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

Summary

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.

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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 |

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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.

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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.

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For More Information

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

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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.

Transcript

[Joel Salatin]

Make America work again. The problem is not illegals. The problem is Americans won't work. So I think we need to start a mahwa and then we'll be in business.

[Tai Lopez]

You first have to change how society sees work. 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.

[Joel Salatin]

That's right. The most fundamental human need, the need to feel needed. And work makes you feel needed. I mean, it's what you do. We're known by what we do. So when you take the do away, then there's no purp and there's no need. And when there's no purpose and no need, then I'm not important. Touch something living biological to realize you're not in control. Too many people think that this world is just at the end of my little fingertips and I can just manipulate it however I want to here in my garage.

[Tai Lopez]

Welcome to a special episode of the Tai Lopez Show. I've got my first mentor, Joel Salatin. I came here when I was 19 years old and, and we're doing a private mastermind, but I wanted to do a public podcast for different reasons. But Joel, thanks for taking the time.

[Joel Salatin]

Thanks for having me, Ty.

[Tai Lopez]

Joel was just giving a talk on. He has a new speech he was practicing on the crowd here. And I want to get into the couple ones that you didn't finish. But the first thing you know, I feel like when I came here when I was 19, there was, there's like three things that's, that I really learned from Joel that I think is important for anybody, entrepreneur, any human really. Number one, common sense is no longer common. So I didn't have a lot of common sense. I had lived a little bit on a farm, but mostly in big cities. And the problem with big cities is it's hard to teach kids and teenagers common sense. The average 10 year old now, Joel, is watching up to eight hours a day on their phone, scrolling TikTok and stuff like that. So whenever you're staring at something, you're not going to have much common sense. So coming here, there's a good story. Jolo is way far back up, almost to the top of the mountain, and he was on a field way back there and he told me, hey, bring stuff for the electric fence. He's like, bring some two pieces of twine to tie it off, bring a roll of aluminum fence and bring these white insulator knobs, they call them. So I didn't have that much common sense. One simple Common sense thing. If somebody gives you something important to do, write it down. Don't just try to remember it. So I was just like, I'll remember it. And I walked. I don't know. This is before Joel believed in four wheelers. Now he has four. I was here when it was like, tougher. You had to walk everywhere. So I walked a mile and I get up there with Joel. I don't know if you. You probably don't remember this, but I said, okay, let's build a fence. Here's the stuff. And I gave you the right thing, number one. The right thing number two. And you're like, where's the white insulators? And I go, oops. And Joel said, well, my dad used to tell me, if you don't have it in your head, you get to have it in your heel. I'll sit here under a tree and relax. You get to walk all the way back to the barn and back. And it was a good extra two mile walk. And that was the last time I didn't have a notepad. Your dad taught you a lot of wise things. What's the wisest thing your dad ever said to you?

[Joel Salatin]

Oh, wisest thing he ever said one is the world still stops to look at burning bushes. He was, he was, he was really keen on. On living a life that, that makes people stop and look. And quite a visionary, but one I remember all the time as a kid, you know, run now, you can rest when you get back. You know, send me to like, fetch suppliers or fetch a hammer from the shop, you know, the little kid he's doing and run now, you can rest when you get back. That was a. That was another real.

[Tai Lopez]

So, hustle.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, hustle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Joel's the hardest guy to ever keep up with when he goes on a walk. I'm telling you, that was the number two thing I learned. I remember I had read us like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison said, everything comes to the man who hustles while he waits. You know, when you, if you're. I always tell people, bring a book with you if somebody's late to appointment. Instead of getting mad, I just read everybody. Everything comes to a man who's hustling, even when he's supposed to be waiting. And that's Joel, I'm telling you. Joe, do you still have that problem where people can't keep up with you when you walk?

[Joel Salatin]

Not as much anymore. I've slowed down a little bit.

[Tai Lopez]

Slowed down? Joel, slowed down is still faster than most of the world. So I wanted to go for people who don't know your story. We'll go into that. But I think that I have a lot of entrepreneurs who follow me now and we're all getting high tech and you are a little bit high tech on some things. But what are things you think you're totally counter to modern entrepreneurs wanting to do? Like, what's a couple of things where you just don't agree with. You brought up this one. Say this one about sales targets again.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, so we, we don't have any sales targets because 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. I think it cheapens, you know, it's your subconscious, you know, you're actually, you're actually thinking about, instead of just enjoying the person for the person they are. You're gonna buy something or not buy something, you know, and it cheapens the, it cheapens the conversation, cheapens the possibility of a relationship. And so we, we monitor our, whatever, how we're doing by our sales, up or down or flat or, you know, what's our situation with sales? Letting sales be the barometer of, of our performance.

[Tai Lopez]

But you don't want individual, you don't ask an individual salesperson, how much did you sell this month?

[Joel Salatin]

No, no, our salespeople are all on commission.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

But they're not targeted by saying you got to collect 50,000amonth to stay here.

[Joel Salatin]

No. And some people, no, not at all. Because if they don't, if they don't sell something, they get zero. That's the beauty of commission based relationships is that they can, they can make as much or little as they want to. And if, you know, if one of our salespeople, you know, sells a lot, they have the potential to earn more than I do.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Which is fine because, you know, as long as your margin is right and it's, and you have figured in so everything. When we price our stuff and figure margins, we have, we have a straight across the board sales commission that adds to everything. And it's all based on, on, on gross income.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Not profit or. I don't believe in profit sharing because profit sharing is a, is a disaster because you can manipulate the books any way you want to. So if you're, if you're going to, if you're in a business and you're going to, and you're going to share profit share, it should be based on gross sales. And it's up to the business to figure out the margins so that the gross sale actually works. If the margin works, then gross sales are fine. And that's an objective figure. We can all look and say, here's what the sales were this year. That's an objective figure. Profit. You know, you got your real books and you got your tax books, and then you got your under the table books. You know, you got all this stuff. And so I just think that the profit sharing is rife with. For that kind of manipulation.

[Tai Lopez]

A lot of. When I lived in Hollywood, every guy who's ever invested in movies is like, I'm not going to do that again. The reason why the big movie studios, they pay you points commissions on a movie, and then they just expense everything. So it's like, all right, yeah, you get 10% of $30 on this movie that made 100 million bucks. So, yeah, profit sharing is sometimes.

[Joel Salatin]

Will you.

[Tai Lopez]

I use a modified gross revenue. So if you have one simple thing like Facebook ad spend, and you spend 100k on ads and you make 300,000, sometimes we'll use a modified number. We'll subtract just one metric that can't be manipulated. You can see the Facebook ad spend. So, changing subjects for a second. I saw you were just on this RFK Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Podcast. And what's your take? You know, we're here in the United States. You got maga, Make America Great Again. And then you have the Maha movement, which is Make America Healthy again. When I came here at 19, one of the things that really stuck with me the first month I was here. So the way Joel had it set up is that little teeny house out there that where they were cooking our lunch. I lived there, me and a guy named Geronimo from Mexico. And it was a 12 by 2240 square feet, and Joel hadn't finished the insulation. So it was cold. Let me tell you. You know how I know it was cold? We slept. Sometimes we'd put two sleeping bags inside of each other to sleep, and I used to have a glass of water. And I wake up in the morning and be frozen solid. It was cold.

[Joel Salatin]

Well, when I was a kid, Atina in our house down here, we had a wood stove in the. Down in the front, and I was up in the upstairs bedroom. And the bathroom was on the western edge of the house where, you know, our wind comes from the western side of the house. And there were times when I'd get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and the toilet, it was hit ice. Ice in the Toilet.

[Tai Lopez]

So if you pee it, don't.

[Joel Salatin]

Don't sit here and start whining at me.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, you had it soft. They have a. They have a cool house. Their house is. Your house was built around the year America became a country.

[Joel Salatin]

1790, 14 years.

[Tai Lopez]

I like that. This house. Here's a quick guess. See if anybody can answer this. You know, it's funny, I asked this question people can't answer. Why was this house built on top of a spring? So this house is built over. What was a spring for? Water. Why do you think that was? Keep it cool option. What else? To test the farm. Common sense. Running water to drink easily, to use as a fridge. Nobody's got it yet.

[Joel Salatin]

I love this.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, you're okay. Keep going.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Farming to water plants. I'll stop you when you get it right. To swim.

[Joel Salatin]

Swim?

[Tai Lopez]

Man, you said sewer. No, because then you'd be going to the bathroom in your drinking water.

[Joel Salatin]

That's not good.

[Tai Lopez]

Joel, reveal the real reason.

[Joel Salatin]

The real reason was so that when the Native Americans attacked, you could have water.

[Tai Lopez]

You could stay. The Native Americans would surround you till you ran out of water.

[Joel Salatin]

Then.

[Tai Lopez]

So here, you never ran out of water.

[Joel Salatin]

Ran out of water.

[Tai Lopez]

It was a different time. Whenever you think you have tough times now, then back then, they're like, let's build a house where an Indian surround us for two weeks to set us on fire. We're good. Got little holes to put your musket through.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, that's right.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

This is seven. This. The house was built in 1790. It's kind of a modern. It's a modern spot. When I.

[Joel Salatin]

Long before building inspectors.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Tai Lopez]

But when I. When I first came here, Joel, I would get to eat dinner there. So I. Breakfast and lunch, we were on our own. But we got all. And I got paid $300 a month. I remember, and. But I got all the cracked eggs that we couldn't sell. Me and Hieronimo didn't have any money. Who's from Mexico. Me and him were both. I probably had $20 in my bank account when I came here. And so for breakfast, we work pretty hard on this place. And I used to have to move 10,000 chickens every morning, or 2,000 chickens, whatever it was. So we come home and we'd have 36 eggs. We used to crack three dozen eggs. He'd get 18, I get 18. And then we make oatmeal and bread, and I would. You didn't gain weight. It was a great. Joel used to always say the main reason to have a Farm is so you can eat a lot and not get fat. And now the science came out because I got. When I came back, after about a year, I went back to North Carolina. People were like, you got super. I got noticeably strong. I just filled out 18 eggs. Eggs is six grams of protein. So with oatmeal and bread and butter, I was probably having 120 grams of protein. And now they used to say, you can't absorb more than 40. And now science has come out. You can absorb 200 grams. It just. Your body takes three or four hours. All farmers know that. No farmers spreading protein out, 30 grams a meal. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

You know, our most dramatic body change. So. So this. This. I mean, we. We've been told you need to start a fat farm. You know, I mean.

[Tai Lopez]

And the most politically correct phrase ever, they used to call them fat farms.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

You would send your fat kids there to get them skinny. Yeah, it's a real word.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, it is. It is a real deal. But we had. We had a guy from Canada. Well, actually it was Washington State, but he'd been. He'd been in Canada in college. And he. And he was. He was not a big guy. He was a small, smaller build. And that summer he gained 40 pounds. Yeah, he was a small. He was not a big guy. He was a smaller guy. Gained 40 pounds and did not change waist size. Yeah, it all went.

[Tai Lopez]

You can add 40 pounds of muscle in a year.

[Joel Salatin]

It all went right up on.

[Tai Lopez]

You're young enough.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

And a lot of protein. I mean, one thing Joel was always telling me is it's total BS that beef is bad for you. You know, Joel's Joel, and one of his kind of mentors was a guy named Allen Nation, who wrote the Stockman Grass Farmer. They've been saying, you know, since the 70s and 80s, all that, like, beef is great for you. And now everybody. Carnivore diet is popular. Creatine. Yeah, creatine that people have. That's from cows. Creatine's from beef. I mean, that's not the only source, but that's the. And so, you know, I just remember. But what I was going to say is, when I would have 18 eggs.

[Joel Salatin]

A morning, I don't think I knew you ate that.

[Tai Lopez]

Oh, we would go. Because we wouldn't eat lunch. So we were like, let's just have 36.

[Joel Salatin]

Well, I tell you, they lived on my wife's suppers. Let me tell you.

[Tai Lopez]

We would come in starving.

[Joel Salatin]

Teresa's suppers She's. Yes, she's legendary.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Tai Lopez]

She had all the dinner. You know, it's a funny story between farm and. There was a family named the McCumsies. Stephen McCombsey and, and they had grown up in the city and Joel, they were part of. Joel did home church, kind of like a small church and they would do, you know like a. Kind of like a barn raising. Different families would share. So when they came over here, all the church came and we did a big work day, got a lot of stuff done. His wife is multi generation farmer. Okay. They're Germans. Wanger. Her dad's is huge strong. Talk about short and strong. I'll tell you a little challenge. I've told people that I saw he was 60s. We went over to make hay at their place. He could take a pitchfork, stick it in a bale of square bale of hay with one arm.

[Joel Salatin]

40, 40 to 50 pounds.

[Tai Lopez]

No one here can do that on.

[Joel Salatin]

The end of a, of one hand.

[Tai Lopez]

And put it on top of a wagon in his 60s. If anybody here does that, I'm going to give you 250 bucks.

[Joel Salatin]

His arms, his forearms were as big.

[Tai Lopez]

As my thighs, you know. Now there's a competition on Instagram. Can you take a 45 pound barbell and just pick it up? He was doing 45 pound at the end of a pitchfork and all day and I'm sitting here anyway, so.

[Joel Salatin]

So he. So he was 80, went to a county fair.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

With, with sue is. After Theresa's mom died, he remarried and. And you know those things with sledgehammer, you hit that thing and it goes way up.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

He's 80. Guy hands him that hammer, smack that thing right up, you know. And there were these, all these 16, 17 year old young bucks, you know, stand around halfway up.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

And he just bang hit the bell, you know. 80 years old.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

There's no strength like farm strength and construction worker and logger strength. Those are the three. And I would add sheep shearer strength, sheep shearing. She, you know, sheep sharing is the only job I ever did. I could handle any. I worked at Old Order Amish farm. Milking cows by hand. Could handle it. I went to New Zealand to shear sheep. I ran out of money so I couldn't leave the country because I couldn't buy a plane ticket. So I started shearing sheep. After two weeks I'm like this is too hard. And the Australians in New Zealand told me we have an old saying in Australia. When you're at a bar late at night, never pick A fight with the sheep shearer because you'll always end up on the bottom. They'll just flip you over like nothing. It's the hardest work anyway. So there's this farm field day with the McCombseys. They come here. Joel's wife is used to farming, so she makes 7,000 gallons of food for everybody to come, Right? So everybody gets their fill. We flip over to the McCumbies. We go over there. She has, like, same church group. Same church group.

[Joel Salatin]

It's a work day.

[Tai Lopez]

We work all hard. She has, like, small pot of casserole, four eggs for 40 people. I remember thinking, common sense is no longer common. You only need to diet in the city. On the farm, you don't really have to diet. You can get in your 4,000 calories a day. 5,000. We're. Let's see how much calories in an egg. 80.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So if you have 20 eggs, you know you're eating 3,000 calories a meal, so that's good. And you won't get fat anyway. When we go to your dinners, you used to say something that I thought was strange when I was 19. You, Joel, used to have the same prayer every night. He would say, God, thank you for giving, allowing us to give people the gift of good food. And I was always like, what? You know, I didn't quite. But now I understand. What you were basically doing is seeing your business as. As a spiritual bigger than just money. It was a mission.

[Joel Salatin]

That's a sacred mission. That was my first point in my talk.

[Tai Lopez]

So how can people take a business and turn it into a sacred mission? I feel like that's very rare. If you look at big corporations, you know, it's Wall street, they're trying to hit numbers in sales. How can people listening turn things into a sacred mission?

[Joel Salatin]

Well, there would actually be some businesses that couldn't. Coca Cola. You can't. They can't make a sacred mission.

[Tai Lopez]

Right?

[Joel Salatin]

I mean, they make. They give everybody diabetes. So, you know, there are some businesses that wouldn't qualify. And so I think it does. It does put whatever boundaries. You know, just because you can doesn't mean you should. So if you haven't figured out how to put sacredness into your business mission, then think about, Think through about it until you can find that kind of. Of. Of beyond money, personal gain, you know, you know, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, you know, celebrity, whatever. Make it. Make it something that's. That's got value beyond that physical.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah. When I started my personal brand. I kind of had learned from Joel and I, and I made the mission. You know, we spread good ideas. I feel like who here feels like the world's. A lot of bad ideas get spread, you know, so that's kind of always been the mission for my.

[Joel Salatin]

That's a great mission statement.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, we try to get the good ideas out there and get them to go viral and interview people. That's why I'm doing my podcast. It's the same. That's kind of. I made my sacred mission because if you look at spiritual things, if you look at the Bible or whatever it says, you know, the word of God, like words have power, idea. Words convey ideas and knowledge. And you know, the word knowledge is like in the Greek, whatever, gnosis or something like that. And it's, it's a very sacred thing. So for those of you building your personal brand, try to build, try to spread a good idea. There's nothing that's changed the world for good more than just a couple simple good ideas. That's why the old saying is the pen is mightier than the sword. Big armies can come and have military, but they don't necessarily change the world in the same way as a really good idea does. You know, so, okay, so going back to this RFK and the Maha movement, what are the most practical things that, you know, most of the world now lives in cities. So someone living in a city that can't have a farm can't grow their own chickens. What's one or two things that would make America healthy again? Maybe some things that people haven't heard, like most people have heard they shouldn't have processed food. And what's some kind of out of the box. You're famous for out of the box ideas. What's a couple out of the box ideas for city dwellers?

[Joel Salatin]

So I've got a, I've got a three, three ingredient recipe for this. Number one is get in your kitchen. You know, it's never been easier to cook from scratch than now. You don't have to go to the spring with a wooden bucket and start a wood stove at 4 o' clock so you got hot enough to fry eggs when PA comes in from the milk house. We've got time bake, we've got hot and cold water refrigerators, you know, time bake, insta pots, crock pots, blenders, dicers, shakers, smoothie makers, ice cream makers, bread makers. I mean, it's never been easier to cook from scrat. And no civilization has ever more profoundly abdicated its visceral responsibility in culinary arts than ours.

[Tai Lopez]

So. And not. That means not going out to eat as much.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, absolutely. Not going out to eat as much. And, and, you know, single. Single ingredient stuff. Yeah. You know, get a squash.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

You know, get a T, bone steak, whatever, you know, but. But actually cook from scratch. I mean, the ultra processed food craze, this is just kind of new thinking that I've had now in the last month is not because people wanted ultra processed food. They wanted convenience. And convenience is shelf stable and, you know, single serving, you know, single package size. And so it's very conducive to convenience, to kind of grazing, you know, through life.

[Tai Lopez]

By the way, on that, I saw there's an Instagram video that went super viral. It was a guy talking about making money online. And he said, you know, first rule to make a lot of money, I never cook. I only order three meals a day from Blue Apron Uber. Even worse, Uber eats. Just. And I was thinking, you know, of there's a saying by Sigmund Freud, and not everything Sigmund Freud said was true, but some of it is very wise. In this one book, he said, I can't help but have the impression that men often underestimate what's truly important in life and overestimate. And so having good food is like the ultimate pleasure. Why would you want to be successful financially and be eating McDonald's? You're kind of. You forgot the money is beyond dialysis. Yeah, exactly.

[Joel Salatin]

You know, let's. Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So it was a leg.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. Yeah, Right. So what's another one? Get, get, get, get parted out. We call it parting out. As you age, we part you out, you know, so, so one is get in the kitchen. Just, just get in the kitchen. Number two is do something yourself. Touch the mystery and majesty of life. It could be something as simple as a, as a, as a quart jar of mung bean sprouts on the windowsill. That could be sourdough mother, you know, starter. It could be a little 12 by 12 vermicomposting kit under the, under the sink. You know, little earthworms, dill earthworms that you throw your kitchen scraps in. It could be a hanging, you know, herb, herb pocketed, you know, herb thing on the porch. But, but touch something living, biological to realize you're not in control. I think we live in a time when too many people think that this world is just at the end of my little fingertips and I can just manipulate it however I want to. And I think Part of common sense, and maybe humility is part of common sense too, is to touch life that you don't control. That's one of the reasons I love children's gardens. You know, if you're doing a video game and you wreck your car, you, two seconds, the game gives you a new car and you're back on the road. When you're 16, you wrap your car around a utility pole. Life doesn't give you a new car in two seconds and you walk away from it. And so in a, in a gardening situation, you know, when the tomato plant dies because you didn't water it or because the mildew got it, or because the worm got it, nature doesn't give you another tomato. This non participation in the life, death, decomposition, regeneration. Life, death, decomposition, regeneration. That, that, that compost circle, if you will, lets us, I think it, it helps us to understand that there's a, there's a bigger thing here than just me. And I think that's very healthy.

[Tai Lopez]

So have a, so have a little garden.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Or you can buy, you can do wheatgrass juices or you could buy these wheatgrass starter kits where you get it like on Amazon and you sprout your own wheatgrass. I do that. And when I'm in the city and cut wheatgrass every day and grind it up, it's. You want to talk about a superfood? People are getting these super green things. I'm like, Nothing. This is 100x. You can take a thimble full of it is more chlorophyll than you'll get in anything else.

[Audience Member]

Yeah, good.

[Joel Salatin]

And the third, the third one, the third one is to invest in your provenance. What I mean by that is my best story for this. I was up speaking at the University of Guelph in Ontario. And there were three of us speaking at the campus, at the university, the evening lecture hall. And the lady got up and did her five minute, you know, monologue, prologue, introductory thing. And we're going to do two hours of q and A with the students. And here's her story. She says, you know, three years ago, my husband and I, you know, we, we had a baby. She had the baby. And, and we said, well, we, we're kind of responsible for this new life. You know, what are we going to do? And she was, she was a six figure, high powered attorney. This is a couple of decades ago in Toronto, sixth floor condominium, you know, $100,000 urban attorney. Okay. Top of her game. So. Well, I'm going to breastfeed well, that was pretty radical in the circles that, you know, she ran in. And they said, well, what else? So they decided to take all of their recreational entertainment budget for one year that they were going to spend on the theater, vacations, everything else, and find their food, whether it came mail order or they found it locally or whatever, but they were going to sleuth their food. And she stood up and she told those students, she said, and at the end, for one year, they were going to invest in this for one year. And she said, at the end of the year, there was not a barcode in our pantry.

[Tai Lopez]

So by looking at how food was.

[Joel Salatin]

Made, so what they, so here's the thing. The silliest thing in the world is to think I can change my destiny without changing me. You know, whatever, Whatever is dysfunctional in the culture. Well, it's up to them. It's up to that. If those people there would just do what's, if that guy would just do. You know, it's always this finger point. And what she did, she, she took responsibility and said, we're gonna, we're gonna make this change ourselves. And so they, they bought, they bought oat, you know, rolled oats in a, in a 50 pound sack, you know, and they got a flour mill on the, in the kitchen, you know, they made your own flower. I'm not saying you have to do that, but, but to me, it was, it was quite a challenge. And I'm sitting there listening to her, what she's describing. I'm saying, well, if she can do that in a sixth floor condominium in Toronto, what's my problem? And I realized then, okay, what she did was she said, this is as important as sitting on the couch on Saturday afternoon watching the NFL. And, and I can't wait and expect everybody else to make the changes that I want to see for me.

[Audience Member]

Right?

[Joel Salatin]

I have to invest in the changes I want to see for me. So whether it's, I need to read books, I need to, you know, whatever it is I need, I need to practice speaking in front of a mirror until I make myself excited. And if, I mean, I've done that.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, you know, I remember you're a big public speaker, practice guy.

[Joel Salatin]

I am, I am.

[Tai Lopez]

You know, Joel memorizes his public speeches, which I feel like nobody does anymore.

[Joel Salatin]

I didn't learn to be able to just say mob stalking, herbivorous solar conversion, lignified carbon sequestration, fertilization off the tip of my thumb. You know, I did that in front of a mirror. You know, Several times. But, but, but, you know, if you. If you want a different. If you want a different outcome for your life, you got to invest in that different outcome.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

And so those. Those are the three things. Get in your kitchen, do something to touch life, and be intentional to invest in your own providence.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, I tell. I tell. I'd add to that. Take at least 10% of your month. That's three days. And get out of the city. So you can. If you live in la, you can go to Palm Springs. You know, you got the mountains there. Get more primitive. And I think that, you know, they say men's testosterone's dropped 60%. Your grandfather had, you know, a lot more testosterone. And a lot of that is just living too civilized. Civilization and its discontents. That's. That's Sigmund Freud's book. You know, everything we went wrong. It's. And if you look at, like, ancient spiritual things like the Bible, you know, Adam and Eve was in the garden. That was like the primitive thing. They were touching their own food, growing our food. The punishment was to be kicked out. And they eventually made cities. The city is almost the punishment for man. Even though cities are good to make more money, they're worse, probably. For everything else. I track my hrv. I have one of these rings that tracks my. Who tracks their heart rate variability? Do you know what's your HRV average? Who's got. Look, it's on the homepage of Aura. Who here Has a hot HRV over 50? Let's do. Let's see here. What's yours? What was yours last night? So it's basically measuring the variance, not your heart rate. Like if your beats per minute, it's when you're really healthy, your heart rate, when you work hard, goes really high. And then when you're sleeping, it drops super low. So it's. It's measuring this variability. What's yours? Okay, does anybody have theirs? 55. How old are you? That's low. We got to get that higher. How old are you? Yeah, you need to be 150, man. Really? I'm serious. It's. If you go on Whoop App, you look at pro athlete guys that really. They have 400 HRV, 85. No one break. 100. What I was going to say. HRV is like this primitive measure. Does your heart go up? See, when you're not that healthy, you get stressed. Your heartbeats goes up and it stays up. So there's no more variability or you don't exercise much, so it just stays low all day. So there you can see, even on our bodies, we're built to be primitive. Run chase something, you know, and then you get your heartbeat super high and then super deep. Who here does not have super deep sleep? Who here wakes up a couple times a day? You know, it's funny, if you watch little kids, like under 10 who are super kids are generally pretty healthy sometimes. If you have kids, you'll know this. They go to bed, and then when they wake up in the morning, they think they didn't fall asleep because they slept so hard. You ever had anything here have kids? I've had my son be like, I only slept five minutes at eight in the morning. I'm like, what do you mean you went to bed at 8? And he's like, oh, yeah, I just woke back up. But that level of deep sleep is something you need to focus on. So Joel, switching subjects kind of bouncing around here.

[Audience Member]

So.

[Joel Salatin]

So. So let me. Let me tell you where I am. Maga. Yes, Maha. I want a mah wah.

[Tai Lopez]

Okay, what's my wa. Make America weak again.

[Joel Salatin]

No, make America work again.

[Tai Lopez]

Oh, okay.

[Joel Salatin]

This whole thing about. About immigration and who's going to gut the chickens, who's going to cat, who's going to make the hospital, you know, the hotel beds, who's going to, you know, because we're shipping away all the illegals. The problem is not illegals. The problem is Americans won't work. So I think we need to start a mah wah. Let's make America work again. And then we'll be in business.

[Tai Lopez]

You know, one thing you told me when I was 19 on that, that I thought was interesting, he said, you know what most parents do wrong? They punish their kids with work. So if kids does something wrong, you're like, okay, now you have to vacuum the house. Well, instead of teaching that vacuuming the house is just part of being part of a family, you got to do it. And, you know, it's interesting. I live with an Amish guy named Sam Chupp, and he had. He had a small family for Amish, six kids. It's funny how a relative, I always remember thinking, oh, he had a small family. But one of his sons was six years old, David Chupp. And one time at dinner or breakfast, Sam said, did you. You could hear the milk cow was mooing in pain. And he turned to his son and he said, did you milk the cow? And David goes, oh, I didn't do it. And he said, well, the cow's in pain now. And so the kid put together and so he ran out and did it. When he came back, dad said, for your punishment, you can't come on the work crew with me and brothers today. You can't come do work all day with us building a log house. So he turned work into the pleasurable thing and punished by, you can't work. And I remember that David cried like he had gotten spanked. He's like, please let me come. And the said, nope, we're going to build this house. You got to stay with your mom. So make America work again. You first have to change how society sees work, because 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 people. That.

[Joel Salatin]

That's right.

[Tai Lopez]

When you retire, you die. You die real quick.

[Joel Salatin]

I mean, the science, the most fundamental human need is the need to feel needed.

[Audience Member]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

And work makes you feel needed. I mean, it's what you do. I mean, when we introduce ourselves to each other, you know, our first question is, what do you do? You know, we're known by what we do. And. And so when you take the do away, then there's no purpose and there's no need. And when there's no purpose and no need, then I'm not important. And. And this is one of the problems, you know, we got. We've got a teenage suicide problem in this country. Huge problem with teenage suicide. And. And I think. I think our young people are growing up with low self esteem, no self worth, because they haven't successfully accomplished meaningful tasks.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

How you develop self worth is successfully accomplishing meaningful tasks. I know how to do things, and I need it around here. That's how you get self worth. It's not. It's not sitting in the basement playing video games and being told that you're a liability. It's doing meaningful tasks where you become an asset to the family and you become affirmed in your personhood and your need to exist.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

A guy once told me, your competence is your confidence. You want to have more confidence, get better at more stuff. You'll rarely meet somebody who's really good at something that's insecure. And just telling people to be secure without giving them a hard time. Kobe Bryant, the basketball player, said, the peak of human experience is when you have something hard to do, but not so hard. It's impossible, but just hard. They call it a stretch goal. You know, I was like, what's the. I think everybody here in your business, you should. I'm not a big fan of huge There was a guy that I did a call with a couple months ago and he told me, I said, what's the minimum, you know, net worth business? You're trying to build income? And he said, $25 billion. I said, I told him, I was like, you're kind of an idiot. I didn't want to be super. I was saying it in a nice way. I said, so if you made 24.9 billion, I said, you'd be depressed, like I don't believe you. But he said, well, I've learned if I have a huge goal, even if I only get halfway there, I'll be doing pretty well. But the famous coach, Dean Smith, the basketball coach, he said, I never was a fan of that approach and here's why. Think about who here, bench presses at the gym. What if you just say, you know what, I haven't been lifting weights at all. I'm not strong. I'm going to go into the gym, I'm going to go for a thousand pound bench press. And even if I only go halfway, I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, but you'll die. There's a guy, there's an influencer in Bali who is famous for lifting like super heavy. And last year he was, he was back squatting, I forget, 1200 pounds or something. And he, and it was too heavy and he fell forward and it broke his neck. So that's a good analogy for life.

[Joel Salatin]

Well, yeah, it's like Bill Belichick, you know Bill Belichick, Coach Bill Belichick, he was famous for, you know, they would always ask, well, you know, you head into the super bowl, next game, next game. He never, he never thought about the super bowl. And, and coach Nick, Nick Saban in Alabama, who's now retired, he was famous for saying, for not, for not even having a goal, of winning the game as a goal. His goal was, you are supposed to do your job where you are on the team and if every single one of you does your job at your position on the team, we will win.

[Audience Member]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

But if you get winning in your head.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

Then, then it actually distracts you from, okay, I got this guy right in front of me, I got to do thus. And so.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

And I call that my three. You're getting your three foot world. Your three foot world is like, what's, what can you just do right here? And it's important. I always say it's good to have a big vision. But goals I don't think should be big. I think goals should be small. If you're bench pressing, you did 150 last week. Then you push up to 152, you get those little weights. You can get those little half weight. That's the whole purpose of, you know, pushing the muscle and tearing down the muscle and rebuilding. So one of the things that I learned from you that before the even in the Internet existed was relationship marketing. So you had the way you sold your farm food instead of selling it to Tyson Chicken or whatever and getting paid pennies per chicken, you direct marketed it. So you were famous when I was a teenager and still now for being direct marketer and you had this newsletter you would write. You would type it, I think on a typewriter. I remember Joel when I was here. Joel would still had a typewriter, not a word process.

[Joel Salatin]

That was before there were computers.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

You were taught you were typing away, but even when there was computers, you were still typing.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. It took me a while.

[Tai Lopez]

You did not. Joel doesn't change that.

[Joel Salatin]

No. Remember I don't have a smartphone.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

So I, when we finally decided to get a computer, we felt like we had to get a look. It's okay to be nostalgic until you're obsolete.

[Audience Member]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

So you know, we built our, our brand on all local. We didn't ship. I mean we were cultish. That's how we got in. Omnivore's Dilemma.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

And then we started, you know, here came Amazon and here came Butcherbox and here came this door to door delivery stuff and we started seeing customers. Well, I haven't seen you for a couple years. You run into them. Well, I can just sit in my jammies and order on the Internet from, you know, butcher box that comes to my doorstep. I don't want to go on a dirt road with potholes and I might get a ding on my car, you know, with a gravel jumping up or something. And, and we started hearing that and said, whoa, wait a minute. You know, we're. It's okay to be nostalgic until you're obsolete.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

And so, so July 4, 2019, we launched nationwide shipping. Yeah. Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So it only took. So Amazon started in 94.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So it takes you about 25 years. Every 25 years.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. So. So we, so our answer to people that, you know, that. And we took a lot of heat in the farming community.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

For, you know, always gone to the dark side. He's, you know, now he's, he's, he's got his eyes on Empire. You know, he's gonna blah, blah, blah. And. And we said, no, no Somebody moved my cheese. You know, a little business book, Two little mice, you know, Somebody moved my cheese.

[Tai Lopez]

Has everybody read that book? Who Moved my cheese? That's a good one. You gotta read a teeny little book.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. It's really. You can read it in 15 minutes.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

But it's. It's a wonderful little book. But that's exactly what happened to us. Somebody moved our cheese. And. And we had to. We had to adjust to it.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Warren Buffett always says, what made me money in 1979 didn't work as well in 1980. What worked in 1980 didn't work in 1981. So I had to become a learning machine.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

As I said, your only real solution to life is be a learning machine. If you're a learning machine, doesn't matter what happens. You're going to be fine now.

[Joel Salatin]

So the. What got you here won't get you there. That's another great, great book.

[Tai Lopez]

So a lot of people here want to build their personal brand. And you've built a personal brand, people. If you ask ChatGPT now, who's the most famous farmer in the world? I don't know if you know this, but it says Joel Salatin. So that's a personal brand in a niche industry. Right. Farming. And what are some things. I'll throw out a couple that I've learned building my personal brand that I think will be helpful for people here. And then I want to hear you're Joel. So a couple things. One, and Joel did this really well, too. When you're not known at all, you should take something that you believe that's relatively controversial. That's a great way to launch your personal brand. Humans are attracted to controversy. So, you know, you've been controversial 75 times in the last 20 years. So if you don't like any controversy, I don't think people should build a personal brand. There are some people go, you know what? I don't want to be in the controversy game. Then build a business that's faceless. It's okay. There's still room for faceless businesses. So number one, you got to be able to. I always tell people, and I'll do a little test here with the live audience. What is something.

[Audience Member]

Scott?

[Tai Lopez]

What's something controversial but you truly believe it to be true, that at least half of this audience, even though this audience is probably more of similar politics and mindset than you. What do you. What's something you believe that half of this audience doesn't? I'm gonna take you three, okay. Everyone should shoot guns. Okay, now, this crowd, you're probably okay there. But in America, if you go in America, out here in the country, I always don't want.

[Joel Salatin]

MSNBC asked Joy Behar.

[Tai Lopez]

Yeah, I always said I came down here doing Covid. I was living in New York, and I came right down here, Covid, and people are like, are you worried about, you know, mass loot? I'm like, nobody loots in this county because everybody's armed. You grandma would be armed. Okay, so everybody should. Okay, that's good. What about you? What's something you believe that half this room probably wouldn't. Everybody should be sovereign, like, libertarian kind of. No central government.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Tai Lopez]

Are you anarchist close to anarchy? My mom has been close.

[Audience Member]

Get.

[Tai Lopez]

My mom's been getting into anarchy. By the way, anyone here an anarchist? That's a great way to build a personal brand, because if you start talking about it there. We have one anarchist there, tall. You got to talk about that. And you have to be okay with losing half the audience, because if half the people. There's so many humans on Earth that If you get 50% of people listening to you, it's a huge number. What about you? Probably, like, the customer's not always right. Okay. You believe customers aren't always right, so if they ask for a refund, sometimes you're like, no. Exactly. Although in this room, 100% of entrepreneurs agree with you, you win 100% of your disputes. There we go. So I would just throw out. If you're trying to build your personal brand, find something that 50% of your target audience. And this is the key thing. 50% of your target audience won't agree with something that I talk about. Now, that's very controversial even in my circle. Is that genetics matter? This is like, I might as well open up now. Every farmer on Earth knows most of your farm things are based on genetics. So most of the milk cows in America come from, like, five male bulls. All the border collie dogs in the world essentially come from Wiston Cap, one dog in the 1800s that was so smart, everybody sent their dogs to breed with him. So corn cultivars. All the corn you eat comes from, like, three strains.

[Joel Salatin]

Every single horse in this year's Kentucky Derby.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Every single horse in his Kentucky. Kentucky Derby was a progeny of Secretariat.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Every single horse in the Kentucky Derby this year had its.

[Tai Lopez]

When I talk about genetics, I mean, it's crazy because people automatically think. When I say genetics, I'm talking about right race. That some races are better, but that's actually talking about genetics is the opposite of that. It's more saying that some family lines are better, doesn't matter the race, or. Or superior in certain things. Anyway, that's something I. And I. I posted on Twitter. I posted something like this. And I mean, one of the biggest UFC guys wrote the longest, nastiest thing back. Ty's so wrong on this. Everyone in my family is an alcoholic and that. And I became successful. He kind of proved my point because he's like, everybody in my family is crazy. And I became a crazy cage fighter. I was like, yeah, that's. But the fact that he reposted it to his whole audience. Got 2 million people to see. And a lot of the comments were like, no, I think I might be right on this. So that's what I'm saying. Even within your target audience, don't be afraid as long as you truly believe it. Don't just make up controversy to. To. You know, they call that rage bait. I'm not a fan of rage bait, but most people here are going to have a lot of rage bait. If you're an entrepreneur, you probably think maybe who here thinks you. That the vaccine overall was a good thing? One person, right? Who here like Joe Biden? Who thought Joe Biden's one of the great presidents? Who here think Joe Biden may be the worst one of modern times?

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Okay, here's one. Who here likes Trump?

[Joel Salatin]

He wasn't even president.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

I don't know who was running things, but it wasn't him.

[Tai Lopez]

Who here really above average, likes Trump? Not just like, Trump's good, but like, Trump's amazing.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So half. Who here like Kamala Harris? Anybody vote? No.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

So this crowd is. I'm saying if I'm trying to build my personal brand to you all, I can't just use talking about things that are controversial to the world. I got to be controversial to this group. Another controversial thing I just posted. I'm not sure that free will. This is the one. If I want to bring down the quality of my entrepreneur talk to where people the first half of my talk are like, I love this Thai guy. And then the second half, they're like, let's leave. I say that free will, you don't only have free will. Some things are predestined in life. And entrepreneurs. Think about it. You become an entrepreneur because you want destiny in your hands. And you're like, I don't need a. A diploma. I'm going to start my own business. But I do. And I just Posted on this the other day. Even though I lose half of my entrepreneur crowd when I say this, I don't think free will. We have as much free will as we think, but I do think we have some free will. And so your point in life is to take the free will you actually have and maximize it. But I don't think that I, for example, I think people, I don't think everybody could become a billionaire. I think I've been in business with three billionaires and genetically, which is in IQ is very genetic and they're all tremendously intelligent people. It's not, it's like saying everybody could lift a 500 pound rock. Some people just have the genetics. So I think that free will. And if you look at.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. And it's good to know, you know, I get so tired of. You can do anything that you want to do. You can't do anything you want to do. I will never play in the NBA.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

I don't care how much I wanted to do it, I would never play in the NBA. And so I mean it's not built.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

And if you're seven foot tall in America.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

You have a 30% chance of playing in the NBA.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

But you're under six foot, you got a one in a million.

[Joel Salatin]

As far as entrepreneurs go. You know, in Kevin Lehman's birth order book he points out that 80% of entrepreneurs are middleborn. 80% of salespeople are last born.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

Because they're manipulators.

[Audience Member]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

You know, they, they, they can't, they can't beat them physically.

[Tai Lopez]

They got a sales here and is the last born.

[Joel Salatin]

There you go.

[Tai Lopez]

All the hands stayed up.

[Joel Salatin]

That's amazing. And, and, and, and 80% of the, of the upper class, professional doctors, attorneys and all that are first born because they're the ones that grow up being doted on, you know.

[Tai Lopez]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

Comb your hair. Right. Make your, you know, and, and if you have a first grader that goes to school carrying a briefcase.

[Audience Member]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

That's an only born.

[Tai Lopez]

Oh, okay.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

But, but in our family, and it's, it's most.

[Tai Lopez]

You're the middle, right?

[Joel Salatin]

I'm the middle, yeah. I'm the entrepreneur.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

My older brother, mechanical engineer, that's, you know, professional and my younger, and my younger sister, sales. So it's most stereotypical or it's most, you know, consistent in three, three, three sibling families. You get into four. Like, like Teresa's the one daughter of, of with three brothers. So she has a lot of firstborn tendencies.

[Tai Lopez]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

Because she was the only girl.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

And that, that's an example of things outside of your free will where you were born.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, exactly. But her young, her youngest brother, the youngest of the four, he could sell a hat rack to a moose man.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

I mean, he could sell a, you know, ice cubes to an Eskimo. He. He's made his living and he's. He's fantastic.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

I'm the middleborn of my dad. My dad's middle.

[Joel Salatin]

Okay.

[Tai Lopez]

So I became the entrepreneur.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the birth order. So that bolsters the point.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Just, I mean, I'm the one without a baby book.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Because you get the first one, all the baby pictures, last one, maybe, you know, the middle one. I go play in the traffic, you.

[Tai Lopez]

Know, and so there's no baby pictures of you. Not any.

[Joel Salatin]

No, no. And so as a result, this is what exactly the point you're saying is that you get pre. Preconditioned.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Right. Just from that circumstance to, I'm going to go do my own thing.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

You know.

[Tai Lopez]

Well, if you look at, if you look at religions, the biggest argument in spiritual things has been, do humans have free will or is it predestined? So you had the Calvinists in Christianity, you had Calvinists who believe you're born, you're going to go to heaven. It's predestined. Not much you can do. Then you have other groups.

[Joel Salatin]

You know that, that Armenian is the other mainly view that's it's totally free will or conditional.

[Tai Lopez]

But the reason is, is because the answer, it's called a dichotomy. And most of the things that are true in life are dichotomies, meaning both opposites can be true at the same time and people have a hard time handling. It's both. True that you have free will, but it's important to know that some stuff is just in the cards for you. I mean, think about babies who are born with a disease. You can't just say to them, hustle. And you have the same chance as Elon Musk had to be successful.

[Joel Salatin]

So think about, I mean, I'm thinking about a guy who I used to be in, used to go to camp in the summer and this guy couldn't read a note of music.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

He could sit down on the piano and if you hummed a tune, they could play anything. Just play it on the. I mean, up and down. I mean, the guy was a. He was a prodigy, you know. Yeah, but where does that come from? You know, it wasn't like he sat down one day and said, I want the gift of being able to play the piano by ear. No, it just. He was three, you know, can you imagine? You know, my dad was real gifted at language. You know, he could just learn language. He taught himself Russian, Greek, all this stuff, you know, gifted at language. Of course, you know, Spanish. He went to Venezuela.

[Tai Lopez]

Didn't he learn that one language? What's that?

[Joel Salatin]

Man made Esperanto.

[Tai Lopez]

Has anybody here ever tried to learn Esperanto?

[Joel Salatin]

Esperanto.

[Tai Lopez]

Somebody invented a language, you know, J R Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings, created a language. Anybody learned that one?

[Joel Salatin]

That was, that was done in like the 1960s. Yeah, to create a global universal language. So people, you know, this is when people wrote letters. You could write letters, you could communicate across all languages.

[Tai Lopez]

So it was like sign language of words.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There were no exceptions. Yeah, it was a little bit like Spanish. I mean, Esperanto, you know, but it, it had no exceptions. So the vocabulary was real easy. Yeah, easy, yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

English is one of the hard. Who here doesn't have English as their first language? What was, what's your first language? Spanish, Spanish, Spanish, Portuguese, German.

[Joel Salatin]

German.

[Tai Lopez]

German is a tough one. You ever seen that video that goes, German's the ugliest language? They say, you know, all these different languages. They say ambulance, English, Ambulancia, Spanish. And then they say German krankenwagen. They say butterfly in America. Spanish is Mariposa. German is Schmetterling. Germany, by the way, this valley is very. A lot of German families here. Oh, you're Austrian.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Well, Germany's a new country. People don't realize Germany's, you know, people don't. Very few people realize Italy only existed, you know, in your grandparents life and Germany's a new place. My grandma, who's from Germany, grew up without thinking of Germany as a place. She'd be like, oh yeah, those Prussians or those Pomeranians or those. So Austria used to be kind of the king. Austria has almost the most immigration. Vienna, there's nobody left who's. It's like Ukrainians and Turkish and Middle Eastern. What's your take? You. You brought up a little bit of this. But what's your take on immigration in general in the world, not even just America, should countries go more nationalistic? Like there's slow movements in almost every country to react to the kind of mass migration. So Sweden, who knows? Without it. If you're from a farm, do not answer. What is that machine? If you're from a farm, do not answer. Only, hey, Baylor, I'll tell you when I hear the correct one, the proper word. What do you say in German?

[Joel Salatin]

Not my first language.

[Tai Lopez]

What do you say in German? Anybody know who knows?

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Oh, he speaks. He speaks Pennsylvania Dutch. You say hojrek?

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Reha. Hoi.

[Audience Member]

Rea.

[Tai Lopez]

Hoi. I know, I speak. I know the Amish language somewhat. I live with them for a couple years. Anybody in English? Yeah, it's a rake. It's a hay rake. And anybody who here from the city knows what a tedder is? Tedder, like the guy's name Ted, but tedder. When you have your hay and then it gets a little wet, you shoot it up in the air so it. It flips, it fluffs it and gets.

[Joel Salatin]

More sun up in the air so it'll dry.

[Tai Lopez]

You know, the Amish language is very interesting because the Amish language for some things doesn't have many words, but then it has the most words for like all the parts of a. Like a. On a horse, like all that. Not just a saddle, but also on the harness. Who here knows any horse harness words? Only you and me bridle. But on a harness, where you work a horse. I have two farms. I have one here, near here that we use tractors, but I have another one that we use. We don't use any tractors, we just use horses. So, Joel, the doom scale. I don't know if you've heard of this, but it's the scale of the smartest scientists. Supposedly they're. They. The odds. They think the world's going to essentially fall apart. Could be from. I could be from nuclear, but like, there's no food in L. A for two weeks. There's no food. So everybody think, where are you on the doom scale? Some of the smartest people in the world are at a 95 of doom scale. They're like, it's just a matter of time. The smart. I think the lowest I've seen any of these experts is like 15 to 20%. If you ask ChatGPT the odds LA or New York or London will have an event that shuts down food supply for two weeks. They give it like 10% any given year. So imagine you wake up, you live in a city, any.

[Joel Salatin]

Any food future, any future time.

[Audience Member]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

It's like every year there's like a five. So let's imagine you have a dice, you know, with a hundred site twenty sites on it, and it's like if it rolls a one, that's high odds because let me tell you, if a big city has no Food for two weeks. I'm not even sure what would happen in two days. You see, runs on food and stuff like that. So I tell people, get a farm, that when you make your first million dollars, a farm is also farmland in the last 30 years has been the best risk adjusted return, meaning it's not volatile, it's just gone up nice and steady. It's beat the s and P500 in.

[Joel Salatin]

1961 when mom and dad bought this, the original core 550 acres. House, shed, barn, which they weren't as big as they are now, but anyway, a tractor, a rake. 550 acres, all $49,000.

[Tai Lopez]

40 for a million dollars in LA. Now you get a crack house. I'm not joking. You get a house that probably has drug addicts living in it for a million bucks. East Hollywood, you know. Okay, here's something for you, Joel. Guess compared to, let's say the 1950s or 60s, what would minimum wage have to be for people to have the same buying power? Let's say you were 16 years old in the 50s or 60s, you worked at a drive in place. Okay. And what would equivalent have to be so that you could buy the same house and same lifestyle as they could in the 50s?

[Joel Salatin]

Do you have the answer? Yeah, you do have the answer. I'm gonna say 45 bucks an hour.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Tai Lopez]

Right now, what is the minimum wage in Virginia's probably about 10 bucks right now. $10. What do you think Virginia would have to be to be the equivalent of what you could live. You used to be able to live on one, just the dad working and the mom could stay at home and you could have a house. And so what do you think the answer is? Anybody know? Yeah, it's $65. So what that means is the world's getting a little bit crazy in the sense that you got to make more money than you think just to keep up with the change.

[Joel Salatin]

Yes.

[Tai Lopez]

This is in 2019. I looked at farmland. I did a call with a whole big group of people. Nobody listened to me. I remember being disappointed. I said, who wants to buy farmland with me in central Illinois? Basically the most fertile farmland in the world by like raw fertility, is this one county in central Illinois just flat. And I, I went. It was in the winter. I took a shovel and I got out of the car. People thought I was crazy. It was a zoom call. Like 300 people on. And you could dig like 2ft. It's like 10ft of black dirt.

[Joel Salatin]

Oh, yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

You could buy that farmland. And this is 2019 for nine. Eight to nine thousand an acre.

[Joel Salatin]

Now it's going for 25.

[Tai Lopez]

25.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Six years. You know, I'm working right now at the desk. I'm working on a chart. I've got Thomas Jefferson's farm book, and he's got in there the different prices for different things.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

And I'm. I'm. I'm actually. And so some of it's in dollars, some of it's in shillings, and some of it's in pence. I mean, this is colonial.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

And so anyway, I'm. I'm converting it all to dollars. And to get the ratios of different things, the most amazing one. Beef. Okay, ready for this? Beef, 2 cents a pound.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

Wheat, 50 cents a bushel.

[Tai Lopez]

You're saying 2 cents a pound in our time. No. Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

No, in Jefferson's day.

[Tai Lopez]

Jefferson.

[Joel Salatin]

Jefferson's day.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

Beef, 2 cents a pound.

[Audience Member]

Wow.

[Joel Salatin]

Wheat, 50 cents a bushel.

[Audience Member]

Huh.

[Tai Lopez]

So wheat was more valuable than cows.

[Joel Salatin]

So, so if that ratio, if. If wheat were that much more expensive than beef today.

[Tai Lopez]

Oh, my.

[Joel Salatin]

So that. That's a. That's a.

[Tai Lopez]

You'd never eat bread again.

[Joel Salatin]

No, no. Wheat.

[Tai Lopez]

Wheat.

[Joel Salatin]

Wheat would be 500 a bushel.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

What is wheat right now? What's.

[Joel Salatin]

It's $10 and 90 cents a bushel.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

Chicago border.

[Tai Lopez]

You still used to be able to buy farms here, plant wheat for five years and pay off the farm.

[Joel Salatin]

Oh, listen, when we came here, I was, I remember, you know, old timer neighbor here. Old. I mean, all the, you know, old timer neighbors around that were old when I. When we came and I was a kid, and we, you know, and they'd always say, yeah, yeah, we bought that, about that 40 acres over there in. In 52.

[Tai Lopez]

They had no teeth, I guess.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, yeah. And kind of, you know, shriveled up all farmers. And we. We put in some wheat there on. In 10 acres. We grew some hogs there, and then number five. And we had some beef cows over here, had a little flock of sheep and. And we paid for that land in two years.

[Tai Lopez]

I know.

[Joel Salatin]

And you know, so when we. So think about this. When we came, this was 90 bucks an acre, and feeder calves were $180. And you could grow half of one per acre per year.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

So that's a $90 market price. A $90 production price on a calf. That's a one to one ratio today. The land is 10,000.

[Audience Member]

Yep.

[Joel Salatin]

The feeder calf is 1,000.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

Half of that's 500. So we've gone from a one to one to a. 20 to one. And that's why you can't do what grandpa did and stay in business.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

What got you here won't get you there. Well, just.

[Tai Lopez]

That's what I was trying to say. In this doom scale, there's so like right now, beef cows are gone through the roof. Part of that's Joe Biden. You know how all of a sudden there's no eggs. Part of that is because how many chickens did Joe Biden kill?

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Stupidly.

[Joel Salatin]

Millions and millions.

[Audience Member]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

You killed a laying hand.

[Joel Salatin]

20. 20% of the whole supply. But, but, but the beef thing was mainly the drought.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

And so they just something with Mexico, they changed the export import.

[Joel Salatin]

You know. In 2022, I was down in Mississippi at stockman thing and there were farmers down there I met that were. That. That were having to go out and shoot their cows because the soil had cracked so wide. Cows were stepping in the soil cracks and breaking their legs. They had to go out, shoot them and, and so, so that drought. But, but what's, what's different now is that's ever been in, in these cycles, whether they're economic cycles, drought cycles, whatever, is that this time the average cattle farmer.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

Is almost 70 years old.

[Tai Lopez]

There's no.

[Joel Salatin]

The average farmer is 60. The average crop farmer is about 50. Okay. The average cattleman rent is 70. So in the. So what's happening this time is cattle prices are through the roof, but nobody wants to expand at any price because I'm done. You know, I'm too old. Yeah. Too old.

[Tai Lopez]

You think there'll be robots farming one day?

[Joel Salatin]

I'm certainly there. There will be. And I feel like there's a lot of robots farming today because they don't think but. Or they just program whatever, whatever programs into them.

[Tai Lopez]

Well, that's what, that's what everybody thinks in the modern world. They'll be like, oh, that doesn't matter. There's no farmers left in America. We'll just replace them with robots.

[Joel Salatin]

You know. You know what's fascinating, I just had a guy call me from Chicago. He's. He's in it. So he's, you know, and he wants to farm. And so he asked chat GPT. I'm in Chicago, I want to farm. How do I do this? And you know what it said? I haven't written about this yet because I'm still just floored by it. Had him send me the, Send me.

[Tai Lopez]

The whole trans 20 page.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah. Spit out. And it said pastured poultry.

[Tai Lopez]

Really. Which is what Joel invented That word, there you go.

[Joel Salatin]

Said pastored poultry. And then once you get that going, start with rabbits.

[Audience Member]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

And it gave a brand. It gave a marketing message. I mean, it was the whole shooting match. And it struck me, like I said, I haven't written about this yet because it's brand new. I just, just got struck me, you know, this morning you were talking about all of our decisions ultimately are emotional or, you know, a lot of it is emotional chat. GPT is not emotional.

[Tai Lopez]

Right.

[Joel Salatin]

So it's being completely rational.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

You ask it a question and it's looking at the body of stuff.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Joel Salatin]

And in a totally rational, logical way, it's saying, do this.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

And it's taking that whole emotional element out of it.

[Tai Lopez]

Although I have a counter story for you.

[Joel Salatin]

Okay.

[Tai Lopez]

A general in the military did a talk about six or eight months ago. He said, we did a simulation with AI we pretended it had. It was just on a computer screen. Take this missile and bomb this city. Okay. So it went out. And while it was going out, they said, type to it that we've changed our mind and they're not the bad guys, so come back to base. So the AI drone said, no, we would like to complete our mission. You sent us on it. And they said, come back, I'd like to complete it. So finally the general typed in, I'm the general, Return to base, I command you. So it turned around, came back and bombed the home base.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

I have a friend who's a PhD in AI. He says he thinks if AI gets connected to nuclear weapons, it'll be 10 minutes till there's a nuclear war. He's a PhD in this subject, he's not an amateur. So he said. So that's why what I was telling people, back to the doom scale and all this stuff in forums is have a backup plan.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

I'm telling you, if. Even if you want to live in the city, be like the Mormons. Mormons have whatever, three months or three years of food in the pantry. Although if you live in Los Angeles and you have three months of food, I don't think you'll have it for long unless you have a lot of machine guns.

[Joel Salatin]

Well, right here. Right here in the last six or seven years. Yeah, we have helped. In fact, we're helping another family right now. We have helped six families of wealth buy properties within 30 minutes of us for us to manage. So they have an agrarian bunker if things go south.

[Tai Lopez]

But Mark Zuckerberg has a bunker in Hawaii. I just saw. He just bought even more land he has a huge bunker. He's making a big mistake. If you have a bunker, he shouldn't tell people where it is. Yeah, everybody. Why are you going to show up at his and Oprah's house when there's. But you should have a backup plan, you know, at some level. And since people here are making more money than average, I think you should buy a farm because it's one. It's a solid investment. It's gonna. It's gonna do well. You get good tax deductions. People don't realize how much of the IRS tax return you can is farming. It's in my tax return is a bizarre tax return. You gotta go.

[Joel Salatin]

I've got about one minute.

[Tai Lopez]

All right, everybody, if you want to learn. Everybody listening. You want to learn more about Joel Salton, go to Joel. Should they go to polyfacefarm.com?

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah, the. The website's comprehensive.

[Tai Lopez]

He has no Instagram, so you can't follow him.

[Joel Salatin]

No.

[Tai Lopez]

You can't text him because he has a flip phone.

[Joel Salatin]

And I don't have Facebook.

[Tai Lopez]

No Facebook.

[Joel Salatin]

I'm not on X.

[Tai Lopez]

No nothing.

[Joel Salatin]

But, you know, I do a podcast.

[Audience Member]

Yes.

[Joel Salatin]

And we have, you know, I've, I've got book number 17.

[Tai Lopez]

Book number 7.

[Joel Salatin]

Be here next week, actually.

[Tai Lopez]

What's it called?

[Joel Salatin]

Pitchfork Pulpit.

[Tai Lopez]

What's the best selling book you've had?

[Joel Salatin]

You can farm.

[Tai Lopez]

You can farm. I'm in that book in pictures.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

If you want to see a picture of me of a teenager here.

[Joel Salatin]

That's right. You can farm that one.

[Tai Lopez]

There's two pictures of me in there.

[Joel Salatin]

And, and, and Ty, you actually contributed. You had a couple chapter titles. We were talking about it. Yeah.

[Tai Lopez]

Okay.

[Joel Salatin]

And you said, joe, you. You should tell them the 10 best things and the 10 worst things. And those became two of the chapters. Oh, really? So you were, you were instrumental in, in helping flesh that out.

[Tai Lopez]

So you can Farm is still a good book, still your bestseller.

[Joel Salatin]

Yeah.

[Audience Member]

Good.

[Tai Lopez]

So everybody grab. You Can Farm on Amazon. And Joel, thank you.

[Joel Salatin]

Thank you.

[Tai Lopez]

Ready to give him a hand? I'm going to stay up here, but he's got another podcast.