 Howdy everyone welcome to the next session. I want to introduce to you Ian Smith This is a man who has stood up to tyrants in his state. You know, I love that they try to shut down his gym They try to shut down his employees and try to shut down him But he wasn't having any of it and he stood right back up and his story inspired a lot of people even in Texas To not shut their businesses. So he's had a he has a wide national effect He's also very knowledgeable about globalism and the effects of globalism on masculinity and the family And he sports an odent beard worthy of any frost giant killer Good afternoon. I am very happy to be here for my second year at the 21 convention um last year I spoke amidst the COVID quote-unquote crisis um and in the middle of a very nasty and uh and lengthy battle with the entire state government of New Jersey um I gained notoriety two and a half years ago on the national stage because Somebody came along into my life Uh and told me that I wasn't allowed to provide for my family I wasn't allowed to do my service Which I am extremely passionate about uh to the community and uh basically told me that everything that I hold Of value and all value that I can provide Was no longer needed wasn't necessary Uh my business partner and I decided that we were going to reopen our gym and uh, well, I guess the rest is history And I've come today to share with you Uh some of the things that I've learned along the way What we did two and a half years ago was probably One of the most proud moments of my life one of the biggest accomplishments that I've ever had as a young man uh, however Before I tell you about that before I tell you about the lessons I've learned I'd like to also tell you about my greatest failures as a man in my darkest moments as a man because this isn't a highlight reel um And I'm by no means a perfect man um in fact far from it But I am a trying man and I am a growing man And I think that that's an important thing for all of us to remember today And I hope that after I tell you the stories of how I wound up here That I can leave you with a lesson or two and maybe answer some questions for you about Masculinity and what it looks like in today's modern world It's a question that I only began to ask and be asked Two and a half years ago when I decided that I wasn't going to close my gym so Once again, my name is Ian Smith Pretty regular childhood Nothing out of the ordinary. I was raised by a single mother who did her absolute best To raise me well She did a pretty good job But I think as all of us here in the crowd and everybody watching understands that You can't raise a man being a woman But there's something else missing As I was growing up I always looked around For some sort of example how to be a man And I started to form my identity and I decided That I wanted to be tough But I didn't know what that meant I decided that I wanted to be strong. I didn't know what that meant I decided that I was opinionated and that I had strong beliefs But I didn't know how to express them So as a young teenager, I grew wild. I grew restless and reckless When I was in college 19 years old 20 years old, excuse me I was a hard part of your Had no respect for anybody Authority good or bad I didn't really have a set of values only what served me best in that moment I was good at getting what I wanted And that usually meant stepping over or on people to do so Something I'm not proud of Always got my way one way or another And it eventually wound me up in in a lot of trouble In April of 2007 I woke after a night A very typical night At college I didn't leave the campus that night Looked like any other normal college night for a kid who lives on campus 20 years old Having everything paid for them student loans Barely focusing on school doing the bare minimum to get by trying to make make the most of that time there Drank in excess What was Considered normal for me was definitely in excess looking back at it And I went to sleep that night The next morning I woke In a hurry late to work didn't really have a real job Uh, I was doing something for my parents Um woke up with about a half hour to get there and took about an hour to get there So woke up in a rush. It was the end of the school year. So I threw some stuff into my car I got in it and I just started barreling towards my destination About 20 minutes later I became the sole reason For an automobile accident in which took the life of a 20 year old man Barreled through a stop sign going well in excess of the speed limit Well in excess of what was posted and well in excess of what was even reasonable Why because I was a selfish asshole and I didn't really care about anybody else in the world around me I just needed to get to where I was going Blew a stop sign and t-bone that young man. He was dead on site Um I remember the accident very vividly And it's probably something I'll never forget It came to uh after the collision and Didn't really know what happened. I still remember the song that was playing on the radio skipping And um I was looking around and there was a big gash across my forehead and the first thing that Led me to realize something was terribly wrong Uh was blood dripping down Over my eyes so that I couldn't see And I ran my tongue across the front of my mouth felt several teeth missing and in that moment I realized That it was serious hopped out of the car And uh ran over to the other vehicle What I saw Was the worst thing that I've ever done Saw the young man trapped in a vehicle that had collapsed on him With absolutely no chance of helping him Fast forward went to the hospital For some reason or another I sustained minor injuries a couple missing teeth a lot of glass in my forehead But I was otherwise okay Still smelled like alcohol Because I had drank so much the night before that it was pouring out of my pores And there was still alcohol present in my system So not only did I do something terrible And make a huge mistake I looked like a genuine piece of shit in the process Nine o'clock in the morning and I still had a above the legal limit uh blood alcohol level the next weeks go by and Trying to deal with this Feeling bad for myself asking why How did this happen How did I not see it coming Why didn't I just roll over and go back to bed that night Or that morning And you know the only way I can describe how I felt In those couple weeks afterwards My phone would ring And it wouldn't even elicit a response I wouldn't even look to see who was calling I was just there um trapped in my head reliving those moments and um Being in a place of hopelessness And hatred for oneself My mom came up with the idea She's a public school teacher or was That I should speak about what happened And I didn't want to do it But being the selfish asshole that I was at the time She said you know what it might look good for your sentencing I said okay I went They put me up in an auditorium full of 500 kids Had no idea what I was gonna say um I just got up there and I told my story And um afterwards Uh the principal of school came up to me and he said You know I've been doing this for 20 years I've never seen an auditorium full of high schoolers dead quiet So I've done auditoriums for years and years and years I mean I've done uh presentations for years and years and years for these kids And he said you captivated them do you mind if I give your number to some of my colleagues Said sure Round up speaking at 25 schools before I was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and um Right before I was sentenced It's a very strange feeling when you know you're going away There's this sort of kicking clock over your head Feels like Very hard to stay motivated to stay focused To even give a shit You know I had already felt bad enough about what I did Um, and now it kind of seemed like my life was over too 20 years old facing down 10 years in prison for What was totally Something that I never meant to do that was an accident that if I could change places with that young man I would didn't matter though justice had to be served and um A couple weeks before I went away Never slept very well I would sleep a couple hours a night no matter what I did I'd always relive That scene getting out of my vehicle walking up to the other vehicle and seeing a young man trapped dead I went into the mirror I assume I went to the bathroom and uh it was We hours in the morning and I remember kind of having a moment Where I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I was still Still pretty banged up. I looked like two-faced kind of from Batman I had hit the windshield with one side of my face So I had all these scars and cuts all over it and I was missing teeth on this side But pretty normal looking on the other side and I I looked at myself and I actually started to laugh Because I thought look at you you fool Look at what you've done look at what your arrogance and your selfishness um And your lack of concern Has done you thought you were tough You thought you could handle the world by yourself You thought you had all the answers you thought you were Invincible Now you have nothing your life will go nowhere And you look like a fool in that moment I remember thinking to myself What now Where do I go from here? What do I do? How do I make this better? Can I make this better? Should I even try and I sat there looking at myself for a while and I came to the conclusion that not only should I Change my life I had a responsibility and a duty to do so I had a responsibility to the young man who was killed Because my my recklessness and carelessness and if I didn't Strive to be a better man and if I didn't strive to somehow repent for my sins that um That that would be an insult To the young man who passed away and an insult to his family and to everybody that I hurt By doing what I did so I resolved that in there that I would Figure it out. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't even know who I wanted to become what my values were or How to get there Fast forward 21 years old The gavel bangs. I'm sentenced to five and a half years in state prison I uh Don't remember a whole lot that day a lot of crying Um, it's kind of like being at your own funeral You're surrounded by family and uh, nobody really knows what to say. It's not a whole lot to say um People are just trying to be there for you and um Before my sentencing A family member of the young man who passed away Came up to me outside of the courtroom And said to me Are you Ian? I said yes. She handed me a card and she walked away I opened up that card and in it just said We don't hate you We hate what you did and I remember feeling a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders Because that was forgiveness like I've never experienced And um And I felt an even greater sense of responsibility moving forward because somebody had given me that gift um That probably wasn't very easy for that person to write And to say gavel bangs I hear my mom's scream as I'm sort of ripped away from her um and off I go 21 years old Kid from the suburbs who's Pretended like he was tough his whole life, but really wasn't um Getting thrown in with the big dogs In uh in one of the roughest county jails in jersey You know and uh, and that's never fun. You go in and you might get two shoes One's probably the wrong size your pants are probably three times too big and they're still wet from whatever laundry Uh, the prison offers and you know, you're kind of sent into uh this Holding area and I was just trying to take it all in and uh, I remember Sitting there a couple days in and It was actually a weekend And I had made a friend this older gentleman Who was getting ready to to serve 18 years And I remember we were we were playing cards and I I was like man a week went pretty quick Like I wasn't too bad And uh, and then I started to compute how many more weeks I had to do um And I remember feeling like the walls were closing in Uh, and I couldn't breathe and I started to just absolutely panic Uh, because it was hundreds um compared to that one So I was shipped off eventually to state prison And the first year Was about learning how to survive Um prisons are little micro societies They all operate a little bit differently depending on the demographic and who's in it And what the the ratio of Groups are in there and that was my first experience With tribalism I had never experienced it You know, I wasn't I wasn't in a fraternity in college I wasn't a On sports teams or anything growing up. I didn't have that that bond Between men where You're willing to go to Really really far extents To protect each other and to make sure that not only are you okay? um But that you're thriving as well And I remember watching it all watching the way different groups Gangs races religions Whatever way they were divided how they would interact amongst each other and with each other And I studied and I and I just watched and watched and watched and watched And eventually uh after many mistakes Annoying correctional officers was one, you know, I didn't have a pillow And I kept asking this guy for a fucking pillow And eventually I wound up just with a knife under my mattress and then solitary confinement instead Because nobody gives a shit about your comfort nobody gives a shit Whether you're happy you've been stripped of everything And in order to gain in order to have anything you have to gain respect First you start at the bottom in prison And it took a while for me to understand that I was at the bottom because I was used to living a somewhat comfortable life You know, I lived middle class life. I never really had to struggle that hard I never really wanted anything that bad. I was never really deprived of anything um to the point of discomfort and Hunger and all of these all of these feelings that I've never really felt before Feeling alone feeling desperate feeling completely powerless Being told when you're gonna eat what you're gonna eat how much you're gonna eat When you sleep when you wake up when the lights turn on when the lights turn off Where you can go? Who you can be around with what you dress like What type of materials you can read what type of television you can watch what type of communication you can have with the outside world You don't get anything you have to earn all of it. So About a year in sort of figured my way through things and um, I was approached many times To join these different groups and I just kept saying no kept saying no kept saying no eventually I ran into a little bit of trouble with a particular group and uh wound up in a little bit of scuffle and because of that I wound up in solitary confinement Not a fun time When you don't know who you are Being alone is a very scary thing Very very scary thing being alone And being unable to be distracted Was one of the scariest things I've ever had to face down Because I was 22 years old And I knew nothing about myself I didn't know what my fears were I didn't know what my dreams were I didn't know what my values were And everything that I thought I was was just sort of a projection Um, there was not a whole lot of substance to it I may have said things and acted certain ways but I never lived any of these things And I remember how loud The silence was And how intimidating it was But I'm actually very thankful and grateful for the opportunity Because I had to sit with myself for weeks No contact Nothing to do you're gonna sell 24 hours a day You might come out to make a phone call every three days for about 15 minutes Other than that it's 24 hours a day Just you and your thoughts And eventually I started to use the time well At first I would just try to sleep Because I was trying to be distracted and I was trying to escape Because there was all these nagging questions That were that I could hear That I didn't want to answer that I didn't want to address Or that I was too scared to even think about And eventually I got myself a pen and a paper And I started to write some things down I started to answer some of these questions And I took the time to figure out What I wanted What I wanted to be What I wanted to do And the mark That I wanted to leave on the world And I realized in that moment That I hadn't left a good mark The relationships that I had the friendships that I had Were shallow Were hollow And I had burned a lot of bridges from from the real people in my life In exchange for things that were attractive in the moment That were shiny on the surface And I figured out in those weeks A rough idea Of who I wanted to be when this was over Who I wanted to walk out of those gates as Because I had four years left Or three years left, whatever it was I was released back into general population And person's a pretty boring place overall You know, it's everything you see in the movies and nothing like it all at once Your biggest enemy is boredom And the biggest torture Is watching the world go round and round without you I used to sit And I faced a highway at one point out of my prison cell I could I could see the highway off in the distance And I used to try to count the headlights and I just used to watch the world Go on without me And it was a very humbling experience because I had I had always Thought of myself as so important And in that moment at least I was not I was on very few people's minds All the people I grew up with All the women that I thought I had seduced and and were so into me had moved on Um and only a couple people really gave a shit A couple people wrote letters Um A couple people came and visited I was very lucky. I had a strong core group of people, but it wasn't a lot It was a very humbling humbling experience But I remembered that I didn't want to feel like that when I got out I wanted to be Something better I didn't want to be what I was before Arrogant Stupid and reckless and selfish But I still wanted to be important I wanted to make an impact on the world that was Positive and I wanted to try at least to tip the scales a little bit to undo some of what I've done And I came to the conclusion that the only thing that I could possibly do to right the wrongs that I had done Is to make the most of the rest of my time in prison And then to get out and to live as good of a life as I possibly could In hopes that I would maybe inspire some others to do the same So eventually the the timer ran out. I made it I got out of a prison in 2013 26 years old I had never done anything on my own at this point except make it through prison I didn't really know the first thing about holding a job having a job working hard You know, all I really figured out in prison was That I like to read And and then I didn't want to be under anybody's thumb anymore Having your freedom taken away rightfully so Having your freedom taken away changed my value system and And I'm very thankful and I'm very grateful for that Because it made me appreciate life so much when I got out I was so happy to have made it and I was so grateful That I did have some people who cared about me and who helped me through And helped me land on my feet when I get out I get out Worked in the gym industry for a little while Been fired from every job I have ever had or have quit on bad terms. I'm not a very good employee And I made that mistake a couple of times until One time I was working as a assistant general manager at a 24-hour fitness flagship location I had the possibility that I could make six figures Felt like I was doing something in the world and um, it's two weeks in on the job and some Some guy in a suit walks in and hands me a letter of termination saying that my criminal my criminal past Um, was not something that 24 hours supported and that I was terminated effective immediately um Even though I had just been hired even though I was doing phenomenal and I remember in that moment never wanting to feel um So dependent upon anything or anybody else ever again So I set out started personal training um Did pretty well for myself I moved back to new jersey and I opened up my business There did very very well very very quickly. I Got a huge book of clients. I was quote-unquote successful or so. I thought um Making good money spending a lot of money enjoying my life and I was kind of getting blown off track just a little bit Still really working on myself as an individual, but I stopped pushing the envelope I stopped holding myself accountable to all the things that I had told myself that I was going to do Told myself that I was going to volunteer. I told myself that I was going to Be a better son to my my mother and be a better cousin and be a better grandson And uh, and the world distracted me again so blown off course and Very thankful that eventually I was presented with the opportunity To do something great And to inspire a lot of people and that came in the form of the covet 19 lockdowns in the state of new jersey When they came and told us that we couldn't open our business my partner and I Didn't like what we were being told didn't sit right didn't feel right But we didn't know enough to confidently stay open So we shut down our business, but we started paying attention. We paid attention to the science and the politics neither one made sense um So we started to figure out what do we do now? And um, we knew That what was going on was not only incorrect But was morally wrong We were watching the effects even very early on what it was having on people And we saw it firsthand till us jim is a jim with a lot of people who come Not just to exercise physically but to keep themselves Saying up here and um A lot of veterans a lot of guys who struggle who have battled with addiction And who use the jim as a anchor to keep them Driven in the right direction and um and not be blown off course and we were watching these people suffer and we were watching other businesses fail and 14 days excuse me 11 days in we decided that we had we could no longer sit by idly and allow this to happen We knew it was wrong. There wasn't a A doubt in our minds that what was going on was not only um Hurting people but it was criminal So we decided we were going to reopen our jim We didn't know what we were getting into Back then we just thought it was This governor that was out of control. We didn't realize that it was the entire system itself That has been blown off course Reopened our jim caught the attention of tucker carlson Tucker carlson threw a can of gas On our little fire and blew us up into the national spotlight, which also made the fight bigger. It made it more important It made it scarier because now Every weapon in the arsenal Of the entire state of new jersey was pointed at us Um They were coming after us with everything The situation escalated very quickly what started out as citations that we were getting turned into doors being locked on us on our own private property Turned into after we picked those and opened the gym back up and the plan was very simple all along We didn't have to have all the answers But we made a choice we stuck with it And we weren't going to back down for anybody no matter what the consequences no matter what the sacrifice um because What was going on was wrong and then we were going to stop it They started messing with our plumbing They uh, they started arresting our members They started finding us 15 000 dollars a day every single day that we were open They threatened to arrest us they came back to uh to lock the doors again So we took the doors off and we camped out inside of our gym for 44 days or 47 days and nights They finally came in and arrested us they boarded our doors up with plywood Although i don't know who thought that that was going to stop us But the next day we came back and we kicked them in turned the lights on and opened the gym back up Um from there it continued to escalate we were Robbed of 173 000 dollars from our bank account Santander bank just said Sorry governor murphy told us to take this We weren't charging our members. We were running off donations And the fight kept going and we stayed steadfast in what we set out to do All said and done The gym stayed open We paid a huge price But we didn't do it alone Because when you do the right thing the right people will support you I started out as an obscure gym owner three years ago And today I have a network of people who are powerful And important and influential and caring beyond anything that I ever thought that I would be a part of Um, and it was all because we did the right thing And we stepped up to take shots um For everybody and we did so gladly and I would do it a million times again no matter what they did So on the back end of this I started to get a lot of questions As I was becoming this, uh figure for freedom Small business freedom and uh traditional american constitutional values People started asking me questions men started asking me questions, you know, how do I how do I become a better man? how do I How do I have courage how do I do all these things and to be honest with you? I still don't know all the answers But I started to ask myself as well For the second time in my life because I had done it once already and I decided I decided that It was not only a parent That there was a war being waged On all things good and masculine um But that it was an existential threat to The world that we live in today And that it's a game of inches That has been being played for quite a long time By people that you'll never be able to stick a finger to or point out um You can call them globalist interests. You can call them bankers. You can call them whatever These people have been around for a very long time And the game that is being played Is that when you lose They win And we see it all the time we see it in politics. It's not just a political thing, but we see it in politics all the time markets crash Who loses? Everybody in the room who wins the guys that have been playing the game behind the scenes the whole time and The only way that they get this done Is by making men Whose fundamental job Is to protect by making men complacent by making men mediocre By making men soft by making men fearful by making men weak by isolating men and by demonizing them sounds like a Grand conspiracy theory, but look around you Look at collectively not individually collectively Look at modern man Is that something that Anybody will be proud to be a part of collectively? Is that a tribe? That any of us can say that we're proud to be a part of Modern man is overfed and undernourished we're distracted Many men don't have all of those fundamental questions that I had Asked myself and that many other men have asked themselves not enough Answered for themselves modern man today is given these pre-packaged concepts Of what kind of man you are sports guy So on sunday as you watch sports You know, you don't you don't do anything else on sunday. You watch sports. You hang out with the boys drink beer Boom, that's modern man number one And there's another pre-package and there's another pre-package another pre-package and all of these pre-packaged ideas Right the stupid dad The frat boy All of these things are fabricated they're a product of A society that has a propaganda machine That is constantly pumping ideas into The hearts and the minds of not only young men, but all men And I was one of those And I looking back I can remember My value system I got it from somewhere else. I didn't get it from here. I didn't get it from other men with strong values Because I never communicated these things with other men. I was never taught that men would do that I was I was taught that you were you would be tough and you would be rugged and You know, you uh, you don't show your emotions and you don't you know You don't talk about anything except sports and girls and so on and so forth um And I finally got to experience something different During all of this I connected with a network Of men that I am very Very proud to call my tribe. We're all over the place. Some of us are local Some of us aren't But they're all men who Have similar values But more importantly have firm and immovable values We're not all the same Some of us are uh more wholesome than others some of us are uh Little more wild than others, but we all believe in a couple of really important core values And the one that's most important to me Is the idea of freedom having been in prison for all that time Maybe appreciate it and when I saw the world Starting to turn away from it Um I decided that I would do anything to protect it and that I would not accept defeat No matter what the cost And if you would have asked me if I had the strength to do that Five years ago I would have said no I would have said, you know, I'm just one guy. Just one guy. I can't make a difference Um, but I stand before you here Um, having been one of the most influential People over the past two years having been one of the most talked about people for the last two years And I don't say that to brag. I don't say that to boast. I say that Because I am No different than anybody in this audience. No different than anybody watching There's nothing inherently special about me. There are no characteristics that I have that any other man Doesn't have the capacity to develop But they have to be developed And the only way that they're developed is by conflict And overcoming I've been very fortunate in the Span of my 36 years Um That I've had to fight some battles Some of which are on my own doing They weren't always good But I was able to make the best out of all of them and I was able to grow and become a better man Because of it and I noticed that as I became a better man As I held myself to a higher standard My life got better. It got more interesting It was filled with passion. It was filled with more memorable experiences And eventually I came to the conclusion That we have five responsibilities As a man we have a responsibility to ourselves We have a responsibility to our family particularly the women children and our elders We have a responsibility To our community Be that at the local level or be that at the national level We have a responsibility to some sort of higher order Not a particularly religious man, but I don't believe that This is all random and even if it is that's pretty fucking cool and that You have a responsibility to respect that And I think most importantly As a man You have a responsibility to the men who have come before you Who have built the world that you live in today You have a responsibility to protect that world You have a responsibility to shape that world Your grandfather and your grandfather's grandfather And your grandfather's grandfather's grandfather Would be ashamed To watch you sit on the sidelines while the world Carries on while the world goes in a direction that I think anybody can confidently say in here is not a great one, right? We have a responsibility to the great men who have come before us To protect what they've built and to carry on a legacy And we've been handed What I think is an incredible opportunity To carry the torch There's no doubt that there is a decline in society decline in the Values there's a decline in the quality But that doesn't mean that there always has to be I truly believe that that decline is because men have checked out collectively that men have resigned to being a spectator by being a consumer and not a creator and That's because they've been told that they're not powerful They've been told that they're just one man They've been told that they don't matter. They've been told that they're a demon whatever. We've all heard all the All the nonsense, but that is unequivocally false And I am living proof that you can make a difference beyond Your wildest dreams I am by no means the smartest man in this room Um, I am by no means the hardest working again, there's absolutely nothing special about me except That I made a choice that aligned with my values and that I was not willing to compromise for anybody or anything because of that I've been surrounded by Incredible opportunities my life has gotten unfathomably better And it's on track to continue that so what I leave you with is A call to action you have a responsibility You have a responsibility to yourself to your family to your community to your country to your elders So the people that have come before you into some higher order to be the best man that you can possibly be And now is the easiest time to do it The pack is weak overall And it doesn't take much to stand out at this point and I think everybody here probably understands that Or else you wouldn't be here ask yourself those tough questions Sit in silence, whatever you got to do Answer them answer them truthfully even if they scare you and hold other men accountable These people that are your friends Even if they aren't on the same page Bring them in Bring them into the fold You make the man next to you better you'll get better It's a positive feedback cycle And what we're in right now is a negative feedback cycle as I get lazy the guy next to me gets lazier At the end of the day we are pack animals And that's just how the pack dynamic works You push the guy next to you pushes You get better together you get stronger together you conquer anything together And if we can start with just one person The impact that you will have will continue to grow And I think that in a very very short amount of time We could see very very different country in a very very different world But it starts with each and every one of you starts today it starts now It doesn't get the lead it doesn't get put off It shouldn't be a fleeting thought it should be a priority That's all I have so if anybody has any questions I'm more than happy to answer them any topic Doesn't matter Go right ahead So yeah, so it can be often be very tough, especially if you have Like national news coming after you to close Close the gym and I mean it obviously does take a lot of courage to be very confident in your and very firm in your decision to Um keep your gym open Um Like how do you get that type of courage to to really stick with that decision not Like Fold on on that Like a lot of I'm sure a lot of other when the heat comes What was that when the heat comes? How do you how do you stay true? Yeah, because a lot of other men I'm sure would like close their businesses. I mean I I live About two hours from Boston and that whole city was like shut down Yeah, well that's a really good question. Um And it's it's um, I think it's a really important one You are going to face scrutiny No matter what you do Um, and it tends to happen like this The greater the move you make the hotter the flame but I can tell you this It doesn't mean jack shit what these people say about you Doesn't mean jack shit what they write about you The only thing that should matter to you In terms of people's opinions of the opinions of the people that you love And the the opinions of the people that you provide and protect Whether that be your family members, whether that be your best friend Whether that be anybody else who stands by your side and and aligns with you in your value system. I think that The internet plays a large role in this The The voices of negativity Uh, and hatred and all that get amplified because everybody's got a microphone these days But if you take Take that out of the equation take mass media and the internet out of the equation If you were in my position, would you have opened the gym without any criticism? Probably Probably not I mean Well, no, I would say I probably would have opened it if you weren't going to face any scrutiny Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I mean that was the decision. Yeah, so why would you care About the scrutiny of people who you don't know who aren't your members at your gym Who don't provide for your family who don't care You would have lost everything and these people would have applauded They would have they would have been happy that you lost everything It was it up, you know, well, we just had to do it for the greater good Meanwhile, you're down and out on your ass everything that you've built your entire life's work The way you feed your family And these people also have the power to arrest you and put you back in prison They sure do They sure do You have to look at the bigger picture though You know, it wasn't it wasn't about a gym The gym was the vehicle it was about freedom and if they can come close my gym They can come do whatever they want to you And they can take the next step and they can take the next step. So at some point In your value system, you have to draw that line And say you are not going to cross it no matter what you do to me no matter what you say to me because this is This is my perimeter These are my people. This is what I protect. This is my stake And no opinion Is worth it letting anybody cross that line. No punishment is you know, but you just have to be very realistic, I think and With what we did, I think we realized a lot earlier than many people did the importance of what we were doing, you know, a lot of people thought oh, it's just two weeks You know, um, it's just just businesses shut down But look where we're at today You know what started what started three years ago is still going along People lost jobs over people did all these things over it. So it was important enough for us to draw that line in the sand Not everybody's got the same line. That's okay But you have to figure out what that perimeter is What else Ian, thanks again, um, yeah I'm just curious a little more about the ongoing saga if if there's an end to it if it's still ongoing because Um, as we talked a little bit last year, um, that's my old neighborhood too. I worked over there I wasn't familiar with it at the time But i'm just curious it has this national spectacle played out. Is it still ongoing in your life? Is there been financial damage that's still haunting you so, um all said We did not charge members, but we were open for the entire two years Until we got our business license back So they had one of the punishments they had done is they had stripped us of our business license When we originally reopened when when there was quote-unquote lockdowns Um, we weren't charging anybody because it wasn't about the money. It was about the principal Um, we didn't want to charge people that weren't coming. So we said hey, it's free donate if you want Eventually when they reopened new jersey They took our business license a week before and said now now you can't be in business And that was obviously designed to to make us fail. So we just stayed open and we sold t-shirts We sold t-shirts and we took donations for another year and a half or so until We just kept suing the township We sued them We lost we sued them we lost we sued them we lost we sued them we lost all said we've spent about 650 thousand dollars in legal bills That were funded entirely off of donations and t-shirt sales um The mayor contacted our lawyer back in in april excuse me in may And said how long are these guys going to keep this up for? and the The lawyer said as long as they keep paying me and they don't they don't seem to have a shortage on fundraising so Two days later in the mail came our business license So the mayor finally gave up because of course it wasn't the mayor's decision The mayor was following orders the mayor's a democrat and a democrat run town and a democrat run state Um, and he was toe in the party line The order came down from governor murphy told us to take the business license. This guy probably didn't care and he could no longer justify the the legal expenses because cost money to go to court whether you're the state or not and um Eventually said I can't I can't justify this anymore even even the craziest of Covid carons didn't care about until us anymore. Um, you know, everybody had had moved on Everybody had moved on so um at that point I was running for congress um I wound up running for congress on the back end of this which is part of the story that I kind of forgot to talk about but um I had uh, I had gotten wrapped up in my in my race and um, we still had some things going on But I ultimately sold my half of the business to my business partner Um, and there are still some appeal processes going on. So they took all that money They fined us $15,000 per day for x amount of days. They wound up confiscating 200,000 altogether So there's an appeal process for those fines that will probably drag on for at least another year and a half if not more Um, and then a counter suit will follow So it just gets to be a very slow process and that's that's what these people understand They know whether it's big money either way corporations government same thing Um, they know that they can get away with bullshit Because in order to stop them it's going to take years and years and years and they know that most people will never Even depart on that journey because it's expensive because it's tiresome And you're going to take a lot of punches along the way. So until the ship is open We've remained open all the way through that was the ultimate goal. They never successfully shut us down ever And we're sort of just rocking and rolling operating like a normal business so awesome, it sounds a lot like uh Jeff Younger's experience with the dragging on and they just want to keep you fighting. Yeah drain you They know it's a 12 round fight. They know it's a rocky story. You'll knock them out in the end You know good will always prevail, but they know that most people aren't cut out for that um Whether they just don't have the resources You know, which we were very fortunate at Attila's there was a lot of businesses who tried to open who just didn't have the support You know because of the Intensity of the story, you know, we were getting crazy punishments But we also had an incredible network of people that supported us So we were able to sort of go the distance And and my former partner will continue to go the distance We'll continue to fundraise and support, but it'll be a long journey until until the end is done But they try to discourage you rounds one to 11. They'll they'll beat you down. They'll try to Drive you into poverty. They'll Intimidate you they'll write nasty articles about you But you know in the end if you can if you can outlast those 11 rounds round 12 is ultimately where the victory comes Thank you sir All right got one more Ian i'm just curious. What's the story behind the tattoo on your left arm? Oh, this is this is what this one or this one? The lower one. Okay, so this is this is George Washington crossing the Delaware So being a new jersey native actually lived right around not too far from George Washington's crossing and to be honest These men have fascinated me for a long time Our founding fathers something that a lot of people don't realize they think that they know but they don't realize A lot of these guys were like in their 20s and We're living in this new land that was rough and rugged under the thumb of some some radical tyrants And uh, and they said fuck you. We're not doing this And they didn't have the resources they didn't they didn't have the organization. They didn't have the uh the structure they didn't have They didn't have what they needed to fight and they fought anyway they fought hard And um, I just have a tremendous amount of respect. I think that's one of the greatest american stories ever told is what these guys did To create a country that we live in today and of course we have we have we the people that's um If I learned anything from the atilla's story It's that the power of we the people is a very real thing You know, uh, when they took telling this story last night when they took 170 thousand dollars from our bank account We walked we walked in granted we had everything else going on, you know legal troubles all this stuff And you open up the computer and you have no money in your bank account You got lawyers to pay you got bills to pay whatever uh, and we didn't all of a sudden it was zero And um, you know, I just remember going on to social media. That was like my broadcast network at the time And I said hey guys It took all our money Zeroed us out Jim's still open see you guys later And by the end of that week we had a hundred thousand dollars in t-shirt orders Uh, I didn't ask I didn't say a damn word other than we were open And all these people from around the country and around the world we sent shirts to 18 countries Decided they were going to buy a t-shirt that day two t-shirts three t-shirts with five t-shirts hats whatever We didn't even have the inventory But nobody even cared. I mean it took months to get all this stuff out. Nobody cared. They just wanted us to keep going so We the people is something that I I truly believe and that's one of one of the core values. I have I think that we're stronger together Um, and I think that you see a lot of division in this country. I think it's on purpose So that's something that always brings me back and last part is the Liberty Bell So i'm from philadelphia. That's a iconic uh American landmark and um just along on the long lines with all my values Thanks guys