Nick Freitas: How Voting Works, the Power Trap, Poverty, and Parenting Hacks

When I turned 18— no, when I turned 18 a long time ago, yeah, I knew I turned 18 in October. It was an election year coming November. I knew I wanted to vote. I did not know who I wanted to vote for, so I asked my dad. I said, 'Dad, who should I vote for?' 'Bob Dole.' And I went— that was the very first person I ever voted for.

Yeah.

Okay. Republican like yourself, right?

Well, Republican, not like myself.

Did I do the right thing?

Well, I think so. And not necessarily because I was a huge Bob Dole fan, although I—

You were?

No, I wasn't. I wasn't.

How old are you? I'm 45. So you're how old? 45.

I'm 44.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so you didn't get to vote for Bob Dole? Yeah, you voted for H. Bush?

Yeah. Okay, but, but I'll tell you, uh, W. Bush.

W. Oh, you voted for W. George W.

Okay, well, but here's, here's the thing, um, I was in— you remember when Bob Dole fell off the stage and, uh, on the campaign trail?

See, I don't remember anything. I asked my dad who to vote for.

I was standing about 20 feet away from him when that happened.

Oh really?

And, and so I got to meet him, I got to meet Elizabeth Dole. My mom had been involved in, in politics in California. Okay, but here's the deal.

You were already hardcore into politics at 18?

Well, she, she— I was, I was definitely interested in it, and I was, I was kind of brought up in it. Yeah. And I was interested in the political philosophy, interested me, um, probably more than— I mean, partisan politics and whatever. But, um, but no, in that election, it's, it's a binary choice, right? It was Bob Dole or Bill Clinton. And now for me, I have certain fundamental principles for which Bob Dole didn't check off some of those boxes. But Bill Clinton didn't check off really any of them. And so, you know, I was out there campaigning for Bob and whatnot. But, and I think fundamentally, he was a good man. And certainly, you know, had sacrificed a lot for his country in war. But he's not exactly my ideal Yeah, representative.

Well, that seems to happen a lot. Yeah, most of the time the candidates don't seem like anybody's ideal.

Well, and here's the important thing to remember, uh, we put all this— you see this a lot now, like, our democracy, our democracy, our democracy. Put aside for a second that we're actually a constitutional republic, right? Um, I get what they're saying, it's representative government.

Yeah.

Um, that's not what makes a free country. What makes a free country is you have the ability to live your life the way you would like with as little interference as possible, provided you don't infringe on the rights of other people at the same time. That's a free country. And what a representative government is supposed to do is to help ensure that the people's voice is heard with respect to protecting those liberties. But you can have a representative government that's highly tyrannical, provided that 50% plus 1 of the population voting population wants an authoritarian government. And so I think it's important that we distinguish between, you know, what do you want? If you just want representation, okay, that can end up pretty bad. If you really want genuine freedom, then you need to have representatives that also want genuine freedom if you're gonna ensure that. Yeah.

So if my dad had said, vote for Bill Clinton, and I did, would I have done the right thing?

Well, I don't think so, but here's what I'll say. I think that, well, one, it shows that you had trust and faith and affection for your dad to ask him what you should do in a situation you didn't know that much about. By the same token, I do think we have a responsibility as citizens to be aware enough about what we believe and aware enough of what we think government's proper role and responsibility is to be able to make these decisions. But there's nothing wrong with going to people that you trust, that share your values, to be able to get insight into this. Because we're not all supposed to be so obsessed with politics that we can tell you the voting record of everybody that happens to be in office. But it is important to know Again, if it's going to be representative, then it needs to represent you on some level. Yeah. I've had people ask me before, they're like, Nick, when you get up there, you know, because I'm obviously in the state legislature in Virginia, you know, if I vote for you, are you going to represent the people? And I like to look at them like, what do you think that means exactly? He goes, well, I want politicians to do what we the people want. I said, I got news for you. We the people don't agree on what we want politicians to do.

Or we don't even know what we want.

Yeah. I said, so what representation is, is not me conducting a poll every time I got a vote. What representation is, is I am honest with you about what I believe and why, so that you have a good idea of how I'm gonna vote on every major issue that comes up. And if I don't vote that way, if I lie to you, or I can't properly explain why, What I told you suggested one thing, but I did something else. Well, then maybe it's time to get rid of me. But what representative government means is that you look at your options for who you can send to a position of power, and you ask yourself, does this person's worldview, does the way they think about things, the way that they process information, does their integrity, does it represent what I want in the government that is supposed to be protecting my rights?

Yeah, does— do all politicians know that?

No. I will say this. I think people content themselves to believe that politicians are either all the same, or they're all greedy, or they're all just snakes in the grass. And the reason why I say they content themselves in thinking that is because it's far easier to believe that they're all just scoundrels. It's far more difficult to understand why a lot of the decision politics are made, because I have a lot of colleagues that I disagree with vehemently, and they're not voting opposite of me because they're horrible, greedy people. They're voting the opposite way because they have a very different worldview. And the thing that I want people to understand is that's actually more dangerous. C.S. Lewis had this quote where he said that— and I'm gonna not get it perfect, but he said it might be better to live under the rule of greedy robber barons than it would be moral busybodies. And his justification for that was he said that the greedy robber baron may eventually have his lust for power or wealth or whatnot satiated. He goes, but the moral busybody will torment you without end because they do so with the approval of their own conscience. And so if somebody honestly believes, and if you want to look at all the worst atrocities in human history, they weren't due to a quest for greed or power. They were usually conducted by people that truly believed they were doing what was best for the greater good or for their nation or whatnot. And so I think it's really important that we understand that what makes government different than any other organization within society It's not voting. It's not that we have committees. It's not that we have pretty buildings. It's the fact that we are the only institution within a free society that gets to use aggressive force and the threat of violence to achieve our objectives. And there's times where that's appropriate, right? If somebody's invading this country, you want us to come back with a whole lot of coercion and force. If somebody's stealing from you or robbing from you, you want people to fight on your behalf to protect your rights and protect your property. But when you start to allow that ability and that power to be utilized in a wide array of other issues, you're playing with fire. And that's the part where it may be very easy to think, gosh, if we just had the right person using the force and coercion to force those other people to do what I think is best for the greater good or society. Get ready for some really, really bad things to happen. Whereas if we have the sort of government that respects that it has a very, very limited role to play in our lives, again, largely the protection of God-given rights, the protection of property rights. It doesn't mean we can't still fix these larger problems of healthcare or hunger or privation or whatever else it is. But then we look for mechanisms to do it where free people are working in cooperation with one another not coercing one another. And I think that's what's, that's the mindset that I try to take into politics is that my job is not there to micromanage the lives of my constituents in a way that I think would be best. They have a right to make decisions that I might not agree with until they infringe on the rights of other people. And when you take that limited role and that limited vision for government, it actually expands the role and the vision for people. And that's kind of a paradigm shift because there's a lot of politicians up there that think that their job is to use state power to make things better. And they never seem to understand that, okay, but what if you get it wrong? 'Cause we sure seem to get it wrong a lot. Yeah.

Why then does the government go towards expanding its control versus the other way? Why do you think it tends towards that? Why do you think we tend towards more powerful governments?

Well, so Jefferson talked about this, um, that over time governments always seem to expand at the expense of individual liberty. Um, it is a far more enticing view if you believe— if you, if you look at government, you see, my gosh, here's this big powerful entity with all this money, then, and this ability to make laws and rules and regulations, and think of all the good things we can do with this power. Um, I mean, it's almost like a Lord of the Rings scenario, right? It's like, oh, but I— when I have the ring, it'll be different because I have good intentions and I'm gonna— um, and maybe you do, maybe you do, but how do you— no matter how good your intentions are, no matter how smart you are, You can't possibly know the individual needs, wants, and desires of the millions of people your laws are going to impact. And so if— but it's an enticing, it's an enticing thing, right? You see, you see somebody living in poverty, you see somebody a victim of crime, you see somebody that's dealing with sickness, you see somebody that's hungry, and you think, gosh, if we could just pull these resources over here and manage these programs, we could fix this. And yet somehow it doesn't—

it does not translate.

Doesn't translate. And why? Well, because you're setting up this— you're setting up a different incentive structure, because what that person really needed probably was a family or a community or a church. What they needed was— what they needed was to be able to do a job, a productive labor that could help them take care of themselves. And now you've created an environment where you're going to punish one person over here to help this person over here. And you end up creating all these different constituencies that are now fighting to get closer and closer to the seat of power, because that ends up being the way you get taken care of. And it's not just one group or another group, you see it across the spectrum. And it's because it is always tempting to believe that if you're the one that controls the power, you'll be the one that does something good with it. And even if you don't be consumed with greed or whatnot, you're still wielding a force that you can't really control because you can have good intentions all day long, but people react to what you're doing, not just what you intend. And so that's why, again, I think that's why it's— and if you believe that that's the proper role of government, you're going to be naturally drawn to politics, right? If what your desire is, is to live out here with your family and manage your homestead and teach other people how to do it. Your passion in everything is about making your life better, your family's life better, your community's life better. And you see an active way that you can do that, and you see the benefits from it. And so your focus is there. Somebody that doesn't have that or has decided that the government's the way they're going to do that, well, they're drawn to that kind of power. How many people want to go to government to restrict their power?

Right?

So you talk like abundance, right? You're involved in this because you have a mechanism for achieving greater abundance. And there's theoretically not a limit to that. You can keep going and keep benefiting other people. You're not going out here to be like, I want to reduce everything to this small little— well, that's what I'm doing. I'm going into government. Because I want— I desperately want to keep their power limited. Um, that's not as enticing.

Uh, yeah, that's true. It's not as natural, is it? No, we would naturally want to grow.

Yeah. And they naturally get stronger. Yeah. And government naturally wants—

and because people are running government, that's what happens. Um, the Lord of the Rings scenario is interesting, and it is— I never thought about it that way, but the whole movie is, uh this most powerful thing in the world, the best thing to do with this most powerful thing in the world is destroy it. Yeah. Make it go away.

And I think if you can get people to understand— I put it this way once. I've taken a lot of unpopular votes when it comes to, like, welfare programs. And the assumption is always, well, it's because you don't know what it's like. I'm like, oh, don't die. And I got real personal once. I said, let me make this real clear. I got married young, and I take very seriously my responsibility as a husband to provide and protect my wife. And we were young, we were married, and we just— one winter we couldn't pay the bills, power got turned off. And when you— Even thinking about it now, I get mad, right? I get angry. When you're watching your wife be cold because you couldn't do what you needed to do, you get angry, you get mad. But we had friends and family step in at that point and help. That did not create in me a sense of entitlement. It created a sense of gratitude, and it created a sense of understanding and a desire to reciprocate so that when I saw somebody in that situation, yeah, I was going to step in and help because I knew what it was like. And what I have seen when the government tries to replace the role of the family or friends or the church or the community, and they think they can just put up a program and deal with it, they don't create gratitude. They create entitlement. And entitlement creates just this, this sense of envy and this sense of helplessness. And man, I don't want that. When you see a society full of gratitude for the times that they've been helped and the understanding that that help that they received came at a sacrifice to the person that provided it— this is the most pernicious thing about the way the government does this. When a politician takes something from somebody else and gives it to you, Your gratitude is not toward the person that actually sacrificed to make that provision possible. It's to the politician that did nothing but take it. And then that politician gets this elevated sense of, look what a good person I am. And what I want, I want stronger families, I want stronger friendships, I want stronger communities. And we can't get that if the government is constantly coming in and trying to replace those things with itself.

Um, do you— you are, um, and as— as— where do I want to go with this? Um, and then the, um, I'll say What are we going to do about the inefficiencies with— of the government? It seems like, uh, yeah, this could be the rest of the conversation.

Yeah, fix it.

Like, if I say post office, yeah, the first thought—

the office of government.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually one of the things—

private though, isn't it?

No. If I say IRS Oh, gosh. Nobody's thinking.

We could fix so many things.

Well, let me ask you something. Nobody's thinking. If you want to fix something, the first question you have to ask is, what are the incentives of the people you're asking to fix it?

Okay. Yeah, they got no incentive.

So when something breaks around here, I don't wonder what the incentive is to fix it. You want it fixed. You want to fix it as quickly as possible, as effectively as possible, and as affordable as possible. Why? Because you're spending your money on your problem.

Yeah, that's one problem with the government is that they're just spending all our money and like they don't care. It drives me crazy. It drives me crazy.

There's no rewards if they fix it and there's no punishment if they don't.

You, you can, um, Milton Friedman said, laid this out once in a way that was beautiful. He goes, there's, there's four ways, essentially there's There's 4 ways money can be spent. You can spend your money on you. You can spend your money on someone else. You can spend somebody else's money on you, or you can spend somebody else's money on somebody else.

Yeah.

So he goes, the most efficient way money gets spent is when you spend your money on you or like a close family.

Right.

You care about quality and you care about price. He goes, the least efficient way you can spend money is somebody else's money on something that you're not going to use or somebody else. He goes, individuals spend in quadrant 1, your money on you. Governments always spend in quadrant 4, somebody else's money on somebody else. And so there's natural inefficiencies there. So even if they want to fix a problem, well, now you got to conduct studies and you got to figure out what's the root of the problem and how do we deal with the problem. And the question I always ask people is, Think about it just for a moment. How many problems— when you wake up in the morning, you are faced with a litany of problems, from feeding yourself, from clothing yourself, to housing yourself, to, you know, medicine, whatever it is. You're faced with a litany of problems. How to get to work. And almost, almost all of those problems are solved by free people working together in cooperation, and sometimes competition, in the marketplace of goods and services and ideas. How many of those problems, when you really think about it, where you think, you know what'll fix this? If we gave more money and power to politicians and bureaucrats, that's what'll fix this problem, right? No, nobody thinks that way.

But I don't know. I don't.

But they also don't have a description of that way. Well, they think it would be easy if somebody could fix it.

Yeah, but, but nobody.

But they don't think about what that somebody is really gonna do.

I mean, I've heard the argument a lot like that. The best, if you want to affect, you know, affect or cause change, is to vote in your local, your hyper, you know, your very local community, 'cause that's what's gonna change in your community. But I don't know if that's even true.

Well, it's true for some things, but not for other things. Like, I get, I think people are fed up. With when they're presented a problem, there's something that needs to be solved. I think they're fed up with vote harder. You know, you're just not voting hard enough, right? Or enough. Yeah.

Yeah, voting always—

Well, and the thing is, do you have to vote? Sure. Like, you want to be involved in the process, you want to know what's going on. But what you really want is a government that isn't so powerful that it's the only way that you can address certain problems. Because what you end up finding out is that, and again, I'm not saying there's no role for government. I'm just saying that in a lot of issues, if you just let free people kind of work together to figure it out, it's amazing how often they figure it out. And because they don't have the ability to steal and redistribute and to punish and to jail, you gotta find a peaceful way to figure it out. And that's where you usually get most of your great solutions. Yeah.

Why do you think we're so— okay, so the inspector shows up, you know, for our rebuild. When I see a government vehicle on my property, I'm afraid.

Terrified.

It's terrifying.

Why are we afraid? I bet you I'm not the only one.

Oh, I put it this way once. Somebody was complaining about like, oh, you know, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they're like they're too rich and powerful. I said, if Elon Musk showed up on my porch right now and told me to give him $1,000, I'd beat his ass, you know, send him packing, right? If an IRS agent showed up and said, give me $1,000, I'd start looking for $1,000. Why? Because as rich as Elon Musk might be or Jeff Bezos can't be, they can't force me to do anything, right? Yeah, that IRS agent, they can— if I don't do what they want me to do, they can put me in jail, they can take my property. Yeah, this is, uh, ruin you.

I mean, I get freaked out the county emblem shows up. Anytime, like, you know, the kids told us once, there's two army men at the door.

Oh, I know.

And we were like, I mean, our heart— we swallowed our heart.

Yeah. And we were in the— and the kids were like, the kids couldn't understand why we were so not afraid, but like concerned.

Yeah. Why would they be here?

And the kids just, they don't, they don't have that. Like, we were like, if the Army was here asking for us, asking for us.

That's like a Bubs the Police. That's a Bubs the Police.

We want to talk about your internet search history.

I know, right? It was, they were trying to play a joke on us.

Oh.

And so.

But they had no idea.

But they had no idea that they scared us to death.

Kids like, Mom, Dad, feds are here.

No, we were like—

But isn't it— we've gotten to a point, because think about this for a second. If anybody here that knows you guys had heard the federal government is at the Rhodes house, we would think, oh, something about animals, something about farming, something about land use, something about that. And what are you guys doing out here that would be so horrible, so terrible that it will require government attention? And the answer is nothing, right? You're not doing anything like that. But the more laws you have on the books, the more regulations, the more rules, the more opportunity there is to have these hostile interactions with your government, which isn't it there to protect your rights? Isn't it there to protect your freedoms? And more and more people are looking at it as like, well, no, it's there to harass me over every little thing that I do, ostensibly for the greater good, but in reality, Because some detached bureaucrat wrote a regulation, or because some politician was trying to deal with an issue that probably should have been dealt with by a local board of supervisors, but now we have a federal law that impacts 330 million people. And you know what a lot of this can be solved by? Humility. Just the understanding that you don't have all the— if your ideas were so good, Would they require this much coercion?

No.

Would it require this much? I told somebody once, I was having an argument with somebody, very, very different political leanings than I did. And I said, you know, I see you guys with your coexist bumper stickers all the time. You want to know what coexistence is? Coexistence is resisting the urge to coerce those whom you can't convince. So you and I, we find a problem, we agree on the nature of the problem, we agree on the solution, we work together and we fix it. Or maybe we don't agree. I leave you alone to address that problem the way that works for you. You don't infringe on my rights. I don't infringe on your rights. And maybe your solution worked. Maybe my solution worked. Maybe our solutions work differently because it turns out that our problems were a little bit different than we thought they were.

Yeah.

But my gosh, the moment you hand it over to a room full of politicians and bureaucrats, you are going to get a one-size-fits-all approach. And God help you if you fall on the wrong side of what they've decided the best approach is.

Yeah, a little bit like healthcare. Oh my God, the one-size-fits-all approach where it's like, I mean, just give birth for an example. You know, you go in to the hospital to give birth and then there's all these other things that they want to do that you're like, but I don't need that.

Yeah.

And they're like, well, this is what we do.

Yeah.

And it was kind of like, what? What do you mean this is what you do? Like, when my niece was born, it was a whole eye-opening experience for our family. We were like, what is going on? I had no idea all these things happened.

Yeah.

You were saying earlier before we got on recording that government's looking for— they're trying to avoid liability and put, put that on somebody else.

It's— well, a lot of times when you make— when you're making decisions— so for— let's take in Virginia, uh, we're a citizen legislature, and most states are, which means we go in for like 60 days in even years and 45 days in odd years. I'm not a full-time— I'm not in Richmond all year. I'm there for 60 days. We'll go through 2,000 bills in 60 days.

Wow.

And then we go home and we don't come back again till the next January. Right. And that's the way 46 out of the 50 states operate. It ain't the way the feds operate, but it's the way states operate. And so when you're going through that much stuff in such a short period of time, the first thing you're looking at is, is there any reason to say no? Is there any reason to say no? Because if there is, then we have this joke in Virginia. It's like, Virginia's been around for— the Commonwealth's been around for over, you know, 400 years. We can probably last one more year without your bright idea, which is a good way to look at it.

You say no more than yes?

Oh, I say no a lot. I say no a lot, no matter which side's in charge.

I mean, 2,000 bills to would essentially become laws.

Yeah.

Well, of course. I'm glad. I mean, how many bills are coming into law?

Well, remember—

Are there any ever, let's get rid of this law?

Yeah, I carry a lot of them. I carry them.

I can guess.

Yeah, I always say they're like 2,000 bills. Like, well, you got to carry a bill to get rid of a bad law too.

Okay.

So a lot of those are—

Some of it is like retracting stuff.

Yes, retracting, adjusting, you know. Oh gosh, that didn't work the way we intended. Who would have thunk it? Let's fix it.

There's a law around telephone booths.

Yeah.

You can go ahead and— Yeah.

But yeah, so we do that. But yeah, that's the whole idea. And I think that was kind of what it was meant to be, was you go down there, it's a term of service. You're not supposed to be paid so much in politics that it's your only job or occupation.

But in the federal government, that's— Yeah, their only job.

They're a full-time legislator.

But you obviously have other jobs.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. A delegate in Virginia gets paid about $17,600 a year.

That's it.

So yeah, yeah. Some state— New Hampshire's like, I think you get like a couple hundred bucks a year.

It's, um, just a couple hundred bucks a year.

And one in New Hampshire— New Hampshire has one of the largest state— or has one of the largest legislatures in the world. New Hampshire is very small. Oh yeah, it is.

But they don't get paid. They've got a huge legis—

so to give you an idea, I represent I represent in the House of Delegates, we have 100 delegates in Virginia. I represent about 85,000 people. My counterpart in New Hampshire represents a couple thousand. So they're much closer to their constituents, but there's a ton of them, right?

That's interesting.

Yeah, so a lot of state legislators operate differently, but I think the purpose behind our founding was this concept that politics was a term of service. And that we recognize that governments were supposed to stay within limited boundaries, not because there aren't a lot of problems that we got to solve, but because there's always a trade-off. Thomas Sowell says this best. He goes, you know, a lot of people think the government deals in solutions. They deal in trade-offs. And so every time we assume a problem that we're going to handle, we now limit your options for how you would handle that problem. Now, if that problem is foreign invasion, okay, that makes sense for the federal government to handle that. If that problem is, you know, certain other thing, law enforcement or court system, okay, that makes sense for us to handle that. But if that problem is how many chickens you can have on your property, why do we need to handle that? Especially at the state level, definitely not at the federal level. And yet now we have a government where the federal government's making decisions about what gets taught in an elementary school class. Why?

That should be up to the states and the counties and like the local principal.

I would even say it should be left. I mean, ultimately, yeah, ultimately it should be left up to like if the government wanted to be involved in education. Okay, fine. I got some issues with that, but fine. Why would the government then take over running education? Why is that a legitimate function of government?

They need to teach people what they want them to learn so that they will do what they want them to do. I mean, that can be the only thing.

Our education system was largely based off of the Prussian model. And the Prussian model— oh, well, the Prussian model was designed to make really good conscripts. And then if you look at our own model, it was made to make very good factory workers, right? So they wanted people that were fairly good at rote memorization and fairly simple skills that could do it for long hours. And you think our public education system is, is built around trying to build individual opportunities for each student? No, it's not. It can't be. Because it's a mass production model of education. So if the government said, all right, look, we're going to help with education, we want to make sure everyone can get one. Here's, here's a, here's a, here's a money, here's money for your child's education, has to be spent on education, but we're going to allow parents going out into the marketplace of ideas to find the educational model that works best for your child. Okay. I mean, but no, it's not that. It's Hey, education's important. So we as the government have now decided that we're going to manage education. And unless you can afford an alternative, you will send your child to a government-run school or else you'll be guilty of truancy laws. Right? That's—

I know, because like my kids are like, if you said this to school, we just wouldn't go. And I'd be like, you would have to go because I would get put in jail. And they're like, what?

Yeah, yeah.

And they, they couldn't believe that. They were like shocked at that when I told them like, well, we would be responsible.

Possible.

Yeah.

If you didn't go to school.

Yeah.

They couldn't believe it.

So then, um, you, you had said in the podcast with Michaela Peterson that your kids are entrepreneurial.

Yeah.

And you're not. And you do homeschool your kids, give people context here. Do you think then the public school— okay, do you think an entrepreneur is born or grown?

Yes. Um, here's— and I want to say this too, because there's a lot of, there's a lot of really good hard-working teachers out there. Officers out there within the public school system. And I always get accused of trashing them. And it's like, no, I can be frustrated with a system without disliking or not, or failing to appreciate the hard work that a lot of people in that system are trying to do to make it work.

Were you public school educated?

Partially.

Partially. I mean, I was. I had, I had some really great teachers.

I did too.

I mean, my sister and I, you know, there was just two of us and we went to the same school. For most of our educational. Very interestingly enough, my sister had some really bad teachers. I had— it was, it was crazy because like my mom would be so frustrated at my sister's teachers or, you know, whatever, and mine were just fine, you know.

Like, I didn't— like you said, they still have to go by a curriculum, so you can only be so— yeah, good.

Here's the question: if you don't like the service you're getting at a private sector company, you don't go there anymore. No, you get it somewhere else. If you don't like the service you're getting at the public school, tough. Yeah, right. Go to the school board meeting.

Okay.

I'm sure that'll change everything. Right. So the question— the question on all of this really comes down to more of a question of what sort of options do you have? Well, if you're in a free society, you should have as many options as people are willing to both produce and provide based off of supply and demand, right? All these things. And I've made the argument before, like whenever I say, hey, dollars should follow students, right? Dollars should follow. Oh, if dollars follow students, then the public schools will shut down. Like, so let me see if I understand this correctly. You're telling me that if you gave parents an option, they wouldn't choose the option you've currently forced them into, and that's why we got to continue to force them into that option? Like, is that what you just admitted to? That doesn't sound like you're blowing doors open. What do they say when you say that? Are they like, uh-uh-uh?

Yes.

Oh, well, no, what I mean, why do you hate teachers? Like, ah, I didn't, I like, I love teachers, right? Like, I don't like your model. I don't like your system.

Well, because if you did like this, the dollars followed the students, then those teachers could be hired by individual parents to teach their children. It's just like, yeah, there's like so much goodness that could come from it.

I would say, let me ask you a question. If parents had more control over where the dollars went for their education, do you think they would go to the school that had more administrators or better teachers?

Teachers.

Teachers. And what would happen to teacher pay? It would go up because it would now be, you know, based off of supply and demand. But here's— but to your question about entrepreneurialship, right?

And I am relating it to this public school thing.

So yeah, so, so to, to that question, the public school has government mandates that they have to follow. So even if you— let's say you have a teacher, best teacher in the world, and they're doing absolutely everything they can to foster the entrepreneurial spirit within your child They got a class, they got 20 other kids in the class, and they've got to meet so many standardized testing regulations, and they've got to do certain curriculum objectives. They don't have the sort of freedom to foster that in your child because it's a mass production approach to education. So what I think is so important, one of the things I loved about homeschooling was the freedom that when your child demonstrates an aptitude or an interest in something, You can model their educational experience around that interest and aptitude instead of saying, no, no, no, that's— you've got to stop that. You only get 45 minutes for that. And now we've got to move on to this other thing that you're not interested in, that you hate. And oh, by the way, you're probably never going to use once you actually, you know, leave and go into the world.

Oh, wait, what about this? You're not going to have a calculator with you at all times.

Yeah.

And now we do.

Oh, really? Take that, math teacher.

I know, right? I mean, I just— I just remember the math teacher being like, you have to learn this because you're not always gonna have a calculator.

And now with AI, you don't even have to know how to use calculator. You can just ask it the math question and get the answer.

You can just say, what is this?

We ask the question of our kids, and we learned this the hard way in homeschooling too, right? Like, I don't wanna give the impression that we figured all this out. We went through some pain, right? But I remember my oldest daughter, I'm not good at math. My wife doesn't think math is one of her strong suits. And my oldest daughter was really struggling with it. And we were taking her through this course and we were homeschooling and she was miserable. She was absolutely miserable going through like Algebra 2. And we sat there and like, oh, we'll get this tutor. Okay, we'll try this curriculum. And then one day I sat there and I was like, sweetheart, what do you wanna do?

Yeah.

And she started to lay out all the things that she was interested in, what she wanted to do. And we came to the amazing conclusion that Algebra 2 will help you with none of this.

Yes, that you don't need it.

And so why am I causing all of this stress? Why am I causing you to hate learning? Learning and hate education to compel you. Why? Because I had been taught, well, this is, this is part of the curriculum, this is part of the system. You have to do it, you have to do this, or else you're not going to get your college prep degree, or else you're not going to get— and so it was, it was the most liberating experience. You know, what are things you need? You need to know how to read, right? Like, I don't care what you want to do, you need to learn how to read. You need to, you need to learn basic problem-solving skills, basic math, right? All these things that allow you to develop critical thinking skills. But at a certain point, I want my kids' educational environment to be one that sets them up for success, to be able to take care of themselves, to be able to enjoy learning, to be able to realizing that education is a continuing process. It's not— education is not a building you go to that the government runs. Education is the transference of knowledge from one person to another person. And it's an incredibly exciting and wonderful thing, provided you don't create this institutional, you know, concept around it that says, no, it's done this way.

Well, and what about like financial, like learning to manage your finances, learning to cook, clean, do laundry, like basics, basic skills that kids don't know how to do today.

But here's the thing about all that. Well, if she, if, she might forsake Algebra 2 right now because she wants to be something else. But suppose then she changes her mind, wants to be a statistician or a math teacher or something. Just take a little course online, and then she's gonna want to.

Boom.

And she'll learn it so much faster.

That's the game. If you would have— if you would have sat me down in, in 5th grade and said, Nick, you're going to learn about chickens and composting, you've been like, probably wouldn't be here today. Yeah, I just want to throw an oak ball at my buddy. Like, why do you I don't want to do this. And I would have hated it and I wouldn't have liked it. And when I got older, my only memory would have been like, oh, I hated that. No, what happened was, is that at a certain point in life, based off of changing circumstances and changing interests, and then I poured myself into it and it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed because I wasn't forced to do it. And so I think that— look, do I think kids need to learn a certain level of discipline and that some of that includes sit down, be quiet, and eat your vegetables, right? Those vegetables be actual vegetables or the intellectual kind where it's like, okay, I gotta, I gotta learn this because I gotta learn it. Yes, discipline is an important thing to learn, but don't, don't create an environment where your kids end up despising learning.

Um, well, I think that with homeschooling, yeah, that is one difference between homeschooling and public school is that like public school kids are doing things that they don't want to do. And they're, they're having to do them anyways. And so that's one thing with homeschooling. Yeah, that I feel like homeschooling could step it up a little bit.

Yeah.

Um, the movement—

that's why homesteading is so good. Yeah, because a lot of homeschoolers are going to be a bunch of softies because they're never made to do anything difficult.

It can be. It's not all— not all homeschoolers, but they can be because they— I don't want to say catered because we're not catering to our— we are catering to our, our kids to a degree with homeschooling. Yeah, but it can, it can be where they're catered to so much that they never have to do anything hard. Oh, does that make sense?

Kids need to do hard things.

I'm not saying like abuse them, 100%, like make them do their laundry or make them sit down and have discipline.

Yeah. Oh no, I, I'm— I believe that I want to cater my child's education to what's best for them. I don't want to indulge my child.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. But I do feel like homeschooling can lead to the indulgement.

Oh, I, I—

they're sleeping in.

They— if, if— because I feel like it's so hard. I mean, you know, it's me. It's so hard to be a parent. Yeah, it's so hard. It's like the hardest job ever. Um, so it's hard to know like when to push but when to pull back too, you know? Like there's always that like, oh yeah, you gotta push your kid a little harder because they, they need that, but then also like Maybe that's too much, so you gotta pull it back a little bit.

And then each kid needs it a little bit differently.

Exactly. Oh yeah.

Different times.

Oh yeah. We're going through that right now, 'cause they'll say, well, so-and-so got this. And I'm like, okay, well that's because so-and-so needed that.

Yeah.

And you need something different than them. Yeah. And you'll get that privilege some other time in another completely different way.

Yeah.

That, that other kid will be like, oh, they're getting something.

Yeah, I'm afraid, I'm afraid. I used to think that you had to be born an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

You either had it or you didn't. And then I actually had a guest here come through, a fan, and we were talking about— they didn't— they had a different opinion. They thought that we all have a— if entrepreneurship is seeing a problem and trying to come up with a solution in a creative way and just trading for that solution, yeah, then, then she concluded that We're all born entrepreneurs. And she was concerned, and I'm concerned that maybe it's gotten crushed.

I think that's true. I think— I'll put it this way. I think all of us are born with different interests and aptitudes. And so there's an element there that is, you know, if we want to call it nature versus nurture, right? There's an element that's nature. But then the environment or the nurture, what is rewarded and what is punished, especially in your formative years of life, is going to have a lot a lot to do with what you think you're good at and what you think you're suited for and what you think you're interested in. And things also change over time based off of your education and exposure and experience and all of those things. And so I can look at all three of my kids right now, and I can say that all of them have an entrepreneurial component, but sometimes it manifests itself very differently. But some are definitely more into it in the traditional sense that we think of it from an economic standpoint. Like, which one is most likely to want to run their own business versus which is some— what is somebody that wants to— that would be more comfortable in an environment where a boss is providing structure and they enjoy that. They want to be a very good technician, right? Because that's one of the things with entrepreneurship is that you can't be 100% consumed with the craft. You also have to be cognizant, especially from an economic standpoint, of the management, the marketing, the— you know, it's, it's not just building the best mousetrap. You got to sell the mousetrap. You got to wonder, you got to worry about the, the people to build the mousetraps, right? You got to have, you got to have some sort of inclination toward that. Whereas some people, you will see them, they are super focused and they love to be the best technician they possibly can. And then you have other people that they kind of like the management component. They don't want to stay so focused on the 10,000-foot view. They want to know, how do we complete the thing that we're currently doing? And I think that there's— so I think everybody has a certain component of the entrepreneurial. I think people have a certain component of the managerial. They have a certain component of the technician or the technical aspect. There was a good book written on this. I can't remember the title of it now. Hamilton made me read it. And a lot of it has to do with, I think, maybe different stages in life, different stages of interest, and definitely the environment. Because there is nothing more— there's nothing more disturbing than to watch somebody that you can kind of tell has an aptitude for something but has never been given any sort of encouragement or vision for it. And sometimes we do this as my daughter, both my daughters love the theater, right? My oldest daughter especially loves the theater. And as a father, you're kind of thinking, okay, bud, you need to be able to feed yourself, right? There's a small degree of, there's a much lower degree of probability that this will be an economically advantageous interest.

Yeah, it's not a large—

and this was something that, you know, by the grace of God, Tina and I really prayed about. And it was like, you know what, there's something in there that she loves this. And, and so what, what is our job as parents to kind of foster this, this love that God's given her and a talent for a very genuine talent for it? So what is our obligation to both foster that talent and that love and not stifle it while at the same time understanding the practical considerations. And so one of the things, the conclusion that we kind of came to was we're like, all right, sweetheart, you're wonderful at this and we're gonna encourage you and we're gonna invest in you being able to do this. We're gonna drive you an hour round trip. Boy, it's an investment, isn't it?

Oh my gosh.

To be able to do this. We also want you to understand, and you know, that part of being an adult is being able to provide for yourself. And so what we want you to think about as you're pursuing this, because this is great when you're young, it's a great time to pursue things like this. You got a lot of runway, right? You got a lot of runway. So on the vision side, right, on the aspirational side, study, learn your craft, learn how to do it, be good at it, right? Really, really be good at it. On the practical side, also understand that, okay, what allows me to feed myself while at the same time I get to do this. And it was interesting because she was looking at different things with college. She was looking at different things with maybe going in the military. And she finally said, you know what? She goes, I'm going to go into cosmo. She goes, I'm going to get my cosmetology license first. She goes, I don't know if I'm going to end up going to college. I don't know what's going to happen with theater, but I'm going to get that because no matter where I go, no matter what I'm trying, I can make pretty decent money doing all that. I can make pretty decent money doing that. And I could also get a job within the theater realm doing that as well, because a lot of it— she goes, I've studied this. A lot of this is networking. Who do you know? How do you put yourself in an opport— how do you put yourself in a position to be able to exploit the opportunity when it presents itself? And so she came up with a practical solution that solved some of those basic problems that didn't prevent her, in fact enhanced her ability to pursue that aspiration with a lower probability of success. And I was so proud of her because we didn't pay for her cosmetology school. She worked the night shift at McDonald's. She pet-sit, she house-sit, she did all of it. And how old is she? She's 21 now.

Okay.

Wow.

She did all that, paid her way through cosmetology school, immediately got her license, immediately started working. Has earned more than what her cosmetology license cost her in less than a year. And she's still doing theater. So she came up with the practical means to be able to pursue an aspiration.

There's also another opportunity that's not quite been available to all of us now. If she would just make one piece of content acting, teaching that theater. Does she, uh, do that? How long has she been doing that?

She just started. She first started doing it when she would do nails and stuff like that. She's a very talented artist.

Yeah.

And she would do that, and people started following that, like, oh my gosh, that's a beautiful design. And now her and her friend Laura, who I call like one of my— Laura is one of my— okay, I haven't officially adopted her, but she's, she's in the family. She's, um, but they're now starting to do, um, they're, they're getting ready and they're starting to do their own clips. Like, sometimes it's She's done like short and kind of funny stuff. She's done serious stuff, but she's serving a wider range. And now they're actually developing storylines. And it was— I was talking to Gary Beaker from Nerdrotic, which is a very popular YouTube channel about Hollywood and stuff like that. And he was telling me, he goes, Nick, he goes, a combination of what you can do on your phone. Yeah. AI and other things. He goes, we're going to start to see some of the best entertainment you've ever seen from Anybody.

Yeah, because this was, you know, Rebecca's, you know, scrolling through the Gram, and I'm hearing these reels, and it's like a massive talent show. It's a massive talent show. And what I'm gonna say about your daughter is she no longer needs somebody to produce her. Yeah, she can, she can produce herself.

That's awesome.

So, so by her putting herself out there with content, not only can she bring in if she amasses an audience, bring in ad revenue through that that's shared from those platforms, she then puts herself out there. And if she doesn't want to produce herself, that's how she's going to be discovered. These, these are the new tools of today. If you want to work for me, I'm not— I don't care about— I'll go look at your social medias, uh, and then you're going to come for a trial. I don't care about a resume. Yeah.

Although we don't even look at social media because when we—

because Austin— that's true. We didn't even really look like that. We were going to look at Austin's social media and—

yeah, what she's talking about is we didn't do that. We wanted to hire an editor.

Yeah.

So my idea was I'm gonna get— I'm gonna give everybody the raw footage of the day for the vlog, and I'm going to put it before my audience. Um, you got 24 hours, $500 to the best edit, and a chance to work for the team. Yeah, I got like 24, 24 different versions of my vlog edited, done while I was sleeping.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And then I didn't care about, hey, this one is the closest, has the most potential, let's begin, you know. Then you step up and say, okay, do you want to edit another one? And then, and then, you know, long story short, 2 years later he's moving in next door.

Yeah, uh, we, we, we did something similar when we were looking— when we've looked for people to work with our content We all kind of came to the conclusion, like, we don't care what you got a degree in. No, it doesn't matter anymore.

When we went to college, I don't know if you went to college.

Yeah, I did.

Okay.

I know we did.

Well, when we went to college, it was like, I remember my uncle. So when I was— the summer I graduated from high school, my uncle sat me down and was like, 'cause we were getting married, we knew we were gonna get married, and he's like, "Well, what happens if he leaves you?" And I was like, "Well, he's not gonna." And obviously he hasn't, but he's like, "You need to have something to fall back on. You need a college degree because you might never, you never know, you never know." And I got the college degree and I've never used it.

Our generation was told that.

I know it was, it was imperative.

Our generation, I don't know if the next one's getting told that, thankfully.

Well, we told our kids, I remember we went through this, we told our kids like, look, there are certain jobs for which you will need a degree. Yeah, because it's required by law.

Exactly. Yeah, doctor, lawyer.

But then all you got to do is go take the study for the SAT and just go to the study guide and just get into high school.

It's not hard.

But it's so many other things now, especially on the creative side, um, or the entrepreneurial side. Like, I don't care what we— what our biggest, our biggest question when somebody is, is coming to us and wanting to work with us is Do you understand what it is we do and why we do it? Like, do you understand that? Right?

Because not everybody understands. No.

If you could, you could even be really, really good at the technical stuff.

How many people did you go through before you realized that that's what you needed to say to people when you hired them?

We got— we were— that was one thing. It was a huge blessing because we prayed about that right up front. We're like, what is our mission? Right? And, and so We have this process where we will do, we'll do a lot of work with, we'll farm stuff out to edit, like, hey, edit these clips. And it's always independent contractor work because if we're going to let you into the core part of the team, we got to know that you believe in the mission.

Yeah.

Because we can train you the nuances. That's another thing that we found with some people that are, they're very good at the technical side of it, is that they've been taught a generalized industry standard for this is what this is supposed to look like. And when we do it differently, It's like, well, they'll try to get us back into this mold. We're like, no, we don't want that mold.

Like, your shorts and your reels, you're off to the side. You hold the camera over here. You're not even looking at the camera. You glance a little bit. You're breaking rules. And for your daughter, I'm thinking more about it. This is the way of the future, is that if she would just commit to do a— let's do 100. Let's do 100 high quality, less than 1 minute, or long form, whatever. She can make up the rules, and then it's, it's, it's her play. It's her skill, her message. She doesn't have to compromise.

Yeah.

Or wait for this perfect opportunity that totally aligns with her morals and what she wants to do.

Yeah.

She gets to create her own way. We were walking out of the, uh, at Mac Store and the Apple Store, and we had We, we had just gotten our iPad repaired and we had all our 4 kids in tow. And of course everybody wants to come say, you know, you got your hands full. Okay, everybody, if you got 4 kids, you get it every time you go out.

Yeah.

And, uh, you got your hands full. How in the world— I hope you're saving for, for college.

We were like—

and, you know, we just kept walking. It was just casual. And I thought later, I'm carrying an iPad.

That.

Yeah, the world's information is right here.

Why do you got to go to college? When I had 3 young kids and we'd be out, one of my favorite things— Tina would get so mad at me, but if somebody would come— it was just the 3 kids— people like, oh, you got your hands full. I'm like, what can I say? She couldn't keep her hands off me. And you're like, stop saying that.

Yeah, stop saying that.

She goes, you know, you were the culprit.

I know, right? I know.

But best one is, you know how that happens. You got to say, I got your answer. Yes. And we enjoy it.

I had a man say that to me once. You know how this happens? And I was like, this is so inappropriate. Thankfully, Justin walked up and he was like, yes, we like it. I'm like, okay, good.

I told somebody once, they were talking about kids. I'm like, well, what can I say? They're fun to make. And honestly, that's another part too, right? Because 'Cause a lot of times people will look at the, you know, we're Christians, they'll look at the Christian community, the homesteading community, the homeschooling community, and it's always this idea that we're all a bunch of stuffy. It's like, actually, you would be amazed to find out how incredibly happy we are in our relationships with husband and wife, with kids, with, you know, yeah.

When we were on the Great American Farm Tour, We drove up to someone's— we just visited farms across the United States and we pulled up to this guy's farm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And we, you know, we'd been traveling for like 6 hours. We had 4 kids in a school bus, you know, and they were all like waiting for us, like outside. Like, their daughter was like holding their chicken. Like, you know, I mean, like they were waiting for us to like come out. And it's funny he's a friend now, and he's like, I don't know what we were expecting. He's like, you know, you could hear yelling in the bus, the kids, because, okay, so the people had a pool. They had a pool. And so my kids knew this going in, so they were like—

when he applied to get on the tour, he included that he had a pool.

They were scrambling to get their bathing suits on. I was like, we're not jumping in the pool right away.

Like, guess what? That chicken got ignored. We all went straight to the pool.

Well, no, it It was so funny because like they came up to the door and there was like kids like running around and he like looked into the well of the school bus and there was like shoes, raisins, markers. Like he's like, okay, these people are just regular folks. Like, yeah, it was so funny.

Well, that was one of the things that honestly, that whole, that whole program that you guys did, it was very endearing, um, because again, you, you will see some people who go go way out of their way on some of the stuff, either with homeschooling or— and look, I'm not, I'm not, I promise you I'm not being judgy right now, but it goes on social media and it looks very GQ.

Yeah.

And, and, and it can be intimidating. It can make you feel like you're doing something wrong because why isn't my, why doesn't my garden or my chicken coop or my whatever children—

yeah, why don't they have like combed hair and not dirt on their face and not holes in their clothes?

Yeah. And those people are wearing shoes.

Oh yeah, my kids don't even wear their shoes.

Look, hey, we all know this, right? If you're, if you're a parent, kids are barbarians, right? Especially boys.

When we first started YouTube, people would be like, don't you buy your kids shoes? I'm like, they have lots of them. They don't wear them, or they do wear them and take them off somewhere. We can't find them anymore.

My youngest daughter would just like— I'm, I'm sitting here watching, and look, I was an infantryman in the Army, right? I was a Green Beret. I've I feel like I'm a pretty tough guy, right? But she's walking across like gravel. Yeah. And like the jagged kind, right? We're not talking about pea gravel here, right? Like 5/8 minus, right? She's walking across this barrel.

And it doesn't even look like it hurts. And I'm like, oh yeah.

I'm like, oh my God. Yeah.

The aptitude thing. You kept mentioning aptitude.

Yeah.

I think it's called the aptitude test.

Test.

Yeah, isn't it? I think there is where they take a test and it tells you what you're going to be when you grow up, right? You're rolling your eyes already.

Yeah. Well, I don't know.

I don't remember if entrepreneur is on there. Shop owner, maybe something. Content creator. Even that's gonna have to be added now.

YouTuber. Something. Look, I'm not saying that all testing is bad. I think some testing is fine and even necessary, right? But I love this idea that, oh, fill out this multiple choice thing. Oh, you should be this. Like, yeah, what sort of 1984 Orwellian government crap? Yeah, is fill up the— again, can it give you some ideas? But even then, I think it's a little bit too prescriptive.

Yeah, no, you know what, you're like straight and narrow, like, yeah, and not much gray.

The number one—

yeah, the number one— the number— the kids now, the number one occupation they want to be is not a doctor anymore lawyer or whatever. You know what they want to be? You know, because they want to be a YouTuber.

Well, okay, so do we have a content creation class at school?

No, we don't.

Yeah, well, I have to say this, there is some concern that, that kids want to be YouTubers because we need electricians and plumbers.

Yeah.

And, and, and just regular people too. So like, I, I get that concern, but like I mean, Justin's a YouTuber, and I feel like my kids might dabble in it, but they don't seem to be going that way.

Have you guys ever watched Alex Hormozi?

Yeah.

So I don't— Alex, so he—

the million dollar or the $100 million, uh, offer?

Yeah, yeah. So Alex Hormozi, you could say that he's a YouTuber, but the only reason he's a YouTuber is because he did something very practical in the real world that brought success and value. Yeah. And then he talked about it. And one of the things Alex Hormozi discusses, and he said this, it stuck with me. Another thing Hamilton sent over to make me watch. Um, they were asking him like, okay, YouTube, like, how do you do content and how do you do this? He goes, put down the— he goes, first of all, leave your room, go outside, do something.

Yeah.

Then come back and talk about it. Yeah. He goes, and Don't preach to everybody about what they should do. What did you learn? What did you get out of it? And so what YouTube is, is, and he worded it this way, he goes, I don't care what an 18-year-old has to say about relationship advice on YouTube. I don't care how charismatic they are. I don't care how good their video editing is. I don't care because they don't have any credibility with me on what it means to be able to do this. So what I would say is that if you're going to be successful at this, You have to have actually—

you have to do things.

You have to go do something, right? You want to be an electrician or a plumber? Great. Go do that and then do content about it. I was going to say, and I would watch that because if you're going to teach me how to do something that might be of value to me, wonderful. And I think that's a big part of what we're— you're successful at this one of two ways. You can provide garbage content that's still popular because it that appeals to baser instincts that don't actually provide any real long-term hardcore value. But if you really want to, and I get into, I'll have colleagues in politics like, hey, teach me how to be really good on social media. I'm like, well, the first thing you're gonna have to do is stop making this an extension of your campaign or your political office. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, dude, every time you go on there as I'm delegate this or I'm state senator this or I'm this, Everybody instantly knows you want something.

Turn you off.

You want something from them. You want their vote, you want their money, you want something. What are you providing of value to them? Yeah. So focus first and foremost on— don't tell people what they should necessarily think or believe or whatnot. Go out there, live some life, get some experience, share it in a way that you thought was interesting, and see what the response is.

So what's your value add on as you approached social media?

Yeah, so what ours was— and this is— I always feel, I always feel a little uncomfortable talking about it, right? Um, because I didn't, I didn't set out— I didn't set out to be the coffee mug guy, right, like on Instagram. Um, I guess what it really was is that obviously I was involved in politics, and so the first things that I did that kind of went viral had to do with with politics. A lot of it was Second Amendment stuff. It was the life issue. And some of it was sharing, just making points, making points about making an argument for something that I thought was valuable. I wasn't asking them for anything. No, I was making it.

I was sharing your, your belief.

Yeah. And, and over time, with, with kind of the shorter form stuff, it became kind of making casual observations about things from the perspective of having been Having been a dad, having been a husband, having been a soldier.

There's a lot of material there when you have kids.

Oh my gosh. Never-ending source of content.

Do you write these down before you go and speak it?

No, it's the same way when I give a floor speech or if I write it down, I will screw it all up.

Okay.

I can write down bullet points sometimes to try to keep myself organized.

Yeah. If you've given a long speech.

Yeah.

But for your little shorts and reels, you don't do that.

No, what'll happen is something will pop in my mind. So one of the ones that went just nuts, we had somebody say, you know, Nick, and she was working with us, she goes, Nick, can you talk about— she goes, I love it when you talk about being a girl dad.

Yeah.

You talk about— can you share anything on that? I said, okay. And so I did this little short and I said, and I was in my truck. And I had my sunglasses on. I said, 3 things I learned raising daughters. I said, you know, when I found out I was having a little girl, I talked to 2 people right off the bat. One was my wife because she had been a girl. I figured, hey, she'll know some stuff, right? I said, the second person I talked to, I said, and forgive the expression, was probably the biggest man-whore I had ever met in the military.

Yeah.

And I went up to him and I said, how do I I keep my daughter from someone like you?

You really asked him that?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Straight up. Straight up.

We're friends.

We were friends. And, uh, and he looked at me and he goes— and being a good sport, he looked at me and he goes, tell your daughter you love her, because if you don't, someone who doesn't will, and she'll believe them.

Wow.

And that hit people right here. It hit me. Yeah, it hit me. I said— so that led me to do, you know, that led me to do a few things with my daughters. I always told my girls that I loved them. You know, I always told them the truth and made sure that they could tell, you know, Daddy the truth. And I said, you know, plus I taught them how to shoot just in case. But it was that idea of I wasn't telling people what to do or what to think.

Just what you did.

Hey, this was an experience I had that I thought— this was an experience I had that had an impact on me. And now that I'm a little bit further down the road in raising daughters and I have a good relationship relationship with my daughters. You know, some of this helped with that. And, um, and so people—

you're not saying like, dads, you should do this. It was kind of like, hey, this is what I did as a girl dad.

And yeah, and I—

and maybe someone will take that and use it.

And got a lot of that. Now believe me, there have been times where I've come on and I've said, look, dads, we— you, you do have responsibilities. We did one on— we did a like an 8-minute video on why dads should be dangerous. And we were talking about the responsibility of a father and that, you know, it's like our job is to be dangerous. Our job is not to be dangerous to our kids. It's to be dangerous on behalf of them. And a lot of it is just sharing, sharing stories that were meaningful to you, whether you were the primary actor in that story or whether it was something you observed, or maybe you were the subject of it, right? Something happened to you. But again, as long as it's providing value to people that are watching, I think that's what, I think that's what can make you a successful YouTuber. I think unfortunately we have a lot of young people now that think I'm going to be a successful, no, it's you're going to be successful at something and then you're gonna talk about it on YouTube.

Yeah, I think that's why the family vloggers, you know, for a while there it was like these families could just, film their very boring life and their regular life.

And they were making so much money from social media, they didn't have to have jobs. That was just their job.

And that was— and that has come to an end, I think, because they weren't doing anything. They were just going to the grocery store or they were taking their kid for a haircut or whatever.

Not everything that is relatable is interesting, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Relatable is a good a good component of like content, if you will.

But yeah, it's like MrBeast, you know, like he's so popular, but he also does like a lot of good things and he does a lot of things. It's not— we're not just watching him eat candy bars. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he's done a lot of things, which I think is why he's so popular.

Oh yeah. Well, and his— the creativity level is incredible with the stuff that he comes up with. And, and yeah, a lot of the stuff you could say is cotton candy, right? It's not a lot of—

it's very silly.

Yeah. But it's also the category of entertainment.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's fine, right?

Some good.

Oh, no.

I think those people who saw and the deaf people, like, oh, yup.

I'm like, I think it's important to recognize that there are some people out there that are providing content that is primarily entertainment. And that's fine. Sometimes we'll There's a reason why sometimes I just want to watch a video of MrBeast being trapped on a desert island for 7 days. I know I'm not going to get anything out of it other than it's, it's a moment of being able to escape and relax and not have a message thrown at me, right?

And then if you watch it with your kids, then, you know, it's a bonding thing. Yeah, talk about it at the end, and then it becomes this—

there's a learning experience even.

Yeah, there's all kinds of things you can do. It's interesting how you're associates are coming to you for social media. That, you know, and we're of that age where many of our age even don't understand the power and the necessity that it's becoming to have an online presence now, to have a social media presence. Kids these days, they don't have a weight or concept about like a TV show. Like, I'm of that age where it might still be exciting if a TV show approached us, you know, and yeah, we want to get on Discovery. But like, yeah, MrBeast is getting, uh, quadruple the views of the Super Bowl.

Yeah.

And, uh, you out of your pocket can get— I mean, I looked at your reels there, you're there, you're at like, oh, you're in the hundreds of thousands.

We're about like our subscribers is about 1 point, a little over 1.1 million. And when we do a reel, like a low performing reel, like the other day we did like 6 on one day because we were at an event. And so those will be lower performing just because that's kind of how the algorithm works.

Not everybody wants to see event people. Other people are there for your content, not necessarily you sharing other people's content.

Well, and they enjoy it, but it's just kind of a different form of content. But like if we do a basic reel, like just phone, coffee mug, talking about something that happened or whatnot. A lower performing reel is one that gets 300,000 views, and that's something. A higher performing one is, you know, 800K or more. Um, and, and, and so—

Congratulations.

Oh, well, thank you. It's—

I mean, that's an accomplishment.

Well, we're— again, we're, you know, we dream of being, you know, Justin and Rebecca Rhodes when we grow up, but, uh, it, it's— so it's interesting, but, um, But yeah, to your, to your point on that, it's amazing how we thought about this once. Like, what if when we were first starting off, like, wouldn't it be so cool if like one of these, you know, bigger programs offered us a show? And then about 2 years into it, we're like, we don't want the restrictions.

We've explored shows, we've had shows approach us, and it's like, we don't want the restrictions.

No, I mean, while we weren't going to sign on the dotted line unless they, they met our, met our restrictions.

Yeah.

And because they want to own Yeah, because that was one thing we got pretty far with one, one, and it didn't get greenlighted. So we got to the greenlight room, but we didn't get greenlighted. And the, the person was like, oh, you know, it'd be a 360 deal. They would like want a little piece of everything that you have. And we were kind of like, yeah, that's not— I don't know if we would be doing it even if you had greenlighted us with the knowledge of what you're sharing with me now. I'm like, I don't know about all this.

Well, we saw this. So in the political realm, we were discussing something and the guy's like, we need to do a press conference. I said, why?

Hmm.

Yeah.

Well, well, because we got to get this out to— we got to let the people see it. I was like, okay, can I just show you something real quick? So the daily paper circulation of The Washington Post is 139,000. Wow. That's not 139,000 of your article. That's the whole paper. I said, now their online presence, much bigger. That's in the millions. That's in the millions. But that's people that have a subscription. Doesn't mean they're reading it every day. Doesn't mean you're not getting individual numbers for that piece of content. I said, and it's all going to go through the lens of their agenda. I said, I clipped your speech. I was talking to somebody else. I clipped your speech that you gave on the floor, put on my page. You got 500,000 views in 24 hours. And he pulls up his Instagram. He goes, I got 500 new subscribers on a channel I haven't used in 2 years. I said, do you understand the power now of what you have to go directly to people instead of the filter of legacy media? Yeah, it's like, okay, I get it. Thank you. Can we start focusing here?

Tucker Carlson, I don't know how many views he was getting on Fox. What, at best, $2 million maybe?

Yeah. Yeah.

Then he goes over to X, $200 million.

The best thing that happened to Tucker Carlson was getting fired by Fox.

I know, right?

Because again, it's, it's that paradigm shift.

Then did you see what he did? He, you know, he got— it seemed rather abruptly to leave Fox. It wasn't like, okay, you're gonna be laid off in 6 months, right? So it's abrupt. He goes to X, um, And then now he has his own network. Yeah, yeah, I did the same thing. Yeah, really. Back in the day, in 2017, when we're touring all of America, YouTube started pulling gun videos or demonetizing gun videos or butchering. Or like, well, and then it— but I saw the writing on the wall.

Yeah.

And soon enough they pulled butchering video, demonetized butchering videos and stuff.

Well, because what we were— our original plan was just to create a second channel with all of the Abundance Plus stuff would go on to the second YouTube channel.

Yeah.

And so it would be, you know, free to everybody. But then it was kind of like, oh dear, like now we can't, we can't show shooting an animal. We can't show showing what kind of gun we would use to dispatch an animal. Yeah.

And so it's kind of like because the animals and the animals in the grocery store when you buy your steak, they weren't, they weren't shot. They were— yeah, nothing bad happened.

People have literally commented and said, why are you killing those animals? Talking about my animals. You should just get your meat at the store because they really did not know they got killed.

Those animals died of old age.

It's so strange. It's a very strange—

yeah, everybody's just so disconnected. You know, we talk about the advantage of being on the homestead out there on our tour is the kids, the kids see the birth and the death and the birds and the bees.

Yeah.

Yeah, broad daylight.

Yeah.

And, um, you know, what I'm getting at with that point is, one, you know, your daughter can start producing herself with this phone and putting herself out there and, and, and find— express herself in that way, and it could turn into a really nice career.

Yeah.

With sponsorships, with, with ad money that comes through, with creating her own product, you know, solving some sort of problem, maybe making a course on, on theater.

Oh yeah.

And then YouTube starts pulling that plug. You know, we saw it. It seems to cool down a little bit. And it's like 2020 made everything hot. Like, yeah, social media being really high and censorship.

Yeah.

And stuff like that. And pulling posts.

I'm seeing, I'm seeing, I don't, I don't know what it is yet, but we're in 2024, another presidential election cycle, repeat of Trump and Biden. And I've definitely watched— I mean, Instagram changed, they automatically changed another category on political content and it set everyone's setting to limit. And so you've got to go in there and actively change it to pull that off.

I have seen more sensitive—

Do they censor you?

Censor things.

As a conservative? The issue that comes down— and I do think there's a lot of conservatives that kind of overblow the degree to which they're like shadow banned, right? It's like, like, I've been shadow banned, or your content sucks. Like, let's not— I mean, don't get me wrong, you might have been, right? And they do stuff like this. Like, I'm not being— but that was another thing that our team sat down, like, I get really frustrated about something and they would never let me get away with the easy excuse of you got shadow banned. It was like, no, look at what you did. Look at this over here. And I had to be— and what I found was, is that 8 times out of 10, they were right. It just wasn't as good, and I needed— and I need to get better.

Yeah, okay.

But, but 2 times out of 10, one of these guys had done something a little bit weird or demonetized.

You do think they've—

I don't, I don't know. I, I guess what I'm saying is, is that I think— I don't think they've come after me. I think what has happened is, is that we're in a very, very politically volatile election year, and a lot of these channels are going to quietly kind of push down. That's why Instagram did what it did. And Instagram's Meta, so that means Facebook's doing the same thing. And they're going to try to tamp down the political content. Now, the problem with that has always been—

Period? Political content? Or conservative content?

Well, here's the— Bob Iger, right? CEO of Disney. Not exactly someone I'm enamored with, right? Bob Iger was being asked about it. He goes, oh yeah, Disney's going to get less political. And by that, I don't mean everything, because there's some things that are not political, it's just right or wrong.

Oh my God.

Exactly. Because it's whenever they say we're gonna reduce political content or limit political content, who gets to decide what's political content versus what is just right and wrong? And what inevitably happens is that if you have a more conservative perspective on an issue, you get categorized as political content, where somebody else just gets categorized as cultural content. Or whatever.

Yeah.

And so that's something to be cognizant of. But, um, again, I, I will also say this: a lot of what I talk about when it does come to politics, I'm not saying Republican versus Democrat. Here's the issue. Let's talk about what, what are the assumptions, what are the philosophies, what is the data, what is it that informs that particular issue? Because ultimately there is something to be said about right and wrong on these issues. And those aren't always partisan.

Right.

And my goal, when I look at something that I believe in, like, okay, I am an elected Republican. The Republican Party is a tool, is a mechanism. It is not the end state.

Right.

Like, my goal is not that the Republican Party run it. No, my goal is to live in a free country. Where free people are afforded the maximum amount of liberty to live out their lives the way they want, pursue happiness, provided that they don't infringe on the rights of other people to do the same. And insofar as I think one apparatus or one mechanism might be more useful in achieving that, that's what I'll align myself with. But that's the goal, not partisanship.

Anyway. Yeah. And so they, they had this social media. Anybody can post to that. But then, uh, that's been one level and that's been good. But there's another one now. Now these tools are available to us to have our own platforms. Even, you know, me with Abundance Plus, uh, having its total roots in like, I see the writing on the wall. I don't think I might always have control of content.

Yep.

With a third party. I need to have my own place.

I think you're— I think you're absolutely right. And I think there's actually 3 steps to this. One is using the platforms that are out there— YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. Yeah. And but you're right, they can take that away from— they've proven they can take that away from you very, very quickly if they, if they want to. Then the second step is doing something like what you guys have done where it's like, okay, we're going to set up something separate that belongs to us. The third component is when that is residing on server stacks that you actually have. Because we've seen how, I mean, look at what they did with, what was that one social media? Was it Rumble? Can't remember what it was called.

I know what you're talking about.

No, it wasn't Telegram.

Oh, I know what you're talking about.

Parler.

Parler.

Yeah, Parler was like, okay, fine, we'll set up our own to compete. And then Google was like, okay, fine, we'll shut down your servers.

That's frightening too, because—

Oh my gosh, now you're setting down— Even if you have your own servers, There's one thing to say. I'll put it this way. Think of it as like a road, vehicles on the road. It's one thing to say, you're in my vehicle. I don't want you in my vehicle anymore. Get out of my vehicle. That's YouTube kicking you off.

Right.

Yeah.

It's another thing to say, I don't like your vehicle, so you're not allowed to use the road anymore. Right. Like, whoa. Now I don't just got to build my own vehicle. I got to build my own road.

Yeah.

And the answer is yes. Like, if you really want to be safe from that mechanism, it's not just the car, it's also the road.

And then really, there's only how many smartphones? Like, there's Mac, or there's Apple, and Microsoft has something. Is that the Android?

Android?

There's only a— not even a handful.

Yeah.

And, and Apple would probably be the biggest one. Well, Apple could not put it in the App Store.

Decide not to let your app come on. I mean, it's so crazy.

Yeah.

Like, Apple could say Abundance+ can't be in the App Store because you have butcherings.

I will say this. I do think we're getting— what's encouraging, and we kind of saw this with X, right, with Twitter, was there was like, get your own platform. And Elon Musk is like, okay, we'll buy yours. And I do. One of the beautiful things, the reason why you want to keep the market as free as possible. This is another thing I push back on politics all the time is like, look, I'm not sitting here trying to regulate people that disagree with me out of existence. I would never dream of trying to use the government to shut people down because they disagree with me politically. But I'm certainly not being afforded that luxury by certain elements. And the nice part about the free market, or what's supposed to be a free market, increasingly less free, is, okay, fine. You want to kick me off all my platforms? You want to alienate roughly 50% of your customer base, oh, somebody's going to fill that void unless you've got a government powerful enough to restrict them from being able to compete. And so it's another reason why it's so important to have a freer marketplace, because you always want somebody to be able to say, fine, you don't want to sell apps to those people, you don't want to sell a platform to those people, I'll do it.

Yeah, it is a 50/50, isn't it?

Yeah, it's, it, you know, when we—

thank goodness for that though, right?

Well, let me ask you this: what are the chances that a third party is going to be able to come in and actually compete?

I, I think it's, it's very difficult for the way that we, the way that we're set up already. Can I say this too? Yeah. Europe is full of what they call multi-party democracy. Technically, we're multi-party. There's other political parties. Well, no, we have— there's Libertarian, there's Green, there's Constitutional They just don't get any votes because they're not seen as being viable.

Yeah.

Okay. In Europe, you go look at a European Parliament, you'll have 12 parties represented, 7 parties represented. Are they in a better situation?

Yeah.

Like, I don't think— I don't think necessarily just— I don't think adding more parties is the ultimate, you know, I'm not against it.

Yeah.

Like, I've actually carried legislation to make it, to make it easier for third parties to actually be more active and play a more active role.

But, um, but it's like a libertarian option.

I, I am very, very sympathetic to a lot of libertarian philosophy, and they have a party, but they just never— they never really gain.

Well, it feels like you're throwing away a vote.

It— yeah. And that's— and, and again, the two parties have done a good job of voting for the most—

because there's only two, the Democrat and the Republican.

If you go for a different one, then it messes up. Now, who's Kennedy running under? He's running under independent, I guess.

He was trying to get the Democrat nomination until they essentially shut up. They shut down and do it, which is— well, he wasn't on the Party of Democracy.

He wasn't. I know, right? He wasn't on the North Carolina independent.

Yeah, he wasn't even on the ballot.

We couldn't find him on the ballot at all.

The important thing to remember, and this is, this is something I have a real problem with, like, so in Virginia, like, I don't like the idea that the state will pay for— like, you have, you can have a state-run primary, but you have to meet certain thresholds, right, to be qualified to be a recognized party in that primary. And that's— now you have a private institution, a party, using your tax dollars to fund its selection process.

Spending my money, right?

Yeah. And then, and then guess what? When it's only those two parties in control in the legislature, they come up with certain criteria to make sure that other people— it's more difficult for them to be able to be a part of that process. And, um, but again, we UK Parliament, you have all kinds of parties, Canadian Parliament, all kinds of parties. What it's really going to take, in my opinion, I'm fine with all of that if those are things that we want to try. But what it really comes down to is a citizenry that is focused on this idea of I don't care which party is screwing me over, like, or which party is taking more of my money or restricting more of my freedoms. Like whether I have one party doing it or seven parties doing it, I don't like it.

Right.

You need to elect more people that regardless of their party, their ideology is like, hey, Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists out these enumerated powers. That's your job. Not all this other crap. I want people that are going to focus on that. Now, maybe we disagree on the best way to run the post office, right? Because that's under Article 1, Section 8. Maybe we disagree on the best way to run it.

Anyway better than what's going on right now.

Fine, let's have— I would love it if the debate between Republicans and Democrats was, you know, we have a really inefficient post office, we should probably really focus our attention on that, rather than determining what the, you know, what the preschool curriculum in Pakistan is going to look like. You know, that's— and, and if we get people focused back on, guys, we don't need them to do half the crap they're doing, right? And when you allow them to do it Nobody's happy. They spend way too much money. They come up with— they stifle creativity and ingenuity. Like, it was never meant to be this way because they're not good at it. The way I described it once is you would never go to your dentist to have your car fixed, right? And if you did go to your dentist to have your car fixed and your dentist didn't fix your car, you wouldn't be like, well, the problem here is I don't have a compassionate enough dentist. No, the problem is, is that you took the wrong problem to the wrong person, right? You don't need a better dentist. You need to take it to a mechanic. Well, unfortunately, we have a lot of people that are taking a whole variety of problems to politicians and bureaucrats instead of to the people within society that would actually be far better at addressing their problem. And that's what I want more of. We call whatever party you want. I want more people that realize We can argue the government's got an important role to play, but it's limited. Focus on that because quite frankly, none of us schmucks are good at half the things we're trying to solve.

Yeah. Do you have— so we have a feeling when we say IRS, we have a feeling when we say post office. Yeah, we do have a different feeling when we say, um, Army. Yeah, Green Beret, the Navy SEALs. But that's government.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Is it just as inefficient?

There's definitely inefficiencies in there. I think what— I think it comes down to two things. A lot of us disagree on what we think are the appropriate roles of government, but most of us don't disagree that an appropriate role of government is providing for national defense.

Okay.

And so we recognize that as, okay, we understand that the government by design is inefficient. And in fact, if you, if you look at what the founders wrote, they wanted it that way, right? They did not want a federal government so powerful that it was a hot knife through butter and you want something done and the next day it's done because they recognize that the federal government uses force to get what it wants. Whenever a politician says, all we're asking, they ain't asking you crap, right? They're telling you, you're going to do this or we're going to take your property or take your freedom. Right? So they wanted a slow, deliberative process to make sure that, hey, if we're going to do this, we really need it done. And the problem is, is with the rise of the federal bureaucracy and with the rise of this idea of the government's the primary mechanism we use to solve problems, it's rapidly expanded. But when you look at the Army, when you look at the military in general, you think, okay, I get it. That's a legitimate function of government. Government, and I would like it to be run more efficient. I would like it to be more effective, but I get why the government's doing it. More and more, though, like the post office— we bring up the post office— if you knew you had it, if you knew you needed to get a package somewhere, would you go to the post office or would you go to FedEx or UPS or someone else?

Yeah.

Something tells me the post office would probably be your last pick. Yeah.

Now, the reason I always go to FedEx Just because it's sometimes cheaper.

Yeah, you know, but no, and actually it's not because it's subsidized by your taxes.

But when we had to get that letter—

I'm paying those taxes.

But when we had to get that letter and we wanted to make sure they got it, oh yeah, we went to FedEx. And it's— then it's FedEx and paying, paying it the big bucks and getting the signature.

And why is that? Because if the post office doesn't get your letter there, tough. Oh yeah, if UPS or FedEx doesn't get your letter there They owe us. Well, FedEx doesn't get it there, you go to UPS.

Oh, I see.

If UPS doesn't get it there, you go to FedEx.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

If the post office doesn't get it there, they get their money either way.

And they don't care whether we show back up again or not.

We were at the post office, gonna go in, I guess, or we must have come back out, got in the car, the postal worker opened the blue box door, a big gust of wind came and took mail away. Yeah, she just went, oops.

Well, no, she went and got some.

No, she didn't.

When we came in—

no, she didn't. We went and got it because I was like, those are people's bills. People don't put junk mail in the blue box to send it anywhere. And we went and got electric bills, water bills out of the, out of the highway. And I took it in there and I said, these are the ones you didn't collect. And she just was like, oh well. And I was— I wanted to slug her. I wanted to be like, this is— somebody's water could have gotten turned off.

Yeah.

Because of your negligence. And then when, you know, when I don't get something in the mail, they're— I'll just tell the person, I'm like, look, our mail— our office is not good. Our post office is just not good.

So it comes back down to incentive.

Yes. You— and, and here's another thing that people—

is there no incentive though? I don't understand this. Are they not getting paid? Because they're getting paid but they're not doing the job they're getting paid for.

It's not a question of whether or not you get paid, it's a question of whether or not you get fired.

But why don't they get fired? Why is it so hard to fire government workers?

Because of civil service laws.

Why do we have civil service laws?

So prior to, like in the 18— back when the federal government was still relatively small, okay, one of the things— president— 1800s, before the 16th and 17th Amendments constitution. But anyway, that's a whole nother podcast. But in the 1800s, the federal government was relatively small, and the chief executive, the president, had a great deal of authority on— he was actually kind of the CEO of the federal government. And so one of the things presidential candidates would do is they would promise jobs in order to get votes or contributions or stuff like that. So it was called the spoils system. They want— and that's problematic, right? We can all acknowledge that's a That's the problem. So the solution to that problem was, oh, we'll set up these civil service requirements and now we're gonna reduce the power of the executive branch to just hand out federal jobs. Yeah, they get to select their cabinet. Yeah, they get to go after like department heads and things like that. Anybody that's involved with policy, but middle management, stuff like that, they're kind of untouchable. Well, you traded one, again, you didn't have a solution, you had a trade-off and you traded one monster for another monster. And now the monster is you have a massive federal bureaucracy where a lot of the middle management knows they're not getting fired. You see the same thing a lot of times with some of the teachers' contracts. You hear about these ridiculous teachers' contracts in New York where a teacher— to fire a teacher for negligence takes like 2 years where they're receiving full pay and benefits and they just go to an empty room and read the paper. And so again, you've traded one monster for another monster. And this is another reason why you don't want the government running a lot of these things, because the incentive structure is better in a system where you are getting what you pay for. And it's— I had somebody once tell me when we were talking about this with teachers, and they're like, teachers don't do this for the money. They do this for the love of teaching. I'm like, well, then why are they always asking for pay increases? When a teacher asks me for a pay increase, which she may well deserve, right? I can't go to her and be like, but I thought you were doing this for the love of teaching. How dare you? Well, which is it? Is this a purely altruistic endeavor or do you want to get paid? Well, if the answer is you want to get paid, well, my question is, is then what happens to you when you don't do your job? Because if I'm the customer, if my child's the customer, and I have no say over— unless I can afford an alternative, if I have no say, you're forcing me to send my kid to the school, it's not working out, and now I have no control over it. I can go write a stern note of protest to my representative. But if you have an environment where there's a close connection between the service provider and the customer, you build a far closer relationship and people are able to adapt. And here's the amazing part. Teachers are rewarded for it. But anyways, this person is like, well, Nick, I can promise you, you know, teachers— I said, do you think every doctor has nothing but altruistic intent? Do you think every soldier is just a stand-up guy? No. Do you think every cop is a stand-up guy? No. Do you think every firefighter is a stand-up guy?

No.

But you think every teacher is just just wonderful, no bell curve, it's all the 100th percentile. Well, no, I said, of course not. So stop saying that. Stop making this about me denigrating the teaching profession. That's not what I'm doing. Teaching, being a doctor, being a nurse, being a soldier, being a— these are noble professions. That doesn't mean everyone in there is noble. And it's absurd to believe otherwise. And so the question should always be, How do we get to a system which is far closer to actually providing, to incentivizing and rewarding the noble people within that profession, the hard workers within that profession? You don't get that within a government system. You just don't.

So what do you tell the young? What do you tell the young people now? What do they do?

As far as fix this problem? Oh, Honestly, and so I'll put it this way. Politics plays a role. You know, you got to be engaged. But here's what I'll say. I don't think our country would be in the condition it's in if our families were in a better condition.

If we're in better condition?

If families were in a better condition in this country, I don't think the country would be in the condition it's in.

In.

Oh, because you, you have— there's no question that we have more and more kids now growing up in an environment where they—

that's distracting, right? Who is that?

Jonah, see who that is.

It might— well, make sure it's not our car. Sure.

No, our car is right here.

Okay. Oh, where did my keys go? Oh, I left them in the car.

All right, maybe that's it.

They got it.

So I'll back that up a little bit. I think our country would be in better condition if our families were in better condition. And what I mean by that is I see a lot of people that are very, very focused on either chasing a view of success that the modern culture has given them. I see a lot of people that they are so obsessed with politics that they will spend hours arguing with complete strangers on Twitter while at the same time, they're not conveying any of their beliefs to their children. And you can't convey beliefs—

They don't spend time with their children.

You can't convey beliefs to children by just saying, believe this way, because we believe this way. I was teaching a course once. And it was kind of heartbreaking, actually. 'Cause it was a very, very gifted student, very, very strong, like strong in their faith, strong in their beliefs. One year into college, one year into college, and they were just questioning everything. And the first person he called up was actually his parents to ask them about this stuff. And the response he got back from their parents, 'cause their parents now are, they're kind of scared, right? They love their child and they want their child to be, successful and grounded in their beliefs. But because the parents didn't know how to answer the question, it was just, well, you need to read your Bible more, or you need to, you know, we didn't raise you this way. And the reality, the conclusion I came to was, actually you did. Because if by the time your kids leave your house, their faith, or the things that they believe in, or their worldview is not their own, then you didn't teach them what you believed and teach them how to properly defend it, and most importantly, why it's true. Because it can't be true because you said so. The truth has to come from something outside of any of us. What you taught them was a structure of authority and obedience. Obedience. And what they learned was, again, obedience to authority. Believe this because in my house, you're rewarded for it if you repeat what I say, and you're punished if you don't. So what happens when they leave your house? And now you're not the authority figure, it's the college professor, it's the friend group, it's the boss.

And they're taught to believe that.

Now they're given new values.

Instead of—

And now the new values are the rule. And if I repeat these new values, I'm rewarded by my professor, I'm rewarded by my boss, I'm rewarded by the HR department, I'm rewarded by my friend group.

So you try not to be too authoritative then?

What I try to do is when your kids are very young, it's very prescriptive, right? I don't, I don't explain physics to my child when I tell them not to run into the street. I tell them they're going to get in trouble if they run into the street because I want them to associate running in the street and they compete with, you know, bad results. As they get a little bit older, then we explain why. Well, if the car hits you, you're gonna lose, right?

Right?

And then it's the same thing with moral philosophy. It's the same thing with your faith. There's a lot of prescription when they're younger. As they get older, you start to explain why. And I will tell you, one of the most formative, I believe one of the most formative moments you will have as a parent, and I always share this story because I think it's so critical, is one day your kids will catch you being wrong. Yeah, they will catch you. And I don't just mean being wrong as incorrect. They will catch you doing something, saying something, behaving in a way that you have told them is not just, you know, disadvantageous. You've told them it's immoral.

Yeah.

And for me, one of those moments was I came home from work. I was, I was stressed out. I walk in, I see the kitchen. It's a mess. My youngest daughter, my son are cooking something. And I just went off like, what are you doing? You've blown up the kitchen. Put this all away. But Daddy, but Daddy, nothing. Put it away. Go to your room. And then I march upstairs and my oldest daughter at the time, she's about 13, 14, knocks on the door. Who is it? It's Lily. Daddy, can I talk to you for a minute? And I said— and this is probably about like 10, 15 minutes after, right? So she was smart.

And timing is everything.

Not immediately after.

Timing is everything.

Yeah, yeah. What is it, sweetheart? Daddy, I don't think you handled that well. Oh, like, again, I paused a moment because every ounce of me was like, oh, please, wise sage of parenting. I had no idea you were ready to display some wisdom for me. Like, let me sit down and get some notes, right? Oh, and I did it. I very easily could have, but I was like, okay, what do you, what do you mean? Daddy, the reason why Luke and Allie were in the kitchen making something is because Mommy told them they could do it because they were making something for you. And they were doing their best and they were so excited to make this thing for Daddy. And because you didn't take the time to understand what they were doing and why, and you— now they're too scared to tell you. Ah, like, your dad heart is just like, I'm such a jerk. And I remember looking at Lily and saying, thank you. You know, you're right, and I'm wrong. I'm gonna go apologize to them. I will make this better, but I want to thank you for having both the courage and the respect, 'cause she didn't come to me flippantly. She didn't yell at me. She was very respectful in the way that she approached it. But in that moment, and I always say like, there by the grace of God go I, because there's any other moment where my attitude would've been very, very different, but for some reason, God caught me and said, you have a huge opportunity here. To demonstrate to your daughter that what you told her was true is just as true for you as it is for her. Because if in that moment my attitude is, "It's my house, it's my rules, get out," what I've just told her is the truth that I taught her is arbitrary. It's arbitrary based on authority. I have the authority, so when the truth applies, it only applies because I have the ability to impose it. And if you ever want your daughter to be able to stand up to authority when it's wrong. Yeah, you better reward her for doing it right now when it's you.

Yeah, that's true.

And definitely our kids—

that's a good point—

pointed out to us, don't worry.

Yeah, good point.

But it's—

but then, I mean, I also, I feel like when they were young, we were like, oh hey, we're not perfect, we're gonna make mistakes.

Yeah.

And they knew that from a pretty early age. Yeah.

And but the— what— but the wonderful thing about that is you're going to have kids that that they are more concerned about what is true than what authority figures say. That doesn't mean they disregard authority. It doesn't mean they're not even respectful to authority when it's worthy of respect. But they're gonna stand for truth. And I want my kids in a world where their government, their culture, arts and entertainment are constantly telling them something else. I want them to believe so desperately in the truth and understand the fundamental importance of it so badly that they are willing to challenge it, and they're willing to accept the consequences for it. And you can't expect that of them if you haven't trained them to do that. And even at the expense of your own pride, in fact, especially at the expense of your own pride. And like I said, there's any number of times I could point to where that was not my response, and I was guilty of giving in to pride. But that one moment stuck with me so much that I've tried to remember it anytime another another instance pops up. And the wonderful reward of that is when you see your children, again, respectfully and effectively pushing back against what the world is telling them when they know it isn't true. And they know it isn't true not because you just told them so. They know it isn't true because they've experienced it. That's when it's their belief. Belief.

And so, yeah, I think one of the biggest things a parent can do is apologize, because, um, I don't— I never got it from my parents, and I craved it. Yeah. And I even had it out with my dad once, and, you know, I, I think I was first and apologized to him for something and practically had to pull, you know, whether it was appropriate for me or not, I, I pulled it out of him. Yeah, I had to get that just for whatever reason. But it's because it's hard, because you hurt the kid. The kids get hurt feelings.

Yeah.

And apology can go a long way. And now that you mentioned this though, with the authority— I'm their authority, but now they're learning that the authority can be wrong.

Yeah.

Sometimes. Yeah. They're not always to be trusted.

Yeah.

Yeah. We've had—

that's okay.

Over the last 5 years especially, of authority being very, very wrong. Wrong.

Yeah.

And then wanting to claim, but it's okay because we had good intentions, or it's okay because we were voted into office, or it's okay. No, no, it's not okay. Now, some cases it may be understandable that you made a mistake, right?

You didn't have all the information. We have a lot more information now.

Yeah, but it doesn't make it okay, right? And you do owe an apology. And it's— and sometimes I would even say it's not even good enough sometimes to say I'm sorry. Sometimes it's— it requires you to say, I'm sorry, I was wrong, and you were right.

Yeah, that's a good addition.

Telling someone they were right. Because it's one thing to say, okay, I'm sorry, I was wrong. You were right is a deeper form of acknowledgment that they didn't just accurately tell you what the problem was. They actually got the answer right. And there's something liberating about that. You know, talk about wanting an apology from someone that's close to you, that you love, that you care about. It's because we have a desire for justice. And we certainly have a desire for justice for the people that we love the most. And if we're going to define justice, it's the idea of the correct thing happening, the morally correct thing taking place and being acknowledged. And what we've taught our kids is that ultimately, the truth lies with God. So that authority is the one that you can depend upon no matter what. But all other authority, look, they don't get to subvert truth. They'll try, they'll try often, and you better be able to distinguish it. Yeah.

So we could go back to little 18-year-old Justin and his dad and wondering who to vote for. It sounds like And he may have, but it sounds like Justin did the right thing because he's respecting his dad and going to his dad. Don't we all parents dream that our children would come to us for advice when they're adults? Yeah. And, and then he trusted him. So Dad did something right that he has the trust of his 18-year-old son. But it sounds like maybe what, what have been a— what should have went down is is, well, these are your options, this is what they stand for, what do you think we should do?

Decide.

I think there's a—

get out of this authority and authoritative model.

I think, um, again, authority can be important. Authority is not bad.

Yeah, right.

Um, but there's a, there's a certain point where, um, you know, with your children they're going to have to go out there and be able to confidently make decisions without the benefit of your advice. Yeah. And so you want to prepare them as much as possible to be able to make good decisions based off of what they believe, why they believe it, critical thinking, all of those things. And I think as they get older and as they get closer to leaving, they do need to be faced with more challenges. It's, you know, we don't send— you don't send a fighter into the ring without any training. You don't send a fighter in the ring without any sparring. And the way I've kind of looked at it is that there are certain things that I'm sparring with my kids because I want them to get used to it. I want them to get understanding. And again, because there's going to be a fight out there and I want them to be prepared for it. And I still want them to be able to come to me when they have questions. But I also understand I'm not always going to be there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So who do you follow on Instagram that's liberal? Or do you?

Um, there was a—

who do you pay attention to?

Or there was a— I, I will tell you that, um, it's interesting because I, I— people always ask, well, do you even understand the other side? Do you understand? Like, I have to sit and listen to the other side's arguments.

You understand more than anybody.

So I hear it a lot, I read it a lot, and it's kind of permeated throughout the culture, right? Um, my worldview is not the dominant one in the United States anymore. At least not from an entertainment or a cultural perspective. So there's some I'll watch and listen to, and I like to understand their arguments and perspective. I can't point to like one individual that I think, oh yeah, this is a person that I, you know, I want to get their take on it. There's a guy named Greenwald who I enjoy hearing his perspective on things. He's on Twitter, a journalist. I'm definitely more on the left, but I feel like he's got a dedication to the truth. We may disagree on what the truth is, but when someone has a dedication to the truth and you disagree, what that means is, is that there are peaceful mechanisms to arrive together at what the truth is. You either make a better argument, you present new data, you convince them, but you don't rely on coercion and you don't rely on ad hominem attack or things like that. And so there are definitely people left of center and on the left that if I feel like they're dedicated to the idea that there is such a thing as objective truth and we're not going to use these mechanisms to arrive at it. One guy that I think is interesting is Destiny. I disagree with Destiny on a lot of things, but I enjoyed watching his dialogue with with Jordan Peterson, because Jordan Peterson could make a point and Destiny could concede to a point. A lot of times when I get in arguments now, it'll get to a certain point where we could be arguing about something as innocuous as the marginal tax rate. And everybody's sitting here using logic, everybody's using logic, everybody's using data. And then all of a sudden, when the data logic doesn't support the other position, now all of a sudden, well, you're a racist, you're a sexist, you're a bigot, you're mean, you're greedy, you're selfish. Like, if the moment logic no longer works for your argument, you have to resort to ad hominem attack to question my motives, I'm less inclined to even have a discussion with you.

Right.

Because what you've told me is logic was only a useful tool to get your— to win. It wasn't a useful tool to arrive at truth. You want to consolidate power. You don't want to arrive at truth. Anna Kasparian is another one. She's on The Young Turks. And some people say, 'Oh, that's convenient. She's starting to question things.' Well, she's starting to question things because like when the squatter issue came up, you know, she is a dyed-in-the-wool left-wing progressive. When the squatter issue came up, she's like, 'This is ridiculous. You shouldn't be able to just go to someone's house, occupy it, and get And then she immediately got attacked by her own side as, "You don't care about the poor." She's like, "Are you serious right now?" Like, how is it okay that, you know, someone loses their home or has to go through this extensive legal battle to protect their own property? Again, I saw that as like, okay, we don't agree. We don't agree on rent control policy. But she does agree that there's something fundamentally wrong about being able to take something from somebody else.

Yeah.

And so that's a lot of times what I look for. I look for that on my own side as well. I don't like it when I see someone who identifies as a conservative or a libertarian that the moment somebody else makes a good point or brings up an issue, it's, oh, you're just a statist or you're just this, you're just— did they make a good argument? Like, maybe we don't agree on the actual solution. Do we agree that there's a problem? Okay, can we agree that there's logical ways that we can potentially address that problem? I hate— I do not like name-calling. I do not like it when it is, we're going to come up with cutesy little names to call somebody in order to denigrate them in the minds of others. It can be perfectly appropriate to say, okay, that comment was statist, or that comment was Marxist, or that comment was— that's just a form of categorization. And if the shoe If it fits, wear it. But coming up with little pet names for people, I despise that. I just, I really hate it. So yeah, I guess that's probably the best answer I can give to that.

Earlier you talked about the, in general, having a belief that there is something wrong 'In America.' Yeah, big time. As opposed to maybe we are actually okay. Which one is it?

We've got a big— we've got a huge problem.

What's the problem?

I think it's something of— I mean, something of an identity. It's something of an identity crisis.

Okay.

And that we have a lot of people— we no longer— the generally held belief through much of U.S. history was we have our disagreements on policy, we have our disagreements on how we're going to solve problems, we have our variety of disagreements. But there seemed to be an underlying commitment to this idea that with all of our problems and with all of our flaws, because we recognize people are fallible, there is something true about that fundamental statement within the Declaration of Independence, that there is something fundamentally good about the way that the United States has organized its government with the restraints, the controls, and the division of power, there is something fundamentally true about the idea that overall and on the whole, the United States has been a force for good in the world. That is not a commonly shared belief among all Americans anymore. We are quickly approaching a 50% margin in this country where they fundamentally believe that the United States was, was rooted, you know, desperately and inextricably rooted in racism and sexism, that we have not been a force for good, we've been a force of exploitation and colonization in the world, that notions of what we would call the traditional family are patriarchal, that even ideas as simple as we all have equal value before God, is no longer as widely, no longer nearly widely as accepted as it was before. So what that means is that culturally, we are divided in a way that we have not been, I would argue, probably ever in American history. And I include the Civil War on that, because there was major cultural divides then, major cultural divides. The difference there is, and what we have now, is we're not even agreeing on the categories anymore. Category in 1860 was, should you be able to own slaves or should you not be able to own slaves? Should you have a tariff? Should you not have a tariff? Right? But we all agreed on what slavery was. We all agreed on what a tariff was. And then we just fought it out. Now it's like, we don't even— we don't agree on what truth is. We don't agree on what basic idea— we don't agree what man and woman are. Is we don't agree on basic fundamentals with respect to the scientific method or process. We don't agree on categories of logic. Words are commonly manipulated to mean things that they have never meant, because people want the effect of the word without the common meaning that corresponds with it. And so at some point, we're going to have to make a really, really tough decision on do we Do we want to share a country? Because if we do, we're going to have to come up with— there has to be some element. I hate this term, and this is going to get me in trouble. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our strength. Diverse perspectives, capabilities, perspective, you know, interests working towards some degree of common goal, that brings strength. Absolutely. There is an element where diverse capabilities and perspectives is invaluable to a common goal. But diversity without some sort of unifying components around culture or objectives is just a recipe for division and fighting. And now if you're telling me that the primary way that we solve problems is going to be through government power, then now what you're telling me is that the primary way we solve problems now is force. It's not good enough that you're free to live the way you want and I'm free to live the way I want as long as we don't mess with each other. You know, work together when you agree, leave each other alone when you don't. That's not good enough anymore. Now, if you don't agree with me, you'll be forced to, you'll be compelled to, you'll be punished if you don't. How do you sustain that indefinitely? Especially when it's not on issues of like murder We can all agree you shouldn't murder and you should get punished if you do. We can disagree about the degree of punishment, right? But we agree that that's bad. Well, now it's what the government should be able to micromanage within our lives. And at some point, if you— if we don't have a peaceful way of living and let living, if it is going to be solved by politicians and bureaucrats punishing you if you disagree and rewarding you if you do, you don't get out of that without conflict. The question is, how bad does the conflict get? And so I think we need to get back to understanding that if we don't have some degree of common culture, some sort of common concept of our founding and what's at the root of who we are as a country, if we don't have some sort of common idea of where we're going together, you're not going to last.

When did that happen?

I think this could be a whole other podcast. I think it started to happen. It started to happen in academia in the— well, I'll go back. I think it started to really happen around the progressive era with like Woodrow Wilson and whatnot. I think it started to happen with this idea of of what was the proper role of government versus what was the proper role of the individual, the family, the church, volunteer community organizations. I think that started it. I think you started to see a deeper division recently in this whole idea of what do words actually mean? What do terms actually mean? And then it wasn't good enough to say, all right, you do you, but I don't agree with that. You will acknowledge what I say is reality. And you will be made to acknowledge, you will be made to celebrate what I say reality is. And we would look at that and be like, okay, but there's common meaning to certain words. And that's important. Well, we've decided this is more important. Okay, how do we adjudicate that? It used to be at the very least, if we can't adjudicate it by logic, and by experiential reality, then at least we can, maybe we can adjudicate it by saying, okay, fine, you do you, I'll do me, and that's when we're good. We'll just leave each other alone. That's not even good enough anymore. And I think that's the part where you are looking for a long-term fight, because there are any number of things that all of us put up with that we don't like in order to live within society, in order to live within the realms of the rules and the laws And as long as we believe that there's a logical and peaceful way to adjudicate those differences and to change those things, we continue to put up with the things that we don't like. What happens when certain lines get crossed, where my response is, you've made your law, now let's see you enforce it. You've told me you want to do this. I'm going to show you how bad I don't want to. And more and more issues are falling into that realm. Because I can tell you right now, there's certain lines I will not cross. There are certain lines where if you cross, I will go vote, I will go participate to try to— there's other lines you cross where I will be civilly disobedient, which is to say I'm not going out there and, you know, I'm not fighting, I'm just not going to comply. I'm going to try to get away with it. And then there's other lines you cross it, then yeah, you got to fight on hands because there are things in this world worth dying for.

Yeah.

And I already made my peace with that in a hole in Iraq in 2008. So I know what I'm— I know what I am willing to say. This line and no further. And I think some people don't understand that that is a very real thing for a lot of people in this country. And I pray— and there's some people begging for it, like, let's just do it. I've been to war, man.

Yeah.

I went to war so my kids didn't have to see it. I don't want it to happen here. I desperately don't want it to happen here. But there's some things that are worse. And my worry is that we're going to find that out. But my hope is, is that ultimately there is a great deal of good. One of the reasons why I love the homesteading movement And I'm not, I'm not very good at it. I'm not very good at it, but I love it. And people ask me why. They're like, do you— did you get into homesteading because you think the world's going to collapse? I'm like, I got into homesteading to prevent the world from collapsing. The things that we're doing, the skills that we're learning, the people that we're meeting. It's not because I think the apocalypse is inevitable. It's because there is something rejuvenating and hopeful about putting down Putting down the fights in Congress or in Richmond or online and going around people that, man, they just, they want you to win and you want them to win. And they're not just willing to share their successes. They're just as excited to share their failures because they're not in competition with you and they want you to be successful. And it is rejuvenating. And I think the more people that can kind of experience that, the more people will realize that in many sectors, by many experts, by many politicians, they've been fed a bill of goods that is not going to serve them well in their life. And when that gradually starts to fail, and when they start to associate why those things are failing, they're going to start looking around for what works. Works. And they're going to look for the people that have a great marriage. Uh, not perfect, there's no such thing. They're going to look at people that have a good relationship with their kids. Not perfect, because there's no such thing. And they're going to look for the people that said, look, this is how we did it, and we did it by focusing on things that we could control. We did it by focusing on things that we could have the greatest impact with. And we have a sense of community, and we have a sense of identity that can't be shaken. I always tell people, look, I'm not shocked when things get bad. My faith tells me things will get bad. But because of my identity in Christ, I never have to worry about who I am. I never have to worry about what my meaning is. I never have to worry about what my purpose is. I never have to worry about what truth is. And that's wonderful, not just when times are good, that's especially wonderful when times are bad. And because I have this group of people, whether it be family or friends or just this larger network of people that I met yesterday, you know you're not alone. And man, that's a comforting thing.

Yeah, and it feels like a lot of people out there listening to you know, it feels like this very big issue. And as you know, it's a very big issue. And if somebody's not into politics, politics, they're voting and kind of can feel like it's out of our control and the problem's so big and it's out of our control. But really, you just do one little thing at a time. Just put one foot in front of the other and you just— Lucas Nelson sings, turn off the news and build a garden.

Yeah.

And there is something about that. Just going out, getting away from all the noise. All in— nowadays, the social media is the news to a lot of people. So turning it off and just getting out there and getting your hands dirty. And Joel Salatin said it once, the worms don't care who's president. Yeah, yeah, they just keep on going. Yeah, making the soil better.

Yeah.

And So it's kind of nice to get out there and commune with the worms and chickens and the cows sometimes.

Yeah, well, and if— because doing that is gonna put you in a better position to solve the bigger problems.

Yeah.

And again, somebody asked me the other day, like, you know, what's all the— what can we do? You know, what can we do to save it? I said, well, you're doing it. I said, I don't know what— I'll never be able to properly quantify any effect I might have had on social media and whatnot, but man, I can go home and I can look at my wife who I absolutely love, my kids who I not only love but love hanging out with, love being with, and be confident in the fact that they're also confident in their identity, their meaning, their purpose, the idea of truth, and they're also willing to fight for it. And if you want to win this whole thing in one generation, You know, you spend a lot more time fostering that than the— not that the other stuff doesn't matter. See, not the other stuff doesn't matter.

Yeah, but, um, it's easy to complain. It's easy to watch Fox News or CNN, whichever side you're on, and then say, complain. Yeah, about the other side. But really, you need to turn that Fox News off or social media off and focus on the problems in your own house. I think, um, you can maybe actually do something about.

Yeah, I'll even put it— and some people ask, well, it's so right, are you saying to me— and you're not saying this, but like some people, so you're asking me to be ignorant of what's going on? No, I'm asking you to prioritize your time and your efforts into things that will give you the best results. And worrying about everything all the time on the news is not going to give you the best results. And when I compare that that Twitter battle or that battle I'm going to have with somebody on X versus the time I can have having a conversation with one of my kids or working on a project and letting them know that that time with them is more valuable to me, that's going to pay much bigger dividends. So I'm not ignoring the other things. I'm investing in the things that are actually going to contribute.

There's something to be said about the power of plasticity here, you know, and they say, you know, you, you, you pass somebody, they're broken down on the highway, there's more of— there's been studies. If you're— if you look at that, if you look at the police officer talking to them in the window, you're actually more likely to hit them.

Yeah.

And you're afraid to hit them.

Yeah.

And that, that even compounds.

Yeah.

The tendency. But you just got to look straightforward.

Yeah.

And you're actually solving the problem. By looking straight forward instead of looking at the problem.

That's a great— that's a great way to put it. Well, have you, have you also noticed that, um, I don't know, I feel like, I feel like ultimately, you know, happier people are not just pleasant to be around, but they're also the sort of people that you want to solve problems with, right? Yeah.

Um, yeah, because like sometimes on, on social media you'll see a comment and you're like, that person does not sound like a fun person. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it has nothing to do with being at a party, but like, if that person— like, you imagine, like, if that person was at your party, you'd be like, I would not want to be talking to them.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you— do you— the way they're coming at whatever is the comment they're making.

Yeah.

Do you come up with your content from comments? Do you address comments?

Sometimes, yeah, sometimes.

Has everybody— has anybody ever broken through and gotten to heart and soul and broke your heart?

Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. There's two types of comments that really move me. The ones where somebody will— actually, three types. There's one where somebody will share something that we said or did really impacted me. When I talked about three things I learned raising daughters and the number of women that said, I wish you would have my dad. Like, gosh dang, like right now, like, yeah. Um, man, that's the other thing I've noticed. The older you get, the more you have kids, that— yeah, man, I used to not— like, I was like John Wayne, man.

I didn't cry because you become more of a man. Yeah, men cry, men cry. It's all right.

Now it's, uh, the things just hit me. The other ones that hit me is where somebody will— somebody will correct me, but they will do— they will obviously do it in a sense of love. Love, right? They'll be like, I love what you have to say and I get where you're going with this, but yeah, okay, I wish you'd consider this. It's like, oh man, you're right, I could have done that better. I acted in pride, or I acted in sarcasm, or, or, and I should have, I should have thought about that more carefully. And then the other ones, uh, and then there's always the trolls.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you how the trolls impact me. Uh, first of all, thank you for trolling because it helps the algorithm. And, uh, and secondly I've got some really good content off of it.

Yeah, sometimes that's a way to turn a problem into a solution, isn't it?

I made a joke once where I said, so my son and I are going to the gym and my son's, you know, he's starting to throw up some more weight and he's starting to get a little cocky. So I just reminded him, you know, well, later I'm going to make out with your mom, so why don't you clean your room? And most people are like, that's hysterical, you know, good for you and your son and all that's so funny. And this one lady was like, like, that is unacceptable. I cannot believe you— your son's bad behavior is not a credit to you or any— and so I went on there and I put my suit on and the whole deal and I put a tie on and I said, you know, my fellow Americans, I'll do this one other thing. You know, I made a joke talking about this, and many of you accepted this for the good-humored and good-natured comment that it was. But some of you were drastically concerned. I put on my reading glasses like, so-and-so said this, and I'm like, I said, some people would probably consider you to be a humorless human being that they'd never want to hang out with. But I respect the fact that, you know, you put down your busy day of probably asking to see a manager in order to comment. And that did very well. I said, so I just want everyone to know that I deeply apologize to no one. I regret none of my actions and would do it all again. But so, yeah, that sort of comment could sometimes— thank you for the additional content. Yeah, right.

So tell, tell us, 40— you're 44, I'm 45. You're starting to lean into— or have you always been on Shorts and Reels? No. And is this social media thing hard for you at 44 years old?

Uh, no. I— gosh, I think it would be harder if you were younger.

Okay. Yeah.

Um, if you wouldn't have the confidence, you'd have more competition.

You have so much life, you're gonna have more competition.

You wouldn't have as much experience. It's like so much of what we talk about is either things we observed, experienced, screwed up on. And so life is full of content.

So did you do a vertical short today?

No, I have not yet.

You do one every day?

I try to do one every day. I don't make myself do one on Sundays.

Okay, so you take one day off a week.

I've learned that Sunday, it's important to have a day where there's no expectations of anything except focus on God.

You'll get burned out. Count. Do you, do you— what, what's going to be on today?

I don't know, probably something we did here.

So, so when you say you don't know, are you gonna sit down and think about it for it to come up, or are you gonna wait for it to— a thought in the car?

I'll think about it.

I'll try to—

like, we had, we had a ton of stuff here today. Yeah, that'll be— and, and today's will be funny, right? Because it was, um, because we had a ton of stuff we were talking about. I love to pick fun at myself myself. Uh, yeah, because that's so easy. Like, I know, yeah, I know me and I am easy to laugh at. Um, laugh at, hopefully with too. Yeah, definitely laugh at.

Um, yeah, I noticed you put the exact same thing on Reels and Shorts. Yeah, is that a good idea?

Uh, yeah, I will notice that different things will perform better. So for instance, on, on Instagram, I have 1.1 million on Instagram. I have about, uh, 900,000 on YouTube.

Nice, good job.

Thank you. Thank you again. One day I want to be Justin Rhodes.

You're coming up close on YouTube.

Um, but a lot of that growth was on short form, right? So like, you guys have, you guys have done the growth the hard way, which is on that medium form, that long form.

Yeah.

A lot of mine has been on short form, but it's, it's nice because it transitions people over to a long form as well. So we've seen the benefit of that.

Have you found that to be true? How do you know?

Because people comment. They'll say like, oh, I'm here from— I came from the Shorts. Like, they'll say that all the time. Or I came from Instagram or whatever.

And I'm asking this because I need to start leaning into the verticals.

It's—

I haven't really been able to just—

oh, you guys would be so good at it. You guys would be so good at it. There's honestly so much of the stuff you do on medium and long form would be great to clip up and put on. Yeah, Shorts. Um, because it generates the interest for somebody that's flipping through, like, oh, that's— oh, I wanna— yeah, because there's the rest of this.

I watch Reels. I'm I just will be like, do you know who that person is that's talking? No, I'm just scrolling. I'm like, I don't know who this person is. And sometimes I'll follow them. A lot of times I don't.

I noticed you followed Gary Vee. And so Gary Vee used to be— and I don't know if he still is. I just don't follow enough anymore. But he used to want you to keep separate stuff on different things. But I don't know if that's the rule anymore.

I don't think it hasn't been for us because I put it on. Here's what I found.

I haven't found—

there's some platforms you got to be a little bit more careful. My YouTube audience is 75% male.

Okay. Yeah. So it's—

my Instagram audience is 50/50.

Oh, yeah.

So sometimes something will take off on Instagram that doesn't take off on YouTube. Sometimes it'll take off on YouTube that doesn't take off on Instagram. But I haven't found it to be. I think the stuff that I talk about is, I would hope, equally accessible on either platform.

And you haven't found it to be where, uh, people are seeing both pieces of content and annoyed?

No.

Um, I, I think, I think that's more the— where it used to be, it could have maybe been the case, but there's so much content out there now.

My audience is different on Instagram.

Yeah, it's different. I think so.

And, um, yeah, and yeah, so every once in a while we'll have something that's a little bit more YouTube-oriented, you know, short-form content.

Yeah.

Yeah, there is stuff that we'll do that'll just go on one rather than the other, but, but most of it, you know what I ended up finding out? I would put it on one and be like, I'm not going to put on this other one because I don't think it would perform as well, and then somebody else clipped it and then put it on because we, we let everybody download our videos and share it. Like, we don't, we don't, um, yeah, but, uh, so yeah, our general rule is, is that it's, it's probably better to get it out there more than it is to try to sit there and and like think like, oh, I shouldn't do it on this. Yeah, do it on both. The amount of time it takes to like really like pour through and like tailor the content, I think you lose some of the authenticity of it sometimes.

And, uh, so you're more of a fan of just winging it?

Oh yeah, well, we— 70% of our content is—

I mean, we are winging it. We, we are not— Gary Vee said once, uh, don't create document. I mean, we are the classic example of that. We're, we're doing our line, our thing on the homestead, and you're coming along, we're grabbing the camera.

Well, when we first started, literally I went to like— I was looking at family vloggers, and I would, I would catch a glimpse of them filming themselves in a mirror and be like, what camera is that? Because that's the camera we should get. Yeah, we had no idea what to buy.

Yeah.

And then like when we were on the Great American Farm Tour, film guys would come up to Justin and be like, oh, let's talk gear. And Justin's like, I'm shooting an automatic. I just hit the button. Like, I don't know anything about gear. I mean, he's learned some, but he just got whatever Casey Neistat was using. Yeah. He still doesn't know all the things like Austin.

Yeah.

The more he would know more about—

I've got Hamilton for that. Hamilton knows. I can't— like, at our studio, yes, we have as we got more successful with our audience, we reinvested into, okay, great, we're going to do some better lighting and some more stuff to provide a good experience with our more highly produced stuff. But most of it's on the— almost everything I do, it's on my phone.

Is this your job? Is it the other 10 months of the year?

So I do a program called the Y Minutes. And so that's a big part of that is my job. Yeah, it's on YouTube. Yeah, it's on different platforms, like 3-minute things once a week that we put out.

And then this is a paid—

yeah, yeah.

So it's called Y Minutes. Yeah, the YMinutes.com.

Uh, well, you just go on like YouTube. It's the Y Minutes on YouTube, though we don't have a like a separate website for— I mean, we, we do, but that's not really the main—

how do people sign up?

They just go onto YouTube or YouTube, Facebook. Um, those are the two places where we do most of— there's also an Instagram account.

Oh, and there's a link? Yeah, to it.

Yeah. And then we have the website, but most people go through the social media.

Why Minutes? And what's it about?

So we will take some sort of like interesting fact and we'll kind of talk, um, okay, about like the underlying principles. Uh, so like, uh, I'm trying to think of a really good example for one of ours.

I could use that for homeschooling.

Uh, you—

we, we do, we have people that'll use it while you're thinking about that example. How do you, how do you, how do you—

and then I also do this, doing this is also part of my job as well. It's not the entirety of it, but yeah.

How do you decide then what goes on why minutes and what goes public. I'm dealing with the same thing. Like, what goes in Abundance Plus? Of course we put the slaughtering and the stuff like that in Abundance Plus.

And well, the White Minutes is— so the White Minutes is much more highly produced, much more video edited. We had like a patron for that, that she was running the show. She asked me to host it and gives me a lot of latitude. But like, we'll do, for instance, we'll look at an interesting question like Why was this little island in the Pacific Ocean once the richest place on earth? And then we'll get— it's the island of Nauru. And it turns out it was bird poop, right? It was because it was from fertilizer purposes. And there was such a buildup over and over time, like the average, the average per capita income there was $169,000 a year. And now everyone's like dirt poor. And so why, why did that happen? And we'll talk about the underlying, like, economic principles, the policy principles.

You got a researcher?

Oh yeah.

Okay, good.

Yeah, Christian, Christian, uh, Hines. He works with me on that.

He doesn't give you a script.

We— Christian and I will work on a script. Christian does the majority. I used to do all the research and all the scripting, and then we, we started like expanding, so we brought Christian on. Christian does excellent research. He's a wonderful researcher. And him and I, he'll work through like a basic script. I'll go through, edit it, and work on that together. But he does a great job. We did one on like why the Soviet Union destroyed the Aral Sea. And people are like, what's the Aral Sea? And who destroyed a whole sea? Right? And then we explain what happened and why. But we got to do it in like 3 to 5 minutes. That's it. That's all we got.

The kids don't want— I'm learning people don't want— they don't have the time to consume gobs amount of content.

So I think that's why reels do so well, or shorts, because—

but you never— I don't ever hear you, or do you? Do you ever have a pitch reel where you say, hey, for the Y Minutes? Yeah. Because— or is it all just links in the description?

Here's what I'll say. Like on podcast, on our podcast, we'll do more like, oh, we did a whole episode on this in the Y Minutes. You go over there, watch it.

Okay.

Short-form content, I am very, very careful on asking the audience to do anything. So every once in a while we did— like we've had people ask us for paid— hey, we want you to promote X, Y, and Z. And we're very, very— like on short-form content, we tell anybody, like, first of all, we don't promote anything that we don't fully believe in or like. Already used, or already used, like, or secondly, we have full creative, like, license to do it the way we do it. Now, if you— if we do it, you don't like it, great. You don't got to pay us and we won't publish it and we'll be fine. But we run that. So for instance, everyone knows we had to deal with the Tuttle twins. And I explained a story about my daughter being a Senate page and this floor debate she got onto and how I was so proud of the way that she debated it and the whole deal. And that's why my kids read the Tuttle Twins. It was at the very end. I wasn't telling them to do anything. I wasn't asking them to do anything. I was letting them know, hey, you know this really cool story? Part of the reason why this cool story happened was because this is the books they read. And if you're interested, there's a link in the thing. So, we're very careful on that because I want to be very, very respectful of the audience. And I never want them to see our channel as like, okay, is he going to be selling me something today? Or is he is he just going to be— and so now again, for the podcast is a little bit different. People are sitting down there for a 2-hour podcast. They understand that they're getting it for free. And so we have sponsors. And so there I'm a little bit more comfortable doing. I feel like that's a healthier, more expected transaction.

Is the Y Minutes growing based on this marketing approach?

The Y Minutes, we again, we will mention the Y Minutes and other stuff we do. We will share it out there. But I'm very, very— we actually had a discussion with our patron on that. Because initially, she was like, this is how much we're going to give per year for this. And we expect half of that to go into advertising. And we sat down, and we came back 2 years later. And we were really worried, because one year, we just didn't do it. And because we were absolutely convinced— and I give a lot of credit to my producer, Hamilton. Nick Hamilton, he was— he's like, the problem with like over-advertising is it makes you lazy because you go in and you just start saying, look at all the likes or look at all the views we got. You can pay for views. You can't really pay for likes. You can't really pay for comments. You can't really pay for shares or saves because you have to provide content that is valuable to someone. You can pay to have it throw up in people's like feeds and just get the views for it. And what we found is, especially in that world where you have someone that is donating the money for it and they don't expect necessarily a return on investment, is that it's very easy to manipulate people into believing they got their bang for their buck when they're really trying to do something meaningful by just saying, oh, look at all the views we got. And so we took a year and we focused on content. We focused on doing data analysis. We focus— we have an excellent video editor. Oh my gosh, Cody is an incredible, incredible video editor. I will never reveal his last name because I don't want anyone to poach him. Like, we keep him locked up in a dungeon, we give him Mountain Dews and Hot Pockets, and you know. But anyway, um, come on, feed him something better. Hey, look, you know, video editors like— farm fresh. I was kidding. I said Hot Pockets in front of the wrong people. I know, right? But, uh, He does an excellent job. And what happened was, is that we noticed, we said, here was the number of views that we got when we were doing advertising, and here's the number of views we've gotten now. Here's the number of likes we got, and here's the number of watch time. Yeah, that was— you want to talk about a metric that got her to go, okay, you guys know what you're doing, was I said, back here, here's the views and here's the watch time.

Yeah.

Okay, now here's the views, here's the watch time. Like, people are spending, you know, millions of hours a year watching our— or hundreds of thousands, I forget what it was— watching this because we put all of the effort into good content, good quality, good topics. And then we asked her for less money. We said, we can do this with less, but we need to do it this way because we're going to build an organic following where this is part of their day, not something that just showed up in their feed so we can give you a metric to try to convince you to invest more.

More. So you started leaning into the organic content more?

Yeah.

So how much organic followership? So, so then your approach is, uh, you're still spending on ads? No, no ads. So now it's all organic, it's all Reels, Shorts, uh, long—

that was for the Wine Minutes. So for the Wine Minutes, all of that, we don't— we do some short form content on the Wine Minutes, some, but it's 3 to 5 minutes, right? So it's not a big ask of the—

okay, I thought Wine Minutes was behind a paywall.

No, no, the Y Minutes is out there.

That's your thing. That's how you're— oh, and so, well, forgive me now. So how, though, then, is Y Minutes more of an income than just your personal brand social media?

Well, part of it is because when we looked at our personal brand with social media and we don't really take a paycheck for because we are like reinvesting just about everything because we want to build it and we want to be able to— we want to be— we do one day want that to be— that's the goal eventually. But right now it's like, look, I can pay my bills. I would much rather invest in something that I think has the ability to have a much larger impact than get a temporary benefit right now. So no, we just had— again, it was— this is something where we have a very We have this, you know, this couple are— they're very passionate about liberty. They're very passionate about messaging. And so when we do these shorts and all, there's always like a liberty component. There's a message of understanding, like the— because there's so many easy answers. Oh, the government didn't spend enough money. Like, we're like, no, you know, no, the government probably should have left this alone. So there's a liberty component to the explanations that we provide, but they're just, they're desperate for that message to get out there. And they understand that this battle is not just political, it's cultural. And if you're not making a good argument to an audience that doesn't want to watch your political content, they like being entertained, they like being informed. I think that's actually one of the things that's so amazing about YouTube is that typically when you would turn on like a sitcom on Netflix, you're— or when you turn on a program on the TV, you're either looking for information or entertainment, right? I'm either watching the sitcom or I'm watching the documentary. One of the things I think has been revolutionary about, about YouTube, and not to say that this didn't happen in traditional forms of media, but there is so much more, I think, intertwining of entertainment and informational to where I know that that, you know, 5 years ago, most of my, like, viewing time would have been on, like, Netflix or Prime or something like that. YouTube is my primary source of entertainment right now. But then when you say that, what am I watching? I'm watching Justin and Rebecca Rhodes. I'm watching, you know, something about history on, you know, History March or something like that. I'm watching something that not only provides entertainment, but I am genuinely interested and entertained But I walk away feeling either more informed or more capable. And I think that intersection of entertainment that genuinely makes you feel more informed, legitimately informed, not just scared of the world and capable, like, I know how to do something I did not know how to do before I watched this. Yeah, that is a far more empowering form of entertainment. And we really want to lean into that.

You want to go away from a piece of content feeling better, or, you know, not necessarily feeling— that might be bad. You might need to be informed about something, but you need to go away from a piece of content better. Yeah, I'll say better than you were going. Yeah. Now what about that though, like the scrolling though? If you consume yourself the Shorts, um, scrolling half an hour on TikTok versus watching 2 or 3 YouTube videos in 30 minutes, let's say, you're not as fulfilled after these shorts, are you? It's like, well, I think although you'll hit one that's powerful.

Here's what I've noticed on a lot of that. Some of it is just entertainment, right? I'm just like, I'm tired. Sometimes you're just tired of thinking.

You're just ready.

Yeah. And that's okay, right? I don't think that's bad. It can be, it's like anything, what do they say, in all things moderation, to include moderation. But a lot of times when I'll see somebody do a shorter one that I think is particularly powerful, I'll be like, ooh, I wanna see the rest of that discussion. I wanna see the rest of that issue, or I wanna follow this person's channel and see, like, I really like what they showed here. You know, I wanna see the rest of their stuff. Jesse and Jeremiah from Roots and Refuge.

Is that how you found them?

I found them. I think it was a short-form piece of content. I can't remember what platform it was on, but it had to do with, like, the trellis gardening. I was like, that's really cool. And the next thing I know, I'm spending the next 2 hours watching how to do the trellis gardening, how to do this, what to grow, where to place, do all this other stuff. Stuff. So, I think there can be a good— sometimes shorts is a little bit like channel surfing.

Okay.

If I had to put it in a term like we would understand.

People would probably like that you said that.

But my kids are like, what are you talking about?

Probably the YouTube would hope.

I know, kids have no idea.

And what it is, is like, again, you got a lot of demands for your time. How do you determine whether or not something is worth 30 minutes? You know, again, my—

I see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so hard to know.

Rebecca, have you ever converted anybody's long form?

Have I?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, I won't necessarily— like, a lot of times people are like selling something, I won't necessarily buy what they're selling because they're overcharging. But, um, I don't know what the deal is with this, man. People are charging like $600 for something they're selling on Instagram, like a course or like a, like a piece of information, and I'm like, $600?

I might have converted. If you had the money, you don't have the time.

$600, definitely not going to be buying that.

I've bought products off of Instagram.

Oh, I have too.

But I can't think of any like services I bought off of.

No, I mean, I do a lot of health, so it was like a health course, but I was like, not for $600.

If you're driving, you want— why minutes? That's the income generator. Do you ever plug it in your personal brand?

At least on the podcast. So, oh, the podcast. Like, so if we're talking about— so a lot of things that we talk about on the podcast are very relevant to the Wine Minutes.

Okay. All right.

And so we'll be talking about it, but like, oh, we did a— we did a Wine Minute on this. Like, if you want a 5-minute summary of what we're spending 2 hours talking about, you go to the Wine Minutes, look at this channel, it'll get to you. And that's beneficial. But I want it to be relevant to the audience. Like, I can't emphasize this enough. Yeah. I think it is incredibly important to be respectful of your audience's time. Yeah. And to the extent that you're going to sell them something or that you're going to ask them to do something else, I want to have given them so much more than I'm asking them to do.

Yeah, for sure.

But by the same time, I've also had people— I had somebody who's a great content creator, been wildly successful, just a good dude. Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan told me once, he's— when we were talking about doing like coffee mugs, he's like, He's like, why aren't you selling coffee mugs? And I said, well, you know, he goes, Nick, people want to support your show. They want to support what you're doing. And they'd like to get something that makes them feel a part of your community. He goes, you're not doing anything wrong by offering that. And he's absolutely right, because this is another thing we've become really, really adamant about, especially as we move into this kind of new era that we're going to talk about, like, on our show with intentional community. And obviously we're not the first ones or the only ones talking about it, but genuine relationships are not producer-consumer. Genuine relationships are transactional. And I don't mean that in the pejorative sense. I mean it in I'm providing benefit to you and you're providing benefit to me. And we kind of feel like, yeah, this relationship is good, not simply because we might like each other or be friends, but because we both get a chance to provide value to the other. And those are stronger bonds of community. And so providing mechanisms where that can take place, I think, is a positive thing. Yeah.

And if you don't have anything for sale, they don't have that bigger way to support you. And to contribute other than just a comment.

Yeah. Or like Super Chats.

And, and there are many, probably 20% of them are wanting a deeper—

yeah—

contribution.

Yeah, yeah.

I've had people tell me they got Abundance Plus, they're in New York City, they're never going to do this, they just want to support the show.

Yeah, yeah. They see the value in what you're— they may not directly benefit from the fact that they're never going to have chickens in their high-rise apartment in New York City Yeah, but they sure benefit from the fact that what you're doing is good and it's valuable. And by supporting it that way, yeah, you get the benefit, the other people that are going to use those skills get the benefit, and then they also get the benefit of living in the sort of society where this is done.

Yeah. And yeah, so what would your first coffee mug say? We're going to wrap it up, but what's your first coffee—

no, you—

yeah, I'm wrapping it up here. What's your first coffee, coffee cup gonna say?

Oh, we already did it.

Oh, you already have one?

Yeah, so we have coffee mugs now.

We did Okay, good. What did it say?

Well, we are— our link for it is Only Mugs, right?

That's the link. Only Mugs.

Only Mugs.

Onlymugs.com.

So it's in our Instagram, onlymugs.com.

So you don't have— you have it in your— you have it in the Shopify. Yeah, we have YouTube videos too, right?

Yeah. So we have, um, Tread Around and Find Out, uh, was our— because, you know, you have that—

that's the one—

the Fool Around and Find Out or F Around and Find Out. We're like, okay, we're family friendly. Yeah. But we saw the "Don't tread on me" and like, oh, this kind of— "Tread around and find out." Like, that's our— so that was kind of like our signature mug. But we've got a bunch because I haven't—

How's it doing? Is it selling?

It's been doing well. Yeah. And I think our top seller is the "Tread around and find out." It probably always will be. I think our second bestseller, though, is we have a mug that says, "My wife is hotter than my coffee." Yeah.

And the other one, that's "My husband is hotter than my coffee." I'm gonna tell you what, if we're brainstorming and throwing out some ideas, let's put it out before the audience.

Yeah.

Have, hey, I've got some ideas for coffee cups.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, have 5 that they can vote on.

We have a community. We have, uh, so we, we use Circle for our, our community. So we have, we had about 1,500 people on Circle.

Okay, cool.

That have kind of taken that extra step to go on and be— and we go out to them all the time like, hey, what do you guys want us to talk about on our next episode? What do you And we love that feedback and that interaction. And we're definitely going to expand our next— this year, our next project is really expanding out that community that have followed us on those platforms and then taken that. So, like Abundance Plus, they've kind of taken that extra step. It's like, no, I want to be really involved, not just a consumer. So that's our next thing, is rolling that out this year, and that's going to be fun.

Well, and then after that, your own coffee.

I actually had another Green Beret. We served in the 1st Special Forces Group together, and he called me up the other day. He goes, hey, man, I want to talk to you. I'm thinking about running for office. And I was like, why do you want to do that to yourself?

That's your first reaction.

But he's like, oh, by the away. He goes, I've been, uh, roasting and doing coffee for the last, uh, yeah, 3 years. He goes, do you got a, uh, you got a coffee provider yet? I said, we've had 3 or 4 come out to us. I said, but the reason why we've held off is because one, we want— when we make this jump, um, that's going to be a, that's going to be a long-term commitment. We want to be able to work some branding, and, and it's got to be a product we like. It's got to be— I'm not recommending something we don't like. Um, so yeah, I said, so send us over, send us over a proposal. Let's talk about it.

Seems like Black Rifle Coffee Company is doing really well. Yeah, like veteran.

Yeah, that's another former First Group guy. So I was First Special Forces. Okay, we have 5 active duty groups, 2 National Guard groups. But, um, yeah, there's been one First Group guy I think started Black Rifle Coffee with— I think the other guy was Ranger Battalion, Ranger Regiment. And then, uh, yeah, this guy's got a— this First Grouper's got a— there's another First Grouper that has a, uh, a distillery Yeah, uh, I think, I think it's a first group. He has horse soldier. That's a reference from Afghanistan.

But yeah, so don't worry about you. I think you got— I think you're on the right track here with leaning into the content.

Uh, it's been a lot of fun.

We're gonna wrap it up. We got a barn dance this afternoon and we got to get you back to Virginia.

So I know I got a 7-hour drive ahead of me. Yep, more coffee.

We'll have all the links to you down in the description.

So yeah, and we'll— and, and you will be— we'll be seeing a lot of little reels.

Because—

oh, this is fun.

I think there'll be a lot of, uh, people who are interested in both things. Your audience, a lot of them haven't seen me yet, and a lot of my audience hasn't seen you yet. Yeah, that's good.