Podcast Summary: The Tai Lopez Show #740 – My First Mentor Joel Salatin on Making America Work Again

Podcast: The Tai Lopez Show
Episode: #740
Guest: Joel Salatin
Date: September 12, 2025
Theme: Exploring work ethic, health, and entrepreneurship in modern America, with a particular focus on lessons from Joel Salatin—Tai Lopez’s first mentor, renowned farmer, and business philosopher.

Episode Overview

This episode features a candid conversation between Tai Lopez and his first mentor, renowned farmer and author Joel Salatin. The discussion dives deep into the loss of work ethic in America, the importance of common sense and practical skills, and how to reclaim purpose through meaningful work. The episode also explores nutrition, sustainable farming, personal branding, and the looming issues facing both cities and agriculture in the modern era.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Make America Work Again: The Value of Labor

• Joel Salatin opens the conversation with the notion that America’s problem is not immigration but a lack of willingness to work among Americans. He jokingly suggests, "We need to start a MAHWA: Make America Work Again." (00:00)
• Tai Lopez reinforces that society must change how work is viewed: “Work is generally taught as a negative thing that we’re trying to escape from. But if you escape from all work, you also escape from purpose.” (00:08)

2. Life Lessons From the Farm

• Tai’s formative years working for Joel shaped his understanding of common sense, hustle, and responsibility.
• Anecdote: Tai recounts forgetting an essential tool while working on the farm, leading to a long walk and a memorable lesson: "If you don’t have it in your head, you get to have it in your heel." (02:16)
• Joel Salatin shared his father’s wisdom: "The world still stops to look at burning bushes…run now, you can rest when you get back." (03:11)
• Tai reflects on always hustling and turning downtime productive—reading during appointments, for example. (03:48)

3. Entrepreneurship, Sales, and Mission

• Joel’s approach to business rejects aggressive individual sales targets. "You start looking at people as if they’re a wallet. I don’t want to look at people as if they’re a wallet…it cheapens the conversation." (04:51)
• He favors commission-based structures tied to gross sales, not profit sharing, due to its transparency and resistance to manipulation. (06:29)
• Discussion of profit sharing abuses in Hollywood and pitfalls for entrepreneurs. (07:16)

4. Health, Food, and the MAHA Movement

• MAHA: Make America Healthy Again—a theme about reclaiming health through real food and common-sense nutrition.
• Joel’s early farm house experiences: living without modern conveniences, harsh winters, lean meals, and how those conditions forged physical strength and resilience.
• Tai’s “egg and oatmeal” diet as a young worker—"18 eggs for breakfast, and I came back noticeably stronger." (11:47)
• Joel: "It’s total BS that beef is bad for you"—defending traditional diets and critiquing fads. (12:55)
• Story of a young man who gained 40 pounds of muscle on the farm in one summer without gaining fat: "Did not change waist size. Yeah, it all went…right up on." (12:26)

5. Business as a Spiritual Mission

• Tai: "What you were basically doing is seeing your business as…more than just money. It was a mission." (16:45)
• Joel: Not all businesses can be a sacred mission (“Coca Cola gives everybody diabetes”), but entrepreneurs should seek beyond money—"Make it something that’s got value beyond that physical." (17:41)
• Tai urges listeners to spread good ideas as a personal brand mission: "There’s nothing that’s changed the world for good more than just a couple simple good ideas." (18:43)

6. Practical Steps for Healthier Living (for City Dwellers)

• Joel’s Three Ingredients for Making America Healthy Again: (20:04)
  1. Get in your kitchen—Cook from scratch, buy single-ingredient foods.
     • "No civilization has ever more profoundly abdicated its visceral responsibility in culinary arts than ours."
  2. Do something yourself—Gardening, sprouting, or composting, to reconnect with life’s mysteries and humility.
     • "Touch something living, biological to realize you’re not in control."
  3. Invest in your provenance—Take personal responsibility for your food source, even if it means buying in bulk, sourcing locally, or making sacrifices in entertainment for a better pantry.
     • Story of a lawyer couple in Toronto who eliminated barcodes from their pantry by sleuthing all their food sources. (24:30)
     • “The silliest thing in the world is to think I can change my destiny without changing me.” (25:59)

7. Changing How We View Work

• Joel: The real crisis isn’t immigration but unwillingness to work—Americans need to change attitudes about work’s value.
• Parenting wisdom: Don’t punish kids with work; instead, make work a privilege they earn (Amish example). (31:17)
• Importance of accomplishing meaningful tasks for building self-worth, especially among teenagers: "How you develop self worth is successfully accomplishing meaningful tasks." (33:34)
• Tai: “Your competence is your confidence. You want to have more confidence, get better at more stuff.” (33:59)
• Cautions against overly ambitious, ungrounded goals: "If you made $24.9B, you’d be depressed?" (34:27)
• Drawing from sports: focus on the next play, not just the championship.

8. Personal Branding & Controversy

• Building a personal brand often requires embracing controversy within your niche: "When you’re not known at all, you should take something…relatively controversial." (39:37)
• Both Tai and Joel share examples of controversial stances (e.g., genetics matter in performance, work habits).
• Joel references birth order’s influence on entrepreneurship: "80% of entrepreneurs are middleborn…80% of upper class professionals are firstborn." (47:04)

9. The Future of Food, Farms, and Civilization

• Farmland is a historically strong, low-volatility investment; owning land is also a practical hedge against urban disaster ("doom scale").
• Changes in land and food prices over centuries, eroding purchasing power, and modern barriers to farm profitability. (58:00)
• Discussion about the aging population of farmers and the potential for robots in agriculture.
• AI guidance for new farmers: ChatGPT rationally recommends pastured poultry and rabbits as first steps, referencing Salatin’s methods. (62:12)
• Dangers of AI in critical systems: cautionary tale about AI’s inflexibility when given military orders. (63:03)
• Survivalist prep: "Six families of wealth have bought properties within 30 minutes of us for us to manage so they have an agrarian bunker if things go south." (64:24)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Joel Salatin:

  • "The world still stops to look at burning bushes." (03:13)
  • "You start looking at people as if they’re a wallet. And I don’t want to look at people as if they’re a wallet." (04:51)
  • "It’s okay to be nostalgic until you’re obsolete." (37:39)
  • "No civilization has ever more profoundly abdicated its visceral responsibility in culinary arts than ours." (20:43)
  • “How you develop self-worth is successfully accomplishing meaningful tasks.” (33:34)
  • "You can’t do anything you want to do. I will never play in the NBA." (46:40)

• Tai Lopez:

  • "Work is generally taught as a negative thing that we’re trying to escape from. But if you escape from all work, you also escape from purpose." (00:08)
  • "Your competence is your confidence." (33:59)
  • "The pen is mightier than the sword…a couple simple good ideas." (19:11)
  • "If you want to have more confidence, get better at more stuff." (33:59)

Important Timestamps

| Time | Segment | Description | |----------|--------------|------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Work Ethic | Joel on “Make America Work Again” | | 02:16 | Farm Lessons | Tai’s anecdote: common sense and taking notes | | 03:11 | Wise Words | Salatin’s father’s advice—hustle and vision | | 04:51 | Sales Ethics | Rejecting sales targets, focusing on relationships | | 11:47 | Nutrition | Tai’s “36 eggs a day” and the myth of bad beef | | 17:22 | Mission | Turning business into a sacred mission | | 20:04 | Maha Steps | Joel’s three steps for city dwellers | | 31:17 | Work & Kids | Teaching value of work through positive association | | 33:34 | Self-Worth | The importance of meaningful tasks | | 39:37 | Branding | Personal branding and embracing healthy controversy | | 58:00 | Economics | Comparing historical and modern farm economics | | 62:12 | AI and Farms | ChatGPT’s advice, the role of emotion in decisions | | 64:24 | Backup Plan | Wealthy families buying rural “agrarian bunkers” | | 65:50 | Wrap Up | Joel’s books and closing notes |

Tone & Style

Both Tai and Joel maintain a casual yet deep and honest tone throughout, blending anecdotes, humor, and practical wisdom. The discussion balances storytelling with hard-hitting truths and a healthy skepticism of modern “progress,” especially regarding work ethic, food, and personal development.

Resources Mentioned

• Books: "You Can Farm" by Joel Salatin, "Who Moved My Cheese?" (Spencer Johnson), "The Birth Order Book" (Kevin Leman).
• Websites: polyfacefarms.com
• Quotes: Referenced Sigmund Freud, Dean Smith, Warren Buffett, and classic wisdom on purpose and labor.

For More Information

• Joel Salatin's books: Especially You Can Farm, available on Amazon
• Polyface Farms: polyfacefarms.com

Summary prepared for listeners who want all the essential lessons, laughs, and actionable advice from Tai Lopez and Joel Salatin—without missing the heart (or hard knocks) of the farm.