 What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriars. There's nothing more natural than being a father. Welcome back to the 21th Convention, 2nd Patriarch Edition here in Orlando, Florida in 2020. This is our last speaker of the first day, and one of the things that you will notice as you spend more time in this space of masculine self development is that there are a lot of men who find themselves becoming masters and experts within a particular niche, and then that's all they become known for when they really have so much more value to be able to offer. And our next speaker is one of those men, where he's spoken here before, he's been able to develop a reputation, talking very particularly about sexual dynamics and how that works, and the way that he's been able to establish himself there is well deserved, but there is so much more depth to him, so much more depth to his experience, even to what I personally witness as far as his own growth and development. And so I'm very pleased to be able to introduce Texas Dom. He's coming up, he is a father and a grandfather, and there's so much wisdom and so much experience that we can gain from him. So please welcome Tex, come on up. Thank you. Following Steve to Dean Williams is going to be a chore, because I don't have the timing or the comedic skills, but I'm going to try. We had a lot of months between when we thought we were going to do patriarchs in May to now, so there was plenty of time to make a presentation, trash it because it wasn't good enough, make another presentation, trash that because you're not happy with that, and then lo and behold, it's like when you were a kid and you were taking that SAT test, it was always the first answer, the first gut thing you thought you were going to check off on is usually the right answer, and you start second guessing yourself and you end up missing a lot of stuff, right? So I'm going back to the original idea that's percolated for a long time and I kept putting little bullet points in my phone of how things I wanted to make sure I got to say, and I'm going to invariably miss something. But in the meantime, I'm going to catch a lot. So the title of this talk is if I only had a time machine. We talked earlier with another guy outside, you know, had there been the Internet and 21 University and all these things back when I was 20 and 25, I'm 59 now, right? I can't imagine how much further along I would be in life had I had access to all this information. It's mind boggling how much stuff is out there for us and you younger guys are blessed. If you're under 30 and you're in this room or under 40 in this room, consider it yourself completely blessed to have access to all this great info. It's just 30 years of life lessons from being a dad and now grandpa. I call it the blood, sweat, and tears edition because you don't make it 30 years as a dad without bleeding. Okay? Shit happens. Everybody was here last year for my talk here, last year at Patriarch, you know, sometimes it ain't so great being a parent sometimes, right? We're going to go back in our time machine and we're going to talk to this jerk, okay? This guy didn't have a clue. He just had a kid. He's 29 years old. He doesn't know what's going on. He wears a mask in life because he has no confidence in who he really is. He doesn't know who he is. He's confused. He just had a kid. He just got married right before having a kid. Clueless, absolutely clueless. So if I could go back and talk to this kid, what would I tell him? What would I talk to him about? I would say first of all that you cannot self-sacrifice your way to heaven, okay? You have to take care of number one. And let me tell you young man, you are going to do things because you think somehow, some way, you're going to get a gold star in heaven one day for being such a great guy for putting up with all this bullshit around you instead of being a man and taking charge. You got married. You don't have a clue what being married is. You watched your mom and dad a little bit, but, you know, their example was pretty good. But until you're living it, you don't know what it is. And so now here you are married. What's fatherhood? Good Lord, I married a single mom. That's red pill rule number 75, right? Don't do the don't do rule. I did it. I was in love. What I was in love with was sex. And the sex was amazing. I got married because of sex. I bet you a few of you might have done the same thing. Next thing you know we're having kids. She had a kid. She already had a kid. She had a six-year-old daughter. She joined the family. So I had an immediate family. Most of us, when we start having children, we get to grow into fatherhood as the child grows up from one years old on up. And you get to grow and be a better dad as the kids coming along in those first couple of years. They don't know what's going on anyway. So you got some little bit more room for air and all that. I started off with a six-year-old. I didn't know what I was doing. Not a clue. And that came back to haunt me. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Not knowing what fatherhood was. But I meant it, man. I meant it to win at this point. But here's the problem. About three or four years into this, the marriage wasn't going so good. It was just a lot of bickering. I was unhappy. And my son was at that terrible two, three stage where he was just all over. He's my best friend now, but he's a great kid. But he was just what kids do, what boys do. And I'd had enough and I was stressed out. A lot of things weren't going my way. And I did what Steve did, but I didn't have six kids. I went and got clipped after two kids in my 30s. I regret that to this day. And I would tell this young man over here, say, hold off on that. Have her go get her tubes tied. Or y'all just hold back and use some contraception because you're going to wish you had more kids. You're really going to wish you had another couple. And I'm just going to tell you young man, don't do this too quick. Abort, abort. Don't do it. I have never met one man ever in my life that said, man, I had too many kids. Not one. I've never met a woman later in life. This is completely off tangent. Who's ever said, I'm really happy I had that abortion. I've never met one in later life that was happy she had an abortion ever. Luckily, we haven't had to deal with that in my family. And that's just one of those things. You know, you look back, you make these rash decisions as a young person and they come back to you and you go, man, what was I thinking type of thing? So what I tell this young man right now, you're 29, I got bad effing news for you. In six years, your rock is gone. Pops. Pops dies in six years. Boy, you better have your shit together. You gotta be rough. That man there had a lot of fun. He got to be a grandpa for about six years. He got cheated. Those kids got cheated when he died early. Cancer is what it is, right? So my message to that young man is, you got six years to make the most out of what you got with your dad. The message to you is, if your parents are still alive, get with them. Hang out with them. And you won't know. If you're a young man whose only role model was your dad or John Wayne, it might have been the other one. You take that rock away, you get some issues. Young man, you're going to be lost. You're going to be depressed. Your depression is going to get so damn bad that it's going to affect your relationship. It's going to affect your ability to parent well. You're still parenting, but you're not doing a very good job at it. You're going to start eating and drinking, man. Jack Daniels is going to be your new best friend. And you're going to get to know him very, very well. And he hates you. He hates you, young man. And all that crappy food that you're eating, you're also giving it to your kids. And they're also going to have weight problems at some point because of that. Your wife's eating shitty food too, because that's all y'all do is eat shitty food and drink. Luckily my wife wasn't a drinker. So when I was going through this decline, what did she do? Because women are absolutely amazing when they are mothers and wives and their husbands fall out and just hit the pavement. What do they do? They pick up the ball and they run with it. And they do an amazing job because they have to. And they resent the living hell out of you ever since. Because they had to do your job for you because you were a piece of crap when you fell down on the floor and you couldn't get up. Depression's real and there's treatments for it, but ignoring it and not doing anything about it but drinking and eating a bunch of crappy food, that doesn't work either. I had a job that I got drug tested on. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have been doing drugs too. That's just the way where I was. Furthermore, I abandoned God. I got angry at God. I grew up religious. I grew up with a family. Which is kind of funny looking back at it now. But that was a direction that I was headed. And I ended up diverting and going somewhere else on a different mission. But quit going to church. Got mad at God. I didn't suffer as much from that as my kids did. My kids had a rudimentary understanding of what church was. My daughter was doing better. And I always referred to her as my daughter because her dad wasn't in the picture. I got that on and I embraced it. She got some religious upbringing because we didn't stop going to church until she was about 12 or 13. My son didn't get much past age six. And that did not bode well for him later in life. He's now a Christian again. And he's back to doing virtual church services with us and things like that. But there were a lot of dry years there. So young man, don't ignore your church family. Don't ignore God. You don't have to be a holy roll of Bible thumper. You just have to teach. You have to give your kids, I think, young man, give your kids the ability to at least get the education and they can decide for themselves what they believe. That's the goal here for me. It should have been for you. But you fucked up and you got lonely and you got depressed and you didn't let anybody help you. You didn't have the internet to look and research you to why am I unhappy. You didn't have a lot of friends. Your friends suck, right? You didn't have a lot of friends. All they wanted to do was drink Jack Daniels with you and watch football. So I'd say to that young man, when the shit hits the fan here, when pops goes away, you need to realize you need to be the hero in your own movie. We are all the hero in our movie. The world revolves around text now in my mind. You, young man, the world revolves in whatever which way and you're just kind of floating on the outskirts hoping to pick up some scraps and figure out what's going on in life. But the old man dropped the crown and it's up to you to pick it up. And you got to do that and you got to embrace that. It's your time now. You don't have a choice. But you're weak because you don't know any better. We always say you don't know what you don't know. That's a true statement. Once you, one of the guys talked this morning about it, you know, you can competence to whatever, but once you know that what you don't know, then you can start doing something about it. This little guy, you want to be the hero in your movie, you better be because you're his hero. You have an option here. You can be his dad or you can be his best friend. Try to be both. Got to know where the rules lie. You're 80% dad and best friend, whatever you want to do. I don't care. But you got to make sure you're dad number one in your life. At some point, young man, this little guy is going to talk to you and they're taking him to see the resident evil first movie. And he wears you down and you take him to go see that movie and he's way too freaking young to go to that movie. And you screw up. And next thing you know, five minutes into the movie and people are getting sliced and diced into cubes by lasers. If anybody ever saw that movie, the two of us got up, walked across the lobby and went to go see Ice Age, a real movie for the two of us at that time. So you need to listen to me. You're not going to take him. You're not going to show him X-Files episodes every Sunday afternoon because he's scared of aliens. You're not going to take him to Jurassic Park at age four just because he likes dinosaurs. What the hell? You're an idiot. I'm so mad at you. You're his hero. Fucking act like it. And you're in a shit job. You're fucking the living life out of you right now. And you don't know any better because you think this is as good as it gets. The money's just good enough that you've got a pretty decent set of golden handcuffs on. And you're afraid because you've got no confidence and you don't know that you can find a better job and you just need to man up a little bit. And when that boss eventually in seven years from now tells you, well, you know, an addicted customer is a loyal customer and he's a happy customer. It takes that to get you to quit your job if you should have quit five years earlier. Don't do anything that you hate for that long because all that does is compound your misery and you've got to get out as soon as you can. Don't wait. Now, you grew up a football fan and you are a rabid football fan and you still are at age 29. I get it. It's fun. You live the old glory days, the old high school football days, the old Bruce Springsteen song, glory days. And so you watch college and you watch pro and by God, there's no DVR yet. There's no cable. So, you know, Sunday, you got three games in a row. Saturday, you got college football from 11 a.m. till 7 p.m. And you're watching the big three networks and you're enjoying this and your kid's picking up on it. And your son turns out he loves sports too of shared value in a lot of families. And in my part of Texas, where I grew up in a blue collar chemical town down by Galveston, sports were if you didn't play sports, you were nothing in that group. It was all about competing and being with your buddies, being in the locker room, having that male companionship. It's one of the best days of my life and probably some of yours. And definitely for that little young man that you're holding in your arms, it's going to be some of his best days too. You're going to coach baseball, little league. You're going to coach baseball. You're going to coach basketball. You're going to do all the sports stuff with him not because you're good at basketball, coach. Not because you were ever any good at baseball. You suck, dude. You know it. But because he doesn't know what he's good at yet. And so you're going to let him go to these sports. Well, not soccer, because that's communist. But you're going to let him go before we finish. That's how we feel back then. That's how I still do. The boy's going to realize that his baseball skills and his basketball skills aren't that great. But guess what he's going to find? He's going to find a love of football. Because he's going to be 6 foot and 230 and rock solid with little body fat. He's going to be a beast of an offensive lineman. And he's going to make you proud. But I got a warning. You can't live through him. Now, if everybody's seen Friday Night Lights in Texas, we know how big that is, right? And so the state championship team can be proud of this boy one day. He sells out every play. No days off. No plays off for him. Offensive guard that pulls and his quarterbacks about 3 inches taller. And they are best buddies. Because nobody gets past him to kill the quarterback. And I'm bragging here. He's selling out on a play over here. And he's just a stud. And then what else do we do? You're going to have to start taking him on these father-son trips. Let me go back one. I've got to have myself. There's going to come a point in time when that young man is on a high championship team in Texas and he's looking to play in college football. And I want to tell you do not be greedy and push him to play college ball. Just because you think you're going to get the nation out of it, you're going to keep your money in the bank. It's a terrible thing to do and you're going to be real tempted to do it. You're going to be tempted to push him. It's got to be his decision. And then when he does play college football and eventually after a year or two decides he's had enough he's gotten too many injuries and he backs off. You got to support him at all times and make sure you know he did it for his reasons and not because you were just the proud papa. You're going to find that when he's playing these sports you want to be a part of it. In fact, so much so that you go out and buy a really kick-ass camera and you're going to sit on the sidelines and you're going to take these great photos but guess what you do in the process, young man? You leave your wife in the stands with some other parents and you abandon her so you can be down on the field to hear the action, to hear the calls and to be a fly on the wall. And a lot of young men are going to really enjoy your photos because if you got in the game you got photos, 1,000 plus photos every game posted them online for free and all that stuff but you abandon your wife up there in the stands and it wasn't a lot of fun for her. So just keep these in mind make sure he's doing sports for him and not for you because eventually if you're doing it he's doing it for you or whatever it's just going to turn out poorly. Luckily you're going to get this one right you're going to do well on this one. One of the things that you're going to find is a lot. And every summer if you're smart you're going to do this you're going to take him with you for a week to work and when I say work you're going to find a lot of playtime you're going to end up in the Colorado mountains fly fishing you're going to end up kayaking in Hawaii you're going to end up eventually he's going to hit college and you guys are going to go to Ireland and Scotland and go hang out in the locks and hike the lakes the Highland Lakes and stuff and you're going to be the times you didn't have with your dad your dad before he died for a year he kept talking about man we're going to go we need to go fishing we need to go fishing in Alaska my son and I did that my dad would say we need to go hunting in Wyoming and to come to find out years later he was waiting for me to have enough money to pay for myself he figured he didn't want to have to pay for me to go or he figured I wouldn't want to do that or whatever and so you're going to miss out those trips with your dad but your son's not going to miss out those trips because these are hugely just hugely important and maybe you're just doing nothing but hanging in a hotel and watching a movie maybe you're hiking and you're doing your thing but you're together and you're bonding and you're talking you have road trips you got time to be in the car with them make sure you take advantage of that I'm here to tell you I'm 30 years ahead of you it's a win, don't fuck this up but in the meantime you're going to ignore your daughter it's a sad state of affairs when you get focused in on focused in on one kid because he's doing the things you like to do and you're not all into that whole girl stuff but sadly she's going to suffer and she's going to pay the price and eventually your wife is going to pay the price you're going to screw this up and you need to course correct that stuff immediately you didn't make sure you spend more time with her maybe have a daddy daughter trip somewhere I know you didn't want to do a daddy daughter trip because she was just so obnoxious and hateful and didn't want to be around anybody but she had a lot of issues and y'all didn't deal with them right shame on you you're going to do this okay but you're going to give up you got to make these kids learn how to play an instrument I don't care what instrument it is it can be anything that they want but it's a gift that you should give them they can choose that instrument make sure they learn how to play it it's one of those gifts of music that they're going to appreciate more by knowing how to play how to create music and who knows maybe that's a gift for them that they're really going to blossom and take off with you're going to do pretty good you're going to slack up and let them off the hook too quick should have made them do it go a little longer that's all I'm going to say on that but I think this is a good thing for any man out here that's got kids school band if they did guitar get them some guitar lessons if they like keyboards or whatever buy a cheap Casio electronic $99 keyboard and bang away on it get them some lessons type of thing oh yeah by the way you're going to get fat I got bad news dude you went from Chad to chump that's that Jack Daniels I don't know if y'all can see that or not but it's pretty disgusting and you wonder why you're having problems with your wife I found this photo of the other day digging around looking for another one I thought man that's one of my best just what a jerk I don't even like that guy and trust me you're not going to like him either there's going to be a number of years there especially when he's 330 pounds and he's miserable and you don't know what to do about it and he doesn't have any aspirations to change because he doesn't know there's a better life out there for him but I have some great news oh yeah wait not so great news it's going to kill you almost now I left off the gore picture that's a wound vac that's a dressing on a vac you're going to get flesh eating bacteria and the doctors are going to tell you the reason why they probably didn't do such a good job of fighting that infection was because you were unhealthy metabolically you were a mess and you weighed 330 pounds you didn't get any exercise your body was already super stressed that bacteria entered your leg and 3 or 4 surgeries later they're about to cut your leg off and that wonderful wife of yours who also had a million dollar life insurance policy on your dumb ass saves your life twice that week understand that she married you for more than just your money understand she's doing the job of both of you at times and you need to course correct that stuff don't let that happen so you manage to get out of this surgery you manage not to let it kill you and it's a miracle from the good lord at all flesh eating bacteria is going to take a lot of people to reclaim your health you're going to first do that by starting to respect yourself you're going to stop the drinking and eating the shit you're going to start exercising you're going to start realizing that you have to do better than what you're doing right now because right now you're about dead I hate to break it to you you didn't have to go there you didn't have to go down that path because this reclaiming your health part that's freaking hard then you're going to run into people you're going to think you're done you're going to run into people that motivate you you're going to find a small group accountability guy, partners you're going to just take it to the next level but you got to keep doing the work and I don't care if you're getting old everybody in their fifties gets fat nobody works out anymore at 50 we're all just chilling you can't do that, you can't relax other thing I want to tell you you better get your damn finances in order you better do it now and you're going to be in way too much pain because you're not taking care of business you're going to start too late because you're lazy and you're living for the day and you're spending every money in your paycheck and you run up your credit cards luckily, you and the girl figure it out a little while later a long while later and you start paying off those credit cards one at a time and you start building your credit score back up a little bit you know, all those repossessions from the cars and all that stuff where they came and got your car out of the driveway you remember that? Oh, it hasn't happened to you yet, has it? that's going to because you're an idiot and you're not going to do this so you're going to struggle and you're going to make your family struggle because you're not a man enough to take care of your own finances again, the good news is it's not too late, it's never too late the girl's going to get into real estate you're going to get into buying rental houses income's going to go up to one that you really love and you're going to find a job that you love so much that you're so successful at it because of the fact that you love it and customers that buy from you are going to see how happy you are they're going to see you getting in shape they're going to want to buy from you because they like you because you're an authentic man your words match your actions they're going to see that they can trust you and you're going to turn it around in a big way you're going to get to retire on one day whenever you decide you're tired of working but that ain't happening for a while because you love what you do invest in things that bring you a return don't invest in things that depreciate young man $90,000 BMWs they depreciate they don't bring you anything back in return a little bit of fleeting joy $600,000 houses that you really could have done just fine $150,000 house you need to learn these lessons because these are the things that suck the finances out of your back pocket and you're making, you're working hard to make this money why are you giving it away to everybody why are you in debt why do you want to be in debt it's ridiculous don't do this you're going to but you're going to get out of it I got good news you're going to get out of it here but don't be greedy I'm going to help you very much financially when you got into a pickle because they were smart enough that they knew don't feed the bears because they'll keep coming back for more but don't be greedy when you're blessed and you have a little bit more that's time to give it away not all of it but a portion of it because that what you give away comes back to you tenfold and the sooner you learn this lesson about not being greedy the happier you're going to be in your life and you're going to resonate in everything you do because you know with this abundance mindset we talk about this you're going to learn about abundance mindset one of these days having that abundance mindset is key I know I can make more if I need to give somebody a loan I need to help somebody I need to sell in one of my cars at a zero percent interest for a couple of years I want to spread out some cheap payments if that helps them I'm helping them I'm still getting, you know not be nice don't want to be a nice guy but being kind goes a long way in this world you're a fairly kind young man you're clueless you're an idiot but you're kind and you're also a hell of a nice guy at this point too your wife is going to recognize that kindness when you finally do fix your marriage the kindness is going to be one of the reasons why it got fixed nothing wrong with being kind that's not a sign of weakness that is a sign of strength your pops dies in six years but guess what your mom is never going to die I mean that one was probably going to outlive you especially the way you live but I want to tell you something when pops dies you're going to step up and you're going to go down there and help her mow the grass you're going to go down there and help her fix her computer you're going to go down there and do some of the honey-do things because she's grieving even worse than you are marriage of 50 years or whatever it was gone but you're setting the example for your son because statistically you're dying before the wife is that's just the way it is the man almost always dies first I want to know that when my wife dies my son is going to step up and take care of her like I took care of her and still take care of my mom and I think that's an important lesson that we're teaching our kids I already covered the be kind part I got a little ahead of myself be kind to your mom be kind to your dad if he's still alive realize that they're getting older and they're not used to accepting help from their kids and their first indication is be kind to the void and do that and be patient with them especially when they ask you to fix their email for the 87th time because that's what happens they're not going to understand you were really good at this when you were young you were really really good at this and then life kicked you in the ass you felt like you were getting a shot to the nuts about once a week and you started getting serious about everything but seriousness so my message to you young man is don't be so serious all the time it's okay to laugh and joke there's a time and place for everything just don't make that your lifestyle you're not the class clown you might have been in school but you're not now but it's okay to relax a little bit it's okay to go have some fun it's okay to go on vacations it's okay to laugh and smile and show your kids that life is fun but then it's time to know when to get back to work and work hard because you're setting those examples for your kids on everything that you do and they're going to follow your lead because you're their hero this one's huge you think it's just because you got married you're going to get laid every night, didn't you? yeah, how'd that work? nah, not so good? nah, never does, does it? because you took your foot off the gas you quit trying to do things that led you to getting sex every night when you were dating and when you were first married those couple of years you made some big assumptions and then you started ignoring her you started making her do things that should have been your job because you were too stupid and lazy to do them and I'm talking hard to you because you deserve it absolutely but eventually she steps up and she helps you and you help her and things get to be a little bit better and I will tell you love deeply and love often, young man Steve talks about falling into respect and he is dead accurate on that woman's got to respect you there's a great book out called Love and Respect and I probably talk about it in every speech a guy written by a guy named Emerich and it's women women want to be loved and men want to be respected and I think that is the key to any successful union any successful marriage LTR, whatever you want to call it everybody's got all these terms these days but the premise of this thing even when you don't think she deserves to be loved because you're mad at her she ain't giving you none or she's doing things you don't like and you think well I don't have to love her because she doesn't respect me that's the time when you need to love her the most you need to love this woman because unconditional love is unconditional love she doesn't have to earn it she doesn't have to deserve it she's a good woman and leading a good life she should be loved at all times and even when she starts screwing up you love her back onto the path don't ever forget that because hey your kids are watching do you want your kids to grow up seeing what a healthy relationship is or do you want them to grow up seeing a dysfunctional relationship because what's going to happen is they see two parents they can't figure out how to parent they can't figure out how to love each other how to have a marriage that's their role model your son's going to be a nice guy the next girl that comes along they might even get married he's going to be miserable too do you want that for your kids if you're not setting the proper example for them in a relationship that you're in some damage your friends suck dude your friends are horrible I mean they're just terrible it's time to find a different group of men to hang around with it took me until the last five years or so to find a group of men it's going to take you a long time but you can start earlier than I did we talk about fraternity of excellence that's one group there's other groups out there that men are in Murphy's got limited order Ryan there are fraternal online men's organizations where you can find your tribe I love FOE I'm enjoying it it's my family it's my brothers there are other organizations out there as well so I suggest you young man find that tribe this room is a tribe in some regards probably it only meets once a year so what do you do in the meantime who do you hook up with in the meantime maybe you're making notes maybe you're talking to the guys in the hallway you're getting phone numbers passed around maybe as guys you can check in with have accountability partners we did a workout thing starting in November last year where the four of us were texting every freaking day and nobody wanted to be the weakest link everybody wanted to make sure they didn't let their brothers down that's the only way some of this stuff ever gets accomplished so and let me tell you something this is going to blow your freaking mind one day your wife's going to come up to you and say I think I'm a submissive will you be my dominant you need to roll with it young man this is the best thing that's ever going to happen to you and you're going to thank me later keep an open mind you're going to agree to going down to live style which is not just kinky sex and I've talked about that a lot in my other presentations it's not just that it is a deepening connection where you're emphasizing trust and communication, honesty, respect and love and you're blending these all together and you're maximizing your relationship and the great sex is as kinky as you want it to be but it's also the icing on the cake okay it's the fulfillment, it's the intimacy all the things that come together when two couples can figure out what path they want to go down and they burn their ships like Cortez did at the coast there's no ship to go home this is where we are and we've talked about it this dom sub life that we live right now this is our life and if one of us decides that they just are no longer happy doing it our divorce is the next step we're not going back our ship is sailed really cool thing about that we both agree to it which forces us both to bring our A game every day some days you're on your B game but at least you're striving to be on your A game every day the door works both ways either party can leave at any time which is the reality of any marriage either party can walk out that door any day of the week if two people are trying to fix a situation it can be fixed every situation I think can be fixed the problem I hear with men one partner the man's trying to do everything he can to fix a situation and the woman's checked out and it's a bust he spends his wills and tries and tries and tries maybe she comes around maybe she doesn't but the likelihood of success is pretty low but if you can both get on some sort of a path some sort of a framework some sort of tools to help you try to fix what you got I'm telling you that love and respect book is something that husbands and wives should both read I know pastors that it was written by a pastor I know pastors that give that out in marriage counseling before people even married and have both parties read the book and in some ways it talks about biblical submission and in some ways it's kind of like the primer the intro to a dom sub relationship I mean really it's the basics of all this stuff young man she's going to blow your mind it's going to be the best thing that ever happened to you I didn't know Steve was going to do the talk right before me I didn't look at the schedule but let me tell you something young man you're drifting around and you're lost and you have no sense of family pride you have no sense of where you came from you have no sense of how strong your ancestors were your ancestors came from two families on the Mayflower that's one fork of your family tree your ancestors fought in the American Civil War your ancestor died in the freaking Alamo you come from strong stuff and I'm going to tell you that you need to never forget that no matter how dark it is no matter how much you want to give up you need to know that you come from strong stock you come from winners once you count that Alamo thing you know but that guy was a winner too because Texas is now its own country and then we get to 2020 let me tell you something it's going to blow your freaking mind there's going to be this death of hope and a promise of destruction and that's what the media is going to push down your family's throats but luckily you're strong because you got your act together a couple years ago so in this hit we have men around you at 21Con you have good advice you have the internet to research and fact check your own stuff you don't have to believe everything that's being force fed but 2020 is going to kick a lot of people's ass they're going to gain that weight they're going to get divorced because they have to live together in the same house because they were locked down in an 800 square foot apartment with two kids for six months you aren't used to that I'm not going to be used to that so resist the urge to fight resist the urge to believe everything you're force fed by the media to understand that it is just a phase and that you're going to come out of it stronger leaner hopefully should be buckle under get things done know that it's not a permanent curse know that we're going to come out of this thing have hope, have faith but you put yourself in a position by being educated by being around your brothers by personal self-improvement that no matter what they throw at you to come and there's more to come I'm sure you're going to handle it because you've prepared yourself to handle any eventuality you don't know what's coming you don't know what tools you're going to need but you've created the mindset I got this I'm going to handle this just fine and young man you've got to find the meaning in your life you've got to find your mission your wife can't be your mission a lot of you may have heard this before you've never heard it because you're an idiot and you don't have any friends I'm telling you, he was an idiot it's not too late it doesn't matter you can go from obese to beast it takes some work and some discipline a good program you can go from poor to rich or poor to comfortable how's that? that's a nebulous word what does rich mean? it means something different to every man in this room but you can go from poor to comfortable and smart with your money and what you're doing you can find meaning in your life that's not your wife it's not your kids we heard earlier people get divorced when the kids leave the house because they're meaning in life with their kids in college or they're off being electricians or something and not living at home anymore and they move away they move across country every freaking time it seems like the way our society is now they get out of college or they get out of whatever and they move 500 miles away and you don't seem as much anymore and that's a shame because that tears up the integrity of the family to a certain degree but find that meaning in life find a mission, find something that's greater than yourself to get up out of bed in the morning whether it's helping your fellow man I mean you're here and you're gaining all this valuable information and I closed out my talk in 2018 by talking about how you've got all these tools and there's so many men that are lost out there that are thinking about suicide you know they're checking it in and in our job and your job now because you've been given these tools and what those tools come responsibility those guys are in holes, they're in pits we're going to throw ropes to them that's what we do, we men throw ropes we don't pull them up though they got to pull themselves up right we're going to make sure that rope is solid at the top and we're all waiting for you bud crawl up, I'm here for you come on, pull on that rope we threw them down to you, we ain't going to pull you up you got to do it on your own that means it's going to be one that you make on your own and by God men are important and society says they're not those men in those holes are important and when you pull one of those guys up you're going to realize how important you are because you did the pulling and that's why we do what we do that's why the guys come here and talk that's why the guys come in here and reinforce the education they've gotten from the last three 21 cons because they know they can do a better job of pulling of throwing those ropes and recognizing and talking to men having a real conversation with the man, how are you doing what's going on man you look like you kind of down to what's happening you know most of us are like hey how are you doing and you pray to God the guy don't tell you how he's doing I don't want to hear all that but you ask those questions because you give a damn because that is a bigger meaning for your life because you know you can help those guys you can listen sometimes all you can do is listen but at least that guy knows hey you know what maybe it's not so hopeless after all maybe I mean god damn suicides are up I mean it was four to five to one men suicide to women and with COVID it's way up isolation it's high right now and it's scary because it doesn't have to be that way so I am challenging you to reach out to those people around you that you meet maybe they're casual acquaintances these men need help these men are not going to show you they're going to hide it real well because we all still a lot of us still wear those masks we don't want anybody to know I know Hunter touched on that earlier I hate to repeat stuff you've already heard today but it's so true it's worth repeating so with that being said that's what I've got for you today find your mission find your meaning do what you got to do thank you and I will say that I wear hearing aids so please enunciate and speak up and there's no questions we're cool with that too so on your slide where you mentioned finding a better tribe it sounds like that's happened pretty recently in your life I find that's one of my biggest challenges just being divorced and just kind of going out to bars and you kind of just pick up this is pure group that you didn't really intentionally select but it's just sort of the default of who's and I look at my text messages the contacts in my phone and I'm like wow how did all these people end up in my world most of them don't really live up to the standards that I hold for myself so what did you do intentionally whether it's to this group or others to sort of refine your peer group over time I don't want to hang around with losers and what you're talking about in the bar is drinking buddies right I mean that's basically how we all go out and drink together and that's really not the kind of thing I want to do with my friends we'll go to the beach or whatever have some beers that kind of thing I still drink some I don't drink much anymore I think you if you have any hobbies I think that's a great way of finding your tribe at least a local tribe a couple of guys and a tribe could be three people two people I know a lot of guys get into Brazilian jiu-jitsu things like that because they're meeting like minded guys that are pursuing some sort of a goal like that or maybe you're in a cycling you're just into cycling you can find a cycling club you find men that are trying to improve themselves and I think hobbies sometime might be maybe you like to go shooting maybe you've you're blessed enough to have enough ammo to go practice shooting these days which is not easy to do man I told a buddy of mine the other day I'm not shooting with you for a while because I only got so much ammo left and it ain't worth punching holes in paper with I may need it for something else but if you can find that hobby something locally I didn't have a lot of luck with that I have a lot of acquaintances at home and they're mostly we're party people drinking people we sit around and watch football on TV and drink and stuff and even now with the new neighborhood I moved in there's a bunch of guys that do that as well I consider them really friendly acquaintances and I like their company from time to time but they're not friends I mean a friend now is a high standard for them to meet because I don't hang around with losers I got lucky enough because I got into Twitter when Trump was running last time and then from there I just somebody sent me one of Zach Small's family Apple emails and I read it I was like this guy is cool as shit let me go follow him and the next thing I know I'm hearing about Reddit and Red Pill I'm following Rollo and Rich and I'm looking at all these other guys Donovan and all these other guys that are out there and I'm starting to really enjoy the content and all that and then I come to my first 21 con and then I'm really starting to connect with people and I got guys that I still text from when I met them October 2 years ago in 2018 those are the kind of guys I want to talk to there's one guy that guys I want to bounce stuff off of and then in late 2017 Craig and Zach started their fraternity excellence and happened to be on the sidelines right there as it happened I think it was the first guy to sign it up and that's been a wonderful experience because we do stuff we meet and we go places and now we don't do it every week especially with COVID and all that but we have a bunch of guys here we went camping rough camping in Florida in February with these guys I couldn't make the mountain trip they went to Colorado and climbed mountains but we're on Slack and we're communicating all the time I happen to also belong to Jack Murphy's group Liminal Order, I'm not quite as active there as I am with FOE but it's a whole different slant you're trying to pick a group the best way to pick one of these groups if Ryan Micler's writings if you guys know who Ryan is does he order a man if his writings really resonate with you that's your group all of his which is good stuff right Jack's great podcast and stuff then you're probably going to like his group if you like the stuff that Craig puts out Craig James puts out a lot of Christianity stuff a lot of fitness stuff and Craig is one of the most solid men I've ever met I resonate with this stuff I resonate with Zach's stuff that's why FOE was such a good fit and that's why that's home for me even though I participate a little bit in another group just because I like those guys they're involved with as many groups as you want but they're there and sometimes that's the best thing and then what happens is these little pods these couple of guys up in Ohio and Kentucky or whatever get together and go have dinner together one Saturday night they go to the shooting range together off in Texas somewhere and so these guys are all over the country but they're hooking up in little twos and threes and fours and going out and doing stuff and having real life conversations and not just be on slack bouncing comments back and forth even though the slack stuff is fun too anybody have any more questions did I answer that good enough you asked me what time it is I'll tell you how to make the clock you know alright you're going to text what he represents is patriarchy we're here to do work as men as patriarchs more natural than being a bomb