De-Influenced with Dani + Jordan - The Humble Billionaire: Tim Dunn’s Wild Story

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Happy Thursday De-Influencers! For our Jordan takeover fans, we have a special treat for you! It's a Jordan Guest episode and man have we been waiting for this one! Jordan sits down with Texas Billionaire Tim Dunn to talk business, family, religion and politics. It's a great conversation with Tim bringing a lot of insight from his years in the oil industry, being a husband and father of six children, and a man of faith. He came in right from a SouthWest flight wearing his favorite New Balance sneakers to this interview. I mean how many billionaires have you heard of that are flying commercial? We scored some great deals with a few of our favorite brands for our listeners: Huggies Little Snugglers, now with blowout protection in every direction* *Sizes 1-2. Huggies. Huggies.com. Cotton is The Fabric of Our Lives and make sure you’re checking tags to ensure it’s the fabric of your life too. Learn more at TheFabricOfOurLives.com. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal you must go to hiyahealth.com/DANIAUSTIN. This deal is not available on their regular website. Shop the best selection of home improvement online. Get renovating with Wayfair. Head to Wayfair.com right now. Visit LiveConscious.com today and make the switch to a smarter sip with Beyond Brew. Use code DANI to receive 15% off. If you’re ready to build your own business—whether it’s merch, a passion project you’ve been sitting on, or even a summer side hustle, get on Shopify.com/dani and make it happen! Make your life easier—shop Amazon.com for college. With Amazon’s low Off-to-College Prices, just save on college, save the everyday. Let us know in the comments what you thought about this interview!! Make sure you’re subscribed to our official channel on YouTube, @deinfluencedpodcast, and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your De-Influenced fix! Stay connected with us on Instagram and TikTok @deinfluencedpodcast, and as always thank you for being a part of this journey.  we love y'all!! D+J

The following podcast is a dear media production. It's almost that time of year where kids are heading off to college, and if you've been following along from the very start of my influencer journey, you'll probably remember me making videos in my dorm room. That time of my life will forever hold a special place in my heart, but you want to know what won't. The stress of making sure I had everything I needed to go away to college. I mean, seriously, talk about chaotic and expensive.

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you could get. I used to have to beg the upperclassmen to take me to the store to stock up on snacks. For the days, I couldn't fathom eating another dining hall meal. Now those days are over. So if you or your kid is prepping for this off to college season, save on college, save the every day with Amazon. Fast delivery, endless options, and honestly, way cheaper than dragging your mom through 15 stores. So make your life easier, shop Amazon for college. So remember, with Amazon's low off to college prices, just save on college, save the every day. This podcast has been a long time in the making. I want to preface by saying that when Danny and I first started this podcast, we called it de-influenced because the original purpose was we put a lot of things out about ourselves on the internet. And

usually it's short form. So Instagram stories or real short form content. And we wanted a long-term platform to de-influence the assumptions that people had about us and our family. And the podcast has kind of evolved into something where I personally, a Jordan guest, is I like to bring on guests that I find fascinating to de-influence as well. So I want to introduce you. I've been waiting on this episode for about a year. I've been politicking through your son to get you here. So please help me welcome. I'm going to give you some intros. The CEO of Oil Company Crown Quest that just sold for $12 billion, one of the strongest faith-based men I've ever met, a guitarist from the 80s brand called Scrub Brotherhood. That's true.

Bother of six. 70s. Father of six children, framed by the Rolling Stone, is Trump's Christian Kingpin all the way from Midland, Texas, Tim Dunn. So to me, you are a fascinating figure. I met you randomly through your son, had no idea what to expect, didn't even know who you were. And I enjoyed the entire weekend that you spent with Danny and I because most of the time, you just ministered to us. And I was there on the weekend that you closed on the deal for this $12 billion exit. And I remember you sat there in your new balances.

You took us to an $8 Mexican, you took us to an $8 Mexican food restaurant. And you sat there and preached us the entire time. And I've been fascinated by you ever since. That's an interesting image. I'm saying if they're firing away. No, no. In the kindest way, we sat around your living room. And you told us about the Bible.

You told us about courses that you had taken. you were deeply engaged in the theology across the board. Talk about business a lot, too, as I recall. A little bit. You guys had a lot of business questions you were dealing with. A lot, yes, because we were in the middle of our private equity transaction. So that's my introduction of you, but I would love for to have you introduce yourself. Oh, okay.

Well, you said, I've got wife, we'll turn 50 years and two years, which is kind of crazy to think about. We've been married, but we've got six kids. as you mentioned, 20 grandchildren. That's crazy. That's a lot of grandkids. I basically grew up in West Texas, a small town. I got an engineering degree and got in the oil business, mainly because my love was to play Monopoly.

I just loved it. And one of the girls in our class, her dad was the president of the local refinery, which was the local oil refinery. He was the biggest business in town. And a friend of mine and I were thinking about going into chemical engineering. She found out and said, I'll get you an interview with my dad. So we went to his office, which was like in the only multi-story office building in town, which I think was four stories.

And we went in his office and he had a speaker phone, which at that time was like Space Age. This was still like rotary dial era. And he was talking on. this speaker phone about how many millions of barrels they had of oil out there. And I was like, that's me. That's what I want to do. He's playing Monopoly. Yeah.

And so from then on, I was like, okay, what did he do? He had a chemical engineering degree. All right, well, that's what I want to be. When you have one data point, it's not much confusion, right? Right. And it turned out that was completely, you know, faulty reasoning. But it worked out for me. Oversimplified.

Vastly oversimplified. It's the only data I had. So I'm a real high quick start person, and quick starts don't like to do homework. So the four years at Texas Tech were like the most miserable years of my life. I hated every minute of it, but I wanted to play Monopoly for a living. So I made it through. And then I went to work at Exxon and got some business experience and then discovered I could be an energy banker and play Monopoly as a – first line person. So I've kind of been doing that ever since. Does this man know that you

looked up to him? His name was Paul. His name was Paul Meeke's deceased now. I expressed my gratitude to him multiple times. He absolutely gave me a show. Well, he gave me a job. I was a, I was an intern there for three summers. And then, and then I was going to go to, I was going to, I was planning to go to work there and then decided to go to law school. I was trying to looking for a shortcut to get to that executive suite. And then Terry got pregnant with Lee after we were only married eight months. So we were 21. And so I switched angles at that point. We're going to get into business. And I want to talk about Crown Quest because it's pretty historic, legendary in the space. But I want to ask you, what do you see as your primary purpose in life? Yeah. Well, of course, you grow and evolve over time.

And I would say today the way I would articulate the purpose. And I think the more experience you get, the clearer things become. But today I would say my purpose is to learn to be a great steward. And so my biblical understanding is that everyone that believes in Jesus is a servant, his servant. That's a class. You know, you come into his family. You're born into his family.

So the Bible uses a lot of metaphors. You're a child. And, you know, once you're born as a child, you can't be unborn, right? So you're a child. But children, as you're learning firsthand, make their own decisions. You can create consequences for your kids, but you can't decide for them. And that's the way God made it. So he lets us decide incredibly.

You know, he lets us decide. He tells us ahead. That's what the Bible is mainly about. here's the consequences of your decisions, and here's the ones that'll work out, and here's the ones that don't. If you want to cheat, if you want to cheat sheet, here it is. But the goal is to grow up. You want your children to grow up and thrive.

Well, so does he. And the way you grow up and thrive is to become a good enough steward where he says, well done, good and faithful servant. come, you've been faithful over a few things, come rule with me over many things. And he calls that, enter my joy. So it's kind of a, this is an internship. This whole life is an internship to learn to try to get to a partner level. And everybody has that chance.

And, you know, one talent people, five talent people have different levels of accountability to have much as much is given, much is expected. correlated, you know, the implied corollary as to whom little is given, little is expected, but everybody's expected to do something. And so the goal of life is to learn to be faithful. And the metaphor Jesus uses, one of them is he says, you cannot be my disciple unless you take up your cross and follow me, which is a very pragmatic statement. It would be like a professor saying, you can't be my student unless you come to class

and turn into the homework and turn in the tests. If you don't learn what I have to teach you, then you're not a learner, which is what the word disciple means. And another metaphor he uses is there's a narrow gate, and this is on the sermon on the Mount, so he's talking to his disciples. There's a narrow gate and a difficult path that leads to life. Few choose it. So becoming a faithful steward is really hard. hard work. But if you do that, you get life. Life is connection. And so there's life as a gift.

You were born. You have life. And it's also a reward. The more you work at being functional in life, the more connection you get to your design and to other people. And so the ultimate connection to our design is to enter into the joy of our master, which is what we were created for, but the fall has kind of gotten in the way. But there's this difficult path. And if you you can climb it, then there's this amazing prize at the end. So I see as I want to pass the internship and be promoted to partner. When did the game for you switch from monopoly to stewardship? Probably about when I was 40. The Yellow Balloons book that I wrote is about that transition. Yeah. And so what was that book about and why did you write it? Well, I wrote the book really

about the lessons I had learned and that I just articulated in a short time. And a, about, big part of the purpose of the book was to try to get to the point where I could articulate what I had learned intuitively and put it into words. And it started off, you know, with a tone and then it got more and more condensed. And today I can say it in sound bites. Sure. But, man, it's hard to, it's hard to express intuition into something that's concise. The catalyst event of the book, though, just for people not aware of it, was the loss of your granddaughter? Well, so what really happened is the catalyst for the book really was this, I call it Job experience I went through. Sure.

And that happened when I was about 40. And there was a confluence of events. I lost my dad. I changed careers. There's a whole lot of things that happened. But the big thing that happened, all that was just circumstantial. The big thing that happened is I came face to face with myself. You know that scene in Star Wars where Luke is in the cave and he sees his dad and it's him.

Yep. I had that experience. And I came to realize I'm a rationalizer. I would now say that's the way we're all born and learning that and coming face to face with it and kind of facing your own. I guess self-focus and learning to focus externally is kind of a death you have to go through. And I went through that and I wanted to try to convey that. And I wrote multiple series of books. And what people told me is that none of this is personal.

Nobody's going to read this book unless you personalize it. So I'm like, well, I just had this, you know, horrific experience with Mariah. So I started it with that as a way of introducing. the out, which we lost a granddaughter at age 20 months, which in our house. She was taking a nap. She had fever-induced seizures, and she had a slight fever that morning, and so her mom was keeping close watch on her. The reason why they were in our house is they were remodeling something, so they were staying with us for a while. And so she went in, she's blue. You know, Terry got there, my wife got there just a minute after. She gave her CPR. The ambulance got there.

very quick. But what we learned later is that toddlers, 90% of the time, their heart won't restart. So they got to her in plenty of time, but little kids' hearts typically won't start. So we lost Mariah, and it was obviously very traumatic. And the thing that I learned, one of the big things I learned in this Job experience was the power of perspective. So there's three things you control as a human. You control who or what you trust. You choose that. Nobody else chooses it.

You choose your own perspective. I would say all of us choose it. Few of us are even aware we're doing it. But being intentional about choosing a perspective that's true is one of the most powerful things you can do as a human. And that's what the book's really about. And the third thing is your actions, but your actions really flow out of what.

you believe and what your perspective is. So when something like that happens, like losing a granddaughter, the circumstances force you to choose a perspective. So I write about that. But actually, the places where you can get off base the most easily is in everyday routines where you have the illusion of control and you don't have, you're not forced to choose a perspective and you can get lulled into oblivion. That's why God gives us Job seasons. I think so, honestly. Really, when you, when your options narrow down to very few, it's very helpful.

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But that's to prepare you to be able to live everyday life intentionally. And then when you get to the mountain top to be very sober about it. Because as James 1 says, basically my words now, it ain't going to last for long. So enjoy it while you're there, but don't get the illusion. Which is why we're still in new balances. $12 billion later, we're in new balances. You know, I've got plantar fasciitis. That's why I'm in.

Yeah, I know. I'm messing with you. I'm humanizing you. So when you, when you were staring at yourself. I do still have my 2013 truck, but that's because I love it so much. So when you were staring at yourself in that cave, the Star Wars reference, which you love Star Wars. I do. I love them.

I love all those fantasy things, Lord of the Rings and Guardians of the Galaxy. I'll tell you the reason I love it so much is because all those things are a reflection of what I said life's purpose is. Right. You have a great power. You don't know it. This is every one of these stories. Somebody has a great power or there are a great royal position. They don't realize it.

They come to realize it. They're kind of starstruck. And now they have a decision point. What am I going to do? Right. Am I going to take responsibility or I'm going to cash it in to be a. tyrant. Yeah. No, I think you like the biblical undertones in these movies that you find. So when you're staring at yourself, you're Luke Skywalker, you're staring at yourself in this cave

in that moment when you're 40. Who did you see when you saw yourself before that moment, and then who did you become after that moment? Well, I didn't change after the moment. I'm still the same person. Right, but it was an reflection point. Yes, but now I recognize I am, in my natural state, I'm manipulating tyrant. I'm amazingly good at getting attention on myself and getting my way. And that's my orientation. Now, everybody has some version of that.

Some people nice their way into being in the center. Some people bully their way into be in the center. Some people promote their way. Some people entertain their way into being the center. But our natural bent is to be at the center. But my number one values integrity. The reason this was so hard on me is because I recognized that I had been living a lot because I was living this external appearance.

I could pass a background check flying colors. I mean, I just haven't ever done any crazy stuff. And so, you know, that's just been, I never saw the purpose in it. And also I was afraid to do it. But the, so I've lived a very moral life, but I was still rationalizing my actual behavior. And I was basically self-centric. Now, I say if you, I've talked to a bunch of people that knew me growing up and they said, I didn't see that. Oh, yeah, of course you didn't.

I was, I'm good. You know, I'm good at what I do. but internally I was disingenuous. I was rationalizing. Yeah. You're talking about the sin inside that God showed and revealed to you about yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Because I lose my temper and then say to myself, well, I'm better now. Instead of, oh, that tells me I've got a problem. I am. Instead of I'm getting better, I recognize I'm always going to be this broken, fallen person. So what I have to do is set that aside and walk in a different as a new person. There's a night and day difference between I am broke. It's like the 12-step program. I like to say we're all self-aholics.

And some self-aholics are also addicts. But we're all self-aholics. And it was that number one, I have a problem. It's me. and so why do I have these recurring relational problems? Well, there's only one common denominator in my relational issues. Me, right? Okay, so all right, well, that's, okay, that means I have a problem.

I need to take responsibility for that. And so I would say the big impact it had on me, I would say the word humility is usually misunderstood. Humility properly understood really means pursuing and embracing. reality. That's all it means. So I began to pursue and embrace reality instead of rationalizing. And it's brought, I just live life so differently now. Like, I'll give you an example. So I went to the eye doctor a few years back. And he did a scan of my eyes because he said, he said, oh, you have glaucoma. He said, I'm sorry. You know, you came in here this morning. You're perfectly fine. And now you're

leaving with glaucoma. And I said, no, I came in here with glaucoma. And I said, no, I came in here with glaucoma and didn't know it, couldn't do anything about it, and now I'm leaving knowing about it, and I can do something. He's like, oh, yeah, I guess that's right. He said, well, come back in six months and we'll prescribe something for you, and I said, okay, why are you going to wait six months? And he said, because that's what we always do. I said, well, is this like bad side effects? Do this? What do you is, eye drops, right? Yes. Are there bad side effects? No. Well, then why don't we start it now? and said, because nobody wants to admit they actually have glaucoma. It takes them a while to kind of come to grips with it.

And so I always have to kind of, you know, step them into it. And I said, well, I don't have that issue. If we can do something about it, let's do that. That's your quick start. Well, no, it's reality. So I just like, if I know I can do something. And I would say, in retrospect, like, I can remember, you know, having like, oh, I hope I don't have this and pretending like it wasn't there, you know, a symptom of something.

And try and, you know, if I don't check, then it'll go away. That's the more normal, natural thing to do. Pretend it's not there and it'll go away instead of, hey, let's check and find out. And if it is, maybe we can do something. And you're an enneagram eight? No. You told me you're an eight. I'm a seven wing eight.

I can live as a seven, eight or nine. Right. So I'm sorry. That's not right. I missug that. I can live as a six, seven, or eight. Right. So I can fully function as a six, which is a foinker, you know, imaginary consequences.

What about this? What about that? Very useful skill and managing risk. Debilitating if you have the illusion you can control things. Okay. So you have to get over the idea you can control stuff. The way you do that, by the way, is to say run out the thing in your mind, like all the imaginary thing, well, my child's going to not clean their room.

they might be irresponsible and then they won't graduate from my school and then they're going to be a drug addict. I have to have my child clean the room or they're going to be a drug addict. Is that really true? If I try to control my child, actually they won't learn to make choices. That's actually backwards. So that's not really true. But also I can say, okay, well, I can't control what my child chooses. If they do that, could I trust God?

Well, yes, I could. Okay, well, then I won't try to control that. But then I would ask myself, well, is there anything I actually can do? Well, yeah, I can help my child make good choices. And whether they clean the room or not, it's not particularly important, you know. So, you know, you can be in reality that way. Six. Seven is mostly about persuasion.

And then eight is mostly about achieving results. And I lived as an eight a lot in my early business career because that's what's rewarded. So pre-40, the eighth side came out. Pretty high. Yeah. Because that's how you climb the ladder. Right. The higher you climb the ladder, the more you can play a monopoly.

And eights can rationalize around quite a bit. And I think also... Everybody rationalizes around. Eighths, you talked about humility coming into the picture post-40, though. I think eights struggle with humility, no? Everybody struggles with humility. Everyone shows us humility. Yeah.

What we typically call humility is meekness. Right. And that's not humility. Right. That's meekness. Right. True humility is seeing reality as it is. So you go through the circle, your whole audience knows the enigram, I guess.

Yes, they do. Okay. So if you go through the whole circle, by the way, to use the enneagram constructively is to get out of your number and acquire the characteristics of the whole circle. Okay. So the way you do that is look at whichever thing, whichever arrow points to your number, follow that one backwards to get out of your number and then go the whole circle. That's constructive. A destructive way to use it, which I think is pretty common is, oh, I'm this number so I can't help it. So therefore I don't have to change. Right. And you're obligated to adapt to me. We talked about this a lot in Midland. I had actually never heard that because I think most of the Enneagram coaching is about understanding.

your number and understanding, oh, well, this is what makes you you, but I think you were the first person ever challenged. Hey, you should try and acquire the other traits of the other numbers. If you think about all those numbers, like one is you could call it righteousness, you know, doing the right thing. And two is service. And three is accomplishment, you know, win the prize. All these are biblical admonitions, wisdom, you know, examine yourself as four and six is count the cost and seven is have vision and eight is um and eight is uh you know achieve the goal uh nine is peace you know shalom and so we're we're told to have acquire all those characteristics but you can't do it if you only have one right so you get out of your number well the way i got out of the eight

and this was before i knew the enneagram i was going through the list of um for elder which is a like a you know, qualification to leadership. I want to be a good leader, so I want to look at that list. I went through the list, and then I got to gentleness. I said, I don't know what that is, but I'm confident I don't have it. So I went and did, I knew it didn't mean passivity because Jesus was not passive at all. If you'll think about it, Jesus created a conflict with everybody he interacted with. Okay.

But he's always creating a constructive conflict to help them improve. move. And so I looked at that gentleness word and really what it means is seeing what someone else sees, you know, seeing from their perspective. Oh, yeah, I stink at that. So I really started learning to listen and see what, and that made me a way better business person, by the way. As you all know, Divi just won EY Entrepreneur of the Year. So we decided to take it way back to the yending and let you in on a little bit about behind the scenes we first started, building our brand. I think it was 2021. We had never launched a thing in our lives, never really ran a business. But when Shopify approached us for a partnership, it was really a no-brainer for us.

Divi has been tried and true to the platform from the beginning. So like I was saying, yeah, we had no idea where to start. You know, I had sold some things in my life. It was more like on the streets of San Antonio with my mom selling key chains, swinging key chains back in the day. we only took cash. So this was a little different. Luckily, I leaned on Jordan a ton. He had a little bit more experience being in the startup scene in San Antonio and Austin. It kind of leaned on him to figure out, you know, the back end of our business because we really had just, we never shipped product all over the country before. I remember feeling really confused and like, how the heck are we going to do this? Do you remember where I go first to get all of my new ideas on like what's the best product?

Reddit. Reddit. So I get on Reddit and I'm like, okay, easiest way to launch a Shopify store. Because when we first launched Divi, we didn't know it was going to be like a big deal. We launched out of Stratton's like nursery and he wasn't here born yet. And so we like research, we wanted to get a website up in like a day. I think the thing about you and I is like we don't like to take time on things. Like if we make a decision we're like let's do it. Like why can't it be up tomorrow? Yeah, I'm not going to like wait for the meeting next week to get it. We're very much like against bureaucracy. So like it was like, okay, let's launch. a store, okay, what can we do quickest and easiest? And it was Shopify was like the unanimous, you know, uh, winner in terms of like what everyone uses. And what's crazy is that we're still on it today. It's so, it really is crazy that we're still on. You said like we have the same account, like same. Yeah, the only thing that we've changed is like the, the code on the back end to better support like site speed because it gets so much more traffic. That's it. True, true. Shopify has

honestly been a total game changer for us. It's like the backbone to our business giving us the ease to start and the flexibility to grow and we can manage the business from anywhere. Truly, that is like one of the biggest benefits of being a business owner is like you can do it from anywhere. They always say, no, let's be honest, sometimes it's hard. Like you want to be on vacation and you know, you don't want to be checking your Shopify account, but you can and that's what's nice about it. Although I do remember that we took a trip to seaside Florida. I remember and I could not figure out how to turn the notifications off. I finally did. Yeah. But all the sales. But it was just like crazy. It was like every minute. I mean, you can literally go in and see where people are ordering from like all over the

country. No. And let me tell you it's a dopamine rush too. Like when you when you hard scroll up to get it to refresh and you're seeing like your numbers and it's like ding ding ding. I actually deleted the app off my phone year two of our business because it was it was too engaging for me. It's addicting. He was a little bit addicted. People, some people get like addicted to Pinterest and Instagram. Us, it's Shopify. It's Shopify. It's just our Shopify numbers.

No, but it's so funny. I actually do sometimes like whether it with the lake or like on vacation, sometimes I still download the app and I'll go in and I really won't look at like the big numbers anymore. I'll be like, I wonder how many visitors we got. It's like the the nitty gritty analytics, which is so like helpful with Shopify. Any like truly any data point for our business. I can download the app, log in, and see within the Shopify app. Yeah, which is super cool.

So if you're ready to build your own business, whether it's merch, a passion project you've been sitting on, or even a Somerside hustle, get on Shopify.com slash Janie and make it happen because we did, and now we've sold more than 2 million bottles of the scalp serum that started it all. Thank you, Shopify for sponsoring our podcast and being the best e-commerce platform ever. We love you. y'all know we are on a serious health and wellness journey in our house we're getting rid of the toxic products and welcoming ones that support a more holistic lifestyle so our family can grow and thrive this doesn't just stop at the cleaning products or with what's in our fridge we're making changes all the way down to what we wear this is where cotton comes in cotton is a natural fiber that comes from the earth it feels good on your skin by being gentle it allows your skin to breathe which makes it a great option for us with the texas summers already upon us. It's also hyperallergenic, which makes me feel good as a dad knowing I'm putting the best fabric I could possibly choose on my kiddos and their sensitive skin. It's not just for summer,

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kind of a transition moment um it was a season probably took about two years yeah how did that affect your career and then how did and i don't know what year you started crown quest it was about the same about the same time so that's what i was hoping it was because that's a great story i mean all these things like changing careers yeah starting a new job losing my dad It was all like the same season. Okay, so you were 40, how was about 40, yeah. 40 when you started Crown Quest. Right at that.

Going through this preparation. And by the way, we didn't sell Crown Quest. We sold Crown Rock, which was a partnership. We still have Crown Quest. But when you transitioned into this, that's when you kind of transitioned into running your own company, correct? Yes. Okay.

So here's what's interesting. Have you ever read The Big Rich about the Texas oil families? I've read part of it. Okay. I had always believed, because this was what year you started, Crown Rock. Well, Crown Rock was started in 2007. Okay. The predecessor, really the thing that turned into Crown Quest started in 96.

Okay. So it's always been my belief, you know, especially from that book, is that there were four or five families that jumped into Texas, West Texas oil, or some of it was in... East Texas also. Hunt was East Texas. So I always believed that if you weren't at that time, it was hard to get to the level of scale

that those families had gotten to because they were just kind of first to the pile. You started in 1996 and build this company that is one of the most successful companies in oil of all time. certainly an outlier. So can you tell me, we're playing with interesting pieces here.

You have this newfound perspective through this Job season you go through. You start this company. You're late to the game. Tell me about that story of Crown Quest. Well, we relate to the conventional oil game, but the unconventional oil game was coming. So the unconvention.

So I'll try to make this brief. This is long form. If you think about, take your time. If you think about an oil basin, okay, the oil happens in basins. There's always mountains on one side, in our case, the Rocky Mountains of West Texas, or on the west of us. And the basin is granite, okay? So you come down from the mountains and then granite, and the bowl's full of sediment.

So think of a layer cake. And the layer cake, shale, shale, sediment, shale, sediment, shale, sediment, shale sediment. And we don't know exactly what happened, but the best model is shale is like, you know, it's like a slate roof, a shale, like a chalkboard. And the reason chalkboards are black is because they got organic content, carbon in it. So the shales have the carbons, probably smashed up plankton from some cataclysm, some of it going to go. And then intermingled are like sediment layers like an old beach or an old reef or something like that that can hold oil. So the oil seeps out of the sediment into the, into the, like, porous stuff. And he's stick a straw in, the porous stuff comes out.

That's conventional. Unconventional is you go in and shatter the shale, which is completely impermeable. Well, you put it on your roof, the whole water out, right? Well, we crack it with this massive hydraulic fracturing, and oil flows out. And nobody understands why. According to all our calculations, it shouldn't work, but it does. And so that's unconventional. And that business had not started yet when we came in.

And that's the right. So we were on the front end of that game. It was a new game because of technology and because the price was so high. Did the conventional business owners of the, like the Big Rich families, did they also jump into the unconventional business? Well. Or was it the kind of the innovators that rewrote the game? Let me think.

The hunts are still in the business. So I saw them around some. I know they were in that business. I don't know. I don't really know what the, you know, the Merkison and the, I think the basses sold. I think the basses were because I think they sold Exxon recently. So you guys aren't. I don't know.

I don't track those. You guys aren't all friends. You don't have like an oil convention summit? Those guys live in a different world. That's really Dallas and Houston. Yeah. I live in Midland. Midland.

that's awesome well so you know when when i came i asked you a lot of business questions about crown quest and what made it successful and it was funny because you talked more about the people and the principles by which you ran the company than you did about the business itself yeah so i i went through this season and i started looking at reality stuff and i started trying to acquire tools to help me see reality and we we have a friend herman ebon We got a bunch of stuff from him. We got a bunch of stuff from Robert Fritz. We got a bunch of stuff from, you know, a lot of leadership books.

You know, there's all kinds of material out there. And we kind of synthesized it down to with a guy named Dave Coonerty, who hired from, he was a military guy. Do you know he came into Divy? What's that? He came into Divi, our company. Oh, did he really? He taught a leadership course. Oh, great.

Two months ago or a month ago. Okay. Well, he's great. Well, we work together to kind of. And basically it's taken all this massive leadership stuff and asking the question, okay, you've got all these great principles out there. You can read all these books. But what do you do?

How do you implement this stuff? So we created a little toolkit to implement these things. And I kind of developed a philosophy of if you can't put the basic actions you need to take on a five by seven card, you don't understand it. So I have this card deck. And the card deck's in my mind. And what I learned through this whole building of, of Crown Quest and Crown Rock, which was, you know, kind of like my third or fourth

tribe. I got to be an executive when I was 27, so I've gotten a lot of opportunity to try this stuff. And through this iteration, what I really discovered is that the real leadership opportunity is to have a clear purpose. Our purpose was to create value using a risk-manage investment approach and having a self-governing organization. So that means everybody in the organization knows how to make investments and does it in a collaborative manner. So there wasn't any like gather information and bring it up to the top for the top people to decide.

I made almost no decisions. I just created a culture where massive numbers of decisions were made on the ground by the people who had the best information and the and the and the and we had great tracking about what was happening so we had feedback and we looked at actual costs and actual results and we had goals and what we missed and what we didn't and we just had a conversation about what's happening and adjusted and you know it was it was just team effort we're looking at and and when you have when you have motivated people that are being equipped, that have a shared purpose, and working together as a team, amazing things can happen. Now, was that leadership style that you had sort of inherent to what developed

over your executive years? This was just packaging it into a program. No, 100% not. So this was a learned behavior. It's exactly the opposite of everything I did until I was 40. Wow. Yeah. So like I've met with some really natural leaders that, and I've talked them through this, and they can't articulate it because it's so innate to them that they do all these things, and they can't explain why. In my case, none of it was innate.

I had to learn it all by rote and then apply it very intentionally. I think the divine reason that Danny and I ended up in Midland was a lot of how we, lead our companies is very innate to what the program is. And it was funny because, first of all, we didn't understand why Wally wanted us to come to Midland. There was no plan. It was just like, hey, you should come to Midland. We were like, okay. And then the second thing that was funny is, you know, we ended up in this room, you know, and we were growing our company at the time and we still are, you know, but it was smaller probably than Crown Quest, but 25 employees.

and we were hitting this, this challenging point where we couldn't figure out how to stop having to make every decision. And we knew in our heads, but we didn't know how to culturally implement it into the actual company. And so it was kind of divine about our meeting that I would have never expected is,

everything that I kind of had felt innately, we were trying to accomplish, you built us frameworks to do. Yeah. And then I said, hey, how do I teach our company this? And you said, we'll call this Dave guy.

Oh, Dave, yeah. And then Dave came in two months ago, and our company loved it. And I haven't seen effects of it yet. So the key to that is repetition now. Yes. You practicing it and one of the most valuable things I learned is when you've said it so many times you're ready to put, they're just beginning to hear. And so, and my inclination is if I've thought it, you should know. Okay.

So I had to make a way 100% 180 degree pivot from that and just say the same things over and over and over again. You know, when I'm ready to puke, they're just beginning to hear. Now, how did this program or this kind of philosophy benefit you in the oil business? Because when I was asking you what made Crown Quest, Crown Rock different, you talked a lot about the efficiency. No companies could keep up because the amends. of decisions that were happening. I wouldn't say no companies could keep up. I would just say we had a stellar performance. Right. And it wasn't stellar the whole way along because we're basically building it from scratch. So I'd say we started off behind and then we caught up and then we

began to pull ahead and we were in the top part of the pack. And there's other companies that would say they were better at us. Maybe they were. You always look at your own performance through your own eyes. Right. But what I know is we extracted, I believe we were getting the optimum value from the rock that we had. And we had this, we had this brand, I guess, that we called relentless optimization. And we just, the culture of the company just became, how do we make it better?

And one of the things that companies typically do is, you know, any business is systemic. You know, we've got a bunch of different variables interact with one another. You know, if you can cut your sales force and that'll reduce expenses, you make more money, but in time, that's going to create less revenues if the salesmen are any good, right? Mm-hmm. So that's systemic. And what people typically do is create a bunch of goals without an underlying systemic knowledge of how those things interact. Yeah.

And so we skipped that. We had a very intentional, like, here's how all these things interact. And we're creating goals for you. But we want you to look at the bigger picture. And if those turn out to be not good goals, because we can create more value some other way. Just, you know, raise your hand. We'll switch them. And I think that's what really got us to the point where everybody bought into that.

We also spread a lot of the ownership of the company pretty deep. So everybody was vested in a common goal. That's awesome. That's what we did, too. I landed in Midland. the, I think it was like the day after this deal closed. Okay. And I remember meeting you.

Yeah. And I sat down and I was expecting, I mean, you would have think that it's huge celebration for the family. The kids were running around the same. I was like, hey, you guys just closed on a $12 billion oil deal. What are we doing here? And I asked you, I said, hey, how do you feel? And you said, I'm really burdened because this is a lot of responsibility to steward. And I was fascinated by that because it had nothing to do with you or any type of life change that you wanted or any type of upgrade to some car or shoes.

It was a burden on you. I felt your burden. Why is that? Well, you asked me the purpose of life to be a great steward. So I got promoted to have bigger stewardship. And now the stewardship was of something that wasn't known. Okay. So we're making a big shift.

from one form of stewardship to another. So I've got to learn a whole bunch of new stuff now. And so, yeah, that's all it is. It's just, and, you know, if you start chasing, and I run into this quite a bit, like somebody who said, God, I want to be a billionaire. Really? Why? Well, you know, to be a billionaire.

Well, what are you going to do when you're a billionaire? Well, try to get two billion. What are you going to do when you try to get three? Why? Well, because, what are you going to do then that you can't do now? Well, nothing. So, you know, like, there's no, it's just like keeping score. Yeah.

But if you're keeping score and you can't win, you're just on a hamster wheel. Right. So that more monster, you know, the idea of if I had this, then it would make me happy. That's one of the worst delusions we all, we all struggle with. and I got off that wheel after I realized how dumb it is, but it's natural to do it. And, you know, if I had that, then I would be happy. Well, once you have it, then you can't want it anymore.

So the idea of if something I don't have will make me happy, if you adopt that idea, then you can never be happy because you only are happy with something you don't have. So you flip that to I'm happy with what I do have, then you live a great life, right? That's been a huge theme. You don't listen to our podcast. You're not our demo,

but that's been a huge, huge theme for our family this year is exactly that. And we're not billionaires, but we caught ourselves early enough, especially after we had kids, because kids change everything in the sense that we didn't know what we were even chasing. More.

Yeah, we knew that we were like, Well, more is not more. It's actually then just more. And it never stops. And it's actually an addiction. No, it 100% was an addiction. And that's what we identified it as is it was an addiction to more. It was addiction to the chase. It was an addiction to a pace that was unsustainable. And that's a huge part of our story. And I think that we're still in the early stages of, okay, well, if it's not that, then what is it? And there's just wisdom that God has been given our family so much, just the first part of this year and in understanding what that looks like. But for you, if stewardship was the calling, you know, I feel that you steward to ministries, you steward to politics, you steward in a lot of different areas. And before we jump into that, I want to kind of take a side tangent on media.

Okay. because it's all going exactly how I wanted this podcast to go because I really wanted to focus on who you were first. And there's who you are, which is who I met in Midland. And then there's who the media says that you are. And then there's who your family says you are. But I want to talk about the media. And when we came, it was interesting because we were in a different form of media, social media. And you asked us a lot of really good questions.

and a lot of your questions were around framing. And I never really heard the term. I knew what you meant, but I had never heard it as eloquently as you talked about it. And you have very strong views about the importance of framing in media in particular. So can you talk about what framing means to you and why you think it's vitally important? Well, yes, but I'm going to take it up a notch. So you're, I said that my question. One of the most important things you can do is choose a perspective that's true, okay?

Because you have three things you can control. What you trust, who are what you trust, your perspective and what you do. Well, a perspective, your perspectives are all shaped by the framing you adopt. Okay. So this is actually the foundation of your decision making. What media is doing is presenting you framing, hoping you adopt it, so that you'll take the actions they want to take. So you think about, you know, a commercial.

So, you know, like a jeans commercial. Yeah. So you've got like $300 jeans that are $10 jeans that somebody, you know, ripped up and put somebody's name on. Okay. So why am I going to pay $290 for jeans that will wear out a lot faster? Because I have that name on it, right? No.

It's because somebody framed to me like, do you want to be cool? or not cool? I want to be cool. Oh, cool people buy this, you know, $300, $300 jeans with this name on it. Okay, well, so because I bought that framing, now I'll go buy those jeans. Okay? That's how this works. The first episode of framing in the world was in the Garden of Eden. So a framing is usually like some basic, very value-based underlying, underlying value-based binary question. Do you want this or that? It's usually unspoken. It's presumed.

And if you don't see through what's presented to what's being presumed, then if you buy what's presented, you're adopting what's presumed. And that's how the framing battle works. So God says, hey, I want you to have life, but you can have death. But life comes through doing what I ask you to do, do anything you want to. do. Really, you just tend this garden, keep it. I'll give you advice every evening, give you some feedback on how to do it best. You figure it out, and everything's good. Just don't eat at that tree. That's the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's death. And so that's framing.

And then Satan comes and says, hey, I'm now paraphrasing all this and dramatizing it. like, hey, didn't God give you choices? Yeah, he gave his choices. Well, doesn't he want you to make the best choice possible? Well, sure he does. Yeah, but he said if we chose that, we would die. Do you really say that? He didn't really.

No, I think you misunderstood that. He didn't say that. He said he wanted you to make the best choice. You could be like him, you know. If you have full knowledge, he has full knowledge, eat that, and you'll have full knowledge, you can make better choices. Oh, yeah, I guess that's right. Okay.

So the underlying question is, who do you trust? You trust yourself or do you trust God? Who do you ultimately trust for your decisions? Well, yeah, trust yourself. Well, that didn't work out too good, all right? So that's why framing's so critical in the media. So if I look at a media article, I don't pay, I pay hardly any attention to what's presented. I just look through it to see what the framing is.

What are they trying to, what are they pushing? And so I think that as communication in general has gotten so divisive because of the framing, the framing has become much more black and white. And I think social media plays a huge role into this. We talked about this a lot. If everything is based on framing, is everything just propaganda to us? Well, everything's framed. The question is, is the framing true or not?

So the framing in the garden was life is harmony with God and his design. Death is being separated from God's design. Right. That was God's framing. Satan's framing was life is you in charge. And death is you not having the full wisdom and capability. It's a definitional thing. Which do you believe is true?

Which perspective are you going to adopt? So I would say it's the framing's not black and white. the framing's always underneath. Yeah. The teams are black and white. Okay, the teams are real clear. But what's behind the teams is not always real clear. Sometimes these guys, you know, the guys on Team A are giving you a framing that's actually the framing of Team B.

And because they have an agenda of some kind. So you really have to be discerning and look through what's being said if you want to, if you want to really make a, choose a perspective that's true. Yeah, and I don't want to put these words in your mouth, but it feels like politics is a game of framing, right? Because it's all about what, and the reason it's become so divisive is it's like the framing of Fox versus the framing of CNN. And I think what most Americans feel is like we all know it's framed. We all know that there's some agenda behind every message that's being pushed. And so the question is, how do you find the truth beneath the framing?

if we don't have the access that, you know, a Tim Dunn has to try and figure out what is actually going on behind the scenes. And I'd be curious your perspective on that because I would say you have been framed in one way. Oh, sure. They want to frame me as, you know. The Rolling Stones article said, meet Tim Dunn, Trump's Christian Kingpin. That's framing, right? Yes. They're trying to define me into a role.

Right. And so how do we if— By the way, what does that even mean? Yeah, well, it was behind a click wall or a paywall, and I don't have a subscription. Good, good. Well, I'll assure you they did not define that. No, I don't think that they did, but they got a good headline that was a framing job, right? And so, you know, I do understand the game that you were explaining to us.

So if it's a game of framing, what does the normal American citizen do to discover what is the base level truth beneath the framing? Well, let me take a step back first. You're using the word politics the way most people do, but I think that's actually an incorrect usage of the word. Okay. Okay, you're using politics just to apply to government. that's actually a Marxist framing. And the better framing, and if you'll think about it, we actually use the word this way,

is politics is just humans interacting with one another in any kind of organized manner. Okay, and you'll say office politics, family politics. And so the connotation is politics is bad. The reason why we use that connotation is because the tendency of humans is to be selfish-centered and to exploit. That's the way we're all born. Your four-year-olds are all that way, right?

Naturally. And you have to learn to know it's better to love your neighbor. That's a learned, an acquired taste. But the politics that we had in our company was fact-based, result-oriented, purpose-driven. and we just we had a culture cultures is for any group is is based on what's honored what shamed what what actions are honored or shame so we shame drama if there was any drama we just storytelling we just we didn't put up with it really facts argumentation the junior person in the room raising their hand and saying they don't agree we honored that because we want to get to a fact-based

result-oriented conclusion that optimizes value. So we very intentionally built a culture that supported our operational goal. Okay. So that's still a political, that's a political formation. It's just constructive. The fact that most things destructive is a problem about humanity, not the problem with the word. So now you're talking about civics and government. Yes.

Specifically. But the media actually plays in all. manners of politics. They're in your family. They relate to sports. They relate to, you know, products, things like that, and they're framing products. But the goal of media in our modern society is to get clicks and sell advertising. Right. At the bottom, at the root bottom, that's what they're after. And in government, the news they get is basically from leaks. or from scoops or from access. So what they're generally doing is just playing the game

with the people in power in order to, you know, the people in power want to spin and the people in media want to scoop. And so, you know, how can we collaborate? Is generally the way that's played. As opposed to how can we give information to people where they can make good choices. Right.

So now if you risk, so it depends, So it depends on, it depends on like how you, what, where you, where you're at in the, in government and voting and stuff like that. What most people do, and I think this is smart, find somebody you trust that does the homework and ask them. Okay. That, that's a good way to do it. Right.

And then that, that person has plenty of, of resources. Ballotpedia is a really great resource. It's very fact-based. you can dig through if you'll not pay attention to the headlines. It's not that unusual to read an article that has a headline that says one thing and you read the article and it says something totally different. Like I remember reading, gosh, it's kind of escaped me. There was a CDC Center for Disease Control during COVID.

I had a headline that basically I can't remember the details. it contradicted what the actual document said. And the headline was one thing. That's what got reported. But the report said something totally different. Right. That's not that unusual because everybody knows almost everybody just reads the headlines. So if you just know everything's being framed and you look through and actually read the information or talk to somebody about what's really happening, I don't actually think it's that hard to find out what's really going on.

Right. I think it was it was it's a we're in a transition state probably in media where you know the trusted networks right that's how they presented the trusted networks are no longer so. You know the podcast genre I feel like is now where a lot of people trust the long form quality conversations that are coming out of that and I'm and that must have because you've been in you have been involved in civic politics. funding it and involved in the knowledge of what's going on, that must be a different transition for both parties as well of really trying to figure out how do we speak to the people because they're not trusting these networks anymore. Yeah, a lot of people are doing their own podcast.

I'll tell you another good source for what's really going on is think tanks. And, you know, you can go on and read what the think tanks stand for and they'll do papers and just, you know, look through their conclusions and look at the underlying data. If they have a good reasoning, then that's, you know, that might be useful. And sometimes their reasoning's faulty. So you can pitch it out.

So where does your stewardship collide with civic politics? I'm going to start prefacing by saying civic politics. Yeah, there you. That's what we're talking about. So where does your stewardship calling intersect with that? And when did that start and why? Well, I started early on like Reagan Revolution. So I've been involved in this for a long time.

But I would say my search was for where is the real opportunity for reform? And I tried all kinds of things. And it was like, are you my mother? You remember that little kid's book? Are you my mother? Where the Doug is. Yeah. And it was like, no, no, no, no, no.

And finally, finally what I did is I found that politics is systemic. And there's some very key levers that make a really big difference. So just to take a step back, I would say what God tells us in Scripture is that the most powerful human organizing approach that creates the most flourishing and the most positive results is self-governance. And in self-governance, the authorities are the ones that take responsibility, but they serve the other people to accomplish the purpose. So Jesus is the authority, and he said, I didn't come to be served but to serve. So when you use your authority to take responsibility so the triangle turns upside down, I still am the authority. I don't try to say I'm not. But my job is to build structures and to do equipping where the other people are successful to accomplish the purpose.

So my job is structures and clarity. Okay. And if I do those things, then I'm serving that mission. That's a self-governing approach. The church is given a self-governing. You know, elders do not lord over, be a shepherd and, you know, equip. It's the same idea. It's self-governing.

So when God set up Israel, he set it up as self-governing. The Deuteronomy is a treaty. And the ancient treaties that was usually a superior king and an inferior king. And the Superior King would say, you be faithful to me and pay me this much tribute every year. And if you're faithful, then I will bless you. And if you're not faithful, I'll curse you. And that's the format you see in Deuteronomy. But God did not do, like me versus to Moses.

He did me to the people. He did God to the people. We the people. And then he set up this deal and he concluded it with, I'm giving you a choice this day. sounds very similar to the Garden of Eden, right? If you choose life, if you do my commands, and if you don't do my commands, you choose death. And if you want to simplify it, you could say life is a love your neighbor culture,

where it's win, win, if you win, I win, and a death is the surrounding pagan cultures, which is the strong exploit the weak. And I win when you lose. Okay. Well, kind of common sense is if you have a love your neighbor culture where people tell the truth and collaborate, it's going to thrive. And if you have a strong exploit the week and if you create something, I'm going to take it away from you, it's going to dive into poverty and violence, right? That's not that hard to figure out.

And that's what God's telling them. And then he says, you know, if you choose death, I'm going to accelerate it so that you have a chance to repent. And if you choose life, I'm going to accelerate that to create a blessing. Okay. So there's natural and divine consequences. And then 450 years later, they came and said, we want a king. So we can be like the other nations. So we don't want to be exceptional anymore.

So that we can, you do the work instead of us doing work. We don't want to self-governance hard work. Everybody has to take responsibility. We don't want to take responsibility anymore. And we don't want to fight our own fights. Okay, we want you to do all the fighting. And so Samuel goes to God and says, man, I'm really bummed out. I failed.

And he said, God said, you didn't reject. They didn't reject you. They rejected me being king over them. So self-governance is we the people, to God, to love our neighbor. That's the way it works. Okay. So fast forward, there's been pockets of self-governance that have happened. Israel, little bitty pocket, the Swiss valleys pockets, some of the Athenian cities off and on.

You know, it's happened here and there. But America, I would say, is the only large-scale application of the self-governance principles. And that's what the revolution was about. We had governed ourselves, and England came in and said, we're ready to take over now, and we said, no, thanks. Okay. So that's, to me, that's what the fight is. Now we've had about 75 years of this, I would say, Marxist, stateist philosophy that basically says it's the First Samuel 8 again.

The experts can do a better job than you. The government knows better than you. We will provide peace for you. You don't have to do that work anymore. We'll make the decisions for you. We can take that responsibility away from you. And then your life will be more peaceful. That's been the promise.

and the reality is what God told Israel. He said, I'm going to judge you by giving you what you asked for. But here's the reality. The king is going to come in. He's going to get the power, and he's going to take your property away from you, and he's going to take your sons and daughters away from you. And then you're going to say, help us God, we're oppressed, and I'm going to say, nope, you got what you asked for.

So I feel like we're in this position where, and this is structural now. I don't really point at people. We've got a structure where decisions are being made by an elected bureaucrats who have sovereign immunity from prosecution. So if they break the law, they don't get prosecuted. And they have immunity from being fired from their job. That's beginning to change recently. But if you put somebody in that structure, and give them a massive amount of power and then separate them from the consequences of the

decisions they're making, what do you think is going to happen? And then you give them an incentive to accumulate more power. And so slowly, slowly, we don't have representative government anymore. We've got a bureaucracy that is now our ruler, and that's going to turn into tyranny. And we've already seen that begin to happen. So to me, the key thing that I'm fighting for is to restore, our heritage self-governance. And that means we got to do the work.

It's up to us. I'm not blaming anybody else. I take that responsibility and say, what can I do to bring self-governing structure back? And let's get the regulations where there are boundaries within which we make decisions. We bear the consequences. We have a safety net for the least of us, but not a protection from consequences. You know, we should have a trampoline for people that have a horror on their luck so they get back in the job market, not a quicksand that traps them in a welfare system. And we need a government structure that supports a self-governing society because that's what thrives.

People making decisions, learning from those decisions, interacting with one another in a constructive manner. the market economy, you win if you're best at serving. Well, that's great. That's a love your neighbor culture. Why, I don't feel like that's a message that a lot of people would disagree with. No, it's probably on either side. No, it's probably a 90% people agree with that. Right.

And so is the way that things are framed causing that message to become more divisive than it really is? No. So actually, what I would say is you get two facades given to you, a red one and a blue one. Yes. And I'm way over generalizing now, okay? It's pretty advice about that. Many of the red people, what they really want is power. And many of the blue, what they really want is power.

Okay. And so my biggest enemies and political enemies in Texas have been red because I'm trying to get the red team to actually stand for self-governance, to be transparent, to do what they say they're going to do, and for the voters to have more power than the lobbyists. Well, guess who doesn't like that? The red. The lobbyists. Yeah.

So the Republicans are indifferent. But the lobbyists, the political consultants, the media, this is their industry. And they're the ones you see the spin from because they tend to control the campaigns. So is that who you're really fighting the most then? The lobbyist, the media. The lobbyist media, government, the people that live off of the system, they have no incentive to change the system. I don't really blame them for wanting the system to say the same. They're responding to the incentives within the system.

But somebody's got to bring that to light and say, we need to change it. And there's a whole bunch of people doing this now. It's not by no means is it just me. But that's beginning to shift now in a major way is to say, wait, this doesn't work. We need everybody needs to be accountable for their job and it needs to be transparent. We need to see what's happening. And we need, you know, I want to make the decisions for my family, not somebody else. How do we, how do you take down a system that large, though?

You don't. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, no one person can take that system down. Sure. But I think once the awareness, you spread the awareness and people say, I want something different, then that begins to happen. And I feel like there's a massive movement all across the country of this happening. I see it everywhere. I agree with you.

And I think that people are seeing, I think COVID did a lot to people. Oh, it was amazing. COVID did a lot to people because I think now we're like, whoa, okay. Okay, this whole thing, you know, wasn't. It's like Wizard of Oz. The curtain got pulled back. And I think a lot of hands were overplayed in a variety of different areas. And so I think that it's happening across the board, coastally and, I think, in the Midwest.

Well, and I would say the Republican Party's had a bit of a civil war going on within it, the Red Party. Because, you know, the question being, are we supporting this government system? that we helped build. Right. Okay? Because a lot of these bureaucracies were set up by the, under Republican Congresses, and it works for a lot of people. And then there's another group that says this was a mistake.

We need to reform it. And we need to make it something that really works for the American people. And I think that war has now been won by the reformers. I think that tide has turned. Now, that doesn't mean the reformers won't become the new establishment. Okay. That's a, that's a human characteristic. But I think that's been reform. There's now a little bit of a reform movement in the Democratic Party, which would be a wonderful thing. The ideal scenario is for both parties to be fighting over the best way to do self-governance. I think, which is what we had for about 100 years. Well, that's what we had until about 1930. That's what we had. Right.

But, you know, I felt like, you know, the Republican Party's problem has been hypocrisy. You say one thing, but don't do it. And I think that's an easier thing to cure than what the left has got into Marxism, which actually is say whatever you need to say to get power over other people. And they would say because experts can do a better job. Sure. They would rationalize that we're doing better for people because we know better than them. And I just think that's completely corrupt.

So they need a new philosophy to, because Marxism doesn't work. So when you decided to back Trump and follow the current leadership structure in place there, do you believe that we are closer now to the Reformation, right? the march down towards like we the people? I don't know. I mean, all you can do is work in the moment. Right. I mean, there's no guarantee what the future is.

You learn from the past, but, you know, look, self-governance is a, it's not a destination. It's a way of life. and my favorite Bible verse on one of my favorite Bible verses on self-governance is in judges. That's the period of self-governance. And they did good some, they did bad some, right? And after Deborah and Bayrak had their big victory, the song of Deborah in judges five, I think it is. She says, bless be the Lord, in the day that the leaders led and the people volunteered. That's a pretty good synopsis.

think about it, if Debra and Baywright, if they lose Debron and Bayrak's head go on a pike. If they win, they don't get anything other than more of responsibility. The people, if they win, they get to go back to their normal life. They don't really get anything either. They're not trying to take over territory. They're not trying to take each other's stuff. They're just working together for a way of life. and that's that's you never that never goes away right so if we get to reform that just means more work

because you self-governance is an ongoing it'd be like hey do you think your family's reached the point where you don't have to try anymore right oh our marriage is good now i don't have to we don't have to right you know spend time together anymore you know it's it's an ongoing investment i'd love to tell you these same self-governing principles applied to family All right. So let's talk about kids. Your natural bent is to have your kids validate you. That's going to be the default.

And you can tell yourself it's not true, but it will be unless you very intentionally make it not that. Okay. So what should it be? You know, I want my child to validate me. There's a lot of versions of this. You know, I want my son to meet the needs that my husband's not meeting. I want my daughter to meet the needs. My wife's not meeting.

I want my son to be successful at the sports I wish I had done. I want my daughter to be popular at school that I wish I would have been. Whatever, okay? All those things are, if you have those thoughts, join the club. Everybody has. That's the natural setting. But it's very counterproductive for your kids. So if you say, okay, well, what's the very best thing I can do for my children?

I would say it's two things. It's to separate two things. Separate acceptance from approval. Okay. Acceptance should be given or belonging. Acceptance should be given unconditionally. This is actually the gospel message. I'll accept you unconditionally based on believe and you're in my family.

But approval is something you win with your actions. Okay, well done, good and faithful servant only goes to those who do well. Okay. So I accept you unconditionally, but I will approve only things that are good for you. Okay. Now, why would you do that? Well, when someone knows that you'll never reject them and you're always in their corner, no matter what you do, no matter how.

bad you are, I'm going to seek your best interest. That belonging need being met frees them up to achieve. And if they don't have that belonging need met, then they're going to go get it in a conditional manner. If I perform for this group, this gang, this click, then they will accept me. So now I control my own acceptance, which kind of has a twisted human kind of benefit because I feel like I control it, but it's not real acceptance. And so you're chasing something that's not real. And you're going to be controlled by that group. A lot of really destructive behavior comes out of that.

So if you're fully accepted, now you're free to actually chase approval. And because you already belong, you're not susceptible to those cliques and those gangs and those sex that will, you know, try to capture you. Okay. So now the approval would be, well, okay, what do you approve? I approve you making good choices based on good values. I approve you having a good work ethic. I approve you learning to love your neighbor. And as long as you're doing those things and you're striving toward that, we're good. And we're going to set up a reward mechanism for that. And it's going to be that some of your kids are not the, you know, music. prodigy you wish they were or the sports prodigy wish they were or the beauty you wish they were probably 99% probability that's the case but all of them can make good choices based on good values all of them can love their neighbor so um there's a a bible verse that if you raise your children in the way you know in the way of the lord they won't depart from it some people say that can be understood is toward their bent. If you'll understand who your kids are and help them become

everything that can be within that, that their, their giftedness, then you're doing the best they can for them. Now, the key thing is you to, if you want to do their best benefit, is they're leaving. Say, there's a termination point. Now, you may have a child that, you know, is disabled or something that that's not the case. So there's some exceptions. But, But generally, you want them to leave and you want them to, you know, get married themselves and start their own family. You want them to have their own adventure and their own life. And so having that in mind and telling them, like, mom and I are going to still be here when you're gone. We keep going.

We love you. But we want you to leave. We want you to leave. And we want to have that be a very specific and well-thought-out progression for your business. benefit. And that will, is another thing that keeps you from cleaning to them so they meet your needs somehow. So I think having a, we call it a there here path, you know, a there for your child. We want them to leave home, understanding good values and knowing how to make good choices and having a good work ethic. You know, that's all you can do. You equip them with the truth.

You give them good examples. They know how to make good decisions. You can't control them. their decisions. And if you try, it'll backfire. Especially six of them. Well, and they're all way different. I mean, we have three. They're all way different. Six is psycho. Spilled milk. Okay. I love James Dobson on this. Never discipline a child for being irresponsible, just for being defiant.

If they're irresponsible, teach them responsibility. If they're defiant, teach them defiance never pays in this world. If you're defiant, if you're disbant. defying authority, you know. And if you don't teach them that, they're going to learn it from a policeman after they go to jail, you know, which is not good. So I think having those clear goals for your kids and really thinking through those expectations is a huge benefit to the children. And then with respect to like husband and wife, there's a lot of research that basically says if you'll just stay together and be more or less civil to one another, your kids turn out way, way better. So I'd say marriage has been sold as a means to fill needs.

And absolutely not true. Marriage will fill your needs, but only to the extent you invest in the other person. So marriage is really a commitment to a shared purpose. It's just another kind of organization. and if you have a mutual commitment to a shared purpose, that will work with your kids. Stability at home is what makes your kids thrive. It's not your happiness. It's your commitment.

It makes it thrive. Last thing. In scripture, really tells us this. What was all that? Is that Donald? That's a lift. That's lift. Your ride is on the way.

My ride's on the way. Hey, that's the best exit from a podcast ever. But share your last point. Share your last point. Okay. All right. Also, you take lift? Lift, yeah.

You don't like lift? You're an Uber person? Well, no, I'm just fascinated that. I live a normal life. You're on the same page. I'm just a lift person. He's probably going to get Taco Bell on the way out of here. I'm going to a Southwhip.

West Airlines fly it too. It's a way more comfortable than private, by the way, for the most part. That can't be true. Yeah, mostly is. Would you rather fly in a 737? Would you rather ride an SUV or on a motorcycle? Oh, gosh. Little planes are real convenient.

I'm telling you're the coolest person I've ever met. You're so fascinating. Little planes are really convenient, but big planes are really comfortable. I was literally going to make a joke because Wally was saying that your flight was out. And I was like, what are you talking about? Flight schedule? you're going to fly private here. And I was going to make a joke, like, would you fly Southwest here?

And you did. Yeah, I fly southwest. Now, I do fly private sometimes when it's way more convenient. But, I mean, for the most part, it's not. That's so funny. It's not. So, so husband and wives. I want to talk about husband and wives.

Did you get the lift premium? Because they'll wait for you, or did you get the regular lift? Extra comfort. Okay, wrap up your point. They're going to leave you. No, I got 15 minutes. Every woman has a superpower because men are deathly afraid of female rejection. True.

Okay. And no man wants to admit that, but it's true of every man. And the more macho they are, the more fearful they are. That's why seductive women are so attractive to men because they're sensitive. in a signal, I won't reject you. That's why pornography is so attractive. An imaginary woman will never reject you. Okay.

So 1st Peter 3 talks about this, and it basically, and it says, I'm just going to paraphrase it. Hey, women, your husband's probably going to be a knucklehead. Okay, that's kind of the way men are bent. and but don't use words to correct them. All that does is chase them away because corrective words to a man feels like rejection. Okay, don't use words. Do use example. So if you are a fantastic example of great character, that's almost irresistible to them

and most of them will come around. And do use words of affirmation like Sarah, and it says he, called her husband Lord, which is a great sign of respect. Okay. So you go back and read about Adam, sorry, Abraham and Sarah. You know, he's a rich guy. Back in those days, rich men had multiple wives. He just had one.

He's wealthy, again, many women, many children. He just had one. And she was barren. And the idea of getting a concubine came from her. Okay. So it works pretty good. and and when he when he said hey we go to egypt he said hey you know they pretty much murder everybody down here you're a pretty woman and they murder the husbands to take the woman tell them you're my sister

and maybe and they won't kill me if they take you i'll come get you and she's like okay i trust you so that's the relationship they had and that's that's a i wish more women knew what an incredible power you have to help your husband be everything he can be. And if you ask your husband this, it's not fair to have him articulate this because our culture is not really, I would say, encourage men to embrace this. Sure. But it's just the way things are. I think that's why Adam, it says he was with her when she took the apple.

And you wonder, why didn't he say, don't do it? Well, I think it's because he didn't want to risk rejection. That's how powerful that is. Now, men won't say this, but they'll sing about it. So go look at just about every honky talk song. You know, I'm drinking myself into oblivion because of her memory. That's about every honky tonk song, right? Going to take a freight train all the way to Georgia.

I'm never coming back. Can't you see? Can't you see what this woman's been doing? to me. Okay. So they sing about it because that's what they feel, but it's hard for them to admit. But I would say to men, I'd just say, go watch Batman begins. And when he's in that cave, facing the bats that he was afraid of, that's what we need to do relative to female rejection and just say, I'm going to be the leader I need to be. And no matter how it feels, I'm going to do what's best for our family and for our marriage.

And that's what we need to do. Now, what the First Peter tells the men is your wife wants to be a teammate and she's built to be your helper, your teammate. The word helper is used in scripture mainly of God. So it's a very divine characteristic. But it's really frustrating to want to help and have somebody tell you, go away, I don't need your help. So it calls it fellow heir of the great.

race of life. And he says, if you won't do that, if you won't invite her to help you, then I'm not going to listen to your prayers. So if you won't invite her in to be a part of what you're doing, I'm not going to invite you in to be a part of what I'm doing. Okay. So that's a big deal. And it also says, dwell with her with understanding. So what's the typical thing men say, I can't understand women. You know, the less you talk to them, the better. So it says to wives. Don't use words to correct your wife. And to men, it says, use words to understand your your wife. Okay. So you got to be Batman and you got to engage with lots of words. My gosh, women like words. And it just goes on and on. Marriage counseling, they call it saying,

get curious. You know, just goes on and on. But you got to recognize their brains are not absorbed like seven to nine times the data urge does. They need help sorting all that out. and, you know, we're not burdened by data, so we tend to make, make, you know, focus decisions more. Yeah, the mental load sits different. Dan and I talk about that all the time. Yeah, the mental load's different, but we're missing most things. So you actually can benefit greatly from seeing a bigger picture. You're going to make better decisions, and they can benefit from your, you know, focal of the decision, but it takes time.

So that is why I say that commitment, marriage is about commitment to a purpose. of oneness. Oneness comes about through understanding your role. Like the man is like, I need to bring my wife in, make her a part of what I'm doing, and use words to understand. And woman is like, don't use words of affirmation, not correction, and be mainly an example. And when you're doing that, and then out of that flows unconditional acceptance and then conditional approval to help you learn to love your neighbor and to make good have good values and to do

right things and get to that exit point when we're going to say you did a great job and you know we're rooting for you let us know but you're it's yours now then then i think you have a really picture of health and that that is actually self-governance that's that's the family version of self-governance. Okay, one last question, and then we're going to do a couple rapid fires. Okay. I would want to know what is Tim Dunn's vision for America? Well, I would like to see us be a self-governing nation for another 200 years. And if we do that, then the amount of thriving that's going to happen is going to, you know, continue. We're going to be an instrument for thriving like we have been.

And if you'll think about it, the places where we have suffered great harm or been a cause of harm is when we have failed to follow the principles of self-governance, love your neighbor. Slavery based on race, you know, is a, is not loving your neighbor, right? That's having an excuse to exploit a certain class. So if we'll be true to our founding principles and true to self-governance, I think we can create a lot of flourishing in the world. And that would be my goal for America. I love it. A couple of rapid fire questions. What is your favorite conspiracy theory that you believe is true? Well, I probably won't satisfy you on this one. So conspiracy theories come about

because there was a cause effect of some kind, and it's really complex. They always are, but because we can't understand complexity, we substitute with a story. I agree. I way oversimplify. So in that same vein, have you ever met George Soros, and is he a boogeyman? I've never met George Zoros. He definitely funds a lot of stuff that I oppose. Right.

He's a massive funder in Texas, Texas state politics. I think the last cycle, maybe he was in the top five, and he doesn't live here. I don't know if you notice that. Yeah. At least not that I know of. And so most of his funding has gone into by the district attorneys, which prosecute like voter integrity laws and like riots and cities. So just think you can make your own conclusions about why he's willing to put that massive money into those things. Right.

Okay. All set. Will Trump and Elon ever make up? My favorite Babylon B on that whole thing was federal judge orders that Trump can rule America, yeah, rule America during the workdays. And Elon gets every weekend. That one was so good. Look, people are still people. Yes.

People are still people. And I think people chase headlines. And so one of the things I've learned in politics is just don't react. Right. You're not going to try and mediate them back together. No, no. Who's your favorite president of all time? Has to be George Washington because he could have been king.

and he declined. He worked for the Congress being the general, and they wouldn't pay his soldiers. He could have gotten his soldiers to march in and forced them to pay. So he turned America over to a bunch of people that he knew weren't up to the task, but he did it anyway

because he knew that self-governance was the only hope for true thriving. And I just don't know. I don't know how you can get any more, you know, higher integrity than that. What was the golden age, golden era for America? You know, you could argue any time. You could argue any time for a number of different reasons. But objectively, the 19th century is when American industry so surpassed everybody else in the world that we actually took down the structure of Europe.

if you'll study in like the 1870s-ish, all the nobilities and the kingdoms and all that stuff, they all flipped to parliamentary, parliamentary, and it was, and basically kind of vestiges of self-governance because they had to out of competitive pressure from the U.S. So that was a pretty amazing century in many respects. I love it. The most fascinating thing about this interview is that I think everyone, who doesn't, who's not in the inner circle, right? We all think you guys know each other.

Like I would just think like, oh, yeah, all the oil guys know each other. They hang out. Oh, you don't hang out with Elon? Oh, you don't know George, George Soros? And it's so funny. But maybe it's just because you're a Midland guy. Last question, and this is for you. I know that you don't care.

But I think that you are villainized in the media. I think you're the boogeyman. You're the George Soros of the right. And I think a lot of what you talked about was, today was, we the people, empowering people, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, etc. And creating or party, too. I mean, you spoke against both parties, which I think was fascinating. And for both parties. And for both parties.

I think that what was fascinating about this conversation is that you spoke to the structures that prevent people. from thriving in America. Structure demands behavior. That's one of our things you'll hear us say 100 times a day. Which is why I want to ask this question, what would you say to the people who villainize you? Yeah. Well, here's what I would say that people who are looking on. I don't know.

I don't really think about that. I don't really know. I know you don't. But here's what I would say. Here's what I would say I would say I've learned. Number one, we all are inclined to think everybody's looking at us. Okay? And you're in a store and you think, and you see somebody, you know, kind of wrinkle their nose or something, you think, oh, they saw me and they thought this or that.

And the reality is everybody's thinking that same thing, okay? They're not thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves. And number one. Number two, people don't have much time to think about people other themselves. They've got lots of things, you know, their job, their tasks, the people immediately in their view. They're not thinking, they're not obsessing about whatever you're obsessing about. Additionally, in order to be famous, you have to be in the media all day, every day.

It costs millions of dollars. You watch the celebrities, you know, set their hair on fire and go into rehab. And I don't know if they actually go into rehab, but I know they got a headline out of it. You know, they just self-destruction. And I don't know what all they do. And most of what I know about that is from, you know, looking at the headlines going through the grocery store line or whatever. But, you know, it's just it's so people, that's the bottom line. People are not thinking about you.

And most of the time when you get it, when someone attacks you, they're counting on you thinking everybody's thinking about you. And they're just not. So if you have, and I'm talking about in any venue, if you have somebody that's being nasty to you on social media, which sounds like kind of what started your thing here. Yeah, yeah. We deal with us. You know, you know who's thinking about that? You. Yeah.

Nobody else is paying attention to that. So, I mean, you can fix it easy just by turning the social media account off and you can ignore it. If maybe you engage with those people and maybe you hear what they have to say and maybe you can gain a perspective where you have better reality, maybe you can help them see something. So there's a time and a place for everything. But, you know, most people are reacting to the structures that they're in. Their behavior is responsive to some structure. It may be a family structure. it may be a it may be um you know their mental models about things and everybody's got a story about

why they're behaving the way they are and if you knew that story you you you probably have some empathy for them so great answer you know i don't uh now now that doesn't mean that you know when you're provoked you're not going to immediately feel then right yeah but i have this little speech I give to myself. It sounds a whole lot like what I just said. You know, when someone says something bad about me or whatever that comes into view, just like, that's, you know, nobody's thinking about me. If people that know me know it's not true, people that don't know me, don't care,

just let it go. Yeah. That's kind of a, when, you know, Matthew, I don't know if you ever noticed the Lord's Prayer, the middle of it, it's a kiaz. which is a biblical structure that's a lot like ABC CBA. It's a mirror. Like it'll say three things and then mirror in the middle is the main point. And in the Lord's Prayer, the middle part is forgive us as we forgive our neighbors, those who trespass against us.

So think about that prayer. God, only forgive me to the extent I forgive others. That's what the prayer is. And then at the end, it tells you why it made that prayer that way. He says, for if you do not forgive others, neither will your heavenly father forgive you. Now, again, this is to his children, his disciples. And it's kind of like you probably do that with your kids, right? If you're going to be mean to your friends, then I'm not going to be nice to you.

I want you to, I want you to, you know, be a civil person. So if you think about that, it's like what's in our best interest is not to be antagonistic towards others. And if you think about it, if they're not thinking about you, but you, you think about you, you're thinking about them thinking about you and you're boiling and seething inside, you're only hurting yourself. So bitterness is a self-poison. And you have the illusion that you're punishing somebody. And it's just not true.

And it's dumb. So just kind of let it go. If you ever run for president, I'd love to be your campaign. I'm sure. Man. You know, I think I'm talented at some things. I would be such a terrible politician. Really? Why do you say that?

Well, so if you're in political office, if you're going to, you know, your job is to do constituent services and past, I'm talking about like a legislative office now and pass legislation. And, you know, there's a lot of collaborative work. That's mostly, it's very difficult to get away with not having your. time scheduled in 15-minute increments. And I just would be so bad at that. I got to have lots of time to think. My skill is really thinking about things and kind of boiling it down to its essence and looking for the key tipping points.

I'm way better at being on the outside. I don't think I could do what those guys do. Well, I appreciate you coming. This is a great conversation. Good. And I had a lot of fun. I hope your listeners enjoyed it. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services.

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