Hard Truths America Needs to Hear Unfiltered with Dr. Phil, Robin McGraw, and Joe Polish

And we're cheating these kids, these concierge parents who are smoothing the road in front of them. We're raising a generation of kids that don't have the self image and the self worth necessary. They're living on their phones watching people live their lives instead of living their lives. I guarantee you nothing great in your life is ever going to happen watching a 2 inch screen. And that's what's happening in this country right now. There is a big difference between headship and leadership, I'm afraid. We see a lot of that in our government right now. We got a whole lot of people that we've got charged with solving problems who just aren't problem solvers. And when you've got people charged with solving problems that aren't problem solvers and aren't even motivated to solve problems, you have government shutdowns and shit like that. So that's a problem. You know, I've spoken out about anti Semitism in this country. I spoke out about October 7th. This was a horrible thing. And we have students on campus that are celebrating a terrorist organization. We're hearing things that are worse than you heard in the Nazi use camps. I said this is disgusting. It's horrible and we should stand up against this. You have no idea the death threats. It's. I have 24 hour armed security at all times because of the stand I've taken against the anti Semitism against the Jewish community. I'm not Jewish. I'm just a country boy from Texas. I do know right and wrong when I see it. Do I like seeing death in Gaza? Of course not. That's horrible. I spoke out about anti Semitism and what we were seeing on our campuses. And I continue to speak out about it. We have to be under 24 hour armed guard and are right now as we sit here today.

How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish Show. Any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network.

How's everybody doing? Good.

Well, how cool is this?

Right?

You know, you can get. There's all kinds of people you can get here, but this is like, this is total game changer stuff. So. Well, let me start with this because here's one of the things. By the way, I'm giving everyone a copy. This is what's hidden in this little blue bag. Here is one of the most incredible books that I think you're ever going to read. And it's called We Got how youw Can Stand Strong for American soul insanity. Dr. Phil's latest book you're all going to get a copy of.

Has.

It has a QR code on it. I want you to download the audio version of it. Because he read his own book and he just got the best awesome reading voice. And Robin opens up every chapter, so you definitely want to get a copy of the audio version, too. And one of the things you talk about in the book, I'll start with you, then I'm going to ask you both some questions, is leadership in headship. And I thought, what an interesting distinction because we have a room full of very successful entrepreneurs that are leaders. And this group represents reaching millions of people. And I think it's a great distinction because there's a lot of people that have been put in a position of leadership that aren't really leaders.

Yeah, there is a difference between leadership and headship. Headship is when you are assigned a position of authority, power and control. And leadership is when you have earned a position of power, leadership and control. And you might, you know, somebody might come in and say, okay, I'm picking you. You're going to run this division. You're going to run this company, you're going to run this. But the workforce, the people, even the customers, don't acknowledge that that's the person to go to. And you'll see in an organization that that's not who people turn to when they want to know what to do. That's not who people turn to when they're looking for answers. What they do is they go to the old gray dog, maybe they go to the person that's been there who really knows how to fix things, really knows how things work and have earned the respect of the people that know really how things work. And they go to this person. So you see it a lot in the military. You'll have some young captain come in or whatever, but they'll go find the sergeant when they want to live. They'll go find somebody who knows how to get them the hell out of there with everything intact. So there is a big difference between headship and leadership. And I'm afraid we see a lot of that in our government right now. We got a whole lot of people that we've got charged with solving problems who just aren't problem solvers. And when you've got people charged with solving problems that aren't problem solvers and aren't even motivated to solve problems, you have government shutdowns and shit like that. So that's a problem.

Yeah, totally. What are your thoughts on leadership?

Well, I think it's Very important to have a leader in charge, of course, someone that is in control, that it doesn't matter if it's in the workplace or in the family even. And it's of course very important that those leaders in the family, that there can be more than one, but they should be working together.

So let me ask you. So there's this line in, you often hear in 12 step groups that says God never gives you more than you can handle. And rehab centers and hospitals are filled with people that got more than they could handle and prisons are. And so what do you say to someone who's in a position that it's overwhelming, they do not know what to do and they're feeling totally lost. Because for however many years you've been doing the Dr. Phil show, you have had thousands of these sort of conversations and tried to direct people. So I'd like to hear from both of you what, you know, what do you say to that person? Because every one of us, I think, has some area where we just don't know what to do.

Well, you know, to me you have to decide as an individual where you're trying to get. And I think a lot of people don't know. When you say I don't know what to do, they can't answer the question, what do you want? And if I went through this group right now and asked people, what do you want? You'd get a lot of different answers because people have different kinds of currency. When you ask somebody, what do you want? What does that mean? People say, well, I want to be happy. Well, hell, my dog wants to be happy. What does that mean? What do you want? When you ask somebody what they want, there are different kinds of currency. There's monetary currency, social currency, spiritual currency. There's all different kinds of currency. And oftentimes it's difficult to help somebody if they don't know what success looks like. They don't know. And you know, a lot of people will tell you, well, I don't want to jinx myself, so I don't want to talk about success. But a true champion, somebody that really is going to succeed, can tell you exactly, precisely what success looks like, feels like, smells like, who's going to be there, who's going to be standing there when they get to that place. And I've dealt with over 20,000 people on the Dr. Phil platform. And the number one challenge I have is people don't really know what success looks like in their life. And for some reason, I really know what the reason is. I Don't know why. I say for some reason, I know exactly what the reason is. But Since I've been 12 years old, when I was 12 years old, I started focusing on why people do what they do and don't do what they don't do. Now think about that for a minute, if you would. If you understand why people do what they do and don't do what they don't do, you've got a big advantage in life. But you really have to understand their motivations. And if you think about it, if somebody's, like, selling you a car, don't you want to know their motivations? I mean, like, if it's their car, if it's a mechanic and he's telling you, oh, yeah, this is a good car, and he's got an investment in it, if he makes money if you buy it and not if you don't, you want to know that. That's obvious. But everybody needs to understand why people are doing what they're doing, what's their motive behind it. And if you understand that, if you understand what's driving them, what's making them tick, what's making you tick, you have a huge advantage in life, a huge advantage over the rest of the world. But nobody focuses on that enough. We don't teach people that in school. We don't teach our kids to understand motivation. We don't teach people to really focus on motivation and why people do the things they do or why they don't do. How many diets have you started and quit? How many New Year's resolutions did you start and quit? I mean, 90% of them are done by the first of February. So I bought these jogging shoes. I put them on the porch. The damn things won't jog. And we don't know why we start and then quit. We don't know why we start and then fail. And if you ever figure that out, if you break that code, man, it changes your life in a fast hurry. And I've been focused on that since I was 12.

Are you constantly surprised as to why people do what they do or don't? Or do you believe most of the time you're able to get to the core?

They can get to the core, but they've got to be honest with themselves. They got to be authentic about themselves. Robin, this is the most authentic woman I have ever met in my life, from the day I wish we started dating when she was 19 and I was 22, just turned 22. I've been bald since I was 12. By the way. So, yes, the first time I went to Dad, I love bald. Thank God.

Thank God.

The first day I went to pick her up for a date, I knocked on the door. Her dad opened the door and said, no, just shut the door. And went back and sat his ass down in the recliner. He didn't tell her I was there. He just went and sat down, and I stood there for about 20. We didn't have cell phones or anything. I just sat. He didn't tell her I was there. He didn't tell her. He sent me away. He just went and sat back down in his recliner and started watching tv.

I still lived at home, and his sister introduced us.

Yeah, I stood there about 15, 20 minutes, thought that wasn't a joke. He's not going to tell her.

He thought he was.

I knocked on the door again and I knocked and I knocked. Finally she came to the door and she said, you're late. And I said, no, I'm not. I've been here 20 minutes. Your asshole father said, no and shut the door.

And then I shut the door.

He thought I was like 35 or something. We were only three years difference. But seriously, this is the most authentic woman I've ever. She told me. Well, on her first date, she told me we were going to get married. Or she implied as much.

I didn't tell him we were going to get married. I just said, how do you feel about marriage?

Yeah, right. We were standing in front of a church.

It was our third date.

I shit you not. We were standing in front of a church.

No, it wasn't.

I said, let's take a walk. We were standing in front of a church, and she said, how do you feel about marriage? I looked at a church. I said, now, I mean, I thought.

My God, third day, not first date. But I really, really wanted to know because I knew he wasn't the one. So I said, how do you feel about marriage? I wasn't going to waste my time.

Yeah, we obviously did get married. We'll be married 50 years next August.

How long were you dating before you got married?

Three years.

Three years.

Okay. Oh, I got to tell you this. I said, look, let me at least get a marketable degree before we get married. She said, well, when is that? I said, well, I get my master's degree. August 14, 1976. Ask me when we got married. August 14, 1976. They were walking the stage, I was walking the aisle.

Wow.

Didn't waste any time.

I waited three years.

Yeah.

Do you know the Number one, cause of divorce. You guys, don't give it away. You've all heard this. It's easier to find a new audience than a new joke. And I was like, who's the best person?

Yeah.

Number one, cause of divorce is marriage.

Yeah. I don't know what we were talking about.

It was the third date.

Wow.

Well, okay, so what do you guys do when you're bickering or arguing or whatever? How do you resource yourself?

Because here's the question. Yeah, People don't believe this, but we really don't bicker and argue. We don't get in big screaming fights. Let me put it that way. We disagree and we get mad. And we went through a period where I would pout and not speak to him for a couple of days in the beginning. So all of that, because it worked. When I was growing up with my father, I could pout. And then I got my way. The youngest of five, twin brother. We were the twins and the babies, and all of that worked. And I tried it on him. Even though we had dated for three years and we went through. We did do our homework before we got married and we discussed, you know, what kind of marriage we wanted to have, what we were looking for in a partner. We wanted our marriage to last. And so I said, here are deal breakers for me. He said the same thing. So we really did our homework, and we didn't want a hostile environment. We didn't want screaming and yelling. Both of us grew up with alcoholic fathers. Very different alcoholic fathers. My father would never. I never saw my father take a drink. He would just not come home. So he went off to have his binge. And because he golfed on the weekends and we were very poor, he'd go to a different public golf course with his friends and play golf and then gamble what little money we had and then just not come home for a couple of days. So I grew up with a life of uncertainty because we never knew if he was coming home or if this was the weekend, because he didn't do it every weekend. His father drank at home in front of them and was very hostile and belligerent, and he. So on our first date, I asked him, how do you feel about alcohol? Because I was probably 11 or 12 years old and made a decision one night.

Not on our first date, she wasn't.

No, no, no, no. But he joked about marriage on the first date. My question on our first date was, how do you feel about drinking alcohol? And he said, I actually think I'm allergic to alcohol. I said, oh, I think I love you.

Wow.

Because when I was 12 years old, after a very bad evening, not with my father, but with his drinking buddies knocking on the door, I made a decision. I would never marry a man who drank alcohol, and I would never raise my children in a home with an alcoholic. And I was very, very serious. So on our first date, I asked him, how do you feel about drinking alcohol? And he's never had a drink since that day. And it's not really because of the way I felt about a man who drank alcohol. It was a decision he had made long before I met him.

This was all standing in front of the church, by the way.

I don't think it was.

But anyway, bright light.

We're old now, so I can't remember everything, but I do remember those two questions. So.

Wow.

Okay. We did make a decision not to scream and yell because of how he grew up and that my parents didn't scream and yell. My mother was an angel on earth, and I didn't have that type of childhood. So we both agreed that, you know, we're not like saints or anything. Like, I get really mad at him or really upset with him, and he knows it, but we dispute, discuss it eventually. And.

Yeah, when the. When the sentence begins. Now listen.

Now listen.

Yeah, you know, you.

That was not okay.

Have you ever said to her, how's that working out for you?

Oh, hell no.

Do not Dr. Phil me.

That's a good point. Don't Dr. Phil me. You ever say that to him? Does he like going there?

Yeah, I've become a. I've become a verb in America and in my own home. Yeah. Do not.

Married, 49, almost 50, and he hasn't been Dr. Phil the whole time. So when he became Dr. Phil and he tried one time to Dr. Phil. No, don't Dr. Phil me. We need to make that very clear.

Are there any Dr. Philisms that are in the culture on memes, whatever, that you wish did not exist?

Well, you know, people talk about Dr. Look, I'm just from Texas, and that's just how I grew up. I don't, like, make this. These things up. I just say what's on my mind at the time. So then people pick this stuff up and turn it into memes and stuff. That's just the way I grew up.

It's really his thinking and his personality, and I think they're hilarious.

How much of it?

He's a very funny man. I'm sorry.

No, he is funny.

He is a very funny man. He's hilarious. Very funny.

Do you consider her funny?

Is she funny? Oh, yeah. That's one of the things I attribute success in our marriage to, is to this day, she cracks me up. I don't know why.

I love.

She doesn't try to. She just does.

Do either one of you try to, like, jump out and scare each other during doing laundry or something?

Oh, hell no. No.

Oh, he did that one time when we were first together. First married in college in a small apartment. I was. Do you want to hear the story?

Sure.

Can I tell? Okay. We had a little one bedroom apartment. He had a night class. And I'm at home cleaning that apartment, and I'm cleaning the sink in a little tiny bathroom. And he's very sweet. He was coming home and he thought. And they had just planted the flower beds on campus, and he had a bicycle that he traveled on, and he was traveling by this flower bed. I probably shouldn't tell it, but he's traveling. I'm doing it. And he saw these beautiful geraniums that, you know how they smell. But anyway, he reaches down and grabs one whole bunch, and it was wet dirt because they really had just planted them. And he grabs it up, he goes, I'm taking these drop. And he puts them in his backpack. Mud.

That's theft.

I know. But Eddie comes home, he's so proud, and he was going to surprise me with him. And I'm like this cleaning. I look up in the mirror, and he's like leading into the doorway. It's just his head and the geraniums scared me to death. And he just knows better than to scare me because I.

You probably went off, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow. Okay.

You don't want the wrath of Robin is what she's basically saying. So here's. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you some real important, what I consider important, significant questions about the state of America and the world that I think you are well equipped to. To not only answer, but guide and direct and help us to how to think about it and what to do with it. And your book. We've got issues. Where is Wes at? Wes? Is he in the room somewhere? Okay. You know, it's funny you didn't know that Dr. Phil was coming today, and I had suggested. Can we grab him a mic real quick? Cause. Did you read the whole book? Do you mind running up real quick? Because he sent me a text last night and. And he's like, you know, I. Whatever you say. I guess I can read the text. But he was talking about Dr. Phil's book. And I was like, boy, he's going to be so surprised when he see tomorrow Dr. Phil shows up in person.

But what were you.

What were you saying to me?

Yeah, sorry, I have a cold. That's why. Yeah, I just got an iv. Cherie, your people are brilliant. But I texted him and I said that it was probably one of the best books I've ever read.

Yeah, thanks, dad. And.

But I would say, I mean, your depth of knowledge, not just on the human condition, but also world politics and how different things all over the globe and the different people and the way they think about stuff and their own trauma is, you know, it's broad. I never would have guessed just from watching the Dr. Phil Show. Brilliant.

Thank you.

Thank you. And here's the point on this, though, is that I first read Life Strategies when it came out in 1999, I believe it was, and I still have the original copy. And then Relationship Rescue, which is like, your books are really good. And I've thought about this a lot, going. Okay. In the entrepreneurial world, how many people actually look at Dr. Phil as someone who would guide and direct, like, founders and entrepreneurs? And that book is so damn good that once I read it, I mean, we spent four hours together at your office in Dallas, and I appreciate all the time you gave us. We were there with Pardis and with Whitney and Dre Redfern and Jeff Hayes. Where's Jeff Hayes at? He's in here somewhere. Right there. And Lou. And so we flew up there. We'd just done a premiere of the Maha film, which aired the night before the first premiere, that of Jeff's films, and we go and visit Dr. Phil. I thought we'd be there like an hour. We spent four hours together, and I was like, man, this man is incredible. And then we had a tour of your studio. And, I mean, just the stuff you've accomplished. I was like, I don't often hear entrepreneurs associating Dr. Phil with, like, leadership principles. And it's one of the best, if not the best, leadership book I think I've ever read. And it also is current, and it's more important right now than ever. And so that was one of my motivators of wanting you to come here to, for one, talk about what are the issues we got, and then let's get into what to do about it.

Well, you know, I do think we're at a critical point in this country right now. And I'm sure you could have said that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And everybody thinks that's probably the most pivotal moment. And so I'm sure that. I just think that, because this is the moment that I'm in. But I think we're really fighting for our country right now. And I really believe that the family unit is the backbone of any society. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not political. People see me with President Trump or whatever, and so they make up their mind that that's where I stand. But I'm really pretty apolitical. I focus on cultural issues, and I think the family is the backbone of any society, any culture, and I think it is in America. And I think the family unit has really been under attack in this country right now. And like church membership, for example, has dropped below 50% for the first time in our country's history. And I think that's important because that's one of the mainstays of family. They join churches as a family and they take time as a family. And we're a very mobile society right now. And I read a study recently that said parents right now are spending more time with their children, even in a double income society, than they were spending with their children back in the 70s when at least one parent was at home and not working outside the home. Yet children are doing worse the more time parents are spending with them right now. Now think about that. The more time parents are spending with the kids, the worse the children are doing. Now what's that tell you about the quality of parenting right now? We've got the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness among our young people since records have been kept. Now why is that? And I think it's because we have parents that are trying to protect their children from a scary world right now and not preparing their children for the next level of life, which is the prime directive of a parent. You know, think about how you learn about yourself, how about your company, and how people within your company learn about themselves. They learn about themselves by watching what they do. You go out into the world and you overcome an obstacle. You face a problem and you knock it down and you look at yourself and go, hey, I did that. So I attribute to myself the qualities of being able to do that. I attribute to myself the traits and characteristics of being able to handle a bully at school, being able to face a crisis at work, solve the problem, and move on to the next thing. I attribute to myself those traits and characteristics. If you cheat the child out of ever having the opportunity to observe themselves doing that, what's their self Image based on what is their body image, their self image, their self worth. And we're cheating these kids, these concierge parents who are smoothing the road in front of them. We're raising a generation of kids that don't have the self image and the self worth necessary. They're living on their phones, watching people live their lives instead of living their lives. Nothing great ever happened on a 2 inch screen. I guarantee you nothing great in your life is ever going to happen watching a 2 inch screen. And that's what's happening in this country right now. So they're getting cheated out of the opportunity to learn what they can do and what they can't do. And let me tell you, you come out of that with a damaged personal truth. And the important thing about that is you generate the results in life you think you deserve. So if you've got a damaged personal truth, then you're going to generate the results that go with being a second class citizen. And so if you think you're damaged, you're going to generate second class results. Your employees are going to do it. You're going to do it. I grew up with a damaged personal truth. Like Robin said, my father was a violent drunk. I never knew where I was going to come home. The utilities were going to be on, the windows were going to be kicked out of the house. What was going and what we do, the mistake we make. And check yourself because I guarantee you, you've done this. And if your kids are doing it, it's terrible. We compare our personal truth with everybody else's social mask. I'd go to school, a kid next to me have on a, you know, press, clean shirt, bright shiny face. And I would compare my reality to his social mask and lose every time. And so you feel like, you know, that's for everybody else. Being happy is for everybody else, you know, having qualities for everybody else. And if I didn't repair that damaged personal truth, then I would have generated really second class results. And we've got to start, you know, a lot of groups in America are that way. Christians are that way. They kind of, you know, cower away. Our kids, if they don't feel like they're competent, you know, they're going to kind of cower. We got to teach these kids to be tough. We got to teach them to be competent. We got to teach them to do things that they can observe and go, wow, I did that. I handled that. And if you think about it, you've got to ask, am I doing that to my Kids. Has it been done? To me, we have to get tough and observe ourselves. And then a very important step. You got to take time to give yourself credit. Hey, I did that. I brought this company from the dead. I overcame this problem with my sister. I dealt with this stuff. And give yourself credit for having those competencies. And if you don't, then you got a damaged personal truth, and you'll generate results you don't want. That's critical right now in this country. It's critical in business. It's critical in life. It's critical in marriage. It's critical as a parent. And it's not selfish to put yourself first. And Robin has talked about that with women till she's blue in the face, and it's hard to get them to listen. It is, yes.

Yes. It's very, very important to me because I lost my mother. I was actually talking to her on the telephone, and she said, oh, I feel funny. I said, what do you mean by funny? And she was already dead. She died after she said it. And I thought we had just gotten disconnected. We had just moved in in the middle of the night, a rainstorm. We'd moved into an old house. We planned to refurbish and redecorate, whatever. And so I thought, oh, this house is so old. We got disconnected. And then the phone rang right again. And he had been to the grocery store to get some things for our son and breakfast, everything, whatever. He walked in about that time. As I picked the phone back up, I thought, oh, huge. She is. And it was my father screaming. And I handed it to Philip, I guess, picked it up. And so, long story short, we raced over there, and she never. She had already passed away. And the one thing I took from that, took many things, because I'm the woman I am today because of my mother in so many ways. But the one legacy I was not going to perpetuate was self neglect. Not putting myself first because my mother lived with an alcoholic and she raised five children. But she never put herself first. She never took herself to the doctor. She never, ever took care of herself or put herself first. It was always us, the family. And she died of undiagnosed heart disease. Had she gone to the doctor even one time, I think she'd still be alive today. I don't know. I was only 32 years old, and she died way too young at 58. I'm almost 72. And I just made a decision that day. I am going to take care of myself. I am going to put myself first. So I can take care of my family and those I love. And I'm going to be here for as long as I can. And our youngest son was born one year to the day she passed away. I am certain she sent him to us. So he just turned 39 and I'm still here parenting him together every day. Our oldest son is 46. We have four grandchildren. 15 and a half. 14. Four and three. Three of them she never got to meet. So, yes, I do not think it is selfish to put yourself first. The only person in this life, in your life I believe that you put first is one person, God. Other than that, no, it's not selfish to put yourself first because you have to do everything it is everything you can to be the healthiest, most thriving human on earth. So you can take care of everyone you love, do what you need to do to be here as long as you can. So that is something I can't give away what's written about, talk about as much as I can.

So earlier we, Cheryl, I was talking with her about energy, managing energy. So which I don't think there's time management, I think there's energy management. When you're engaged with something, are you depleted? There's that Bible verse, you can't fix the world with broken hands. So you're constantly, both of you are being given more options and more opportunities than most people by a factor of probably a thousandfold, just because of who you are and what you do. How do you decide what gets your attention, who gets your attention, what you say yes to, what you say no to? Because you're also in the positions of constantly helping people with everything that you do with your foundation, everything that you do with your show. I mean, it's, it's, it's a continual. How do you, how do you do this without becoming depleted?

Well, one thing you got to decide. And listen, I, if, if there's one thing that I would want people to come away with from here today, it's probably this. So I think you've asked the pivotal question. If you're not passionate about what you're doing, you need to find something that you are passionate about. And if you're lucky enough that your work and your passion are the same thing, then you really, you've hit the lottery. And again, I bring it back to family. People always talk about, yeah, kids don't listen. Maybe they don't listen, but they're always watching. And you gotta ask yourself, what kind of role model am I setting for my kids? If your Role model is you get up every day, you go to work, you come home, you're dragging in. How'd your day go? Terrible. What'd you do? Nothing. Well, how you like your job? Hate it. You're just telling them you work all your life, you get an education or do whatever you do, and then you sell out and go do something you don't want. That's terrible. You gotta find passion. And it's not just enough to find passion for yourself. It's gotta be infectious. You gotta make sure you surround yourself with people that share that passion. And if you don't, you're pushing a rock up a muddy hill by yourself. And that is no way to live your life. If you know, I work a lot right now, would you. That it's fair to say right now?

Yes. Yes, he does. And I'm so proud of him. I think he's brilliant.

But the thing is, if I don't have to work at all, if I never hit a lick of the snake for the rest of my life, I'll be fine. You know, I just. And I don't want to be with nothing to do. You know, if I'm just kind of hanging around the house, kind of like a duck. If it doesn't rain, I'll walk. What the hell kind of. What's that like? I mean, what's that about? You wake up every day, you got nothing to do, you got nothing you're excited about, nothing that challenges you, nothing that you feel called to do, nothing that you are pumped about. You gotta be passionate. And if you're passionate and you're surrounded by a nucleus of people that support your doing what you're doing because they share that, then it's, I've got one of those get to jobs, not one of those got to jobs, and that's what you're looking for. I've got a job that I get to do. Not that I've got to do. And not that every day is great. I mean, some days you wake up and go, holy God, I don't want to do this. But in the main, it's really a job that I feel privileged to get to do. And I said, there's a lot of different kinds of currency. It fills me up a lot of different ways. If you can make money, great. If you get the currency of achievement, that's great. If you get acknowledgement for it, great. If you feel spiritually fulfilled, that's great. But you do those things that you're passionate about and not those things that you Don't. Somebody else will be passionate about those things. And I learned to say no. And I have to say no to a lot of stuff. And I say no more than I say yes. Because I adopted a rule really early on in my organizations throughout life, and that is, I don't do anything somebody else can do because there are too many things that only I can do that I can do. So I don't do anything that somebody else can do. If somebody else can program their computers, then I don't do that because I got more to do that only I can do than I can do. So I do not do anything else somebody else can do. And trust me, that should be a rule. I mean, if you own your own company, if you're a leader, you should not do anything somebody else can do. You gotta delegate everything you can. If anybody else can do it, don't do it. And that's kept me going. I'll tell you.

When's the last time you did laundry?

Never. I'll go buy a shirt before I'll wash my.

Don't ask me that question.

Well, no. So Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, who are in the audience, they wrote a book called who not how, which. This guy over here came up at the first. It was, you know, instead of learning how to do something, you find the who. You've surrounded yourself with a lot of who's in life.

Yeah. And there are people that are very passionate about doing the laundry and take great pride in it. And that is not demeaning. I mean, there are people that love that and. And God bless him.

Ask me who steamed this jacket.

Okay, so, by the way, if you were ever in a situation where, like, you guys were stranded somewhere, would he be completely helpless or would he just start consulting with people and.

Oh, no, no, no, no. He's very competent and can take care of us. And we are a team. If we were stranded somewhere alone, we would get ourselves fed, that's for sure.

You know, when's the last time you, like, went camping or something?

And you built the last time I what camping?

Well, he went camping with the boys when they were young.

Okay.

So he. He will do what it takes. If the children needed it, you know, wanted to do it for fun, he wasn't going to deny them that pleasure. But to decide to go camping on his own, and he would not do that.

Gotcha.

Okay. All right. Yeah, my camping is. If the plane goes down, you got. Wait till they get there.

So. All right, so I'm going to ask you some questions. About what I think is some of the insanity that's going on, because I think culturally, you are. I mean, you just have a really good perspective on it. Well, I'll ask you this first, because I went through so many questions saying, what would be the most interesting things that I would love to hear from you guys? And what truth about human behavior have you discovered that most psychologists are too afraid to say out loud?

You know, probably that we tend to listen to the loudest voice, and that's a big mistake. Particularly in this day and time, you can't pay the most attention to the loudest voice because of what I call the tyranny of the fringe. You gotta ask yourself, what's going on? When we live in a country where our government guarantees us freedom of speech, so we start taking it away from each other. What the hell is up with that? We have a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, so we start taking it away from each other. You know, George Orwell wrote in 1948, what's going on right now? And we really have to stop and think. You look at the elite universities in the United States, what have been called elite universities. They list the top 50 universities in this country based on freedom of speech with a pretty good formula. It involves publications and polling the students, and they got to 50 and had to make a new category. For Harvard, it's like 51st. There is this suppression of ideas. People are afraid to speak up because it comes with a price. And I think that, you know, we've got the heckler's veto. We've got people signing petitions to keep folks off of campus that disagree with mindsets. And then you start having political violence like you have with Charlie Kirk. It doesn't matter whether you agree with Charlie Kirk or not. You have to disagree with the assassination of someone that has an idea that you might disagree with. That is a real bad sign. And I'm. I think we have such a fear of speaking out. I had a woman on my show by the name of Carol Hooven. Has anybody here heard of Carol Hooven? And that's scary, because this woman was a Harvard professor. I said, was. She came on to talk about transgender athletes. She didn't do the research. She did a meta analysis of over 50 other studies and just looked at the data. Just no preconceived ideas. Said, let's just look at the data and see if you can get through chemicals, testosterone blockers, hormone therapy, if you can level the playing field with biological males, with biological females, through all of these things. If you can get them leveled out. And she said, you just can't get there. A meta analysis of these really robust studies. It just says you can't get there. You can't change wingspan, you can't change lung capacity, you can't change recoverability. You just can't get there. And she just said, I didn't do the data. I'm just reporting on what the body of literature shows. So I'm just here to tell you what it says. Do with it as you will. Drummed her out of Harvard University After 20 years, every one of which she was on the list of the most sought after favorite professors in the university. Drummed her out of Harvard University. Hate speech, transphobe, all of these things against her for the things she just reported. Here's the data. Do with it as you will. And that makes people afraid to speak up.

Yeah, I've seen it happen here at asu, a thing called the Lewis center that my friend Ann Atkinson, she brought Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager and Robert Kiyosaki. Health, wealth and freedom, I think it was called.

You know, I've spoken out about anti Semitism in this country. I spoke out about October 7th and said this was a horrible thing. And we have students on campus that are celebrating a terrorist organization and we're hearing things that are worse than you heard in the Nazi use camps under Hitler. And I said, this is disgusting, it's horrible and we should stand up against this. You have no idea the death threats. I have 24 hour armed security at all times because of the stand I've taken against the anti Semitism against the Jewish community. I'm not Jewish, I'm just country boy from Texas. But I do know right and wrong when I see it. Do I like seeing death in Gaza? Of course not. That's horrible. But I spoke out about anti Semitism and what we were seeing on our campuses and I continue to speak out about it. We have to be under 24 hour armed guard and are right now as we sit here today.

So the Harvard example with that professor, how does that happen? Who in Harvard ultimately makes that decision? Or is there just so many people that collectively just have this worldview that it push?

I mean, they start petitions, they boycott the classes, they start writing to the president, the deans, they withdraw from the classes, they start petitioning other faculty members to call for her resignation, they challenge her tenure, they do all of this and finally they just say, you gotta go. Yeah.

And I mean, we've got issues. In your book, you showed dozens and dozens examples of this. But what I really love about what you're doing is you don't just identify the problem, you actually lay out solutions on what to do with it and how to do it. So how do we solve some of these things? What can everyone here do? Being an entrepreneur, leader of a company, clients a lot of influence in this room. What are some of the things that you would both recommend that would make things better?

I think, number one, we have to be who we are on purpose. I mean, think about that for a second. We're too reactive in our lives. We wake up and days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, months turn into years. Trust me. You may think this is not something that you want your organization to hear, but we're all in business for ourselves. Whether you like to hear that or not, we are. And if you don't think that's true, you're kidding yourselves. We're all in business for us, every staff member. I don't care if you work for the United States Post office and you're in rank and file civil service. You're all in business for yourself. Everybody is. And when you recognize that, then you start saying, okay, that plays into the care and feeding of my staff, my organization. What do they need to feel fulfilled? What do they need to know that they've got a shot? They've got a chance to be upwardly mobile, They've got a chance to succeed. And you got to be who you are on purpose. And that means. And when I say it's not just be who you are, but be who you are on purpose, have you really thought about what you think, what you care about, what your values are? And do you express that on purpose? Do you decide? I'm going to. I know what I think, I know what I feel, I know what I value. I know who I am. And I'm not going to be timid about it. I'm going to be who I am. And I know what that is. And I'm going to do it on purpose. And by God, I'm going to own it. By God, I'm going to own it. And let me tell you, they grade my paper every day. They grade my paper every day. They publish the ratings, they publish everything. And somebody's going to have a problem with what you do. No matter what it is. You can decide to go left, right, up, down, stay home and sleep, get up and go. No matter what you do, somebody's going to have a problem with it. So you might as well do what you want to do because somebody's going to have a problem with it no matter what you do. So you got to decide. I'm going to be who I am, which means you got to decide who that is. And then you got to do it with intention, you got to move with intentionality and do it on purpose. And you know, when I was younger, I would read all this stuff about philosophies and I always thought I must not be very deep because I don't have a philosophy. And then I started thinking, actually I do. I just haven't said it. Like you remember the day I got my PhD and we were in Denton, Texas at North Texas State University. Go Mean Green. They're actually winning games. But we came out and she said, well, okay, big boy, what are you going to do now? And I said, well, I don't know.

Say big boy. I said, sweetheart, I don't know.

But I can tell you what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to market my education in a traditional way. Whatever I do, I don't want to be a face in the crowd. I'm going to do. I want to market my education in a non traditional fashion. That was my commitment from the day I got my PhD and I got trained in clinical psychology and medical psychology at the same time. And then I did a year's postdoctoral fellowship in forensic psychology, which turned out to be a good thing because I had no intention of ever being on television. But if you're going to do it, it's great to have a really broad lane so you don't start lapping yourself right away. But I said, I'm going to market my education in a non traditional way. And I wasn't sure what that was going to be. But I didn't want to be a corner therapist. And thank God for corner therapists. We need more of them and I have so much respect for them. But it wasn't me. I was going to do things in a different way. And I've done that from the beginning. And that's who I am. I do that on purpose. I own it on purpose. And when I started doing it on television, I had critics who said, not sure he ought to be doing that on television. But even the critic said, not sure he ought to be doing it, but he does get it right. Not sure he should be doing it at all, but he does get it right. He does his homework and what he says is right. And then five or six years later, they gave me a presidential citation from the American Psychological association saying you've made psychological services and ideation more accessible to more people than any psychologist in history, living or dead. They came around, they said, this is actually good. You do it right and you're pushing this to the forefront of the narrative in America.

And he created the Dr. Phil board advisories.

Yeah, yeah, I got this board of advisors that I could fall back on and I just realized I did have a philosophy to do things in a different way. That's who I am. And not everybody always sees the wisdom of it in the beginning. And that's okay. If you believe in what you're doing, you go all in and do it. And that's really been my philosophy.

So along the way, did you. When you started doing TV and by the way, I went to a Dr. Phil show probably. Oh God. Where on. Was it Universal or where was it where they. It was right where the original Jaws was filmed. What is that?

Paramount?

Paramount. Okay, so is that. And I mean you both come out in the audience. So you've been on God knows how many shows. Were you ever super uncomfortable with that?

Yes, yes. It's very nerve wracking. Very nerve wracking. I've been to every show for 23 years and it wasn't planned. I had no intentions of going to work with him every day when we moved to la, but the entire family, our sons, one daughter in law and myself went to the first show to see it. It was a brand new life we had created. And so we all go to the show and I'm sitting there and he ends the show. And they hadn't come up with a way for him to end the show. So it's over. And he says, well that's our first show, tune in tomorrow. And he just decided to walk off. And I was sitting right there and he said, I just couldn't just walk right by my wife and go ta ta, you know. So he said, come with me, let's talk about it. Because he thought the cameras were over and not rolling anymore. But the, his executive producer, a woman was sitting there and she goes, and he takes my hand and she called it her Sleepless in Seattle moment when took her hand on the top of the Empire Steakville, she went, oh my. And changed who he was. You know, he was no longer Dr. Phil now the viewer saw him as a husband and whatever. So he takes my hand, we walk off and we're talking about it. And she made him continue rolling. And so she races in the back, said, can you come tomorrow? And I was like, oh, I don't know. Our son, who just turned 39, was only 15. He didn't drive. I said, I've got a carpool. I'll take my son to school. She said, but can you come? Like, do that? And then come. And I raced home and got dressed. I have to this day, I'm really into aesthetics and design and everything. So I've always done my own hair and makeup and wardrobe for the show because I love this. So I race home, I get ready to go up there, and from that day on, I went to every show. And so. Yeah, well.

And by the way, when I went into his office, which is so freaking cool, what he says, he's like, my wife designed it. He's like, rob, you did all this. I mean, you really do have. Amazing. I was taking pictures of everything. Like, I love this. Yeah, you have. Really cool.

I've picked every home we've lived in. I've decorated every home we've lived in, every office, our sons, until they got married. It's just a real passion of mine. I love it.

So I gotta ask you this, then. So there's this line I like, and I say it to myself whenever I'm having to do something, either in a state of just being really tired or fatigued or overwhelmed or if I'm sick. Remember that old Dunkin's Donuts commercial? The guy's like half fricking zombie, and he's like, gotta make the donuts, Gotta make the donuts. And he wanders into the donut shop, right? So the line is, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. And there's got to be many times you. The Spider man thing, you know, with great power comes great responsibility, even though great responsibility is given to some very irresponsible people in government when you just have to show up or you have people waiting for you and you are just not in a good place, not in a good state. That many years that you've been doing this, how do you psych yourself up or how do you. Do you put on an act? I mean, there's gotta be times you're like, man, this is just tougher. You got a stomach ache. I mean, whatever. It could be anything. How do you.

How.

How do you handle it without letting the. Letting the audience down?

Well, you know, they're saying in Hollywood, that red light comes on, so do you. Yeah, because, I mean, you have people that have flown in from all over the country or the world sometimes, and you. You got to do what you got to do. And I. I had a. I had a situation. It's the worst I've ever had. And I've never told anybody about this, so. But I was. I used to race motorcycles a lot. And so James Corden asked me to do this stunt for his late night show. And it was this thing where you were showing things that people don't know about somebody. And so I was supposed to turn into my driveway and pop a wheelie on a dirt bike and ride it up my driveway. And it's a really long driveway. I wish I had a more macho story, but so I did that in a suit and everything. And so we shot that and we were through. And then we were just messing around, and somebody put a palm tree there that hadn't been there before. And I swear that I don't know what happened because I have total amnesia from it. But I came down, went over the handlebars, and, you know, you're trained when you crash a motorcycle, get away from it, you know, get away from the machinery. And I kicked away from it, went over the handlebars, and I broke seven ribs and blew this shoulder out and all of this stuff. And I was in ICU for like a week. And then they said, well, we got to fix your shoulder, but we can't do that because your lungs are bleeding. So we gotta wait till that stops before we fix the shoulder. And I had 24 more shows to do to finish the year. So I thought, well, shit, I'll just go do the shows while they're waiting on that. So I'm out there with a lung bleed, but my shoulder's, like, jacked up. And I thought, well, nobody will know. So they give me this pain pill to take. I don't drink, I don't do drugs. So I'm real sensitive. So I take this pain pill and I think I'm fine.

We tried to tell him not to do it. I think I'm his children, me, the entire control room, we said, you're not yourself.

I think I'm doing fine. And I get out there and I start doing the show and I look over the side and everybody's going, no, no, no. I had no idea that I was being nonsensical or whatever, but they're over there waving, no, no, stop, stop. I don't know what I was saying or what I was doing. Apparently I was completely incoherent. So you ever want to see Dr. Phil drunk, I'll air that show sometime and see. Was it more than one?

Yeah.

Oh, God, Yeah, it was.

I told him, just keep walking. We don't even need to walk off.

So I was trying to. I was trying to get up and do the right thing. But, yeah, it didn't go well.

And then when they did the shoulder, they did do the shoulder, and he had it in a sling. He was supposed to have a really close friend, David Foster, who was getting married and asked him to help officiate. And it was in a private backyard. His friend had tent and everyone was in the round and he had to walk up and he had the shoulder done. That morning I forgot, and I said, we should cancel this. And he said, oh, no, I could not shave it. So I finally said, okay. Well, I went upstairs, I said, sweetheart, you need to get up. I need to get you dressed in your tux. He had the sling. And I got him all dressed and took him down the stairs. And we get in a car, driver takes us over there. He was like in the chair. And I said, he's on anesthesia. Pass it around. And he had his blue cards, like what he was going to say. And I said, do you think you can get up those stairs and get to the bikes? I said, yeah, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. And he got up there, he made no sense at all. Everybody's looking at him like, do you.

All know David Foster, the music producer? He gets married about every two years.

Anyway, so he will never get married again. He's with the sweetest wife right now.

Yeah, this is probably going to stick. The one I did didn't stick.

It didn't stick.

He's one of my best friends. What's this, his six marriage or something? Yeah, yeah. So I think this one's finally going to stick. Wow.

It's going to stick. But everyone was like, because he can't handle it.

Yeah, but you make do.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And don't err.

Here's the formula here.

Yeah.

Well, this kind of leads into this one. So you've helped millions. What's one pattern of self destruction? You still catching yourself?

Impatience.

Okay.

I'm impatience.

Impatient.

Yeah. I want to get things done by noon yesterday. And I really hold myself to that standard. I want everything done right now.

I have a sign in my office, this little me. It says, why is patience a virtue? Why can't hurry the fuck up be a virtue?

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah, That's a good one.

Yeah.

And the older I get, the more in a hurry I seem to be. It's like how you know how much longer this is going to last. We need to get busy.

Do you, you know, it's funny, you're if how many of you saw his interview with President Trump? It's great. Several times President Trump's like something along the lines of you psychoanalyzing me. What did he say?

I think that's what he said.

Yeah, yeah. He said first off, I'm not going to cry. He said I know that this is, I know what you're doing and I'm not going to cry here. But I think he really did get human and personal during that first. I've interviewed him several times.

Absolutely.

I think he went places that he hadn't gone before and showed a side of himself he hadn't shown before.

So how do you get someone to go to a place that they haven't gone before, including ourselves, in order to get to that place of breakthrough or transformation? Because I think that is your magic. I mean I think that's part of your show is you have to. People aren't going to get to where they want to go doing the same things they're doing. This whole Einstein.

Well, I think you have to ask questions that most people don't ask and I think you need to get people to take a look at themselves that they don't normally take a look at. And we've gotten away from that. In this fast paced world, I don't think we regard each other as human beings nearly enough. Eye contact has just pretty much gone away. We don't really look at each other anymore. And if you think about it, one of the things that I would like you guys to ask yourself when you finish this day is think about how many people in your day you didn't see. Think about that when you, you go through an airport, you go through the grocery store, you go to the doctor's office, you go to your kids school, you go, you go through life. How many people you just looked right past that you never actually see, you never actually engage. You don't need to stop and come by yah with every person in your world, but how many people we actually look past and never actually give the dignity of acknowledging in any way. And I think if you actually ask yourself that, you'd be surprised how many people you actually look past. And that has a real bearing. There's a document that I've evaluated from the old Soviet union in the 60s that was talking about how to break down American society and it talked about getting us to dehumanize one Another. And at the end of the paper, which we had translated from Russian into English, the conclusion of the paper was, they're already doing it at a decelerating rate, at an accelerating rate. If we'll just stand back, they're doing it for us. They're breaking down society because they're dehumanizing each other at an incredible rate. And that was their observation. It was a psyops observation about what's happening in American society. And that was 75 years ago.

Wow. Can you explain a psyop? And if you believe this, right now, we're in a psyop in many different ways, shapes and forms, and how to even be aware of it.

We absolutely are dealing with it right now, and China is the main driver in this. When. When you look at what's happening in the media, when you look at what's happening with the poisoning, I hate it when I hear people talking about how many fentanyl overdeaths, overdoses there have been. There haven't been any fentanyl overdeaths. Those are poisonings. Those aren't overdoses. Those are poisonings that are coming from China, through the Sinaloa cartel and into America. And they are programming the media. Everybody knows what bots are, these robots that get on Twitter. You know, less than 20% of people actually use Twitter in America, and 80% of the comments are made by 10% of the people. So if 23% of the people are using Twitter and 10% of the comments, 10% of the people make 80% of the comments, then think what a small group of people are driving Twitter, and then break that down into how many of those are robots. And these bot farms live in China and Russia. And when I'm talking about bot farms, I'm talking about they're deploying tens of thousands of these at a time. And you think you can spot them because they have no followers and it's a new account. They've been cultivating these for 20 years. So there are pictures, they follow each other, so they look very legitimate. They'll have, you know, 1200 followers and lots of pictures on vacation and stuff. And they look legitimate, but they're not. And they're programmed to create a mindset. And then people, real people, start jumping on that bandwagon and they drive ideologies. And that is a very real psyop. And it's. It's just a psychological operation that is very actively going on. And it's happening on social media. And when you look at the documents that have been leaked from some of the major companies, Meta and others, they're falling victim to it, but. But they're not figuring out how to stop it. So we have an awful lot of influences in legacy media and digital media that's coming from outside this country that is creating real problems with misinformation with our children and adults on certain issues. And this isn't some crazy conspiracy theory. There's no question it's going on. The Department of Justice knows it's going on, and the companies that they're falling victim to it know it's going on. They just haven't figured out how to stop it. Yeah.

Do you know how to stop it?

I don't know how to stop it until we put down the devices and we start using multiple sources to figure out whether a story is correct or not. And most people don't have the time or the willingness to do that.

Yeah.

So I guess if you could question, if you could sit the entire country down for one intervention, what's the first.

Question you'd ask America what you're enabling yourself or members of your family to do? You know, we. One of the most fundamental principles in psychology is don't reward bad behavior. Don't in any way reward behavior that you don't want to see more of. And do reward behavior that you want to see. Repeat, repeat, repeat. And you got to ask yourself, what am I rewarding that I don't want to see more of? And you would. If you ever actually do that analysis, you'd be really surprised what you're reinforcing that you don't want to see more of. At a government level, a personal level, at a family level, we reward behaviors we don't want to see more of. And you see parents that say, I'll give my kid money. I know they're on drugs, but I'll give them money so they at least have a roof over their heads. You're not giving that kid money so they have a roof over their head. You're doing that. You're giving that kid money so you feel better that night that you've done something to protect your child. And all you're doing is enabling them to get more poison to put into their body. That's for your anxiety, not for their betterment. Enabling is a terrible, terrible thing, and that's why kids are getting worse the more time parents are spending with them. Right now, we're rewarding behavior we don't want to see more of. We have to stop doing that.

Let me ask you A question based on your work. So what's the message you wish every woman, especially the ones who don't believe they matter, could hear once in her life?

Well, I think the message, at the risk of repeating myself, is to take care of yourself, put yourself first. That is harder to do. You know, I can say that it is very hard to do. So I'll expand on that, find out what it is that makes you feel less than good enough to put yourself first. Because I think a lot of women have lived a life of watching their mothers not do that, their grandmothers not do that. So it is a choice that you have to make. So get to a place in your life where you feel that it's time to make that choice. Because I think that's what it comes down to. I'm gonna make the choice that I'm worth it and live that. And sometimes it's very hard, but it does come down to a choice. I'm going to make the choice that I'm good enough, I'm worth it, to put myself first, to take care of myself, to give myself the life I know I deserve. So therefore, my children have the life that they deserve. Because there are a lot of women out there that put up with a violent marriage of violence in their life, and their children are paying a price for it. And so it's time to just say, I'm kidding myself if I think that I didn't help create this. I think a lot of women sit around and go, this is not the kind of marriage or life I wanted, and I don't think I deserve it. But I don't know how to get out of it. It's like, make a choice to not live that kind of life anymore. Admit that you've paid your dues. It's time to get out. And just. I've told lots of women through my foundation, I have a foundation when Georgia Smiled, for women and men who suffer from domestic violence and sexual assault. But a lot of times it's as simple as making a choice. And you have to just say, you know, I'm not going to let my husband chase me through the house so he can get his hands on me and beat me up. If a man chases you through the house, it's so that he can get ahold of you, rock you, hold you, cradle you, and make you feel safe. That's the only reason you'll let a man chase you through the house and get ahold of you. If he's gonna chase you through the house so that he can grab you and call you names. That first name should be Queen. That name should be beautiful. That name should be your name. So sometimes it's just listen to your gut and decide what it is you know you deserve. Surround yourself with, like, people that can tell you that and make a choice that that's the life you deserve and that's the life you're going to live and your children are going to benefit from it.

So if a man, a woman or child is hearing this, watching this, what you just said, and they're in a situation where they don't know how to run away or fight back because of the danger, the fear involved, and they're stuck, what would you recommend they do?

I recommend go to the Internet, go to the helplines. There are lots of sources out there. And don't hesitate to call. Hesitate to call because there is help out there. Through your church, through your school, through your job. There's somebody out there that can help you, but especially through the help lines.

Thank you. So, Dr. Phil, when we met in May, you shared. Towards the end of our meeting, we were having a lot of conversations about addiction and about different, different things. And you told the story of the woman that had her. She got out of her car for just half a minute to go into like a juice bar or something, and there was a baby that was. Her baby was in the backseat. And I believe someone on meth hijacked the car. And could you tell that story? Because what you ended up sharing with that, first off, what happened and what you ended up sharing with that woman, it was. That's really powerful.

Yeah, I, you know, one of the things that I've always. One of the things that I've always tried to do is share stories through the eyes of people that have experienced what we're talking about. I think if you stand up and you lecture people in some didactic fashion where you go down through. Well, here's point one, here's point two, here's point three. Here's point four. Even my own mother would tune out, you know, 10 or 15 minutes into the hour. I've always, I've always tried to demonstrate things in a way that people find relatable and can understand. And this was a situation that was probably the biggest challenge that I've ever faced with regard to forgiveness. And this was a woman that was in Chicago, and she had her child in the back seat in an infant seat, and she was going home and she stopped at a convenience store to get the child, the toddler, a juice box. And she was just parked at the curb right here and wasn't from here to you from the child. And she went inside and she left the car running. So the air conditioner was going and she was holding up the two different juice boxes and child was giggling and which one, which one, which one? And this drug addiction runs up and jumps in the car and it's running with the keys in it and jumps in the car and she's like, oh my God. And she runs out quickly and says, no, no, no, stop, stop. And I don't think he saw the baby in the back. And she jerks open the back door to get the child out and says, take the car, I don't care, just give me my baby. My baby. And she gets the seat unhooked and out the door, but the belt buckle hangs and he takes off and the door slams and he drives off dragging the baby in the infant seat. And it just grinds the, the baby's head off. And it was just a horrible situation. And her question to me was, how do I ever forgive myself for this failure? Now at this point, Every mother in America is leaning forward because they're sitting there thinking, I showed up five minutes late at carpool and my child was sitting on the curb with tears in his eyes. I forgot a birthday, I did this, I did that. If he can tell her how to forgive herself, he can damn sure tell me how to forgive myself. And that's what I mean about instead of getting up on a whiteboard and listing the five points of forgiveness, if you can meet people where they are and you can share a compelling story, then they are going to hear you and they're not going to forget that. And I've always tried, I said I wanted to use my education in a non traditional way and I've always tried to find a way to demonstrate things in a compelling way. And you know, when I have someone that think about it, has the courage to sit down and write me a letter and then get in the car and drive to an airport and fly across the United States and come on that stage and, and share their story in front of the whole world, I've always felt like I owe them 100% of what I can bring to help them. There's a transaction that goes on there. What do I get out of this? I get a teaching tool. I get someone that I can use to teach millions of people that are watching and they get an up close and personal focus on their individual situation. And I owe it to that person to do Everything I can to help them find an answer, a bottom to, to their situation and what they've done. And I take it very seriously every time somebody comes. And I think that's been the key to success. To have the number one show for all of this time is being serious, taking these people serious, hearing that this is a high stakes situation for them, and using every resource I possibly can to get them the answers that they're looking for. People have asked me many times, do you think problems are as simple as you make them out to be? I don't think problems are simple at all. I think they're complex, I think they're layered. I think they're oftentimes very, very difficult. And I try to start them on the path and point them in the way. Sometimes the solutions are very simple, even though the problem's very complex. But I think if you can get people's attention and get them to really listen and be empathetic, they can find their path to answers if you can meet them in that way.

So I, I can't imagine anyone here that heard that did not have some part of their stomach drop or just what did you, what did you tell that person?

What did you tell her, you know.

Or anyone that's in such a incredibly difficult situation like that.

Yeah, I've worked with, I think almost every family that's had hostages in Gaza, alive or dead, and worked with them and the losses that they've suffered, for example. And I always. Hate it when people tell somebody, you know, oh, it's going to be okay. Let me ask you something. Don't you know the truth when you hear it, when you're talking to somebody and it's something that really matters? You know the truth when you hear it. And I think people want to know the truth, particularly if they're in a dark time in their life. You talk to somebody that went to the doctor and they said, oh, you know, sorry, we've seen some, you know, spots on your X ray for your lung. We'll get an answer after the weekend and they're home for the weekend, like, oh my God, you know, 10 people come by, pat them on the hand, say, oh, honey, you'll be fine. What they value is somebody that tells them the truth and says, look, you don't know what this is going to be, but you do know that you're young, you're strong, and you do have quality care at your fingertips. And we're going to make a plan and we're going to work the plan and let's do this. Let's do that. People know the truth when they hear it. That's what they value. They don't like this vapid yip, yip, yip. And I told her at the time, look, you're not going to get over this. I don't care how long you live. I don't care what you do, how much you talk to me or anybody else. You're never going to get over this. What you will do is you will learn to get through it. And you have two other children and you owe it to them that they have 100% of their mother. You have a purpose. You have a meaning. You have to put one foot in front of the other. It is not about you. It is about these other two children. Don't expect to get over this. You will get through it. You will change. And 30 days from now, you're going to be standing in the kitchen and you're going to be looking at some stupid sitcom on the television. You're going to catch yourself laughing and you're going to say, what kind of mother am I? I have a dead child and I'm laughing. That's a pressure release. You can get mad at God. He's big enough to handle it. And when you can change from every time you think about your child, it brings you pain. Till you start remembering this and you can celebrate the time that you had that child and it brings you joy to think about that child, then you know that you're changing for the better. Don't make your goal to get over it. Make your goal to get where you can celebrate this child and recognize what you owe to the two children you have. That becomes your goal. That becomes your objective. When you have people in that kind of pain, you have to give them something to do. You are a mother. You have a job. Be who you are on purpose. You are a mother. Do it with intention. And she said, you're the first one that has told me it's not going to be okay. You're the first one that's told me I got to get up off my butt and do my job. That gives me something to do and that I will do. And that was the truth. That's what I told her.

Well, it would be an understatement to say that what you both are doing and have done is impactful. It's incredible. And how do we support you in this? I mean, first off, read the book. Okay, let me. Let me display it again. So the book is called We've Got Issues Everyone will get a copy of this. Like I said, download the audio version. I would love to hear if you do not think this is one of the most important books you've ever read. I actually want to take a role of trying to launch this to the entrepreneurial community and I will do whatever I can to actually get this message out because I think it's not just important to me. I feel I have, when I come across people and things and ideas that I really like, I do my best to edify the heck out of it. Secondly, we didn't even touch on addiction recovery yet, even though we've been having a lot of conversations about collaborating with what I'm doing with Genius Recovery and with the prison programs, you both do a lot of that work. Let us know what are the newest things you have going on. Millions of people watch you daily. So tell everyone here that may not know a little bit about some of your current projects and what are new things you're on and how can we support you with it?

Well, I had the longest running show in the history of the Paramount lot at cbs, but I stopped that and have launched Envoy Network, Envoy Mediaco, and we're on, you know, cable, Spectra Vision and we're adding every day. We're on Samsung and you know, lots of others in streaming. You can find us all over. We're everywhere. I mean we're in over 100 million homes already even though we've just started Envoy Media. So you can find us on YouTube and Samsung and Home Network and Charter, Spectra Vision everywhere. So I have not retired. I've just launched my own network and it's going great and we're having a great time. So tune in and watch us. And we're, I think we're, we're over 100 million homes now. I think we'll be at 200 million by the first quarter and so find us and watch us. I'm on in primetime every night on the network and we've got news, entertainment, live sports, everything. So you can find us on Envoy Media. So find us and watch. We want to hear from you.

Do you take sponsors?

Yes, we do. Yeah, we've got people sponsoring some things all season long. We've got sponsors for Dr. Phil Show. We've got all sorts of things. So yeah, we're, Would any of you.

Be interested in being a sponsor on Dr. Phil Show?

Yeah, we'll, we'll damn sure get your message out there, I promise. So let us know if you want to do that. Okay.

Awesome. What about you? What do you got. What are you working on now? That's the most important thing.

Well, like I said before, I'm very passionate about family. And so. And we have, we have two homes. We still have our home in la, but we have our home now here in Dallas. And we're not in Dallas right here, but in Dallas because of the new network. And so I'm busy working on our home and I'm not a part of this network. So I have a lot of wonderful time now to do a lot of things I'm passionate about. So we have our grandchildren and two live in Dallas, two live in la. And I'm so thrilled to have time to now just really focus on them. I've actually am about to do a design class in Paris. I'm really excited about. I've always wanted to do that. So I have a lot of things in my future that finally at the age of 70, almost 72, I can now do a lot of fun things that really interest me.

Awesome. Now once you have four grandkids, you go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

They're so cute. They're very, they're pretty far apart. Our boys are seven years apart. So our grandchildren are about that. So love being a grandma.

Awesome. Awesome. What didn't I ask you that I should have? Anything that we did not discuss that you think would be very useful to leave this group with.

I thought this was an interesting and challenging interview. You made us both think and that's always good.

This was wonderful.

Thank you. And by the way, tonight for the 100k dinner, it's going to be Q and A with them and with Cheryl Hines. So. And it won't be me just sitting here asking all the questions. So those of you in the group, we're going to do Q and A tonight. So think of a question you'd like to ask them and we'll go from there. And I cannot thank you both enough. What'd you think, Dr. Phil and Robin McGraw? Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulist show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit thejopolishow.com don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulish show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was discussed, please visit. Visit thejopolishow.com 48.