CW 656 – Congressman J.C. Watts – DIG DEEP, 7 Truths to Finding the Strength Within, Canadian Football League & OK Sooners Orange Bowl Champs, AIDS Relief

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine seller, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode number 656. 656 and listeners from 164 countries worldwide. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm your host, Jason Hartman. And gosh, we got people from 164 countries and maybe we've got almost as many world leaders who are engaging in corrupt criminal activities. Yes, I am referring to none other than the Panama Papers. That story, at least $2 billion in transactions involved people and companies from all of these countries. Many, they say, had ties to Vladimir Putin. We've all heard about all of the wealth he has hidden tucked away around the world. Possibly one of the richest people in the world, if not the richest, is Vladimir Putin. Although that's not as visible as those people you see on the Forbes 400. Right, because this is government money. This is money taken from the taxpayers. The hoi polloi boy. Iceland, Iceland, I kind of like that country. They're pretty activist over there. They don't put up with a lot of crap from their politicians. And when they find something out, man, they are booting them out. The crooked. Remember during the financial crisis, all of the crooked bankers, they were gone the moment that the story was revealed. So I kind of like, you know, I kind of like that Iceland has been involved with WikiLeaks and I don't know, watch that, watch that WikiLeaks documentary. There's several of them out there. But the, the one that was in theaters, what was it about two, three years ago, talking all about Julian Assange and all that interesting stuff. It's, it is amazing. And I tell you folks, you want the answer to government corruption, regardless of what government you're talking about around the just Know, and I'm gonna say this as my pessimistic self here, right. Sometimes I'm very optimistic. And you know what I always say, it's an amazing time to be alive. It's an amazing time to be alive. And we see from the private sector all of this incredible technology that is changing lives, improving lives, staving off the ravages of big government, inflationary pressures, taming the beast of inflation that would be here in massive force if it weren't for technology being the counterbalance to irresponsible government spending and vote buying. But I tell you, people are fallen, okay? That is the nature of humanity. Yes, there are many great people out there, but there is a dark side to probably every human out there. Even, even the late Mother Teresa, I'm sure, had her dark side. We probably all do. I'm gonna throw it out there that we all have our dark side. I've done a few things in my life I'm not extremely proud of either. Okay. Some of them I've mentioned on the show. So if we know this about people, that eventually people are gonna have their hand in the cookie jar here and there. Right. And if we want to make government less corrupt, wouldn't the logical obvious thing to do, wouldn't it just be to simply keep government smaller? Because if we take. Assume that these things are proportionate, right. If government gets bigger, there's a certain amount of corruption that goes on inside any government or in any organization, in any corporation. Right. You know, there are people that steal from the till in the cash register at Subway and Starbucks, I'm sure. And at the local bar and restaurant that you go to. Right. Less of that nowadays because so many transactions are non cash. But you know, the concept of people kind of have their hand in the cookie jar from time to time. Right. We know employee theft is a huge problem. We know shoplifting is a huge problem. We know identity theft is a huge problem because this is a transfer effect as it gets harder to commit one crime, like mugging people on the street. We've seen some stats saying that that has dropped. Thank you. To more proliferation of second amendment gun rights. Well, I don't know if the rights have actually increased, but at least the number of guns have increased because of course, the guy in the White House is the best gun salesman probably ever in history. And that's Obama. You know, Starting back in 2007, 2008, we saw this meteoric rise in gun sales because Obama had stated as a candidate that he wanted to take away the Guns. What he did is he did an end run around that. It was very interesting and really very bright. Actually. I have to compliment the control freak comrade Obama by making ammunition more expensive. Yes, guns aren't too useful without ammunition. So anyway, and then they tried to make it illegal for people to. What do they call that, like reshelling? I don't know, I've never done it. But you know, they have those machines where people can repack their ammunition and take the shells and anyway, yeah, you know what that, whatever it's called, I'm no expert on this stuff, but anyway, so you've got that. And there's always this transfer of crimes, right? So if the criminals are worried that more people in their homes have guns or alarm systems and more people on the streets have pepper spray and have guns and. Or are trained in self defense or are less vulnerable and more confident as they walk down the dark street at night, of course, fewer criminals will be willing to commit those kinds of crimes like muggings and purse snatchings because people are more on guard. Right, Obvious. And so they switch to new forms of crime. And we've seen identity theft increase dramatically. I mean, it's happened to me a couple of times that I know of. God forbid. I don't know if it's happened other times, but certainly a couple of times I've had some identity theft problems. Things showing up on my credit card statements, even on my credit report that aren't accurate. And there are lots of forms of identity theft, not just credit card or financial identity theft. There's criminal record, identity theft, medical record, identity theft, citizenship, identity theft. There are DMV identity theft, there are many insurance identity theft. There are many forms of identity theft. Most of us just think of it as, oh, you know, someone got access to my bank account or my credit card. It's. There's way more than that to it. Anyway, the point being that if we look at. What were we saying? Jason, you're on a tangent again. You're on a tangent. Tangent alert. If we look at all these world leaders and all these governmental entities, there's going to be a certain element within, not with inside. Jason, fix your grammar. Oh, yes, I will. Okay, so inside any government there are going to be a certain number of corrupt people. Take it at face value, it's going to happen in any business there's going to be some corrupt people. All right, so if we say this number is maybe 10% are going to succumb to some sort of temptation to, you know, put their hand in the cookie jar, metaphorically. Right. And they're going to steal. So if we just simply make government smaller, then the size of the corruption will be smaller. And this is exactly what we see with these Panama Papers. And this story is just developing, and there's going to be more and more of it. You're going to see a lot of this stuff coming out. It's just disgusting. And this is why you take a candidate like Bernie Sanders. And even though I think the guy's actually well intended, I kind of like him in a lot of ways. But he's going to make government larger. And what he doesn't realize, good old Bernie, is that if you make any organization, any human organization with some fallen people inside it larger, the corruption is going to get larger. If you make that organization smaller, the likelihood is, and I would say it's 99.9% likely that the corrupt element will be smaller. In fact, it might even be better than just proportional. So if you say that if the organization is 10% corrupt, whether it be company, family, government, whatever, committee, charity, anything, anything, doesn't matter. The church, someone stealing from the till at the church, sure, that's happening. A lot of times it's the pastor. And the whole thing's designed as a corrupt organization. You know, we've got some Jim and Tammy Faye Baker people out there. Right. There's certainly been a lot of that over the years. But that doesn't mean church is bad. Okay? It just means that people are people. Right. We just got to accept that. Let's be realistic here. And so. So if the organization is smaller, I would bet that the corruption element will not be just proportionally smaller. It will actually be a lot smaller because it'll be more apparent and obvious. If the organization is smaller, when it gets bigger, it's easier to hide the corruption, so there's even more of it. In fact, the corruption level might double or increase exponentially as the size of the organization grows. So really, just think about that. It's a simplistic approach, but I'm telling you, that's the way to go. That's the way to go. All right, so we had a big meeting in our company today, and we talked about, you guys are wonderful clients. We love you. And we talked about how bright and sophisticated our clients are and compared them to some of these other rather sleazy real estate outfits out there who will remain nameless, because I really don't feel like getting sued again for outing some criminal. But in the future, we'll probably do it Again, so listen to episode number 417. Listen to episode any of this stuff. I've talked about my Kansas City experience, which is still going on. What a joy it is to fight these people. And, you know, the harder the, I believe, believe that the more corrupt they are, the harder they fight because they're really, really trying to hide something. They'd probably settle or throw a settlement offer on the table if they weren't so worried about their. Maybe a greater concern that might lead to a more serious penalty than just what's on the table. We will see more to come on this, folks. More to come. But we were talking about our clients and the properties and just how much more sophisticated our clients are and how we use this as a way to get better inventory for our clients. Because one of the things our local market specialists, our LMSs in different parts of the country love about working with us, and for some of them, it takes them, it takes a couple of months, maybe a year, even if they're a little slow, to come around to the beauty of working with our network. Because our clients get it. They understand. They're educated in advance of going to look at properties or going to buy properties. They get it. And they're better qualified than they are with so many, many of these other groups out there. Many of these groups, by the way, are rather famous. You've heard of them. They've been on television, they've been on reality shows. They have very famous books that we've all read and talked about and even like. But that doesn't mean that when the rubber meets the road, they have the same type of client. So we had a long talk about that. We had a talk about how we can really, really, really get better inventory from our providers. Because I gotta tell you, this challenge is getting more and more challenging every day, every month. The deals ain't what they used to be. Don't you love it when some real estate guru gets up on stage or on the podcast and says, this is the best time to buy ever? Well, no, it's not the best time to buy ever. Actually, it was. Was a much better time to buy in 2009. But guess what? It's not 2009 anymore. So we can only work with what we have. My prediction is that it will actually get even worse. I could be wrong. Some of you out there are trying to time the market and you think prices are going to drop. But I've got to ask you, and this is the equation that I had people do a little. It's a very simple math problem at JHU Jason Hartman University when we did that live in Salt Lake City, Utah and in San Diego, California. It's a simple little equation. Okay, Ask yourself what would be the. I mean, everything's booming now. Prices are up, rents are up, clients are. By and large, there's a few little problems out there. But believe me, compared to past times, there are very few problems out there because properties are renting, things are going really well, by and large, okay, there's always the one off deal here and there, of course. But what is going to make prices come down? Ask yourself that question. Now I have predicted and I have said many times that I think real estate prices in the high value markets, the east coast and the west coast and the Socialist Republic of California and South Florida and the expensive northeastern areas and the Pacific Northwest, I think those markets are largely overvalued. I'm not saying they're at the peak, but hey, it's getting pretty frothy out there. These prices do not make sense. No, they're not as nutty as they were the last time around before we hit the skids, got into trouble. But in the linear markets, the simple, conservative linear markets we like, yes, prices are up, no question. But they're not up proportionally anywhere near as much as they are in these high flying cyclical markets that we don't like. So ask yourself, what would make prices decline? What would make prices decline? The answer to that question is largely affordability. Now, affordability comes in multiple forms. The affordability issue number one, it could come from an increase in interest rates. That's sort of the obvious one because people buy properties on a payment, not a price. They buy it on a monthly payment. And let me tell you, I can't believe how low monthly payments are. It is mind boggling how cheap it is to get a mortgage still. Yeah, it's still really, really cheap. Incredibly cheap to finance properties. So it comes in one form in terms of the interest rate. Let me give you this equation. I've mentioned it on past episodes before, but it's roughly equivalent that 1% in interest rate equals 10% in price. Now remember that 1% in interest rate is not really 1% in interest rates. For example, if the current interest rate, just to use round numbers here, it's an example. I'm not quoting the rate. If the current interest rate you would pay is 5% and rates go down by 1%, did the rates go down 1% or 20%? You know the answer, right? Because we're Talking to sophisticated crowd here. Most people out there think, oh well, it's only 1%. No, it's not 1%, you, you fool, it's 20%. Or what if they go up? What if they're five and they go to six? Okay, so that's the thing you've got to understand. But that 1% in interest rate roughly equals about 10% in purchase price. So if you think that prices are going to decline by 30%, then you should look forward to an interest rate increase of 3%. Okay? Now this is, it's rough math, okay? So understand that first of all, but understand that that 1% is equal to about 10% in price, alright? The second part of affordability is not the interest rate though. The second part of affordability is the ability to borrow in the first place. So here's what we've had going on since the financial crisis and during the financial crisis we've had very, very low rates. But banks that just don't really want to make loans, they want to hold the money, they want to hoard the money, they can make money in a much less risky fashion, but by simply buying treasury bills, okay, they don't. You know, the fractional reserve banking scam, which by the way, we're going to be talking about on Jekyll island at our upcoming Venture alliance trip. And we are working on a little Jacksonville property tour Friday before that. So if you want to come as a guest, go to venturealliancemastermind.com and check that out. Talk to your investment counselor at our company. Of course you can reach them through jasonhartman.com or if you already have a relationship, you already have their contact info. And join us as a guest. And join us for a little VIP property tour, very exclusive, in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday. What is that? May 6th. And then on the 7th and 8th we'll be in Jekyll island and it's just going to be a great time. And we'll be talking about fractional reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, how we can invest, how we can align our interest with these very, very powerful forces. So just understand that that is the issue. Affordability, like income property investing is a multi dimensional issue. Income property is a multidimensional asset class. And this affordability equation needs to be diced up into multiple things. Of course you can dice it up a lot more than that because what's the affordability for investors versus owner occupants that matters in terms of interest rate, of course, that's a little different ability to qualify. What does that mean to Renters. Everybody out there needs to make the decision of should I rent, should I buy, should I be homeless, should I live with my parents? That last one, hopefully, is a joke, but I know you know it's not, because if you have millennial kids, they are the boomerang generation coming back to live at home as they try to pay off their student loan debt and cope with that other huge government scam amounting to $1.2 trillion with a T. So, yeah, we'll talk about that. Just understand, affordability is the primary driver of prices. There are other drivers, of course. There's the supply side and the demand side, and those two curves need to meet, and that's what creates a marketplace when the curves intersect supply and demand. And demand is driven by affordability. Supply is driven by the amount of money floating out there in terms of developers to develop new projects, how liberal zoning laws are prices of raw materials, commodities, energy, labor, regulatory environment, OSHA requirements. It's a whole complex set of issues, obviously. Right. So we address those on the show from time to time. We address all of those different issues. So that's it. Okay. Our guest today is Congressman J.C. watts, and he's a great guy. His book is called Dig Deep, Seven Truths to Finding Strength Within. He was on the Canadian Football League and the and the Sooners took him to the Orange Boys. He's doing a lot of great stuff. So it is a political season. So we have some political guests on here and on the next episode after Flashback Friday, which, by the way, this Flashback Friday, you do not want to miss this one. It's G. Edward Griffin, and we've got him coming back on the show for a new interview as well. He's been on a few times, so with a Jekyll island trip coming up, and Jekyll island, of course, for those of you who aren't in the know, that is where they created the Federal Reserve just over a hundred years ago and started scamming the entire world. So we, we want to. Even though we know it's a big scam, we can't complain about it. Well, we can complain, but we can't do anything about it. It's much more powerful than any of us. But we can align with our interest with the Federal Reserve and all central banks around the world and all governments around the world so that we can win the personal finance, the wealth creation, and the investing game. All right, let's get to our guest, J.C. watts. Couple websites to visit. Jason hartman.com, of course, properties there, software to help you track your investments there. Venture alliancemastermind.com for the Jekyll island trip. And here is Congressman J.C. watts. It's my pleasure to welcome former congressman of Oklahoma, former chairman of the Republican Conference for George W. Bush, the first African American elected to statewide office in Oklahoma, President and CEO of Feed the Children, co founder and co chair of the Coalition for AIDS Relief in Africa and founder and chairman of the lobbying firm J.C. watts Companies and Watts Consulting Group. You probably know who this is now, don't you? That's the largest African American owned lobbying company in Washington. He's also former Canadian Football League and Oklahoma Sooners quarterback, leading them to two Orange bowl championships and author of the new book Dig Deep. Seven Truths for Finding the Strength Within. And that is none other than Mr. J.C. watts. Welcome Congressman. How are you?

Jason? I'm doing well. Thank you very much for having me on. And let me give you a little color and insight on my new book, Dig Deep.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And I want to hear about your career. You've got such a long resume as well. Why didn't you retire after 10 years in the House in an era of career politicians?

Well, actually, you know, when I ran, Jason, I said I was going to run. I said I was going to serve three turns, actually served four. And after eight years I knew it was time for me to move on. I never meant to do it to have a career in politics or to build an empire. It really was public service. And you know, I, as you mentioned in my intro, I have served in many arenas. I've been in youth ministry, I've been in politics at the highest level. I've been in football at the highest level. I've owned my own business. I've been on the board of some fine companies in the US and there's one common thread in every one of those arenas and it's to cheer the crowd. And to cheer the crowd is, can be intoxicating and be very seductive. And it's more intoxicating and seductive in politics than any arena I've ever participated in. And so I had a lot of experience with the cheer the crowd. And you know, you can't overstay your welcome. And I was careful that I didn't do that and didn't become addicted to, you know, approval. And so I moved on after eight years and I've never looked back.

Yeah. So when you say cheer the crowd, just tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that.

Well, you know, it's the cheer, the crowd often encourages us to do what is popular as opposed to doing what is right. You know, in football, the fans don't always like it when you're only gaining 3 or 4 yards or gaining 6 yards. It's a whole lot more sexy when you're throwing a 50 yard bomb or you've got a 60 yard run. But in football, as in life, you're going to have a whole lot more five yard gains and you're going to have 50 yard gains. And, and so, you know, the cheer of the crowd says, hey, we want more. The cheer of the crowd says, you didn't vote the right way and we're going to vote you out. Well, because the cheer of the crowd thinks that it's wrong, it doesn't make it wrong. Or because the cheer of the crowd thinks that it's right, it doesn't make it right. And I think you have to come to whatever arena you're in, be it business, politics, athletics, ministry, you have to come to the table looking to do the right things. Not necessarily the, you know what the cheer the crowd tells you to do, you know, the cheer the crowd will tell you that you're all of that. And you start thinking, man, I'm pretty good. And Jason, I've seen it in the ministry, I've seen it in athletics. I've seen in every arena that I've been in. And when I see someone that thinks that they're all of that, I could just hear my grandmother saying, boy, you might be some of that, but you ain't never all of that. So it's a good reminder.

Yeah, that's for sure. That is a wonderful, grounded perspective for today's world, JC it's really great to hear that. So, okay, so you got out after, you know, a fairly short time by most people's standards. And what was next for you? Did you start your, I mean, is your main business your lobbying firms, your lobbying and consulting, or is it authorship and, you know, being a thought leader or what's your main thing, if you will?

Well, it's not actually. It's only a portion of my income. I'm in the John Deere business. Own a couple of John Deere stuff stores down in Texas. I still get to preach about eight to 10 times a year around the country somewhere. I'll do eight to 10 current affairs speeches around the country every year. I'm in the cattle business. I mean, I do several different things in order to keep my house payment made. But you know, on the consulting side, the lobbying side, because I left public service, didn't mean that there were not issues or cause issues that I was concerned about. So I am still concerned about tax issues. I don't think we need more taxes. I think we need more taxpayers. So what do you do to help create more taxpayers? You work in the government to create an environment that people can invest their money and get a good return. And it's, you know, it's not over regulation, over litigation, over taxation. You create that type of environment, you'll create more taxpayers. And so if you create an environment that's hostile to investment capital, that investment capital, it won't come to Oklahoma, it won't come to Missouri, it'll go to Texas. If Texas does it, it'll go to Arkansas. If Arkansas does it, it'll go to Kansas. But if you create a, maybe it'll.

Go to Luxembourg or maybe it'll go to some other offshore tax haven.

Exactly. It'll even go overseas, you bet. And so I've still been involved in some of those issues on the consulting side, but it is only a fraction of my. Of my total income.

Yeah, well, that's a very good thing. And I love the way you say that, J.C. you don't want to create higher taxes, you want to create more tax taxpayers. And so many politicians, especially on the left, you know, they just don't understand that this is not a zero sum game. It's not about the way the government gets more money, is not by raising taxes, it's by increasing the size of the economy and increasing the number of taxpayers and really maybe their revenue. So at that's so true. You know, I did a speech for our last event called entitled you can't hear the dogs that don't bark, based off Sherlock Holmes and that story about the dog that didn't bark because, you know, the dog knew the killer. And that's what's so true in life. You know, when you, when you raise taxes and capital flees, or maybe people just think, why should I try? I'm just going to give it all to the government. That's the other thing. You don't hear that. That's not quantifiable, but it is most definitely true. Right?

No, no question. No question. And you know, Jason, I did not the book dig deep. I didn't write it as a political book. I actually wrote it as, you know, just kind of looking at my experiences and my circumstances that I've had to deal with and the different arenas that I've been in, from ministry to athletics. To politics, to business, to, you know, owning my own business. I wrote about my circumstances and my experiences, but the principles that I talk about, they are woven into the fabric of the earth. And if you are to stand on the mountaintop, it doesn't matter if you're red, yellow, brown, black or white, liberal or conservative, there are going to be times in your life, in your business, in your personal life, in your. In your faith life and your. Whatever you're doing. There's going to be times that you're going to have to dig deep and call on, you know, summon the best of who we are and lunge ourselves into our, our current circumstances to fight another day, to play another couple of downs, to work through the bad business deal, work through the struggles you have in marriage. And so there are principles out there that a dysfunctional world. I am dysfunctional. You're dysfunctional. We're all dysfunctional. It's just a matter of being. But we in being dysfunctional, that's not, that's, that's not the bad thing in living life. The bad thing is when we make our dysfunction our normal. And, and that, that's when we get ourselves in trouble when we say, well, that's just the way I am. When you hear someone saying, that's just the way I am, what they're saying is, I don't want any accountability ever, correct me? And humility is not a part of their DNA. And I think, you know, that that combination, Jason, is bad for someone running for dog catcher, let alone someone to be, you know, the leader of the free world, to run a country. That's a very dangerous demeanor, in my opinion. When a person says, that's just the way I am, they usually say, I'm not looking for personal growth.

Right, right. Yeah, that's, that's as if they're fixed or something. And nobody is fixed in being a certain way. What tell us about, Take us through some of these seven steps. Not all of them. Maybe we. Because we won't have enough time, but just highlight a couple of your favorite or maybe a couple that you think apply the most today, especially in the political scene, because you've got so much background there.

Well, yeah, I do talk about seven principles in D and D, but one of the principles I talk about is adversity. Jason, you're going to have it. I'm going to have it. Life can be difficult. As I said, life can be messy, and life happens. And when I was elected to state office back in 1991, the agency that I was Elected into was under an investigation. I had done nothing wrong. I was. I mean, it was two years prior to me being there. And all of a sudden, I find myself on the evening news, on the radio and the TV about three or four times a week. And it was a very painful time. And I remember today, I look back on that, and I don't look at what it did to me. I look at what that time did for me. I grew in my adversity. I've learned a whole lot more in football when I've lost than when I've won. And all suffering. And because we suffer, it doesn't mean that we are defeated. So adversity can be good for us if we'll keep our eye on the prize and like I said, lunge ourselves or plunge ourselves into our circumstances and fight another day and fight another week and fight another month. So that was one of the principles and another principle I talked about is unlearning. Jason. We carry old traditions around with us, and traditions in and of themselves, they're not bad in and of themselves, but traditions can also lock us into not going to the next level in our mental and our physical and our spiritual growth. And I know in terms of wellness, I mean, I've had to unlearn a lot of. Of bad eating habits. And I thought, well, you know, that's the way I ate when I grew up, and that's what my culture. That's the way we cooked food, and that's the way we ate food. And again, because you've done it a certain way for 40 years doesn't mean you've done it right. And so unlearning all. Unlearning bad habits for that, that can be tough because, you know, we say, hey, well, my, My, my, my. My mother's mother's mother did it this.

Way, and that's the way we do it.

That's the way she did it. And you know, my grandfather's grandfather. Grandfather, that's the way he did it. Well, it doesn't make it right because we've done it a certain way for the last 40 years. So unlearning and rethinking is critically important for us to, you know, to do life better. And that's really what the book is about. It's. It's about doing life better. Just taking my circumstances, my stories, and, and hopefully people can take the wisdom that I gained from. From those things, and it will be beneficial and helpful to them.

Yeah, yeah, good advice, good advice. You know, unlearning things and understanding that adversity can really be the call to greatness. I mean, we humans are so much stronger than we think we are. It is amazing how when we conquer a few adversities, then we'll experience that same adversity down the road a bit, and we'll think, this is nothing. I can handle this. I did this. I've been here, done this, no problem. It's really incredible.

You know, Jason, George Bernard Shaw, he said. And then I mentioned in chapter three that talk about unlearn and rethink. George Bernard Shaw, he said that progress is impossible without change. And those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. And I just think it's important that when you come to the table or you say that, hey, Jason, there's only room for one opinion in this boat. And guess who's wrong. I mean, how many. How many times have we done that? And we often draw those conclusions just based on the fact that I've been doing it a certain way for so long. I remember when I was a youth pastor, I'd gone to the deacon body and the pastor and the youth met with, you know, in what we call the big service on Wednesday nights. And so I went to the pastor and the board and the deacon body and I said, I would like to separate out from the main service and have the youth do our own thing on Wednesday nights. And I remember one of the deacons said, well, you know, brother, watch. We. We've been doing it like this for the last 20 years. And. And I wanted to say, well, maybe we've been doing it wrong for those. I talked them in allowing us to do that. And Jason, we went from about 17 to 20 on Wednesday nights to where we were doing about 90 to 100, just because we, you know, we were appealing strictly to the youth, and we changed our model and we changed our thinking. And the young people thought, you know, they're having something especially for us on Wednesday night. And our youth group just exploded. And so, again, if we would have locked ourselves into. Or the pastor would have locked himself and the Beacon body would have tried to lock themselves into saying, we don't want to change because we've been doing it like this for so long, we probably would have sat at, you know, 20 to 25 on Wednesday nights for the whole time I was there. So. So change it necessarily a bad thing. If you're changing into a good model, change for the sake of change, that necessarily mean, you know, doing it, doing it better. But, you know, if, you know, change for. For you know, to a better model and to a better way of thinking. Boy, that. That's when you really find your sweet spot in life, right?

Yeah, that's for sure. You're the president and CEO of Feed the Children and talk to us a little bit about the nonprofit world, if you would, and your experience there. So many of these things just turn into either exercises in ego gratification or. And you've alluded to that before, when you talked about cheer the crowd or they become really scams where the people heading these groups just. They siphon the money off the top and live this lavish life lifestyle. We've all heard of these scandals. Do you see a lot of that? And, you know, what do you. What do you think about that world? And how do you. How do you fix nonprofit. There's just. Maybe those are. Those questions are too big, possibly, but I just wanted to throw them out there.

And. Well, well, I. I don't think you're. You're out of bounds simply because I think in every arena that I've participated in today, you know, some people would say that anybody that's in politics today, they're bad. Vote them out. I don't think because a politician, you know, a bad politician, and that. That makes all bad politics, all politicians bad. I know ministers that, you know, in a fallen world that, you know, they. They've had difficulties now because one minister does it. I don't believe all pastors are bad. That makes them all bad football players the same way I've seen football players that fall and get in trouble and fall into difficulties. But I don't think all football players are like that. So I do think we have to be careful that we don't paint with a broad brush. But my mission, when I became President, CEO of Feed the Children on February 1, I said, you know, we want transparency and we want people to feel like if they invest and feed the children or if they sow seed and to feed the children, that is fertile soil to sow into. And I think it is. You know, they've had some challenges over the last four or five years. I want to get them back to the glory days of priests. 2011, 2012. And I think we can. We do a lot of great things in dealing with. Dealing with poverty and dealing with hunger. About 90% of our resources we deploy here in the United States. But we are, Jason, in about 10 countries, and every day we feed 263,000 kids overseas. And last year, in 2014, I'm sorry, 2015, we fed about 9 million kids in the United States of America. So obviously, a lot to do and a lot to be done. And hunger and poverty does exist. And one final thought on that. You know, Jason, many of us, you and I both can say or could say we've skipped meals or we've gone without a meal, but neither of us could probably say we've not known or could be able to say that we didn't know where our next meal was coming from. That's never been a part of our equation. We might have skipped a meal, but there was no concern that we didn't know where our next meal was coming from. Well, there are kids in the United States and obviously abroad. They live under those circumstances every day. And feed the children is at the tip of a spear around the world and around the United States and trying to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry.

Yeah, absolutely. Any other of the seven things that you want to talk about?

Well, you know, another one that I've really learned from, I told you that when I was elected to state government, I, you know, got dragged into an investigation, and it was very painful. And after I'd been elected to Congress, I mean, that stuff, you know, followed me, and my opponents tried to use it against me. Of course, my margin of victory continued to go up because people knew that finally concluded that it was, it was political. But the gentleman that kind of dragged me into that, I left, went to Congress, and all of a sudden I'm thinking I'm supposed to apologize to him. And Jason, I went through some serious battles with myself and with God. And I'm saying, God, why should I apologize to him? I did nothing to him. And so finally I gave in and I went to him and I said, hey, when I left this place, the heart that I had for you was, was, was not Christian. And, and I said, I beg your forgiveness. I ask you to forgive me. And, and one of the reasons that I fought that so hard is because I thought forgiving him would make him right. But giving him didn't make him right. It made me free. And, and, you know, we go around with unforgiveness in our heart. And you know, Bill, as the old saying goes, unforgiveness leads to anger, anger leads to bitterness, and bitterness leads to hatred. And Reverend King said, no man should drive you to hate him because, you know, it puts us in a, in a prison that, you know, that person controls our emotions, controls so much about our lives. And your listeners to today, I would encourage them to think about this. They probably, if you've got listeners that's my age, 58 years old, they probably have someone that hurt their feelings or did something to them in high school.

Oh, we, we all have that.

No, no question. We all do. And though. And just the mention of that person's name puts a burr under our saddle and just ruins our day and just, you know, messes with our emotions and, you know, unforgiveness is no different than Jason drinking poison and thinking it's going to kill me or me drinking poison and thinking is going to kill somebody else. It doesn't. It kills the person who's not forgiving.

Right. You're right. And that's a famous, I think, conflict. Confucius said something like that many, many, many eons ago. So I want to ask you a question about that, though, because a lot of people say that. So here's an odd counter question. I know we gotta wrap up, but is there ever a time when it's appropriate not to forgive people? I think there is. I think there are. There are certain circumstances in life where forgiveness is overrated, if you will. Well, you know, but I totally see your point.

I want you to understand my standard is God's word. Now, are there times that we don't want to forgive? Will it happen overnight? But let me tell you, I know people who allow people who are dead that. To control their emotions because they said something or they did something. Now, I'm not saying that it's. That it's easy, but I'm saying that if we are to go to the next level in terms of our mental and our physical and our spiritual growth, especially in our, in our, in that one spiritual leg of our tripod, if we are going. Or to go to the next level, forgiveness, that. That's a part of it. And, and it's, it's. It frees the soul going around with that, with that luggage. I mean, I had Guy Jason when I first ran for office, Oklahoma University had, in a, in a span of 45 days, several different incidents on campus in athletic dorm to where three guys, three black guys were involved in a raping incident. One black guy, one black player shot another black player. And then the starting quarterback was on the front of Sports Illustrated in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs on, having been busted for selling drugs. Now, when I ran for office, I had a guy, a white banker there in Norman, Oklahoma, that said when he heard I was running, he said, hey, people are sick of blacks and they're sick of football players. Did that sting? It did But I had no reason not to forget him. I had no reason to hold that against him. I had, you know, there's two things that I can control in my life. I can control my work ethic and I can control my attitude. And let me tell you, it takes a whole lot bigger person, and we may not recognize this at the outset of me saying this. It takes a much bigger person to turn over cheek and forgive than it does not to give, not to forget. And when that, when you truly forgive, I'm telling you, you a person will see the exponential growth in their spiritual lives, in their, in their personal development. And you know, politics today, that's one of the things that hinders politics. It's, you know, we don't say in politics. The handbook no longer says, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The handbook today says do it to them before they do it to you. That's kind of the policy in politics. And where has that gotten us? I mean, it's gotten us to a point that we, that we are very sarcastic. We're very not sarcastic, but very cynical. I've not watched a Republican debate probably in four months because there's all I, I, I, me, me, me. It's, it's, it's, it's about you did. It's a reality, I'm gonna do it to you. Yeah, it's almost like a reality show. And so I, I would ask the voters, where has that gotten us? You know, just holding on to those grudges and that I'm gonna get him back and I'm gonna get her back. And she did it to me, I'm gonna do it to her. You know, it kind of reminds me of 8 year olds, 9 year olds, the way they operate. But anyway, getting back to directly back to forgiveness, I'm not saying it's not difficult and I'm not saying that it's easy, but it really is the best model.

Good stuff. Well, J.C. give out your website, if you would. Of course. The book was just released. It's on Amazon, number one in categories you didn't even expect. So congratulations on that.

Well, thank you.

What's your website though, or Twitter handle where people can follow you?

Well, it's on. I'm not a social media guy, Jason. I'm still pretty old school. I've got a 6G phone that I'd probably do okay with a 1G, but nevertheless, you can go to regularly Faith and they'll have it listed there. You can buy the book at obviously Amazon costco has it, Barnes and Noble, they've got it and we are in discussions for Walmart and hopefully they'll have it in the next week.

Well jc, thanks again for joining us and keep up the good work.

Good talking with you Jason. Thank you sir for having me on.

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