 Most soap gets you clean. This soap gets you dirty. Real dirty. Time to get dirty. With tactical soap. All natural pheromone. A few soap for men. Proud channel sponsor of 21 Studios. I'm Anthony Dream Johnson and I approve this soap. Order now at the link below. Use coupon code 21C for 10% off now. Real dirty. George Bruna with a 21 report in Orlando, Florida. And we're here with Texas Dom from TexasDom.com. He just got whisked off the stage and he's in the studio now. I got to ask him a few questions. And all I saw was a bunch of guys with a lot of energy coming out of that auditorium after listening to him. What is your impression of the 21 Convention so far? Well, it has been fantastic. And it's been four days of guys all on the same page working in the same direction. Multiple angles of attack. Different speakers coming at different directions. The attendees are able to pick out what they need, discard what they don't. And as we are summing it up, we're ending soon. And we're all going to be walking out and having to face the world. These guys are armed with an amazing amount of ammunition now to go out and attack all the issues they face. You said some different angles of attack because all the speakers are distinctly different. It wasn't just the echo chamber for the past four days. Right. We had guys that were completely into the whole pickup thing. Multiple women, all nine yards we had guys that were married monogamous like myself and Hunter and everything in between. It was a fantastic line of Anthony to a stellar job putting this together this year. Yeah, it's a well-oiled machine this year. It really is. I find that this year is probably, I think one of the most diverse years as far as attendees is concerned. There are people here who've been in the men's support community for many years. There's guys that needed to be here as a result of some kind of trauma or something that happened in the past month. The last few tickets that were sold may have been from a guy who just was told by his wife that she no longer wants to be married. He went through a breakup and this is kind of like emergency intervention in a sense. And then there's guys who've been just chugging along for many years. What type of men have you seen here? Because you've interacted with a lot of guys. Absolutely. I've seen guys that are in college. I've seen one man that came up to me. I was bragging about being married for 30 years. He's been married 47 years. He's in his 70s. I said, what are you doing here? He said, yeah, we're doing pretty good. He said, but I'm here for my grandsons. I want to get this nailed down so that I can help raise them better. That's fantastic. That's powerful. That is powerful. That's amazing. I know the guy you're talking about. I wasn't the oldest guy in the room, which I really thought I was going to be when we got down here. It worked out really well. What is your main message for men in general? Absolutely own your shit. Everybody wants to blame everybody else. You don't want to blame your wife for your problems, your girlfriend for your problems, your job, your boss or whatever. You can go look in the mirror, figure out what the hell am I doing wrong to cause all these. It's cause and effect. You're experiencing all these effects. What's the cause? Almost in every single case, it's the guy looking back at the mirror every time. That's powerful. That's true. I just tweeted today. There's this phrase, the struggle is real. And a lot of people tweet that and hashtag that and I'm contrarian in the sense that I said the struggle is real. But the reality is you probably orchestrated that struggle yourself. Right. You absolutely have the life you deserve. Good, bad or ugly. Everything you've done to get you to this point today are the life choices you've made. You can't blame it on anybody else. Once you get past that shifting the blame off on everybody else and putting it back on yourself, now you've got a roadmap for what to fix. How does a person create a roadmap for recovery or to write the ship? How do they do that? I think they just have to analyze what causes their problems. What particular events, what particular decisions that they're making. And once they've been able to at least identify the cause and effect, here's my problem. How did I get there? And then you can start writing that one down. What's my next problem? It's trust when we all have a million problems, right? And they're almost all of our own making. So map that out and draw it out and figure out which one is causing me my most pain today. Get rid of that one. It's kind of like credit card debt. Find the one with the biggest interest. Knock it out first. So find your biggest pain today. Work on that one first. Don't work at all 15 at once. Work on one at a time. Get that one knocked out. Go to the next one. Powerful. Very powerful. What would you say is the most common problem or the most recurring problem amongst men in general that you've observed in your lifetime? They give away their power. They spend their entire life saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. They absolutely don't lead themselves. They expect other people to follow them, but they're not even leading themselves. And so they just have to work in that direction. That reminds me of what Hunter Drew said. He says, look at yourself in the mirror. Would you fuck you? Yeah, I actually mentioned that in my talk today. When I was drastically overweight, I did the same thing. My wife doesn't, she's not fucking me like I want her to. And look in the mirror like, I can't blame her. I find that if we don't talk about the hard issues and get a little course sometimes, I think that we're not doing men a favor. I think a lot of times, many times our language can be, what's the word? Can emphasize issues. And I noticed that your talk, when I was in there, you would lower your voice. You would raise your voice. You would use different types of words to describe things, to emphasize points. Did it tastefully? And you shocked a few people as well. It reminds me of what Ryan said when he said he had a speech written, ready to go. And then someone said to him, don't tell them what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear. And I feel that your talk in there was what men needed. You weren't coddling anybody. No, no, no, no. Thank you. I had thought about how should this talk go. I asked a wise, one wise guy which direction I should take. And he said, well, are you doing, are you teaching, are you inspiring? And I thought, well, that's a good question. And I never answered it either, did I? So I was doing either. I don't think. I was just, I was trying to help. I just want to help. I think everybody in that room wants to help. That's the thing. And that was my, my call to action to the guys in that room is to help somebody else. You know, you're here, you're getting all this knowledge. Implement it and use it. But if you're just using it for yourself, that's cool to start with. But look around, man, guys are falling out left and right. Pick them up. Everyone is a student and everyone is a teacher. Absolutely. What do you feel that the generation of young men today, I won't. And over, I hear everyone just ragging on millennials all the time. I just like to say young men. I don't want to fall into that echo chamber of hammering millennials. I have children that are millennials and I don't want them to feel like I'm hammering them in any way. With young men, where are they lacking? What is the direction they need to go? I had the benefit of having a father who probably was winging it most of his, his life. But I had a father. There's a lot of guys who don't have that presence. What advice would you have for them? Because they're going to be watching this. Find a man that you admire. Somewhere around you. And try to hang out with them. If you're trying to find a mentor in life, phrase your questions carefully. Don't ask a bunch of stupid stuff just to start a conversation. Actually have a legitimate question that you need answered. And that person will see that you're serious. And they will often spend hours trying to help you out. Just because you approach them with a great question. If you don't have a dad in your world, your dad's not a masculine man. Or maybe your uncle is. Maybe your dad's best friend's a little more masculine than he is. The three of you can go do some stuff together. But you find that guy out there that you admire, that you want to be like. Go find out what he's all about. I was talking to my son's 28. And we were talking about his friends from high school. Dad said we're the generation of the lost boys. He said there's no direction. We don't know where we want to go. Most of them are playing video games 24-7 as much as they can. A lot of them have moved back home. They're living with their parents still in their mid to late 20s. And he said there's no direction. They don't have any goals. And I guess they've been allowed. Maybe part of it is the parachute parents that come in and try to take over and do everything for them. A lot of these younger folks have not been allowed to fail. They've just been rescued all the time over and over and over again. They've only learned by fire. Trailed by fire is how you learn these things. So I think putting yourself into some situations that challenge you. Things that are hard. Stuff that's easy anybody can do. Find something that's hard for you. Figure out what you want to do. I know one young man that decided he wanted to make a knife. And he got online and he gathered the parts from an old bone yard, automobile yard. And he made a forge in his driveway to be able to hammer out a knife. You know, with scrap parts by costing less than 50 bucks. And now he's working on becoming a blacksmith. I mean, so that's just one challenge that a man can take on. That's incredible. That's fun. Dr. Jordan Peterson came out with a book called The 12 Rules for Life. I love it. I love it. First rule is make your bed. Simple. And I thought it was going to be, honestly, I thought there was going to be something more profound. And I was like make your bed. And then I thought that's your first chance in the day to take chaos and make order out of it. It gives you something to do. It was an instructional thing. What are Texas Dom's first things that a man should do? First things first. I love Peterson's book. I got to address that. I know that not everybody agrees with him to say that and the other, but I think the man is legitimately helping an entire group of people. Created a conversation that didn't exist before. Thank you. Thank you. He's doing his thing and he's doing it pretty well. I've got hats off to him. What would I say that my number one rules would be is to, when you're just talking about it a minute ago, you've got to own your own shit. You've got to accept your own faults for what they are. You've got to start to improve. Making your own bed. Clean up after yourself. Don't live like a pig. Those are legitimate things that everybody should take care of. I think dressing nicely. There's no reason why you shouldn't. Nasty t-shirts and gym shorts are not going to get you anywhere in life. Sorry. You want to go bum out after a workout and sit in those for a while. It's fine. If you're with an LTR, you're with a wife, that kind of thing. You come home from work or you've got your decent clothes on, keep them on. Let your kids, let your family see you dress nicely. You don't immediately go throw on the old Led Zeppelin shirt and some jams. I just think you just need to work on, God, you know, get in shape, work out. It's the same men's fair advice you hear. The reason why you hear it from every single speaker is because it is so damn true. If you can't be the master of yourself, how can you be expected to be the master or the leader of anybody else? And men thrive on respect and men and women alike do not respect somebody that doesn't take care of themselves. I think many times how we look communicates more than what we say. You express, we're getting into Tanner, Gussie's area here, but you're expressing yourself and the image that you put out to the world of who you are and what you're all about is expressing your clothing. And as I sit here in a very casual shirt and some blue jeans, but that's who I am. I got boots on in the whole nine yards. But as you get into other situations, there are times to be able to put on a nice sport coat and to be able to dress up. And it's all about the environment that you're in. And like I said, Tanner does his way better than I do, but it is hugely important. And I'm in sales and I had a buddy of mine years ago that says, look, if you're going to go in and ask for a million bucks, you damn well better look like a million bucks. People don't want to give that much money to us. And so I just closed a big order the other day that was just under a million dollars. And the same thing suit and tie when I walked in and made it happen. But I'm talking to the governor's office. I'm talking to state senators and that kind of thing. And I had a huge audience. And guess what? The context, everybody in there had a suit on. You better play the part. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you have to play the part. Yeah. Sometimes you have to play the part. But you know what they say about that? As they say, you know, OK, I want to be this guy, right? How do I get there? You say, OK, well, I'm going to pretend like I'm that guy. Right? I have this box of stuff and I'm going to write confidence on it. And I know that that box is empty, but I'm going to put it over here. I'm going to pretend like it's full. And every day I try to be more and more like that guy that I want to be. And eventually some point down the line, you quit trying to be that guy and you've become that guy. And then eventually you open that box of confidence and it's full. You know, like how the hell did I get there? Right? You have to work to get there. They say, fake it till you make it and all that. People like to hate on that. But I'm telling you, it is true. You know, think of yourself as being more valuable than you might think you are. Quit talking negative to yourself. You get into that. Sernovich has that book, Guerrilla Mindset, where he talks about, you know, quit talking negative about yourself to yourself all the time. He's just reinforcing it over and over and over again. Yeah. Build yourself up. You know, be your own biggest fan. I'm a big fan of Guerrilla Mindset. It was one of my favorite audio books from about a year and a half, two years ago. It's a tremendous book. It's good stuff. It is. You know, it's interesting. We train ourselves by our words. We like to say that if you say, if you're saying things like, I don't know what I would do without her, that when she leaves or if she's gone, you won't know what to do without her. And you're training yourself to not know what to do without her. What are some of the ways a man can verbally train himself in excellence and not make himself weak and vulnerable? Good question. I think you look at a situation, and I think the very first thing when you encounter something that's difficult in your path, you tell yourself, I've got this. You keep telling yourself that over and over and over again. And eventually you're going to start to believe it. You're going to start to quit worrying about that type of thing. You just have to have a little bit of this self-talk. I've got this. I can do this. Sure, I can. I'm a man, damn it. I can do damn anything I want to do. I like that. TexasDom.com is your website. Tell us what that's about. I started TexasDom.com as a blog. My girl has a submissive, mostly female submissive community that she wanted to start with WordPress. And so I decided I better start a little WordPress blog to figure out how this whole thing works. And then I posted a couple articles. People seem to like them a little bit. I don't monetize it. I don't make it. There's no ads. There's nothing like that. I don't sell things. But I just started putting my thoughts into words. I talk about dominance and submission. I talk about masculine things. I talk about picking up fallen brothers. That whole gamut that we talk about here this week. And it's giving me an outlet to get the words out of my heart and onto the paper or on the electronic media. I'm thrilled to death with where it's gone. And I actually, people always talk about, hey, I turned 30. I'm going to do 30 things at 30 years old, right? Well, I did 57 thoughts at 57. I just turned 57 a while back. And I think I titled the post 57 classic. And most of my stuff is 500 words or less. This one's a little longer because there's 57 things. But it goes with the territory. But yeah, stop by and take a look at it. If I can help, email me. Click on the link and email me if I can help you. That's fantastic. What would you tell the one guy who's watching this who needs change in his life? He's hurting right now. He doesn't know where to go. What to do? Is there a change in his mindset? I know you said own your shit. How does someone own their shit? Admit that they're in the situation that they are in because of themselves. Once you admit that I've gotten here because of my piss poor choices, then okay, now I can quit blaming everybody else and I can start on that path. The other thing is if you're miserable, get to the gym, start lifting. Richard Cooper talks about lift heavy things. Pick them up, put them down. You start to release endorphins in your body. You start to feel better. You're bathing your brain and feel good chemicals. And there is no substitute for it. You've got to get out there, cardio, do something, move, get off your butt. Don't sit there and feel sorry for yourself. It's easy. It's a trap. It just sucks you in. You get bigger and bigger and you get sadder and more miserable as the days go by. And I know it's take the first step. Even if you're just walk around the block, take the dog out for a walk or something. Just get outside, breathe some fresh air, put the damn video game controller down and reach out. There are a gazillion help sites out there that are on the internet. If you're suicidal for God's sakes, call the suicide prevention line. There are people there 24-7 that will talk to you at any time. They live to help you. But don't make that mistake, that tragic, tragic mistake that I see a lot of people making. Everybody wants you to do well, but you have to take the first step to doing well. And then when people see you starting to improve and starting to do better, guess what? They want to help. They want to chip in. They want to do everything they can to help pull you along. Mr. Swift said the other day. He said, don't expect me to pull you up. But I got a latch over here. I got a handle on my pack over here. You feel free to grab onto it and hang with me for a while. I'll pull you along. So yeah, just take the first step. Do something to quit analyzing everything. Once you've said, okay, it's my fault. I've gotten here because of this, this, and this, and this. Okay, put it to bed. Don't look in the rear of your mirror. You're not going that way. Start to take your first step in the next direction. And figure out what that step can be. It can be as easy as going on a bit of a diet and start to walk around the block every day. Start to put away sugary drinks, things that are poison to our brain. And once you start to make those first couple of steps, they're contagious. The brain starts getting to feel good chemicals and then everything starts to multiply, multiply exponentially. It just goes up around them grammatically. So, how's that? I really like that. I'm going to start doing those things. George Bruno from the 21 Report, talking with Tex from texastom.com. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.