 What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriarchs. There's nothing more natural than being a father. Welcome back to the 21 Convention Patriarch Edition 2019 of Orlando, Florida. Our next speaker is a very good friend of mine. I've gotten to know since 2017 when he first spoke at the 21 Convention 10-year anniversary event in Orlando, Florida. This speaker is a, I call him the most interesting man in the man's sphere because he is. He's a living legend. He's a huge YouTuber. He's got over 135,000 subscribers right now. He'll be a 200,000 before you know it. He's been a professional barber for over 40 years. He's easily the best barber in the man's sphere and the best one I've ever had in my life. I'm dead serious. I don't hate getting my hair cut by anyone in the sky right at this point for over a year now. But that's the side of the point. This man is a proud patriarch of three. He's a father figure to thousands of men and he's one of my best friends at this point. This guy is beyond awesome. Without further ado, please allow me to welcome George Bruno to the stage. The Sultan of Silver, you guys. Good morning everybody. Can you hear me okay? Fantastic. Fatherhood is logos. Fatherhood is consistent with the divine nature and order of things. It's not unnatural. There's nothing more natural than being a father than creating life. You wanna do something with those dicks, make babies. That's the highest and best use of your physicality. That's what you were created to do. I get 80 to 100 emails a day for the past two years of people saying all kinds of nice things. It's like the 80-20 rule, about 80% are positive, 20% are haters. But out of the 80%, if I can distill everything that everybody says into one sentence, it's this. You are the father that I never had. And when I started answering everybody, I don't have time now to answer everyone's emails. When I started answering, the first time I heard someone say, oh, you're the father that I never had. I'm typing back saying, oh, I'm sorry, when did your father die? He said he didn't die. He's just not a father to me. And that blew my mind. Half of the young men who write me have fathers that aren't fathers to them. And I became the father that they never had. That's when I started taking my following very seriously. That's when I started cursing less. That's when I stopped telling people off in the comments. I'm decreasing it, let me put it that way. I'm trying to calm that down. And then of course, when you realize your own children are watching your videos, then you really have to calm things down. These men have fathers that are not fathers to them. So today I wanna give you some tips for parenting your children throughout the spectrum. When we think children, we think children. I'm talking about from here to here. So let's talk about those things. If you say it, you own it. If you say it, you own it. I remember talking to a police officer. Yes, I've been a barber for a long time but most people don't know and I don't lead with this. I was a psychotherapist for 22 years, master's level. I was a clinician. And I left that world about 15 years ago. And I remember talking to a cop that I had as a client and I said, do you ever use your gun? Have you ever had to pull the gun? And he says, I've never had to pull it in my entire career. And he said, something I learned in Academy many years ago was that once you pull the trigger, once the bullet leaves the chamber, you can't call that bullet back. I'll never forget that. That reminds me of our words. They're like that bullet. Once words leave your mouth to your children of any age, it's like a bullet. You can't call it back. So you have to own everything you say and if you say something stupid, you need to apologize. There's nothing unmanly, unmasculine about admitting you were wrong. Actually, I would say that is one of the qualities of men of a true man and a true masculine man is to admit where he's at fault. I'm not talking about apologies that you see in the media today publicly. I'm talking about private apologies in your home, to your family. One of my favorite mentors is John Paul DeGioria, the founder of Paul Mitchell Systems, one of the largest hair product companies in the world, salons, beauty schools, et cetera. And he has a management style where he says, catch people doing something right. If you wanna get a job with Paul Mitchell Systems, you know why, because no one leaves. They retire, but nobody leaves. The retention rate is amazing. If you wanna hear a great speech, go to Stanford University's business school. John Paul DeGioria speaking, it's about a 60 minute speech. It's the best business speech I've ever heard in my life. And he says, catch them doing something right. Our radar is on for catching people doing things wrong. Sit up, sit up straight, suck your stomach in, wipe that smirk off your face. We naturally are wired for that. Rewire your brain with your kids and say, hey, I like how you're smiling. I like that. When they come out of the room after they dressed themselves. Wow, you look really good. That's good for them to hear. Catch them doing something right. Get that into habit. Break the habit of only criticizing. And many of us, I heard Charles Stanley talk many years ago. He said inside of us is, we have George and then we have little George. And that little boy that's inside of every single person, every one of you can still hear the critical parent, the critical teacher. And we hang on to those voices our entire life. You can't do anything about your past, but you can do something through your children. Your children are your seed, your legacy. You wanna live forever, teach your children properly. That's how you can live forever. Praise in public, reprimand in private. I didn't come from that kind of family. Praise your kids in public, reprimand them in private. We used to joke around. In my family, everything was reprimand in public. I mean, I got swatted in public. I got put down in public. I won't do that to my children. My children are 22, 20 and 16. Well, actually 16. And I never did that because of what happened to me. If there's something you don't like about how you were parented, what a great opportunity to turn that around and do something different. Praise in public, reprimand in private. The enemy of execution is complexity. Keep parenting simple. It's better to have one simple project than 10 where no one retains anything. Keep it simple with your parenting. Children remember your projects more than anything else. Think about that. Of all ages, I'm talking the spectrum. CNI, I learned this in management training when I was a hospital administrator. We heard of CQI, Continuous Quality Improvement, TQM, Total Quality Management. Well, what's hot now in hospital administration is CANI County, which stands for Constant and Never-Ending Improvement. They just keep changing that title over about every 10 years. Constant and Never-Ending Improvement. When your children see you improving, not declining, that inspires them. We say this in the Manisphere all the time is that we tell men, watch what they do, not what they say. Believe in what they do, not what they say. Children are the same way. They're watching what we're doing. If they see a dad that is constantly improving himself, that inspires them. You are their motivational speaker. Someone says, hey, who's your favorite motivational speaker? Is it Jim Rohn? Is it Tony Robbins? Is it Dennis Waitley? Is it Zig Ziglar? Wouldn't it be cool if your kids said my dad? My dad is my motivational speaker. Be your children's motivational speaker. Super important. Six, modesty is your gift to others. Privacy is your gift to yourself. I remember there was like kid shower time. Now for those of you that have little kids and are about to have children or want to have children someday, I have two sons and a daughter, I'll never forget. There's a certain point when you can put everybody in the bath tub together. Then there comes a time when girls are in the bathroom by themselves and then boys are in the bathroom by themselves. I still have black and white Polaroids of me in a bath tub when I was probably three, four years old. Cute, right? And then at a certain age, parents stop taking pictures of you in the bath tub. If that happens after a certain age, then the authorities get called. But I'll never forget when the kids are little and they're jumping out of the bath tub and they're running through the living room into their bedrooms. I'll never forget when I said, okay, they're at the age now where I get bathrobes for them. So there's three pegs on the wall, bathrobe one, bathrobe two. So now you don't walk out of your bedroom naked. You don't walk out of the bathroom naked. You wear a robe. And like I said to my daughter, when you're changing, you close your door. You close your door now. And especially if you're a divorced dad, you wanna avoid any possible problems because you are gonna be a target for accusations. Let's keep it real. Keep it, you have to protect yourself if you're divorced or separated. You have to protect yourself in a way that you never thought before. And all of these things happened after I was divorced. So I said to my daughter, I said, modesty is your gift to others. I don't wanna see you. I love you, but I don't wanna see you. Wear a robe when you come out of the bathroom. Wear a robe when you come out of your bedroom and close the door of your room when you're changing. And privacy is a gift that you give yourself. She's 22 years old. She never forgot that. And when I look at her on social media now, I'm proud of her because she's not being the average 22-year-old on social media. Now all of these things that I'm telling you, I'm gonna be putting on my Twitter. Each one of these points will be at my Twitter page, my Twitter feed at George Bruno. So if you want to follow me, all of these points, I'm gonna be just putting them on Twitter as well. So they will be permanent notes. Number seven, if it's true that men and women are different, which they are, that means boys and girls are different. You put girls in a room, they're organizing, they're talking, they're talking in other voices, they're talking to imaginary people that they're serving tea to. You put boys in a room within five minutes they're fighting and they're not even talking, they're making noises. They're different right from the get-go. Girls talk, boys make noise. I've seen the difference. You hear explosions and gunshots and bangs and things like that when boys are playing with girls, you hear them talking amongst themselves. Even by themselves, they're talking to imaginary characters. So we like to say that men and women are different, boys and girls take that down to children, boys and girls are different. Number eight, show interest in your kids and they will do the same to you. They will show interest in you. To this day, my kids will say, dad remember when we did this or remember when we did that? I would get the kids the typical single father thing every other weekend and one night during the week which blew my mind because when you go from tucking your kids in every night to being, going from a dad to being a visitor is mind blowing if you ever go through a divorce or if you have ever been there, it's just the indignation that you have that you're just a visitor will just blow your mind. Reach out to other friends who have been through it and it'll help you if that is ever in your future and those of you that have been through it, you know what I'm talking about. I would try to pack a lot of parenting into one weekend. I mean, you think that being a married parent is busy. Monday night is karate, Tuesday night is soccer, Wednesday night is the library, Thursday night is scouts. You know, you pack all the single parenting, wow. That's even more because you feel like you're missing out on things. So as a single father, you try to pack as much into your weekend and I remember my kids saying, dad, we're just tired. Like, okay, we're going to the circus, then we're gonna go feed the ducks at the pond and then we're gonna go to the movies and then we're gonna go bowling, like all in one day. And it's like I'm making up for lost time and there were times where I would just look at the kids and say, you wanna take a nap and they're like, yeah. So we'd all pile on dad's bed and crash for an hour. And that was always fun, but we did things like a nacho tour. So every weekend that I would get them, we went and got a mountain of nachos at a different restaurant and then we took a vote as to who made the best nachos. Or we went on a root beer tour. Every time that they came, I got a different six pack of different root beers and there's so many different kinds and it was interesting. And then when Andrew Zimmer came out with Bizarre Foods, we did Bizarre Foods and that lasted for about a year. So every weekend when I had the kids, I would go to Cabela's and get like chocolate covered ants, spicy grasshoppers, like literal bugs and stuff like pig speed. I would go to the Jamaican store and get brains, goats, eyeballs, and the kids still remember that and their fond memories, very fond memories. I showed interest in them and they still remember all of that stuff. And they ask me all the time, do you still eat goats eyeballs? Remember that time that we had a lamb's brain? And it was gross, like, and I had it on video too because I always like zooming in on their faces when I like would show them. I'm like, lamb's brain. Like, so it was always made for fun home videos. And as dads, multiply the zaniness by a hundred when you have your kids. If you're corny as a married father, it's gonna be corny times a hundred when you're a divorced or separated father. Number nine, bedtime rituals. This is super important. Your kids will use your bedtime rituals to calm themselves as they grow up. Let me say that again. Your children will use your bedtime rituals to calm themselves and manage their own emotions when they are grown up. I used to talk to my daughter about sitting on a big giant marshmallow and floating down the chocolate fudge river slowly. You know, like when you go to like a water park and they have the lazy river and you sit on the big donut float thing and you're just floating. Well, I made up this thing, the chocolate fudge river and you're just floating on the chocolate fudge river and then the sky is cotton candy clouds and the trees are made of candy canes and every now and then we'd reach out and I'd say, taste the candy cane. She'd go, she goes, oh, it's good, look at that. To this day, my 22 year old daughter calms herself, controls any anxiety or anything by thinking about the chocolate fudge river. To this day, the bedtime rituals that you use for your children, they will use to calm themselves as they get older. I taught them four, seven, eight, breathing. You see, let me tell you why you do this because when children can't sleep, the first thing a doctor or pediatrician is gonna do is prescribe something. When teenagers can't get to sleep, the first thing doctors do is wanna prescribe something. I wanna avoid that. And if you're in a marriage or a partnership where your wife, girlfriend, partner is a take the kids to the doctor for every sniffle and you're more of a holistic kind of person, more natural, you would rather have natural remedies. There's gonna be some friction there and that's what happened in my family scenario. We did four, seven, eight, breathing and that's take a deep breath in for four seconds. Hold it for seven seconds and then blow it out for an eight count. You do that three times, you get a two or three martini feeling. Calms kids down. Dad, can we do that breathing thing? Yes, we can. The other kids would come running in and we're all doing a breathing exercise. Teach your kids to breathe, it's important. I taught them the backward breathing, counting backwards from 50. So you take a breath in and in your mind as you're exhaling you go, you're just thinking 50, your next breath. This is not forced breathing, it's just your natural respiration rate, 49. I never made it below 25. It calms you down, it's intentional. A stress buster technique. One of the things that I do is I work with the kids and I would say, all right, tense your feet, make your toes point up to the ceiling and they point them up. Hold it for a few seconds. Let it go. Now tighten your legs, like make your thighs tight, flex those muscles. Hold it 10 seconds. Okay, let go. Tighten your tummy, they're sucking their tummies in. 10 seconds, let it go. All right, and then we would do like isometrics. You know, I'm like, 10 seconds, 10 seconds. Now your face, scrunch your face for 10 seconds. Let it go. By then, I'm like, good night. A stress buster technique. Teach your children to relieve their own stress. And then mindfulness, practicing mindfulness. And that is, you do that through the senses. What are you seeing? Think about your five senses. What do you see right now? I see my dolls on the shelf. I see my dresser. We didn't have TVs in bedrooms. I see my clothes in the closet. I see my chair. Okay, what are you smelling right now? I smell lavender from the infuser. I always have lavender infusers, or diffusers. What are you hearing? I hear the clock ticking. Are you tasting anything right now? No? What are you feeling? The covers? How do you feel? Sleepy? Mindfulness. Get them out of their heads. When you teach your children to calm themselves, that's being a father. Calming your children. You know why? What, who's the superhero that has like that? You know, like, and that force comes out, you know? You're kind of like that. When you train your children like that from a young age, you can discipline them with a look, with a hand signal. And they quiet right down. That's called autogenic conditioning, which means you're teaching yourself how to control your body and your thoughts. You know, Russian scientists would work with athletes holding thermometers. This is a great example of autogenic conditioning. And they would work with these athletes and they would say, think hot hands. The temperature would rise. The temperature would rise. Autogenic conditioning. Your body can go places that it wouldn't normally go. We've all heard the story of the 85-year-old grandma who's, you know, there was a child underneath a rolled over car and the grandmother lifted the car up to free her, you know, you heard those myths. The body is amazing. They can do amazing things. Teach them that their bodies are amazing. Discover the, number 10, discover the beauty of the analog life, the lifestyle of nondisposable things in the world of throwaway pens, lighters, crumpled up post-it notes, things that we throw away, plastic cups. We had daddy's glass, mommy's glass or cup on the camera. And then the three kids. Did you clean, did you rinse out your cup? Yep, you did. So it wasn't just always putting stuff in the dishwasher and it wasn't always paper or plastic cups. The analog life, fountain pens. You knew I was gonna mention fountain pens. A fountain pen is a beautiful thing because you don't throw it away. You have to take care of it when ink runs out. You take it apart, you take the nib out, you take the feed out, you clean it, you put the cartridge in, or if you're an advanced fountain pen user, you use the converter and draw the ink up from the ink bottle. Wipe it off and then you're good to go. Fountain pens. When you give your children a fountain pen, they write slower, they write better. Their handwriting is more legible. You have a child that has horrible handwriting. Buy a nice Tumoe River notebook, high-end paper and a fountain pen and have a writing night with them. Practicing the alphabet, practicing sentences, practicing their name. What a wonderful memory that you can create with your children of any age. Teach them to respect and care for and desire things that will last in this world because everything is disposable. If you're separated or divorced, they learn that marriage and relationships are disposable. I don't like it, I don't want it. I'm done with it. Teach them that when something breaks, it can be fixed because the big lesson that they get out of separation or divorce is that if something is broken, throw it out. Don't do that. Teach them to fix things, the analog life. Number 11, attention is the currency of the parent-child relationship. For instance, your kids don't care if you take them to gymnastics class in a Ford Fusion or a Mercedes E-Class. They don't care. You know what they care about? That you took them. And that you didn't just drop them off that you walk them in. And then there will be a time where they get embarrassed of you and say, dad, you don't have to walk them in. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And then there'll be a certain time where you can just pull up and they get out by themselves. I'll never forget when my daughter, you know how like you cut the meat of your children? You put the meat on their plate at the dinner table and you bring their plate over and you cut their meat in little pieces or their vegetables. I'll never forget the first time my daughter said, I can do it. I almost freaking cried. I'm like, my God, my daughter's like, she doesn't need me anymore. And we want our kids to need us. But as they break away, the sick parent will always say, okay, I'll do it for you. I'll, uh-uh. I'll never forget the difference between men and women. My daughter's on the floor, not even a toddler yet, not even standing up. And there's a doll over here and she's here. And she's, you know how kids kind of scooch towards it like that? And I'll never forget my wife saying, she wants the doll, give it to her. I'm like, no, let her get it. And she goes, give it to her. I said, no, look at it, she's moving towards it. She got so mad at me and went and put the doll in front of my daughter. That's the difference between men and women. That's the difference in parenting. Make sure that you're on the same page. Be careful who you make babies with. But you don't know this stuff when you're dating. You don't know this stuff in the backseat of the car. You don't know. Well, we used to say that back. Does anyone do anything in the backseat of a car anymore? Do they? Okay, let's hear it for the backseat. They used to be afraid. I mean, there are so many songs in the 50s and 60s about the backseat. Switch up transportation with their mom. Don't let their mom always be the taxi driver. You do it as well. Which leads me to talk about division of labor. I dated a gal years ago and I observed her parents just had a great relationship and they seem to cooperate really well. And I asked her, dad, what's the secret to your marriage? We were out in the garage or something. He said, a long time ago we decided this. She changes the diapers and I changed the tires. And I thought that was kind of cool. Plan your division of labor. People say, you know, make me a sandwich. I mean, I will just post it on Twitter and get 20 women saying, make your own fucking sandwich. Okay, what? And I do that just to trigger a little bit. I am the master of triggering. They didn't see the part that says my Twitter is satire. If you are the better cook, then you need to be in the kitchen. My wife couldn't cook. I wouldn't want her to cook. So like, and I know guys in the Manusphere saying, you cook, you mean you're doing the cooking? I'm like, that's because I like to eat. Figure out, every family is different. Every relationship is different. The division of labor is not this way or that way. Don't think in binary terms. Who does the best cooking? Who does the best cleaning? I hate doing dishes. So what I did was I was the cook. And she cleaned up and that worked out really well. Division of labor is different in every household. Indifferent, if you're going from a marriage to dating, a new woman, you're going to see different things. But you've heard me say this in my videos. It takes about two years for crazy to show up. About two years. And you start seeing, because anyone can be on their best behavior for six months, two a year. So I always say date long, marry slow, divorce fast. If you remember anything about relationships, remember that, okay? Number 12, when you went into argument with your children, let me ask you this. When you went in argument with your kids, what did you really when? Think about it. Chalk one up for dad. Uh-uh. We have to model humility. We model humility for our kids. Logos, the divine order is you are the leader, but you're not infallible. Divine order, logic, the way things should be. There's two kinds of parents. There's the first kind that says, fuck off, I'll say what I want when I want. This is when your kids are older. Awesome, dad, dad. Come on, fuck off. I'll say what I want when I want, this is my house. And then there's the kind of, the second kind that says, you know, I'm sorry. I won't do that or say that again. I apologize. Be the second kind of dad. Be the second kind of father. And then finally, think about what you wanna be known for in one sentence. This morning I woke up and I texted my children and I said, I love you and I believe in you. Now my daughter, because boys and girls are different, my daughter texts back right away, right away. Little heart, same. Heart, same, she says. I'll hear from my sons in about a week. If I texted emojis like an I and then a heart and then a sheep like I love you, you know, she would think that's funny and text emojis back to me and the father-daughter relationship is so precious, when they get older, I'll be texting her. I'll text her today, going back and forth. She's like, dad, did you ever hear of the cars? That song, just what I needed. I'm like, yeah, I have, sure. Dad, did you ever hear the song, my Sharona? Yeah, I heard that. And then I'll call her and it goes right into voicemail. I'm like, honey, I know the phone is in your hand to pick up the phone. Isn't that funny? Isn't that funny? What is it called? Anachronistic, anachronisms, pick up the phone. Tells you how, who picks up the phone? Like, who picks up the phone anymore, okay? We're still using language that they have. No idea what it was. Be the guy that is your children's motivational speaker. Who's your favorite motivational speaker? My dad. My dad. And in closing, I want to leave you with the immortal words of Michelangelo's father. Can't you just paint on the walls like the other children? Thank you. What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriots. There's nothing more natural than being a father.