Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Dominick Quartuccio of The Great Man Within Community Is Helping To Change Our World
Help us destigmatize this work. Men’s work still carries a stigma — that it’s weird or for “the weak.” It’s the opposite: communities like ours are homes for the most courageous, capable, and extraordinary men who take command of their lives. We need a massive PR campaign to truly show the miracles occurring behind closed doors so more men can feel the power of what’s happening and join in!
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dominick Quartuccio.
Dominick Quartuccio is the founder of The Great Man Within Community, a global organization serving hundreds of men who are actively becoming better leaders, fathers, husbands and friends.
He is the author of two books Design Your Future and On Purpose Leadership, and is the co-host of The Great Man Within Podcast (275+ episodes).
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Is a stereotypically male existential crisis an acceptable answer?
Here’s how this story goes:
- I spent 15 years working for a Fortune 100 financial services firm.
- I achieved financial and social success.
- Despite the success, I felt empty, lost and unfulfilled on the inside.
- I was confused by how I felt because I thought, “I’m doing what I’m supposed to.”
- I made poor personal decisions to bring a sense of “aliveness” into my life.
- I hit rock bottom and entered a 12-step program for Sex Addiction.
- I got the help I needed, I saw the light, and my life felt like my own for the first time.
- I found my purpose: helping other men find their purpose, and
- I left my 15-year corporate career in 2016 to pursue this purpose.
Now, the mission for the remainder of my life is to help men stop lone wolfing their lives, come together with other men in pursuit of their best selves, and do the work we need to align with our life purpose.
Now, The Great Man Within Community, which I founded, is no longer “mine.”
It’s ours.
Many successful men in our community — lawyers, business leaders, finance guys, tech entrepreneurs — are leaving their professions to begin pursuing their passion:
They are building The Great Man Within Community to be a lighthouse for men sailing adrift at sea, looking for their shore.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
I sure can. It’s called “Porngate.”
The following events occurred on September 28th 2020:
That was the day I mistakenly sent an email to 300 of my corporate clients about how “men need to make better decisions about their porn habits.”
That email was sent to my corporate clients on a Monday.
By Friday, I had 0 corporate clients.
You see, in 2020, my business served two entitles:
- Men (men becoming better leaders, fathers, husbands and friends)
- Corporate (keynote speeches, workshops and facilitated events)
Those two businesses were supposed to be church and state — never the two shall meet.
Alas, one silly administrative error on my email system mixed up the two and burned my entire corporate business to the ground.
As it turns out, corporate doesn’t take too kindly to the word “porn,” no matter how true your intentions.
The silver lining:
The “burning of my corporate boats” forced me to give 110% of my focus to the work that needed me most: serving men. And in the year since Porngate, I’ve launched two more masterminds for men, a global pushup challenge for men and expanded our online network of men by the hundreds.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Yes. See Porngate. (insert grin)
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
Too many men are “lone wolfing” their lives.
The Lone Wolf is the man going about his life emotionally and spiritually on his own.
When a man’s inner world is walled off to those around him, he feels lost, misunderstood, confused and alone, no matter how “successful” he may appear on the outside.
The Lone Wolf’s inner world is also walled off to himself. Most of the time, he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, what he truly wants or how to create the change necessary to break out of his self-imposed prison. There are Legions of Lone Wolves out there. And Lone Wolves starve. And so do their partners, children, businesses and communities.
The work we do in The Great Man Within Community is to help these men stop lone wolfing their lives. We give them the tools necessary to stop drifting and start living intentionally.
One of those tools is teaching them emotional fluency:
- The ability to feel an emotion
- The ability to name that emotion
- The ability to be with — not react to — that emotion
- The ability to express that emotion
- The ability to shift that emotion (if desired)
When men stop Lone Wolfing, their lives elevate, as do all of the lives that they touch.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I call this story “Is alcohol keeping you from greatness?”
Most stories we hear about people giving up alcohol come from when someone hits rock bottom.
How about a story of someone giving up alcohol because he’s at the absolute top?
Steve Wilt is one of the premier financial advisors and a senior partner at one of the top financial services firms in the industry.
Every year you’ll see Steve neck-and-neck at the top of the firm for most business production. He’s got an incredibly loving partnership with his long-term wife, whose relationship continues to flourish with each passing year. He’s a devoted and present father to two children whom he adores. He’s a devout man of faith. And a pillar of giving back to his community of Akron, Ohio.
Steve is a man who has chosen to go for it all — to become his absolute Great Man.
In our mastermind, which Steve is a part of, we spend much time envisioning who that Great Man is — the best version of yourself.
One day, Steve realized that he could never become his Great Man — his fullest potential — with alcohol playing a role in his life. So he decided to join a 90-day program called I Am a Comeback to quit alcohol, which he succeeded in doing.
As a result, his energy levels spiked, he started closing bigger deals at work, his body got into the best shape of his life (which made his wife happy).
He ended up telling his story on The Great Man Within Podcast: Ep #248. Is Alcohol Keeping Your From Your Great Man and ended up inspiring many other men to modify their drinking habits, which has allowed these men to show up as better leaders, fathers, husbands and friends.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
- Shine a light on men’s work. The lack of awareness is the #1 obstacle to getting more men to stop lone wolfing and join a community to do inner work. If society and media took a greater interest in the work we’re doing here at The Great Man Within — and other excellent communities like the ManKind Project, Evryman, Modern Renaissance Man and the Sacred Sons — then more men who need this work will find us.
- Help us destigmatize this work. Men’s work still carries a stigma — that it’s weird or for “the weak.” It’s the opposite: communities like ours are homes for the most courageous, capable, and extraordinary men who take command of their lives. We need a massive PR campaign to truly show the miracles occurring behind closed doors so more men can feel the power of what’s happening and join in!
- Celebrate the men who do this work. It’s no secret; men love to be heroes. The men who sign up for a men’s retreat, hire a therapist, or join a local men’s group are heroes for doing the work that is still, to some degree, destigmatized. The more we celebrate these men, the less stigma there is. And eventually, men’s work will become something we all celebrate.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
We have 3 Principles of Leadership in our Community:
- A Great Man creates environments where he and those he cares about can thrive.
- A Great Man constantly leans out over his edge in everything he does.
- A Great Man masters the art of leading himself first to inspire and impact others second.
Leadership Principle #3 — “A Great Man masters the art of leading himself first so that he can inspire and impact others second” — is critical to expound upon.
Too many self-proclaimed leaders have not done the necessary work to master their self-leadership. So they end up passing along their flaws, failings and inconsistencies to those they lead.
The man who masters the art of leading himself has done the work required to be ready to lead others.
I love this quote from Neale Donald Walsch:
“A true master is not the one with the most students,
but one who creates the most masters.
A true leader is not the one with the most followers,
but one who creates the most leaders.
A true king is not the one with the most subjects,
but one who leads the most to royalty.”
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started”, and why? Please share a story or example for each.
- I wish someone would’ve told me to start The Great Man Within communities sooner. Before “Porngate” (see my story in response to question #2), I made 90%+ of my income from corporate work and less than 10% from men’s work.
This is why the corporate work persisted: I was afraid of where the money would come from if I followed 100% of my passion for men’s work.
But when Porngate obliterated my corporate business, and I had no choice but to throw 100% of my eight behind The Great Man Within Community, that’s when it took off!
2. I wish someone would’ve told me to charge more.
MAN…doing this work can be INTENSE.
I love it, but it’s a lot more emotionally demanding than it appears to the outside world.
Previously, I was WAY undercharging for the impact of this work on the lives of men…and I’m still not where I should be…but I’m getting there.
3. When I was a boy, I wished someone had told me it was ok to feel my feelings.
Boys — and young men — are taught that emotions and feelings are a liability. Stoicism and a strong poker face — especially in the eye of a storm — are applauded in a man. We’re allowed an occasional outburst or display of anger, which makes us even more manly.
But over a lifetime of suppressing emotions and going numb on the inside, I started acting out flippantly to recapture feelings of “aliveness” that could penetrate the emotional wall I’d built up inside.
I’m 43 now, and I’m still deconstructing that wall so I can feel fully again.
I’d love to know what life would be like if I — if men — could feel freely.
4. I wish someone told me to take 2–3 days off after running a men’s retreat.
Holding space for 72+ hours of intense emotional situations at a men’s retreat is what I live for, but it also takes a tremendous toll emotionally.
Because these retreats take place on the weekends, I often found myself working the entire week leading up to the retreat and going right back to work on Monday after the retreat ended.
That’s NOT a recipe for healthy long term emotional recovery.
Now I’m getting better at softening my schedule at the front and back end of running these retreats to prioritize my self-care.
5. I wish someone would’ve told me to spend less time behind the computer and more time getting in front of men.
As an entrepreneur, there are always reasons to be behind the computer: working on socials, writing email newsletters, answering press interviews, and recording podcasts, to name a few.
I’ve found myself getting lost in the obligations of being behind a screen WAY too often, only to be reminded that a full 20 minutes of person to person connectivity can lead to the next big client or opportunity.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Our biggest mission in The Great Man Within Community is to get 10 million men on the path of inner work and actively pursuing their best selves.
There’s a deep-rooted sense of knowing that 10 million men doing this work will create a tipping point “awakening” among the men of this world…and create tectonic shifts in the way men show up as leaders, businessmen, family men, and friends.
This may take my entire lifetime (or perhaps longer).
But this movement of 10 million men WILL happen.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This quote has become a beacon of warning inside of our Great Man Within Community:
The Definition of Hell is
on your last day on earth,
the man you became
meets the man you could have become.
There is no worse fate for myself and the men in our community than to leave this planet knowing we didn’t go after our full potential.
The only way we live out that Definition of Hell is to allow ourselves to drift in life. The antidote to drifting is intentionality.
So we have committed to living an intentional life — every day, every minute, moment by moment, to realize our fullest potential.
Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.
Elizabeth Gilbert is my absolute favorite author — and speaker — of all time. Everything that pours from her speaks to my soul.
Most of her audience is female, but I know she’s carrying skyscrapers full of wisdom and insight about men that she’s yet to share with this world, and I’d love to ask her all about it.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Catch a glimpse of my daily life on Instagram: @DominickQ
Check out The Great Man Within Podcast
- 275+ episodes for men
- High-performance habits, masculinity, purpose and sex & intimacy
On Spotify: Click Here
On Apple Podcasts: Click Here
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Dominick Quartuccio of The Great Man Within Community Is Helping… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.