 This is Tanner Guzzi coming to you with the 21 Report at the first ever Patriarch Edition of the 21 Convention 2019. And for this interview, we're gonna be flipping the tables a little bit. I'd be interviewing George Bruno, the man who you've been watching do all the other interviews. So I'm excited to get to pick your brain a little bit. So thank you for joining me on the program. It's my pleasure. So George, let's start off. I wanna hear a little bit more about your association with the 21 Convention because you've been involved in the men's community through different iterations for a while. Why be so willing to hit your horse to this particular wagon and be so associated and so involved with the 21 Convention at all? Yeah, I think it started with my YouTube channel, which was a men's grooming channel. And the joke was when you and I first met that, I take care of guys from the neck up, you take care of guys from the neck down. And literally it was just a YouTube channel about haircuts based upon your face shape, how much hair you have, the density so forth, beards, mustaches, facial hair, that kind of thing, cleaning your skin, just stuff that guys usually don't get instruction about. And after about 150 videos, I just thought to myself, how many more videos can I do on like beards and facial hair? I mean, I just couldn't, I exhausted the topic. For me, it was exhausting the topic. And then one day I just started talking about men and life and stuff. And one thing led to another and then I got contacted by Anthony Johnson and said, we've been watching your channel. We'd like you to be part of this. And I believe it was like 2017 was my first year. And I came on not knowing anyone that's part of this movement. I had my own following, not unlike a lot of the Kings, like call all the content creators and speakers Kings. We all have our own kingdoms. I didn't have a, I'll say this word once during this interview, manosphere. There, I used up my, I didn't have that kind of audience. I didn't even know what it was. I didn't even know what the terms that everyone throws around. I didn't even know what they were. I heard them for the first time when I came to the conference because I don't operate in that world. I operate in a world where I see one man every hour in a salon. I cut his hair, trim his beard, give him a straight razor shave. And that's what I do for a living. That's my trade. And can I do things faster than an hour? Yeah, of course. But I like to spend time with my clientele. And over the years, I've developed a method of talking to a man where he talks back to me and we talk, it's not just, hey, how about them bears? Did you see what the Phillies did last night? I don't even know sports talk. I mean, I don't do that. You fake it pretty well. Yeah. And we started talking about life. And I was, here's a good example. A guy comes to get his hair cut and as he's sitting into my chair, tears are rolling down his face. And I said, you know, what's going on, man? What's happening? And I cut hair in a private environment. So it's not like a bunch of barber chairs lined up, a typical barbershop. I have a private grooming studio and it's one to one. So when people come in, the door gets closed and it's similar to Vegas. What happens there stays there. And he says, you know, I came home from work, went into the front door and there was a note taped on the door that said, this marriage is over. I want out. I walked in the house and everything was gone. Everything. Furniture, the dog, everything was an empty house. And I put my hand on the dude's shoulder. I said, when did that happen? He says, 45 minutes ago. Oh man. And he still kept his appointment with me. I would have just forgotten my appointment. And I've had that guest in my chair for several years and I've watched him go through his divorce and separation and this kind of stuff and the battle and the back and forth and the equitable distribution of assets and so forth and him paying alimony and everything. And that's just one of hundreds of stories of how I've interacted with men and have worked with them one to one. And this is after 22 years as a therapist. So it wasn't, when someone says to me, you're just a barber, I just get a little smirk in my face. And I'm like, yep, I'm just a barber. And that's my superpower is, and I tell people this all the time, your secret skills that no one knows about are superpowers. They're not things that you, you don't have to have an S on your chest to wear a cape to be a superhero or have a superpower. Sometimes the superpowers are hidden little private things that show up at times when they're needed, very opportune times. So I developed this large following and then women started following me. I don't know why. A lot of moms who have sons who've encouraged their sons to watch it. And then I started getting letters, things like, you're the father that I never had. And I'm like, yikes. I wasn't even the father that my kids had, let alone the father that strangers would have. And that grew and grew and grew. And it wasn't, it wasn't this audience here at all. And then when Anthony found me, I came on board just as a speaker and that was it. And it all kind of took off from there. How was the adjustment for you, well, not even for you, but for your audiences as you made these, as you made these pivots, these transitions, because to go from purely talking about grooming and attracting and building an audience that way to then expanding into the idea of masculinity in general and helping men become better versions of themselves, not just looking like better versions of themselves. There's that pivot. And then there's also the pivot into getting into the a little bit more radioactive components of what we do and associating with the men, some of the men that we do. Tell me about how your audience has reacted as you've gone through this, as you've turned your ship a bit to go in this direction. Pivot is a good word. That's some of my friends back home, we use that. We talk about our pivot points and we plan our pivot points. There was a point when I was experimenting with growing a huge beard. When I was a young man, my hair was black and I had a black beard. And as I got older, within a one year period, my hair turned gray, my beard turned white and I grew it long for about two years and gathered a following of people who appreciated that and I thought, well, why waste this grow out period and not teach about hair care and beard care and the social implications. I was divorced, I'm social, I like going out, I like women, I grew the beard, no women. It was like a birth control device you wear on your face. Now, I'm not talking about a beard like yours, I'm talking when the beard is down here, like for instance, I'm sitting at my local biker bar and I have a big beard down here and I'm wearing a camo hat and a flannel shirt and I'm surrounded by men with camo hats, big beards and flannel shirts drinking major label, generic beer. I shaved the beard off into a very tight goatee even smaller than what I have. I'm at that bar about two weeks later on the same night of the week, no camo hat, just like a nice, maybe like a golf shirt or something like that. And I wasn't surrounded by guys and camo hats and flannel shirts. All of a sudden, I don't know if this is universal bar behavior but when someone buys you a drink, the bartender comes over and puts an upside down shot glass in front of you, which represents have anything you want, someone just bought you a drink. And about every 10 minutes, the bartender would come over like that and then point that girl over there and I'd look over there through the crowd and the girl would be going like that. I'm like, you know, back at her. I ended up with about five or six shot glasses in front of me and I'm not a drinker. I go to my place to listen to a band play and I said to the bartender, I said, can I trade these in for a grilled chicken, Caesar salad? So I traded in my shot glasses for dinner. Nice. Cause they represented, you know, like, I don't know what each shot glass was worth financially. But what a change going from wearing the birth, the huge birth control device and having just that experience for the first time in my life. Cause I'm a social guy, I like women and I like flirting and getting out there and whatever to having two years of being in monk mode. And it was fascinating, fascinating. And I would, and I had a running commentary on that on my YouTube channel. And I think I gathered a bunch of people who did the same. It's, it just happened. I started getting invited to beard contest. I didn't know there was such a thing as a beard contest. I think the fact that I was in the hair industry and had a big beard, you know, they would want me on the panel of judges and that, that was interesting. And then I think at around that time, beard brand contacted me as well and I developed a relationship with them and have an ongoing friendly relationship with them. Then there was a point where I shaved the beard off and I lost 5,000 subscribers in one day. Which Eric from beard brand has experienced similar things to what he has. He has, I remember that. I would read the comments and they were just toxic. It was just amazing. And I wasn't used to peep. I wasn't used to strangers affecting my emotions. Like some, somebody whose only identity is a pseudonym and an avatar would like ruin my day. I never had that. Like if you want to say something to me to my face, that's cool, I can deal with it, that's okay. But straight, I would just get like a hater and it would just jam me up for the whole day. And then I would just like fire back. Just like itchy trigger finger and curse back. And I wasn't even a cursing person prior to this. And I discovered like a really dark side of me. And so I spent a year just like cursing at people online. Strangers. And I had to, you know, and then I started seeing patterns like this 80, 20 rule. You know, if I get a hundred emails or comments, 80 or positive, 20 were negative. And I would always focus on the 20. And it took months and months and months of conditioning to be able to ignore that and not want to fire back. And I don't know why. I discovered something about myself that I never knew was in me. Yeah. As far as the masculinity thing is concerned, I never knew any different. My dad was a player. I grew up with a dad that flirted with women. I grew up flirting with women. I grew up having girlfriends from a very young age. Women were not an issue. When I heard that there were seminars on how to get a girl, I was like, what? You mean all men don't know how to get girls? You mean they're like pickup artists, like what? I actually, someone said, yeah, there's a PUA seminar. I'm like, what's a PUA? I didn't even know any of this stuff. I had no idea. So what I didn't wanna do was jump into that world and start using that terminology and that glossary of terms. And I just started talking about what I know to be true. And one thing led to another and I got invited into this world. And the fact that I keep getting invited back without using the language is a miracle to begin with. The comments I get now are, oh, you went from a beard grooming channel to a woman hating channel. I'm like, a woman hating channel? Like if you knew me, you would know I don't hate women. I don't despise them at all. But then again, that brought that dark side out of me. So I'm like fighting with people that I don't know. Fighting with an avatar on mine. And it's been absolutely fascinating. And from that, I would say about half of my time during the week is spent making money with social media. It is now a full-time business for me. And then I cut hair three days a week. Cool. Yeah, cool. So let's talk about the PUA component of it because obviously intersexual dynamics, male to female dynamics, that's a big component of what a lot of guys who first stumble into the world of online masculinity struggle with or start out with. And obviously that's not enough. There's way more to being a man than just how you interact with women. How has your perception been as far as being involved with the patriarch edition of 21Con and getting to see what this is like as opposed to it's just kind of consistently a focus on how men and women interact with each other. What's been your perception as we've expanded beyond that this weekend? I felt like the organization did a pivot to stay consistent with that theme. It took a turn. I saw men dressing good. Well, first of all, when men are getting together, I noticed that as the years are going on, they're dressing better. They're taking it more seriously, but they're not dressing better to get a woman. No, it's because they respect themselves more. They respect themselves more. So I saw that happening in the past couple of years. As far as the patriarch thing is concerned, if the PUA world, I don't care what a man does or doesn't do with his sexual apparatus, but one of the things that I like to say is that the highest and best use of your sex organ is making babies. It's not about screwing. It's not about putting it in different places. Yeah, that's a means to an end. And the end is making children, creating life. I always said that form follows function. We were built a certain way, and when we, I mean, nuts go with bolts. That's just the way things are. And to me, that's the logos, the divine order. That's the logic. That's how God created us to be. And I'm one of the few people that will talk about God unapologetically. And that's okay. Other people don't. But it's growing, it's expanding. They're more of us who are doing it, because I have felt the same way to be alone in that unapology about talking about it. And thankfully, that's expanding. We're no longer just the two of us. And I find that it's not about notch count. It's not about going wide anymore. It's about going deep. And I feel that the pivot is that the 21 organization is now going deeper. And we're being respected for it. I'm too old to be changing. You know, there's nothing worse than an old pickup artist. It's just creepy. You know, when I see old guys talking about picking up women, to me it's just like creepy. When I see a man who loves his woman, takes care of his family, provides, improves himself, to me, those are the notches for me. Yeah, yeah. So one thing that I've wondered, and I think a lot of the viewers of the 21 Report have wondered because you've done so many of these, is what's your favorite part about getting to be on that side of the table and get to have these kinds of conversations with the speakers that really nobody else gets to have them to the same extent that you do? What's your favorite part about it? Probably asking a question and then I just let people talk. Yeah. And I'm not a gotcha journalist. I'm not the kind of person that tries to trap people. I mean, we all have inconsistencies. And my mind does not, I don't have that devious part of my journalistic career where I'm trying to catch somebody doing something wrong. It's almost like my parenting philosophy, catch them doing something right. And in a world of despair and in a world of everybody being on the defensive, I wanna bring hope, optimism and positivity into this world, into this organization. And that's where I'm directing all of the interviews. Rather than just talking about darkness and despair and depression and how the world is trying to change us. I don't need to tell anyone that TV sucks. I will go a little step further and say, just turn the TV off. I haven't watched TV in three years now. And I've initially, yeah, but you're not living in the real world. You know, it's tough out there. There's forces that wanna drag us down. I know that. I know that. I know that. But I don't wanna be on the defensive. I would rather bear a sword than bear a shield. I actually, I'd rather have both. We need both. Go into battle, you need both. But I'm not interested in just being on the defensive at all. So I try to bring that out of everyone that I interview. Awesome. Well, and you do a great job of it. It's fun to see how you are able to focus on the positive, focus on the idea of building as opposed to just defending because we can't just attack what we don't love. We have to build what we want to see. And so having been on the other side of your interviews, I appreciate that you do that and that you do that so well. So George, thank you for letting me put you in the hot seat. It's been a pleasure getting to hear some of the answers and we're signing off. Once again, the 21 Report with the 21 Convention 2019 Patriarchs Edition. Thanks, George.