"Men Today Are Weak"- Turn On Your Inner Beast & Accomplish Anything In 2024 | Patrick Bet David

Summary

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Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: “Men Today Are Weak” – Turn On Your Inner Beast & Accomplish Anything In 2024
Guest: Patrick Bet-David
Host: Tom Bilyeu
Date: December 5, 2023

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down with entrepreneur, author, and media visionary Patrick Bet-David to critically examine what it means to be a strong man in today’s society. The conversation tackles the so-called "crisis of masculinity," the misunderstood value of power and aggression, and the importance of personal development both for individuals and society. Together, they explore hard data, personal stories, and cultural commentary—ultimately challenging listeners to “turn on their inner beast” and take full responsibility for their lives in 2024 and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Crisis of Modern Masculinity

• Data on Social Trends:
  • Since 1960, the U.S. population has grown by about 90%, but single-person households exploded from 7 million to 38 million—a 442% increase (01:38).
  • Children born to single mothers in America have soared from 4% (1940s) to 40% today, one of the highest rates globally (01:53).
• Societal Consequences:
  • Boys growing up without fathers lack role models for love, fear, and respect. This absence is linked to weakened personal standards, discipline problems, and increased criminality.
  • Patrick: “A father gives… love, fear, and respect. If a boy has all three, he has the highest likelihood of doing something big with his life.” (05:30)
• Unconditional Love and Pain:
  • High achievers often share three experiences:
    1. Unconditional love from someone
    2. Deep pain/disapproval from someone they desperately want to impress
    3. Choosing their enemies wisely (turning rivals into motivation)

Redefining Power and Its Role in Success

• Changing Attitudes Toward Power:
  • Tom describes cultural shifts: "Power" used to be a positive ambition, but is now “almost disgusting to want” (06:07).
  • Success—especially at a grand scale—requires cultivating and channeling aggression and determination.
• Power vs. Force (David Hawkins’ Framework):
  • Patrick highlights Hawkins’ levels of consciousness, charting the journey from shame and guilt up to courage, willingness, acceptance, neutrality, and eventually enlightenment (08:18).
  • The key inflection point: "Courage is the first level where you start gaining true power."
• Healthy Selfishness:
  • Through a focus group, Patrick’s team concluded that optimal leadership (and parenting) requires a balance: “70% selfish, 30% selfless.”
    • Too selfless = neglecting self-care and initiative
    • Too selfish = poor relationships and untrustworthy
    • Optimal: Big dreams AND a drive to help others (12:00)

Ferocity, Aggression, and the Kind but Tough Mindset

• Aggression as an Essential Gear:
  • Tom: “One of your gears should be aggression… focus, determination, the ability to run through a wall to ensure that something gets done…” (15:26)
  • Both agree that healthy aggression is necessary for high achievement, especially when facing chaos or adversity.
• The Audacious Few:
  • Patrick frames real success as “business planning for the audacious few, not the timid majority.”
  • Drawing from sports, politics, and military history, he illustrates that “alpha” leaders are rare—and the ones who step up in crisis move the world (18:07 and 22:13).

What Makes a Real Man? The “Three Pillars”

• Love, Fear, Respect:
  • Patrick’s definition of a real man (and leader, father, or husband): someone who inspires love, instills respect, and is feared in a protective, not abusive, way (25:52).
    • “If a father has all those threes, you’re a trifecta… the best cocktail of parenting and leadership.”
• The Calm Threat:
  • It’s not about violence, but about being capable and known for it—“strong enough to use a sword, but keep it sheathed” (paraphrasing Jordan Peterson).
  • Tom: “You want to get so good at defending yourself… that you can stay calm… because you know the power is there if you need it.” (32:09)

The Danger of Weakness and the Value of Order

• Order Versus Chaos:
  • The absence of strong, grounded leadership—at home or in society—breeds chaos and exploitation, whether in families or nations (36:08).
• Discipline and Earning Privileges:
  • Patrick’s household operates on earned privileges (e.g., reading and grades unlock more freedom). “America started off as earning. We got away from that because 'earn' is now a curse word.” (44:21)

Key Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Time | Speaker | Quote / Moment | |----------|-----------------|----------------| | [01:53] | Patrick | “We’re the worst [globally]… in 1940, [single-mom births] was 4%. Today it’s 40%. That’s a data we do not want to be bragging about.” | | [05:30] | Patrick | “If a boy is raised [with] love, [someone] you fear, and someone you respect… that boy has the highest likelihood of doing something big.” | | [06:07] | Tom | “Power… that’s such a gross thing, it’s almost disgusting to want power… But if you want to do something big, you’re going to have to generate power.” | | [08:18] | Patrick | “The first level of consciousness [with real power] is courage. You have the courage to be wrong, to fail, to talk to people you disagree with.” | | [12:00] | Patrick | “The right score to be a leader is 70% selfish, 30% selfless. That person makes for a good father, a good husband, a good leader.” | | [15:26] | Tom | “The only way to persevere is with a level of ferocity… you have to be able to push through those storms.” | | [25:52] | Patrick | “Every 90 days, your kids should see what you’re capable of… There needs to be a certain level of fear and respect a man imposes.” | | [32:09] | Tom | “The meek shall inherit the earth… but in ancient Greek it means: someone strong enough to use a sword, but keeps it sheathed.” | | [44:21] | Patrick | “In our house, everything starts with earning… The more you read, the more you can ask for. If your grades are solid, you get to ask for more.” | | [51:09] | Patrick | “The person disciplining us eventually ends up being exactly what we want… 18-year-old Patrick needed order. He was the first guy I faced that checked me.” | | [68:38] | Tom | “If you fix the individual… and enough individuals… suddenly you get a society that’s high functioning.” | | [82:41] | Tom | “It is necessary but not sufficient to understand what’s really happening… the key is to inculcate people with values.” | | [91:32] | Patrick | “You have no enemies, you say. My friend, the boast is poor… If you have none, small is the work that you have done... You’ve been a coward in the fight.” [Reading Charles Mackay] | | [93:12] | Patrick | “Anybody you admire that’s able to tolerate the kind of pain required to win at the highest level, they have an enemy that drives them… they’re just not telling you.” | | [99:31] | Patrick | “If you don’t do it, for the rest of your life the other person can say they were right. Can you live with that?” |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:38] – Data on single households and the consequences for young men
• [06:07] – Cultural suspicion of power and how that creates weakness
• [08:18] – “Power vs. Force,” conscious leadership, and the selfish/selfless balance
• [15:26] – The necessity of aggression and ferocity for achievement
• [18:07] – The “audacious few” and why most won’t lead
• [25:52] – The three pillars for real men: love, fear, and respect; setting boundaries and standards
• [32:09] – The “meek” as defined by Jordan Peterson; the importance of restrained power
• [36:08] – Why families and societies falter without strong, respected leaders
• [44:21] – Discipline and earning in Patrick’s family; dangers of lowering standards
• [51:09] – Impact of discipline in youth—Patrick’s military story
• [68:38] – How changing incentives—and individual mindsets—reshape society
• [82:41] – The crucial role of culture, incentives, and values in social stability
• [91:32] – The necessity of enemies; how choosing the right one powers achievement

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Notable Themes and Takeaways

• Strong leadership—at all levels—requires a blend of love, respect, and fear, as well as the courage to pursue power and tolerate pain.
• True power is not oppressive or violent, but a capacity for focused, controlled action (aggression), and the wisdom to know when to wield it.
• Modern culture’s aversion to power, order, and earned discipline is making individuals and societies weaker, less resilient, and more chaotic.
• Personal responsibility, clear values, and the willingness to identify and “choose the right enemy” are necessary for personal and collective progress.
• Societal change begins with the individual: by developing internal strength, disciplined habits, and by setting (and earning) higher standards.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a rallying cry for agency and self-mastery. Patrick Bet-David and Tom Bilyeu challenge the prevailing cultural narratives about masculinity and power, arguing that true progress requires embracing struggle, setting high standards, and developing the kind of strength—intellectual, physical, moral—that not only transforms lives but stabilizes entire societies. If you feel called to be among “the audacious few,” this conversation delivers clear guidance on how to start.

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Find Patrick Bet-David:

• Website: Valuetainment
• Social media: @patrickbetdavid

Listen to more Impact Theory:

• Impact Theory Podcast

Books Mentioned:

• “Your Next Five Moves” by Patrick Bet-David
• “Power vs. Force” by David R. Hawkins
• “No Rules Rules” by Reed Hastings
• “Quiet Strength” by Tony Dungy
• “First Rate Madness” by Nassir Ghaemi

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

To truly be free, you have to be strong enough to control your own life. And many men today simply do not qualify. Many of you have been told the pursuit of power is disgusting. You shouldn't do it. Many of you don't even have a clear definition of what it means to be a strong man. And as today's guest Patrick Bet David says, we we have a hero making machine problem. So today Patrick and I are going to dissect the current crisis of masculinity as well as what true power really is and how to have it in abundance. Let me ask are men today weak? And if so, what can we do about it?

[C]

If you look at data, yes, from 1960 till today, our population has increased around 90%. But in 1960, 7 million people used to live by themselves. Today's 38 million.

[B]

Whoa.

[C]

442% increase, right? So what happens when we're alone? You don't have competition, kicking your ass, challenging you, pushing you, having all that stuff taking place. Standards today are slightly lower. You can look at strength with men, with boys, what they have going on. Then there's another data that's deeply concerning. When you look at from 1940, the percentage of kids that were born to a single mother in 1940 was 4%. 1944%. That means 96% of kids that were born in 1940 were born in a household of a mom and a dad. And today we went from 4% in 1940 to 40% today. That's ten 10x A data we do not want to be bragging about. By the way, worldwide we're the worst when they look at data, China, India, they keep it together. We don't keep it together. Middle Easterns, they keep it together. Muslims keep it together. But in America, we've gone a completely different way. Now, some people will say this was FDR's bad policies because the whole welfare state, some will say this was Lyndon Johnson. But regardless who we choose to blame and put the responsibility on, here's what we will look at. A father offers two things that naturally comes to him when it comes on to boys. So when we're talking, choose your enemies wisely. I'm talking to Tom Brady, and I said, tom, when I look at somebody that does something very big, they have three things in common. One, they experienced unconditional love. So somebody that, no matter what you did, you got arrested. Oh, my God. Babe, are you okay? What happened in jail? Did they do anything to you? Like, you can't do nothing wrong in this person's eye. Like, you actually understand, I cannot believe this human being loves me. And I can go to jail. You still love me. Freaking awesome, right? We need that. The second thing we need is an unbelievable amount of pain from someone you loved. Meaning no matter what you and I do, we can never make this person happy. You can win Mr. Olympia. You can become a billionaire, you can become a president, you can become whatever you want to become. To this person's eye, it's always going to be like, yeah, whatever. But, yeah, whatever. So you're never going to win this person. And your entire life you're pursuing, converting this person and baptizing them into finally celebrating your success, right? And the last thing was you choose your enemies wisely. Brady chose his enemies wisely. Dana White chose his enemies wisely. You got a lot of these guys that you look at. So where am I going with this? You come back to the boys. You're asking about young boys, not having a father. Father gives one of three elements that you need as a. As a kid growing up. You have to be loved, but you need somebody you fear and you need somebody you respect. If a boy is raised most boys, you get to an age. I remember one time, I'm 14 years old, my mom is hitting me, and I'm like, what are you doing? Your hand hurts. What are you doing? It's the last time she hit me because it hurt her when she's hitting me. I'm 14 years old. It's doing nothing to me. That was the last time I said, you can hit me all you want. It's not going to do anything to Me. So what happened in that moment? I no longer feared her. I no longer saw her from an authority place. I just saw her from a place that I love her. Not fear, not respect. Like you're going to make me do something. You can't make me do anything. I'm coming on at 10 o'. Clock. My parents were divorced. I'm coming home. Whatever time I come home. Where were you? Not your business. I'm home. Right? That kind of respect that a kid will have. But a father, if you have fear, respect and love, that boy has the highest likelihood of doing something big with his life. Our current incentive program in America, our current tax system in America doesn't reward husband and wives having kids together. That decreases the chances of a boy being raised by a father. What does it do? Produces reckless criminals, produces kids that don't have order, produces kids that think they can do whatever they want to do and essentially they become net negative to society. So you asked me the question, I would say yes, but it's a multi dimensional answer.

[B]

Yeah. So when I think about what it takes to form a strong man in a time where the thought of power itself is considered negative. So this would be now, 23, 24 years ago, I created a domain called seeking power. And I remember telling people about it in the beginning and there was just sort of an intuitive, oh yeah, I get it, that's cool. But somewhere over time that became like, oh, power. Like that's such a gross thing, it's almost disgusting to want power. I was caught so off guard by that because I had my head down. I was building something and I was building things in a way that absolutely required aggression and power. And when I look at people that want to do something big in their lives that aren't able to generate power, they're not able to tap into aggression, I'm like, you're not going to be able to do the things you want to do. You're going to have a sense of internal weakness, a sense of frustration, not knowing how to make the things come true in your life that you want to. And then if you let layer on top of that a victim mentality and somebody tells you, no, no, the problem is that somebody's holding you back or whatever. You suddenly have a story for why you feel the way you feel, but it's not the true story. And so to me that creates this like death spiral of for forget. Like I'm not doing it as like a keep off my lawn thing, but I'm really mortified by what is Being pushed as like, this is what we should aspire to. And reading your book was really interesting because your book isn't about how to make strong men, but the tactics of getting successful at building a business. And obviously it's more nuanced than just building a business, but is an easy way to talk about it. You basically spend 300 pages talking about how to cultivate, capture, and use aggression. So walk me through what is the trick? That people are missing one. Do they need to understand power? Revere power. What is power?

[C]

You ever read the book Power vs. Force? I'm certain you've read the book. Okay, Power vs. Force. A guy like you, Good luck putting it down. It's written for a guy like you. So the author, David Schwartz, talks about different levels we go to where we calibrate. At the bottom, whatever these eight levels are, you're trying to force life. And then the next levels, you actually start gaining power. You start becoming powerful, right? So at the bottom, the lowest level of calibration he talks about is shame. Then it's guilt, apathy, fear, anger, pride, desire, like I desire drugs, alcohol, stuff like that. First level of consciousness that you start gaining power and control of your life is courageous. You have the courage to be wrong. You have the courage to fail. You have the courage to talk to people you disagree with. Courage. Then it goes willingness, Then it goes acceptance, Then it goes neutrality. Like, I can stay neutral. Like, you have a very high score. If you look at the book, your score is going to be high because you have courage, you're willing, you're able to stay neutral and process both sides of the story. Acceptance. Then it goes love, joy, peace, enlightenment, and enlightenment. There's only been two or three they put at that level. This is when you're talking about Jesus, people like that in regards to the aggression you're talking about or the. The power. Why should somebody have, you know, fight for the power or how to go about getting the power? It all comes back down to what level of a life you want to live. Okay, I'm having a conversation with this guy, and I said, do you believe in God? He said, I don't believe in God. I said, okay, so what is God? Everybody has a God. It doesn't matter who you are. You got a God. No, I don't. Yeah, you do. No, I don't. I don't. I don't have a guy. Oh, really? No. Why are you building a YouTube channel with 4 million subscribers? This is the guy I'm talking to. You know who he Is why are you building something like this? What. What are you trying to get? What are you seeking? Maybe your God is data. For some people, God is sex. For some people, God is porn. For some people, God is drugs or attention or whatever it may be. Right. Power is a similar way as well. You know, years ago, Phil Donahue was interviewing Milton Friedman. We're talking 50 years ago. This is in the 70s, 74, 78. He's wearing a yellow. If you put it. I think it's like 43 minutes. And Phil Donahue, who at the time was a socialist, you know, he kind of came from that side. He said, so why do you think, you know, what do you think is the problem with all these greedy people in America? And Milton Friedman smiles and he says, it's always the other fellow that's greedy, Right? You're not greedy at all. He's saying to him. He said, oh, we're definitely not greedy here. It's always the other person, right? Everybody's greedy. Everybody's selfish. Everybody wants power. Everybody, you know, wants to get a certain level of attention. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants affirmation to be affirmed and say, you know what? You're a leader. You're a CEO, you're a rock star. You're this. We want that. That is a form of us being almost proud of ourselves, that our existence was worth it. Everyone's going through this journey. How you go about it is trying to question everything. You know, I remember this whole concept of selfish now. That guy is selfish. That guy is selfish. And then you'd say, I'm not selfish. And you would fight it. You know what? You got lucky. I didn't get lucky. You don't know how hard I work to be this. And then eventually I'm like, I'll dance with you. You got lucky. I agree. You're selfish. Yeah. You don't have anything to say because everybody is selfish. Everybody wants to be lucky. I don't mind being lucky. But here's what happened. In the book, there's a section where we talk about the selfish, selfless score, right? What percentage of you is selfish? And what percentage of you is selfless? So we had a focus group that we did, and we're asking a group, we said, what does a person who is 100% selfless, 0% selfish look like? And what does a person who is 100% selfish, 0% look like then who is actually more of a net positive to society? You know, what conclusion we came with the person that's selfless probably Smells doesn't take care of themselves. They don't care about themselves. They don't wear nice clothes, they don't eat good food. They don't take care of themselves. Everything's about other people. It's in a state of conformity. And the other person that's selfish 100% probably doesn't make a good friend, probably doesn't make a good spouse, but they probably look good, they probably smell good, they probably make good money, they probably eat good food. They probably find a way to win. Do you want that person as your CEO? No. Do you want that person as your husband or your wife? No. Do you want that person as your president? Absolutely. No. But guess what? Individually, just for the sake of selfishly not embarrassing themselves, they're going to do things because it's all about them. So then we broke it down and we said, what level of calibration is good to be a CEO of a company? Okay, do you need a 30, 70. 30% selfish, 70% selfless? Well, no, that's bad. Why? Because we need you to have big dreams. We need you to be pursuing something. We need you to be after something. If you're not pursuing something, why are you coming to work early? Why are you spending a weekend thinking about ideas? You're not going to be thinking about that. Somebody's driving by the freeway. The average person like, oh, nice thing right there. You're going to be like, babe, can you pull over? Let me go in there. Oh, I just got an idea. Think about it. Look at it from this angle. What if we did this to the company? And what if we brought this product? Let's walk inside and see what this building looks like. Because you're constantly thinking about getting closer to the vision that you have. So we learn the profile of somebody that is at the right scoring to be a leader is 70, 30, 70% selfish desires. You're going after vision, who you want to be, the life you want to build. Then 30% is selfless. That person makes for a good father. That person makes for a good husband. That person makes for a good leader. That person inspires others to go. That person challenges others. That person's not going to get too content, too comfortable. So as we're talking about aggression or power or any of that stuff, you know, somebody may be listening to this and they're going to say, man, you are not my cup of tea. Totally get it. I'm not for everybody. But the right person watching this, they're going to be like, that makes a lot of Sense. I've never seen selfishness explained that way before. That makes a lot of sense. I've never heard Milton Friedman explaining greed that way before. That makes a lot of sense about power. Okay, let me find a way for me to become a net positive to society. And then you kind of go through that process. But we got a lot of words that we have a hard time with because somebody told us it's a bad word. You know, be powerful, have power, be selfish, you know, grieve. No, no, no, I don't ever want to have any of those. And I don't want to be lucky. When you break it down and you actually look at it, people who ended up winning at the highest level, they got lucky, they seek power, they had selfish desires, they were greedy, ended up having a life that they had. And they were more of a positive to society than people who didn't have those four things.

[B]

I also inspire people. There's, to me, I think what all this ultimately boils down to is nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to feel out of control. And once you understand that to gain control of your life, you must have at least power by my definition. So my quick way of defining power is close your eyes. Imagine a world better than this one. Open your eyes and go gain the skillset necessary to actually make that world come true. And so it's really a battle to get better at something that matters to you and serves your for sure, but also other people. And if you live in that pursuit, you will very quickly realize that you are up against the world's tendency to move towards chaos. Now, people hate it. When I frame it in that this is just the second law of thermodynamics. The world moves towards chaos. That just is true. It's entropy. But I guess because it has a weird word attached to it, people don't really stop to think about it. But if you're trying to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you there are two enemies that you're going to face. Your own mind and entropy. And entropy, as represented by your wife, falls ill at the worst possible time. When you have a major presentation, you have a competitor that's trying to take you out. You get sued by somebody in a moment of fragility, whatever. Like there is going to be a litany of problems every day is like getting kicked in the face. And in those moments, the only way to persevere is with a level of ferocity. Like you have to be able to push through those storms to inject enough energy into the system that you can bring order to an otherwise chaotic system and move it in the exact direction that you want it to go. But to do that, you really have to be able to get aggressive. That's the. The kindest word I will give to it. You're very unabashed about talking about. I'm using my own words, but talking about aggression. In your book, what I call the dark energy, which one do you agree that the reason that you. The reason that I would want Men. Anybody listening to this? Any man, certainly out there. Anybody that's training you to. You should have a gear that is soft. You should be able to be gentle. I'm not trying to create people that. That only have one gear, but one of your gears should be aggression. Focus, determination, the ability to run through a wall to ensure that something gets done that will not happen by accident. You are absolutely going to have to make that a value and turn that value into a set of skills. Courage, being one of them, and then pushing yourself forward in a very specific way towards a very specific aim. Do you agree with that need or am I messing?

[C]

I love the way you put it. I love the way you put it. So the key word here we use is business planning for the audacious few, right? Audacious few. Audacious few. It's not for everybody. It's the audacious few. For example, when you break down who you want to be in life, okay, I don't know if you're a sports guy or not. You watch a sports team, There's a guy that's just a supporting cast. That's what he does. That's the role he's going to play. There's a guy that is coming off the bench and he does what he does. Then there's a guy that's the flag carrier to the best guy. Okay? Each team's got a flag carrier in a lot of places. There was this player named Paul George. He runs a podcast with one of my good friend, Dudley Rutherford son Dallas. They do a very good job together and they interview other basketball players. And he said something so powerful in one of the podcasts. He says, look, it took me years to realize I can't win a championship as a number one. He says, I've been the best player on a team. I can't win a championship as a number one. I can win a championship as a two and a three, but I can't win as a one. Guess what? He realized he has to be a flag carrier. He's not a one. This week had Ron DeSantis on the podcast. Governor Ron DeSantis. Right. Should watch the whole thing because it's a pretty fiery podcast.

[B]

You have so much content now that,

[C]

well, ended up causing the number two trending hashtag.

[B]

Did you guys end up arguing? Because the part I saw, you guys were very cordial.

[C]

We, we didn't end up arguing, but I asked him a couple tough questions about marketing his boots and all this other stuff and a video of him. Trump. Anyways, it was a bunch of different things we talked about, but when I'm talking to DeSantis, I asked him the following question. I said, I think there's two different types of presidents. And he says, what type? I said, one is Alphas. Yeah. Lincoln is the Alpha. Ulysses S. Grant is the flag carrier. He became a two term president. Not a great president, but he was not an Alpha. Okay? He needed Lincoln to be the flag carrier, too. Ike, Alpha. Nixon, he was a flag carrier. John F. Kennedy, Alpha. LBJ took him out. He became president, allegedly. You got Reagan, Alpha. Okay? Senior is a flag carrier. You got Obama, alpha. Bill Clinton, Alpha. Those two are Alphas. Trump, Alpha. George Bush, the son, flag carrier, father, lineage, Prescott. Then you have Biden. Today, he's a flag carrier. His way of becoming a president was Obama. You're the greatest, you're the best, you're this, you're that. Boom. This is your opportunity for being loyal to me. Now I will come work for you. You become the president. Right. I asked Governor DeSantis, do you think you're the Alpha or a flag carrier? Okay. Now, his answer could be whatever he thinks it is, but the market's gonna determine whether he's an Alpha or he's a flag carrier.

[B]

What do you think he said? Alpha. Well, technically he said, I'm a leader.

[C]

And by the way, you may be an Alpha in a room of 50, you may be an Alpha in a company of a thousand, you may be the Alpha in a company of a hundred thousand. You may be the Alpha in a state of 30 million, but you may not be the Alpha in a country of 340 million. Alphas have levels, and it depends what level of an Alpha you can be. And that's very tough to swallow for everybody. It's not for everybody. And why is that? Here's why. You said something very interesting. You used a couple words and you said, you know, two reasons. Business, all this stuff. You know, your wife gets sick and you're going to an appointment. What do you do with that? There is no manual that says, hey, when your wife gets cancer, 19 steps on what to do next. There is no such thing as that. Your son just went through this. Here's the eight steps on. There is no manual for that in life. And by the way, the people who went through those situations like a. I recommended this book recently. I read the book 2008 when it first came out by the coach of Indianapolis Colts. The book is called Quiet Strength. Tony Dungy. Okay. I don't know if you know the story or not. He's coaching the weekend of Super Bowl. He's about to win his first super bowl ever. Okay? His son dies at 23 years old.

[B]

Oh, Jesus.

[C]

His son dies at 23, 24 years old. There isn't a single person in the world that's expecting this guy to be there on Sunday to coach. If he didn't, what would you. And I say we wouldn't judge him. We're like, dude, what are you talking about? Totally get it. This guy chooses to show up to the game with a smile on his face. He says, because I believe he's in a better place. He's with God right now. I'm at peace. They win the game. I got the chills all over my body. He writes this book, Quiet Strength. Incredible book. I remember I heard this guy speak, gave a talk when he came out and go explain that to somebody and say, hey, you should go coach. Nobody has the permission to tell anybody to go coach. That's the individual's level of handling. Chaos, pressure, pain. And everyone's different in that. There's not a manual for that. However, where I'm going with this on the alpha side is if you want to be the guy of the guys of other guys, you can't go by the standard as everybody else does. For example, World War II is taking place, okay? Chamberlain is doing what he's doing. Uk the most hated guy in that country is a journalist who talks about everybody, okay? Who Chamberlain hates. Disgusted by him. Very arrogant, very cocky, pompous sometimes. If Twitter was around when Churchill was around, he'd be on Twitter all the time. That kind of a guy. He had an opinion about everybody, and he was only 5, 6. You know what Chamberlain has to do? He has to beg Churchill to show up. Churchill shows up. The only man that was able to face the most feared man in the world was Churchill. Churchill may be the reason why we're doing this interview in English and not in German today. Think about the power of that, however,

[B]

just gave me the chills.

[C]

This guy Churchill that we're Talking about was hated, but he was a wartime leader. When war took place, everybody had to call the person they hate the most because they knew they were not cut for that job. It's not for them. So there's the levels of alpha, there's the levels of success you want in life. There's a reason why Jordan said, you know, if you don't want to play, you know, but I'm going to win in the last tense. And he starts crying. You know, you're like, dude, I can see this guy's fire. That's why there's only one mic. That's why we were all glued to the screen for five weeks on Sundays, watching two episodes from 8 to 10 o'. Clock. And we were all blown away by how this guy was wired. But who got pissed off afterwards? Scottie Pippen. And then Scotty writes a book. And in the interview, he's being asked, scotty, how do you want to be remembered? And he's got a smirk on his face. He says, I want to be remembered as the greatest of all time. Dude, you're not a greatest of all time. You're top 50. See, he forgot he was a flag carrier and he wanted the respect of this guy. To have the respect of this guy is not duplicatable. That's a lot of effort. So for somebody watching this, again, choose your enemies wisely. But it's business planning for the audacious few, not the timid majority. It's not for everybody. This is for the audacious few. If you feel you're part of the audacious few, this book's for you. If not, it's not for everybody.

[B]

This is admittedly meant to be inflammatory, but I care so much about the answer to this that I like the inflammatory nature of the following question. What should a real man be like? I believe there are a set of things that I am perfectly comfortable laying out. Saying this is what I think. What should a real man be like? What are the qualifications?

[C]

What should a real man be like? You know, for me, I had a man, Monty. He would say something. He would say, you know, your house, every 90 days, you should, you know, they should feel the fire, but not enough to burn a house down. But every 90 days, your kids should see what you're capable of, okay? Where they're like, ooh, I just saw that side of that, okay? And his reference was with your people you're working with, with your salespeople. Now, today, God forbid you say this on HuffPo, they're going to say you have mental issues, okay, you need to go to therapy. You need to go hire Jack Nicholson to go through a real life of anger management. And you're Adam Sandler, and you know you have issues. You have. You have anger issues. But there. There needs to be a certain level of fear and respect or a man imposes. But you don't have to use. You know the reason why they call it a great equalizer, the gun, is because you knew I had it, but that doesn't mean I use it. What's the whole purpose of jiu jitsu or martial arts is for the other person to know. Look, bro, you just don't want to fight. That's all there is to it. I have no desire to fight you. But if we do fight, it's going to be very bad. There's this video on Tick Tock and Instagram that went viral. And his father is outside. This guy's punking his daughter every time he walks by. He says, bro, what's wrong with you? What's the matter with you? And the guy's swinging. He says, don't do this. I don't want to do this to you. He starts swinging. He said, I'm telling you, I'm telling you again, don't do this. I'm gonna hurt you. The last time he does, the dad picks him up, drops him to the ground, drops him, grabs his hands, doesn't punch him. One time, he said, how many times did I tell you, don't do this? I know what I'm doing. Cops come take him and go away, right? The marketplace should know what you're capable of now to get to that point takes a while when you're a kid. When I talk to my kids and we talk about the values and principles we have where we lead, respect and prove love. We don't get bullied and we don't bully. That's our principles that we have. My son knows the market today for him is the school he goes to. The school just needs to know what you're capable of. One time. Marketing is going to do its part. Everyone's going to talk to each other. You don't need to do it 50 times. You don't need to do it 100 times. You need to do it one time. Once they know the other people are like, you know what, not the biggest guy, but I just don't want to mess with that guy because he's annoying. He's going to keep fighting. You leave that guy alone. Let me pick on this guy right and then that guy's job is to do the same thing. So from that perspective, I think it's good to have a reputation in the marketplace. I think it's good to have a reputation within your family where your spouse feels protected by you. When we got married, at our wedding, at the end of the wedding, everybody's hammered, everybody's drunk. And I got up to give a speech. I said, I got a couple things I want to talk to you guys about. It's 500 people at the wedding. I said, one, I don't know how long we're going to be married. We're going to take it one year at a time. But if we take it one year at a time, maybe we'll make it. I can tell you guys, all right now, I think we can make it for one year. Every year we've taken a one year at a time. We're at the 14th year. We just crossed 14th year. Okay, two, I said, if you come to my wife at any time without us telling you if my wife is pregnant, you will never see us again. It's none of your business. You go through me and you don't ask that question because you don't get to put that kind of pressure under my wife and say, you guys are not getting pregnant. Are you sick? Is it him? Is this thing not working? Is your thing not working? Don't ask me that question because you'll never see us. And I'm being. I have some levity while I'm saying this, where it's not like I'm being a drill sergeant talking to everybody, but it's a way of managing expectation, where my wife feels safe to know, you know what, we're going to be okay. I think if you ask that from the man standpoint, there's an element to it as a husband, there's element to it as a father, there's an element to it as a son to protect your father, there's an element to it as a brother to make sure nobody messes with your siblings. Then there's an element to it when you become a CEO of a company to know that you're a formidable guy, that people are not going to bully your company, and if they do, you're going to have their backs. You're going to stand up in politics. Eventually you get to a point where if you become a president. Fortunately, one of the biggest problems we've got in America right now is those three components that I talked about. Love, fear, respect. Love, fear, respect. If a father has all Those threes, you're a trifecta. If, if you, if you are loved and you know how to love, if you know how to impose the right amount of fear and if you are respected, you have to make sure that that makes for the best cocktail of parenting and leadership. As a president. As a president, if the enemy fears you, if the enemy respects you, it doesn't matter if they love you, but if they fear and respect you, chaos are down. We have a president today, unfortunately, that's not feared, that's not respected, and is not loved. What happens worldwide chaos when you have leaders at the top, at the top leading the way as the number one alpha and there's not fear, respect and love catastrophic situation you're in. And that happens in marriages, companies, parent, parenting as well as countries.

[B]

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[B]

That to me is the important button. So the reason that I think that this all matters, the reason I think that mental ought, and I use the word ought on purpose, I think you and I actually define ought differently. To me, it is the moral standard. So when I say a man ought to do something, I believe he has a moral obligation to do that. So men ought to be strong. Now, my favorite definition, which was really close to something you were saying, is Jordan Peterson's definition of the meek. He said he was reading all this biblical scholarship. Obviously in the Bible it says the meek shall inherit the earth. And he was like, this doesn't make sense. If you read meek as weak, he was like, there's no way. Weak people will never inherit the earth. And he just knows that the dynamics of power are such that the powerful are always going to rule. There's a quote. I forget who said it, but the powerful will do as they will. The weak will suffer as they must. And that is the natural order of things. Society is designed to keep that from being the thing. But certainly in a natural environment, the lion is going to eat the gazelle because the gale simply can't stop it from doing it. So when you get in an environment and you remove some of the niceties of civilization, such as, you know, when we're recording this, there is multiple. One outright war, another one that's certainly threatening to become an outright war. And you begin to realize very quickly that to your point, a lot of the. The posturing matters. How people perceive the other people matters a lot. It's a big part of the equation. So Peterson's thing, he's looking at this, he's like, the meek are never going to inherit the earth. People have to believe that you're strong. And he said he found an ancient Greek reading of the word meek, and it meant, effectively, somebody who is strong enough to use a sword, but they keep it sheathed. And that, to me, is brilliant. You want to get so good at defending yourself intellectually, physically, emotionally, whatever the moment calls for, that you can stay calm, navigate the situation well, because, you know, the power is there if you need it. There's a. An idea with animals called nervous aggressive. When people say that somebody has a loud bark but no bite, that. That's nervous aggressive. They don't actually think they can win in the fight, and so they try to throw up the smoke screen of making all this noise. Uh, Jay Z has a line something like, they talk as loud as a motorbike, but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight. Food fight, probably. Uh, anyway, you get the idea. So that makes a lot of sense to me, that the real power is because it's not enough just to be strong, it's not enough to be violent. You really do have to be able to calculate it. I saw the interview with Jared Kushner on Lex Friedman, and Kushner said that Trump always liked to leave people with a 10% chance that he might nuke them, which is horrible. I say it with a smirk because I get the showmanship of it. But there is something to the unpredictability, the belief that that person is dangerous and that it is merely strategy that keeps them in check. There is something to that. And at. At that level, to pretend that that isn't real is to Set yourself up for disaster. In fact, I'd like to introduce my favorite Thomas Sowell quote, which my audience will have heard me say a gazillion times. The last 50 years have been marked by exchanging what worked for what sounds good. And that feels like a lot of the policies, a lot of the ways that we talk about young men, toxic masculinity, all of that is. It sounds nice. It would be nice if we lived in a world where everybody could just be kind and gentle, but we don't. And so you wear thin the armor of civilization when you teach men to be weak.

[C]

You know how in families, there's typically the one person everybody fears and respect when they die, there's chaos. And all of a sudden, you know, one person is taking advantage of this person or that person. My mother, her family had some money. The moment her parents died, one of her family members took over all the money and he abused everybody else. He said, you're not going to get it. I have it now. But when mom and dad were alive, he couldn't do that. The moment they died, he bullied everybody from the money that he got. That money was supposed to go to a few people. He took it all and he gave crumbs to people and he became that dictator. You're lucky I'm giving you this kind of money. No, no, that was their money. But because the parents didn't put anything on paper, he stole it from everybody. And he could do that. What's the moral of the story? When. When that Alpha, when that leader is not present, bullies show up, you know, so. So for us, again, like, this is a very chaotic time. I don't know when this is going to be released. You know, whether it's one war or the other, that we're. We're one or two people away of being offended of World War III getting started. You know, you got 16 million to 18 million people died World War I. You know, 60 million on two third one. If we go at this trajectory, could be 200 million. The. The job that we have collectively is to try to do whatever we can to turn down the temperature, not increase it. You know, if. If you and your wife get into an argument and you call me and you say, you won't believe what she said. My job isn't to say she said that, Tom. Oh, dude. If she would have said that to me, it's done. Are you kidding me? Doesn't she realize how amazing you are, how lucky she is to have you? Instead, it's to say, Tom, Come on, bro. She loves you, and you know you love her. She's partly right, bro. I'm gonna take her side. How could you say something like that? You're not on my side. You're on her side probably on this one. But I'm telling you privately, I'd go back and try to make this work. Screw you, Pat. Totally get it, bro. Let me know if you want to talk later. You get off the phone. I have a job, and it's called Doug Diffuse, Unify, and Be the Glue. We don't have a lot of Dougs around the world today. We have Division today. We have Divisiveness today, so. But if there's that one strong personality, leader of the free world, a Churchill, a Reagan, a person you don't want to mess with, the world is typically a safe place.

[B]

Yeah, that is. It is maybe a balanced place where the level of danger that is always ready to pop off is currently held at bay. But I think the reason that that cycle works, where strong men make good times, good times make weak men, so on and so forth, works, is because when things are good, the seed of its own instability is present because of that loop. And I don't know that there's any way to escape it. It's one of the things that makes this so predictable.

[C]

I agree.

[B]

Now, Churchill is a fascinating character. In fact, this will be fun, because I never get anybody that can talk about Churchill. I absolutely am just blown away by Churchill. And you can say what you want. And did he have his flaws? Of course he did. But this is a guy that felt he had let his country down in a military. This is World War I. He makes a mistake leading the Navy, and he says, okay, I know exactly how to come back from this. I'm going to. Even though he could have just gone back to England, he says, no, put me on the front line. And so he goes to the front line, and he said other people didn't want to walk with him on the night patrols because he would just talk out loud. And they're like, bro, we're going to get shot. Like, what are you doing? And he. He said to his mother, I have such a need to earn a reputation for physical courage that I'll basically do anything. And so he stays in the front line multiple times narrow, narrowly escapes getting killed, sees countless people die around him, and said to himself, okay, now, after. I forget how long, but it was a long time. Again, all voluntary. He's like, now I've earned my way back to Parliament. And he Goes back to England and re engages in government life. And I just thought, whoa. Like, I'm not even saying I could do it, but I am saying I admire it. And I'm saying that men ought to have that kind of courage. And that to me, we've had 70 years where we really on our own soil where we have not had to face violence and danger. I'm not taking anything away from the men and women that have served overseas, obviously, but there's something that still let our country's psyche be lulled into the sense that we don't need men standing on the wall protecting us. And that worries me.

[C]

Military, meaning we don't need a military?

[B]

Yeah, basically. I mean, so I was quoting the line from A Few Good Men where he's like, men like me. And the thing is, I hope what we are supposed to take away from that is that he's a complicated character and yes, some of the things he did were despicable, but he's also right. And that's what keeps him from being a caricature, is you. You are asking people to risk being shot, you're asking them to kill other people. I mean it, it is horrific. Horrific.

[C]

And.

[B]

There is an evolutionary seed inside, certainly inside the male brain that makes that very possible.

[C]

You know, if there's anything like any man that wants to earn, forget about, you know, should I go become rich, should I go have a six pack, should I be in shape, should I do this? If you pursue anything, if you earn moral authority, you're going to have a lot of self respect. You'll have self respect in the way you lead your wife and your kids. You'll have self respect in the companies you lead and you'll have self respect in a community. Does this mean you're going to be a billionaire? Not necessarily. Doesn't mean you're going to be a millionaire? Not necessarily. But if you earn the right and you have that moral authority, there's something to earning that, that takes years, that doesn't happen overnight. When you're telling the story with Churchill, there's something to it. There's something to, you know, a guy setting the pace from the front. There's something to earning the right. You know, there's something to it. This is why for me, with the voting system that we have, I think our voting system is totally screwed up in America. A couple areas of it, I'm not a fan of it because for me I, I would much rather have a 16 year old kid who has a job working at McDonald's who made 20 grand last year and paid $3000 in taxes. I want him to vote over the 25 year old bum living with his mom and dad, not going to school, not getting a degree, not doing anything for him to vote. I don't want this guy to vote. I want to hear from this 16 year old kid, let this guy vote. Our system is too much of yeah, here you go. Yeah, here you go. Now earn the right to vote. Why don't you earn the right to vote? Well, just by being an American, don't I earn the right to vote? I totally get it, but you got to have some. You like pull your little red wagon. How are you going to contribute to society? Well, you're discriminating against. Dude, I'm from Iran, I was born in Iran, half Armenian, half assyrian. I'm a 1.8 GPA kid. I'm a welfare kid. I'm not a kid. That came up here was going to be something, but I wanted to come back and earn the right to say, hey, I want to earn this respect that America gave to me. I want to go do my part. I think we have to go more towards that in our house, our kids. You know, everybody's talking right now about having a phone. I don't know how many articles I've read that the more you delay your kids getting a phone, the more happier they're going to be. By the way, parents, if you're watching this, do yourself a favor and go watch the movie Disconnect. Disconnect. I don't have a phone to see who's the actor, but one of the guys is the. I don't know if you've seen this movie or not. Disconnect is Bateman. What's his name? Is it Jason Bateman? Is that his first name? Certainly is. So the guy, is that from Horrible Bosses?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay, so that guy. This movie Disconnect is a story about a boy who 12, 13, 14 year old kid goes to school, there's a girl he likes. These two bullies knows he likes the girl. They create a Facebook profile with the girl's picture. Befriend everybody in high school thinking that's the girl, but it's not. She dm's him on Facebook in the movie this is 11 years ago, 2012 and says, hey, please don't tell anybody, but I really like you. I'm shy, I don't want to tell others, but I like the way you're. Oh my God, I've loved you. Da da da. And they're going back and forth. She says, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. But it's the two boys. So the boys send a picture of somebody else they got from a porn site. He opens it, so he sends it. And then she says, but I want to see your face in it as well. So he does. The next day he goes to school, everybody's laughing at him because those two bullies took the picture, spread it around the school. Then the boy runs away, comes home, is in his room listening to heavy metal music. He's trying to hang himself. Daughter sister walks in, prevents it from happening and saves his life. And then they have to figure out how this happened because the parents weren't involved. There's so many different things going right now in society that we have to be aware of. People earning stuff. Phones are dangerous today that, you know, kids are picking up on what can happen to them. If you do, you have to educate them. If you do, you have to hold them accountable. If you do, you have to watch and see what's going on. But in our family, everything starts with earning the currency. In our house, I've talked about this God knows how many times. It's reading. You read, you earn the right. The more you read, the more you can ask for. If your grades are solid, you get to ask for more. If it's not, you don't. And people say, pat, how could you have standards like that when you had a 1 point GPA? What does that have to do with anything? I didn't have those standards. I simply grew up in a house that nobody cared what my grades were. There was never an expectation of me doing anything my grade. So guess what? I'm going to rise up to the standards or whatever, whatever it is. As a 14, 15, 16 year old, there was no standards. So I was left alone. In our house, there is standards, there is expectations. You got to perform to it, you do, you get more. So America started off as earning. We got away from that because earn is now another one of these curse words that people don't like to talk about. How could you say something like that? How could you say something like that? All you care about is money. All you care about is this. No, man, I cared about you being proud of the contribution you're making to society. Because the more proud you are of the contribution you're making to society, the safer the place is going to be. The less you contribute to society, the more bitter you're going to be feeling like everybody owes you something. And Then you could do something very bad to everybody else. So, yes, I think we need to go back to earning. Like when you're telling the story of Churchill to have that moral authority.

[B]

Hmm. It's very interesting to me. There's something super telling in the fact that people ask you, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. How can you ask them to keep their grades up when you didn't keep your grades up? Because that reveals their value system. Now, I have a feeling that their value system, they've never taken the time to lay it out. And I think one of the biggest problems when I think about, okay, what's ailing men? How do we get them back on track? It's what is your value system? What do you. How do you believe a man ought to be? Write it out. Then at least we have something that we can actually talk about. When somebody says, how can you do that? You didn't have good grades. What they're going for, I assume, is fairness. The second your primary focus is on fairness, now we have a problem. So the reality is, of course, life isn't fair. And I don't mean that in any sort of cheeky way. It's just if you're trying to optimize for fairness, you're setting people up to try to say, the game is always going to be controlled world. Go out there, you're going to be fine. And then they're going to get into a fight. And I don't mean a literal fight, but they're going to get into a fight for their business, a fight for a promotion, whatever, and it isn't going to play out fairly. And if in that moment, they're emotionally devastated because they've been taught that everything revolves around fairness, they're going to be in trouble. If, on the other hand, we. And this is very specifically what Tom Billy wants, people optimizing for what is effective. So you have to have a goal. You have to know what your goal is, what am I aiming at? And then you're going to judge everything by whether or not it's effective. Did it actually get me towards my goal? Now I'm going to assume that your goal is honorable. If it's not, then we already have a problem. But assuming that your goal is honorable, now you can just. Is believing this, doing this, whatever, is it going to move me towards my goal? If yes, I'm going to do it. If not, then I'm not. Do you know Jeffrey Canada?

[C]

Mm.

[D]

Mm.

[B]

Oh, Jesus. I've gotta meet somebody that can help me get this guy on the Show I've been trying and trying and trying and I have no idea that he will agree with me on anything. However, he has created the most effective school for kids. So he, he will go into an underserved area and in the same building that the school is already being run at and they're delivering kids that are like three years below in reading and graduating levels is absolutely atrocious. He'll go into the same building with the same kids, randomly select students. So it's not even like a merit based anything. Randomly select students, and then put them into a merit based school system. And now it's like, are you following our discipline rules? Are you doing your homework? Are you getting your grades, like all of that? And if you do, you stay, and if you don't, you're out, dude. The outcome, by being regimented, by being disciplined, by saying you are going to live up to these standards. And of course, I'm sure they do it in a way that gets the kids excited. The kids aren't like, oh man, like, I have to pay attention. It's like, hey, if you learn this stuff, you can control your life. You can get out of this neighborhood, you can go on to do whatever the hell you want. And that kind of. Because again, I need to interview this guy to make sure my breakdown, Jeffrey Canada. To make sure my understanding of what he's done is accurate. But from what I can tell, a big part of what he's doing is sidestepping the unions. And so if he's got a bad teacher, bye. Like, you have to be good, you have to be performant. And so they just churn out graduates at like an insane rate. It's startling. And remember, these are the same kids that before they got moved in, were failing, just abject failures. They do it in the same building. It's absolutely bananas. And that to me says, especially at that age, structure, discipline, the right value set, and helping people tap into. Um, I, I have no reason to believe he would use these words. These are now my words and my interpretation of this, that when you can show somebody how to generate ferocity in a controlled manner. Ooh, now you've got something. Now you've got something. But most people can't find that gear.

[C]

Yeah, that's pretty wild. But at the same time, I'm not surprised, right? I'm not surprised where a, you know, Bill Walton, who's a hippie, goes into a system that they have with ucla and he comes in with his beard and his long hair and he says, hey, John, Wooden says, go get a haircut and then come back. You got to shave your beard and you got to cut your hair or else you're not playing. He said, I'm not getting a haircut. No problem. You ain't playing. He said, what are you talking about? Listen, kid, I know you're the number one pick in the country today because you're the best center in America today. You're not going to play for this team. He says, I got on my bike when I cut my beard, when I cut my hair, came back, and I think they ended up winning the champion national championship, one or two of them. But when John Wooden died, I was at the Ronald Reagan Library in ucla. I think it's one of those in la. And one of my friends, Dudley Rutherford, is there, and we're in the waiting room. We're having a conversation about to make a big decision in my life. This has got to be. I can't even tell you the date. It's got to be between June to September of 2009, when Reagan died. Has to be around those. When John Wooden died. And. No, it's. Yeah, it's somewhere around that season anyways, maybe couple years after that. So I'm sitting there and I'm just watching former UCLA players. 6, 7, 6, 8, 6, 9, showing up, coming down the elevator, they're crying. Leaving, coming on the elevator, they're crying. Here's a man that impacted their lives. If you ever read books on him, his pyramid of success and things that he did. Fascinating. This guy lived up to 99 years old because of how many people's lives he changed. But what we don't want as a young man, as a young boy, that person that disciplining us eventually ends up being exactly what we want. I'll give you one here, depending on the levels of audacity from the kid. I'm 18 years old, I'm in the Army. We're just talking about this on the flight here, and myself and three other kids, we're from New York, Louisiana. We're all acting like we're tough guys. We're not tough guys, but we're acting like we're tough guys. Like that story you were talking about earlier. You use a certain phrase that, hey, you know, they're loud, but it's not really. They're not going to do anything. We're thinking, we're gangsters, we're tough guys. All this stuff, we're fighting each other in the laundry room, hitting each other. All this stuff we don't Have a clue what we're doing with fighting. We just have a lot of testosterone, but we're not listening to this guy, Drill Sergeant Greene. One day he asks us to get into the Humvee. He said, I'm gonna take you guys to the place. Get in there. We get in there, no problem. We're driving to the back. 40, 30 minutes. 40 minutes. We've never been here before. He goes into a place, it's not on a road. Cole pulls up, gets out. It's not saying anything to us. Picture a guy that moves slowly, like Bruce Lee, okay? Think about when he's not fighting. He's just moving like that. Takes his jacket off, his bdus, takes his hats off, hat off. Takes his dog tag off. And he says, who wants to go first? We're like, what do you mean? So who wants to go first? I said, draw, sermon. What are you talking about? He says, if we fight here, no one will ever know, but we're gonna fight. Who wants to go first? He's five, eight, okay? We're all big guys, all right? But we have no clue what this guy's background is. But he's very confident. So one by one by one, we go in there casually. One by one by one, he beats the living out of us. Except he's got one rule. Doesn't hit us anything up here, everything is here. We're all on the ground begging him to stop. He took it to levels where he knew we were going to be able to do PT the next day. But not to the point where the public's gonna know what just took place and then we're done. He says, okay, you sure you guys are tough guys? No, Drill Sergeant. You guys gonna be good moving forward? Yes, Drill Sergeant. You guys are gangsters. No, Drill Sergeant. We're privates. Get in the humid, let's go back. We got on a Humvee, we went back. Let me tell you, I wish they would have recorded it. There's a picture of me standing next to him with me and my dad. You could tell in that picture who ran the show. You could tell who was the alpha. He was the alpha. You know what that 18 year old kid needed? That 18 year old Patrick. That's exactly what he needed. I needed order. He was the first guy I faced that I couldn't get away with everything I was doing. He wasn't afraid of me. He put me in my place. Boys need that. God knows how many boys. Because let's just say that doesn't happen in my life. We're not having this conversation today. Just say, I'm just like a regular guy. I don't get that discipline from somebody that challenges me. And he doesn't care if parents got a divorce. He doesn't care where I'm from. He has no sympathy for me. He's trying to lead me. That's his job, to make sure soldiers are solid. So when war happens, somebody like me is going to be able to stand up to the enemy. But today, that would never fly. Today, he'd go to jail. Today, he'd be written about all over the place. Today, they would make a movie about him. And I would get a call from Disney saying, it's so unfortunate that he discriminated against you, that you are Iranian, Armenian, Assyrian, and you're brown. That's why he did that. We should go sue the army and we should make a movie about this and turn him to be a villain. He was not a villain. He was a leader. He made the world a better place by checking me very quickly at 18 years old. So as you're telling these stories and you're going through Jeffrey Canada, maybe his approach is a different approach. Maybe he's not going to use the approach that Drill Sergeant Greene used with us. But at the same time, we need more people. Like, I don't know who he is. I don't know his standards. But based on who you're telling me, a guy like that, we need more men like that in America.

[B]

Yeah, I'm with you. So how do we get going back in the right direction? In fact, talk to me about the military. So what's your confidence level in our current military?

[C]

You know, there are certain things that I talk to my boys about that I don't want my wife around, and she doesn't want to be around. I said, babe, this is between me and them. You can't be here right now. I got to talk to these guys, and I will talk to them. Okay? And she respects it, and we do our thing. We got a couple rules in the house. I don't give the girls papa's. They don't get pow pows.

[B]

What are you saying?

[C]

Pow pows.

[B]

Pow pows.

[C]

That's what we call in our house. It's called pow pows. They don't get spanking. They don't get anything. The boys, it's a different story. They don't get it anymore, but they know what can come and when. I need to talk to these boys to put them in their place, I have to have the conversation privately. What's the point if you've never been in the military, if you've never been to war? You have no understanding of what it takes to prepare somebody to defend. You have no idea what it takes to get somebody to defend. You've never done that before. So what does it mean in war when the other guy is trying to kill you? There is no, hey man, do you have your mask on? Because covet it could spread. Hey, before we fight, did you take the vaccine? Because I can't fight you if you didn't take the vaccine. Hey, before we fight, what's your DI score in Russia? What's, what's the ESG score? You guys have all you guys? You guys good or because we can't. Inappropriate. Hey, what kind of weapons you guys use? Are these going to make the climate dirty? The bomb? How are you not worried about the climate? How dare you have a weapon like this? So before you shoot us, let's check to see if that weapon you're using is climate friendly. That doesn't exist when a war takes place. When a war takes place, the other guy has one thing in mind. Either surrender or I'm killing you. That's what happens in war. So how do you psychologically prepare somebody for that? Well, maybe we should just prevent people from going to war. Totally agree. I'm not for it. I'm glad we didn't have it for few years. It just all of a sudden when we don't have fear, respect and admiration for a leader in America, we have more wars. Okay? Everybody thought the last three years were going to be friendly and peaceful and we were all going to get along. Forget about us getting along in America. The world can't get along the last three years. Right. So how do we get back to it? We get back to it by the following manner. You got 50 employees here, give or take, based on what I, what people told me. And you build a good business and you're doing very well. Okay, how many times, Tom? Matter of fact, let me ask a question a different way. How many people, including Quest, including all the businesses you've ran, how many people have you hired, personal employees that you personally have hired?

[B]

I've interviewed 1500 people.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

More now, because that's the one. I clocked that stat. It was like five years ago. But so yeah, I've interviewed 1500. I've had 3000 employees. I was involved in hiring probably 30% of them directly.

[C]

Fantastic. You were the COO or whatever role you have, CMO or CEO. I think one of those roles lasted me to a president. Okay, so president has one of the hardest jobs because you're the COO and your ops, your data, you're all of that stuff. Okay, how many HR managers have you interviewed?

[B]

Oh, Jesus. Interviewed. Probably 25.

[C]

Okay, so watch this. How many have you hired or have you had? Four? Okay, so did you ever have an experience when you interviewed your first HR manager where the next one, this one didn't work? It prompted you to ask two additional questions on this one that you didn't ask on this one, and on the third one, you asked better questions than the second one. And on the fourth one, you asked better questions than the third one. Right. Okay, so first HR manager I'm hiring, we just need somebody to do the payroll, you know, total stuff. And, you know, check GNA Insperity, ADP, who do we use and $39,000, and do this and blah, blah. Okay, great. Man, I'm so glad we got somebody handling all this payroll. And then, hey, we got a complaint here. 401k benefits, health insurance costs going up. Is this good? I don't know. And okay, right. Next one. We need a better one. We need a better one. We need a better one in Covid. Covid happens. We had a HR manager that was reactive to everything, and it's the end of the world, and it was causing everything in the office to be chaotic. I said, this is not going to work out. So I'm interviewing people, and here's how I'm interviewing people. I say, hey, Mary, just out of curiosity, let's just say in our licensing department, we have 20 employees there. One of the employees comes to you and says, I got a cough and I'm not feeling well. You tell this person to do what? Go get tested. Great. They get tested, they come back, it's positive. What do you do? What are your next three moves? Oh, send everybody home. Okay, I can't hire you. Second person comes in, and just that answer alone, I already know you're not fit for this job. Next thing I go, comes in. Licensing department has 20 employees. One of the employees comes to their cough, and they're not feeling well. You send them and they get tested positive. What do you do? What do I do? Yeah. Here's what I do. I send an email to everybody in the company. I tell them such and such as, Covid, if you'd like to leave, you can take a laptop and go home and work. Okay, great. Better answer, but still a little bit too much. Third person comes in for the Interview. Hey, licensing department has 20 employees. One person comes to you, they're coughing, they get tested positive. What do you do? I ask who in that department has been with them. If they have, I tell them they can go get tested. And then if that person's gone in the kitchen, I'd say, who else was around you when they were, you know, in the kitchen or the bathroom? Such and such. Have you shook anybody's hands? I haven't shook them. I'll go to that person and tell them that and ask them if they want to get tested. They can. And then if they bring back negative, come back to work. If not, totally get it. Okay, reasonable. We're hiring this person. So I started hiring people based on case studies. Where am I going with this? Your question is, how do we go strong like we used to be because it's chaotic today. Here's a point. Next time you're picking a president, think about you're hiring somebody for a job and ask better questions. One of the questions we need to hire today when we're wanting to pick our president or our governor, is how to handle chaos. Based on what experience? Not based on what they've said, based on what experience? What have they gotten done? What's their biggest accomplishment? How have they helped the economy? What do you want as a president? Do you want somebody that needs other people's money when they go run for office? Because the more people's money you take and the more they give, guess what comes with that? Nobody gives $10 million and says, what? Yo, you know what? You don't owe me any favors, but here's $10 million. Don't worry about doing favors for me. And you're super packed. I'll give you $100 million, but I don't want any favors from you. That doesn't work that way. They'll give $100 million, and there's three favors in the back. And hey, you got to change those three laws to prevent this guy from competing with me. Any president that ever ran that needed the least money, the people of power hated. I'll give you a list of these guys. John F. Kennedy, his father funded 50, 40 or 50%, the entire thing. And then people showed up, a big number. And by the way, he said, I'm willing to spend 100% of it when he became president, who hated Kennedys. It's a long list of people. Are you kidding me? The oil people. You got CIA, you got Federal Reserve. You want me to keep going? You know the story. You're Smart guys, a lot of people that don't like that guy. Why? Because he didn't take money from anybody that they needed. They knew he could do it on his own. Reagan, his own financing. Okay, you go Trump, his own financing, you go Hillary Clinton, 100% other people's money. Biden, nearly 100% other people's money. That's a bit scary. Okay, Kennedy was a Democrat, you know, Trump is a Republican. It's not like you're talking left or right, but maybe if, like when you probably know the story with Steve Jobs, when he started Apple, when he started Pixar, right, he put $7 million of his own money into the company. Okay, we're having a meeting yesterday with Dana White. Two hour meeting, nice meeting. And we're having a couple of the conversations about what could possibly happen. Business dealings, all this other stuff. Guy comes to you, he says, tom, we want to raise $10 million for this project we're working on. You're going to ask, we're going to ask probably the same questions. 80% will be the same question. 20% is going to be different. But what do you want to know so far? Who's the management team? What's their past? What's their background? What's different about this? What's their blue ocean? Do they already have a technology? Is there an mvp? What kind of results do you have? How many transactions have you knocked our app manect? We've done nearly ten thousand transactions a hundred thousand times. This app's been downloaded. We have revenue in the seven figure mark. So we have a number to look at it now. I come ask you for $10 million and you say, okay, what are you going to do with the $10 million? I tell you, oh, that $10 million, I'm going to take 5 off the table for myself and then we're going to take the other five and I'm going to give myself a $500,000 year salary. And we're going to pay this person this. And then the last 2 million that's left, we're going to put into technology. Are you giving that $10 million?

[B]

No.

[C]

Now watch this. What if I come to you and I say, tom, here's a product. This is our proof, this is what we've done. This is our leadership team. Here's our salary. We're paying ourselves right now the $10 million we raised from you and your camp. I'm taking zero salary. I don't want any salary, nothing. And I don't want to take a penny off the table. We're going to take that money to put into technology. You're probably more open to the idea of entertaining this. And if I finish up with the following thing and I tell you, by the way, Tom, I have put $6.8 million of my own money into Manect. You're not going to say 6.8. Doesn't even want to take 6.8 right now. Of the money he put in the business. He's willing to do it later on. He wants to put 100% in and he doesn't want a salary and he doesn't want to change his salary in the company. You're probably going to sit there and say, what's the risk? For me there isn't. Let's talk about it. Let's get lawyers involved, let's look at the deck, let's get deeper, et cetera, et cetera. If a president comes in and they're running and they say, I'm putting XYZ amount on my own money, that kind of gets my attention. Because you're risking your own capital as well. We have to start asking, what do you have involved that you could lose if this thing doesn't work out? You know, as an investor, we have to look at hiring our president and our governors in that way. We've not been trained that way. We've been trained to just. He's been 30 years in public service. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, you know, 30 years in public service, we ought to give them respect as a cop. Cool. 30 years, I get it. Respect. 30 years in the military. Salute to you, sir. 30 years as a firefighter, that's a tough job. You've been 30 years as Congress. What have you done for the economy? Who's your funders? Who's giving you money? We have to ask better questions. Now, most people don't want that conversation to be taking place. But I think our interview process of whoever we pick that come with the policies that's leading to the catastrophes we're experiencing, we have to be a little bit more selective of the presidents and the governors we choose.

[B]

Okay, so that circles back around to me. So I'm not a society guy. I don't think at the level of society, I think at the level of the individual. And if you fix the individual, then if you fix enough individuals and suddenly you get a society that's high functioning. So to me there's ultimately no difference between talking about what does an individual person need to do? And then how do you ask Better questions. Because right now if you tell people to ask better questions, they still aren't going to ask those questions. Even if you give them the questions to ask, they will not understand how to interpret the answer. To me, you have to build up what I call frame of reference so we all view the world from a certain frame of reference difference. And when you believe the world ought to be fair, when you believe that equity is the name of the game, not equality of opportunity equity, that everybody gets the same on the other side, then those people are going to act a certain way and they will feel right and they will feel justified because from their frame of reference it all makes sense. If money is evil and everything has to be viewed through the lens of power, then all of a sudden their actions make sense. If you have a different worldview, let's say it's about freedom, capitalism, self determination, then you're going to be viewing life through that lens. My question is, is there a right lens that you are like, hey, this is the thing that we ought to put forth and this is what people ought to pursue. And I think the downstream effects of that will be that we elect better officials, so on and so forth.

[C]

Let me, let me ask this question. So let's, let's have a little bit of a banter here. Exchange. I like this. A what? What causes a company to attract tens? Meaning? If you read Stephen Schwartzman's books book, in it he talks about how at one point, 30 billion auto guy, at one point he realized it's all about hiring tents. Not nines, not eights, but hiring tents. But most people can't afford tents. When you read Reed Hastings, no rules rules, they realize a 10 is the equivalent of 28s. Okay? One 10 is the same as 28s.

[B]

Sounds about right.

[C]

Sounds about right. Okay, so what causes a company to attract tens?

[D]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[B]

You want me to give you the breakdown?

[C]

I want to hear from you.

[B]

Okay, so number one is going to be a mission that is bigger than whatever mission they have in their own life that they are very excited about. Next one is Going to be that you're building something that is novel and is actually going to allow them to bring the full weight of their talent and intelligence to bear. So they're not retreading old stuff. This is really something new.

[C]

Got it. The

[B]

world actually wants the product. They are compensated well. They have a sense of ownership, autonomy, and they're surrounded by other tens.

[C]

Okay, so compensated well. Did you say autonomy?

[B]

Autonomy.

[C]

Okay. And then last one was you're surrounded around other tens.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay. I'm not going to ask you how many tens you have here because I don't want to cause a fight. But we won't go there surrounded by.

[B]

It isn't all tens.

[C]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

Even my team knows that.

[C]

So. So. So when you look at this compelling mission novel, you know, full. You know where we're going, what we're doing. World actually wants the prop product compensated well. Autonomy, surrounded by tents. To me, what does Blackstone do to get tens? Is the mission that insane? I don't know. What does Netflix do to get tens? What does Yahoo do to lose tens to Facebook? What does Facebook do to lose tens to Google? What. What does. What. What are tens attracted to? To me, everything here. You could have an incredible mission check. You could have novel, man, this is. We're doing a really big thing. Historic Czech World actually wants the product check. If the incentive program sucks, you're not attracting those people, period. Let me make go a little bit deeper for you. You live in the great state of California. You know California, how many people they lost between California and New York the last. Last year?

[B]

1.4 million.

[C]

1.4 million. You saw this stat. Do you know what state in America's 50th place for the most people lost last year? California. Do you know what state's number one? Florida's number one. Receiving net positive. Net positive population growth. Florida's number one.

[B]

Texas.

[C]

Texas number two. Then you got Carolinas. This just came out, by the way, very interesting number for you to look at because at the bottom is California, New York, Illinois. Okay? The economy is bigger in California, the economy is bigger in New York. The economy is bigger in a lot of different places. Why are they leaving? Because the incentive sucks. So if a state with better incentives is in place, like Florida, which means what? You keep your state taxes? If in Texas you keep your state taxes. Tennessee keep your state taxes. We'll figure it out. In California, why are gas prices in some places 7 bucks. Why are gas prices in certain places 5 bucks, 6 bucks. You got this gas tax on top of this cash tax until. How come the other states don't have the. These are the incentive programs. Why did one of the biggest liberals in America that try to save the world. You really want to talk about climate change? No one probably did more good for climate change like try to do good for climate change than a guy named Elon Musk who voted for Obama, who voted for all these guys who voted for Hillary. And this guy moves to Austin, Texas. Why would he do that? Why did the guy who tried to legalize marijuana for the longest time, who said, I'm voting for Bernie Sanders? What, what is he doing moving to Texas? Guy named Joe Rogan. Why did 40,000 employees leave Toyota go to Texas? Because of the incentive program. So where am I going with this? I. You and I are in the same place where everything starts off with you and I, like, what do I control? What can I do about it? Right. And as you get to a different level, I'm sure you've paid a lot of taxes. If I were to ask you about how much taxes you paid, you paid a lot of taxes for the money you've made. You guys build a billion auto company. When you have a billion auto company and you've taken money off the the table multiple times, you know, and you're doing it in this state, you could have Your capital gains 23.8, but you got to add that 13.3 on top of it. So in your state, you sell, you get $200 million. In the state of California, you're going to pay roughly $80 million in taxes. But you do that in Florida or Texas, you're going to pay 60 million, $50 million in taxes. That $30 million stays in your pocket. Guess what? That's pretty attractive incentive wise. What else? When you look at it, you look at other people that want to live as well. The average person that's making 60 grand a year in California, dude, you have to live 80 miles away in Palmdale to be able to make it. And Palmdale's even getting expensive today. Quartz Hill, you got only a couple pockets. You can live to be able to survive with the kind of pay that this marketplace is paying you. So when I'm going back to the question and you said, well, what percentage of people are really going to be thinking about that question? This is the problem that we have. We think we have to win everybody over. We don't. We think we have to convert a 50% of the population. You don't. It's the 12% in the middle that run America, that's who runs America. You get 47% that's going to vote Democrat no matter what. You got 44% that's going to vote Republican no matter what. Then you have that middle, whatever that number is going to be that you're dealing with. You know, maybe it's going to be 42, 44. Then you got the libertarians degree and all this other stuff. The independents and libertarians rule America. So if those guys who have the ability to have courage to have a change of thought and are neutral neutrality and are willing to accept alternative solutions and they're able to reason, well, guess what? They watch a podcast like this and say, shit, this makes a lot of sense. We have to change the incentive. So what do we do? Either one, you say, dude, I have no desire to get into politics, so how can I help? Okay, no problem. Go back somebody up that you can feel that they can do it and start recruiting people to run. You know, behind closed doors. I'm recruiting people to run. Like I'm talking to people and saying, you got a lot of values that people would love. I think you ought to consider it. Really? Yes, you ought to consider it. I never thought about that. I think you should think about that. Why don't you read these three books, see if it does anything to you. Why don't you go look at what the Bushes and the Kennedys had as a legacy. Their legacy was simple. In their family, you make money first. You take care of your wife, you take care of your kids. They have enough money to not have to worry about anything. They're set for school and all that stuff. You set yourself up a little bit of retirement. If you want to make a little bit more money, go for it. But last but not least, you got to give back to the country that give you this incredible life. How do you do it? Non profit, okay, you either go into politics or church, but somehow, some way, you got to contribute. So I, I want more. Like I used to not care about politics at all until I realize America's problem is, is the incentive program. The reason why we went from 4% of kids being born to single mothers in 1940 to 40% today is because of the incentive program. The reason why we have so many divorces in the world, we are leading the world in divorce in ways that doesn't even make any Sense. We're at 23.8. Some numbers you look at where China and India are at 3 or 4%. Our incentive program sucks. When you look at small business owners, when you look at people going out there fighting for, let's print more money. Every time these guys print more money, guys like you get richer. Every time they print money, you and I make more money because your money's in assets and your money's in equities. And that money is going to go to these equities. So the valuation of these companies who flips. Like right now, everybody's worried about a market crash. You know what's bigger than a market crash today? You know what scares me more than a market crash today? A reverse market crash. You know, it's a reverse market crash. It's what happened in Venezuela this year. Imagine stock market goes from 10,000 to 64,000. What? Like right now we have interest rates at 4, at 8%, eight and a quarter some places, but let's just say 8%. And real estate prices are going up. It's the least amount of refi we've done in 27 years. REFI application is at the lowest for 27 years. The amount of inventory of homes for sale right now is the lowest we've had in 20 years. But real estate prices are going up. How so? Imagine if Powell today takes this 8% and he brings it down to 7 to 6, to 5 to 4. What happens? Market Dow goes to 60,000, 40,000, 50,000. Why? It's not because the economy is doing good, because we have that money in the market. It's going somewhere. So what happens? All of these people that we're talking about, wow, look at the rich getting richer, the poor getting poor. Your policies are printing more money, is causing the rich to get to richer and the poor to get poor because the disparity is getting wider. If the rich are making 12% on their money and the poor are making zero because they have it in checking accounts, what do you think is going to happen? Every year that distance is going to get bigger. So what do we have this year in 2023? Most strikes we've ever had. You ever seen any this many strikes in our lifetime? We're three years apart, you and I. I've never seen this many strikes. UAW strike, finally agreed. 42 bucks an hour. You got UPS strike, you got Walgreens CVS, you got Kaiser 75,000. You got. There's so many strikes going on today. What are people saying? Dude, I can't make it. I can't make the money in your state, California, they raise the minimum wage for fast food restaurants to whatever the number is, 22 bucks. And you know what? Chipotle and McDonald's just announced they're raising prices. Why? Because they have to. How are they going to make that money? You can raise minimum wage all you want, the restaurant is going to raise the prices. They're going to have to raise the prices. So now all these automakers that are sitting around saying, oh, you want us to pay these guys 42, 2 bucks an hour? No problem. Guess what? The consumer is going to have to pay 1500 dollars more for the car they buy. Is the consumer okay with that? Because that's how math works. Math works that way. So to me, at this phase of my life, If a person's 20 years old watching this, don't worry about what we talk about last 20 minutes, just go make your money. If a person's 30 years old watching this and they got a wife and kid in their careers, like here, they're about to kind of go focus on your career. Pay a little bit attention to this. But if you're 40 plus, 45 plus, and you're seeing what's really going on in the economy and you're like, what the hell are all these policies? I love my state of Illinois, but what the hell are we doing here? I love New York, but what the hell is going on? New York? I love San Francisco, but it's no longer San Francisco. Then you have to pay very close attention to the different incentive programs in other states and ask, why can't we do that in California? Why are we not doing that in New York? Why are we not doing that in Illinois? People in California are not asking those questions. So I love this compelling mission novelty, you know, novel world actually wants the product compensation, autonomy, surrounded by tens. But at the basic, most simplest thing is our incentive program at the top of our US Government today and by many states, absolutely sucks.

[B]

It's interesting. So let's have a collision of visions here. So I think that every word you said is true. It is necessary but not sufficient to understand what's really happening. So it show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. So says Mr. Munger, and he is correct. When a system becomes deranged. So when you're talking about an incentive program which I know you leading sales teams have experienced, the madness that ensues when you get something a little bit wrong in your incentive structure and it incentivizes terrible behavior. I've seen that up close, being in Web3, I've seen that up close where suddenly people are treating something that should be fun, like a video, treating something that should be Fun. Like it's a roulette wheel or a gambling machine. And so for sure, people are going to find, like, whatever little minuscule thing that they can exploit. But to me, the key is to avoid deranging the system as much as humanly possible. And the way that you avoid deranging the system as much as humanly possible is to give people values. Right now, my big problem is that people are not being inculcated with values. And I can't believe I'm saying this because I am, like, the least conservative guy on the planet. However, I am so obsessed with what works. Like what? What is the outcome that you want? If the outcome that you want is the America that you see or wherever in the world you are, okay, great. Then whatever you're doing is working for me. This seems like as close to a humanitarian crisis as you're going to get in the West. I mean, when I was a kid, I really believed I could do anything I set my mind to. And because I believe that, I went and did it. But if you don't like, I remdude. So I've worked in the inner cities a lot, and the first time I heard a kid say, I was like, why aren't you even trying? Like, bro, you're so smart. Why aren't you trying? Like, why. Why are you here working for minimum wage? This is crazy. I'll teach you anything you want to know about how to grow and climb up in the world. And he goes, oh, my mom told me that the world doesn't want people that look like me to succeed. And I was like, so what? That's the worst advice ever. Assume it's true. Assume it's true. Assume everyone is against you. Now what? You're just going to take it? You're just going to take the first minimum wage job on a line that you can get. You're not going to, like, push yourself. You're not going to again, develop personal power. Get so good at something. We both love Kobe. You got to meet him. And I did not. But he's got my favorite quote. Booze don't block dunks. You can get so good at something that people can't stop you, even if they hate you, even if they're paid millions of dollars to be better than you, to stop you from doing a thing. This guy still scored 81 points by himself in a single game. Okay? In a game where often 80 plus points is all that's scored. Pure insanity. And so if this is why, like, I don't have kids, so the odds of me suffering from what I can see coming are very low. It is but a love for humanity that makes me want to scream. The whole idea of Impact Theory is I really believe the ideas that you believe about the world matter so much they will control the quality of your life. And so now I'm just trying to make sure that people get high quality ideas about self ownership, about what you're capable of, about. Everybody should be trying to build as much personal strength as humanly possible so that they can do the things that they want to do in many different areas. So getting people to understand all ten fingers of responsibility should be pointed back at you. That if we want people to build a society that is better, they must believe in a grand vision. There must be a mission to their life, to the lives of others. That mission must have some tie to measurable results so that we don't just do what feels good or sounds good, we do what actually works. And so to me there is a massive restructuring of the way that we think about raising kids. About the way certainly my contribution is once you come to work for me, cool. I'm not going to raise you, I'm not going to raise my own children. It's not the way that I'm playing. But God damn it, when you come inside of Impact theory, we are going to run this in a way that's going to be effective. It's going to make you a better version of yourself, it's going to make you a better version of however you're contributing to the company. And that shit is a non negotiable. So everybody has to sign a culture document that says, and I quote, you must be a hardcore like period, end of story. And if psych that turns you off, great. This is not the place for you. But I know what it takes to actually fight against the chaos of the world. And you're going to have to choose your enemy wisely. In fact, this is something we haven't talked about yet. Part of what I'm trying to get them to now. I think you have to balance the beauty of what you're trying to do. I'm trying to make sure nobody gets to the age of 15 without encountering a growth mindset at scale through entertainment and ideas. Cool. But then you also need to be able to tap into the dark energy. And that to me is about an ability to capture the energy output of the fire in your belly, for lack of a more literal expression. So tell me why when picking an enemy, it needs to be somebody that really makes me feel some kind of

[C]

way, because choosing an enemy. How do you judge an enemy? There's 14 different types of enemy we talk about in the book. But the way you judge an enemy is the lifespan of how long that enemy can drive you. You may have an enemy that drives you for a day. You may have an enemy that drives you for 30 seconds. Somebody cuts you off. You got an enemy for about 30 seconds. Okay, you may have an enemy that drives you for a month. Somebody you're going up against for a sales contest. I'm going to beat that guy. Okay, cool. Short lifespan, not a big deal. Then you find an enemy that drives you for 5, 10 years, 20 years. Now you got something good. Unfortunately, Tom, most people choose the wrong enemy when they're competing. I want to read something to you. Is this the book, or is this a different book?

[B]

Book, I think.

[C]

Is this the book? Let me see if this is a book. I'm gonna. I'm gonna open this up and see if this is a book or not. Let's see here. All right, hang on one second. If it is, I want to read this to you. Oh, they sent you the heart.

[B]

Look at that.

[C]

Look at you, buddy. Respect. I don't even have this. Literally, I'm telling you. I don't even have this.

[B]

Funny thing is, I didn't get it either. I got a PDF. So when I saw it here, I

[C]

was like, who sent this to you? Do you know who?

[B]

I know the team.

[C]

Really? So Penguin sent this? It. Okay, well, I don't have this. I don't have this cup. That's. Sam sent it. E sent it. So you got it directly from Penguin? Just so you know, this is the first time I'm seeing a copy of this. Let me read this to you. Okay? Two quotes. One, a wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. Baltazar. Gracian. Let me read the other one for you, which fires me up. Okay. You have no enemies, you say. My friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You've hit no traitor on the hip. You've dashed no cuff from the perjured lip. You've never turned a wrong to right. You've been a coward in the fight. Charles Mackey. Okay, all right. So you read this, Coward. I'm not a coward. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not going to be Categorized as that. Totally get it. But if you're, if you're going to be doing something big, you're automatically going to have some enemies. Now we're looking at Elon Musk earlier, and we're talking about him. And you look at Elon, who's been driving for this long, everybody asks, isn't this guy worth $300 billion? Yeah. What are you doing buying Twitter when you're worth $300 billion? You're already running SpaceX, you're already running Tesla. You got these trucks that all of us are waiting for, okay? You got to figure what happens with that rock. You threw out the glass, that the glass broke. We got to fix that. Right? And at the same time, how many kids you have? Nine or ten kids. And you're doing podcasts. You're always on podcasts. You're interviewing with people. How the hell do you have time to sleep? Sleep? Why would you buy Twitter? And now you're the most, second most hated guy in America. You didn't become a friendly person when you bought Twitter.

[B]

That's crazy.

[C]

You got worse. Why would you want to do something like that? Psychologically, you have to have issues. So then you ask the question, okay, say this guy in three years is the first trillionaire. Say it happens in a year. What do you think he's doing the next day after he becomes a trillionaire? You think he's taking three months off and going to Monaco? No, not him. Why? Because while the world thinks this guy is doing it for money, he's not doing it for the money. He's on a mission. Okay, fair. But why at that level? Because he's got something that drives him that none of us know about. Could it be his father? Very high. Likely. That could be his father. Could it be something else we don't know about? Of course. Could it be what these, you know, astronauts said about him and made fun of him? That we think space experiments should only be done by the government and not by free enterprise and free market? Maybe. And it got him tears. If you've never seen that 60 minute interview, I'm sure you have, right? It could be. But it's him now. Michael Jordan. Same thing. Tom Brady talking to him. Same thing. Anybody you admire that's able to tolerate the kind of pain required to win at the highest level, they have an enemy that drives them. They're just not telling you about it. Most people will never disclose who the true enemy is. It's private. Bill Clinton in this one book. It's called the HYPOMANIC edge and, you know, first rate madness. I don't know if you've read these books or not. It talks about bipolar, hypomanic, you know, adhd. Why? All these people that end up doing something big, they typically are a little bit off. How does this guy. How is he capable of going 18 hours straight and he's still doing it? And he had. But what's wrong with this guy? How can he do that? That there's that element that they just can't help themselves, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Bill Clinton, you know, they asked him about his mom, him and his mom. His mom drove him a lot. Most people don't know about this. And in one of the interviews, he said, there's no benefit from me saying anything bad about my mom. Literally, there's no benefit for a man to say anything bad about their moms. You're not going to win. You're never going to be able to convince the marketplace you had a bad mom. As a man, you can do it. As a woman, you cannot do it. As a man. The market's going to be like, how dare you say something now? Men can talk trash about their dads. The market will receive it. They'll make a movie about it. Right. But you can't do it about your mom. That was Clinton's who drove him. You know, people have it people now. At the same time, you know, 14 types of enemies in the book that I talk about, you know, there's also the concept of choosing the wrong enemy that could steal decades from your life, decades away from your life. Hypothetically, I'm doing an event at the vault conference. Okay. This is two years ago. And on the first night, we go through a personal audit questionnaire that you got to go through. And the next morning you got to come back and talk about it with the group. And we're looking to see who's going to have a breakthrough based on the questions that you have to answer. Okay, no problem. These are 83 questions that I went through back in 2003 at Matador beach here by Zuma. I'm sitting there going through myself, crying like a little baby. My notepad, yellow notepad that I'm answering these questions. I had the breakthrough. Boom. I added these into this list that people are going through, and they get to experience it for themselves. Who do you get along with? Who do you not get along with? Is there a pattern of people that piss you off the most? Why is that? Who do they remind you of? These types of things that kind of, for you to see what you're going through. So the next day, 2,000 people in attendance. Everybody's giving theirs husband and wife. This the breakthrough we have Another one is the breakthrough. We had one girl over here not getting up, or her sister's, like, elbowing her. My sister wants to say something. I think she really had a big breakthrough. Babe, what are you doing? Babe, you got to tell him. Babe, tell him. Okay. She gets up. She said, pat, this is very hard. So what is it? So let me tell you who I am. I've done very well as a person who runs her own business. I make more money than all my exes. I make more money than the guys of my life. I make more money than any of my teachers. I do very, very well with the salon I run. I make very good money. My people make very good money. I have a nice house. I drive a nice car. I have money in the bank. I have all the Chanel purses, everything. I said, okay, so what's the point? But I'm alone. I'm not married. I don't have any kids. I don't have a family. I don't have somebody to look forward to coming home to and talking to, celebrating any of this. I said, where are you going with this? She says, for the longest time, men have been the enemy me. And I realized they're not. I'm wasting my time having men as an enemy. If you've ever seen a movie, Jerry Maguire, where all the divorced women are sitting around the table and they're bitching about men and their husbands and all this stuff. And then Jerry walks in, and she's like, I don't care. I love him. You guys can sit here bitching about all your exes all you want. I love this guy. I love this guy. I don't want to be alone for the rest of my life. I want somebody in my life. They in that group had identified their exes and men as all enemies. She's like, I'm not joining your camp. You know how hard it is to leave a camp like that? These are groups of people that go through this. How about some of the people that are 65 years old that joined a feminist movement at 15 years old, never got married, have no kids. How many of these videos are going viral right now on social media? I wish I would have never joined a movement. I'm 65. I have a cat, no husband, no kids. What the hell am I working for? My parents are dead, and it's just me. What's that all about? So many people choose the wrong enemy and it costs them years, if not decades of their lives. You have a person in your life that's challenging you, pushing you to get better, encouraging you, having high expectation of you. You think that's the enemy. That's not the enemy. The actual enemy in your life is the people around you that are saying, eat more pizza, here's more cheesecake. Sleep in, don't get to work, screw your husband, to hell with your wife. I hate, hate your boss, he's a moron, all he cares about is money. Those are your enemies. You got to step away from those types of people who ruin your Life. And then 17 years later, you used to work with a company that if you would have stuck around, you would have had a nice ex with $2.8 million. But you screwed up because you believe the other people that quit. And you never had that experience. And now you're sitting there for the rest of your life trying to explain to your kids why quitting was the right decision. But deep down inside, when you go to sleep and you're in front of the mirror, you know what you tell yourself? Made the biggest mistake. I should never done that. So this is a very much of a emotional decision for a person to sit there. There's a formula on how to find that. I've been doing business planning with guys for the last. You know, business planning, you know how it is if you have a sales team, hey, let's sit down. Do your business planning for 2022. Do. Let's do the business plan for 2006. How many years have you been doing the business? Imagine how many, one on one business plans you've done the month of December with people, right? I would sit there and business plan. Here's a one page business plan, right? And what are your goals for the first quarter and how many calls are you going to make? And if you do this, what are you going to get yourself? I'm going to buy myself a new suit from such and such and Stefano Ricci and I'm going to buy myself a C class or M5 or A range Rover. Are we going to buy this house on a cul de sac and all this other. And here's what we're going to do. Do great. You have a little bit of dream. The rest is logic. You write this thing, maybe you look at it for a month. Done. You forgot where you even typed it out. You don't remember what's in it after March or April. Okay, where to me eventually got to A point where I judged the effectiven effectiveness of business plans based on how we would do business plans together. And I see how you respond to it, where your energy goes, how you come out the gates in every year. Then I said, we're finally getting closer at learning how to do better business plans with people because you were able to pursue it. And it came down to 12 building blocks. Six of the building blocks were logical. Okay? We're talking systems, processes, things like that, capital. And then six of the blocks were emotional. You have to study your competition, but your competition is not going to drive you the way you identify your enemy. People who have the right enemy in their lives, they'll be willing to tolerate way more pain than those that don't have the right enemy in their lives.

[B]

Can you describe why?

[C]

Because the point is, if you don't do it for the rest of your life, the other person is going to be able to say they were right. And can you live with that? If yes, go for it, fine. If not, you ain't doing it for the money. You ain't doing it because you need another Lambo or something. You're not a car guy. We're talking earlier. This house you live in, that's a palace. A place most people around the world would dream about living in. This is a 8 Lamborghini garage that you turn into what you turn into. Cars don't drive you. Okay? It's not something that fires you up. Who cares if you pull up in a Lambo? Okay, maybe now this is bigger than that. This is about you being able to look at yourself in a mirror and saying, I'm proud of you. Others can say it to you. It's great to hear it from your mom and dad. It's magical. I'm sure you remember when you heard it, when your family told you they're proud of you. Very emotional moment when you hear that, right? Some parents are loving. So some parents say the day you're born. Some parents don't say it until way later on. So if you got I'm proud of you very early just because you filled out a piece of paper, it doesn't have that big of a meaning. But if a parent didn't say that to you but 18 times while you're growing up, and then you heard the real, I'm proud of you at 32 years old, you're in the car, you're gonna cry by yourself. It's a very monumental moment. You're gonna. I remember that day when it happened to I was speaking at this office on Cerritos, and I pick up my mom from the airport. I hadn't seen him for seven years, since I was in the army. And she sees what I'm doing and where I'm at at 26 years old, she's like, what happened to you? And you said, yeah, I'm proud of you. I remember my dad said it to me. I'm proud of you. We're driving back from Long Beach Queen Mary, and we're in the car, and he sees what happened to me, and I told him, you don't have to work at a 99 cent store ever again. At Inglewood, right next to Great Western Forum. I don't even know how I drove home that night. I was flying. I wasn't driving. It's an incredible feeling, but as great as that feels, there's going to be a moment where it's, you're in the car by yourself. You're 43 years old, 41 years old, 39 years old, and you can sincerely say, I'm proud of you, without low standards. That victory of you versus you is a powerful thing, Very powerful thing when you go through that. So. And you're going to need that right enemy to drive you to go through those tough times, because they're coming. They're going to come. It's given. Yes.

[B]

The book is fantastic, man. Where can people follow you and find the book?

[C]

You know, go to valuetainment or Patrick by David. You'll. You'll find my content.

[B]

All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.