As a speaker and author, Kristofer's strengths lay in his presentation style and his ability to inspire and educate any number of people at once - whether 20 or 20,000. Never one to pass up an opportunity to make a new friend, he involves his audiences in his conversations...talking with the participants, not to or at them. He is more apt to walk amongst the audience than stand upon a stage. Kristofer's style is such that he isn't so much a motivational speaker as an inspirational teacher. "Motivation is within all of us," he says, "I just want to inspire that motivation to be at the forefront of your life." He is the face of Man Husband Dad, and his qualifications are best described by some of those who have experienced him in action...
David Escandell
Kristofer is a dynamic motivator. He has an uncanny ability to make people see the best in themselves.
Mauro Hamza
You are the very best!
Rich Hall
When Kristofer Dylan Cowles is involved, every measure of growth, both tangible and intangible, is on the rise. Personal productivity and peace of mind - all seem to increase without bound. Cowles' style has conquered many previously insurmountable obstacles. His message relies heavily on common sense, focuses on interpersonal relationships, and emphasizes the ultimate victory of the human spirit over every worldly antagonist.
Cowles draws strength from extraordinary tribulations in his lifelong experience, as you will no doubt hear in his poignant anecdotes. He draws an audience with his relentlessly spontaneous humor. His innate power to motivate springs from his deep-seeded love for every member of the human race.
For Kristofer Dylan Cowles, people-building is a way of life. Be forewarned that Kristofer's presentations are highly interactive. I encourage you to open your mind and heart to his timeless message.
Gregory P. Sphon
You were a great source of both knowledge and inspiration to me. Hopefully I can use and apply something out of the four pages of notes that I took from your sessions! It excites me to learn from others and to get a 'new perspective' on things. Your sessions enabled me to do just that.
Reverend David R. Trask
I'm ecstatic that you met our needs, with the focus on personal contact. It's appreciated. Know that Fr. Schmitz is as appreciative as I when it comes to the way you've worked with us so graciously.
Charlotte Ostermann
When Kristofer Cowles stood in the gap between me, as Director of the 50 Million Names Project, and an army of my enemies, intent on destroying beauty, shocking innocence, and overwhelming good with petty evil, he was the kind of man I point to with pride when I tell my sons, “There’s a real man!” I’m so thankful to God for Kristofer’s presence as a partner in this project, because he demonstrated, even in the midst of a battle, the human quality of manliness that is best tested in the worst circumstances. He buffered the impact of this onslaught as certainly as if he had taken the brunt of a blow to protect me. I continue to thank God for him as he continues in the less dramatic work of protecting 50 Million Names through excellent support and wise advice.
Art King
Kristofer is a self-starter and a go-getter. I have always admired people who have fortitude and courage and are successful, with high moral character as Kristofer, a dedicated family man, has. It is my firm belief that no one will go wrong by working with Kristofer. I know he will be an asset to anyone who engages him.
Clcik here for Kristofer's brief bio in his own words...
I was born in New Hampshire and lived with my Grandmother outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after my parents divorced in Vermont when I was six. I was diagnosed with diabetes at thirteen during the eight years I lived in Ohio with my divorced father and brothers and sister, all older than me. My entire time in Ohio was spent in poverty, including several winters going without heat in the house. Not knowing the Natural Law that personal responsibility and one's decisions pave the path before a man, I left home at 18, a year and a half after moving to Texas with my father (who left to escape many things aside from just the poverty), heading to college objectively ill-equipped to be an adult. An avowed atheist, misogynist, liberal and moral relativist by this time, I eagerly participated in the immoral lifestyle of a person without scruples or virtue.
The time I spent with my Grandmother is where the ManHusbandDad seeds were planted, and on summer and holiday visits to her from Ohio those seeds would be watered and nurtured, eventually starting to show growth above the dirt after I had finished four years of college and had determined that my lifestyle wasn't, for some reason, right.Those four years were spent walking in the shadow of a building on my college campus that had words inscribed on it that I finally read and accepted as a challenge to me personally from God:
Click for a full view of the building and inscription in a different tab or window.
"Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free."
So I spent the next five years honestly seeking the Truth through myriad books and faith traditions, counting he Bhagavad Gita, Koran, Bible, Book of Mormon and their incumbent religions among them. Eventually I found the Catholic Church, convinced intellectually of its founding by Jesus Christ. This revelation was the final piece in a journey of discovery that started with a very personal and real experience with God two years earlier, a blessing that does not give me the option of any doubt of His existence.
I was baptized on April 15, 1995; 11 days shy of my 26th birthday.
Life began anew for me that day.
I am married to Beth, with three boys and a dog. I live in Texas and smoke a mean brisket. I am fond of a good cigar, especially when there is a good porch and good conversation accompanying it. I also fancy myself a pretty good No Limit Texas Hold 'Em poker player, having finished eleventh out of 300 in the only casino tournament I ever entered.
I started speaking from the stage in 1993, when I stopped feeling sorry for myself and what I thought was a bad hand that life had dealt me. Inspired by the teachings of Stephen Covey, I quickly became a professional motivational speaker.
Chronically ill and now blind in one eye, I see opportunity in life where once I saw nothing but hopelessness. And I like to share that with people, as well as my philosophy and concrete guidelines on how to not just make it through life, but to succeed in a way that can only mean God has something special only you can do.
God gave me the vision for ManHusbandDad twenty years after showing me that His gift to me was the talents of writing and speaking. I like to say that God gave me a talent for writing and public speaking, and made me aware of it before I even believed in Him. It just took almost two decades for Him to train me on what he wanted me to write and speak about - being a Man, Husband, and Dad. And it took several more years for him to bring my training to a point here i could share what He wanted me to share.
This conclusion was not an easy discernment. I grew up midst poverty; sexual, physical, emotional and mental abuse; a broken and dysfunctional family life; subjective agnosticism and atheism; misogyny; and moral relativism that justified all of it including divorce, abandoning children, and, objectively, extreme and purposeful lack of parenting. Combined with a regular fear of not knowing when or where the next meal would come, or if I would be allowed to eat it, I not only started out with no training in how to be a Man, Husband, or Dad, but actually had an extremely opposite idea of what those roles were. At the time that I discovered my talents for speaking and writing, the only thing I could speak and write about was how to break all Ten Commandments and how to best avoid being a Man, Husband, or Dad.
I have been around a couple of blocks, some of them more than once. And I've had a fair share of rodeos, too. Whether being an On-Air Radio personality or selling Radio advertising, delivering newspapers ice, t-shirts, pizza, or custom photography; designing web sites; fixing computers; DJ'ing, steel and road construction, slinging burgers at McDonald's or a beach concession stand; or running legal files and consulting on Parliamentary Procedure issues, training organizations on membership recruitment and retention, and social media and traditional marketing and owning several businesses that provided these products and services, I have professional experiences that mix with my personal life experiences to provide a Pandora's box of topics and presentations that not only teach, but inspire. And I haven't even told you about my personal experiences during my eight years of misguided college life - though your imagination might not be able to think of everything.
I have paved my way down a path that God has shown and led me down, making the way a bit less bumpy for those who follow - starting with my own three boys. Growing up without guidance on so many fronts that a Man, Husband, and Dad must be able to meet head-on, I took the vocations seriously from the start, studying successful Men, Husbands and Dads and purposefully applying the success to my own life and family. Everything I do is my own making revealed by God as the path to take, including specifically rejecting the way I was raised in order to forge a new family tree from those seeds my Grandmother planted.
Far from perfect, I seek that goal of perfection in the Biblical sense. I make many mistakes daily and still drop the ball in relationships. But I continue to improve by remembering that defeat only happens if you don't get up one more time. What you see is what you get with me, and hopefully that makes me someone you can relate to. But in the long run, I know that I am turning the ship of multi-generational dysfunction from my own past and setting the right path for my children as what Stephen Covey would cal a transitional parent - and while that is not what I planned for my life, I am very comfortable knowing that I am following God's plan for me to be a Man, Husband, and Dad.
And you're invited to walk along that path with me.
