10 Ways to Build an Environment That Forces You to Win | Ed Mylett

Key Takeaway

The most powerful force on earth is that we become consistent with the expectations of our peer group. You'll get out of life what the people around you expect of you. When your water gets shut off like mine did, you realize the people accepting your limiting thinking are keeping you there. The solution? Evaluate your environment ruthlessly: Do they believe in you? Do they discuss the future or just reminisce about the past? Are they energy givers or drainers? Your environment—especially the people in it—either supports your transformation or reinforces your limitations.

Episode Overview

Ed Mylett delivers a powerful message about the critical role of environment and relationships in personal transformation. He shares his journey from having no running water to oceanfront living, attributing much of his success not just to mindset shifts, but to strategically evaluating and changing the people in his proximity. The episode explores how to audit your relationships, the difference between acceptance and belief, and why most people fail to sustain motivation from self-improvement events. Mylett emphasizes that environment overrides almost everything, and the people closest to us set the standards we'll ultimately achieve.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 10 Ways to Build an Environment That Forces You to Win | Ed Mylett from The Ed Mylett Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Hit that like button and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you never miss my show, whether it's Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday. Here's our first guest. So, I get asked all the time, how in the world did you go from having no running water in your apartment to living on the water to living oceanfront to have another home that's lakefront? How does somebody go from changing their conditions that dramatically in a pretty short window of time?

And a lot of different things went into that. A lot of it was blessing. A lot of it was a lot of hard work, all kinds of mental changes that I made. But there's one area that I've not talked a lot about that I want to cover today that I think you need to know if you want to change the conditions of your life that way as well. So, when the water got turned off, you know what I had to do? I had to look around my life.

I really had to take an inventory not just of me, but what was around my life. And the fact of the matter was I did not have the right people in my life. I didn't have the people who believed in me. I didn't have the people who supported my vision. I didn't have people who made me want to be better in my life. I had a few, but I didn't have enough. I had too many people in my life that have just always been in my life.

They always accepted me for who I was. And that acceptance, that lack of belief in me, that lack of standard got me all the way to where I couldn't even pay a water bill. I didn't even have a car, never mind electricity for a while. And so, it's very dangerous. It was very dangerous for me for who I allowed just to support my limiting thinking, who I had around me. They weren't bad people. There's very few bad people. They just weren't people who were going to get me going in my life where I knew I needed to go, where I was born to go.

I had read all the books on personal development. I learned about influence, kind of learned how to change my state, how to think differently, been to a lot of the events that you go to. Why is it that so many people go to all these self-improvement, personal development, business events, they get all excited when they're there. They're ready to conquer the world. Then they get back home and life very slowly starts to drift back to normal. And that's because environment overrides almost everything in our lives.

That's why. And so the reason you're so excited when you're at the event, the reason you're ready to conquer the world is the environment supports what you're doing. And so I had to start to address my environment. And environment is all the place you are. But most importantly, your environment is the people that are around you. Because write this down. Number one, in our lives, the most powerful force that I'm aware of in the world is to be consistent and congruent with the expectations of our peer group.

Let me say that to you again. The most powerful force on earth is we become consistent with the expectations of our peer group. You're going to get out of life what the people around you expect of you. And so I had to begin to address who were the people around me and specifically what was the environment that I was in. Because number two, proximity is power. The closer somebody is to you, the more influence they have over you. That's why your personal relationship that you're in is something that must be evaluated at all given times.

And people ask me, "How do I get more spouse support or partner support, boyfriend or girlfriend support?" I don't know that you're always going to get more support. And I don't even know that that's needed. But one thing that's a foundation of all relationships is, "Does this person believe in me?" Most people love us. That's one thing. If we're in a relationship, we kind of feel a level of love. But the deeper question is, do they truly believe in me? And when I started to evaluate my friends that were around me, if I asked myself, were they supporting where I wanted to go in my life, not that they didn't love me or like me.

In fact, what most of us do is we love to have people around us who accept us. We say, I want people to accept me as I am. And there's a benefit to that. There's a huge negative as well. If people are constantly accepting this version of you, there's there's nothing compelling you to go to the next version. There's no stimulus that says, "I better change." there's no discomfort because these people closest to us their proximity has influence over us. So number one thing I want you to ask yourself is do the people around me believe in me and if they don't that needs to be evaluated people say well then what do I do?

Do I get rid of them? Well maybe in some case I mean if they're antagonistic to you certainly but what you have to do is begin to add people in your proximity who do believe in you or who will believe in you. And if they don't believe in you, perhaps they don't need to be eliminated from your life. But one thing you may need to do is start to reduce their proximity to you. Maybe they're not as close to you as they used to be. I've had to do that many times in my life where I've had to eliminate a few people from my life, but very few.

This is so critical to you becoming successful because your environmental game is more important even than your mental game because it's what supports it. And so I want you to evaluate a few things. Do they believe in me? Number two, are they a past or future reference type friend? In other words, when you're around them, what do you find yourself talking the most about? Is it the past or the future? I want to be around people who are constantly talking about either the present, but most importantly, the future.

In other words, I want people who are present with me so that when they're with me, we're together. You know, you have those friends too are constantly not present even though they're in your presence. We don't want that either. But if people are constantly taking me in the past frame of reference, old stories, old things, remember when high school, college, previous date, previous vacation, previous business, remember when constantly, you know, they're just always reminiscing or are they projecting me into the future? If at least 75% of your conversations aren't about the future with the people that you're around, these are not people supporting your future.

They're supporting your past. They're reinforcing your past. The more we talk about something, the more we reinforce its importance in our life. And so this is a very subtle thing. And I think even as I say it, you're going, "Whoa, they do love me. I think they might believe in me, but man, we talk about the past all the time." Well, this is somebody who's going to reinforce that state of your life. You need to add people to your proximity who are discussing the future with you.

You know, you've heard about triggers before where you can learn in personal development that, you know, you snap your fingers, you put yourself in a state or you walk, you hear a song, it's a trigger, isn't it? You hear a song from some point in your life, it triggers a memory. Or a song you love right now, it triggers you wanting to work out or move your body. So things are triggers. People are also triggers. And if there are people in your life, just by their proximity, trigger events that are prior in your life that didn't serve you, just by being around them, they they're a trigger.

Humans are triggers. Do you have people that just when you see them, they trigger peace for you? They trigger joy. They trigger abundance. They trigger competing. They trigger intensity. They trigger belief. They trigger confidence. They trigger your desire to grow. Ask yourself what triggers these people are in your life. What do they trigger in you? And you begin to you start to look at these things. You're going, "Wow, I have this group of friends who they accept me, but I don't know if they believe in me." Then I've got this other group of friends where they believe in me, but we're always talking about the past.

And then, you know what? They kind of trigger these states of sort of comfort or average in me. Who do I have that's triggering my desire to grow? Who makes me uncomfortable? Who do I have like I kind of clean up the house before they come over? Who do I have where I get excited when I see them because not every conversation's the same. I don't know where it's going to go. You should have those people that accept you in your life. There's nothing wrong with that.

It's an important thing. But you should have these other people who really don't accept this version of you. They believe in you so greatly, so much that they don't accept this version of you. They don't accept this performance from you. They don't accept this level of happiness, abundance, joy, performance from you because they know how much more you're capable of. Who do you have like that in your life? And the reason that that matters so deeply for us is because, and I want you to write this down, we get our standards in life.

We don't always get our goals. We don't always even get what we focus on. We end up ultimately getting what our standards are. Standards dictate everything in life. And the people around us help create that standard. For example, I was at a birthday party last night and the people sitting around me were all very fit people and dessert came. It was birthday cake time. And I probably normally would have probably had that piece of cake, but the first three people that were asked have this standard for how they eat in their life and when their cheat days are, their cheat meals are.

And all three people passed on it. And immediately, almost through peer pressure, I went, "No, I'll pass, too." And then my buddy goes, "Dude, it's okay. I have a piece." I said, "No, no, man. That's good. That standard alters us in every little area. Now, that's an obvious example, but we're going to get our standards, our standards of wealth, our standards of faith, our standards of abundance. And the people in our proximity help set the standard based on what theirs are in their life. So, the people around you evaluate next.

What are the standards they help you set in your life? The other thing we win with is energy. And so, ask yourself this, is this person in my life an energy giver or an energy drainer? This is massive. So when you're talking to them, do they feed you energy? You know, there's that one number where it shows up on your phone and you're like, "Oh, right." You know, that conversation, that text is going to be an energy drain. This person's proximity to your life is stealing some things from you.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have people in your life who you're supporting and you're helping, cuz we're going to talk about that next. But if the vast majority of people around you are energy neutral or energy drainers, what do you think that's doing to your environment that you're supporting yourself with? Okay? Or on the contrary, is this someone who gives you energy, feeds your belief, makes you stronger, gives you that juice in your life? Because all of these things, these people around us, all these evaluations, they're creating our environment so that it'll support our thinking, it'll support the changes we're making.

It'll support our goals. This is supported by scripture as well. Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpen another." And so, one of the obvious questions about this is if someone is lower energy for me or is a past reference person or a trigger that doesn't support me or they don't believe in me or they only accept me as I am. If you have some of these issues, what do you do with them? I give you three things. I don't think you just eliminate people from your lives.

It's not that hardcore a thing because this is more about adding the right people than it is eliminating people, but it is reducing their proximity. And so I think with people in your life that aren't supporting you the way you want to, I number one, I would recommend you be kind to them. Be kind in your conversations with them. You don't have to become mean to them or adversarial to them. And I don't even think you need to let them know this. Number two, I think you need to be cordial.

But I will tell you that you begin to become three, which is concise. Your dialogue with them begins to be concise. their proximity to you begins to shrink. And these are things people say, "Gosh, that's so difficult." Well, do you want to be happier? Do you want to win? I mean, you've already tried the other things, right? You've already started to write goals down. You're already working on yourself. You already got some habits that you're working on. Maybe this is the area. Perhaps this is the area.

Those of you that have children, this is an audio or video they should be watching or listening to. Their school teachers influence them. That's their mentors. That's like what we're doing right now, right? But who really has influence over your children? Who really sculpts who they are? It's their friends and it's their closest friends. That's why parents guard those associations so vigilantly. The good parents do because they know the proximity of these kids around their children are going to influence ultimately who they become. Our lives begin to have a a pace of that's different than when we're young.

But the same exact thing is true for us. These people closest to us dictate who we become. It's not our mentors like our school teachers. They have some influence. I have influence hopefully with you, but not the same as the people that you're texting with when you're done listening to this. Not the same as who you're having dinner with tonight. Not the same as who you have lunch, who you're around at work, who you're around in the evening, who you socialize with, right? They have the greatest form of influence over you.

Cuz in your life, you're trying to build this library of memories, aren't you? And in your mind right now, these memories are going to be different. They're different places, different experiences, different things, right? Different moments, different achievements, different breakthroughs, different feelings different feelings different feelings with the same people. with the same people, you are people, with the same people, you are likely to build the same types of memories over and over again. So if you love your life right now, if everything in your life is rich and you don't want it to change and you don't want it to grow and you'd like to keep repeating these memories you're getting now, well then by all means keep these people very close to you and add people as you go.

But if there's this party that's I want to change the memories. I don't want the next 10 years of my life, the feelings, the experiences, the accomplishments, the places I see, moments I have. So, all I'm asking you to do today is do an audit on your environment. I want you to audit the people around you in your environment and the things around your environment. What do you have around you in your environment? Are your goals up on a board? Do you have visualizations? Are you reading things that you can see visually in your life?

Are you listening to the right things? These are all part of your environment, but the most important thing are the people that are inside that environment that are around you. And so that's how you eliminate. Now adding people to your life. The best way to do that is to seek out go to places where they are. So I mean where do they have lunch? Where do they have coffee? Where do they work out? Where do they worship? Go to the places where these people that you think could help you to become good friends and just become a part of that environment.

And the more you're in the environment, you'll end up meeting people. It's a strategy. It's work to add people to your life. I could tell you that I work very hard at this. I also believe in the law of reciprocity. You don't just ask somebody to be your friend. You find a way that you can contribute. You want to become a friend of mine, say, "How can I help you? How can I serve you?" Just offer whatever you have. You say, "Well, I don't have anything to offer people." You'd be surprised.

Could you offer me your belief in me? Could you offer me your truth? Could you offer me your prayers? Could you offer me your support? These are real gifts you give people. Not all of them need to be knowledge and breakthroughs and an example and a track record. You'd be surprised, someone like myself, what just your belief means to me, your support means to me. and I'm the type of person and the people you want in your life when I feel like you've given me something I feel obligated obligated to pay you back even more.

And so the way you add people to your life is with the law of reciprocity. Put yourself in environments where they are and begin to offer your belief, your kindness, your support, your love. Maybe it is your collaborations, maybe it is your connections, maybe it is a talent or skill you have, but it doesn't have to be those things. When I was a young person, I ended up adding people to my life that were much more successful than me, much more well-known than me. But you know what?

As I got to know them, I think they sense this person truly believes in me. They truly care about me. This is a real friend. You have those people in your life as well where they don't necessarily have the the all the experience to support you, but they really believe in you. They really love you. If you run a business, you know it's not just what you do, but the time you spend doing it. And nothing wastes more time faster than messy accounts payable issues, bills everywhere, approvals dragging, vendors blowing you up.

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Life Surge is a one-day faith-based event where you'll walk in hungry for success, and you'll leave ready to build your resources to leave an impact on others. We're talking faithfueled finance, growing your resources, crushing obstacles, and then, yeah, using it all for something way bigger than yourself. I'm joining Life Surge in a few cities this year, and I'd love to see you there. I'll be sharing the stage with legends such as twotime football champion Tim Tibo, star of Duck Dynasty Willie Robertson, and leadership hero of mine, John Maxwell, pastor and author Craig Rochelle, and worship with artists like Natalie Grant.

Tickets are on sale at lifesurge.com. And just for my listeners, you can use the code ED30 for 30% off a ticket. There will be a link in the show notes, so click through and take some time to join us. Cities are being added all the time, so if you don't see one near you now, check back. I hope to see you there. And then the last thing I want to ask you today is because for you to add these people to your life, what I just said is the most important thing.

How do you show up in people's lives? How do you show up in people's lives right now? Are you that person that's an energy giver or drainer? Are you a future frame of reference or the past? Do you help your friends set high standards or the acceptable standards they already have? Right? Are you someone who deeply believes in people and they know it or you just kind of accept them as they are? These are the things you begin to ask yourself. How are you showing up in other people's lives?

Because that'll have an awful lot to do with who shows up in your life. How do you show up in other people's lives? And if you begin to evaluate these things, your environment slowly but surely will begin to support your mental game will be supported by your environmental game. And why is that so important? Because I want to remind you about something. You were born to do something great with your life. You were put here to do something special. all your life since you were a little boy or a little girl.

There was some point in your life where you knew you were supposed to do something great. That you were put here for a reason. That you've got a calling. That you've got a home in your life you're eventually going to find where you're living the real true authentic version of you. Your best version. You know you're supposed to do something great with your life. And right now, if you're listening to this or you're watching this, maybe you're not quite there yet. And maybe it's your thinking.

Maybe it's some tactics and strategies and habits, which I cover all the time on this show. Maybe it's all the mental stuff, but more than likely, it's the environmental stuff. It's the standards. It's the people around you that believe in you. It's not just having people that accept you cuz you want to do something so great with your life. I have this theory that many of you heard that when I die someday, I believe I want the Lord to say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." But I have this hallucination as many of you know that when I die, the Lord's going to do that and he's going to turn around and say, "Eddie, I want you to meet the man I made you to be when I made you in my image and likeness.

This is the destiny version of you. This is the man you were born to be." And that guy's going to be standing there. And I want to meet him and go, "I've been chasing you all my life, man." And he's going to say, "Boy, you caught me. You did it. I'm proud of you. You had all the memories, all the moments, all the contribution, all the feelings, all the difference, all of it in your life. You made it all happen. You became the man you were born to be.

We're identical twins. To me, that's heaven. When I pass away, heaven is I meet the man I was born to be and we're identical twins. Hell would be that you'd meet that person and you're total strangers. You're total strangers. That woman someday when you die and you meet the woman you could have been and you're total strangers. You went down different paths, different roads, different decisions your entire life and you never become that woman. You never become that man. To me, that's hell. So if it's that important to you that you've always known and maybe it got buried as you got older, maybe life sort of kicked us around a little bit to where not everyone in our life believed it and then maybe our parents, our friends, our school teachers just life started to happen and we forget who we are.

We forget who we are. And you know why you forget who you are? Because of the people that have been in your damn life. Because they haven't supported that great version of you. When you were really little, you knew it. You felt it because you were closer to God at that time. And the more and more people were added to your life, they began to treat you in such a way that they didn't expect those things of you. And maybe you've started to accept that. So if it's people that created these limiting beliefs, created this anxiety, created this fear, created this thing about us where we forget our greatness, if it's people who did this to us, it's people who are going to help us get out of it.

If it's the environment that stole this joy, stole this belief, stole this confidence from us, stole this sense of purpose from us and passion, it's the environment that'll give it back to us again. And we put the people in our lives that we deserve to have, not just that have always been there. Ed, on a different topic, I've also heard you speak to speak to speak to appreciating that people with limiting beliefs beliefs beliefs about themselves, about the world, about you often project that onto you.

And I'm guessing I'm guessing it goes both ways, right? We also have limiting limiting beliefs and we project on onto others. Will you speak to the power of understanding when you might be in a relationship with a partner, a spouse, uh a boss, a leader where their own limiting beliefs might be projecting onto you and diminishing your self-confidence, your self-confidence, your self-confidence, your self-esteem or even your self worth? Yeah. Often people that project their limiting beliefs onto us, they love us. They're actually concerned about us.

Why are you working so hard? Why is this money stuff matter you? Why do you want to achieve so much? and they're just projecting their small thinking and small beliefs onto us. They're not always antagonistic against us. But how do we know if our friends, our associations serve us? I have a chapter in the book about becoming an impossibility thinker and a possibility achiever. And I have a point that I make in the book that 99% of people on earth today operate out of a filter, a frame of reference in their life, which is their memories and their history.

This is the filter in which they think and operate out of. 1% of people operate out of their imagination or their vision. So stay with me. History and memories 99% imagination and vision 1%. Okay, this is a fact. Why are we happier when we're children? We're happier when we're children because we're operating out of our imagination because we have no history. But then by about age 10, we have a history that's been installed in us with limiting beliefs by loving parents. In fact, Scott, I make the contention there's all kinds of child neglect.

There's alcoholism and drug addiction. There's a family where we don't show affection like what you said. I don't say I love you or I'm proud of you enough. But the most insidious form of neglect of all children in the world is a is a child being raised by a parent who is not pursuing their potential and their vision and their imagination. This is a form of neglect because everything with children and leadership is caught not taught. As I said earlier, you are limiting. You're projecting your limiting beliefs into those children by not pursuing your potential and your dreams.

So, here's how you know when you're around somebody who serves you. Are they often saying to you, "Do you remember? Remember when? Remember this?" When you're around your friends or your spouse, remember this. Remember, remember how about this? Remember, remember, and they're constantly remembering. This is someone who operates out of history and memory. I try to surround myself with friends who don't do that. Where my friends say, "Where are you going? Isn't this moment amazing? What's your vision? What are you dreaming on? What are you working on right now?

Where are you heading? Man, isn't tonight special? So, they're in the present focused on their imagination and their future. This dialogue, if you really think through it, most of you, and I love you, I'm saying it. When you're with your friends, you're reminiscing. There's nothing wrong with doing a little of that, but if it's the dominant conversation, dominant conversation, dominant conversation, they operate out of their history and memory. And here's what's going to happen. They're going to repeat it. The same emotions, the same thoughts, different circumstances, different people, same life.

to tie the two topics together. I want people and most of my friends, I can't get them to reminisce like, "Ah, man, let me tell you where I'm going. This is where we're headed. This is how amazing it's going to be." And today's a gift, man, because I get to do it today. Those are the people I want around me. I don't want to be going backwards all the time and repeating the same history by thinking the same stuff. Ed, my on fire today, Ed, my second favorite aspect of the book is uh one more question more question more question to ask ourselves.

You list about 40 plus questions in the book. Things like, "Is there one more thing I can do to make my family feel more special? Is there one more thing I can do to show my appreciation for the people I work with? What's one more thing I can do to calm myself down today?" Couple more. What's one more way I can worry less about what other people think? And then my favorite of all of them is number 12. Is there one more thing I can do so people will see me less different than I see myself?

I mean that's so powerful. Is there one more thing I can do so people will see me less different than I see myself? It really speaks to the power of self-awareness. Expand on that. Dude, you're really good. So the quality of our life is the quality of our questions we ask ourselves. I have a chapter in the book on thinking. What is thinking? Thinking is the process of asking and answering questions to yourself. That's a thought. Change the quality of the questions in your life, you'll change the answers, you'll change the emotions.

the emotions. the emotions. Most of the time, here's what human beings think. They think they're not qualified to help people. They're not qualified to make a difference. They're disqualified by their past. Something they're ashamed of, a failure, a bankruptcy, a divorce. Maybe they've just always felt average and ordinary like I did with Mrs. Smith. And they think, "I'm not qualified to do this." And so the question they keep asking themselves is one that doesn't serve them. But what if the question started to be, how did my past prepare me for my future?

How did what I've gone through prepare me to be my test become my testimony? Let me give you a quick example. The most important decision of my lifetime was made by my father, which was to try to get sober one more time. There's a chapter in the book called One More Try. I vividly remember my dad go, I'm going to try one more time. And that decision to get sober changed our family tree, changed my unborn children who are now going to college, Max and Bella.

Their life is different because my dad made this decision. Millions of people that I reach on a weekly basis, their lives are impacted because my dad made this decision. But thank God there was another human being that I never thought about until three weeks ago. Four weeks ago, Scott, I woke up in the middle of the night. I told my wife, I said, "Babe, "Babe, "Babe, someone helped daddy." And I was emotional. She said, "What, honey?" I said, "Someone helped my dad." She says, "What do you mean?" I said, "My dad making the decision to get sober." And getting sober, someone helped him.

Someone asked themselves THE RIGHT QUESTION. HOW CAN I HELP this man? How can I serve him? In the darkest moment of my dad's life, when he was going to lose his family and made me take his own life in I don't even know where it was, some bar, some alley, some coffee shop, some precious human said, "I'll help you." And here's what's crazy. crazy. crazy. What qualified THEM TO HELP MY DAD WAS THE things they were most ashamed of and embarrassed of. That they were also an alcoholic at one time and a drug addict.

Little did they know when they were lying to their family about their drinking or stealing money to get drugs that they were being prepared if they asked themselves THE RIGHT QUESTION AT THE RIGHT time to change my father's life and consequently mine and millions of other people. The ripple effect of that one question. When my dad was desperate, this person asked themselves a question. How can I help this man and they got the right answer? They could help him because of the things they thought that disqualified them for making a difference.

Was the very thing preparing them to change someone else's life? And so for people listening is not only do you need to ask that better question, but you need to know that the things of your past that you think disqualify you, a bankruptcy, a divorce, whatever it is, SOMETHING YOU TOTALLY ASHAMED of is probably the thing that pain which preparing you on the other side of it to meet that other self of you. If you ask the right question, that precious soul, Scott, has affected millions of lives.

the ripple effect of them asking an empowering question about the things they thought that disqualified them. In fact, it's what qualified them to help my dad. Different question completely flipped the script on my life and millions of other people. Hey, I want to jump straight in. Um, you know, I've had a chance to to to get through all the way through Power One More. More. More. Good. Good. Good. I got to be honest with you, it's by far one of my best books this year that I've been through.

I haven't seen so much packed into one set of bookends and I don't know how long. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. One of the things that um stuck out to me is this intention is the currency of identity or changing your identity. identity. identity. Explain that to everybody because I thought that was powerful. Well, I didn't learn it's not mine. I learned it from Wayne Dyer. Actually, I probably made it my own, but many many years ago, I was running on a beach in Hawaii. I met Wayne Dyer.

He ran by me. We ended up sitting on the beach together for about an hour and a half. I was very young. If you don't know who Wayne Dyer is, Google him. He's one of the icons of, you know, thought leadership. Anyway, when we were done, he goes, "Ed, you're going to change the world." And I don't know if he said that to a lot of people or not, but to me it was incredible. was incredible. was incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes, "And you're just this big brain, the way you speak and make people feel things and you know, you're very talented man." He goes, "But you but that's not why." And I said, "Well," he goes, "And please never base your self-confidence on or your identity on your abilities or your achievements." I went, "Well, what the heck are you supposed to base it on then?" And he said, 'In your case, your intentions, you have a warm, huge, beautiful heart.

You want to help people and your intentions are so huge. They're so beautiful that that's why you're going to change the world. Always focus on your intention. There's a power to intentions. He happened to be writing a book by that title at the time. Long story short, um it was the first time someone had complimented me where I believed it. believed it. believed it. I've never believed I was that smart or that special or that talented, but I did know I had a good heart. And so since that day, for the most part, man, even preparing for something like this today, my confidence, my identity comes from my intention to serve, my intention to make a difference.

So many people are chasing that tale of once I'm achieving something. Once I'm really great, then I'll have confidence. That's not where mine comes from. Mine comes from intention. And that's what I recommend in the book. Yeah. No, I love that. You know, it's one it's interesting to me. I was just thinking through that. You know, we didn't get a chance because the event was so busy. We didn't get a chance to to spend a lot of time together. But you and I have a lot of similarities in our in our backtories.

You told me that, but I don't know what they are. Yeah. Yeah. So, my father was an alcoholic for a number of years, and I watched him uh really struggle back and forth to try to get a handle on it. And um you know, when I was thinking through the intentions, I remember him actually having a similar conversation uh that your dad had with you about I'm going to try one more time. Really? Wow. Really? Wow. Really? Wow. Yeah. And uh lo and behold, it did.

It did. Yeah. He's been sober for 35 plus years. fantastic grandfather and the whole deal, man. Thank God. That's wonderful. Yeah. Um but the intention behind the mean that intent behind going through by making that um well an importance, right? right? right? Yeah. I think I think most of the things we do great in our life come from love. My dad got sober because he loved his family enough to try again. Your dad got sober enough because he loved you and loved your family enough to try again.

Hopefully loved himself. But often times, you know, we have to find something we love. It may not be us. But all great things are achieved through love. And that sounds corny with two dudes talking that lift weights and stuff, but the fact of the matter is it's true. And when I focus on who I love or what I love, that's much bigger than whatever the obstacle is in my way. And that's always given me the fuel and the energy to, you know, persevere where maybe other people quit or gave in.

Yeah. How much of that intention is cycles into self-sabotage? What do you mean? What do you mean by that? Well, that? Well, that? Well, to me, if you have a focused intention, you're int you're intentionally choosing a direction where self-sabotage appears to be a lot more subconscious. And And And well, well, self-sabotage comes from that internal identity that whatever you're about to go do, you don't believe you're worthy of or even if you get it, you'll blow it. Like you you've heard me talk many times about the thermostat analogy.

It's in the book. But the truth is, if you don't get this internal thermostat, your identity high enough, no matter what you achieve, you're going to turn the air conditioners on your life and cool it back down again to what you believe you're worth. I just I and and I I watch this all the time on my new show, I have a new TV show, what's going to be streaming called Change with Ed Milelet. And uh this woman, one of the guests on the show was a woman, she gained 180 pounds, lost 90, gained it back.

Lost 90, gained it back. And I said, "The challenge for you, Angie, is you believe you're a heavy woman who happens to have lost weight." Mhm. And because that's the case, your identity as a heavy woman, you'll always get back there and turn the air conditioners back on. But what if the truth was you've always been a healthy, fit woman who had gained weight, and if we could switch that identity now, we won't sabotage ourselves again. Sabotage is really the process of getting what we believe we're worth.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're really we're really getting what we believe we're worth. So we're we're trashing the current results or the current situation to get back to what our thermostat setting is. And that we call that sabotage, but it's just getting back to what we believe we're worth. Yeah. Well, at least for me, you know, I again, we didn't get a chance to super connect just one-on-one, but you know, part of my backstory is, you know, overcoming homelessness and some other things to kind of get where I'm at today.

today. today. And there was something in the book that you mentioned I thought was pretty powerful. And it was a huge shift for me, which is one of the reasons I want to bring it up, which is this essence of operating out of history. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Versus operating out of future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I kept telling myself I was the high school dropout because I had to pay the bills and help the family and all that kind of stuff. I kept telling myself for a number of years and then one of my first mentors, old man told me, he said, you know, he said, you're there's two ways to think.

You can either learn to think like me, you can learn to think like your dad. Which one will it be? Wow. Wow. Wow. Right here. Right here. Right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right here. Talk to me about history, man. Talk to me about operating out of history versus future. Well, 1% of all people operate out of their imagination and their dreams. And 99% operate out of history and memory. And this is a really insidious thing. We don't even realize we're doing it. When we're children, we're happier.

Why? My belief is we were just more recently with God. with God. with God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And two, we don't have a history and memory. So, we're forced to operate out of imagination. And then at some point, for some children, like you and I, we start getting a history early because it's crossed upon us with an alcoholic dad or whatever. But for the most part, most kids, it's 10, 12, 15 years old, they start operating off history and memory. And what we do in our life is we move towards what we're most familiar with.

So, you become familiar with this history and memory, and you just move towards it. Same emotions over and over again, same thoughts over and over again. Even if the external circumstances change, circumstances change, circumstances change, the we move we our life is our emotions. We move towards the same thing. And that ties into associations. We all heard, hey, you're going to be the product of the five people you hang around. That's old school, right? How do you know who it should be? What's what's one thing no one's ever told you before?

I'll give it to you right now. It's in my book. If your peer group operates out of history and memory, they don't serve you like they should. I'll give you an example. If when you're with your friends, it's like, man, you remember you remember you remember that? You remember high school? You remember that one thing? You remember that? You me you you Yeah. Right. And that's what most friends do together. I don't have a lot of that. I have a little bit of it. And by the way, my peer group have great histories and memories they can operate out of.

True. Yeah. True. Yeah. True. Yeah. But they don't. When we're together, you almost got to force them. What we're doing is we're talking about imagination and dreams. What are you working on right now? Where are you going? What's it going to look like? You can't You think you can get Tom Brady to talk about past Super Bowls all the time, dude? Come on, man. He's talking about, "Hey, I got this new crypto thing. I've got this new watch. I've got this new business thing I'm doing.

I got this NFT. We're going to win the Super Bowl this year in Tampa. I want to get ring eight." Whatever it is. You You talk to Tim Cook who runs Apple. He's not talking about Max from 20 years ago. He's talking about what they're working on now and where they're going as a company. And so the people around you, if it's history and memory, that's one little key. Like I'm not saying drop people. I'm not a big believer in that unless they're toxic. You don't got to but you got to add.

And so this is how critical imag it's. It's like probably you probably asked me one of the four or five most important things in life. What is your frame of reference? History or memory or imagination and vision. It's okay to have some history and memory. We learn from it. But going back there, you cannot be in both zones at at one time. So if you're in history and memory, you are not in vision and imagination. And you were born to imagine. You were born to dream.

You were born to do something great with your life. And I just remember that's something I want to talk about tonight in my speech. Thank you for giving me that question. Hold on. Go ahead. Keep going. I'm going to write a note down cuz that was really good. Why don't you talk about the antenna a little bit? You know, one of the ways that you get there is you change things about your disposition. And so, when I was younger, I used to think certain things about me were my strengths or I could get away with them.

And what I learned is sometimes it's not a matter of just even developing new skills or talents. It's shedding the thing that holds you back. It's pruning yourself almost. When I was young, I used to think my intensity, my passion was my strength. But very close brother or sister to that was anger. And I was more of an angry type leader. I think that's really hard for most people that watch my stuff now. Like I or that you were a negative thinker because it's just so contrary to what you see with you now.

But mine was anger. And I had to I was winning in spite of that thing that I kept telling myself was one of my gifts. And when I finally decided that I was going to grow up and mature and change this thing about myself and tap into better thinking and better behavior, my whole life took off. And you talk about the antenna. You also talk about the fact that it's hard to believe that you're the positive guy that was always constantly chronically negative. So take those two things together and just dive in on that.

is part of becoming successful, happier, shedding things that about yourself that are holding you back and being honest about what that thing is. And then, if I'm right about that, how does one tap into the good stuff? stuff? stuff? Man, that's a lot right there to unpack. But we have an antenna and that antenna causes us to tune into two main frequencies, a positive frequency or a negative frequency. And there's a choice between two and there's only two. And everything in life comes down to positive and negative.

It's why there's a main gist in our life and there's also a shadow part of that. There's duality. And so that anger is caused by something deeper. There's love, there's hate, right? There's confidence, there's a lack of confidence. There's always two sides to every coin. You have to understand that. And you're either fueled by the positive or the negative. You're fueled by either the wound or the healing. And so often people are fueled by anger because they're hurt. And that anger actually feels better than depression.

So it fuels them. But anger and depression are actually very close. Anger is depression that gets off the couch. Anger is depression that gets off the couch and goes and does something and finds the juice to do it. And so I call anger steroids of the soul. It actually gives you temporary boosts of energy, temporary power. So it feels good but at the same time it's actually destroying you in the process because it's coming from a place of hurt a place of a wound and so many people are driven by this anger or this wound and the need to be successful the need to be liked the need to show that their father who left that they are someone and so the wound drives them and it drove me for a long time this is how I know this so well my biological father left when I was a year old so there was a wound that drove me to be successful Then I lose my job.

30 31 years old. My wife's about to leave me. I'm almost bankrupt. Everything comes crashing down. The guy that was fueled by all of this had the scoreboard of success and wealth and fame. Everything came crumbling down. Now what am I fueled by? It was a crisis of epic proportions. And everyone will go through this at some point in their life, I believe. And it was during that time I said, "Okay, I want to make a difference. I want to impact others. I want my life to be about others, not myself.

I I want to get closer to God. I I knew I didn't have God in my life. And that was a defining moment in my life. And then from there, it became about a healthy ambition. It was a healthy ambition which is different than anger, which is different than being fueled by a wound. Now it's being fueled by your healing, not the wound. The growth, the healing to heal yourself and then to heal others. And from there comes power and peace and confidence and courage. And you can see the difference.

someone who's fueled by love and someone who's fueled by fear. It all comes down to love and fear. What's driving you? The love of others or the fear of not having enough. The fear of not being successful or the love of competing and the love of of being your best and the love of your teammates. One will help you perform at the highest level. The love the fear will cause you to have short-term success, but eventually will be a constraint that brings you down. So, I tell everyone, look at what's fueling you and what's driving you.

And you're either living from your wound or you're healing. And that's how you'll know whether you're on the right path or not. Now, Ed, you were obviously driven by the anger that came from a wound. Then you began the process of healing and self-growth, self-mastery, and then it led to a different mindset, different perspective, different energy, connected to a greater source, a greater power to God. And all of a sudden, you now become a conduit for all that God wants to do in the world rather than this person who's blocking blocking the flow of God's power and peace in your life.

So, are you being blocked or you actually being a conduit for everything that wants to happen in your life and in the lives of others? And so, that's how I look at it from a duality perspective and what each person is facing on this journey. And everyone will move from the wound to the healing. And I really believe this is the path forward for people at work, people in life. More and more people are talking about wounds today because wounds are meant to be healed. And in the healing process, you become your most powerful self.

Let's talk about mentors for a minute. How have mentors impacted you on your journey? Uh John being one of those for you, I assume. And uh you know, where do you where do you think that impacts people? if if you're out there listening, you know, the people that are listening to this show, what have mentors done for your life and what could they do for the people listening and watching? Well, John is one of them. And the idea that I have to live up to him being there last year, it makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

Um, in fact, I talked to John uh Friday because another good friend of mine, John Gordon, was with him and they had met for the first time and ended up, you know, saying, "Hey, they're both very good friends of mine and both, you know, connected over that." Um, my mentors, the number one thing, John's one of them. Um, and by the way, what the coolest thing is when your mentor moves from mentor to friend because when they become your friend, then they have way more influence over you, right?

Like if you think about with your kids, like their teacher, their mentor, and that teacher has tremendous influence over your child. But who do you really worry about as influencing your child? Their friends, right? And so when you get to that point where you become friends with your mentor, oh my gosh, can they make an impact on you that's just remarkable. And I I consider John a friend. Um he was moved from mentor to friend. My mentors, the number one thing they've done for me in my life is they've believed in me in such a a deep way that I've wanted to live up to how they looked at me.

I wanted to prove them right. And so the number one thing my mentors have seen my giftedness, seen my potential, seen my capacity. They see me as I could be, not as I am. And because they see me as I could be as not as I am, and they've done it enough that I actually want to work hard enough to live up to prove them right. That's number one. Number two, my mentors have been further down the road that I want to go down and that's why I selected them as a mentor.

And they have directions. They have directions. And the vast majority of those directions, believe it or not, have come from wrong turns they made that they warned me about that I then don't make. So, of course, there's been mentors will say, "Listen, I did this, this, and this, and that works." And those have been very effective lessons. But other ones have been, "Hey, warning. Here's a turn I made that I don't think you need to make." Or, "I see you going down a path I was going down.

I can just tell you that's a dead end road. Turn around now and head this way." And so, they've done that for me. They also give me comfort and security. Um, they've helped create I would call what I would call like an emotional stability around me that I'm not alone in this journey. My number one mentor and friend is is is Jesus. You know that. And it and he gives me tremendous comfort to know. I just did it last night. I was praying last night. I play on my pray on my knees every night and we're being you know I'm just bearing my soul with you today more than I normally would.

And like literally at the end of my prayer last night kind of got some stuff going on. And I'm like, "Hey, Lord, just I'm giving this to you." I got this overwhelming like warmth float over me like, "Hey, I have you, my son. I love you. I got you." And so that's the ultimate example of that. But it also feels good to be able to call John uh or Lou and and say, "Hey, I got this." They're like, "I got your back. It's going to be okay." There's some comfort to it.

Gives me some emotional peace. They've done all of those things, but they have a sense of direction. There's this the Chinese proverb that I always screw up. But, you know, if you want to know the road ahead, ask those coming back. They have directions. They've seen it. And and most of these people, including me at this point, I've I've been down a lot of different roads. I can save you time by the mistakes I've made, and I can give you some sense of direction on what's worked for me and what hasn't worked.

The best mentors also um usually ask me questions and don't make statements. Meaning they make me work hard within myself to find the answer by asking the right questions as opposed to just giving me instructions because that's the difference between you know feeding somebody and teaching them to fish. My great mentors have made me do the hard work on uncovering the answers and creating the systems and patterns and habits in my life that'll allow me to solve these types of problems when they come up in the future when maybe they won't be present.

What what role does faith play in your selection of mentors? Yeah. Uh it has an it has it's it's now probably the primary thing. I can't say that every mentor I've had has shared faith because that's not true. I've had fitness mentors who don't share my faith and I'm like, "Show me how to get that body, right?" Or my current doctor who's on my show tomorrow. I don't think we share the same faith, but God still made her in her image and likeness to serve me.

So, it's not a requirement uh for me. I mean, I the easy answer would be say that, oh, all of them share my faith. That's not true. I have mentors in certain areas of my life that don't share my faith. And I actually, I got to be honest with you, I enjoy having friends around me with different perspectives and points of view. It strengthens my faith. It causes me to question things that I think require questioning to go to the next level. Um, it's actually a really good question.

Um, my best friend is not a believer. I'm working on him. But my best friend, his name I call his real name's Kelly, but I call him Richard Caba on my social media. You can figure out why I call him that. Love that love that guy. And I and I love him. And he lives a better life than most of my believer friends, but um he's more than a brother to me. Like I I love and adore him. And I think over time things have happened in his life.

like and I think I'm allowed to say this cuz I love him but in the last year he he lost his sister and his brother and and his mom's ailing and uh I don't want to be too personal with his life because I love him but but because I'm so close to him more than a brother it's now the time that we've started to have these conversations about well where'd they go bro you know and what's this life all mean and now that you're getting near 50 is it all about your Louis Vuitton on shoes and your mansion on the ocean and you know these other things and he keeps reaching these conclusions like brother it's not there's got to be more and so now we're at that stage where he brings I think we're having those conversations but so it's not not all of them do share my faith I think the primary ones though I want them to because they understand my point of view and perspective of how I think and what matters to me and in most cases if they don't share that same belief system, it's hard to give me the major directions on the major things in my life.

But I think you'd be surprised, even with John, who used to run a church, church, church, I think you'd be surprised, you know, if I'm being honest, about how unspoken our faith is between the two of us. I mean, it's not that it's never spoken, but it's not like let's pray together every minute that we're together, nor is faith necessarily the central topic when he and I talk. But I think we both know that's the the play running in the background. But I think people would be surprised that you would think you you and John Maxwell must talk about faith all the time.

I we don't. Now, John Gordon and I do. It's just a different friendship. John Gordon and I about everything always comes back to faith. It's just the nature of our relationship. It's just a different dynamic. So, did that answer I think that answers it. Yeah. I I find it um you know, best to live out the way that you want to live. As they say, the old quote is uh you know, know, know, live right because you might be the only Bible that anybody ever reads.

That's That's That's I think that's probably the number one thing that's going on with me and Kelly cuz he's just watched me live my life up close for 20 years. And I think the older and older he gets, he's understanding the narrative going on behind me and why more than when we were younger men. And I think any of you that are people of faith, I think it might surprise you when God will finally use your life at the right time for that person. And it may not be on your time.

It it it's I'm finding as I get older, it's like some of my friends, you know, that just never came up. It just never was there. and was just great respect and understanding between each other. And now it's starting to as we all get older, so maybe it'll not be on your time, but it might happen on his time. Well, man, I I know you're going to love uh walking into that room in Naples, and I'll I'll say this, which I don't I don't think I've ever shared this publicly, but since we're on a roll today, I'll I'll share it here.

You know, Top Contractor School for me is it's my ministry, man. It it's the way that, you know, I'm able to impact people not just in business, uh, but personally, you know, so often in construction, man, you see, you know, these people in the trades who they're amazing trades people, right? They're amazing tradesmen, trades women. Um, but what they've done is they've built a job with a tax ID number. They haven't they haven't built a company. And our our mission as an organization is to be able to take those people and fill in the gaps and give them freedom, build them a life.

And uh you know, I just said it to somebody today. I said, you know, people a lot of times get into entrepreneurship because they think there's freedom on the other side. And if you don't have the right advice, you don't have the right mentorship, you don't have the right foundation, what you build yourself is just a bigger cage. Yeah. You build yourself 18 different jobs. You don't build yourself any freedom. you end up becoming, you know, a slave to this thing you've built. And by the way, I've done that.

I have early in my career, I built businesses that created more bondage, more stress in my life than was reasonable. And it's because I didn't have a mentor. The other thing you create, it's not just you, you don't just have you, you've created an environment that supports these contractors. So, it's beyond you. It's an environment. And winning in life oftent times is a matter of feeling that you're in business for yourself but not by yourself. And so many people feel like they're in business by themselves.

And what you've done is said, "No, you're not by yourself. You're in business for yourself, but you are not by yourself." And you've got access to information and resources and you and peers that accelerate and save time and reduce stress and give you access to resources that you otherwise would never have had in your life. And so you're not by yourself. That's a huge thing for small business operators, medium-sized business operators, and something that the reason I look old, I think one of the reasons I look older, and Sasha, we need to change the lighting in here today, by the way.

Um, the reason that I look older is because I did spend the first 10 years of my business career by myself. And, uh, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. It was totally unnecessary. I just didn't understand what a mentor could do or coaches could do or mastermind in the sense that the collective mind being bigger than mine on my own. I didn't have any appreciation for any of that till I read Think and Grow Rich. And then frankly, I'm old enough that this stuff didn't exist on the level that it does now.

When I was a young entrepreneur, it didn't exist. There just weren't groups like what you've built in this space. The other thing that's cool about what you've done is I want to say this to you is it's not so broad that there's people that one guy's got a dance company and some lady's got a taco truck and some you're in this space and so it defines the space you're in which I think narrows focus and allows the information to be with a higher level of specificity because everyone's operating in the same industries uh collectively and that's brilliant of you Because like even in our coaching program, it's all these different industries and when it's that broad, the content itself has to remain general and broad.

But when you target an industry like you've done, it allows much more specificity and precision. I want to know about this belief thing because I think a lot of parents, a lot of people, a lot of leaders neglect to ever tell somebody that they love them. Love is like almost this word you hear it so often I don't even know if it feels anything anymore belief even like your spouse to have a spouse who believes in you not just loves you that's like a different level altogether I'm wondering your thoughts about belief in people and your intentionality about that how it affected you beyond just love but belief because that's a to me that's a much deeper level.

I think it really for me comes down to my relationship with God. And I think everybody has their interpretation or their own relationship with God. I was introduced to the church. Uh as a youth, I went to church all the time, but I never really understood a lot of things in regards to relationships with Christ because even in the church, things are manipulated. The Bible's manipulated. people are um in my opinion, you know, kind of feel like they they walk out of there convicted every Sunday if they're dealing with certain things or whatever.

And I know that there are a lot of believers believers believers uh that live throughout the globe, but I don't think there are a lot of people of faith. faith. faith. What's the difference to me? Uh you know, uh people of faith move on action. They they move with love. They move with obedience. And obedience is greater than sacrifice. I learned that at a very young age that sometimes what we feel like we're sacrificing. sacrificing. sacrificing. Uh when it comes to God, there is no sacrifice because he has already told us in Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the thoughts that I have for you are thoughts of great things, you know, and a great ending." And so I don't need all the details to move on what God's told me to do.

And before uh even as a kid, you know, it was that I love you and I believe in you message that stuck with me so much because as you said before, a lot of people don't really get told that they are believed in or that people have faith in them. And that's right. that's right. that's right. If I say I have faith in God, then I can't respond to world elite issues the same way everybody else does. I can't be far right or far left when it comes to politics.

I can't be far right or far left when it comes to religion. I can't be far right or far left when it comes to sexual orientation or any of that stuff because for me, so many people invested in me when they had nothing to gain in return from all different walks and all different backgrounds that I have no fight or skin in the game when it comes to like being anything less than a great human being. And I think when people know that you believe in them and that you believe in what they can do, it gives them a strength and a and a and a courage to go out and try something that they normally wouldn't try.

Uh your testimony, my testimony, like sometimes I think even for me at a certain point in my life, I was kind of hesitant to tell my story because I didn't want to be viewed a certain way that I was weak, you know. Uh but I'm I'm vulnerable to the obedience of God. I I have submitted, you know, like I don't have to be perfect. Nobody in this world has to be perfect at anything. We all serve a perfect will and per or God has a perfect will and a purpose for all of us.

I got empowered by knowing that this homeless guy at 13 years old telling me that God's going to use you in a mighty way. And at that time I was on a football field and I'm walking and I I said, "Well, man, yeah, I want to go to the NFL. I want to make a lot of money so I can help a lot of people." And he said, "No, it has nothing to do with the NFL. It has everything to do with you." For a guy that's essentially homeless.

For some people, they look at that situation as hopeless. for me. A couple of weeks later, I come to ask him, "How did you end up in this situation?" And he said, "If I told you I I was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, I had a big home, a yacht, a beautiful family, would you believe me?" And I said, "I would have no choice. Like, if that's what you told me?" And he said, "That's exactly what my life used to be. But drugs, alcohol, and gambling ripped me away from my family." And And And wow, wow, wow, you know, I as I think about like how believing in someone, I believe that this guy who spoke life into me at a time in which I didn't know him, he didn't know me.

Yeah. So I ended up speaking life into him as well as asking one of him as well as asking one of my teammates who dad was a very successful businessman and trying to help him not only get reintroduced to the church cuz his my teammate wanted me to go to his church all the time but he was Catholic and I didn't know that and he had always you know he'd always wanted to get back and go to church and so since I had this invitation to go to church you know I asked if I could invite you know this gentleman to church and next thing you know he's going from going to church to now working for my teammate's dad to getting back on his feet to being reconnected with his wife.

Although they she had moved on and got married, he hadn't seen his kids in like 3 years. God used me at 13 years old to help this person that told me that God is going to do use me for mighty things. Let me ask you a question. The belief thing, everybody, I want to just put a bow on that. If you ask the average person, hey, who's loved you in your life? I bet that you could name 10, 12, 15 different people that have loved you.

Grandma, grandpa, coaches, you know, your your your sisters, your brothers. But if I asked you who's believed in you, I bet that list is shorter. And when you believe in somebody, you are you fit on one hand in their life more than likely where they really feel your belief. And that is a deep difference you make as a father, as a mother, as a friend. I'm not just a friend of my friends. I I let them know I believe in them. And then I let him know why I believe in him as a leader in business.

And I just want you all just to just take that one piece of this away. Here's a big question for you, brother. By the way, remember this. This man goes on to be dominant college football player at University of Florida. Ends up eventually in the WWE. He's a Hall of Famer in the WWE. So imagine this. One of the great all-time Hall of Famers in the WWE was conceived in a sexual assault of an 11year-old girl. Now, what can you accomplish in your life if that's where this man comes from?

He's talking about church. He doesn't just walk the walk. He's actually in the studio at his church right now as we're talking. So, that, you know, uh, out of your book, Max Out Your Life, I actually ripped out three pages that I keep I got a little desk in my room before I go to bed. I do some um I do Yes. And I do some um, you know, I do some reflecting. And one of the quotes you have in that book on page 98 is uh I'm chasing down the ultimate version of me.

The day the day will come when I get face to face with a destiny version of me. I want the satisfaction of knowing that I spent a lifetime chasing down this man. That in the end I caught up with him. Um that he and I are identical. That I challenged myself. I took risks. I dug deeper. I put in the work and I gave it my all. And I used every ounce of the blessings of go that God gave me and I left nothing in the tank.

It's my driving force of my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was an awesome quote. That's like the man in the ring quote by Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I like it. Well, I mean it. Let me show you something. something. something. This is uh right next to where I work every day. This is my dad. It's a good picture of my dad when he was sober. And this is my dad's uh one-year announcement of his passing, his obituary. And I actually keep this right here where I do most of my work every day and it's a description of my dad's life.

Um, and it says that, you know, no one spread more love in a lifetime than my dad. I keep that nearby because I actually think I was just talking about this. I think trying remember who it was on my show recently. It might have been Matthew McConnA. I'm not sure who it was. I think it was Matt. But I think about death a lot. And um not in a cryptic way, but it gives me a reminder of how blessed I am to be alive. And I'm under no illusion that it's going to, you know, be forever.

Now my soul's forever, but you know, Edmlet, the body, you know, one thing occurred to me. I can't believe I'm saying this today, but it's a it's an interesting day in my family life. I had kind of a family issue come up about 10 minutes before I came on here that's pretty significant. And I was with my dad when he passed away, like physically with him. And um when he passed, my mom and my sisters didn't want to stay in the room with him just because it was so sad.

So I was with my dad for like an hour and a half before the hearse came. And uh I know this doesn't sound very motivational, but I think it will be if you remember what I said. And something dawned on me immediately when I was there, and that was that my dad wasn't there anymore. Meaning whoever my dad was was gone. And if you look around that room, my dad's body was still in there, but he wasn't. I had this deep sense my father was gone, even though I was with his body.

My dad's achievements were up on the mantle in the very room we were in. That wasn't my dad. My dad still had problems when he passed away. Those weren't my dad. My dad was a soul and a spirit. And that's who my dad was. He was an energy. He was a force, just like all of you are. We're not our accumulations. We're not our possessions. Even though I've accumulated and I possess a lot of stuff, I'm none of those things. I'm not my body. I'm something beyond that.

And I want to catch that ultimate version of me. And it's actually something that is not a speech. It's not just something in my book. It's pretty much how I live most of the time. I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. I I want to know how far I can expand, how much more I can love, how much more I can think, how much more I can feel, how much more I can give. the memories that I could have in my life. And so to me, there's this ultimate version God made me to be that I haven't met yet, but I'm excited to meet him and I'm pursuing him pursuing him and I'm pursuing him quickly because I'm running out of time.

And so, um, I think that's why maybe when I speak that people, whether you think I'm the best speaker in the world or the ninth best or whatever, doesn't matter to me, but you certainly will feel something when I speak because I feel it when I'm saying it. You can't transfer to somebody that which you're not actually experiencing. Not deeply. And so I actually deeply experienced this stuff. Like I have a great time. If you knew me, man, like I'll show you right here after I got about four hours of work today is where I will spend most of my time, which is in those cigars that are in that humidor.

Right. So like I have a great time. I mean I have a blast. The same time when you're around me, there's an edge to me. And if you're in my proximity and you're a friend of mine, I'm gonna you're gonna want to be you. Most stuff in life is caught, not taught. You're going to catch it if you're around someone like me. Like, I live life intentionally. I love life. I'm blessed to be here. I've had two heart attacks. I'm only 52. So, I know how lucky I am to be here.

In fact, right before I got here, I'm dealing with a very significant family thing that came up. And it's just another reminder of how precious life is. So, long answer. I apologize. But it's not just a quote in my book. It's how I try to live. to I try to live. Absolutely. So, um you know, one of the things I've been teaching people how to invest in commercial real estate for I know I know I know 22 years. 22 years. 22 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um so, one of the big difference between those that are very successful or even successful getting into the first deal is mindset.

It's getting over themselves. themselves. themselves. Um and you the first uh chapter in your max for life book, you talk about things happen for me, not to me. Can you get into that a little bit? Yeah. You know, the other thing too in buying real estate, because I've done a lot of commercial real estate too, is one of the part of getting over yourself is actually believing you have to know everything before you execute a deal. Um, the reason someone like you so valuable, the reason I agreed to speak to your group after we vetted you, because I get about 3,000 speaking requests a year, and I only do about a hundred.

And so, we vet them pretty carefully. I've had somebody take advantage of me in commercial real estate in in the last year. And so, um, you don't have to know everything to do every deal. And for example, the third deal I did in my life was a strip mall. I bought a strip mall on a seller carry. And I made a mistake where I didn't I did not clear one of the leans through the escrow. I made a mistake and it cost me a lot of money at the time.

Um, that happened for me, not to me, because I'm the most diligent dude in the world now when I do escrow. And I've saved myself probably $50 million on things I've caught over the 300 commercial deals I've done, for example, in escros. So, like everything that happens really ends up happening for you, not to you, if you believe that. And so, even my dad dying, we go back to that. Like, it happened for me, not to me. It's horrible that I lost my dad, but I live more intentionally because I did.

I'm a better dad because I did. I'm closer to my mom because it happened. I'm closer to my sisters. I I'm less focused on accumulating stuff and more about accumulating memories. So, anything in your life can happen for you, not to you. And especially if you're going to be in the real estate business, you have to believe that because there's cycles, there's markets. And so, sometimes getting's going to be really great, and sometimes it's not. And writing out a deal that's not going well for a while, you better believe this is happening for me and not to me.

Because if you think it's happening to you, you can make all kind of panic type decisions. Sell when you shouldn't, refinance when you shouldn't. There's all kinds of stuff that you can make mistakes if you don't know things are happening for you. So, I think that's a really profound quote. I'm not the only one who says it. I don't know if I was first or third who said it, but I I live by it. One of the stories you tell is about the thermostat, which the first time I heard it, I was like, "Wow, that's that's profound.

That's so real." Could you just give the brief version of that here and then we'll Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The most powerful force. By the way, are you from Massachusetts? I am. I am. I am. Yeah. Yeah. I hear it. You know that I am too. Did you know that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I heard it. Yeah. Once once New Englander, always a New Englander, right? Englander, right? Englander, right? Yeah. I'm from Weimoth, by the way. So, from Abington. from Abington. from Abington. You are. Okay.

Neither one of us grew up with any money. That's great. So, I uh and I uh I have an island I bought. You probably know because you follow my stuff, but I was in New England yesterday. yesterday. yesterday. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I bought an island called Hope Island. Talk about real estate. All All my life I wanted to own an island. I've bought it. I've done I want everyone there to have hope. Commercial real estate is the fastest way in my opinion if you do it correctly to get wealthy that exists in the world for an average ordinary person.

Let me just state that really clearly. And so I've done enough. I've done residential, commercial, I've built and sold companies. I've done all kinds of stuff. I've invested even in the stock market and made money. But I've also lost money in a lot of things. Commercial real estate is the best and fastest way in my mind to make money, real wealth, generational wealth that exists in the world. And so that's that's awesome. Um, in terms of your thermostat, this is a really important thing. The most powerful force on the planet is for you to be consistent with your identity or the way you see you or what you believe you deserve and your worth.

And I've watched this over and over, brother, where your thermostat setting is your identity. So if you're a 75 degree, let's just say, and you have multiple settings, happiness, fitness, wealth, love, you have multiple ones, but let's just say you're a 75 degree financially, right? And you start heating your life up. You do two or three deals. You're at 90, 95, 100. You're starting to really, you're at 100 degrees of financial results. If internally you don't raise the belief that you're worthy of that, you will unconsciously turn the air conditioners on of your financial life and cool it back down to what you believe you're worth.

You'll sabotage it. It'll seem coincidental. You're like, "Ah, a pipe broke. Ah, I made a bad deal. Oh, someone moved out. The tenant didn't do this." Or the market changed. It'll all seem coincidental, except it never is. It's this invisible air conditioner you turn on in your life. Yeah, you can have it in love. You all have that friend, let's say if you're a lady in there, who man, you meet her and she's met the perfect dude and she's in love and it's 150 degrees of bliss and you haven't seen her in six months.

You come back and she's like, "Ah, we broke up. He cheated. He wasn't right. He's not who I thought he was." No, you turned the air conditioner on again. And you keep picking the same guy in a different body so that you can cool it back down. And so in your life, you've got to increase the thermostat setting because you can have all the talent, all the skills, all the tools, all the deals you want, but you will cool it back down. You've all done as I say this, you're thinking of a situation in your life where you've done it or someone that you know.

And even for me, when I started to get, you know, I was worth a million, I was worth 10 million. I was worth a hundred million. I got to a particular number and I'm like, like, like, and I started to cool it back down again. And I had to read my own stuff. I'm like, wait a minute here. I need to alter my thermostat setting because the reverse is also true. When your thermostat setting's high at like a 100 and you're doing 70, you will turn the heater on and get it back up, which is a great thing, too.

I believe it's the single most invisible force in the world that dictates success. I teach this to my UFC fighters, my professional golfers, my NFL quarterbacks, the politicians I work with, the CEOs, the commercial real estate investors, my kids. Number one force in the world is your identity. You may say, "Well, what about faith, Ed?" Because you talk about faith all the time. Part of my thermostat setting is because of my faith. I believe God made me him as his image and likeness. Wants me to prosper.

Wants me to increase. So part of the fact that my identity is so high is that I believe I have a loving God who wants me to do something great with my life. So my faith is part of my identity. So it is an I can talk about that when I come out there, man. It's the number one mover. You ask yourself, how's a kid from Weaimoth, Massachusetts, with average intelligence, average intelligence, average intelligence, right? No connections, not nothing really that impressive about him. How does he become worth hundreds of millions of dollars and reach millions of people every week?

How the heck does that happen? It's the invisible force. I got a high thermostat setting that I've worked on all my life. And as I got to certain points, I knew the next move had to be a higher thermostat setting every time. So that's why I do read books. That's why you join groups like this. That's why you listen to my podcast. All those things are drips in increasing the temperature of your life. So that's how that works. I'm already getting fired up. Look at the veins are popping.

I'm all not even I'm not even It's not even September. I'm not even at your deal yet and I'm fired up. Yeah, that was so profound the first time I heard it. It's so brilliant. So then, you know, it is it's a matter of choice and it's a matter of just feeding yourself good stuff on a regular basis. It's going to allow you to live at a higher thermostat level. level. level. Yeah, bro. It's really true. And and all of you have always heard, hey, you're the who you hang around.

In my book, I actually teach you the actual tactics to change your thermostat setting. And it's not just who you hang around, although that is a part of it. And if you get this and you do it correctly, it'll alter your life. All of a sudden, let me tell you what starts to happen. Your reticular activating system in your brain starts to see deals that were there, but you missed all before. See investors that were there that you just never contacted. never contacted. never contacted. Miraculous things start happening.

You're like, "How in the world did I find this building when no one else wanted it? How did I find the investor? HOW'D I PUT THE DEAL TOGETHER?" Because your thermostat setting so high, it delivers these things to you. And that's not manifest hokey stuff. It's really true. And I think I can teach you how to do it. Obviously, you're an example of that. I mean, look at the success you've had. Let's talk about leadership because that's what I always think of when I think of you.

And in the book, in segment three of the book, guys, by the way, he talks about team dynamics and leadership. And obviously, dynamic subordination is this term that just stands out from the book. And then you kind of flip it on its butt a little bit in the book, which surprised me. So, what is dynamic subordination? What are your thoughts about it? Yeah, so dynamic subordination is is quite literally the uh task organizational structure for high performing teams. That's what it is. And and I was, you know, this this came to me in a moment.

I was being asked by some executives. I in front of executives and I had a whiteboard or flip chart next to me. They said, "Hey, Rich, can you draw for us the task or shape that would describe a high performing team?" And I was stumped because the models I had didn't tell the story. I could have done the pyramid with the leader on top and all the word goes down. I can't use that. It's too bureaucratic, too slow. I could have done the flat model, the flat line, right?

We've all heard about that. You know, no one ranks anybody. We're all in this together. It's all groovy. problem with the flat model is that you know sometimes it's difficult to figure out actually who's in charge and can happen on the right side of that line that's not seen or heard by the left side of that line. In other words, information gets siloed in a flat model pretty easily and that's not what happens in a high performing team. Uh finally I had the Robert Greenleaf servant leadership model where he flipped that pyramid upside down put the leader on the bottom said I'm in service to my the people in my span of care.

That's probably the most beautiful one if I were to pick one at least philosophically. However, still not how a high performing team operates because in a high performing team burden is distributed. It's not all on one person. And so really largely in frustration, I drew a blob on the on the flip chart and I said, "Where do you think the leader sits in this blob?" And I got answers like front, back, top, bottom, center. I said, "You are all correct. The leader is wherever the leader needs to be in the moment." And this is what we call dynamic subordination.

Dynamic subordination means that a team understands challenges and issues and problems can come from any angle at any moment. And when one does, the person who's closest to that problem, the most capable immediately steps up and takes lead and everybody and supports and then it swi switches the environment switches and someone else steps up. It's a dynamic swap between leader and follower. I also call it alpha hopping. That alpha position just hops to wherever it needs to be. This is how all high performing teams operate.

And I say this, I was an officer in the SEAL teams, okay? I did hundreds of missions. I was in charge of every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time it was opposite. I was supporting other people, my snipers, my preachers, my assaulters. Sometimes the environment shifted to be in support of me. All this tells us is that a very important concept that our position on a team has nothing to do with our rank or hierarchy.

Our position on a team has everything to do with what we're there to contribute to the team. And as leaders, it's our job to create that dynamically subordinating environment so that we have the highest performing, most efficient teams possible. In order to hold that together though, you have to have trust amongst that team. team. team. Yes. And boy, I tell you, I'm thinking of some businesses that I'm involved with where we had leaders that maybe not even been as dynamic or as talented, but they had really established trust and how we just flowed together as a group.

And then other teams I've been on where there just wasn't that trust established by the leader. It just never got established. And no matter how talented we were, how prepared we were, longterm we struggled. You talk about competence, consistency, character, and compassion. compassion. compassion. Of those, what do you think lacks most? And why are all four important? Yeah. So, uh so competence and consistency are often what teams especially in in the business world focus on uh because competence and consist competence is do the thing right.

Consistency is do the thing right over time. Okay, those are in large part visible and measurable. Okay, skill and skills-based. I would even concede. The problem is you're missing two very important ones. Character is the next one. And character is a big word. I' I'd break that down and maybe say integrity. Okay, so you have do the thing right in competence. Do the thing right over time in consistency. Do the right thing in character. And then finally, you have compassion. Do the right thing because you care about me as a human being.

Okay. Now, you can build an environment of trust. You can at least start building an environment of trust inside of any one of those four elements. It's only when you have all four that you have the longest lasting, most durable trust. And I'll give you a quick example. Okay? Imagine you and I are out having dinner somewhere. We decide we have some drinks. We decide we're not going to go home or we're not going to drive home. So, we we call a cab. The cab shows up.

We jump in the cab. The cab rolls out and within 100 meters runs into a telephone pole. We're not injured. We get out. We find we find our way home. No big deal. Okay. Couple of nights later, we're out again. We're having dinner, having some drinks. We decide not not to drive home. We call a cab again. Okay. The the cab shows up. It's the same driver from the night before. Are we going to get back in the car with that driver? The answer is no, we're not.

But rewind that whole scenario. You and I were out having dinner, having drinks. We decide we're not going to drive home. We don't call a cab. We call our mother, father, sister, spouse, brother, best friend. That person shows up. We jump in the car with that person. That person with 100 meters runs into a telephone pole. A few days later, are we going to get back in the car with that with that person? And now the answer is likely yes. Some people are like, "Nope, still not get in the But we also we probably will.

And the reason is because with that second person, we had all four. With the first person, the cab driver, we only had the first two. We had the consistency of the cab company. We had the perceived competence of the driver. As soon as competence took a hit, trust went away. With that second person, when competence took a hit, we had something to fall back on. And so, so what we need to focus on is building all four elements through our behaviors. Okay? Behavior. Trust is a belief.

Trust is a trust is a feeling that's been rationally justified by that person. So in other words, you cannot make anybody trust you. All you can do is behave in a way that allows someone to choose to make a decision to trust you. And so all this nonsense about someone coming like, "Well, I'll I'll trust that person when they earn it or whatever that is, that's nonsense." We as leaders have to go first in these behaviors and build that environment. Gosh, this is so good, you guys.

This every time Rich is on. So there's two things you're always doing. See how I go, guys? Like we just keep going with him. There's two things you're always doing, even if you don't realize it. You're always breathing and you're actually you're actually also always thinking and thinking is the process of asking and answering questions to yourself. That's really what a thought is. And so when we last talked I'm like this is going to be good because now I doubt maybe I'm wrong. I doubt when you were a SEAL you were into maybe well probably not true in the water you were but overall I doubt breathing techniques were the number one thing you were focusing on every single day.

No, not at all. So yeah. Okay. Good. So that assumption is accurate. So talk to us about activating activating activating our optimal neurology through either questions or breathing or both and take as long as you want on it cuz this is guys this is almost like pull the car over stuff right here. Yeah. Yeah. The uh so the breathing so so one of our uh pathways so one of our uh pathways into our autonomic response our autonomic nervous system if you will is the respiratory system.

We have a visual and respiratory system connected directly to the vagus nerve. And we can quite literally shift our our our physiology from sympathetic, which is our action state, to parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. Um, just through breathing alone or through visual tools. Breathing is very interesting because breathing you can actually use to modulate your autonomic response up, down, or even or even keep it neutral. Uh, so the couple couple ways to do that. So, so if you want to up your autonomic response, you want to get more excited, get more engaged.

Okay, that's you know Wimhof does this type of breathing, breath of fire, things like that. You you are you are inducing uh some autonomic response and there there's some techniques in the book you can do that that's typically not what we're talking about when we're dealing with people in stress, challenge or uncertainty because in stress challenge uncertainty what's usually happening is our autonomic response is starting to go up too far and we want to get it back down so we can actually make conscious thoughts and and then ask better questions which we'll talk about here in a second.

So, a couple ways, well, one of the ways you can do that is you can do what's called um CO2 blowout breathing. Okay? In other words, you're brea you're blowing out carbon dioxide. Why does this matter? One of the things that people don't recognize is that when we're say underwater or holding our breath, okay? That that discomfort, that stress that we feel is not because of a lack of oxygen. It's actually in fact a because of a buildup of CO2. Now, people like free divers and some seals understand this.

In other words, you can push past that discomfort because you have different oxygen reserves in your system. This is what free divers do. That's how they can hold their breath for 9 minutes is they know how to push past that discomfort and start accessing the oxygen reserves in other part of their body. I do not recommend this. This is very dangerous because what happens is as soon as you push past that first warning sign, you don't get another warning sign. In other words, you'll just go out.

Okay? So, I don't want anybody to try this at home. All right? Unless you're a free diver, you do it, right? But all this to say is that buildup of CO2 is what's causing stress. And so what we can do is we can literally begin to blow out our CO2 and begin to destress just through breath. One of the best ways to do this is called the physiological sigh. All it is is a deep inhale and then up on top and then a really slow exhale uh for you know 8 to 10 seconds.

So deep in. So is that a breathe in and then another one? one? one? Yeah. Breathe in and then a top off. Breathe in. So nice fast breathe in. top off nice slow exhale. You do that two, three, four, five times, you will literally feel yourself calm down. You're bringing your autonomic arousal down. You're bringing your frontal lobe back online in a position where you can start moving and picking horizons. Okay. The other breathing technique I talk about and many people have heard about this is box breathing.

Okay. Box breathing is in fact a technique that if you are at a perfect level of autonomic arousal, we might be like maybe you and I we just got on stage. You're like, "Okay, I'm right here. I don't want to get any more nervous, but I don't want to get any less. I'm I'm really I'm charged. I'm right where I want." Box breathing is a great way to do this. Box breathing is simply you're going to breathe in for a for a period. So, say four or five seconds.

I say 5 seconds. You're going to hold on top for 5 seconds. You're going to exhale for 5 seconds and then you're going to hold on the bottom for 5 seconds. It's literally just a square box. You can pick whatever timing you want in any of those lanes, whatever is comfortable for you. But if you do box breathing, it actually keeps you at your autonomic level and allows you to actually engage at the state you're in. Um, you breathe through the mouth. Do you reach through the mouth or the nose or both?

both? both? Usually, usually it's breathe in uh breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth, but it doesn't really matter. Okay. Okay. Okay. To the extent possible, in through the nose, out through the mouth, but it doesn't matter. doesn't matter. doesn't matter. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, this is the way we can actually start to manage and manipulate our autonomic arousal. Once we do that, once we are are able to do that, our frontal lobe comes back online and now we're in business cuz now we can start asking better questions.

better questions. better questions. There is something I want to ask you about that is gender specific that I've heard you talk about and I've only heard you talk about it and that is single parent homes as it affects young boys. I'm not a big gender guy like boys versus girls. I I really just think most people are humans. But there is a lot of evidence evidence evidence about boys that are raised without a strong male figure in their lives. And I was with, like I said, I was with my son this weekend.

And of all the things I am grateful for is he's had multiple strong male figures in his life. He's had myself, he's had two great grandfathers, he's had good coaches, good mentors in his life. And I feel like what a in addition to being a white male, but what a great advantage it is. And there was another young man with us who his dad's been in and out of his life most of the time time time and has not had a strong male figure his life.

Has an amazing mother who's worked two jobs and just has done everything she could for him. But in observing both of them in the same screen over the same period of time, I did see a confidence and a way about handling himself and a presence frankly to my son who not I'm not saying because he's my son who's had strong male figures and the absence of that in the other. What do you what do you think is the solution to that? And I'd like you to speak to that topic to so many single mothers listen to my show and have these boys they love so much.

What can they do when they this boy doesn't have that strong male figure? So, it's a generous question. So, first let's talk let's talk about the problem. Um, young men are four times as likely to kill themselves. If you go to a morg and you have five people who have died by suicide, four of them are men. And if you had any other demographic group killing itself at four times the rate of the control group, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated, 40% less likely to go to college.

I mean, we'd be moving in with programs, but because of the advantages that our generation received, there's a lack of empathy for them. And if you try to reverse engineer to and I do think we're finally having a productive conversation. The numbers are just so overwhelming overwhelming overwhelming that people are finally starting to pay attention. And that I track everything. I'm pretty into data. I track everything I do. And the number one email I've received over the last three months is some version of the following.

I get about 140 emails from strangers a day. And number and I categorize all of them. The number one email is it too late to buy Nvidia. It's hilarious. Everyone's obsessed with Nvidia. The number two email that I've gotten consistently for the last three years is a mom, usually a single mom, asking for advice about her son. And it goes something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son. My one daughter's in PR in Chicago. The other's in graduate school at Penn. And my son, who's 25, is in the basement playing video games and vaping and seems just totally lost.

There's a variety of factors that have come together here. One is just biological. Um, men's prefrontal cortex is 18 to 24 months behind the girls. They're literally more immature. Have Have your son and his 10th grade friends come over and the the 15 and 16-year-old boys are boys and some of the girls look like the junior senator from Pennsylvania in terms of how they acquit themselves. They just two 17-year-olds applying to college, a boy and a girl. The girls competing against a 15 and a half year old.

They're just biologically maturing later. And there's something weird going on. I don't know if it's hormones or pesticides, but girls are beginning to menrate earlier and boys their testicles are descending actually later. It's actually headed in the wrong direction. So, let's move to solutions. One, I think we need to red shirt and by the way, I'm paring my Yoda on this, Richard Reeves from the who's the president of the American Institute on Boys and Men. We need to red shirt boys. We need to start them at six and girls at five.

They're just less mature. Uh, two, more vocational programming. Bring back wood, metal shop, more freshman seats at universities. If you have an endowment greater than a billion dollars and you're not growing your freshman seats faster than population growth, you should lose your taxfree status because you're not a public servant. You're a Chanel bag. I mean, you've decided that you're basically in the luxury business. U I think we need a national service. I think men need to find their fraternity. The thing you also mentioned, which is that if you were to reverse engineer to when boys come off the tracks, it's exactly what you reference.

It's when they lose a male role model. We have the second most single parent homes. Dan Quail was right. Kids are better with two parents. Where he was wrong is it doesn't matter if it's two women or two men. But if it's a boy, he absolutely needs male role models. What's interesting is that in single parent homes, girls have similar outcomes. Similar outcomes of college attendance, similar income, similar rates of depression, self harm. It doesn't appear to really damage girls when they lose lose a dual dual parent household.

With boys, they come off the tracks. What it ends up the studies show is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker. So, what's the advice to moms who are 93% of single parent households? And let me be clear, I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary. Lie to my life. But my my mom immediately got men in my life. The neighbor down the hall went out of her way to introduce me to him. Got the sense he was an empathetic good guy.

Used to take me horseback riding on weekends. I had a stock I walked into a stock bro when I was 13. I wasn't very popular. I wasn't very good at school. I was into stocks. My mom's boyfriend gave me 200 bucks. Said if you don't go buy stocks by Monday, I want the 200 bucks back. I went down siro when I was 13 used to take two dimes to the phone booth at Emerson Junior High School call him I own Columbia pictures and he would teach me about the markets close encounters of the third kind is a hit that's why the stock was up 50 cents a day I go by Dean Winter Reynolds on Westwood and Wilshire and hang out with him for an hour literally Ed 45 years later he and I text each other oh wow oh wow oh wow male role models if you're a single mom, you have to get men involved in your son's life.

And also just for men, I've been thinking a lot about masculinity and what it means to be a man. You take care of yourself. You're fit. You're smart. You're kind. You take care of your immediate family. You take care, you start showing love and concern and empathy for your community and your neighbors. But the ultimate expression in my view of masculinity is when you take an active role and you become irrationally passionate about the well-being of a kid that isn't yours. Or put another way, I if we want better men, we need to be better men.

And unfortunately, because of the Catholic Church and because of Michael Jackson, if a man who has loved and care to give wants to get involved in a young man's life, there's suspicion. Oh no, there's something wrong with him. No, there's not. There's a ton of men out there that for whatever reason, maybe they have their own kids, maybe they don't, who have empathy and concern to give. And here's the thing, you don't have to be a baller, you don't have to be a senator, you just have to be a man trying to live a virtuous life.

You know what the most important thing to being a male role model is? Just being there, just spending time with the kid, giving him there just certain things a boy is not going to talk to his mom about. So it's a it's a variety of social programs, taxation, vocational programming, red shirting boys, national service, more freshman seats, and we as men ed there are 4 to one applications for big sisters in the US as for big brothers. brothers. brothers. Men have to get involved in boys' lives.

That's the bottom line. And we're finally having a productive conversation because whenever I think it really bottomed out about 2 or 3 years ago, you started talking about the problems with boys. There was a gag reflex of, "Oh, that means you don't like women." Empathy is not a zero someum game. Civil rights did not hurt white people. Heteronormative marriage did not hurt gay marriage. Recognizing the problems that young men are facing does not mean you're anti-women. And who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women.

Women. Women. How many times have we heard from people, I know all these great young women, high character, attractive, professionally on the ball, and they can't find a man. No, they can find a man. They just can't find a man that they just can't find a man they want to date. We are creating millions of lonely, economically, and emotionally unviable men. And it it is something we really need to be focused on. And we need to stop this nonsense that somehow that empathy is in any way anti-women or massages.

No, it's not. We need women are making unbelievable progress. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. It's fantastic. But we need to acknowledge something is not right in Houston right now. We need programs and we need attention and we need more men to get involved in the lives of boys. So much you just said is true. My show, it's funny, when it started, first three or four years was about 80% male and now it's about 70% female and it's the number one message I get as well is mom's concerned about their sons, which is why I covered the topic today because you guys all know I'm not a big guy on this gender, that gender.

I'm a big human person. Having said that, couple things he said I want to tell you. I was watching a on the flight back last night. I was watching a biography on Mr. Rogers and same thing you said just a guy who loved kids as far as I know right and uh all the flack and criticism just a man who lived a virtuous life who loved kids we have to not stigmatize these men that would like to get involved in the lives of young men and help them and the other thing everybody you know ask yourself if you have a son and he doesn't have a male figure what male figure get in his life and the other thing to look at that he said that I just want to unpack the worst combo that I see is a little boy who does not have a male figure who is also not physically fit.

100%. 100%. 100%. Look at their body. If that young man doesn't have a man in his life, ladies, that you've got a son and you're allowing him to get unfit physically, that is a lethal combination for where that young boy is going in his life. At least get him physically fit and active and working out and playing a sport and on a good nutrition program. It's a deadly combination for your young boy if he's got both those things against him. Heat. Heat. N.