AFR Men’s Summit Speaker Series — Speaker #1 of 8 Summit: The Power of Asking for Help — Creating the American Family Renaissance Date: September 14, 2026 · Online, join from anywhere Meet the full lineup: americanfamilyrenaissance.org/summit/speakers Reserve your seat: americanfamilyrenaissance.org/summit#register
Most men I coach don’t have a strategy problem.
They have a connection problem.
They know what to do. They’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, and written the goals on the whiteboard in the garage. What they don’t have is one man in their life they can call at 10 p.m. and say, “I’m not okay.” They’ve built a life full of contacts and empty of connection. And somewhere along the way they decided that admitting that would cost them something they couldn’t afford to lose.
That’s the wall. And that’s exactly why I asked Scott Schilling to open our inaugural AFR Men’s Summit.
Who Scott Schilling Is
They call him The Authentic Connector, and he earned the name the hard way—over more than forty years of building, selling, coaching, and standing in front of rooms.
Here’s the résumé, and I want you to actually sit with it:
- Over 3,000 live presentations delivered around the world. Not three hundred. Three thousand.
- Stages shared with General Colin Powell, Suze Orman, Jack Canfield, and Les Brown — the people other speakers study.
- Hundreds of millions in revenue generated through his leadership and sales training work with executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations worldwide.
- Bestselling author, executive coach, international speaker, and media host, with a body of work that has touched hundreds of thousands of people.
But here’s the part that tells you who he actually is. Scott describes his life purpose as inspiring and empowering people to live their purpose with Spirit, Love, and Joy. A man with that many stage credits could easily have built a career on technique. Instead, he built one on connection.
Learn more about Scott at scottschilling.com.
What Scott Is Speaking On
Scott’s summit session is built on one idea:
Authentic connection is the gateway. And asking for help is how you walk through it.
Not networking. Not “building your circle.” Not the transactional handshake economy most men were trained in, where every relationship has an angle and every conversation has an ask hiding in the back pocket.
Scott is going to unpack the thing underneath all of it, that real connection requires you to be real, and being real requires you to stop performing competence you don’t feel. He’ll show you why the man who says “I need help with this” doesn’t lose authority. He gains it. Every single time.
The Problem He’s Solving
Let me name it plainly, because Scott will.
There is a generation of men right now who are surrounded and starving. They have coworkers, church acquaintances, a group chat, a wife who loves them, kids who need them, and not one relationship where the mask comes off. They’re managing an image instead of living a life.
And the cost isn’t abstract. It shows up as:
- Career ceilings that have nothing to do with capability and everything to do with isolation
- Marriages where two people are cordial roommates instead of one team
- Sons who learn from watching Dad that men handle it alone, and then repeat it
- A quiet, grinding exhaustion that no vacation touches
Scott’s answer isn’t inspiration. It’s a truth. Forty years of doing this work has taught him exactly how authentic connection gets built, what kills it, and what the first move looks like when you’re a man who has never made it before. He’s going to hand you that first move.
Why I Asked Him — and How We’re Working Together
I need to be honest about something here.
Scott has been a mentor and a partner to me. Not a name I recruited for a lineup, but a man who has poured into my life and my work and whose fingerprints are on things I’ve built. When I say I practice what this summit preaches, Scott is part of the proof. I asked him for help. Repeatedly. It changed my trajectory.
And I mean that literally. I approached Scott with what I thought was a small, contained request: help me build out my keynote, The Power of Asking for Help. That was the whole ask. One talk. What I didn’t know was that the talk was a starting point, not a finish line. That conversation turned the keynote into a summit. The summit turned into something larger still, the American Family Renaissance, the organization that now carries this mission and under which True Man Life Coaching resides. None of that was on the whiteboard when I picked up the phone.
That’s what working with a true professional looks like. The Holy Spirit drives the conversation, Scott’s wisdom speaks into it, and doors open that you never would have thought to knock on. He doesn’t hand you the answer you came for and send you on your way. He asks the question that makes you realize you were aiming too low. Scott is a true collaborator, and this entire movement is downstream of one ask I almost didn’t make.
That’s why our messages sit on top of each other so cleanly. My keynote, The Power of Asking for Help, drawn from True Man True Ways, calls men out of isolation and into brotherhood, because no man was built to do life alone. Scott’s session takes that same conviction and shows you the mechanics of what happens next: how you actually build the connections that make the asking possible.
I build the man. Scott shows the man how to open the door.
And this is collaboration in the truest sense, two men who arrived at the same truth from completely different roads. He came to it through boardrooms, sales floors, and international stages. I came to it through coaching Christian men who were dying quietly behind a competent smile. Same conclusion.
Why You Should Be in the Room
If you’ve been carrying something for months that you haven’t said out loud to anybody, this session is for you.
If you’ve got a network and no brotherhood, this session is for you.
Here’s what Scott’s session gives you:
- A working definition of authentic connection that separates it from the networking you’ve been doing and getting nothing from.
- The reason asking for help reads as strength, not weakness—from a man who has watched it play out across forty years and 3,000 rooms.
- A first step you can take this week. Not a concept. A move.
The Details
The Power of Asking for Help — Creating the American Family Renaissance. Eight world-class speakers. One transformational day. Built for men who are done drifting and ready to lead.
September 14, 2026 · Online · Join from anywhere
Scott Schilling opens the day as Speaker #1. He’s followed by Chris Widener, Tom Ziglar, Jim Britt, Vince Miller, Bob Tiede, and Bob Beaudine—and I’ll close it out.
Reserve your seat now → Meet all eight speakers →
Scott’s Promotional Video:
Seats are limited. Don’t just hear about what happened in that room.
Be in it.
Build the Man. Strengthen the Family. Restore the Nation.
MVP (Mike Van Pelt) is the Founder & CEO of True Man Life Coaching and Founder of American Family Renaissance. He helps Christian men reclaim their God-given identity, break isolation, and lead with authenticity through faith, character, and brotherhood.