year or so ago, maybe a little bit more, when there were riots on the streets of America, remember that? Normal people driving down the road and baseball bats being thrown at them and stuff. What do you have in your car in case that happens? They’re the basics. Then we go into some pretty intense training of if there are shootings in churches or synagogues. If you carry a weapon, how do you react? If you don’t carry a weapon, how do you react?

If someone really plugs in for the full picture, the Main Event and Stand Up, then get it all. But continuously, we have a weekly newsletter that we talk about both of those things as well, a lot of communication skills, and things like that. We have an accountability call that we’re online every week, every Sunday night. We are always investing in our skill sets. There are plenty of skill sets that we need to invest in in order to grow.

Toby: This is interesting. I don’t want to get into some of the transformations that have taken place, but you’re teaching people to be better citizens. You’re teaching them to actually be able to defend themselves, their fellow man, and their family. Do you ever have women that say, I want to join too? What are you able to do for them? I know I’m going to have listeners get mad at me and they’re going to be like, Toby, what the hell?

Natan: Yes, I do have women knocking on our door all the time saying, we want to learn these things. There are two reactions to it. Number one, that is awesome. There are programs that we create that are not part of Leader of the Pack that can be that. As you know, as a businessman, you can’t play with too many brands at the same time. But if there are women that want that stuff, yes, we do provide it.

A really cool thing that we did, we ran a marriage conference in Mexico just a few months ago. The most awesome thing was when we did Krav Maga with the women because for so many reasons, when men get physical in protection and training, we have this arrogance of like, what are people going to think about us? Are we punching hard enough? Do I look muscular enough?

When the women get into it, they’re ripping eyes out, which I know that’s very offensive to Americans. I can tell you, as someone who’s been in terrorist attacks, who’s been held up by gunpoint in South Africa, when God forbid those things happen, they should never happen. But when they do, you need to learn to be violent. You need to be able to switch to change, and women are brilliant at that.

Toby: I was a boxer for 30 years and that my daughter, it felt like I see it. You know what it does? It changes a mentality from being a victim mentality to being the understanding that you can actually do something about it. But still, hopefully you never have to. I just put time out there. We’re not advocating everybody goes out there and gets violent.

Natan: No, God forbid. If I can just say, Toby, as you know, I run a nonprofit called David Shield. When we go to churches, that’s what we do. We train the women separately and then families together. That really empowers them and then it doesn’t mix up with Leader of the Pack.

Toby: That is pretty cool. I never really truly understood the whole gamut, but I will say this. I heard this and maybe you can confirm it. You had somebody who used offensive language about their wife in one of your meetings, correct?

Natan: That’s correct.

Toby: Can you tell the story?

Natan: We have this call that we do every week. For the men, they can come or not come. No one’s pressuring them to do anything. People are busy. The men that come back every week have created an amazing nucleus of trustworthy brotherhood. This has been going, Toby, since 2018. I think we’ve missed three weeks on that call every week.

Toby: You went all through Covid. You went through Covid with these folks. You went through everything.

Natan: Everything. Europe, Australia, South Africa, America, Germany, Belgium, all over the world, England. We’re very blessed to have the different cultures come in because Americans are used to seeing the world as Americans, and Europeans are used to seeing the world as Europeans. Then you have an Israeli rabbi running this group, with people from all over the world.

What we can learn together is incredible. It’s really amazing. There’s no pressure for people to break down barriers, but people do want to get comfortable. This call was happening.

Some guys were offloading about what’s happening in their life. One of the men called his wife a very awful name. He loves her deeply and they’re still married to God, but he was very angry about something going on and frustrated. I don’t know if I can use the word here, but he called her a bad female dog, put it that way.

I stopped the call there and then. I said, this is a place of high level honorability. If we are going to honor each other as men, first and foremost, we will honor our wives. I said, you sir, will now leave the call and you have two options. You can just leave the call and never come back. This is a guy who has been in for years.

You can leave the call and never come back, or you can leave the call and go and apologize to your wife. But my wife doesn’t know exactly. Your wife doesn’t know that you spoke this way behind her back? As a responsible man, if you want your wife to trust her, you need to learn to be trustworthy. So you’ll go and you will tell her, you will apologize, and you will beg for forgiveness. Once you’ve done that, you’re welcome back on the call. And he did it.

It was very difficult for him. I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult for me to make that happen, to put that ultimatum out. I’ve been walked over many times because of it. I believe in being a straight person. I believe in living to your word.

There were really two tests going on. Number one was on that man, and number two was on me as the leader. If the leader is willing to allow things he disagrees with to go unnoticed so that he has an easier life, then I will probably select another leader. If that guy would have left membership and never paid again, I would have that rather than he’d be dishonest and speak up bad about his wife.

Toby: The other folks that were on the call, the other members, how did they react? Were they supportive, or were they like, that was harsh?

Natan: They were very supportive of the man. It was a good cop/bad cop thing. They said to him, we know this is going to be difficult, but we know you can do it. Remember that you’re a loving man. We’re sure you made a mistake by saying it. If you need to sleep in my house, give me a call.

Toby: You’re going to say, if you’re going to get well acquainted with your couch, I’ll tell you that.

Natan: He was. He was on the couch for a few nights. Thank God he has a better marriage and knows that there are repercussions for doing the wrong thing.

Toby: I have to say that this is typically a business podcast, but I say these things go like this. Everybody always says, oh, there’s your work and your personal life, blah-blah-blah. Nonsense. Everything’s related.

Natan: Yup, it’s all intertwined.

Toby: Yup. If you love what you’re doing, you’re not working anyway. There’s an old Latin phrase, “Vita est nihil sine magnis laboribus.” I usually write it in books, because I like it. Life is nothing without great labors. I say, the Greeks look at it as works. What are your works? What are you doing?

I’m listening to you, Rabbi. I know that you do a lot of volunteer work. Now it’s volunteer fireman, like, I’m just going to listen. Volunteer fireman, you do David Shield which is a nonprofit. You sit on the board of King’s Ransom, where you’re feeding people, helping get people out of trafficking, and all that good stuff.

There’s a lot that you’re doing, I’m going to start ticking it down. Do you think of that as work, or do you think of that as, that’s just who I am, that’s why I’m here on the earth, and that’s what I’m supposed to be doing?

Natan: I think that if I thought of it as work, my wife would have left me a long time ago. I really believe and I always tell my kids, live life with purpose. Of course, there’s business behind it. I get paid to do parts of that and not paid to do other parts of it, but I really see it as not trying to have a mission on this earth. If I get paid for some of it, great, but the rest of it, I’m just going to do. If you want to talk business a little bit about this, the best way to create a business is to be trustworthy. No one wants to do business with someone who’s not trustworthy.

Toby: We just had FTX here in the US, where they lost. The guy looked like a goon from the get-go. I didn’t even really know who he was. I’m just teasing you.

Natan: I don’t even know what that is.

Toby: They stole billions of dollars. It’s like another Bernie Madoff.

Natan: I’m watching Netflix on Bernie.

Toby: He looked trustworthy. It’s trust but verify, and there was no verification. It sounded like some people really looked the other way, unfortunately, in leadership. I’m actually going to bring this back around because a lot of what you’re doing is self-awareness and being aware of your surroundings.

I know again in the counterterrorism world, that you have to be able to use your instinct and use that gut. Do you see that people do that in their investing, in their business lives, and that helps the people that are in your group? Have you seen any of that?

Natan: Interestingly, I think that in the world of everybody is a know-it-all, a genius, people are so confused. People have stopped trusting their own instinct. Also, I really don’t want to get political, but it’s so interesting, me being an Israeli, training Americans in protection, how often people know in their gut what they should do. But constantly, they have to think, what’s the legal outcome if I… I’m not saying to anyone to not do what’s legally right and all that other stuff, but I can tell you now that when your family is under attack, if you are thinking it’s legal, there’s a problem.

I have a story about that. I don’t want to tell it publicly because they may watch this, but somebody who is being very religious in their mindset and religious being law-abiding. A bomb went off and they kept that religious lore, which actually endangered them and the person that was with them more than if they thought, let me just act on instinct over here. They were worried about touching a female that they were not married to, and bombs were going off.

In our modern world, when we’re told constantly that you should worry about this, worry about that, and worry about this, I really believe people are losing that human instinct of trusting their gut, or they’re having to deny it when it comes up for them because they’re worried about what the rest of the world are going to say about. We have a saying in security: It’s better to be ready than dead.

I’ll give you a real example here. I trained for David Shield Foundation, I trained at a church in downtown Toronto. The way I started the training was I turned up an hour early. I stood across the road taking pictures of their children going into church to this summer school. I then left my backpack at the front door of that church. Not one person stopped me from taking pictures of their children.

By the way, all of those pictures are deleted. I showed them to the pastor. They’re all gone, don’t worry about it. It was for the training exercise to show that people are so embarrassed about walking up to someone. What are you doing? Why is it taking pictures outside my church of children? They’re worried about being read, about being embarrassed, rather than being dead (God forbid) or having some perpetrator have pictures of their children.

When I questioned them about my bag, they were like, well, yeah, we saw the bag there, but it’s just a bag. We’ve never seen it before. I’m like, yes, and I pulled out a knife because people don’t want to be embarrassed. Excuse me, sir, whose bag is this? Excuse me, man, why are you taking pictures of our children? It is far more important. I’m not saying to get violent, God forbid, or aggressive.

Toby: You just asked. That’s the thing. People don’t realize that it’s okay to ask. Like, hey, I’m sorry, but what are you doing?

Natan: Yeah, what are you doing? It’s every mother and father’s instinct to do that. But this is switching it off because of all of this noise around us that maybe we’re going to do something wrong and offend someone.

Toby: It’s so interesting because it looks like it’s this circular. Here’s a scenario, hey, somebody’s extending across the church, taking pictures of the children, leaving a bag and everything else. The same thing happens in your business. The same thing happens and everything like, hey, are you willing just to stand by and let something occur when you know something’s going wrong? But you know something’s off. It may be with employees.

We feel like we can’t ask anything because I might get sued or anything else. We’ve lost some of that. Sometimes it’s just getting permission to do it. I think that’s one thing that I would say. Standing from the outside, any training that helps you be a little more assertive, to use your gut, to recognize that you have instincts, and gives you permission to actually use your instincts, not violently or against anybody, but actually just to protect your organization, protect your family, I think is a good thing.

Natan: It works on the other side as well. With our spouse, our true instincts are to love that person. We decided to commit our lives to them, but we have so much noise and people who think they’re professors telling us how to show love to this person and this language to use.

Just sit down and talk to the person you love and listen to them, and your instincts will teach you what needs to happen. You don’t want to hurt that person emotionally. You don’t want to insult that person emotionally. You want to love that person. It works on the hard and the soft side of a person.

Toby: I think that that’s a great place to leave this today. We could talk about this stuff for hours. I do want to say this. Your Leader of the Pack, you mentioned a couple of the courses and the live courses. Your courses are inclusive, right? When somebody comes in, they get to the location, but you include everything, right?

Natan: Absolutely everything.

Toby: Ammo and everything?

Natan: That’s funny you said ammo first. Accommodation, food, training, ammunition, everything that you would need, 100%. All you got to do is get there.

Toby: I’m just going to sing your praises because you offer it at really ridiculously low prices. What is it? Is it two days for $1100?

Natan: It’s three days for $1197.

Toby: About $1200. That includes the accommodations and everything. I just want to let you guys know that if you’re a man and you’re saying, hey, I’d like to get some of this training, maybe you never have. I’ve been in the arts for a long time and everybody’s like, oh, I do this martial arts. I box, I kickbox, and all that stuff. But you’re around that environment and not everybody is, and not everybody is used to it.

Some people look at it and go, oh, this is horrible. If it caused you to retract, then that’s probably a good reason to go because you want to be at least familiar so that your first introduction to it isn’t at your own personal expense. You don’t want to be a victim in a situation where somebody needs to stand up.

We see it all the time now. In the United States, they’re showing images all the time of people being attacked, people in the stores, all this stuff, people being shoved into subways. The reality of society is that some of these things pop up and I’d just rather everybody at least have some idea of what they would do under that circumstance than not.

I know that’s not all you teach. You’re teaching them to become a better man. You’re teaching them to be better husbands, better brothers and brother, better coworkers, better bosses, all those things, and we all need that work. But I just wanted to point out how ridiculously inexpensive it is.

If somebody wants to find out more and they say, hey, I’d love to do that, that sounds like a good use of my time and I want to learn more, where do they go? I could certainly put a link or anything like that into our podcast notes, but where would they go?

Natan: Our main website is leaderofthepack.co.il. You can see all our events there. You can see testimonials there. You can email us from there as well. If you want my email, I know there are many thousands of people on this. I can give out my email, I don’t mind.

Toby: Go for it. I’m not going to say no.

Natan: It’s ravnatana@gmail.com. If you are also interested in David Shield, which we come out to churches, schools, we’re now training a school in Kansas on their active shooter protocol because they actually are a school for children with special needs, so the usual act shooter protocol doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work for children with special needs to hide them and think that they’re going to be kept quiet. We’re doing a whole lot of things around the world and really feel blessed to do that. Just on the Leader of the Pack, Main Event and Stand Up is in March in Texas. We’re coming to Israel in October as well, but we’re going to have to bring Toby along for that one.

Natan: Somebody may be watching this and it might be months later, so just check their website, leaderofthepack.co.il. It sounds like you have a couple events in 2023, one in the States and one in Israel. What a great way to spend some time and to make yourself a better person.

I would strongly recommend it to anybody to do this type of training and get this. I happen to know Natan. I would say he’s a really great guy, walks the walk, and you don’t have to worry that they’re trying to get nickels out of you. It’s not. You go there, you’re going to have a good experience. I’ve just heard all the feedback from people.

Natan: Toby also, sorry, I keep butting in over here so you can tell me. I’m a rabbi, so I do these things. We also don’t make anyone sign anything saying, don’t talk business. Men need to talk business. Men need to network.

We don’t take any percentage of any deals done or anything like that. We just want trustworthy men to work with trustworthy men, and then far less nonsense happens in the workplace. We’ve had people buy and sell houses together. We’ve had people employ each other. On the business side, it’s a very, very trustworthy place to come to.

Toby: That’s fantastic. I’ll leave it at that and just say thanks for coming on to the podcast. We’ll have to have you again because I felt like we just touched the surface on a few things.

Natan: Thank you, Toby. I really, really am honored to be in your presence. I know that you have so much to do and so much wisdom to give. To give me this time and space, I very much appreciate it.

Toby: Absolutely. Thanks again.