Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 181. Breaking Barriers Through Adversity

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

In today's Inside Look episode, Bedros speaks with Steve Eckert, a US Marine, entrepreneur, husband, father, and instructor for The Project.   The Project is a 75-hour self-development program for men who want to break through their limiting beliefs and level up in four critical areas of life: Faith, Fitness, Family, and Finance.    As an instructor, it's Steve's responsibility to help unleash the beast inside of you and unlock your greatest potential.    Bedros gets to the heart of what drives Steve, why so many men these days seem to be anxious and depressed, why doing “hard shit” is necessary for personal growth, the impact of your circle of influence, what it means to be a role model father, and so much more.

You could be ripped and have six-pack ass make all the money in the world, but if your fucking kids hate you and your wife's fucking the neighbor, it doesn't matter how much money you have and what shape you're in. Hey, welcome to The Empire Show. My name is Bedros Kulian, and this is an inside look, and it's a very special inside look because we're going to take an inside look into the minds of men, the hearts of men, and of course, into the project. And so if you're a guy and you're listening, pay close attention.

And if you're a woman and you're listening, do not change the channel, go to a different podcast because this is very relevant not only to you, but also for the men in your life and the men that you might be raising. So here with us today is Mr. Steve Eckhart, one of the head instructors for the project. Steve, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, looking forward to it. It's a big topic here. It is a good topic, man. And so we are now seven classes deep into the project. For those of you that are like, what is the project? You've never heard of the project. It is a 75-hour straight men's development course. experience that takes men and helps them level up in their five F-bombs faith, family, fitness,

finance so that they can have a life of fulfillment, that fifth F-bomb. And so it's usually men who are entrepreneurs who are seeking to reach their fullest potential, find their purpose, right? And as we like to lovingly say it, they have something in their life that fucked them up and they're there at the project to unfuck themselves. Why does it take? hard shit, 75 hours of hard intense shit for a man to have that breakthrough. I think it's because in general manliness and masculinity, they have all these terms now. I don't even know the fucking terms, but it's frowned upon to be manly, which makes men soft. And I speak to men every day from all over the country, from all walks of life, from all over

the world even, and they've gone soft. They've gone soft because of they were never taught the way to think. They were never taught how to be a man. it's through the generations, through their heredity, through the social, social heredity that they've had in their life. Well, there's a lot of social pressure in killing masculinity, right? And so when you say men have gone soft, like give us examples of men, what softness means for,

in terms of for men and masculinity, and then tell us what does hardness mean? Because I have a feeling people think hard means, like you've got to go out there and kill, fuck, and conquer. Like, that's not what hardness means. Why don't you give an example for both? So I think a real, a true badass is a man who, sure, he can go out there and do those things you said, but he knows when is the time to also flip the switch and save the puppy in the middle, that's in the middle of the road, help someone out, be vulnerable, ask for help.

That's what makes a real confident man. That's what makes a badass. So men are either on one far end of the spectrum, the two extremes, either they just think that have to be rah, rah, ra, kill, pillage and all this other stuff. or if they think that's since that's so horrible, then they're just soft and weak and not speaking up, passive aggressive, not really showing who they are afraid to really show who they are afraid to be themselves. Because with themselves is somewhere right in the middle who's what a fucking man is. But you're not allowed to be a man anymore. It's you're almost racist if you're a man these days. It's crazy. It's funny that you say that. So we had this discussion. I said, hey, you know, let's make this a discussion about what it really takes to be a man. the project is all about and what we're doing with the project to help transform people. But as I see, what most people will do in any areas of life.

Like, look, one or two beers at a party is cool. Have one or two cases at a party. And now you've become that knucklehead that's not going to get invited to the party because you just broke the party up because of some stupid act, right? When the pendulum swings too far in any direction and any capacity of life, have yourself a few pretzels. Have yourself boxes of pretzels every day. you become a fat fuck. I love pretzels. Go to the gym every day and get jacked and rip.

If your pendulum swings too far that way where you're jacked and rip but you are not in touch with your mental and emotional side, then now you become this knuckle-dragging animal, right? And so I see that what ends up happening is the pendulum. We're living in times of extremes right now where don't be a man. It's hard and it's scary and you will be considered toxic. so then men begin to feminize themselves in areas of strength in decision making, in leadership, in communication. And soon, when you have this burning desire, because when they soften themselves and they take away all those things,

the ability to communicate directly and firmly, like we get feedback at the project and we ask them to give each of their feedback, and when they don't know how to lead each other, when they don't know how to lead their families, their businesses, et cetera, well, you still have that burning desire of being a man inside and so soon it comes out comes out as this passive aggressive energy which is what we see there at the project and so what would you say if like a dude's like all right man i think you're describing me i've totally stifled my alpha male and or maybe i haven't had a i haven't had an example of an alpha male in my life my dad was absent or he was a big pushover and i realized i feel this burning desire within me to be that servant and i haven't had a i haven't

savage that we talk about, but I don't know how. What is the process for someone to do this for themselves, to begin to harden up? It's simple. We have a saying of the project. We say project that shit. They have to do hard shit. They have to put themselves in those situations that are going to challenge them. Show them who they are, what they're capable of, what their true freak of potential is. What are they actually made of? What are they capable of? Because they're not. They're just living a nice life. They think average is easy. Mediocre is easy. They think that. when it comes down to it, average of mediocre is a whole lot fucking harder than being excellent and extraordinary. Living, you know, hiding in pictures because you're too fat because that was easy.

That was easy life. That's a lot harder of a fucking life than getting the gym every day. To me it is at least. The way that it's going to fuck up your head. Yeah. And to that point, when you say do hard shit, like let's give a great example because sometimes people take this the wrong way about do hard shit. Like one way I did hard shit recently, about a month ago was I decided, all right, today I'm not going to sleep. Instead of waiting for nighttime to come and I'm going to go sleep, as the sun falls down today, I'm going to go and start walking. I'm going to hike my entire city.

And I hiked and I invited people here at HQ and five people volunteer to come with me. And the whole night until sun up, we hike. So we're awake for 24 hours and we hike sundown to sunup covering 34 miles. And it was intentionally done untrained because we could have trained for it and built up miles for it. so that, you know, when the hip flexors and the knees begin to buckle and hurt, you're like, well, hey, you know, that doesn't happen. But if you don't train for it and just try and use mental toughness to go through something, you begin to touch this area of life in your mental capacity that you realize,

holy crap, I have so much more to give. And I've been operating in a state, like you said, of mediocrity of average, and that's difficult. And so another thing that you and your family did just this past weekend is you guys went on a hike that was seven miles up. Tell us about that. Yeah, it's a 15-mile hike. It's supposed to be the hardest hike in Southern California. It took us close to 15 hours because experienced hikers avoid this hike because it's just brutal. It's just relentless going up. We do hikes here and there, two, three miles, you know, around here, little local hikes, little hills. This is a fucking mountain. And what we did is took our kids with us.

And actually a couple project graduates. We had two of the recent graduates come. They brought their kids who never had any hiking experience. And it's just a matter of getting, getting through that controlling your emotions because it's exactly what you said not training for it that's what to me emotional resiliency is once you get into those extremes is having to be able to come back to the center that's what resiliency is to have that emotional discipline is to stay in the middle resiliency keeps you back get you back to the middle when that's a good way to describe it's going crazy and that's what mental toughness is and yeah it's not hard doing hard shit doesn't mean do things that you're good at it means make yourself uncomfortable you need to put yourself

in situations where you're not the master, where you're the stupidest in the room, you're the slowest, the fattest, the softest, the dumbest. And that's what real hard shit is. It's not courageous to do something that looks courageous to other people, but it's easy to you. You know, if you like to fight, going to get in a fight is not courageous. But sticking up for someone and doing the right thing, maybe that's the courageous thing to do, you know? That's really well said. So to that point, you took your son and your daughter and your wife with you. Explain to the audience how old your kids are so they can understand that one of the, I think the hardest hike in all of Southern California, seven and a half miles up and then seven and a half miles down. And by the way, that's so

steep on the way down that you're sliding. It's twice as hard as the way up. You're busting your ass falling all over the place. With, by the way, narrow passageways in some areas where there's like just sheer cliffs next to you, right? And so how old are you kids and why do you take your daughter and your son to something like that? Well, so my son's nine and my daughter's six. And this is a big breaks her with my daughter too. The first hour, you just start hitting that hill and her little legs were fried. They were done. Once she started talking, having fun, she made it look easy. She embarrassed the rest of us. She was skipping, dancing, cartwheeling on the final stretch while we're all dragging ass because she hasn't been conditioned like the men we're talking about. They've been conditioned

to think easy. Think so if she hasn't got there. She started to get there and broke through it. She bounced back in. That's the resilience that we're talking about. And the reason why we do shit like that and we go on crazy bike rides and we wake up at 1.30 in the morning to go do a workout or something like that. We do all kinds of crazy shit is because I made the decision what I think a lot of men didn't do in their life. Made the decision to break the fucking cycle. The break the cycle of shit in your family that had made fucked up man after fucked up man for generations. So who knows how far back. So I made the decision. I took the stubbornest DNA that I got from my father and I said, all right, I'm going to use that same stubbornness DNA to break the cycle, to do everything the exact opposite

he does. As a weapon instead of a crutch. Exactly. I'm going to weaponize that. I'm going to weaponize the addictiveness and the personality that he gave me in my blood. I can't do anything about it, but I can make the decision how I'm going to use it. How am I going to use a nuclear weapon for good or for evil? So I made the decision. I'm going to break the cycle. But

in order to do that, I'm going to have to give my kids a life that I never solved. We're giving experiences I never had before. Take them on trips. Let them ride first class in a plane. But that in turn would then make them fucking soft. Then they wouldn't be able to have that mental toughness. and mental, emotional resiliency that we're talking about if they didn't have some of that.

You need a fucked up life. Yeah, that is true. Suffering and adversity introduces a man to his highest self. That's a given fact. And every stoic philosopher has talked about that because it is within suffering that you begin to build compassion. And it is within suffering that you begin to find that your inner demons. It is within suffering that you begin to process through your challenges or the shit that's holding you back. Like, you've had a pretty tough childhood with your dad pretty much ignoring you.

You share this openly at the project. I don't think it's a secret. And now we're going to share it with the world here. And I've had a tough childhood growing up, you know, between the ages of four and six, I was molested by two older boys. And these things, these traumatic events that happened to us, end up programming us to either, in my case, I felt unlovable, broken, rage, shame, confusion. And so we began to look at the world through a set of filters of,

the world's not safe. It's not a good place. I'm not meant to be loved and experience happiness and greatness. Whatever traumatic experience happened, whether it was, you know, dad ignoring you and I think one of the funniest stories you tell is how, was it the wall

that was your best friend? Best friend. Tell me about that. How did the wall become your best friend? Well, I didn't know what to play with, so the side of the house I would just take a tennis ball and play a nine-name baseball game against the wall

and I won almost every time. I lost a few, but I'd sit there for hours and hours. The wall never fucking argued with. With me, I was like, this is great. This is heaven. So, so let me do a little digging because, you know, I like to openly share like what happened to me.

And then that, by the way, the stuff that I just shared what happened to me being molested as a kid, that's just pre-coming to the United States. Then as my family and I, we moved to the United States, I was six years old. My dad and mom didn't realize that they saved me from constant molestation. And then we get here and we're living in Section 8 government-assisted housing. And now you're having gangbangers who live in these. housing complexes, these apartment complexes. I just listened to that the wrong way.

I heard gang bang. I was like, you're complaining about that? No, no goats around. You're having gangbangers beating you up because you're the foreigner. And so there was more adversity. As I look back, that adversity taught me to self-soothe. That adversity taught me that I can bring to violence

if I have to. And I wasn't a good fighter, but you quickly become a good fighter when you start getting into a lot of fights. Soon you realize I have to, something has to change. They're not going to stop beating me up. something has to change.

And for me, it was, I'm going to carry a knife. And I might not be able to fight the four of you at once, but I could stab one of you and the rest of you were going to run. Like I knew if I could poke one of them, they're fucked. The rest of them were fucked. So all that said, but that also led me into a life of, you know, police helicopter chase. And I talked about home invasion robberies and carjackings until I straighten my life out.

But where your dad was concerned, because when you look at the 50% divorce rate in this country, and then you look at the parents who are together, I believe at least half of those 50% who are together are fucking up their kids. In what ways were you, I don't use the word traumatized, were you properly fucked up that gave you the superpowers to be who you are today? Well, by playing with a wall for hours and sitting at home by yourself doing nothing, no one talking to you, become a ghost, you feel like a ghost.

Okay, but now as an adult, I could sit there and you could, say I'm on a business trip, I could sit in a hotel, you can go get yourself into trouble. We're in Vegas. You can go get yourself into trouble. which we've seen happen a lot. Exactly. When you were in my mastermind, they'd go out and get trashed,

make bad decisions, exactly. So I've taken that as a superpower, say, okay, I can use this. I could sit here alone by myself for eight hours. I could write emails for the next three months and bang it out. I could build a fucking million dollar business in a day.

Thanks, Dad. Like, you taught me how to do that. I want to make sure I don't take that away from my kids. If I start giving them just this easy life of luxury, because the earlier thing you asked was, is what I call it, manufacturing adversity. That's something I'm applying adversity in their life so that when

shit goes sideways, the world's fucked up. They have to be able to deal with that. Otherwise, they'll crumble under that pressure. And we actually just had a guy in the project recently. Sometimes, like, you have those serial killers out there and their neighbors always say, he was such a nice, sweet young man, and he never caused any trouble. He was. Sometimes they had too good of a life, you know, and they just, all that built up. Are you talking about Mike? I don't know. We didn't want to say anything. I didn't call him a cereal killer. He wasn't eating fucking bodies in the basement like Jeffrey Dahmer or anything, but But yeah, I want to manufacture adversity then.

Apply adversity in their life. So when shit, like, I curse in front of my kids all the time. They shot guns. They see guns. So when they see a gun, they won't think, oh, what's this? And start shooting it and they know how to respect it. And that's at manufacturing adversity. I told, we talk shit.

We joke around. We talk shit with each other. We were sarcastic. So one day someone's going to tell my kid in junior high school, oh, you're fucking stupid. You're a loser. He's going to go, oh, wow, you really get my feelings. Big fucking deal. And then he's going to punch him in the face.

They're going to be clean up piles of blood and teeth and whatever. But that's besides the point. I'm ready for that conversation with the principal. But yeah, it's manufactured adversity, so they're ready to deal with shit. Because otherwise, they'll just become soft like the men we're talking about. And it's weird, man, because adversity and suffering could be factory installed. Like for us, adversity was factory installed, whether through bad parenting or just some fucked up, you know, older boys in the neighborhood who decided to do bad shit to me, right? And so when that becomes factory installed, we begin to, so there's this thing that my therapist told me, he's like, hey,

because when he would bring up subjects that I didn't want to talk about, especially about being molested as a kid, I would just look out his window. We were on the second floor of his office, Kevin's office, and look out the window and just stare at my car. And he's like, Beidhar's who there? Beidhar's who there? And I would just be looking out the window, but nod yes.

But I wouldn't look at him. And he goes, hey, can you look at me? And I looked at him. He goes, can I tell you what you're doing right now? And I thought I was just kind of paying attention, but I wasn't. It's called disassociation. I was disassociating from the conversation

that wasn't making me feel good, right, that I didn't want to necessarily engage in with him. And so he goes, let me tell you about this association. You might have used this in all your companies that you built, which is how to silo your brain. We call it, you know, I know how to put everything in a box, right? And we can compartmentalize and put our emotions in a box and then take care of business.

We can compartmentalize, put our family in a box, and take care of business. And he goes, this association may have served you well, but I'm going to bet that it's also, not served you well because I wonder if when you get into an argument with your wife, if you then mentally check out as well. And I was like, shoot, man, you got me because I'd mentally checked out from our conversation. And so while it works great and I can avoid all distractions and put everything around me in the box and focus on building my franchise, the supplement company,

the project, whatever, I could also do that with my family when, let's say, me and die are having a conversation that leads to some hard discussions. And once I'm done, I'm doing, done, I can disassociate. Well, the problem with that is, is disassociation is the first step into creating multiple personalities. And so that's not a rabbit hole you want to go down. And so again, it was a matter of him giving me tools to deal with that. And for me to take those tools and install them, the times I was able to think about it was when I put myself through these six week challenges, whether it was trained for six weeks and run a marathon, the six weeks of jiu-jitsu training, where three times a week I'm training in jiu-jitsu for two hours at a time,

just having my ass handed to me, but it's in those moments of pain and adversity and suffering that I was being able to process the things that my therapist was giving me and telling me. And then you look at people who haven't had adversity in their life. You look at people who they've had comfort and a balanced childhood, a factory installed. Our kids have that.

Had you and I not manufactured adversity in their life? So you and I had factory installed adversity. our kids have factory installed happiness and balance and peace and serenity until we bring the chaos to their life so that they're able to experience the other side. Like you said, I want my kids to experience different countries and rub elbows with different people and sit in first class and stay at hotels that are five star and beyond. But I also want them to understand how to deal with hardship, how to control their emotions, how to have resiliency and how to fight through hardship. And that's the piece that we've forgotten. And so whether it was the bike ride you did with your kid, the family hike you guys did over the weekend,

whether it's the hiking through the night I did with a group of people here, or the weekly ice baths I do with my family. My son and I, actually, I took a piece out of your book, the pit in the back of the project compound. Well, we decided that we're going to crawl the pit, just like we have the guys crawl it. But in the process, look for shards of glass and pick them up. So you might be disappointed that next class there's no glass.

I just put those out there. What the fuck? What a waste of my time? Because I was out there. I was like, dude, there's like broken glass out there, Andrew. He's like, yeah, dad. I'm like, dude, we should go clean it up. I was like, you know what?

Steve did say that he and his son were going to crawl this thing. But then I think your son said something to the effect of... He's like, what am I going to tell the teachers in them all slice up? They're going to think out of these abuse or something. Yeah. So my son being 15 years old, abuse is less likely, number one. Number two, I don't know if your son's going to actual physical. school, my kids aren't. They're doing the whole laptop thing. So I'm like, hey, buddy, we're

going to finish our workout and we're going to crawl this thing. And in the process, we're going to clean up all the shards of glass so the next class doesn't have to go through it. And it's that adversity that I see when he, he knows how to turn it on. At 15 years old, 14 years old, 13 years old, he knew how to flip the switch where I had to learn that in my late 20s and 30s. Like what a disadvantage I had over the advantage that we're giving our kids. Our kids are going to be, they're going to out fucking shine us in every area of life when they grow up. Yep, yep. So as we get guys into the project, it's funny because some guys come fucked up with traumatic

events and hardship and they've been molested and beaten and, you know, one guy, I think there's a couple guys now that have gone through the project, killed someone, not intentionally, but you know, in an accident killed someone and they carry that guilt and the weight of that. And we help them break through the cycle of the guilt and then the vice that they use, whether there's drugs or alcohol to deal with that guilt and then to be able to find their superpower. But as people come to us, whether they're too soft or too fucked up, we see one common thread, a sense of depression in men, a higher level of depression and a higher level of anxiety in men. Where is that coming from these days?

I think it's, again, it goes back to not knowing how to deal with those things. They were never taught. They were never taught how to learn. They were never taught how to think. Like that's what I want to do with my kids. Not just give them the experience that I never had, not just manufacture the adversity, because that could just be, that could also swing too far to one end of the pendulum, right? Either at the same pendulum, too much adversity or too much comfort.

I'm also trying to teach them how to think by my actions, the way that I'm acting. I try to teach them how to think, teach them how to learn, teach them how to process stuff, teach them how to make decisions for themselves, not me making decisions. We just came up with a thing recently that my kids don't have to ask if they can play video games. They don't have to ask if they could watch TV. they decide on their own. Just don't fuck it up. You better have done everything you were supposed to do, clean your, done your laundry because

they do their own laundry, both kids, six years old and nine years old. Nice. They'd be doing it for years. So let them think for themselves. Let them make their own decisions. Learn how to make decisions. And if they fuck up a decision, they're going to pay the consequences for it and learn that. I think a lot of men never were taught that.

They were just, it was too far end of the, all right, there's a difference scene of adversity. That's going to make you stronger. There is a far end of that adversity. like some people are just were so fucked up that they need a little more than just doing hard shit like that's just the way it is yeah and i saw that one of your your posts one time is that there's nothing we're talking about where you you said something about doing hard shit is to take care of anxiety and depression and i saw all kinds of people jumping on you're like obviously there's another fucking level of extreme where someone just needs serious professional help and right doing hard shit's not going to help them but as long as you give them just enough adversity but also teach them how to think teach them how to make decisions teach me how to do the right thing then that's the difference. That's what I think most of those men didn't have. So it's funny that you say that, right?

And you're right. Majority of the men's suffering. And when we say majority, like if all the men who are suffering through anxiety and depression, there's more of them these days than ever before, especially here we are in 2021. Statistics are coming out. More men are suffering from depression and anxiety than ever before. 90% of those, they can fix that through consistent and installed or manufactured

adversity in their life because as you're running eight miles a day and by the way if you're like well bedros i can't run eight miles a day neither could i i literally was walking like when i started training for the marathon the six weeks of training i was i walked one mile and i was like man this is really hard on my knees like i'd rather go deadlift and squat all day long and going back to what you said earlier i'm good at deadlifting and squatting and benching so that might that's not hard it's not hard it's not hard it used to be hard right it might be hard for someone who comes into the gym, they've never been in the gym, they're looking around, they feel intimidated, they see mirrors, they don't want to see themselves in the mirror, they're holding the bar, they're

helicoptering with the bar because they don't even have that proprioception and balance in place. That's hard for that guy. If I've been deadlifting for 20 years and squatting for 20 years, it's not hard for me. So to put a picture of me deadlifting and say, do hard shit is an absolute lie. I'm an imposter. It's staying awake, which I don't like to stay awake late because I need my sleep, and it's walking unprepared for 34 miles through the middle of the night, that's hard shit. And that is when you begin to process through all the different things, which reminds me of a show that, so every night, my family and I, we watch one episode of a show together.

Right now we started watching. So we used to watch The Survivor, and actually one of the TV show Survivor main stars, Joe Anglam, he was on three seasons of Survivor, went through the project. I think he was in Project Class 3 or 4. But on the tail end of that, you know how Amazon will say, Hey, if you liked watching the Survivor show, you might want to watch a show called Alone. And they take like 10 people and they go, you can pick 10 things with you, survival gear.

And we're going to drop you off on Vancouver Island. And they're like 10 miles apart. And this is the area you can be. So here's a body of water. You can fish in. You can go trap animals. You've got to build your own shelter. last person who hits the,

and they give them a little GPS transponder, the last person who hits the come save me button, wins $500,000. But if Steve and I are the last two there, we don't know that eight other people have hit the button. It's not until you hit the button or I hit the button that then a boat shows up the next day. They give that final person one more 24 hours.

A boat shows up. And now the person, by the way, there's no camera people like the survivor. They give your own camera gear. So you're micing yourself off. And so these guys and gals, they set up the camera and they're just talking to it. And at the beginning, they're like, woohoo, I got this thing. I could do it.

I'm a bushman. I'm a craftsman. I can do all this. By day 10, there's like three people left. And typically they go 40, 50, 60 days. And every single one of them, as they begin to get hungry, as they began to get chased by bears, lose sleep, do hard physical shit every day, they start looking into the camera. They're like, you know what? I need to be better to my wife.

I realize that I constantly think that I know the answer to everything. And I need to be a better father and I need to have more patience with my kids. Like, no therapist anywhere on the island, bro, they come in thinking they're God's gift to humanity because they're bushcraftsmen, not realizing how arrogant and cocky and fucked up they are. They have breakdowns on camera that they set up and come up with these great epiphanies. Like, holy shit, I realize how I messed up my kids. And I'm going to go back and apologize to him. And it's so neat.

to see that. And if there was ever a great example where adversity and suffering will introduce you to your highest self, because every problem that we create in here, the same brain will create the solutions if the brain is silenced and given enough time and adversity to work through a problem, which we don't do in these days because we have our iPhones and food gets delivered to us and everything's comfortable and easy. Oh, yeah. And so, but you're right. There's that other 10% of humanity, of men, who do need to go get professional help. Like, they're too far gone in a way

where just doing a hard shit isn't going to do it for them. And so, during the project, if there was a person who was committed to bringing the hardship to the candidates who go through it, it's you. It's you.

I bring them all the fun shit. We do the fun stuff. Well, it's funny because at the end, so those of you that don't know, have this graduation dinner at the end. So this last project class started with, I think, 19 guys had registered for it. 16 actually showed up. A few backouts in the last couple hours.

And I always look at it this way. Imagine there's a stadium, right? There's a stadium. And they're like, dude, you need to go and play this game. It's a soccer game, whatever. Football game, could be whatever. You need to go play this game. Well, 18 dudes suit it up, but then only 16 showed up to the stadium.

And then of the 16 that showed up to the stadium, really, in this case, how many graduated? Was it eight? Eight? 50%. Yeah, 50%. The rest rang the bell and gave up. And one of our other head instructors is Ray Care, former Navy SEAL, and with you as a Marine, you and Ray bring the thunder, but you have a very special way of bringing the thunder

to get these guys to start negotiating with their inner bitch and quit. And my job is the Papa Bear is to make sure that they don't quit, to understand the difference being injured and hurt. If you're hurt, keep going. If you're injured, we've got a medic that's going to help you. There's all those other factors. But they, you can tell how much they hate you when you're putting them through all the suffering and adversity. And we have them give each other feedback about every three or four hours. We have them rank each other because in life you're being judged. And I don't care what everyone says, you're watching this or listening to this. Not alone for a lot of men is adversity. That's putting them in a position to transmit and

receive feedback. Feedback. To stand in front of another man, look him in the eyes and tell him what he needs to do what he needs to unfuck himself but then also to subdue your ego and have another man tell you that that right there is is a huge form of adversity for those guys they never had it they never have they never have and we go with that extra mile and we go hey go stand in front of him be specific with not just like hey Steve you need to pick it up you need to step it up yeah how often do we hear that you need to step it up it's like hey tell him in what way in what evolution and what could he have done different because now if it's like hey Steve during the hiking evolution you could have done this different you became selfish and you for while you had the wristband

And to be the leader, you were selfish and you weren't taking care of the tribe. Da-da-da-da-da. Now Steve can go do something about it. But during that graduation dinner, we do something different. Now we allow them, the graduates, that are the men who have made into the brotherhood, to rank us five instructors. And inevitably, while they all hated you, like I could see the hate in their eyes and when I pull them into the...

Oh, they want death upon me. Yeah. They want me to burn in fucking hell. And when I pull them into the lobby on their way out and we give them their stuff, their suitcase and stuff, and the junior instructors take them... them back to the hotel, they don't have the nicest things to say about you. Yet those eight the graduate, or however many that graduate, depending on the class, when they rank, they always rank you as number one. And I find that interesting, but I also find that so telling of the human spirit,

that as much as we hate the idea of voluntary putting ourselves into suffering, once we've done it and we've made it to the other side, we're so grateful for that adversity and suffering. And they rank you is number one, almost in every class. I think every class now, they've ranked you as number one when you add collectively to it. I think they think it's still part of the test, and they're just afraid that they're going to fucking get tortured again. They think we're going to go right out to the pit in their tuxedos and all that. But yeah, you're right.

That might be it. But the reality is it's not. And what these guys are really saying is they respect the fact that you brought the suffering over those 75 hours. But I was telling someone the other day, and they go, how can people go through 75 hours? How can men go through 75 hours of physical torture? I'm like, are you nuts? Like, it's not 75 hours of physical torture.

They go, but we see the videos you put up there. They're in ice baths, and then you're putting them through these pits, and then they're running, and then they're hiking, and then they're in the ocean, dealing with the waves. Like, look, that's a one-minute sizzle reel, and it's sexy. And we put badass music to it, and Ed here edits it, and it becomes this killer, like, sizzle reel for that class. Really, when you strip away what the project is,

it's two-hour sessions. I think the first one is right around 25, 26 hours in, the hunt and destroy, which is a sit-down journaling exercise. And then part two of the hunt and destroy is like 38, 39 hours in. And that's where we begin to hunt and destroy. We hunt for their toxic cognitions, their negative belief systems, the things that are limiting their growth and their ability to experience good relationship, or they sabotage their health, their fitness, their relationship, their business.

Once we hunt those things, how it happened, and then we go in part two, here's the superpower. But this person asked me, well, why do you have to put them through all that physical torture in order to get them to be honest? I had my answer, but if someone asks you that, why do you guys physically torture them just to have them, like, why not just have a four-hour thing, two hours and two hours, and every guy go through the hunt and destroy process and be done? Couldn't we save more men that way? Well, first, the people who think that, how can you put them through the, physical, human bias capable of so much more than people thinking. That's why you do things like the hike that you did through the night. Like people call, like, I love Tim Grover in his book.

He talks about Michael Jordan, how Michael Jordan was such a hero because he had a stomach flu and he was playing basketball. He was throwing a fucking ball through a hoop with a little tummy ache. Like, come on, running around. That's not a hero. A hero or people like Jason Redmond who got shot in the face. That's a fucking tough day. So if it was 75 hours of just physical torture, they could even endure that.

The human body could take a fucking lot. It's all on your head. The physical part is the easy part. It's the mental and the emotional side. But in order to get to there, you have to break down physically. That's when you let your guard down. That's when you start thinking. Like those guys you were talking about in that show, they start thinking about it.

And that's what's going on right now in the world. That's the men who are stepping up. That's why the project is selling more than ever at the highest price ever. They're sitting at home during this pandemic. They're either going to go one of two ways. They're going to sit there and they're realizing how fucked up their life is and they're just going to make excuses and blame the government, blame fucking riots and they're going to go steal some shit out of a fucking Apple store.

Or they're going to say, you know what? I need to unfuck myself. And that's when they're getting on the phone with us and they're showing up because they realize that they've been fucked up and they've been just average, mediocre, like we were saying. You need that physical breakdown to be built back up mentally and emotionally. It's almost impossible for it to happen without that. And that's an important piece. And let's share that for a moment.

I don't know much about the human mind by way of women think this way and men think that way other than no, I know how I think and I can perceive how my wife might think. But I do know this, that when my wife goes out with her friends, they might go and have a little something to eat. They sit around a dining table somewhere and they have some wine and they openly look at each other and they share their life experiences and what hardships they're going through and they have a good time and they're able to process through it. Men, on the other hand, we're conditioned, number one, and number two, I do believe it's a biological thing. We're gifted with the ability to compartmentalize shit because the caveman couldn't be like, oh, man, I stubbed my toe, therefore I can't go fight the saber-tooth tiger. He has to put the stubbed toe aside or put the fact that the cave just caught fire and go and fight the saber-tooth tiger. So we're good at also compartmentalizing shit.

And so when you're like, hey, B, how's it going? I'm like, good. Even though, like, my life might be a disaster, good. Now, if all of a sudden, you and I went and started doing some hard shit together, tough shit, where I'm exhausted, you're exhausted, and I'm stuck, I can't go anymore, and you're like, dude, we've got to go up three more flights on this hill, and you're grabbing my arm and pulling me up, and then I get a burst of energy. I'm like, Steve, now I'm going to help you up. Once we get to the top, we've got a very different bond. We just went through some hardship, some suffering. And now if you're like, hey, man, how's life?

I'm like, bro, let me tell you how life is right now. And that's what men start breaking down and crying. Yes. It's their guard is up. They're just, oh, I'm a badass. I have to be a badass until you, they say fatigue makes a coward of us all in a way. That's a coward in a good way, breaking them down because men think it's cowardly to talk about their emotions and talk about what they're fucked up with. You have to break them down.

You have to break through the shell of the fucking turtle to get to the mushy stuff on the inside. You'll never get through it until you break them down. The second you break down is when you can get to where the fucking problems are, how they need to unfuck themselves. And the thing is, the guys ask me on the phone all the time. What are you going to do for me? How are you going to fix me? I'm like, we're not going to fix you. We're going to fucking, you know, methodically and strategically break you down with specific

attention to DSA. The way we do it is all very strategic. Everything has a purpose. We're just going to break you down. And you're going to have these breakthroughs, these discoveries, these aha moments. I can't tell you what that's going to be. I can't give you the answer. But I guarantee you if you're one of those people that doesn't want to go ring the bell,

that really makes the decision that you want to break the fucking cycle in your life, I want 100% guarantee and 100% confidence that you will find those discoveries. and you'll leave after only 75 hours at a whole different trajectory in your fucking life because of that physical breakdown. It's going to open up your mind, open up your emotions, your thoughts, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially,

and you'll start doing, saying, and thinking things that you never knew existed. Like, that's what I'm going to fucking bring out of you. I'm going to beat it out of you. The things that you thought were impossible, the things you never knew existed. It's like Napoleon Hill talks about the mastermind principle.

how when two people get together and put their mind together, focused on something, they come up with this outcome that neither one of them had the skill or knowledge of it. They never would have gotten on their own. That's kind of way I like to think of it.

When all of us project and start to get together, it's like a mix of the Ninja Turtles, the Avengers, and the fucking three stooges when we get together. But with our recipe of disaster that we put on them, it comes out this thing

that none of us, you, me, Ray, Aaron, none of us could have come up with on our own, but it's the culmination of it all together that they come up with this, like epiphany, this breakthrough, and it's, it's something that they couldn't come up with their own, we couldn't come up with, it just gets fucking smashed together and it comes out

with this outcome. And they now have this new trajectory of like, holy fuck, how did I never know that, how to never see that? And none of us could have figured out. They couldn't have figured out until we put this whole mishmash of just fucked up in this together. And we do that really well. Toot our own horn, we do that really well. And I think part of it is we are subject matter experts in different areas, right? I mean, you've got the SWAT guy, you've got the MMA guy, you've got obviously just while

by the way I'm going to tell you guys right now while you guys are hearing the intensity and the passion in Steve's voice

and you might go like oh my God he's an animal because I just described them as the guy that they all hate and would rather ring the bell

than spend one more minute in the pit or wherever that you're delivering the torture you're also the guy that has so much compassion,

care, love and empathy for them on the other side of that don't ever call me those things ever again kill my whole

fucking reputation Yeah, we're going to have to edit this out, Ed. We're going to have to edit this out. But to that point, one thing we share, and I think it's important for all men to know this, for all of humanity to know this, I think we somehow got sold on the idea that blood is thicker than water. And when I first heard that, I was like, that just doesn't sound right. Blood is thick than water. And I started thinking about that specifically when, again, Kevin, my therapist, started talking to me about one thing specifically.

I was like, look, did you pick your mom and dad? I'm like, no, I didn't. I was born to them. Did you pick your brother and sister? No, they were born into the family that I was. Did you pick your kids? Like, shit, no, I didn't. They were just born to me and my wife.

So there's really one person that you picked, your wife. Like, holy shit, yeah. And so the term blood is thick in the water really is, and when you pick your wife, like you're married, you've got a wife, you only, you and her know the adversity, that you guys have gone through to build up your gyms out there in New York, right? And the adversity you guys have gone through, excuse me, as a family, to continue to grow and challenges and suffering.

Same with my wife and I. And so I realized, maybe it's not blood is thick in the water because we're not even blood. You and your wife aren't blood. Me and my wife aren't blood. And so as I started to do the research on blood is thick in the water, I realized that line is taken out of context. The real line is the covenant of the blood. sorry, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,

meaning when two people have spilled blood together, they have suffered together, they have gone through hardships together. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. When two people have suffered together and shed blood together, that is thicker and holds more value than two siblings born from the same, the water of the womb, from the same parent. And that is so powerful.

When you see men go to war and they come back with a, deep love and regard for each other. And you're like, man, you two aren't even, like, related. You guys didn't even know each other. In fact, you're, like, you're Southern and you're an East Coast dude. And, like, in the real world, you guys shouldn't even connect. Yet they're tighter together than the dude that has a brother. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And it's for that reason that we put these men through that suffering, the adversity, and breaking them down because I realized with my son one day, dude, I was driving with him to the beach we're going to surf. Well, before we left to the beach, as we're loading up the sun. surfboards. I'm like, hey, son, you know, what's going on? You have a girlfriend. You're at that age where you're probably going to start taking interest in girls. Like, oh, dad, I don't want to talk about it. I was like, shoot, all right, fine. We're not going to talk about it. So now we're in the car and we're both looking straight. I'm like, hey, son, so come on, man, like, you've got a girlfriend,

is there someone you're interested in? Come on, you can lay it on me. I won't tell mom, right? Oh, dad, come on. I don't want to talk about it, but there might be someone. That was it. He reluctantly threw a little thing out there. Now, after an hour of fighting the waves and And high-fiving each other when we caught waves and then trying to help each other not drown when obviously the waves would take us down. When we got out of the water, he was like, hey, Dad, let me tell you about this girl. And I was like, holy smokes. That's what it took. We had to suffer together an hour.

And neither one of us are the greatest surfers. So when the waves are big and dana point, like we're really fighting to not drown, right? And so in that moment of us looking after each other, it created that bond. And it could be temporary. It could just stack on top of each other. keep putting yourself through hardship with your son like you are like I am, et cetera, with our kids. And I was like, holy crap, man.

He just opened up afterwards because he's like, you know what? Dad's got my back, not just as dad, but he's my buddy. He's someone who really is looking out for me. And I think that's risked your life together. You want to do hardship together. Yep. So that said, in your experience, in your opinion, do you believe there's a balance of money and meaning in marriage or is it all one?

Like you see dudes who are just all about, I'm going to go make all this money, their marriages are fucked up. They don't have any purpose and meaning in life. Their health is that fucked up. Is that how it's supposed to be? Well, it's the same thing as we started with about the extremes, the pendulum. You could be ripped and have six-pack ass,

make all the money in the world, but if your fucking kids hate you and your wife's fucking the neighbor, it doesn't matter how much money you have and what shape you're in. And that's why that fifth F, we, I call it the secret, hidden F-bomb, the fulfillment,

because until you are firing all cylinders on all four equally, like fucking a 10 or a 10, or at least close to and all of them, then you're never going to have the fulfillment. If you're missing any one of those,

family fitness, finances, and faith, faith meaning more, belief in yourself, belief in your ability to reach your goals and the other three F bombs pretty much.

Until you have that in all four of those, then you can't have fulfillment. You're missing just one of those or if one of those is too low of a score, your life is just as fucked as anyone else.

So I don't like to say balance. I don't believe in work life, balance and all the stuff, but intention to it and having work life intention. Like, so when I'm with, my family, I'm with my fucking family. My kids can't curse. They're not allowed to curse, but if I'm on family time, I mean, time block, I have, if you saw my calendar, you'd see it's color-coded,

every specific thing throughout the day. I know what I'm doing with my family, when we're on family time. So if we're on family time or kid time, we also have what we call a stupid time, where it's just nothing planned, we just don't do any work. If we're on a time like that, that's not work time. And I even touch my phone and start doing it, my kids could say, Daddy, put that shit down. That's the only time they're allowed to curse is when they do that. there is a separation, but it's, I don't like it's called a balance because that's, that's, that's not the way I want to look at it, is intentional, work life intention. I'm intentionally going to be focused here, but what that's going to do is that's going to allow me to then work

better when I work. If I'm working, and I don't, I don't have anything scheduled or planned with my family, I don't know what time I'm going to work out, and I'm just working, 50% of my intention and my energy and my focus is going to be there. My kids are going to hate me. When am I going to find time to do this? I got to get to the gym. I'm going to get fat, all this other stuff. But if I know that stuff is accounted for on my schedule and that's locked down, I either did it already that day or it's coming up that day or later in the week, whatever's planned, now I could focus and not have to feel guilty going all in on the fucking work I'm doing. And then on the flip side, when I'm with my family, I don't have to feel

like I need to go open my phone up. Bingo. Because I did the same thing when I was at work. I was 100% present on that. So it's all about time blocking. I time block like a motherfucker, down to the minute on every single thing throughout the day. Bingo. And then you're 100% present and focused in it, and you go all fucking out. And then in that three-hour time block of work, I'm going to get fucking 16 hours, take the superpowers I talked about before, plug them into that.

I'm going to get a fucking week's worth work of stuff in three hours because I'm not distracted about checking my phone, worrying about where I'm going to go do with the kids, when I'm going to work out, my meals are ready, everything's already taken care of. It's already all scheduled. So it's all fucking out. And you actually, the first time we met,

you really don't remember it. We were at Fitness Business Summit. And the first one before I ever started coaching with you, I just was an attendee there or whatever. And I asked you, I said, I have this gym, but I have these inventions, these fitness equipment that I want to start and start producing. I said, what do you think I should do?

You said, are your gyms where they want to be? I said, no, not even close. You said, well, there's your answer. Laser beam focus. And that's all it is. Laser beam focus. One thing. Focus on one thing and nothing else

so that you could focus on one thing and nothing else at another time. And if there's not anything that you got out of this show, which I would be shocked if you didn't get anything out of the show. It's this one thing that Steve just talked about, which is also a track that I teach. And I don't want to give too much of the project away because part of the project is knowing that you're going to be there 75 hours,

but not knowing what's coming next. So a lot of you men that are watching and listening to this, I know you're going to apply to do a project class. We'll just come up with weird or crazy shit. Yeah, we always do. Because they're starting to catch on to too much shit. But one of the, because there are teaching tracks as well. So there's plenty of time.

Well, not plenty. There's some time for you to sleep during the project. There's definitely the, the journaling and the deep work we do about the traumas and how to overcome those, et cetera. And then there's me teaching about business and scaling your business and making money and creating financial wealth, et cetera. But when we talk about the four F bombs, one thing I do during that track is I asked the guys because I set out four rocks. I go, guys, these are your four rocks, faith, family, fitness, finance. And if we have them all squared away, like you said,

then fulfillment is a byproduct of that, the fifth F bomb. I said, of these four F bombs, of these four rocks, which is the most important? And it's kind of kind of a loaded question when I ask him this because then the guys go, oh man, the faith, the faith rock. I'm like, why? Well, because if you don't have faith, I'm going to hire power. If you don't have faith in yourself and confidence in yourself, then you're not going to be able to do the rest.

I'm like, uh, not quite. Fitness, fitness. Because if you don't have your health, if you don't have mental fitness, emotional fitness, physical fitness, dude, then you can't make money. You can't serve your family. No, no, no, no. Oh, it must be family. Then must be, no, not quite.

I said, it's whatever rock you're on. And it goes back to batch processing or time blocking, which is, it's whatever rock you're on. If between, like for me in the mornings, I have a time block that's for work. I call it GSD time, get shit done time. And in those three hours, unless the house is catching on fire, my son or daughter break an arm or leg or something, it's just work. And I have zero guilt about, man, I should be serving my kids or my wife or whatever because it's time blocked in there for later that afternoon where me and Andrew are going to work out together and then play ping pong. Me and Chloe are going to do her little crafts and then we're going to do, I'm getting into Minecraft because of my daughter.

And when I'm doing Minecraft with my daughter or when I'm working out with my son, I'm not thinking about, did that sale go through, did we get that franchise, are we selling more supplements? I'm just strictly all in on that rock. And the goal here is not, like you said, a work-life balance,

but a work-life mix. And whatever part of the recipe you're on, you've got to commit 100% mentally and emotionally on that. Otherwise, it's just half-ass everything. Your business is going to suck. Your relationship with your kids are going to suck. It's all going to suck if you try to keep doing one thing while you're doing the other.

And how often do we hear, people say, well, and then when I'm at work, I feel guilty about I should be with my kids. And then when I'm with my kids, I feel guilty that I'm not out there making money. And that's because you're not present either place. And they all suck. Then they all suck. But what if you can actually be at work and be productive and not just do busy work? And so with that said, I get that question a lot.

Like, how do I balance money and meaning and marriage and family, all that? It's 100% on whatever rock you're on. And so as we kind of wrap this episode up, Steve, I want to talk about being a role model father. and I'm going to describe kind of what it means to me and I would love for you to share with our audience what it means to you. For me being a role model father specifically is this, that if I've done good in my life and people are like, man, Bezos who've created this franchise,

now you're donating to Shrine of Children's Hospital, Choice for Tosk, Compassion International. I do a lot for humanity, but I'm raising these two amazing kids with my wife who, if I do my job right as a role model father, Andrew and Chloe are going to do more for humanity because there's two of them. They're going to do it sooner than I did

because by the time I had my awakening, I was in my early 30s, that I meant to do more, I meant to serve more, I'm meant to earn more. And so for me, being a role model father is modeling the habits, the behavior, the, you know,

I just started opening the door for die many, many years ago. And as Andrew was born and he started to kind of watch and he grew a little older, he would toddle over to the car door he grabbed the handle, open it when Di was going towards a car. There was zero, hey son, you got to open the door for a lady. It just became factory installed by way of catching what I'm pitching, right, through my actions.

To me, that's what a role model is, because my daughter, she is at some point going to look for a man who's going to be an archetype of me. And if I'm living a life of hypocrisy, if I'm living a life of mediocrisy, of mediocrisy, of average, she's going to go find this average guy and then later end up regretting and resenting me. My son is going to end up growing up to be like me. And so the words that we use have no weight compared to the way we live our life. And I think being a father for me has been the greatest self-development, personal development program ever because it's forced me to go, all right, am I being 100% awesome all the time?

or am I telling my son that you got to control your anger and emotion, son, but then raging out at my wife, and therefore my daughter goes, oh, it's okay to marry a guy who's going to do this, and my son goes, it's okay that when I get married, I can freak out. They can spot you as a fraud. Yeah, what does being a role model father mean to you? So it's very similar to what you said, but it's, I'm not a tree-hugging, hippie, woo-hoo motherfucker like that,

but I believe that the universe will send them a signal. So not only showing them what to do, but even when they're not present because I know that if I do something fucked up even if they're not around, the universe will send that to them. Some fucking how. I can't explain it.

I don't think anyone can, but it will send them. Like, for instance, in our house, we don't wear our shoes in the house. And all the time, I'll fucking forget something in the house. Right? You get in the car,

you realize you forgot something. Upstairs in my office. So this was like last year, I'm running in the house. We're running late to get wherever we need to go. The whole family's in the car. I'm like, fuck, I got to get something out of my office. Go running up the stairs.

My daughter's like, daddy, shoes. I'm like, no, I just got to grab it. It's right there on my desk. It's like, I could see it. It's right there. She's like, no, shoes. Like, fuck.

And I had these, like, high top sneakers, like basketball sneakers that had to, like, lace up. I said to sit down, untie them, both fucking shoes and go up there. I'm like, this little fucking demon child just like, is going to make us late. But now, and I still forget stuff all the time, right? You just leave something in the house. Even when they're not home, I'll go in there and I tell you 100% of the time. If I forgot something in the house with the shoes, I take off my fucking shoes,

even they could be over in Russia. visiting their people, and they'll never know if it happened. But I'll know, first of all, and I know the universe will somehow send that message to them. So it's about having what I believe in all the time and doing the right thing all the time, whether or not their eyes are even on me. So it just all then becomes automatic.

If I have to think, all right, do this because the kids are watching, they're going to even sense that. Oh, you're only doing this because we're watching. If it's fucking automatic and subconscious, like now I go in the house, fucking take the shoes off. Don't even think about it. Don't consider.

Don't even care who's home. It doesn't matter who's home. I'm going to take them off. And if I could do that in all areas of life, the universe is going to send that signal to them. And I have an acronym for it as decaf, discipline, energy, confidence, attack, and freak. And it ends up being freak about having them just be their freak selves,

like not being afraid what the fuck the world thinks to them to live life on their own terms, march to the beat of their own drum, not conform to society or fucking internet, not have a basketball player or some dumbass fucking rapper raising them because if you don't do it yourself that's going to be raising or social media that's going to be raising your fucking kids so

this is my barometer for his and I ask Tyson all the time and my son and I'll say what do you want to be when you grow up and all I ever say is I want to be just like you as long as that's the answer then I have the universe is sending him the right signals and I'm on the right path and I keep doing more of what the fuck I'm doing. Amen to that

amen to that because I got to tell you man like the people that are holding on to the excuse that I was born this way or you know my dad fucked me up so I how can I not drink and do drugs and living congruent to the values that I'm preaching, you broke the cycle. I broke the cycle. And this is a message to everyone out there that whatever cycle that you were born into,

one, feel free to break it. And two, live as a role model. Because when you live as a role model, then you become a congruent human. And by the way, it begins to actually become who you are. Right. You become who you are. And the third thing that I want to kind of end this off with is the fact that have a circle of influence around you that holds it to a higher standard.

Like to have you as a friend and a business partner, to have Ray and Steve or you are Steve. You just call me the F word. You just call me, I have a friend. I have a friend in the world. A freak. And, you know, Matt Schneider and Aaron, like that is a whole new level of being held accountable. Because if it's like, hey, man, it's a, you know, we're going to work out legs. Like the other, I don't know, two weeks ago, Aaron's like, hey, man, let's go train legs together on a Sunday. Now, I know that I'm strong and I can fake through a good leg workout, but I was like, you know what? Aaron's 10 years younger than me, and I'm his leader here at work. We're also friends, but I have to lead through example.

And so I punished myself through there, and I was like, I'm not going to stop this workout until one of us is like literally during the walking lunge is like our knee hits the ground because we just couldn't walk anymore. And it happened. Thankfully, it was him. That's because he's got a bad knee. not for any other reason. He's a savage. But all this to say that I could have like we definitely had a great workout but we went above and beyond that

to a place where if someone told us to do 10 more sets or 20 or 30 more sets, we were at that place where we could have done it. Just keep food, you know, a little bit of calories coming, keep some water coming, we'll just keep going. And that's such a great place to be and that's having a circle of influence that holds you to a higher standard.

So where that's concerned, you know, we've got this brotherhood meetup coming up. The project graduates now. We've got almost 60 graduates and we're meeting up in Las Vegas on March 1 and 2. We'll be in beautiful Las Vegas. And we're going to go out hiking at Red Rock. We're going to do heart shit together, do tough workouts together, have steak dinners together, probably hit the gambling, blackjack tables together or whatever. You know, we're definitely doing a mastermind together. And I love being surrounded by these awesome dudes. If someone's like, man, sounds like this is the group I belong in. This is the tribe I've been looking for.

How does someone find their way on a phone call with you or Ray because you two are the gatekeepers to the project? How do they get on the call to see if they're a good fit? Well, first, in your book, Manup, you talk about the outside team and that's exactly what the project is. Because people have their inner circle, their employees, their family, even the blood. It doesn't matter if it's their brothers, their parents. Those people are going to tell them, oh, it's okay. It's okay. You failed.

It's okay. You fucked up. It's okay. You did this. And they don't have that circle of influence. that you're talking about, that outside team, that a group of hungry, motivated, successful fucking men of fire that are going to hold you accountable and going to contribute, but also maybe sometimes ask for help and not expect anything in return.

Like, that's what's missing with men nowadays. Like, that's why I left, had to leave New York and just jumped in a car and came out here to California because I'm talking about wanting to change the world, wanting to impact millions of lives, make millions of dollars. And people around me are upset about the fucking series on Netflix. They got canceled. So I'm like, I got to be around a different group of people. So that's what a lot of people don't realize about the project is that they say,

oh, I'm not going to pay $12,000 for a four-day thing. This is far from a four-day thing. The true value and the power of the project is that ongoing lifelong brotherhood of men. And we've seen it. We've experienced it. I've already gotten together with two graduates that just graduated last week. They came on the hype with us. Our kids got together already.

So it's a huge, it's powerful, and it's powerful. and it's priceless to have that circle of support and camaraderie. And I'll tell you, even in the Marine Corps to have that type of camaraderie. I was in the Marine Corps. I had a business married with kids and never got a tattoo. The first tattoo ever got right there on the top of my fucking hand of the project because as an adult, you have a different life when you're a kid. You're a teenager.

You go through the military. Of course you're going to bomb with those guys. You're a bunch of knuckleheads. But now you have careers. You have kids. You have real world fucking problems that a sergeant's not going to go and tell you how to deal with it. Like, you have to navigate this shit on your own.

You need to create your own fucking army, your own military, and that's pretty much what we're doing on the project. So if you feel like you're lacking in those areas, you don't have that group of men around you, that hungry, motivated, kick-ass men of fire to support you in all areas of life. That's the true beauty of the project and what it has to go on an ongoing basis.

And all we need to do is jump on a phone call to see if you're a good fit for the program, if you're qualified for the program. And from there, we will get you onboarded, help you out with every step of the way. And then... Let's talk about that for a moment. Because if some dudes are out there like,

oh, man, but I'm not in shape. And it sounds like you've got to be in shape for the project. Like, what y'all don't realize is you can't just sign up the week before on the project and then show up. It's got to be eight weeks or earlier. Because you and Ray, like imagine a Marine and an Navy SEAL putting you minimum through eight weeks of physical training, mental training, conditioning, like, here's the workouts we're going to do together, like via Zoom, you guys do all this, and get these guys conditioned for the

project. And so I'm not saying like, hey, you can be a fat fuck and show up. That's not it. Obviously, you've got to do the work as they're doing the live training with you guys several times a week. And then on the days that they're not doing this with you, you've got to be doing it on your own. But it's a really neat process to see how your body will transform and get conditioned to do the project. And so people always ask me, like, why the project? So project is just kind of a nickname for what it is. It's really about becoming a modern day night. And we call it the MDK Project, a modern day night project,

because I believe that there's no longer modern day nights in this world who will protect, who will be of service, who will be savages, who will be protectors and providers. And we need more of those than ever before. And so if this is calling to you, just go to MDK Project.com or reach out to Steve Eckhart on social media. or Raycare on Instagram and whatever platform you're using and connect with them. Because this might be a good fit for you if you kind of feel like denying in your gut, but you're like, oh, I'm also a little anxious about it. That's how you're supposed to feel.

Because if you think you're just going to come and power, because we've had some young athletic dudes come through the project, you always find a way to physically tax them. And we always find a way to mentally and emotionally tax them. So it doesn't matter if you think you're like mentally fit, emotionally fit or physically fit. you're going to have your breakdowns. You're going to have your breakdowns and your breakthroughs is what you're going to have.

And that's what you are. And that's what we're looking for. Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of The Empire Show. And guys and gals, do me a favor. As you're watching this episode, take a screenshot of this episode

and share it in your story so we can get the word out about helping humanity more and be sure to tag Steve and myself for this episode. And as always, don't forget to share this episode with your mama. See you later.