Dennis Bairos

I'm a husband, father of three, and the author of Wired Like This: Why Men Push Too Far — and Still Say "I Got It," a book about the small everyday decisions that quietly shape how men live — and how long. Not the extremes. The ordinary stuff. Standing on the top step of a ladder. Saying "I got it" before you actually have it. Beating the GPS in your head. Adding a fourth pass to the lawn when nobody asked. Pushing through the workout you should've sat out.

Most of my career has been spent in senior leadership roles, where the same patterns from the book show up in different costumes — the 4 a.m. emails, the one-more-look at the report on a Friday, the inability to send a team into the weekend without one last fire drill. The garage and the conference room run on the same wiring; it just dresses up differently.

The book started at a bathroom sink, when my wife — brushing her teeth — said "you overdo everything." She wasn't wrong. I started writing things down. Twenty-seven chapters later, I had a book.

What I'm not: a coach, clinician, researcher, or motivational speaker. The book is observational, dry, and non-prescriptive — closer in voice to Drew Magary or Joel Stein than to anything in the men's-improvement genre. I won't tell your audience what to do. I'll point at the pattern and let them recognize themselves.

Topics I'm strong on:

• Why men die earlier — the everyday-decisions angle nobody studies
• "I got it" as a mindset and what it costs
• Executive burnout — the cumulative version, not the crash-and-rebuild kind
• Why pulling back feels like giving up (and why it isn't)
• Work spillover, weekend "quick checks," and what they cost the team
• Sports parenting and the over-coaching trap
• The hobby-to-obsession pipeline (golf, lifting, CrossFit, anything)
• Marriage from the husband's POV
• Why "balance" never quite fits for guys wired this way
• Father's Day, fatherhood, and what dads actually do all day

Best fit: Conversational, host-driven shows. I'm a writer, not a guru — long-form suits me, but I can do shorter formats. Remote recording from North Texas. Can be in person for the right opportunity.