Glenn Lovelace has so many awesome analogies and stories that have improved his life, as well as thousands of people that he works with. Take a listen…
Welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law Podcast. I’m relationship expert and master certified coach LeAnn Austin. I’ll help you create more connection and fun with others, especially your daughter-in-law.
Hey y’all, welcome to Lovin My Daughter-in-law, episode #140: Tireless with Glenn Lovelace
I love observing and connecting with other humans, especially noting how they feel and implement love into their lives and their relationships.
We have the amazing Glenn sharing some beautiful love and relationship insights with us today. All right, Glenn, tell us a little bit about you.
Yeah, where to start. I have a crazy beard and a backwards black hat, so I’m probably not your typical guest on the podcast, but I’ve been married about 20 years. In a couple of weeks, we’ll hit our 20 year mark and yeah, I mean, that’s a whole story in and of itself, but we have seven kids, believe it or not. Wow. Yeah. Crazy. I never thought I’d be this guy. This last week, Amber was in Lake Powell. She’s still there by the way. And it was so weird to tell my friends. Yeah. Five of my kids are at Lake Powell with my wife and two of them are here with me. And it was just bizarre to be like, Oh this is who I am.
But I was raised in Utah. I was born in Long Beach, California. So I kind of have this Southern California attitude towards life, but mostly raised in Utah. We moved to Utah when I was like five. So let’s see, I wrestled in high school, did a lot of snowboarding and I served a mission in Philadelphia back in 2001 And for like an English speaking elder, I served in the inner city most of my mission, which was really rare, but I just handled pressure and weird situations really well. And just kind of had a carefree attitude towards really hard situations. And built a lot of trust there.
Came home, went to BYU. I actually ran away to California cause I had a girlfriend and I was too scared to tell her that I wasn’t ready. So pretty immature, didn’t even like say hi or bye. It was just like, I got to go. But I did graduate from BYU and that’s a pretty fun story too, but I’ve had all kinds of jobs. I think my wife wondered when is he ever going to grow up? And she probably still does.
I started coaching in 2008. Awesome. And I’ve probably had a little over, I’m probably getting close to like 4,000 one on one clients, which is really crazy to say, and yeah, most of those were in the business space.
So in 2017, I won a fitness contest with bodybuilding.com, kind of a before and after dad bod, and out of like 60,000 people, I was the overall winner. They paid me a hundred grand. Wow. And that was, that kind of made a shift in my life where people were coming to me organically. Like, how did you do this?
Yeah. I was working three jobs and messing up my life in other ways, just because I was so busy and had this badge of just trying to get stuff done, but nonetheless, so by 2018, I’ll keep this pretty short, even though it’s getting long, but I think it gives everything context. But by 2018, my wife’s like, when are you going to quit some of your jobs? Cause I had three jobs still, and then I was helping people for free with their health. So 2018, I started charging for the advice I was giving, and lo and behold, people started getting results. And it was craziest all of a sudden had value.
So in 2019 ish, my wife and Minda Pacheco, do you know Minda? I do. Yeah. Remember Minda? Yeah, they were like, you need to go to the Life Coach School. And I was like, nah, that’s not for me. And they’re like, no, you should, and you need to. And so I ended up certifying with Brooke through the life coach school, kind of expanded my life and business from there.
And as far as the business goes, I love coaching men whose wives have had a transformation through therapy, coaching, or just personal development. I love this. Yeah. With the sense that it can create some disconnect or distance in the relationship when the wife is doing some work and it feels like, or looks like, or seems like the husband isn’t coming along for the ride.
And so the little narrative that I give is that women who are doing their work, and there’s lots of men out there doing their work too, right? Mm hmm, so it’s not a one sided coin, but women are out deep sea diving. They’re living this like crazy adventurous life. It’s a little bit dangerous emotionally, and they’re petting sharks and playing with dolphins and just having a more expansive experience. Uh huh with life and then they look around for their husbands and they’re like, where is he?
And he’s not in the boat. He’s not in the water and they finally see him. He’s on the beach just chilling where he’s comfortable And they just want so badly for him to come along and play life by the same set of rules. And so that’s who I target. And then of course, probably 70 percent of my business is still coaching men with businesses. Hmm. Awesome. Yeah. I’m trying to juggle their health, their relationships, and it’s just a lot.
So where I’m at right now, though, I had a really bad accident like a year ago and that might come out a little bit in the podcast. But yeah, ultimately I love God, I love serving people and I can’t believe that this is my business and my life. It’s really quite full, especially with seven kids. It’s really crazy.
I bet that’s a lot. And I just love hearing about your experiences and watching you, especially through this accident and how strong and how it’s just amazing to see what you have overcome. So thank you. Thank you for being here and sharing that. I appreciate it. Yeah, and fully transparent, I’m still in the middle of this. Are you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m still trying to bounce back. And it’s hard because it’s like, is this such a shift that I’m supposed to put the pieces of my life back together differently? Like, is this an opportunity to be something totally different?
But then we always want to go back to what we know. And so there’s just this tug and pull of how do I put these pieces back together. And there’s very much. A lot of living on faith where it’s like, God, just give me one little step to do today and really trying to have the faith and confidence just to take that one action. And that’s really where I’m at right now. It’s pretty crazy.
Well, and I love how you’re doing that. Hey, just what’s the next step, I’m going to do that. Yeah. If I look too far down, it’s too much. Right, yeah. Just in my own little bubble, let alone when I look at politics, economics, the climate in the world. What’s true and what’s not true. And it’s just, it’s a lot right now for me and for everybody else. I’m sure. Yeah.
Well, I love that god is the focus and it’s like, okay, what’s my next step. So that’s beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I mean when you look at just basic science, you could look at nutrition and it’s like, this is good for you, this is not good for you. And then you just go to another doctor, another scientist or another study. And it’s like, what in the world is even true anymore?
And so, you know, I was even talking to a gal at the gym today whose son committed suicide a few years ago And she’s like, I think I’m just agnostic right now and I asked her some questions that are really bold because that’s just what I do. And I’m like, do you believe in evil and darkness, and what I’m trying to do. I’m not trying to convince her what to do, but in my head, I just see so much evil and I feel so much evil and darkness to me the obvious thing is there must be light and truth like that opposition, and so for me God has to be the focal point of truth mm hmm, and that light. I love that. Yeah. Ah well, beautiful.
Well, I’ve got five questions for you. So tell me first, how do you incorporate love into your business and life, and how does that impact your relationships?
Good, so I think early on, once I got out of sight of like business and health and nutrition, I realized that people have a lot more going on then hey, you just need to eat this or do this. Like there’s reasons as to why we’re not taking those actions. And then once you start pulling those layers back, you start to realize we all have some stuff to work on and then life has a way of exposing new things.
But what I realized is, if I cared more than my client cared about their own life, then I started taking it on too much. I started worrying about it. I thought too much about what they needed to do. I started to care more than they cared. And I really had to get to a point where I had to turn it back over to God and the Savior. I really had to, cause I’m always been really good at coming at it from love, meeting men where they are in particular and women.
Cause we, I talk a lot about of addictions and just crazy situations that people find themselves in. And so for me to practice, like love in my business in particular, I started to take on this attitude that I was, I felt like I was trying to save people. And I had a realization one day that it’s like, why, why are you trying to be the Savior? Like, you’re not. And I was really humbled by it, to be honest, like I was just like it just pierced me in a way that it was like, why are you carrying this? Like you’re doing all the right things, but this piece is not yours to carry. Yeah.
And so to incorporate love in that area, it was like, okay, I need to myself bring the Savior into my coaching practice for myself, and then realize that I can just show by example, lead by example and then just invite people to to back to the Savior if they had kind of not been involving him.
The the tricky part with this I feel like is that when when we put others first and we can kind of lose ourselves in that mix. And I think women might struggle with this more than men, particularly with kids. And so it’s easy to lose ourselves. And I think where men lose themselves is trying to appease their wife and make her happy. So they take this path of least resistance to avoid confrontation and arguments and difficult, truthful conversations.
And so part of the dynamic of myself is I have to fill my cup first. And that’s really hard because that feels selfish. So there’s kind of a point when my transformation, and it’ll still rear its head a little bit, where I’ll say no to everything and everyone because I need to put myself first, but it’s at what energy or attitude am I saying no to them with. Is it like defensiveness or is it love? So I have the capacity to then really spill over.
So have you heard of the cup and saucer analogy? Tell us. Yes, so the idea is you got to fill your cup first. That sounds and feels selfish, but as you fill your cup with whatever you need to do, this is kind of the self love, whatever that means. And that’s a whole big conversation because you’ve got to try and experiment and really get clean and clear on what works.
And there is a part of detaching yourself from the world. Taking all the toxins that the world has put upon us to dim our light and dim our ability to see truth. But as we figure that puzzle out, our cup starts to fill. And if you’re familiar with like cup and saucer, there’s a saucer under your teacup. And that tea spills over onto the plate. That plate is for everybody else. So some people have a really hard time with this. And so you have to, or what I like to do is empower them by taking five to ten minutes throughout the day to do something very intentional. That helps them feel empowered and control and that really recharges them
So that then they can go back out and put others first and really love themselves. Love others, be God’s hand, and then and be on his errand, and I don’t know that recipe really works for me because if I don’t Then other important areas of my life start to fall away. And then you start to resent the people you love. At least that’s been my experience. Yes.
And that’s such a beautiful analogy to think about that cup overflowing and that’s what we can share. But having it filled up, I love talking all things self love. And I think that is key to not only the relationship with ourselves, but with everyone else around us. That’s so beautiful. Yeah.
And don’t get me wrong. Just cause your cups dropping below the the lip, that doesn’t mean we can’t still serve and love. Right. But it, as you just need to be aware that you’re going into a deficit. Mm hmm. And the longer that goes into a deficit, that’s going to have consequences too. Yes. And then the longer you stay in that area, you’re going to be hypnotized or become patterned into your life. And now you’re going to lose yourself.
So, one area that we lose ourselves is in our health, mind, body, spirit. Mm hmm. Yes. And if you lose yourself, you have less capacity and energy to then love and spill over into others because you’re focused on yourself and your own problems. So, then you become victimized by your circumstances. And it’s just, again, another topic we could go for a while on and I love where we’re going. But that’s what I think of. So, be aware of that and then find the area in your week and your day to recharge.
Yes. And I love that you do that yourself and you also coach on that and the importance of that self love and how it impacts how we’re showing up with others. So beautiful. Yeah, for sure. All right. So something, what is something that you love about you and why?
Okay, so I think where I would go with this question is, so I had this mountain bike accident. In June of 2023, a year ago, and I almost died twice from it. I broke my neck in three places. I broke my back. I broke a bunch of ribs. If we make it to YouTube, you can see my left arm. Oh, wow. And I had what’s called a terrible triad. I broke all three bones and shattered my elbow.
I’m big on like working out and I can’t do a pushup. I can’t do a pull up. And so, the doctors, I’ll get to the reason why I’m sharing this, the doctors wanted to fuse me. And I said, and again, this is where I felt parts of my story with God and the spirit be like, you need to give your body a chance to heal. And I felt that really strong and all I had 12 doctors tell me, you should be dead. You should be paralyzed. Nothing makes sense as to why you’re not paralyzed or dead.
Does that make sense? Mm hmm. So they wanted to fuse me. I was in the hospital about nine or ten days. I went home for two weeks and I was just in so much pain and really, really miserable. And I went back for like my kind of like a post op check, right. And they’re like, we can fuse you and all this will go away. And it was really tempting. And again, I was like, no, like this is definitely not the route to go until you give your body a chance.
So I got really serious about my recovery because they said, look, Glenn, if you get bumped, you’re going to be paralyzed. And that’s a pretty scary thought for a guy who bases his love for himself on all the things he can do, whether it’s for myself or for other people.
And I laid in my bed for four months trying to heal. I couldn’t shower by myself. I was the most worthless I’ve ever been. In 2013, I had a gun in my hand cause I just didn’t want to deal with life. And in September of last year, I had kind of that same call just like, and it was, it was very real this time.
I had way more power and control over it. I just recognized how hard things were. And part of that was, I was learning new depths to love myself, not for what I could do, but for who I am. So this is kind of a tricky question because it is hard to love yourself when you can’t do what you’re supposed to do.
So what’s been really wild this year, and I could probably talk to you for like two hours of all the miracles that God has provided in my life, but I’m going to cover the providing piece of what Glenn is incapable of doing. So it’s, it’s really crazy to have the ability to make money on demand and be successful. And then to have all of that gone. Have all of your savings gone, having your debt increase, and then to have God be providing. It’s very humbling and you have to give up ultimate control of what you think you should have control over.
So, you know, in answering, you know, this question, I still am kind of having a hard time with it because I’m kind of still in a weird place. But I think what my answer would be is I’m definitely tireless. Meaning I show up every day and I just give it my best. My whole business is built around the idea of one day, one life, meaning I have to get extremely present with who I am today.
And some days I can’t do as much as I did yesterday, but I kind of have this, what I love about myself to answer your question more directly is, I feel like I have the muscle to endure to the end. Does that make sense? Yes, that’s beautiful.
And then the dude side of me says, I’m just too dumb to quit. Like I’m dumb enough to keep going because nothing makes sense. Sometimes. Does that make sense? Yeah, way to say it, but it works for me. Yeah. And it’s not even a dumb thing. It’s like, that’s pretty amazing and empowering that you’re choosing that. Hey, I’m just going to keep going. I’m just kidding. That’s awesome.
There’s a Japanese form of art called kintsugi. Have you heard of it? I haven’t. I’ve heard of it before, but last summer it just hit me and it pierced me. And so I’ve been working on a book for two years. This is just like the bane of my existence at this point, because it’s just like, oh my goodness, but I’ve learned so much through this. But as of right now, the cover of it is this beautiful Kintsugi piece, which is Japanese art where they take a piece of pottery and they intentionally break it.
Oh, I think I have heard something about it. And then putting it back together or something? Yeah. And they intricately put it back together with gold lacquer and flake. Uh huh. And it is so beautiful. So, the principle behind this that really touches me is a lot of men are unbreakable, and we just do so much out of our life through force, right?
And this Kintsugi model, what it is, is the more broken the piece is, the more, the more valuable it becomes, and the stronger it becomes. So when I’m working with myself and with men, the reality is, hey, you’re broken. There’s parts of you that need to heal through the Savior, through love, through the atonement. And if you’ll embrace that and not keep it a secret, whatever your past looks like, your value increases as a man and you become stronger.
So it’s just this beautiful thing that reminds me that yes, we get broken by life. We get broken by our decisions, but through the atonement, we can all become, we can become and get back together and, and really become a high valuable tool in the hand of God. If that’s our goal. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, so beautiful. Thank you. I’m excited to read your book too. That’ll be awesome. I am too. I’m so excited to read it. It’s going to be great when it’s done. I love it. Well, all right. I love talking about connection with others and ourselves. And I think that the daughter-in-law relationship is packed full of endless examples to learn from. So any thoughts about any of the daughter-in-laws you know, or your future daughters in law?
Yeah, I have learned a lot through my own wife and mother situation. Uh huh. So, what’s really tricky from my seat is trying to love and support both without picking sides. Interesting. It’s an interesting place to be when you share a bed with one woman and you came out of the womb of another. Yes, that is, yeah. Do you know what I mean? Totally.
So if you choose, either way you choose wrong. So it’s a very fine line to walk. And so, what I’ve learned with that dynamic is a lot. One of those pieces is I can compartmentalize my relationships. So often people want us to choose a side because of what they make that mean that they’re right, the other person’s wrong or vice versa. And it just depends on what tools and mindset people are playing with.
And anyway, I’m trying to keep this really short cause this could go on for a while, but what I found is there’s a metaphor or analogy I use with my clients. And it’s like, are you supposed to be a shoulder or a hammer?
And what this reminds me to do is whoever I’m talking to, to ask them to make a choice as to how I’m going to show up for them. Because once I asked them to exercise their choice, I found that 99. 9, I can’t even give you one example where they were upset at me. Uh huh. So, my mom comes to me, my wife comes to me, and in my head I’m thinking shoulder hammer. So what I’m trying to do is get to a place where I’m like, look, do you want me to be a listening ear? And a support. Do you want my real opinion? Do you want my advice as a coach? Like what role do you want me to play? Do you want me to pick up my hammer and get to work and help you fix this? Or do you want me just to support you without supporting the bad behaviors that I think and believe and that my perceptive sees because of I’m not in this.
Yeah. Yeah. Emotionally. I am not in this. So this recipe and communication has been extremely crucial. So, because we’re connected through the life coach school, we do model work, right? So if your clients know how to do models, there’s a process I call ninja models where how fast can you interpret what the other person’s model is. Okay. And you’re going to have to take some guesses, but in the process you need to seek to understand. Uh huh. You need to seek to be understood, and you have to give the benefit of the doubt. If you can’t do those, then these ninja models are going to be skewed into your perceptions. Does that make sense?
Another thought I would give is tribal languages. So you have a tribe, your daughter-in-law has a tribe, your mother-in- law has a tribe, and if you can kind of see what their upbringing was like and how they handle confrontation, you know, attachment styles, like the list of resources is endless out there, but If you’re actively trying to love that person while maintaining your boundaries and using proper boundaries and requests and consequences, and you give things enough time and you exercise the Atonement in your life and you give up or relinquish control, then I really believe you can make progress.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I love how you, especially as the guy, is like, okay, wait, I’ve got my wife, I’ve got my mom here. And that does put you in kind of a tricky situation at times. And even simply to ask that, hey, do you want me to be your shoulder? Do you want me just to listen? Or do you want some help? Do you want some tools? Your hammer? Like what a great analogy to think about when we’re in this situation or any guys listening to this or even as a daughter-in-law or mother-in-law. Wait a second. What do I need? And can I ask my son or my husband for what I actually need? That’s amazing.
It takes a lot of awareness and you got to realize that, oh, this only affects her and her and it’s like, no. This affects the dad, the grandpa, whoever he is to you, this impacts all of the siblings. People start weaponizing their barbecues and whether their kids can come play with you or not. They avoid you because they don’t know how to handle the confrontation that you and mom are having. And then nobody wants to talk about it. Right. You know, if it’s my wife’s side of the family, when they do talk about it, it’s very explosive. And so it’s just, it’s just a very tricky situation. And so at the end of the day, I think it’s ironic that we’re all learning similar lessons one way or the other, no matter what seat we’re in. Yeah. And these tools become very, very powerful.
Yes. Yeah. So you, you combine the tools with gospel and truth. And now all of a sudden you have the recipe to use the atonement to use the love for bigger and bigger, you know, magnitudes or something where it’s like, wow, I didn’t know love on this capacity. Yes. Yeah. And love feels the best for sure. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, is there anything else you’d like to share and where can our audience go to find out more about you?
Yeah. One thought that’s a premise to the book is you’ve never been a man before. And some people take this one way or the other, and what I mean by that is whatever you’re doing right now, you’ve never done it before. So you’ve got to have a premise of love and patience as you figure out this new circumstance.
Right now I have seven kids. I have teenagers to diapers. And it’s like, I’ve never done this while being broken, while having this, this and this and this, whatever the situation is. Right. This hit me one day because I was struggling with something and I couldn’t tell you what. But the spirit, my intuition both reminded me of when me and my dad used to butt heads as a teenager. And, you know, we both didn’t show up as our best selves, but as the father, he would come to me and he would say, Glenn, I’ve never been a dad before. And as a kid, I think we’re very quick to forgive, which is a really great quality of children that we should all continue to adopt.
But it helped me understand that, hey, he’s never been a dad and I was the oldest. I was also the oldest boy. So we joked that I was the kid dropped on his head and the experimental baby. And, you know, yeah, we understand when things were different for you. But, you know, there’s good things that come with that too. But, you’ve never done this before.
And I’ve told this to men and women, women in particular who are struggling, and they just Like a, like a release valve goes off and sometimes they’ll just get very, very emotional. And I think that’s just a place where they’re like, wow, it’s okay that I’m, you know, Jody Moore yelling at my kids or LeAnn having trouble with my daughters-in-law. Right, or my mothers-in-law. It’s like, hey, you’ve never had a mother-in-law before who thinks her son is still hers. You know, trying to control her son.
Anyway, we’re getting into all kinds of assumptions, but that’d be one message is, hey, you’ve never done this before. Give yourself some time. Clear yourself of all the crap from the world and try to really draw on personal revelation. Think you’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.
So you can find me on Instagram: @itsyourwingman. Okay. It’s your wingman. Awesome. Your wingman. My clients were calling me their wingman. And so I kind of adopted it a few years ago. It’s kind of cheesy, but I like it. It’s great glennlovelace.com People can go. That website’s geared towards men whose wives have had a transformation. They can schedule a call. I’m just one-on-one right now. I’ve had a lot of asked to do group stuff and I just, I don’t know. We’ll figure that out eventually maybe, but then the book will come out and I can share that with you when it’s actually published. And awesome. Yeah. I have a podcast, the One Day One Life Podcast. People check me out. Excellent. All right. And I’ll put all this in the show notes.
Well, so for sure. One thing I would invite people to do if they do want to connect with me, and they would like my opinion on a particular situation. They can message me and I’ll actually record you a podcast that you can listen to or share with the people that you’re struggling with or that you’re trying to invite to come along. Obviously don’t share it with them if you don’t agree with what I say, but I’m here to like totally support people however I can and that’s one way that I found a little bit of motivation to try to unbiasedly share how they can make some progress. So that’s awesome. All right.
Well good. All right. Last question. What is your favorite question or quote about love and how have you used it for yourself and in your relationships?
Okay, so to give this a little bit of context, this quote isn’t really my favorite. But I did stumble upon it this week, ironically, and I wasn’t really planning on sharing it, but when I looked at I, Hey, you need a quote for today, I was like, okay, this is the one I’m going to use. And it’s from Tolstoy.
Ironically, it’s crazy. But what I thought about this quote is the world teaches us to love things, use people and worship ourselves. At least in my opinion, that’s how I see the world. Love things, use people, and worship ourselves. And I’ve had to really flip that on its head and be like, hey, use things, love people, but worship God.
This quote is about kindness, and there’s, there’s two of them. They’re not really short bangers, they’re a couple sentences each, but here it is: “the kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life. With kindness, mysterious things become clear. Difficult things become easy, and dull things become cheerful. And then he continues. Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself for another person. Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another and lives for another, only this kind of love can be called true love, and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life.”
This is the foundation of the world. So I brought up the world because there’s what the world teaches us and then there’s what God teaches us as the foundation. And I’m just reminded of the two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Love yourself. Yes. Yes. Love yourself. Yes. And love your neighbors. And I just, I don’t know, I think kindness is one of those things.
And I’ll say one more thought. I know I’m long winded, so thanks for being patient with me, but we men get attacked or pointed out that they have this nice guy syndrome, right? And kindness, I believe, is different than being nice. And I’ll just leave it there. I’ll leave that as kind of a plot twist where it’s like, hey, go spend some time with what’s nice and what’s kind. Thanks. And there is very much a difference in those two realms, but Tolstoy, man, I think he nailed it. I think the more intelligent we become and the more kind we become.
You know, I had someone cut me off the other day really bad, and I was totally fine. Like, I’m like, oh, they’re totally in a rush to get to school. Like, I get it. And I think that inner barometer is a really good gauge, especially for us guys who resort to anger pretty quick with our ego and our pride. And so even driving can be a good barometer of how do we love ourselves and how do we love others? Oh, so good. I love that.
True love and kindness enriches our lives. Hmm, something to think about. For sure. Thank you, Glenn, for sharing your love insights with us. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Have a good one y’all, and here’s to tireless, connection, and love.
If you enjoyed this podcast, take a look at my Connection Crew Program and One-on-One Coaching options by checking out the show notes. In those programs, I teach and coach a variety of ways to have more fun and connection in your relationships. I also share how I have created a beautiful relationship with my daughters-in-law.
And if you want one easy question you can keep in your back pocket and use to increase the love you feel for your daughter-in-law today, go to leannaustin.com and get the one question.
