Episode 31 of No Man’s an Island

In this episode of No Man’s an Island, Chris Hemmings speaks with Daniele Fiandaca, co-founder of Token Man and co-creator of the Hard As Nails campaign. Daniele’s work sits at the intersection of men’s mental health, workplace inclusion and masculinity. Through Token Man, he has spent years helping men engage more honestly with inequality, power and gender. Through Hard As Nails, he is exploring what happens when men challenge stereotypes in a highly visible way by painting their nails and reflecting on the reactions they receive.

What follows is a rich conversation about empathy, privilege, loneliness and the emotional cost of trying to live inside narrow ideas of what a man should be. Daniele reflects on the moment that first shifted his perspective on gender inequality, the personal loss that changed the direction of his work and why supporting men has to be part of any serious conversation about culture change. He also explains why so many men are still frightened to speak up at work, why compassion matters and what Hard As Nails is already revealing about men’s emotional lives.

What emerges is not just a conversation about masculinity in the workplace, but a wider exploration of how men change, what blocks them and what helps them feel safe enough to start.

What we cover

• Daniele’s journey from advertising executive to co-founder of Token Man
• The workplace dinner that changed his understanding of privilege
• What “laddish” culture really looks like and why it causes harm
• Why men often become “the only” when they challenge sexism or prejudice
• The risks men face when they engage publicly with inclusion work
• How grief and loss reshaped Daniele’s understanding of men’s emotional lives
• Why asking men to be allies is not enough if they are not being supported themselves
• The story behind Hard As Nails and what men discover when they paint their nails
• How stereotypes about masculinity affect confidence, safety and self-expression
• Why empathy and emotional connection need to be taught, practised and modelled
• How loneliness and disconnection continue to shape men’s mental health
• Why redefining success matters if men are to live fuller, healthier lives

Listen and watch

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Takeaways for men

You do not need to wait until rock bottom before reflecting on your life.
Speaking up may feel risky, but it can open the door for other men to do the same.
Empathy is not weakness. It is something that can be learned and strengthened.
Being challenged by a stereotype can reveal how deeply it has shaped you.
You do not have to fit one narrow model of masculinity to be a good man.
Connection, emotional honesty and community matter just as much as work or money.
Redefining success can be one of the most powerful ways to step out of the man box.

Quotes to share

“It was the first time in my working life I’d experienced being in the out group.” – Daniele Fiandaca

“Good men for me are the people that are being active.” – Daniele Fiandaca

“The reality is if your boss doesn’t believe in this stuff and you’re spending your time doing it, you’re gonna get your boss telling you, stop doing this.” – Daniele Fiandaca

“Compassion for men from everyone… that does include women.” – Daniele Fiandaca

“Change only happens when you point to yourself and start to say, what is going on here?” – Daniele Fiandaca

“The number one word is empathy.” – Daniele Fiandaca

Why this conversation matters

One of the strongest threads in this episode is the idea that many men are being asked to change without first being understood. Daniele speaks powerfully about the limits of old inclusion models that simply told men to be better allies without asking what men themselves were carrying, suppressing or struggling with. His point is not that men should be centred at the expense of others. It is that real change rarely happens when people are only being instructed, corrected or blamed.

This is where the conversation becomes especially useful. Daniele is not interested in excusing harmful behaviour. He is interested in understanding what allows men to shift. That includes recognising the cost of rigid masculine norms, the fear many men feel when stepping outside them and the loneliness that often sits underneath performance, defensiveness or silence.

The Hard As Nails campaign offers a surprisingly effective example of this. Painting men’s nails is not the goal in itself. It is a prompt. A disruption. A way of helping men feel, however briefly, what it is like to be seen differently, judged differently or made to feel outside the norm. That experience then becomes a route into reflection. For some men, it is the first time they begin to notice how much their own lives have been shaped by stereotype.

There is also something important in Daniele’s honesty about grief. The death of his brother forced him to confront how little vulnerability he had allowed himself to show, even in close relationships. That moment helped him see more clearly that men’s emotional disconnection is not just a private issue. It has consequences for their wellbeing, their relationships and their ability to show up in the world with empathy and care.

This is what makes the episode so valuable. It is not simply about workplace inclusion or one campaign. It is about the conditions men need in order to grow. It asks what happens when men are invited not just to perform change, but to experience it and what might become possible if more of them felt safe enough to do so.

Resources and links

Daniele Fiandaca – Token Man
Hard As Nails
Men’s Therapy Hub – Find a Male Therapist

Episode credits

Host: Chris Hemmings
Guest: Daniele Fiandaca
Produced by: Men’s Therapy Hub
Music: Raindear

TRANSCRIPT:

Chris (00:01)
Welcome to No Man’s An Island, a podcast powered by Men’s Therapy Hub, a directory of male therapists for male clients. On this episode, I’m speaking to Daniele Fiendarca. He’s the co-founder of Token Man, which challenges inequality in the workplace, particularly around masculinity, gender and power. He also recently created the Hard As Nails campaign, daring men to paint their nails while he interviews them about their lives and work. Hey, Daniele.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (00:27)
Hey Chris, how are you doing? It’s great to be here and I just need to make sure it’s credited. My co-found on Harder’s Nails is Sam Conniff, so there’s two of us doing it. And it was his origin story, so I always want to make sure that he’s credited and yes, we’ll come on to Harder’s Nails on what we’re doing, but I just thought I’d say that.

Chris (00:28)
I’m alright thank you, it’s really good to have you. Go on.

Okay.

Very good of you.

Very good of you. Well, you’ll see, you’re another one of these awesome people in the men’s space that I’ve been connecting with and admiring from a distance for a while now. We briefly met at your International Men’s Day event last year and we couldn’t get a time in for me to record the Hard as Nails recording, which means I get to grill you first, which is very nice for me. So the first question we always ask on this podcast is the same, which is how did you get into this space? So for you.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (01:05)
Yes.

Chris (01:12)
all the way back in 2014, I think it was, what led you to start Token Man, what was going on that made you decide that you wanted to pivot away from your old life into the new, much more challenging life of engaging men.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (01:24)
And

thanks for reminding me what date it was because I was thinking, no, I’ve got to remember when it was, but you’re right. was actually, I have to go back to probably 2012, 2013. So I used to work in advertising. I’m an ex advertising exec. had a, on the side, I ran the biggest collective of creative directors in the world. Funny enough, just as a little hobby, we used to do events around the world every six months with my partner, Mark Chalmers.

Chris (01:27)
Yeah.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (01:53)
And I, and especially when we went to Tokyo, really felt it was the first time I really started to notice and how masculine the whole thing was. we had within our, within, within our membership, we had 26 % women. That was double what actually exists in terms of number of creative directors that were, that were in the advertising industry, which was famously only at 13%. So we were double what was happening in the industry, but I still noticed it.

I’ll take it, and it was just the only way to describe it. It just was really laddy. And I started to realize, my God, how must you feel being a woman in this environment that was just very, very laddy? And so I decided that I needed to change. I needed to recruit more women. So I organized a dinner. So when I turned up to the dinner, I had a full time job. I was the head of innovation at an agency and I didn’t think about the dinner and I walked into the room.

and then something happened to me that never happened to me before. I lost my confidence.

Chris (02:59)
Because you’re the only guy in the room.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (03:00)
because I was the only guy in the room. It was the first time in my working life I’d experienced being in the out group. And so when we talk about privilege, right, that is an enormous privilege. And I was 39 at the time. I think I’ve got maths right, but I was 39 at the time. And that’s the first time experience being in the out group. know, if you’re a woman or anyone from historical marginalized group, you’ll be like, oh my God, if only I had that in my life. You know, and so, and all of sudden, what that meant was,

Chris (03:23)
Hmm.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (03:27)
I lost my confidence as we went to sit down, the conversations that happening around me, I just had no affinity to them. I felt myself pushed further out. When I got up to introduce the dinner, my co-host, a really good friend of mine, she cut me off. These were all things I heard women experiencing in the boardroom. It wasn’t that didn’t believe women, I just didn’t understand the extent of what it felt like to be in the out group. But also, it also started making me think that if…

this and it made me start seeing a world I hadn’t seen before and as I saw that world I realized that if I was just operating that without world without changing anything I was reinforcing that world so I was part of the problem and so that led me to and and also at the same time something had happened to me on another occasion but what was quite clear to me around that time was that

Not only were men not necessarily being invited into the room when we talk about gender equality, but they often weren’t welcome in the room. And if we look at history, no minority has ever affected change without the support of majority. And clearly women aren’t the minority in the population. But unfortunately, if you look at most industries, they still are in the minority in senior leadership. And so for me, unless the men were actually part of the problem, nothing was going to shift. I’m a hacker. The last book I worked on was Hacker Maker Teacher Thief. I did the hacker section.

I like solving problems and I thought there had to be a better way. And so I co-founded Toker Man with three women. And those three women were so important to me, ⁓ Emma, Georgia and Penny, because they gave me the confidence to do it. But they moved within six months, 12 months, they moved out. They just gave me the confidence because they realized it had to be a male voice. that’s really, mean, that dinner changed my life.

because I ended up going into inclusion diversity and we’ll come on to how I started then within that framework. There was a point and maybe we’ll come on to it, you tell me if it’s to do it now, but there was a point at which I flipped some of my work, only some of my work into supporting men.

Chris (05:16)
Mm.

Right. And I do want to come on to that. I guess what’s interesting for me is you’re saying that you were a 39 year old man and it was the first time that you’d been the only man in the room. And that was ⁓ frightening, I guess, because you recoiled and you became nervous. You’d spoken previously about the laddishness of the industry you worked in. What do you mean by laddishness? Like what sort of environment are we talking about that…

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (05:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris (06:04)
And I’m going to be compassionate, as is the nature of this podcast, to say that you probably weren’t aware of just how laddy it was until you weren’t in it anymore, right? It’s the blind spots. So like, what was it that was going on for you? Okay.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (06:14)
100%. I think it’s the banter. mean, anyway,

can say, you we, you listen, every culture is different. But if you think about the English culture, we’re one of the few cultures that think the best way of getting close to someone is by putting them down. Because let’s be honest, that’s what banter is, is putting people down. And actually, if you look at his story, it does come from history. So someone, you know, in the work that I in the work that I’d done a lot of culture change work before that.

and I’d learned the history of banter, which is so fascinating. Banter actually comes when we were tribes people and we were going out and hunting. And it’s that whole time when you bring the kind of junior person comes out, the chief misses its target and the junior person then hits the target. And the banter is putting that person down to save face for the chief. That’s where banter comes from, right? And so for me, it’s that kind of banter. It’s the sexist language. ⁓ I think there was just…

Chris (07:10)
just casually,

not even really meaned. Yeah.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (07:11)
Just casual. No,

no, no, no. mean, listen, you know, if I know all my members, do I think any of those members is misogynist? Do I think any of those members doesn’t just love women? They do. They’re 100%. That doesn’t mean they’re not harming women the whole time. And I think that’s what I see in some of the language that people are using in some of, you know, I just listen, I had a group the other day where someone told this joke.

and in our WhatsApp group and the first thing I did was laugh and then it took me about five seconds and I went and I just went what am I laughing for that’s a hideous joke and the test that I say to my friends with and they’re like you’re overreacting and I said flip the rolls around would it be funny because if you flip the rolls around so the woman’s doing a different roll and the man’s doing a different roll if you’re not laughing at it then it’s

then it’s a sexist joke. Because you’re stereotyping a woman in a certain place and you’re putting that woman down and all of sudden if you turn it around and it’s the man, it doesn’t become funny anymore because that’s not what you’re used to doing. So for me that flip test is so important, understanding that flip test.

Chris (08:28)
How was it for you when you first started to step into this world and had your preconceptions of what reality was shattered? Because I know this place myself. And then suddenly you go to your mates and you start to be, I describe it to my clients sometimes as you become the outlier because suddenly you’re the one saying like, hey, maybe we shouldn’t be making homophobic jokes. Maybe we shouldn’t be casual racists and maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we shouldn’t. And.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (08:51)
Yes.

Chris (08:56)
over time it’s like well actually no I’m no longer going to accept that. It’s quite a difficult place for a guy to be in.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (09:02)
So we could,

yeah, no, I call it the only. I think actually James Routledge gave me the only. And so for me, it’s the only man calling out sexism. It’s the only man calling out homophobia. It’s the only man who actually is actively doing something to combat men’s violence against women and girls. You become the only and that’s quite a lonely place to be in. I think what’s interesting, when I stepped into Token Man, it’s interesting, my co-founder Emma Perkins,

Emma said to me literally the two days before we were launching it, she said, are you sure you want to do this? Because you’re going to get such a backlash. I went, yeah, I went, I went, Yeah. Well, no, no, because I, what was interesting, she said, and I said, yeah, no, I’m kind of, I’m kind of, yeah, I’m a bit worried about it, but it’s the right thing to do. And then she said, yeah, because the men, I went, what do mean the men? I didn’t care about backlash from men.

Chris (09:41)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Did you underestimate it?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (10:02)
I didn’t care at all to be honest, I’m lucky in that just didn’t care about, know, I’m never going to care about what an ignorant person thinks of me, right? That’s just the reality. I’ve got to the stage in my life where I don’t need to care that. But I did care about women thought. I thought I’d get backlash from women and she hadn’t even seen that I was sitting there. And that’s what’s interesting about

you know, diversity and we come from such different angles. And so I was sitting there, she was saying, there’s gonna be a backlash. It’s really scary you doing this. You’re really brave doing this. And we were talking about completely, you know, we were talking about two different kinds of audience. I didn’t care what the men think. I do care what the, well, I didn’t care what the men think, idiots are idiots. But, you know, and I do now, you know, I do a lot of work now where I have to care what the men think because I wanna take them on a journey. So I need to meet them where they are on their journey. So I’m a bit more…

Chris (10:34)
Which is true.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (10:53)
I think I’m a bit more thoughtful with my words now than I probably would have been. But I think coming back to your point, I think for me, I was the only for quite a while. But then I started, you know, I’ve been running the mayoral membership program for two years. My best mate has now come on that mayoral membership program. I know. So I’ve got this. I’ll give you a good example of where the shift happens. There’s two examples, actually. One, there’s a group of friends that I think it’s fair to say,

are at different parts in the journey. They’re very different in terms of their understanding. They are, at least one of them will use the term woke and feels that it’s woke. But what I have managed to shift with that group and we meet every two months for dinner is 12 months later from us first starting, we didn’t talk about important stuff. Now, 12 months later, we talk about the important stuff immediately.

We’ll tell each other we love each other. So even though there’s some stuff I still need to pick up, ⁓ and actually if you look at my LinkedIn, I just wrote a post about using the term R-E-T-A-R-D, I don’t want to say it, but using that term, that happened at that dinner. And I said to my mate straight away, mate, seriously, and he knew he’d got it wrong, but I don’t think he still understood why he’d got it wrong. And so for me, there’s still a lot of education to do.

Chris (12:06)
Hmm.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (12:18)
But the one that really stuck for me was that I was on holiday and I had a group from my old school group, was, you know, as you know, WhatsApp groups just seemed to sprout up during COVID, right? And this old school group kind of shut up. And I didn’t know, you know, I went to school with 150 people a year. I didn’t know everyone, but there was this one guy in particular. went on and I made it, I was on holiday. made a call. I said something and he came back with a really sexist response.

and was about women’s football. So I’m an Arsenal women’s season ticket holder. I’m also an Arsenal men’s season ticket holder. But he said something like, yeah, I watch the women’s football, but not for the football. And I just called it, and I just didn’t have, I was on holiday, I didn’t have time. So whereas I could have called him in, I didn’t know him personally, I just called him out. Yeah, I just called him out for what was a sexist remark and just said, that’s not acceptable.

Chris (13:10)
Stay home.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (13:14)
And then what happened, and then he came back very defensively, but what happened for me is where we see the shift in culture, is my best mate and this other guy who I said has been following me from school, they came in. All of a sudden, once that happened, it shifted the whole conversation because all of a sudden, one of them said, would you say that to your daughter? You know, would you say that in front of your daughter? They just asked questions. One of them knew them better than I did. So they knew they had a daughter, for example.

I mean, the reality is that person then would be in that group for five years. He exited himself. Yeah. Is that the result I want? Not necessarily, right? I would have liked to have had a more proactive thing, had more time so that he can use it as a learning opportunity. But do I regret calling him out? 100 % not. You know, we have to call people out when we don’t have time to do anything else. I would love to have called him in. I just, do know what, I was on holiday.

Chris (14:13)
Yeah, and we’ve actually spoken, Dr. Sara DiMuccio, who works in diversity at work, she came on and she talked about the difference between calling in and calling out. It is a vital difference, but sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you don’t have the space, the capacity, you don’t know the person, it’s much easier to call someone in if you know them. But actually what you’re talking about there is, again, to go back to this outlier, this only, I like the only as well, is when we were…

working in businesses and doing much more than we are now because I’m focusing on men’s therapy hub. It was always saying to the guys like there was usually one or two guys in the room, right? There was obviously it was like 95 % female. There was one or two guys in the room. And it was always to these guys like, do you know what? The fact that you’re here, you’re incredibly brave, right? So if you speak up, that’s really brave. But I think we underestimate how much is at stake for the person who goes second.

for the person who joins in the, isn’t okay behavior, because they are, maybe they haven’t ever done that before. You you are quote, woke, right? And I can happily wear that as a badge of honor, like I don’t care. Of course you have, of course you have, right? So actually what I say a lot is like, actually it’s quite easy for me now. It’s easy, it’s not easy, but it’s easier for me now to do that.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (15:21)
100 cents.

So I actually have got a badge, I should wear it more, but I bought a badge that says woke.

Chris (15:42)
But when I do it and someone then supports me, I think it’s really important that we then say to that person, like, hey, thank you, like, well done, you know? Because like, and this is where I want to bring it back to a business sense for you, because you’ve worked in the depths of corporations in the way that I never will do, thankfully. So you know this space. Do we underestimate the level of risk that men take to act-

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (16:07)
100 %

Chris (16:10)
Engage with this work and do the work that you’re doing.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (16:11)
I was talking about it now until the culture changes from a senior leadership in terms of what they’re required. I work with lots of men, a lot of men are good men and let’s be really clear I think most men aren’t bad men. Let’s be really clear. I think a lot of men are trying are doing the best they can possibly do with what they’ve got right now.

in terms of knowledge, terms of time, in terms of resources. Good men for me are the people that are being active, who are actively saying, how can I be better? And how can I make the world, and it doesn’t matter what you do, doesn’t matter what level you’re doing, that for me is what good men are. But those good men that I work with, because they’re all, if they’re working with me, it means they’re being active and they’re leaning in, is…

I would say 25 % of them have been told by their boss, they need to stop doing this because it’s harming their career. mean, 20, ⁓ wow, mate, it’s becoming even worse. It’s becoming worse. I’ve had people step away, know, they hate to do it, but that’s the reality. The reality is if your boss doesn’t believe in this stuff and you’re spending your time and being seen to spend time doing it, you’re gonna get your boss telling you, stop doing this.

Chris (17:08)
Really?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (17:30)
And so, and I see, and if I think about the, I mean, listen, let’s be really, know, Trump is doing a lot of harm to the world across the whole piece. But one of the things that he’s definitely done is he’s given people permission not to care anymore and to actually speak openly about it and to be more voiceful and to say, actually, you know, to talk more about woke and without understanding that, know, woke just means being awake to the issues that others face. I mean,

Where does kindness come from if it’s not understanding what other people are facing and working out what you can do to actually support those people? That’s what kindness is.

Chris (18:08)
And it’s something that has been for a lot of men, that kindness, the empathy, the compassion has been socialized out of them. And now you and others were trying really hard to encourage men into that. But that’s really difficult when actually there’s a cultural backlash going on right now, which is actually saying to men, no, no, no, no. We were right the first time.

Men aren’t meant to be kind and caring and compassionate, which is really confusing to me because when I kind of reconnected to my empathy in my early 20s, it was revolutionary for me. It’s like I’ve been missing out on so much in terms of understanding the world from a different person’s perspective, because otherwise your life, I don’t know, kind of insular and boring, as well as potentially harmful.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (19:01)
Yeah, and I found it really interesting to use the word reconnect, which I do understand, right? Because I spent, you know, I had to spend time reconnecting with my feelings. You know, I had those feelings when I was young and I do a lot of work with men to help them reconnect their feelings. I’m not sure I do. Funny enough, when I was much later, I didn’t really start looking at empathy until I was 39, right? Until I started Token Man. That’s when empathy really came into my vocabulary. I don’t think I reconnected with it. I don’t think I was ever empathetic before that point. So.

Chris (19:11)
Yes.

Interesting.

Okay.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (19:30)
Yeah,

I wouldn’t say as a child I was empathetic. you know, brother will come on to my brother, you know, who I lost 15 years ago. But I know the only time I made my brother cry, I remember it now, right? I hit him when I was six and he was five. You know, I will never forget that moment because I regret it. You know, I made my brother cry. mean, that’s, know, that was not my job.

You know, so I, whether that’s empathy or not, I don’t know. There definitely was an element of shame and there’s an often element of going, we’re actually connected with how he might be feeling at that point. And therefore I should never do that to him, right? But I don’t think that empathy is something that I ever was connected to. was foreign to me. I’ve always, you know, and it’s funny, isn’t it? I’ve always looked…

to solve problems. So my mum tells this funny story, I don’t tell it very often, but when I was about five, my parents owned off-licenses and because my parents worked the whole time in the off-license, we often spent a time in the off-license and this one customer came in, I was five, remember I was five, and a customer came in said, have you got too little bottle of Coke? And my mum said no.

And I went, mommy, mommy, look up there. There is a bottle of two litre coke. And I basically, and my mum just said from then on for about a day, I just kept reminding her that she wouldn’t have sold that coke if it wasn’t for me. ⁓ So I like fix it. Yeah, you saved it. It’s like, look, all on my shoulders. At five, was, and there’s no surprise that people say I’m a bit of a salesman. it was, I was at that point in time when you see your, when you’re working and see your parents selling and doing the hard work.

Chris (21:04)
and save the family business.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (21:20)
You can’t help but lose, be subsumed and go into your core. But I like solving problems. I’ve always liked solving problems. And empathy, ⁓ solving problems can actually be the antithesis of empathy.

Chris (21:33)
There’s a beautiful thing about empathy is that it actually can be taught. All of the research shows that it can be taught. And I really admire your honesty to say that actually you weren’t connected to it. And do know, recently I was reminded, because I’ve written extensively about my past and how from about 14, 15, when I got enrolled and I was too fat, was the captain of the football team at school. I was too fat to play football. So I was sent over to Rubyfield.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (21:38)
tightsling.

Chris (21:58)
And from there on I got embroiled in rugby culture until I was like 20 years old. And a woman that I went to school with 20 years ago got in touch with me a few days ago. Because she’s seen these posts that I’m making, right? And she’s just like, like, is that Chris Hemmings? Like, is this the guy? And so she got in touch with me just like, hey, I had to check because I don’t, ⁓ she didn’t believe that these were genuine at first. And then she obviously realized it was 20 years ago. What she said was,

We were really close until we were like 14, 15. But then from that point onwards, I just got worse and worse and worse to the point where one of the last conversations we ever had, she said to me, what is wrong with you? And I just told her to fuck off. And that was probably like 17, 18 years old, right? And I think, I look back on that time and I don’t look back with shame anymore because I’ve worked through that. But I look back on that time and I think I was this kind, respectful,

⁓ empathetic young kid, young boy, young man. And I disconnected from it because I didn’t think that that’s what the world wanted. And I look now at so many young men, you know, the Manosphere documentary that everyone’s talking about, like, look at these men. And they are performing a version of manhood and masculinity in which empathy isn’t accepted. So the problem with that is, is what happens is we split.

Right? So we have this version of ourself and we have the real self and the version of ourself that we start to promote and put forward to the world actually kind of subsumes the real version of ourself and that real version gets hidden behind this false version which is what happened with me and so many young men are told not to be kind, not to be empathetic and because that’s the version of themselves that they present to the world that becomes their real version and that’s so sad.

Because now what we’re dealing with and what you’re dealing with is middle-aged guys who are suddenly being told, you need to be empathetic, you need to be compassionate, you need to understand how everybody else feels, but they’ve got no fucking clue how they feel. And it’s an impossible mission for them.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (23:54)
Really sad.

100 % and that’s where you need to start.

And it’s funny as you told that story, I’m probably doing myself a disjustice and the empathy thing. I mean, did meet someone recently from school and he expressed his condolences for my brother because it was the first time we’d seen each other. And he just turned around to me and said, I just really remember when my brother died, how lovely you were to me and how supportive you were. I don’t have any recollection of that whatsoever.

Maybe I am being disserviced and I probably am being disserviced because I grew up with privilege. The reality is I massive privilege. I had wonderful parents. I was talking to the other day. My parents, I once crashed my car two days after my dad bought it to me. I went home, I felt so bad. I’d broken all the door. Brand new car, you can imagine, 17, brand new car.

And I just went in, the guilt, the sheepishness, I went in and I said, and he said, are you okay? And I went, yes, that’s all that matters. And then he left the room and I was like, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s. Yes.

Chris (25:06)
The guilt.

Yeah, wow.

That’s the emotional privilege,

right? That’s a huge emotional privilege. And yet, and here, cause you’ve mentioned it a couple of times, right? So again, I’ve spoken on this podcast and other places. I grew up with plenty of privileges. The main one I grew up with was the emotional privilege. And yet we can grow up with all of that emotional privilege and then we can have monumental experiences. Like your brother died 15 years ago. I’m going to guess that you didn’t handle that so well.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (25:47)
I don’t share, I still haven’t shared everything that happened off the back of it but it’s fair to say I went off the rails. I medicated, I tried, you know.

even trying to speak now. I miss him every day, I would probably miss him. But ⁓ yeah, I did, I did, I really missed him. And actually now I’m lucky because I get to speak to him on a weekly basis with the work that I do because, you know, he informs what I do. He’s the reason why I started supporting men. So, ⁓ you know, I’ll tell you how things shifted because for the…

You know, I started Token Man, we talked about it. I started Token Man, what, 12 years ago. And for the first four years, I just did what everyone else was doing because I didn’t know anything, right? I was totally ignorant. I was learning every day. So I just did what women’s networks were doing. And all they were doing was saying to men, you need to come and be better allies. You need to come back to allies. You need to come back to allies. You know, it’s the patriarchy. You men created it. You need to solve it. And guess what? It wasn’t working. Men weren’t coming into the room.

And then I got married to my beautiful wife, Tina, back in 2012. And this is the book I’m showing you. People aren’t going to see it. But she wrote me this book, which is called To My Future Husband. It’s one of those beautiful books where she gets asked questions. You can imagine three months before we get married. She’s never going to think more highly of me. I’m just pulling one up. My favorite place to hang out with you is definitely our home. There’s nothing I like more than slugging out on our sofa. It’s really lovely things.

Anyway, I read it just before we got married, but I hadn’t picked it up for four years. It was just sitting on the side and I knew I had to do something different. And then I got to this page and it said, the time I felt close to you was 2011 was our annus horribilis. You’ve always shown strength and I’ve always admired that about you. But this was the year I saw something I’d never seen you before and that was your vulnerable side. It doesn’t come out very often and all I want to do is look after you.

So as you can tell by the date, if you’re doing your maths, that was the year my brother died. But reading that was like a gut in the, that was a punch in the gut. Because I was like reading it going, we’d been together for over a decade before my brother passed away. And it took my brother dying for her to see my vulnerable side. And that was, that was the first time, it was properly the first time I considered.

Chris (27:56)
Yep.

Yeah, well.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (28:19)
the negative impact of the current system we live within on men. And I started to realise, if I’m asking men to come into the room, how can I expect them to even engage with me if I’m not even supporting them in some of the challenges they’re facing? So really that was the shift where Tokoman, yes, you know, everything I do is about engaging men with inclusion and diversity, but some of those men aren’t ready to engage with inclusion and diversity. Do they not deserve to get some support? So…

I do lot of, as you know, do brave spaces. I’ve been doing them for three years now. So, and most of those brave spaces, some are how to be a better ally. ⁓ But the one we’re doing on Tuesday is how to reinvent yourself. You know, that’s about supporting men. That’s nothing else. It’s not asking them to come on a journey. It’s not asking them to be a better, it’s asking them to really think about themselves and support them in where they are at. And so for me, I think that knowledge, and I do speak quite a lot about compassion.

Chris (29:10)
Hmm.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (29:15)
for men and the need for compassion for men from everyone and that does include women and I get huge pushback from that, huge pushback unfortunately. A lot of women saying well men don’t deserve our support and I’m like how are we going to create change if that’s really and I listen I get some women are ⁓ rightly don’t have it because of what they’ve what’s happened in the past and they’ve been really hurt I totally understand that and I can’t even imagine you know ⁓

I can imagine, because I know some people who are survivors of domestic abuse. the amount of hurt that’s been done, but we do need to, and I ran a Together Space today, because I think we have to work together to create changes. And that includes understanding that men are hurting, men don’t necessarily have the tools and the skills to be connected to themselves. And until they’re connected to themselves, how can we ask them to help others?

Chris (30:17)
And that is the empath journey was always we do the men’s mental health training, then we do the empathy training, then we do the allyship bit last, right? The problem that you’re talking about here is you’re somebody who has been focused on this work for quite some time now. Both of us have, right? And I recall the single most beautiful conversation I ever had was at Nike where a queer black woman was…

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (30:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (30:46)
agreeing with a privately educated middle-class English guy and she had like a mild panic attack in the room because she wanted to hate me and she didn’t and she it was the most brilliant beautiful conversation that I’ll ever have right but what I said afterwards was I am a trained psychotherapist who has researched and studied to be able to handle that conversation right most guys don’t have that ability right they don’t have

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (31:14)
sleep.

Chris (31:15)
our privilege, me and you, they don’t have the ability to hold that space. And that pushback that you got, that pushback that I’ve had many times, the pushback that every guy who works in this space gets, we have to somehow convince men to walk into what can feel to them, like the snake pit, the bear pit, whatever you want to call it, and then say, yeah, you’re gonna catch some strays.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (31:37)
Yep, yep, yep.

Chris (31:44)
and that’s going to be difficult. So how do you do that? Like what is your message to men when they first come through your virtual door or your real door and they are in front of you and they say, I’m here, I’m terrified.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (32:00)
I would love to say firstly, I’m not sure that’s ever happened. That’s a, that’s that’s a, I don’t think it ever works like that. I don’t think I’d love to have got a man that comes to me and says exactly that thing. But I think it’s not, it’s the real, we never have that conversation. I don’t think anyone takes that realization in that one moment. I mean, say for example, I’ll give you, think you just have to have lots of touch points. Really, I mean, lots of touch points. So, you know, I’m now a qualified coach. I’m part of a group called the Mandep.

People do laugh and look at me and go, you’re part of a group called the Mandem. And they are right. You know, I am older than most of that group and it’s about, I think their makeup is 65 % black, but it’s inclusive. It’s really inclusive. You know, and I’ve coached two of those men, you know, as pro bono. So, you know, I got to, I got to support them, speak to them. So I think you have, firstly, you have to have lots of touch points. Everyone that comes into this work will come in through a different way.

And I do talk about this, so I go to Uncommon Man London. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been, Chris, but if you’ve ever come to London, Uncommon Man London is brilliant. It’s Josh Connelly, it’s Rob Smith and it’s Mark, and I forgot Mark’s surname, sorry Mark. But it’s the three of them, they do it once a month. It’s in Liverpool Street and it’s one hour reconnected with feelings, one hour solving your own personal issues, then it’s one hour of breath work. And the first time I ever went, it’s the first room I’ve ever been into with 35 men.

Chris (33:03)
No, I’ve never heard of that.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (33:27)
and every single one of them, end of the breath, were crying. It’s never happened again that everyone was crying, but it was special. I can’t even imagine. And when I do my work, I’ve heard the cries of men who are just suffering inside. And so I do sometimes get passionate when I hear people belittling men. I try not to use the word angry, but I do get frustrated.

with the negativity that’s coming into the media around men. ⁓ Obviously the man is coming out quite significantly. The man is not the majority of men, right? Let’s be really clear. We need to understand that. We need to understand the negative impact that it does have, 100%. But I also, and I was thinking my…

Chris (34:10)
Absolutely.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (34:21)
my kind of take of the Louis Theroux documentary was…

Maybe next time, let’s have a look at the people that are doing it differently. Let’s look at, know, and Louis Theroux specifically says, and I went, got to interview the men that redefine masculinity. No, they’re not. They’re just taking masculinity back to where it was in the Neanderthal ages, right? There’s nothing redefining that they’re doing. They’re just filling a gap. Yeah, but they’re filling a gap, right? They’re filling a gap. And I said to, and for me, that’s the bit where I kind of lost Louis right at the beginning.

Chris (34:49)
you’re doing a disservice to Neanderthals to be honest.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (34:58)
No, what you should be doing is speaking to the men that are living a more healthy form of masculinity. Men that are looking at primary caregivers for their child. The men who are stepping in and supporting other men. The men who are reconnecting their feelings. The men who are helping others with their mental health. 100%. 100%. The people that are breaking the stereotype and fundamentally the people that have broken out the man box and actually can do stuff. And so for me,

Chris (35:14)
Yeah. The male nursery teachers. Yeah.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (35:27)
You know, I’m sitting at a point in my life where I do think, and again, it’s probably worth us talking about Harder’s Nails. But you know, I do, truthfully believe that Harder’s Nails could be the most impactful movement in the men’s space in the UK for over a decade.

Chris (35:46)
Tell me more about it then. is it that, how did it start up and what is it that you think has the potential within it to create such change?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (35:56)
So just to give context, so Sam Coniff is my co-founder. Sam went to Harry Styles’ concert with his daughter and he said to his daughter, it’s your weekend, what do want to do this weekend? And she said, dad, I’d love us to go to a nail salon together and get our nails painted. So he went and got his nails painted. They went to Harry Styles. Stylus, I’m sure they’re called Stylus, but Stylus, loads of the fans had their nails painted. It’s the thing they do. Harry Styles actually even has his own nail polish brand called Pleasing.

And he got to Sunday night and he said to his daughter, I’ve got a packed week next week for the meetings. Can you please take the nail polish off? And she just laughed at him. And he said, why are you laughing? He said, dad, there’s shellac. I can’t take them off. need to go back. Yes, he didn’t know, did he? So for those that don’t know, shellac is basically gels. And in order, if you get gels, it’s not the paint on nail polish that most people will know.

Chris (36:42)
he got shellax.

You’ve got to go back

to the salon.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (36:56)
It’s jealous.

You’ve got to go back to the salon and he needs to come off with professional equipment. And he said, but I don’t have time. I’ve got no time in my diary. So he had to have his nails done for a week. And what happened was it started opening up conversations that you never expected to have. You know, there was, there was, there was the, I didn’t realize you were gay, but there were other, there’s so many other conversations coming up. Why have you, why have you done that? Is this a statement? You know, people asking and he wrote a blog post, funny enough, one of the guys that I coached through the Mandem.

Chris (37:19)
Mm.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (37:26)
posted his blog post in the group. This is funny how things come around, right? So I knew Sam from my previous career, but I hadn’t spoken to Sam since I went into inclusion diversity. And I read this blog post and his blog post basically said, allyship or performative nonsense was the title. And I read it and I kind of went, okay, there’s something interesting. And he wrote a press release. He wasn’t going to do it himself. He wrote a press release called Harder’s Nails. If anyone wants to pick this up, please pick it up.

So it took us about two, three months to get a call in, but I got a call in with him, I think it was like two and a bit years ago in the November. And I just said to him, Sam, I think you’ve got something here, I just don’t think it’s allyship. I actually think it would be performative if it was allyship. But I can’t really comment on it until I do it myself. I need to experience it. And I did it, but I did it between Christmas and New Year. So I didn’t get to go into work. Okay, so I had a slightly different experience, slightly different framework.

But I definitely had firstly, no one said anything. Apart from my mom, and I have a problematic relation with my mom. She’s amazing as some expert, but she definitely would use the term work. So it probably tells you quite a lot. Yes. Yes. She, apart from her, no one said anything, but two things happened to me. Firstly, I felt different.

Chris (38:38)
Small T conservative.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (38:52)
but I didn’t feel, I felt, actually felt empowered. I painted someone’s nails recently and I said, how are you feeling? He said, I felt freed. And I went, do you know what? That’s actually how I felt first doing it. Secondly, I got to do it with my wife, you know, and it was a lovely experience and actually, but also I also started to realize that I do have a problem. I can’t sit still and you learn when you get your nails painted and I wasn’t doing shellac that you have to sit there for 20 minutes doing nothing.

That was foreign to me. I really struggled with that. So I just said to ⁓ Sam, I did the experiment, I Sam, I think there’s something in it, but I don’t think it’s an allyship campaign. I think it’s a campaign for men by men. And it’s a campaign to show people the negative impacts of stereotypes. And so the stereotype is fundamentally, the minute I paint my nails, people say, I’m gay.

Chris (39:42)
Good call.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (39:48)
I I went into a school, 95 % of the boys, I said, how many of you think I’m gay? 95 % all but two of them put their hands up with 36 in total. you know, and it’s not, listen, I’m not going, I don’t want to trivialise it because it’s a completely different experience, but I do have to come out straight quite regularly because people just make those assumptions. per se, you know, and the first thing I say is firstly,

You don’t need to apologize. People can’t just say, I apologize. First, don’t apologize. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, right? There’s no need to apologize. And actually, I take it as a compliment because I think most of my gay friends… Yeah, Most of my gay friends are the most stylish people ever. you know, for me, I take it as a compliment. But I just say, it just shows us, right, that the stereotypes that we put on people and how they can be limiting, you know, and…

Chris (40:24)
Yeah, it’s not offensive.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (40:41)
And what you do see, and we’re starting to see, you we do start to see, we’ve been on Sky News, we’re starting to see the backlash, we’re starting to people going, men should be men and women should be women. You know, that’s the problem, right? That’s what the man box does. The man box says that as men we have a certain role. And what’s happened is that the world has shifted, the world is changing. But those Neanderthals, as we talk about them for that thing, they haven’t recognised that the world has shifted. So yes, there might be some women that want to stay at home and there’s nothing wrong with that. Let’s be really clear, there’s women that want to stay home with their kids.

But there’s also men that want to stay at home and look after their kids, but they get judged, right? They get judged for doing that. Whereas women who want to actually focus on their career, they get judged because they’re not at home with their kids. And all these judgments lead to harm because they put pressure on you, they make you feel different. ⁓ know, listen, we don’t have kids, we’re childless, by choice. The worst question you could ever ask my wife is, do you have kids? But yet people do it.

almost if they meet us for the first time it will happen 50 % of the time within five minutes.

Chris (41:47)
because a woman of a certain age is supposed, and for those of you not on YouTube right now, I’m doing the bunny rabbit air quotes, that she’s supposed to have children.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (41:54)
have kids.

Yeah. And it’s just, and it’s, and it’s because they’ve got kids, they’re trying, they’re trying to find a common space to actually open up a conversation, but without actually thinking about what impact that question might have. Because that question, that question is my, it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s so loaded. I mean, and again, I I know this from, you know, I wrote a post about it, about it being such a, 350,000 people impressions later.

Chris (42:11)
It’s loaded.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (42:24)
is my most viral post tells me there’s a lot of people that are feeling that hurt and it’s having a negative impact on them. So I think for me, you know, we have this opportunity to really get people to understand what happens is once we start talking about the stereotype of the nails, which are so visual, that then opens up a conversation for us then to talk about the other parts of the man box, you know, aggression, control.

⁓ gender roles in the workplace, all of these not asking for help. These are all the things that put damage on to men, but what we’re able to do with hard as nails. But you know, what’s the most interesting thing? So we’ve now proved, we’ve now done 200, nearly 200 people, and our researchers have said they have never, ever, ever seen a result like this. Because all we’re doing is we’re getting men for a week to two weeks to paint their nails. That’s it. They have never seen…

people’s feelings and actually how they feel shift in the way that it shifts. So two things happen. One, they shift towards a more healthy form of masculinity. So we actually use the Man Box scale, we get them to do pre and post, and there’s a significant shift of how they see masculinity and they become more progressive. The second thing…

Chris (43:40)
So the metric is

that they slowly remove themselves from the month.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (43:46)
100%. So all of a sudden they get much closer to a masculinity that I would call healthy. The second thing that happens is their empathy quotient goes up. So their ability to empathize for others goes up because most of the men that have been in our trial pin, most, not all of them, have been white straight men. And as white straight men, we have huge privileges, but our biggest privilege is we’ve hardly ever had to be in the out group. Right? Everything we do, we’re in the in group.

Chris (43:47)
Okay.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (44:16)
And I’m sure you’ve heard of Max Dickens wrote the book Billy No Mates. Max, Max is, yeah, I can introduce you. He’s fantastic. He was part of the pilot, the original pilot. And he talks about the night that he got his nails painted. We all did it. It was beautiful. We all did it together. It was a really amazing experience. But he was meant to, and I’m not gonna judge him for this. He’s a Man U fan, poor guy.

Chris (44:19)
Yep. He’s on my long list.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (44:42)
But he went to see a Man U match and he was meant to be with his friends and he gets to the front door of the pub and he puts his hand on the handle then he sees his nails and he goes, nah, can’t be bothered. Because he knew he was going to get so much shit. So all of a sudden he understood what it must feel like to be othered. It must feel like to do it. And so what happens is, because when we feel unsafe, 100%, 100%. I mean, I’ve never felt unsafe with my nails painted, I’ll be honest.

Chris (45:03)
And to feel unsafe in social situations.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (45:12)
But I now have also experimented with my own skirt. If I’m honest, I haven’t felt unsafe in that. I did feel unsafe when I first did it because I did it in a rural town or a coastal town in the UK. And someone approached me and I thought they were going to come to beat me up. But actually, funny enough, they just gave me a compliment. So we still build these scenarios. But what was interesting is the way we position it is we position it to men. This is a campaign for you to get your nails painted to open up meaningful conversations.

We give them a toolbox. We teach them about the man box. What happens is when no one actually says anything, they thought they were going like this. And for those that can’t see us, because you can’t see us, I’m pointing outwards. They think that this campaign is about them pointing outwards, them doing a really good thing. What happens is when no one actually says anything, but they feel different, they feel unsafe or they feel othered, what happens is they have to start putting the finger back to themselves. And that’s when change happens. Change only happens

Chris (46:01)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (46:11)
when you point to yourself and start to say, what is going on here? Why am I feeling the way I’m feeling? And what else if I think about that being part of the man box, what else am I being negatively impacted by? And once we get that, that’s when we start to see change. That’s when we start to see movement. That’s when we can start to see men going, okay, what else in my life am I being negatively impacted?

Chris (46:35)
which is all wonderful. And aside from painting the nails of every guy in the UK and beyond, how do we, and this is a big question I appreciate, how do we create that same looking inward mentality in men and daring to challenge their preconceptions? How do we get men to do that? And I know that you’ve done like research around

traditional masculine norms within business. So like, how do we get men even within a business setting to say, hey, I have these preconceptions about what a man quote should be within this business setting. Why do I think that way and what impact is it having on me? So how do we do that without getting everybody’s nails painted or wearing skirts or, know, dressing differently and not…

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (47:22)
Yeah, and

the reality that’s not the answer, right? We don’t get men to paint their nails to say you need to paint your nails from now on, right? It’s an experiment. It’s, you know, for many men, they only paint it once. Interesting enough, 25 % of the men so far will go and repaint their nails again. So we’re actually seeing quite large instance. My nails aren’t painted today, but my nails are painted 80 % of the time. I’ve got other friends that have painted 100 % of the time.

because it’s allowed them to feel different, it’s allowed them to feel different and good and good about themselves. I think to your point, I don’t have the secret answer to that because if I look at Harder’s Nails, I would have said, so I’m going give you one example because I can’t, but one example is we did little pop-ups on the second pie, on the big study that we did.

Chris (48:02)
Damn it.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (48:16)
We also did pop-ups, so we said, okay, you go and do your own nails, you sign up, or we’re gonna be in these spaces, right? And I facilitated one of those pop-ups in Shoreditch at Shoreditch Nails. Four men came along.

50 % of them had tried to take their own life in the past. And so what we were finding is those men that were stepping in at the beginning have all hit, not all, but the majority have hit rock bottom. So they understand the damage that masculinity has done on them and on others. Right?

Chris (48:55)
By masculinity

you mean the traditional rigid masculinity, the man box masculinity. Yeah, okay. Not masculinity per se because that is a wonderful beautiful thing or it can be.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (48:58)
The system, yeah, yeah, the man box masculinity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, but just

the rigidity of that stereotype, really the stereotype. Thank you for correcting me because it’s not masculinity that’s wrong. It’s just those stereotypes and put those stereotypes in. And I’ve asked them all the same question. How could we have got to you before you hit rock bottom? And unfortunately, they all say the same thing as you could.

And I’m like, well, I can’t accept that answer because that answer means us continuing to lose people because they were unsuccessful in taking their own life. But I’ve lost two people to take in their own life. And I want to avoid those people happening. And it’s really interesting. I’m very proud of this. So whatever happens with the Harder Snails, we’re trying to get funding now. We do want to make it nationally.

Our aim is to get in the next five years to 3.5 % of the male population to paint their nails. that is our aim. Yeah, I know it’s 330,000 men. But what’s interesting to me is I said we were on Sky News. I was in a workshop. And keep in mind, this is just how small this world is.

Chris (49:55)
Wow.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (50:11)
I was in a workshop and because I’ve been painting 100 men’s nails, I think you mentioned at the beginning, so I’m doing a 100 man project where I’m getting men to give me their three words they would like masculinity to be most associated with. And funny enough, again, this is news. You could work it out if go to the website, but guess what the number one word is? Have a guess what the number word, think about our conversation earlier. The number one word, 100%, that’s the number one word. That’s what gives me so much optimism.

Chris (50:34)
Empathy?

Amazing.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (50:39)
about

the future. But I was there painting this guy’s nails. I was at workshop. There’s 100 people at the workshop. I just said to this one guy, I had to paint so many men’s nails. I said, do you fancy me painting your nails at lunch break? And we didn’t know each other. We just said hello. And he just went, yes. I was like, wow, that’s amazing. But after I painted his nails, a woman came up to me and said, can I just ask, you’ve got anything to do with Harder’s nails? And I said, yeah, I’m the co-founder.

And she said to me, I just want to let you know that you’ve helped save two men’s lives. And I went exactly wow. And then we went back into the group. So she didn’t explain it to me. then the next break, I just said to her, can you tell me a bit more? And she said, yeah, we saw you on Sky News. We go into hospitals to support people with their mental health. And sometimes we find it hard to connect with men. So we actually inspired by you. We offered to paint men’s nails.

Chris (51:13)
Wow.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (51:37)
We did two examples of it and in one of each example a man came up to us and he opened up, had suicidal thoughts and we’ve now given the support, we’ve now given him the framework and those two men are still here today and that’s partly thanks to you, so thank you.

Chris (51:51)
Holy shit.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (51:52)
I know, I was like, wow. And just think that’s just one person I’ve met in a really random. So where else have we impacted stuff? And so for me, that’s a brilliant example. And again, Chris, it’s for you, it’s for all the men that doing this work. We just have literally no idea what a positive impact we’re having. Because actually, to be honest with you, most people don’t say thank you. Most people don’t tell you these stories. They just do them in their lives. They just do it. We don’t get, I get very little feedback.

But when you get feedback like that, you start going, okay, that in itself is enough, is the truth. And my aim in the work that I do is I want to have a positive impact on one person every day. And I am confident I do that.

Chris (52:33)
And even if you don’t manage to do it every day, the fact that you have already saved two guys or encouraged two guys to speak up and not directly by proxy almost, that to me is success. And it is a message that is continually ringing through on this podcast, which I love, which is you can redefine your own idea of success, which actually is a great way to get out of the man box, right? So the East London rapper, Armour, that we spoke to, he talked about for him some days getting out of bed and having a shower was success.

And if that’s all you can manage that day, that’s success for me. Men’s therapy hub, there’s already been one guy who reached out to me to say he found a therapist who men’s therapy hub and it changed his life. And I’m like, great, everything else from now on is a bonus. That’s already been a success. So look, Danielle, I know you have to go. I probably have spoken the least on this podcast of anyone that I’ve spoken to yet, which no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, is a good thing, which means I’m gonna have to get you back on because we have much more to talk about.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (53:24)
Sorry.

Chris (53:30)
I know you have to go, but we have to ask you the question before you leave. So I’m gonna give you the keys to the vault. I’m gonna give you unlimited funds. And I’m gonna actually say that you can’t just use this for hard as nails, right? Because that’s too easy. Because that’s what a few of the guys who run organizations have said. Dr. Luke Sullivan was just like, more men’s minds matter. And I was like, yeah, okay. So I’m gonna say, you can’t just put it into your own organization.

What would you do that would have the biggest impact and what impact would it have?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (54:07)
I’m kind of filled with those other men, to be honest, because what I don’t want to do is reinvent. I already have the solution, right? So I get what you’re trying to do, but I do think we have a huge impact. think if I listen, I think.

I think combating loneliness and creating more connections, I think will have the biggest impact. ⁓

Chris (54:29)
How would you do it?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (54:32)
If I knew that I’d be doing it. think, listen, there are, are, yeah, I am doing it, but Brave Space is, know, Brave Space is, the truth is, you know, I do a free Brave Space every month. It’s free. It’s an hour. ⁓ I can’t feel 16 places. That’s the challenge that we all have is we have to somehow create a seed change in men understanding that actually their own health, mental, physical, social, financial,

Chris (54:34)
Okay. I mean, you kind of are doing it, aren’t you, with the nails thing?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (55:02)
are all equally important because at the moment all they tend to see is the financial health because of this stereotype that’s put on men that they need to be a breadwinner. So for me it’s how do we create a more balanced framework, success framework for them. So I think it’s, my answer would be how do we redefine success? And I think we’re coming full circle. It is we need more documentaries that are showing, know, Louis Theroux shouldn’t be just talking and that’s his thing, right? It might be someone else.

But I thought the Danny Dyer documentary was quite good, but it was still looking at masculinity. We need more things that are just showing that more positive, healthy form of masculinity. We’re seeing it in bits, right? If I look at Ian Wright, I love Ian Wright. I think everything he’s doing. Professor Green, there are some people that we know. Jordan Stevens is just a dream. But we need to pull those people together somehow and start showing how those people with privilege

are choosing a different route. But mixing that with people actually that don’t have privilege who are doing some amazing things and actually showing that wealth is not money. I’m coming from a place of privilege, to be really clear, I don’t have financial pressure. That’s the ultimate financial health is that you don’t have financial pressure. I don’t have financial pressure, so I can focus on the other things. And so I understand that finance for a lot of people is still going to be one of the key components.

Chris (56:10)
Mmm.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (56:27)
but social, mental and physical health are just as important.

Chris (56:32)
I like that. So rather than, you lot of our answers have been grassroots, what you’re saying is you would like money poured into showing what is happening at the grassroots.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (56:43)
Totally. Totally.

Chris (56:45)
Okay, great. Thank you so much. I am gonna have to get you back on because you have so much interesting stuff to say. Before you go, where can people find you? What do you offer? Where do they find Hard as Nails token men? Brave Spaces, you’re doing so much. What’s the best place for them to go?

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (57:01)
So Hard as Nails, they should just be a type as Hard as Nails. They’ll get a really dodgy, well not dodgy, they’ll get, I don’t know how I haven’t been, they’ll get one nail shop that’s called Hard as Nails with a Z. But they should be, if they just put in Hard as Nails as one of our names, you will find us. I’ve got tokenman.org is the work that I do around Token Man. But the one thing I really would like your listeners to come to, because they’re free, I run Brave Spaces, they’re free, just type in Token Man.

Chris (57:08)
Thought you were a salesman.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (57:30)
brave spaces and you will automatically get a link. They happen every month, they’re one hour, they’re virtual. They each have a theme. If there’s a theme that resonates with you, come along, come and join us. The average feedback score I’ve had on the last three have been 9.7, 10 and 9.8. So people do value them once they turn up. The challenge we still have is getting people in them.

Chris (57:55)
And I would say if anybody is brave enough to go to a brave space, be brave enough to bring a guy with you. Because then you’re doing the work and that’s the big challenge. Daniel, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. It was great to talk to you and I will definitely get you back on again soon.

Daniele Fiandaca (he/him) (58:01)
100 %

Thank you so much mate.