 George Bruno with the 21 report. We are at the 21 summit in Orlando, Florida. The year is 2020. We just wrapped up the 21 summit and I'm having a conversation with Texas Dom. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Glad to be here. What did you think? Three ring circus. And not being able to be at the main event as well as patriarch at the same time was a common thing. And it was the first, I just kept looking at the schedule going, I want to be here, but I want to be here. I want to miss this guy. I know this guy too well, it's his first time I got to be there for him. Yeah, that was rough. Yeah. But everything comes out in video eventually. True, true. I have that look forward too. And we've been getting the mouse, Anthony's been getting the mouse sooner as well. So that's good. You did speak at the 22 convention. I did. How does a guy like Texas Dom teach at the 22 convention? Because there's a lot of people who have preconceived ideas about what you talk about. And I was thinking, I might have been one of those people that said, Ooh, what is he going to talk about to the ladies? And is he going to have them all blushing? Absolutely not. The best lessons in life are stories, right? I told the love story. I told them how a little bit, what's thought to be a different lifestyle, how that can be used as a tool when two people are trying to pursue something, how that can save a marriage. And so the title of the talk was the healing power of dominance. And there was some subtitle stuff there. But I just basically told them a very true and very personal love story. And what, who doesn't love happy endings and good things happening to good people and pursuing through adversity and never giving up on each other. Yes, yeah. The aftermath completely surprised me. The ladies loved your speech. Well, I've heard this. I haven't talked to, I didn't talk to, after I get through with the talk, I left because I don't have lots of conversations with women who are not my wife. So, but I have heard positive comments that have came back and said it was pretty well received. Yeah, yeah. You spoke at Patriarch? I did, I loved it. What did you talk about? I talked about, if I only had a time machine, I'd go back 30 years. What would I tell my younger self? And the good, the bad, the ugly, the blood, the sweat, the tears. And I think that turned out okay as well. It's interesting. We get very retro-spective as we get older, don't we? You see the lessons that these younger men are getting at the conferences. And you look back and you say, we had no internet back then. I was 29 years old and clueless. Not, no idea what I was getting into having kids and getting married and all that. And now you've got the 21 conference convention, you've got the Patriarch convention and guys that are in their late 20s to mid 30s, early 40s, they're getting intel that we were denied. We didn't have. Especially if you didn't have a strong male role model in your life growing up. You didn't have the internet. You didn't have Reddit. You didn't have Twitter. You didn't have any of these group resources that we have now. So I just think sometimes to myself, how envious I am of the opportunity that these guys have. And then at the same time, I'll also say, well, thank God I wasn't having to date anybody as a single man. Now at age 20 or 25, because it's just so crazy out there. It's kind of take the good with the bad. I think Jennifer Moleski said something like, I'm so glad that I'm not out there dating right now. A lot of people say that. It looks to be very challenging environment. Let's just put it that way. It's a nice way of saying it. One, I'm not too concerned about. Yeah. Did you encounter any men where you saw yourself in them? Oh yeah. Do you ever look at one of these young men and say, boy, that guy reminds me of me when I was. Yeah, no confidence, overweight, lost, confused, clueless. I think I just used that word a minute ago. That's why they're here. Because I know that's the thing though. They're aware that something isn't right, which is why they're here. And the really sad part is how many thousands and thousands of young men are going through those motions and living through those same things, but they don't even know anything's broken. They just know that this is the way it is. And the desperation sits in and they don't have, they don't have an awareness that it could be better. And the guys here know that they're gonna get better. And this time next year, when they come back, I'll say if, but when they come back, you're gonna see different guys, vastly improved. When did you become awakened? At what age? 46, 47, something like that. Late, late to the party. And it took me a while to even get to this stage. I was just, I was working it out on my own without looking on the internet, without having Twitter, without having and going through all those things, just looking in the mirror and saying, this is broke, but something's gotta change. So just started, just started making some changes. And then things kept getting progressively, progressively better. I stumbled across several guys that are now great friends online and have struck up friendships that will last until the day I'm dead, so. It's never too late to wake up, is it? No, that's a beautiful message, right? There's always hope. Even in the ridiculous times that we find ourselves living in, there's hope of a better future. Just gonna get through the next little bit here. And yeah, it's an amazing, as our friend Ivan Throne says, it's an amazing time to be alive. Yes. Right now. And I wholeheartedly agree with him. So when a 26-year-old guy says, there's no hope for me. Why? What makes you special? Exactly. There's hope for everyone. You have to make your hope. You have to find your own hope inside. You know? There's always something better if you just look up. A lot of people say 2020 really sucked. The government controlled a lot of portions of our life. We experienced restrictions that I never experienced in my lifetime and I'm sure you never experienced. We have three months left, October, November, December, the last quarter of the year. What advice would you give to the audience about the last quarter of 2020? Well, you have a couple of options. You can finish out 2020 strong, or you can say, okay, let's just go ahead and make October 1st, January 1st in my mind, 2021. We're gonna start of the year right now. And let's just start now, because we've got the time ahead of you is what counts. We can't look in the rear view mirror the last eight to nine months of the nuttiness that's been going on. We're not headed that way, we're going this way. So focus forward, figure out what the next step thing, what is the next right thing to do? Things are all messed up in your head. Pick the next thing that makes sense and do something good. And then your next decision, make it another decision to do something good for yourself, for your family, for the people around you. And give back a little bit and get out of your head. Quit watching TV, quit worrying. We've got an election coming up, right? And it's gonna be in everyone's brain 24-7 if you allow it to be. And yeah, some of it can be fun, some of it's exciting, it's crazy, it's turbulent and all that. But just turn off the TV. If it's doing too much for you, you're still wallowing in the mess of 2020. Or you could say, okay, I'm in the opportunity of 2020. Good things are gonna happen. And I'm gonna make them happen. Yeah. You are a pipe smoker. I am. I see your pipe over there and I'm very jealous. I didn't bring mine. I should say one of mine. Tell me about the role of pipes in your life. It's the craziest thing. Two years ago at this event, our friends at tobaccopipes.com, plug, shameless, no. They gave us a bunch of pipes, right? And they gave us tampers and lighters and some vanilla custard tobacco. And a lot of guys were smoking cigars but every now and then I catch this whiff of this amazing smell that was coming across the verandah or the balcony where we were. And I realized a couple of guys were smoking the pipe so I had to go try one. And next thing you know, it was very, just really just tasted better than a cigar. It just seemed to just melt with my personality. And then there's this whole zen thing, right? Where you're lighting it and tamping it and kind of working with it and messing with it and looking at it. It's not just in a cigar in your hand or a cigarette in your hand type of thing. And it just became a, it's turned into this really zen, peaceful, introspective thing. Just sitting on my back porch early morning with my coffee and just kind of like plan my day out and just listen to the birds and think. And it's become a, we'll say a passion, but it's become a lot of fun. Yeah. And it's got nothing to do with nicotine, does it? I don't think so. We tell this story. I've been smoking probably several times a week for a while now, I had insurance physical and they do all the blood work and your analysis and all that stuff and nicotine came back zero. But I was shocked. I figured it would come back with something, right? But, you know, you just got to puff it on a little bit, swirl around your mouth for a little while and off it goes and watch it, watch it sail away, right? Yeah. And so it's a real peaceful, peaceful activity. Yeah. And it's addicting in regards to that. The behavior. It's the pipes. No, it's the cool pipes. Oh, the actual collection of the pipes. Yeah, I mean, I could walk away and never smoke another one if I had to, right? Yeah. But the fun part about, oh, I like that pipe. I like that shape. That one really fits in my hand good. Oh, it's just got a really weird stem line, but it's really cool looking. Yeah. You know, the next thing you know, you look at your shelf and you've got a dozen pipes. Yeah. You know how that happened. Yeah. It's very satisfying in a weird kind of way and it's hard to explain, but you said something about like how it feels in your hand. Yep. With the dozen pipes that you have, I'm sure your hand reaches for one more than the others. Which one is it? It's kind of funny. It took me a while to figure it out, but the larger ones, the ones that fill the hand are more of my favorites than the little smaller ones. And so I read up just enough to know that you ought to give your pipes a rest, not smoke the same one every single day. Rotation. Rotation. And so I'd have a rotation in about five or six and they're all rather, you know, apple shapes or brandy shapes or something that really fills up the hand. Yeah. So something significant. Interesting. Do you ever solve problems while puffing on a pipe or do you use it just more for relaxing? Mostly for relaxing. Just, it's just peaceful. Keeps everything nice and calm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this all can be edited. Let it out. So we were talking about solving problems versus looking for relaxation. Yeah. Okay, thank you. But yeah, I'd love to take the morning breaks, evening breaks, whatever, but for me it's relaxation. You know, it's kind of funny. I don't have that many problems. I used to think I had a lot of problems and the more I go through life and the more I get more at peace with myself, my problems just kind of take care of themselves. They don't seem to be as big and bad the ogre that they used to be. So I'm not necessarily out there solving formulas for lunar orbits and that type of thing out there with my pipe, right? I'm not doing the Einstein thing. What I'm doing is just showing and enjoying nature and the peace and that which I have built which I have surrounded myself with. Do you puff on a pipe while you're writing? No, no, it doesn't seem to work that well for me. Okay, what about pairing? Do you pair your pipe with any kind of drink? Coffee in the morning, of course. There's daybreak tobacco, which we a lot of like. And then there's some type of tobaccos that are aged in bourbon barrels which can go with a bourbon. I don't really drink that much anymore. So there are some mineral waters that I like. And so if I can get a little geeky, right? You can go, okay, I'm smoking a, like some sort of an aromatic tobacco and maybe I'll pair it with a coconut water or something like that. And sometimes you can find little mixtures that work pretty well together. So people tend to really like the booze thing with, you know, like scotch with this or rum with the rum barrels type of thing but I don't do that much anymore. Yeah. I have a lot of British friends that pair their pipe smoking with tea. On a hot day maybe, it's mice tea. I don't do the hot tea. Yeah. Do you recommend a pipe smoking hobby for men? I have to think at some base level it's not very healthy for you, right? But there's a lot of things I do in life or have done in life that weren't very healthy for me. So take care of yourself, be right, exercise, do everything you can, get your sleep and all that kind of stuff. And if occasionally you decide, hey, I'd rather go puff on a pipe rather than drink, you know, six ounces of Jack Daniels. That's probably a good decision. Yeah. Right? So for me, I'm one of those guys that seems to be needing to do something a lot. I gotta have something going on. And so the pipe kind of allows me to fulfill that a little bit as well as just kind of like do the whole zen thing. It's a relaxation thing for me. Doing a little reverse here. Okay. I mentioned, do the next right thing. Explain that. Favorite phrase of dad, right? Favorite every father should repeat that one over and over and over again. You get to the point where everybody makes a mistake and you have two options. Make another mistake or do something good. Do something right. What's the next right thing you should do? Don't worry as much about what you just did. Time for that. You sort of screwed that up. Now what are you gonna do again? The worst thing you can do is start making four and five and six mistakes in a row and a row and a row trying to correct who you screwed up last at the very first, right? So just do the next right thing. And pretty soon it's like a compounding effect. It just builds and builds and builds upon itself. The more of those you string together, you know, during the week, the month, the year, all of a sudden your life gets infinitely easier. Yeah, I like that. Doing the next right thing with a man called Texas Dom. Thank you, sir. Thank you.