Building friendships take time that can start with a cause.

Causes can give you a common connection point.

Showing up is just as important as sharing your feelings, if not more so.

Sign up for something slightly ridiculous to have a good story to tell.

The first time I showed up to a GORUCK training day was not long after I finished my first Ironman. I didn’t go looking for it. A friend from work dared me.

GORUCK is an endurance event where you pack a backpack full of bricks and take on challenges. Some involve getting cold, wet, and sandy. Others involve carrying odd-shaped objects around. The real events start at 10 p.m. and run until the sun comes up.

The training day was in daylight at Baker Beach in San Francisco, and it was all dudes. We had the same curiosity and the same burning desire to see what we were made of. We also wanted to find other knuckleheads who think spending time in the ocean at 2 a.m. is perfectly normal. Dare I say, fun.

What I didn’t know at the time was that some of the men I met on that beach would still be good friends of mine 14 years later. I wrote about those friendships in “The Power of Crucible Events to Solidify Male Friendships.”

That got me thinking about the origins of Movember.

Two Guys, a Beer, and a Dare

In 2003, two friends in Melbourne, Travis Garone and Luke Slattery, were having a beer at the Gypsy Bar in Fitzroy. The conversation drifted to fashion trends that keep coming back. They started wondering where the mustache had gone.

So they decided to bring it back. Travis emailed their friends with a subject line that doubled as a dare: “Are you man enough to be my man?”

Thirty guys said yes.

There was no cause that first year. No........

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