 George Bruno with the 21 Report. We're at the 21 Summit in Orlando, Florida, and I'm having a conversation with Mr. Tanner Guzzi. Welcome to the show. Thanks, George. Good to be back. So how'd it go for the past four days? It was a whirlwind, especially because with it being the summit, there was a whole lot of basically Zach and I got to kind of run our own party over here with the Patriarch event, which was a lot of fun. But the new blood that came in, the old blood that came back, both from speakers and attendees, it's really fun to just see things continue, continue to elevate. Yeah. How do you think the three stages work? It's the first time we ever had three stages. I loved it because the energy in each one felt very different. As I got a chance to be in each of the three different rooms, it felt almost like you were entering into an entirely different conference as you went through each one of them. And in a lot of ways, they were very complimentary. You could see how what was going on with 22 mirrored, what was going on in 21, but it was specific to different audiences. And then everything that was going on with 21, the main event as opposed to the Patriarch was stuff that was more generalized as far as male self-development. And then Patriarch was, how do we take this and apply it to fathers and families? And so the energy was awesome. It was fun to get to see all three of them put together. The only downside is that we as speakers, we didn't get to see everybody speak. We didn't get to hang out with all of our friends the way that we wanted to. But I think it's a sacrifice worth making because I think it's so much better for the attendees to get to pick and choose and kind of play your own adventure and do stuff that way. That was one of the things I just had a conversation with Jack Donovan in here. And he said for the first time, he actually got a chance to enjoy the entire thing rather than being on the whole time. Yeah. Because he got to come as just a guest instead of being part of one of the stages or being a speaker or anything else. And he just got to absorb it, which I'm a little jealous of. Yeah. Who was the surprising speaker for you? I think the one that really comes to mind for me, there's two. One was Michael Foster just because having been involved with this event for so long and seeing where it was when I first came in and then how it was in 2017. And then to hear the pastor come in and basically give a sermon for an hour was it was cool to see the evolution and to see the progress. And it's not for everybody in the audience and that's fine. But the fact that Anthony is willing to say, I don't care. Come in and talk as long as you're trying to help men be better. And if that's the channel that you're doing it, then do it. And the fact that it did resonate with so many men in the audience was really awesome. The other one was Jeff Putnam, who's the one who kind of closed us out on Sunday. And man, his story, I'm not crying. You're crying. Like his story was pretty insane as far as the sacrifices that he's made or how much of a low point he was at, especially because I think a lot of people when they see what we're trying to do with men and you get your stereotypical, this is the guy who's into the hemisphere and it's the basement, willing nerd or the sad sack or whatever else. And it feels like, one, most of the men, the vast majority of the men who I've seen over the years of these conferences are not like that. But two, you get men who are like that and they're not they're not trapped that way. Jeff was homeless. He was he was having to sling a sledgehammer to break up concrete chunks to try and provide for a family that didn't want anything to do with them because he was he was a failure. He was a failure period by every definition of the word. But he stepped out of it. He improved and it wasn't just pretend and it wasn't just superficial. And he's now better off than most men in the country because he put in the work and he adapted these he adopted all these principles that we talked about here in these conferences and it works. So it was really cool to get to see his whole journey and his whole progression. And he's not a professional speaker. No, he's not going from city to city to city to conferences. No, I think it's probably one of his first gigs ever. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Overall, did it work? Did the whole conference work? It was risky. Socrates said we dared to make it work. Yeah, I think it did. Especially as we got a chance to talk to more of the women in 22 and to realize that and I understand the marketing. I understand the way why it was done the way that it was and the risk and everything else like that. And then to see how much of the the content and the the desire for what was actually going to be produced within 22 and same thing within 21. You know, you use this inflammatory language because it's Barnum and Bailey. You need to be able to get that to get the audience in and to get them to come and do things and to generate that kind of buzz. And then you come in and you realize that Anthony is a good man and he wants as bombastic as he is. He wants families to be good families. He really does want women to be great. He wants men to be great. He wants us to be able to embrace our complimentary nature and the fact that he allows us as speakers and as presenters and as audience members to be able to embrace that and do that as opposed to just feeding into the misogyny or the misundry or any of these other things that the world tries to throw at us. There's there's genuine intent there and so it worked because the intent was there and then he let the rest of us to kind of pick up that ball and run with it. Interesting. Yeah. I was talking with one of the female attendees last night and towards the end of the talk, I just put my hand out and shook her hand and said, thank you for coming. She goes, this is amazing. I said, you know, and I thought she was talking about the event. She was talking about the handshake and the way that I was addressing her. She says, every man that I met this weekend shook my hand with intent. And I quote that shook my hand with intent, made eye contact with me. She says, I felt like I was shaking the hands of men all weekend. She goes, I'm not used to that. That's wild. That's awesome. That's such a perfect little encapsulation of what it is that we're trying to do because obviously this is not a handshaking conference, you know, but that's so indicative and representative of the bigger thing. And it's trying to make men live up to what our full potential is, help women live up to what their full potential is and help society realize that the complimentary nature of that is better for everybody. And she got to experience that throughout the whole conference and then it got encapsulated in that whole concept of a handshake. Amazing. That's a win. It is. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I was talking to Jennifer Molesky who was sitting in this chair right before you. And I said, who stands out in your mind? Who did you enjoy talking to as far as other speakers? She said, Coach Greg Adams. Now, whoever would have thought that those two would be sitting next to each other and actually enjoying conversation with each other? I didn't expect that. Both very polarizing in their own right. 100%. Yeah. 100%. I know some people already told me, some guys, I posted a picture of something and some guys said, oh, I see you handed in your man card. We talked about this last week, like whatever dude. Okay. Whatever. Sorry, I lost your approval, Mr. Random Monster. Yeah, exactly. I should have checked with you first. Yeah. Is there a such thing as a man turning in his man card? I would say yes. There is. You can absolutely, masculinity is something that has to be built and it has to be maintained, which means it can be given up. You can do that. But it's pretty stupid to think that getting along with women means that you give up your man card. What a stupid way to define being a man is we have to be at each other's throats or I have to be keeping you under my boots and you have to be squirming to get out in order for me to be a true leader. And if I don't do it that way, I've given up my man card. That's a dumb idea. Yeah. I think so too. Do you feel that when you spoke to the ladies at the 22 convention, did you have to go easy on them? Did you do red pill light? Or did you tell them the truth? Did you have to modify for ladies? Well, my experience with 22 is a little different because I didn't present or speak as a normal speaker. My wife and I did a question and answer. And so in a way, no, because I would say that the truth that we try and espouse, the way that I try and talk about things, I don't go for the shock factor anyway. I try to be articulate and I try to express truth and do it in a way that's palatable for people. And then what was awesome was that she was able to back up those same truths and do it in a way that it came from her perspective and her experience. And so it wasn't a watering down, but it was kind of a jab and a cross approach where they got to experience it from both of us. But no, I would say no, I didn't water it down or have to really modify. Could you give the same type of talk that you gave to the ladies? Could you give that talk on the 21 stage? Do you think? I don't think so. I think that you have to meet people where they are. I don't think that I can talk to my four-year-old daughter the same way that I can talk to my eight-year-old daughter. I don't think that I can talk to some of our close friends that we're connected with as couples the same way that we talk to other people that are in our neighborhood or go to church with us or things like that. And I think one of the responsibilities of being a truth teller is being able to convey that core truth. It's the same truth, but conveyed in a way that your audience is receptive to hearing it. So no, I don't think that I could have given my patriarch keynote presentation on the main 21 stage the same way, nor could I have given it in 22 the same way, nor do I think that I should have. I think it's socially obtuse to think that you can or that you should because that goes back to this idea of we're all equal and we're all the same in a very unrealistic kind of way. We're all equal in value, but it should be in a complementary way, and I think you should lean into what those differences are. Do you think you conducted yourself any different because your wife was present? Not as far as... I'm not saying that to trap you because I didn't see a difference. You were very congruent. It wasn't like when you're here on your own, and your wife was like, it's not like... No, the only thing that I would say is... Boys weekend out. Can't wait to get away. No, the only thing that was different was that I spent more time with her as opposed to hanging out with the other speakers. I was in bed earlier or stuff like that, and I don't even know if that's because she was here or if that's because I was in charge of MCing and I had multiple presentations to give and stuff like that or if it's because I'm older and the idea of staying out till four in the morning does not appeal to me or anything else like that. So there were changes. I just don't know if my wife is causal or correlated. Yeah, okay. Yeah, excellent. Last night, you and I were talking. I said, boy, I love your hair. It's long. I'm so used to that shaved head kind of thing that I've seen for a couple years now and that you come back with this main texture and dimension. And I said to you, what product are you using in your hair? What was your answer to me? I'm not using anything. I've, man, this is this is interesting admission. I have fallen into weird health Twitter where I'm mouth taping to breathe better at night so I can sleep and I'm experienced because I love experimenting with things and I love the idea of it's boring to think that scientific labs and study and research has the answers to all things. I think we miss out on a lot of experimental nature of reality in their ways to just try things like that. And so one of the things I've been playing with is I haven't been shampooing my hair for a little over a month to see if my natural oils will come back and how healthy my hair is or anything else like that. And you combine that with the fact that I live in the dry desert and then all of a sudden injected into all this humidity and this is what we get now. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. So what is the purpose of not shampooing your hair and I'm not condemning it because I'm really I'm a firm believer and our bodies do naturally create everything that we need to look and feel good if we feed them properly. And my temptation is like for instance I know with beard care people say should I use beard wash or this product or that product and we both know people that have beard product companies yes people that we that we like and respect and so forth. And when I tell people I wash my beard once a week blasphemy sir exactly yeah and I said why would you want to strip what I call God's conditioner God's beard oil every hair follicle has its own little oil producing factory right with it yeah and every well every hair follicle in your body has an oil sack connected with it yeah so what the shine that I'm seeing bouncing off your hair that's Tanner Guzzi right that's the real deal that's not something that I got in a bottle yeah yeah and that's kind of the whole approach is we look at so many of so many things especially related to health that rather than getting back to the source you know rather than teaching us to breathe with our mouths closed and getting our jaws to grow the way that they're supposed to we take out teeth and we put in braces and we straighten the teeth in the smaller cavity that's created or rather than dealing with the fact that we are hormonally imbalanced because of all the different things that we're exposed to we just inject exogenous testosterone into ourselves or there's all these things that we do that just put band-aids on the solution or on the problem or it creates a new problem and it's a cascading effect yeah and I do think that there's this natural fallacy of the further you go back to nature then all of a sudden everything's better I think that there's a fallacy to that idea but what I'm willing to do is experiment and see what if this works and maybe it does maybe it doesn't but I'm willing to experiment with it and we'll we'll come to our own conclusions from there okay yeah how long will you do that I don't know until it gets the point that I either realize it does work or gets the point where it's starting to smell bad or something so far it's good so far it's good how do you know when it's working the fact that it does okay normally when my hair is this long it's this big poofy fro weird thing because it's all dried out because like a shampoo every day like you're supposed to and it doesn't it doesn't fall it doesn't do and I look like councilman jam from parks and recreation which is a terrible reference but that's about as as accurate as it gets so I don't I don't know what does work looks like up until this point it does work and doesn't work means it smells bad or it turns green or my kids are commenting on how I've got bugs in there or something else like that but until that point I guess it works are you doing the same thing with your beard yeah yep okay yeah excellent still trimming them still getting cuts doing things regularly you know it's not let's be a complete barbarian but experimenting okay that's interesting you're always there's something always happening you're trying something I remember one year you posted a picture of you with your face beaten and a black eye or something I'm like yep what is he doing now and I'm thinking you got in the ring yep a boxing ring yep and you're not a boxer nope you trained did it give you new respect for people like John Fitch oh absolutely absolutely I can't wait to get back in again even though I even though I got the crap kicked out of me yeah because not only did it give me a new respect for guys like John or Ed Latimore or these other guys it woke up something in me that wasn't there before same thing this year I uh it was Trath once I did a half Iron Man I've been watching that now and I'm like here's another thing he's doing right and so it'll be something new well maybe I think it'll be boxing again next year I would love to do a full Iron Man but we've got a new baby on the way and the amount of time and training and everything else like that but maybe it's BJJ maybe it's full boxing again but that's one of the things is I spent my entire life succeeding modestly better than modestly without ever having to try because I've been blessed with natural intelligence and I'm articulate and I can just talk my way into or out of whatever I want yes I was that kid who was a B B plus student and I didn't even bother to go to school or do anything else you can just kind of slide by and then as an adult and especially with responsibility of kids and family I realized how good it feels to try at things and to put myself out of my comfort zone and to have to lead from the front and do it that way and in a lot of ways how good it feels to fail and to realize that you're not as fragile as you think you are when you fail and you can learn different things about yourself from your failures and from your successes and so it is it's what's the next thing that scares me what's the next thing that puts me outside of my comfort zone what's the next thing that's going to require growth in an arena in which I'm uncomfortable growing and let's do that yeah yeah I was talking with Jack Donovan earlier you don't have to give anything away but apparently you inspired him to do something that made him pivot some writing that he's doing or something some kind of what how that happened man Jack and I it's been really fun and this is another thing that I can attribute to 21 because like a lot of the viewers like a lot of the people within our community you read the way of men and it that just resonates and Jack is someone that I've looked up to for a long time I love the way that he writes I love the way that he approaches masculinity I love his unapologetic nature in his aesthetics and his earnestness in his instagram posts and things like that there's something about Jack and his his sincerity that in a world of irony or apathy or anything else it's incredibly refreshing and I remember the first year that we spoke together I was kind of fanboying a little bit it's like oh I get to talk to Jack and we ended up one night spending like seven hours in conversation and every year since then that we've been together we just spend all this time most of the conference is spent between us talking together or we've done road trips up through his neighborhood and you know we've gone to lunch with him and he's met my wife and my kids or he's come down to where we are and we've had opportunities to meet so we've gotten to be friends over the years and what's fun is we find out that even though we come from very opposed ideas as far as you know I'm a I'm a member of the church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he was at one point a priest in the church of Satan and he used to be part of an occult pagan group and now he's starting this other kind of religious approach and these should be diametrically opposed but when it comes down to the underlying principles of these things we can find that we have a lot of common ground and so as he and I have talked unapologetically from where we come from these different directions then we've both been able to build each other up as far as well okay that idea makes sense in this context that makes sense in this context and then it builds and it grows from there so I'm very humbled by the fact that his new his new book that he's working on that I can see things that are a direct result of conversations that we've had over the years and that I've been able to be a part of helping him develop that it's been it's been fun and I can't wait to see how we continue to help each other develop and grow excellent what is next for Tanner Guzzi another kid okay yep number five that's the big thing on that's the big thing on the list but honestly it's more of a continuation of a push for I still love doing the style stuff I had six of my one-on-one clients I've had even more of my group coaching clients who have been here and I love seeing the progress that they make and the fact that these are the best dressed men in the room every single time we're here I love the style stuff it's a blast and I love the opportunity to do that and I'm feeling more and more of a calling and this pull it's like there's this this string attached to my chest that's pulling me out of make families aspirational let men know how awesome intentional fatherhood is how great it is to accept the responsibility of leading your family how much more love and satisfaction you can get in your marriage how much more satisfaction and love you can have with your children how much better their lives will be how much better your your wife's life will be how much better your own personal life will be and I hope that what's next for Tanner is that I'm this average guy because I'm surrounded by all these other aspirational fathers it's what I love being around guys like Zach Small because he makes me feel normal and makes me realize that I'm weak in some other other arenas in which he's strong and then I have to step up my game so it's continuing to push more and more for great intentional godly fathers what speaker has grown the most we're not all experts we all admit that we have vulnerabilities and weaknesses that's one of the things that I think is the hallmark of a lot of the speakers most of us is that we're just not we're not all superheroes right okay who has shown the most growth over the years that you have seen whose message is just like wow now that was okay yeah well it's fun to think about that because I think about you know I think about stuff like where where you and I are where we came in because I was the close guy and you were the beard guy and that's not what people come to hear us talk about anymore you know you think about guys like Zach who came in and he was talking more not hypothetically but a little bit more philosophically and and kind of ambitiously about what it was to be a father but he's not working a nine to five anymore yeah he's built a business and he's led his family and he's doing all these other things and so I would say I there's not one in particular that I can put my finger on but there are very few speakers who have been here with us especially since kind of this this big 2017 when we started bringing in guys like Zach like you like Ed and Alexander and all these other speakers Jack and others there are very few who are still talking about what it was that they were originally here to talk about because they've already they've already built that row of bricks in their lives and they're continuing to build the next one and the next one and the next one and that's what I love and that's that's one of the changes that we've seen within the conference that I love is that the speakers that do just want to talk about the same old have fallen off they've fallen away because the audience and the men here that are a part of 21 it doesn't mean that we've abandoned those things that we were talking about and we needed before we still need those things but that layer is laid it's time to build the next one and build the next one on top of that and so I love that the caliber of speakers are men that continue to do that and you see it in in so many of them so we are evolving as well yeah we better be I would be a waste for Anthony for me for everybody else if I were given the same presentation that I gave in 2017 or in 2016 yeah what a joke what kind of what kind of a man would I be if I stagnated at at that one level I had a good time talking with Jeff Putnam yesterday and it was kind of I only knew him from Twitter and then meeting him in person was very interesting and then talking to him in depth about what you had talked about the homelessness and so forth and how he grew and it was you know poop or get off the pot yep yeah a lot of times we have to get back into a corner before we make a rough decision to we're going to make it yep failure is not an option absolutely as far as your family is concerned you have a child coming number five number five number five do you raise child number five differently than you raise child number one yeah how do you not you know better and they're in a different position what are you going to do differently I don't know we'll figure it out as we go how are you different now now that five is on the way than when one is on the way what has fatherhood done to you as a man I am not as neurotic as I used to be I'm not as uptight about things which is not to say that I'm not uptight and I don't still like things to be a certain way and have expectations and stuff like that because I do and hopefully by the time number seven comes around that's improved even more so yes but I'm more of that that steady rock that the waves of the emotion of my children and the chaos of the world and everything else can break against instead of pulling under because I've done enough reps to realize what it feels like to have those waves crash against me yeah and so I am I'm more stable I'm more sturdy I'm more rooted and more grounded and I'm trying to build and become even more of that rooted and grounded a conversation with Tanner Gosey thank you sir thanks George