Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #288 Mike Dillard

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

I’ve known of and ran in similar circles as Mike Dillard for some time now, basically since I’ve been in Austin. Mark lays out his younger years as a small awkward kid blossoming into his college days of debauchery and early days of adulthood as a jet setting entrepreneur. Since those days he has unfortunately been plagued by mold and all the sickness that accompanies that. There’s so much more goodness in here yall. Enjoy!   ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   Full Temple Reset  and Fit For Service 2023 Core Program  are live! Head to the links above and explore the pages, consider your options and hopefully ultimately sign up. I hope to see yall on the path next year!   Connect with Mike:   Website: mikedillard.com  Instagram: @realmikedillard Twitter: @Mike_Dillard YouTube: @MikeDillardShow Facebook: Mike Dillard Official     Show Notes:   Tovictory.com Placeholder for 'The Mike Dillard Show" ft Kyle Kingsbury  KKP #287 Mark Gober’s “An End to the Upside Down Reset” Spotify Apple   Sponsors:   PaleoValley Some of the best and highest quality goodies I personally get into are available at paleovalley.com, punch in code “KYLE” at checkout and get 15% off everything! Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Collagenius Want to become the best and brightest with the best mushroom/collagen product on the market? BiOptimizers go you fam! Head to nootopia.com/kingsbugenius  and use “KINGSBU10” at checkout for 10% off as always! Desnuda Organic Tequila Sometimes being fully optimized entails cutting loose with some close homies. We have just the sponsor for that occasion. Head over to www.desnudatequila.com for the tippy toppest shelf tequila in the game. Use Code “KKP” for 15% off all purchases!!    To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle:   Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

I'm oddly aware of some of the weird quirking habits that I have when I do intros, but even as I recognize them, I still, still feels fucking good to get a good stretch right in the beginning of the show. Welcome back to the show. Everybody. Today's guest is my friend and somebody who I've been following for quite some time. Mike Dillard. Mike and I belong on a covert group of folks on an indescribable platform where

supposedly they can't read anything you write, even though literally everything you do now is watched, recorded, and data logged somewhere. This is a true story and it can stay on the podcast. We were at my friend's 10-year-old birthday party yesterday and my son who's seven and a half was hanging out and one of the kids was trying to look at something on the phone and he pulled the mom aside and he said, do you know that the government is watching everything you do through this camera right here? And at least the person was well aware of it, but couldn't help but laughing. She walked over to me and she's like, your son said this. And I was like, yep,

tell me I'm wrong. Tell me he's wrong. Absolutely. Tell me he's wrong. Anywho, Dylan and I frequently talk about things that would leave most people in a pretty shitty state of being, if I'm perfectly honest. And even though we only spend a very small portion, I should say, maybe a third of this podcast diving into some of that, he remains an optimist. And I love that about him. I absolutely love that about him. I absolutely love that about him. I'm going to link to an article that he wrote in the show notes that was absolutely phenomenal.

I read it and I was like, God, I don't know why I've waited this long, but maybe it was just for this moment. Come on the podcast. And so we're doing a little swap arena. I'm going on his podcast tomorrow. That should be out. We'll link to that in the show notes. Once it comes out, he hasn't released, he's not releasing it yet. So yeah, the time thing's fucked up, but guess what? If you're

listening to this late, you will find that in the show notes. And if you're not listening to this late, you won't find it in the show notes, but you'll at least know the name of his podcast to be on the lookout for it. All that to say, I love Mike's positivity. I love that he sees not only in the good in humanity, but he can hold the polarity of that and see where people are trying to steer us in the wrong direction, because there is that too. And if you disagree with that, listen to the latest podcast that I just did with Mark Gober and buy his latest book and end to the upside down reset. It will explain most of this, if not all of it. And Dillard's got some great outlooks on tech that really reshape things that actually changed my mind on some things.

And I bring that up in the podcast regarding California's rush to have all electric cars by 2030 and then changing that quickly to 2035, realizing we can't power an entire state's worth of electric cars currently. And if we did, we'd be using coal power plants to do that. That could change by 2035 based on some of the battery tech that's coming out. And we dive into that at the end of the podcast. So there's no doom and gloom in this. It's very cool. And even more eye-opening and impressive is the fact that Mike has been through the fucking ringer with his health. And, you know, in these podcasts, I love to get backstory and Mike wasn't sure how long to go

with it. And I just said, fucking let it rip, man. And he went for it. He really dove into what made him into Mike Dillard, who he is today. And the most recent events, battling mold and all sorts of shit that have taken him through a very rough patch in his life, but ultimately one of the most healing times in his lives. I guess I can say that if you're into that thing. And pretty cool, man. I was impressed. I love getting to learn more. Sitting down in front of somebody like this, it feels like I have a lot of people I consider close, but when I get to sit with them and really dive into their background, there's no real other place where I have a conversation like that. And I know Rogan talks about it and other people talk about

it like that, but it's enough to make you want a podcast. I'll just say that. It's a fucking hell of a thing that doesn't exist really anymore. There's other people around, or you got kids, or something else is going on. Not saying I can't have conversations with people where cell phones aren't involved. I can do that plenty well. But to really get to dive into someone's backstory, I love that about this show. And I really thank Mike for opening up and sharing everything that he did. And we'll get him back on for sure because he pretty much stays glued to cutting edge

things that are important for us to know because they help balance out some of the shit that we may not want to know, myself included. Anywho, there are a number of ways you can support this podcast. Number one, share it with a friend. Share it with somebody who likes it. Share it with somebody who's into tech. Share it with somebody who's also been through the ringer with mold. He's got some great ideas on how to combat that and might be able to lead you to the

right people, especially if you're based here in Texas where mold is very high. It's a problem for a lot of people and a lot of Western medicine hasn't wrapped their heads around it yet. They haven't caught up to the fact that it's different in varying states. Unless you're talking to functional medicine or somebody like that, functional med doc, you might not even know you have it. Anywho, support the show by sending that out and also support the show by leaving us a five-star rating on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen with one or two ways the show's helped you out in life. That really helps get more people to it. And then of course, support these sponsors

because they make this show fiscally possible. They help me to be able to section off the time necessary to continue to learn and research and pull in these great guests. And I love getting to do this. So thank you. Every time you support our sponsors who I've hand selected and are the best,

they're the best in the business. Everyone that I've got here. And I love my longtime sponsors. We've got some great new ones, but the people that have been around the longest, they have done so for a reason. I absolutely vibe with them. I feel like they vibe with me and they're great companies. PaleoValley.com is one of those companies. I just did a hunting trip out and I'll do a podcast on this with my guide, Ken Conte, coming up here in March. So we will be able to break that down, what that experience was like. And it was powerful. It was all the feels. And as I've mentioned before, when I travel, Paleo Valley is what I take with me.

I take all of their beef sticks and they have a wide variety. They've got a new maple bacon pork stick, which if you eat pork will change your life. And if you don't eat pork, it will change your life if you try this maple bacon pork stick. I can assure you of that. The best thing about these sticks is that the beef is 100% grass-fed and grass-finished. Many on the market claim grass-fed, but they're actually finished on grains. These guys believe and know what regenerative agriculture is. And there's not a lot of companies that do, that understand that. So there are layers to the game.

We talked about this with the folks at Force of Nature. And the layers of the game are the very best thing you can put in your body would be something you hunted that had no idea it was going to die that day, had been completely free range, eating whatever its heart desired, and then it just died one day.

That's the very best. That's not available for a lot of people. They're quite expensive and challenging. We'll talk about that when I talk about the hunt. It's very fucking challenging. Below that, you've really got a very small select group of people that are doing regenerative agriculture, which is a lot different. And we talked about that with Chad Johnson and Daniel Griffith and some of the different things that we're doing that make that different on our farm and in different places. And I love companies like Paleo Valley that go out and search for these amazing farms and connect them so that they can produce at a wide scale more than they would be able to. And then you can get that out. They can get that out to the people so we can get amazing snacks that will leave us feeling great, healthier snacks that leave us feeling great,

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wellness journey. Order Desnuda at www.desnudatequila.com and use code KKP for 15% discount on all purchases. Desnuda has now extended the discount to all purchases. Desnuda has now extended the discount to all purchases. Again, www.desnuda.com and use code KKP for 15% off all purchases. Without further ado, my brother, Mike Dillard. Mike Dillard, welcome to the podcast, brother. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Absolutely, man. It's been a good one. We've run in similar circles for a very long time.

I think I met you at On It years ago on Aubrey's podcast. And I didn't even know who you were at the time. I knew who you were from a lot of my friends that are following you, but I didn't recognize you when I saw you. So I was like, oh, hey, how's it going? And then I was like, fucking after the fact. I was like, oh, that was Mike Dillard. Fuck.

We've been in, and you might hear a little bit of wind. That's fine. Tim Ferriss says as long as you tell people your location, then they'll get a real feel for it. So we are podcasting outside at this beautiful ranch here in Lockhart at the farm. And occasionally we get a little breezy, but it's like 66 degrees in January and it's too good to pass up. Yeah.

Gorgeous, man. Anywho, we've been in similar chat groups and we've been reading a lot together and watching the last few years unfold. And I really wanted to have you on to talk about that. Some of the predictions that you've made that have come to fruition, some of the ways that you've traversed, the uncertainty of what's unfolding before us. And I want to dive into that especially. But as we always do on the podcast, I want to know what life was like growing up, where you lived, how did your parents raise you, what was your education, the thing you were drawn to,

and really how did you become you? What made you Mike Dillard? Cool. Sounds good. Where should I start? Start at the beginning. You can go as long as you want, man. We got no timer. I'll start where I think it's relevant. It's interesting now from a lot of the deeper work I've done over the last four years, looking back at my childhood, I look at it in a very different way.

I was very different. I never fit in. I didn't know how to interact with other kids for some reason. And I was also the smallest kid in my school by far, like half everybody's size until about my senior year in high school. So that made for a not so fun school life, elementary school, middle school specifically, but all the way through high school. And yeah, I just saw the world in a different way, went through a ton of bullying. And it's interesting because I was smart enough to understand that it wasn't about me necessarily and what I was going through. And I had really supportive parents.

And yet at the same time, it was fucking brutal. When you go to school every day and you're afraid for your physical safety, you're, you know, I used to walk into the cafeteria and 300 kids would start chanting a nickname for me. And I have no idea why this is happening, right? It's like, what did I do? And that was my life almost every day all the way through school and just wondering why. And I think the deeper story that was created out of that

is not being good enough, right? What did I do wrong? Why am I not good enough to have friends or whatever? And the really hard part is, you know, growing up in the same neighborhood as these kids where our parents are best friends, we go to the same church, and it's like if I don't have a friendship with these kids,

I don't have friends, period. And so it was this weird dynamic where I'd go to school and sometimes they'd be friendly to me. And then the next day they would switch and I'd be being picked on or whatever. And yet I still had to keep going back and trying to get approval or get liked or something because if not, that was it.

So yeah, I had the joy of getting my house papered every weekend for fucking years. Your parents' house? That's something I don't get either. You know, like you're just fucking up this guy, this is, you know, like somebody else bought that house. Is this kid living in it? And you're going to fucking vandalize it each. That's a hard one. Yeah, well, it kind of fucked me up now that I realized because every weekend, my Friday and Saturday night was spent looking out my window, like scanning for threats, scanning for movements,

scanning for noise, just on a high alert till three in the morning. So that kind of fucked up my sleep and put me in this fight or flight mode, I think, from a very young age. Lots of adrenaline. And that really created, I think, an addiction to adrenaline that I finally became aware

of a few years ago. As soon as I could ride a bike, I want to say probably the age of four, I was BMX racing. Sports my entire life. High school, broke my arm playing baseball, broke my thumb. My dad was the coach, so I still had to go out to all the practices and just be there. And luckily, it was in a park that had some mountain bike trails on it. So I went and picked up, I think, a $400 Trek mountain bike and had my left arm in a cast and I would go ride the trails with one arm. And within 12 months, I'd won the first Texas state championship for mountain biking and just

kind of found a new passion. So I'd come home from high school and this is in San Antonio and I would hit the bike and I would ride out towards Bernie and pass Bernie towards Bandera. And I do 30 to 50 miles on the road bike every single day. And, um, and that's how I, that's where that energy and frustration went. It went into, it went into those pedals and on, onto the road. Um, I just won a second championship the next year and then went off to college and, and that's where things got different. Um, college was interesting because until then I never had alcohol, never got invited to the parties, right? So there was none of that stuff involved, didn't have that opportunity, which was probably good. But then training, I worked on the weekends,

I worked at the original Macaroni Grill, busting tables in Bernie before it became a chain and used that money to race and then didn't drink because't drink, you know, because of that. I was an athlete at that point. So went to Texas A&M, got dropped off by my parents at the dorm. And the, what are they called? The guy that runs the dorm or the kid, the older guy that's like the- I know who you're talking about. I forget.

It's not coming to me. RA or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Resident advisor or something. And my parents are there and they're saying goodbye. And forget. It's not coming to me. RA or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Resident advisor or something. And my parents are there and they're saying goodbye and it's all emotional and stuff. He's like,

hey man, welcome to the dorm. I think it was Moses Hall. And he's, I'll see you tonight for the keg party. My parents are right there and like,

oh, okay, cool. And that was when I discovered beer. And fuck, like every, probably every night for all throughout college almost i don't have an addictive personality type never got an addiction to alcohol but it's what allowed me to

finally socialize for the first time and and not be super awkward um and uh and then I failed my first semester miserably. I think I got a 1.3. Damn. Yeah. I was going to be an orthodontist because my uncle was an orthodontist. He was the wealthiest person in our family, and I'm like, okay, you know, he's got a good life. I'll take some of that.

Yeah. For lack of a better direction, I met math, chemistry, and biology and all of those classes and failed them miserably. And so got put on probation, went to summer school, changed my subject to marketing. And then I never went to class, but I did study. And I knew soon after that, I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I didn't want to have a boss. I didn't want to have to be told what to do or how much money I could make. And that seed was planted, I think,

waiting tables because I'd come home at night at 1 a.m. exhausted, just want to wind down and turn on the TV. And this is, you know, late nineties. There is no social media. There is no YouTube. None of that. There was infomercials on at 1 a at 1am from Tony Robbins and stuff like that. I was like, oh, okay, that's, there's something else out there to do. And that planted the seed. So in college, I skipped all my classes and I would go to Barnes and Nobles and I would literally sit in the marketing business section. I would just read books all day. And then I would go to the cram classes, you know, three, four, five days before the tests, go in and take the tests. And I finally graduated, almost taking 10 years of school. I graduated in five years, but I went to summer school every year,

failed all of my math classes three times that I had to take accounting, economics. But by, I want to say my junior year, it already started my first business and knew that that's what I was going to do. And that was it. That's fucking awesome. Well, let's talk about like, uh, the life that led you up till 2020. You, you're married to college sweetheart. How'd that work out? What, what, what? No, no, no. Um, yeah, I didn't know. I didn't have my first girlfriend until my, my freshman year in college. Um, but yeah, I graduated and moved to Dallas, got a job. And I knew, I figured out by this time, in order to have a successful business, you got to sell shit. And I was super shy, obviously very much an introvert. And the idea of going out and talking

to somebody in person or even over the phone calling leads was petrifying. And yet after pursuing businesses off and on for four or five years at that point, I realized I've got to get over that and start selling stuff. So I remember Tony Robbins said something. It's like, a lot of people aren't willing to do things that are hard for themselves, but they're willing to do them for other people. And I was like, huh, what if I had a job that required me to sell what I do with that? And I was like, probably because the pressure from not wanting to disappoint somebody else is great enough. So my biggest fear at the time was talking to leads on the phone. So I somehow got my way into a job recruiting surgeons for locum's tenants work, temporary work for physicians. And I showed up the first day, you're in an empty cubicle with literally there's no computer there's nothing there's a phone and there's a binder that's probably six inches tall that has every

doctor's phone number in the country in it it's like an old roll the decks yeah giant and they're like make you got to make 300 calls a day and don't stop till you're done. And for me, who spent the last three years petrified and at a standstill of not wanting to call anybody to that, I was over that fear in three days, trying to get through that barrier. And I was like, okay, that worked. What's my next big fear? And it was selling in person. And so I stayed at that job and, you know, got by. But I knew I was there to gain a skill, not necessarily to build a career. So I stayed there for a year and I was like, next big fear is doing that in person. So I got a job in Dallas for a telecom startup that would require me to go to all the tallest buildings in downtown and try and sell them on wireless internet service.

And that was an interesting experience because you have to sneak past the security guard. Nobody wants someone coming in and cold calling, knocking on doors in their building, right? So I remember I would have my little suit on and my binder and I would walk in the main lobby and I would have my phone at my head pretending I'm talking to somebody so that I could ignore the security guard and just act like I'm supposed to be there. And then get to the elevator, go to the top floor and just start knocking on doors, which was, you know, cold sweat type shit for me. Right. Um, and some people felt sorry enough to, for me to have a conversation. Um, but that didn't, that lasted about three weeks, but it was mission accomplished. It was, it was facing the biggest fear that I had and, and finding a way to, to make it through that. And, and it did. And, um, I think the big moment for me though,

beyond that, from a business standpoint was discovering power of the written word. Um, I realized at that time I was in the network marketing industry cause we didn't have the opportunities that we have today. That was kind of it if you were a broke young kid in his 20s. And all of my mentors, you know, they were making good money. They were making up to 50 grand a month. And I was like, man, if I could ever do that, that would be my wildest dream, even if it took me 20 years to get there. But what I saw them all day was sitting on the phone, selling people all day long. And I'm like,

that sucks. If that's how I got to do it, then I actually don't want that. And so it took me, I spent about four or five years doing things that way. Cause that was the way I was told to do it before I, I realized that I don't, if this is what it's required, I'm going to go do something else, but I didn't want to waste that. I didn't want to throw away the dream and I didn't want to waste the time that I'd put in. And so I just asked myself a question, what would this business look like if I could do it any way that I wanted? And for me, the answer was, it would be awesome if I had people who knew what I was selling, who knew about the product, they wanted it and they're ready buy, and they called me. Is there a way to make that happen? And so I somehow got plugged into direct response marketing. I was like, these

guys sell billions of dollars a year on the phone, in magazines, not on the phone, but on the television, and in magazines and in newspapers without ever talking to a single person. How are they doing that? And so I dove in and I started studying direct response marketing and studying Dan Kennedy's work. And I learned how to write sales copy by coming home every night and printing out transcripts from infomercials, transcripts from sales letters, and just writing them out by hand every night for an hour.

And I did that for about a year. And what that does is it just ingrains those language patterns into your communication framework. All of a sudden you start speaking like they speak. Whenever you and I go to a different country, whether we like it or not, I don't know about you, but within two or three days, I start speaking with their inflection points and tonalities. Absolutely. My wife gives me shit for that. It fucking comes across cleaner to them. They understand it. Well, you just, and you can't help it. You do it subconsciously.

And so it's the same thing with writing and sales. So I spent about a year, year and a half mastering that skill. And I started to implement those strategies into my business and it started working. And I started building a business successfully. I started generating leads every day. I taught myself how to use Google AdWords

and generate my own leads and write an email series that generated interest for people and write a sales letter that sold the product for me without me ever having to talk to anybody. And then the part about that, the secret is that it gave me leverage. I realized that the best people that I have ever studied under can only have meaningful conversations with maybe five to 10 people a day. And so they don't have any leverage. They're literally working and dialing for dollars, even though they're making a lot of money doing it. And I was like, maybe I'm not going to be as effective from a conversion ratio, but what if I could talk to 2000 people a day

with these marketing pieces without actually having to talk to anybody in person. And, and that was just the concept behind it. And so that's what I did. And within 18 months, I went from waiting tables at a PF Chang's in San Antonio to making my first seven figures in business. And that was kind of the, the end of that was by the age of 27. Damn. Yeah. That's a fucking thrill ride. That was fun. Yeah. And that was, that was the beginning of a whole new degenerate chapter of finding, I found and studied Eben Pagan and his double your dating David D'Angelo stuff at the time. That was, you know, when Neil Strauss came out with the game and all of that.

And so I'm finally in a position where I'm making money. I'm in my mid-20s and I have all of this pent up shit of not, you know, experiencing that in high school or college for the most part. And I finally went through his work and learned how to talk to women for the first time, um, and have confidence around it. And then that turned into a single guy in his twenties making millions of dollars who is now making up for lost time. And, uh, and that was a fun, a fun few years for sure. Yeah. That sounds like a fun few years. I never had it. I mean, I've had, I've had fun football at Arizona state was a lot of fun,

you know, getting into the UFC was fun, but I've, I was in long-term relationships from college onward, you know, and that was, that was a good thing. It was a great thing. I definitely have appreciated that. But yeah, just wrapping my head around that, like the unmarried young man in me right now has a shit-eating grin because I'm like, God, what would that be like? You know, like that or the Playboy Mansion

and like do all that stuff. It was super fun. Yeah. And then the candle burns out. When do you start to settle down and build the life? I hit 30. And I met a woman in Austin. And after being single and having a lot of partners,

it got old, honestly, after a while. It's like the same shallow conversation, the same shallow physical stuff that's fun, but it's like Dan Bilzerian. Too much of anything, it loses its luster, right? And I kind of hit that point. So I met her. I met, this is Michelle.

I'll call her Michelle number one. And she was six years older than me. And so she was ready to have a family and do all that. And being an entrepreneur, I have no problem jumping in with two feet, high quick start, personality profile, like cool. And so we got married and we met, got engaged, got married and pregnant within 12 months. And so it went pretty quick.

And unfortunately, within 18 months after getting married, we were separated and we had an amazing son. But I realized that I went way too fast. I didn't know what I didn't know when it comes to different personality types. And this is not me throwing her under the bus at all. It's part of the story and it is what it is. But I didn't know how to recognize narcissism. And that was a really incredibly challenging situation because no

matter what I did, it was never enough. And no matter how much I gave, I never got anything back. And that just came to a point where Chase was 18 months old and he was about to start talking, right? And we're fighting every day. And I'm like, she didn't want to raise him in an environment like that. I didn't either. And we're like, this either remedies itself now, which I don't see happening, or we just call it quits and focus on being a great parent to him before he can speak and really understands what we're saying to each other. And so that turned into a separation and divorce and, you know, dated off and on for a while until then.

And then in 2018, I want to say July, July 15th, 2018, sitting in my apartment in downtown Austin, and I feel a little click in the back of my head while I'm just taking a break playing video games. I was like, oh, that's kind of weird. And didn't think much else about it. It wasn't painful, but it was odd. And that night went to bed, but I couldn't fall asleep. Not for a single minute, just full-on adrenaline fight or flight for some reason. It was very odd. Got up the next morning, was jumping on a plane to Aspen Food and Wine with some friends, went and did that. Couldn't sleep for a single minute, even after having wine the entire day. And then all of a sudden, my brain started

having just song lyrics play through it. That second night, nonstop, could not control it at all. And that was a scary, scary fucking thing to experience because that was the first time in my life I've never had control over my brain. And I didn't know why it was happening and I didn't know how to stop it. Got home a couple of days later. Now it's probably been four days,

haven't slept in four days. And get home, same thing happens. Another full 24 hours without a single minute of sleep. And at that point, I'm probably five, six, seven days into this going on, and I'm scared as hell. And nobody can tell me why this is happening. I have no idea. And I start to feel my body shut down because I'm just laying on the couch at this point.

I mean, you know, people take pride, and I've been up for 24 hours straight. Right. And a lot of pride if you're up for 48 hours, that's kind of unheard of unless you're in the military or whatever, because why would you ever be in that situation? You go seven days. Um, it's maddening, like maddening. Yeah. I mean, it's happened to me not to derail you, but I had a three-day stint, plant medicine induced, where I didn't sleep for three days. And I was seeing shit sober and hearing fucking voices and lots of weird shit can happen from that point where it's like the loss of sleep, it's not going to bring about a visionary state. It can bring about a heretical state. It can bring about paranoia and all sorts of shit. It's a veryetical state. It can bring about paranoia and all sorts of shit. It's a very uncomfortable space. And to your point, the body will fucking shut down at a certain point.

Organs shut down, energy levels, all that stuff. Continue. It's not a fun space. No, no. And so I call up a doctor and I've always been super healthy and health conscious and I don't like pharmaceuticals and that kind of stuff. But at this point, I'll do anything. He has no idea why this is happening. You know what's really fun? Is when you get on Google and YouTube and you type in your symptoms and you cannot find a single person who is talking about what you've been through. That's fucking scary. People talk about, you know, getting on Google and don't look it up if you're sick because you're going to get the shit scared out of you by what everybody says. What's scarier is when you can find zero humans talking about a similar experience.

And so call him up. He puts me on Xanax and Ambien for the first time, which I've never been fans of. And I take that and I get maybe 80 minutes of this disassociated half awake, half asleep. And that's it. And then boom, my body's just right back up into adrenaline. And I can literally feel the cells in my body buzzing with cortisol. It was the strangest sensation I've ever had. Just every single cell, it's like you could feel it buzzing with what I would describe as cortisol resistance at this point. About two weeks of being on Ambien and Xanax, I turned suicidal and I'm living on the 26th floor

of a high rise. And I'm like, no, the balcony is kind of starting to make sense. And this is really interesting because in the past I could never understand why anyone would ever get to a point of suicide ideation. And this created a ton of empathy for that within me because now I understood for some odd reason, something had taken over that now made that a logical choice that made sense. And at that point, I'm like, oh, I understand what those people were experiencing at that point. I'm going to guess someone like Anthony Bourdain, who I heard was on similar drugs. And I get it now. I understand what he was going through.

Got off the meds for that reason. And within a few days that went away. And so I really could target the reason as to why I was having that. So that goes on for months. And I literally, my business shut down. I could barely take care of my son. I could barely drive I would walk in downtown austin and I would get this overwhelming paranoia that the buildings were just going to collapse on me like it was that level of disassociation from reality and My buddy hal saves really honestly saved my life. I want to say i'm about four or five months into this No doctor can tell

me what's happening or why. And I don't know how I ran into him, but he was like, hey, why don't you try THC? Because he was going through chemo at the time and that was really helpful for him. So I did. I took a THC pill for the first time and I got three hours of sleep that night. And that literally saved my life because it gave me and my body a lifeline for the next couple of years. This has been a four and a half year experience that I'm still going through at this point. Nowhere near what it was, but I'm still dealing with it. And it obviously was the hardest thing I've ever been through because I lost everything. I lost the ability to eat the

foods that I wanted, to hang out and see friends, to go out at night, to use my brain, which was how I express myself in the world and conduct my business and make money. There was extreme paranoia. So friends, my best friends would do or say things that would be completely normal. And I would take it the totally wrong way and think that there was some conspiracy against me going on or whatever. And that was rare, but you know, it happened once or twice, which was, uh, just not a fun experience. And, um, yeah, so that went on for about a year and another life-changing moment happened within that time, which was the fact that I was desperate to try anything and everything anybody would recommend. And so

a friend said, hey, you should, a mutual friend of ours said, hey, you should come try an MDMA session. And I was like, all right, I'm up for anything. So went over there and he and his partner sat for me for my first psychedelic ceremony ever in my entire life. And that was a completely life-changing night for me. Like I remember sitting there on the table, you know, got Devi prayer going on and got the mask on. Never even heard any kind of music like that before. Like I am, I am a spiritual level zero at this point. Had never even, even gone down that

path before in my life. And I'm on the table and I just remember raising my hand and I'm just like, I can see everything. It was like seeing through the matrix for the first time of everything that happened in my life and why it happened and what was meant behind it or wasn't meant behind it. And it was unbelievably life-changing. And I remember at the end of that session saying, if I had to go through the year of hell that I've been through just to have that experience, then it was worth it because it was that big of a shift for me. Around a few months after that, I still didn't know what was going on or why this was happening. A friend of mine said, hey, why don't you go get tested for mold? And he'd just gone through the ringer for three years with toxic mold. So I did that, went and saw Dr. Ann Shippey in Austin. He was amazing. And I took

a mycotoxin test, which is super easy. Everybody can, I'd highly recommend you go do this, just pee in a cup. And the test, I got the results back. The test goes from zero to 50. Anything above five is in the red and it's toxic and you need to go address it. And mold releases mycotoxins and mycotoxins are neurotoxins. They attack the brain and they start to demyelinate the brain. And my result came back and it wasn't 50. It was 21,000. Damn. Yeah.

Was it at the source in-house where you couldn't see it? Yeah. Yeah. The lab called Ann and she's like, they're like, he needs to do this over again. This can't be accurate. It's the highest result we've ever had in the lab. And she's like, no, that's right. We did it again. Same thing. And so came back in and sure enough, I'd been living in the Bowie, which I'm going to use by name. So people understand this downtown and the building had flooded about six months before I got the little click in the brain.

There's a pool on the roof and there's elevator shafts up on the roof. And we had this torrential week or two of flooding in downtown Austin years ago. The whole downtown got shut down because you couldn't literally drive on the streets. And the building had flooded all the way down the elevator shafts, which is really fun when you live on the 26th floor. And every time you want to leave the building for a week to go get food or whatever, use your car, you have to walk down what, 50, 60 flights of stairs. And I've got my three, not threes, probably, I want to say five at this point. I've got them on my shoulders and up 50 flights of stairs, down 50 flights of stairs with him anytime I needed to leave the house in the condition that I was in, which was even less fun. Right. So, um, but yeah, the whole building had flooded and

my personal belief is the entire AC system started growing mold. And I was living in that every single day, 24 hours a day at that point. Um, and so that's how it built up in the system. And so as soon as I found that out, moved. And that was tough because it's really hard to find a house anywhere in the South that doesn't have mold in it. And how do you handle that situation? I'm not going to go buy. I wasn't in a position to buy a place because I'd spent all of my savings not working, just paying bills and trying not to fire my staff. And, you know, hoping that this was going to somehow remedy itself the next week or the next month. And, um, yeah, so found a place that, that didn't have mold in it for a while. And then I met Michelle number two, who's my wife now. And we, we wanted to go get, well, we realized even in that house that I was living in, I still

wasn't recovering. I was still coming back with mold in my system on further tests. And I could tell down in the lower floors, a three-story place down on the lower floor, I definitely felt bad every time I walked down there. So for me, there was something growing down there. My body was really sensitive to it. So we moved. And right as we moved, we moved into a friend's house who had gone through a similar situation. And she's like, no, there's no mold here. I've had it tested. Everything like that. So we move in and this is right as COVID hits and the lockdown start. So we're homeschooling at this point. We're living in this house and I get sicker and I get sicker. And before you know it, I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs. I'd lose

my balance and almost fall down. My hand would start having tremors like this every day. And I just started losing my brain function again. Sleep started getting worse. And sure enough, there's mold growing in the walls. We can hear water dripping from pipes in the walls that were leaking. And so now COVID's going on. We need to move out of that house and we end up moving six times over the next 12 months so we'd get a house because you can't test it right if you want to rent a house

it takes two months to get mold test results back and it costs two to three grand to do every single time you want to do that so it's not practical to find a place that's nice because you know it's going to be off the market in a week and do that so we would move in and we did a lot of Airbnbs for the most part. But every two months during COVID, we lived in an extended stay Hilton for three months with two kids in a giant lab.

And me going through my health stuff and we're in a brand new relationship going through the stress of COVID and my health, you know, like all of this and now living in this tiny little hotel situation. Um, so that was a real test for, for our relationship, but, um, but we made it through that with flying colors. Like she couldn't have been more supportive and,. And it was a rough time, but we made it through that. And once we got out of the mold exposure, things started to get better. And we finally found a new construction house and Ruff Hollow moved into that. And that's when I really started to recover for the first time in about three years because it didn't have mold in it. And that's the first rule of mold exposure is you're not going to start recovering until you get completely out of the environment that contains it. And it took me three years to do that.

Wow. I mean, you're Texas born and raised. Did you ever consider leaving the state? Because I mean, coming from California and other places, it's been a new thing for me here. Obviously, follow guys like Dave Asprey, you hear about this stuff a bit. And then some of that because Dave is who he is, you're like, is that taken out of hand? Because he's trying to sell me fucking mold-free coffee beans. But it has been a big issue here,

especially with the freezes, pipes bursting, things like that. And it's just generally much more humid climate than most places. And we get it from time to time, just like if it rains when it's warm, but there's no lightning, then there's higher levels of mold just in the air.

You go to Zilker Park, that kind of thing. And I could see because all of us in my family are real sneezy. We're not sick, but we're sneezing constantly. Get congested. Oh, there's mold in the fucking air. Yeah. If there's lightning, that creates O3. And that ozone does a great job of killing a large amount of the mold.

So a lightning storm could come midsummer and it's like, oh, I feel fine the next day. It smells clean. Yeah. Yeah. We put ionizers in the house now for that reason and dehumidifiers and we basically turn our house into Colorado. And so giant, giant dehumidifiers in the central AC system to keep it below 50% humidity year round is kind of what you have to do. Because if you don't, mold will start growing in the system and the dust and the AC units no matter what over time. But yeah, I would have moved to Colorado. Colorado is the place where you go if you're dealing with mold. But my son is here.

Yeah. That makes it a lot more tricky. Yeah. Absolutely. Thinking about that, not considering at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And this turned into the biggest blessing of my life because it's what sent me down the mental health route and the psychedelic route.

And so I spent three to four years going to every single therapy you can think of. I did EMDR therapy. I did transcranial magnetic. I did traditional talk stuff. Obviously, MDMA therapy, wachuma, a little bit of psilocybin, 5-MeO, and 9-ketamine IVs. The 9-ketamine IVs were my second psychedelic experience right after MDMA. And this is in a clinical setting, so it's at a doctor's office here in Westlake. And I just did it because a friend of mine went through.

She's the first and only person I'd ever met who felt the same click and then couldn't sleep for a year. And she ended up in the hospital, almost died from her experience. And so I was like, okay, whatever you did, tell me and I will do it. And this is before we found out it was mold, unfortunately. So I'm still living in the Bowie at the time. But I go into the clinic and I'm like, Ketamine, oh, it's a sedative. It's an anesthesia. It's going to numb me out and take me out of fight or flight and calm down the nervous system. It's going to be great. So I remember the room's really dark. They make it really nice. And the nurse is sitting next to me and my body's already 10 out of 10 stress level. Intramuscular or IV? IV. Okay. And she starts the drip. And as soon as it hits, I'm like, I just remember looking

at her. I'm like, oh shit, this is not what I expected. And I grab her hand and then I'm going in because I did not expect to lose control in the way that I was losing control in that moment. And then it was off into endocatamine land, which for me was not fun. It was imagery of blood and death and skeletons and me stabbing myself in the chest. And then at some point, I feel like I'm trapped. And you get in that trapped time warp where you're like, I'm stuck. I'm never getting out of here. It's having some bad interaction with the medications I'm on.

And you don't know how to get out because you can't talk. You can't move your body. And time changes there. So you feel like you're in there for a significantly longer time than you are. So then I go through the grieving period of saying, I've fucked myself up. I'm going to be in a mental vegetable for the rest of my life. I'm never going to see my son again. So I start going through this mourning process while I'm in the medicine. And basically an ego death and saying goodbye to everybody that I love. And then it starts to wear off about an hour later and you come out of it. And I'm just fucking traumatized, like just bawling. And the worst part about this is I wasn't dating anyone at the time so and i'm not talking to a lot of people about this because nobody really understands what

i'm going through and if they did they'd think i was fucking crazy um so the worst part about it is they don't let you drive home so you have to have someone drop you off or pick you up and I don't have that. So I call an Uber and I'm coming out of this first fucking ketamine experience in tears. And, and, you know, this is in Westlake in Austin and it's probably four o'clock in the afternoon. And so I'm getting in this Uber, guys like, Hey man, how you doing? What's going on? And I'm just like, fucking can't talk. Don't know what to say. And I'm just like, I need to go see my son. So I have him drive me to his house and it's through the winding canyons of Westlake Hills and I'm about to vomit and just get to his house. He was at his mom's and just sat there and hugged him for 30 minutes. Not really able to talk about what I just went through or why, but,

but that was a, that was a rough trip. Something similar experience the second time. And I went back cause I was like, she, my friend, Christina, who went through this, she did nine sessions before she got the results. I go, all right, I'm in. So went back a week or two later for session two, had a very similar experience, just as difficult, just as dark. Went back again, third session. And at this time, my body is so not a fan of this experience that as soon as they put the needle in, I have a full-on trauma release in the chair, which I'd never experienced in my life

before. And the nurse is like, do you want to do this? And I'm like, yep, if this is what it takes. And I'm crying while she's asking me that. I'm like, let's go. And go back in for the third time. And that one was not that bad. It wasn't as bad as the others. It wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad. So I started to see a little bit of a shift. And ketamine for me, I mean, you know at least it's very visual. It speaks in the metaphor of, of imagery. Um, and every single session had a single theme to it. And the theme started to evolve where the first two were all about kind of death. And the symbology that I took from it was, Hey, you're, you're dying and you're killing yourself for whatever purpose, whether it's where you're living or whatever. I didn't know why, because I still didn't know about the mold at this point,

but that's what's happening. Third was not neutral, but slightly better. Four, five, and six were actually starting to get positive, started to turn into visions of tribe and friends. And it's a really cool experience. I saw probably about 10 friends at the time. They were all in green and gold armor and just kind of standing there in support of me. And it was really, really intense experience, but it was very positive. And so it started to get better. And then session seven, eight and nine were neutral to nothing. Meaning the ninth one was like, hey man, here's some cool shit to look at, but we're done. Like there's really nothing else to process. So for me, it did what it was supposed to do, which is it took all of the trauma that was in my system in the first sessions and it processed that. And then it got better and I got lighter. And then at the end it was done. But the problem was,

is that after each and every single one of these, you're in a very neuroplastic state. I still went home to a house full of mold and just got fired back up into fight or flight. And that probably got even anchored, unfortunately, more into the system. And that's really what I've been recovering from ever since now.

And so the last piece of the puzzle that I'm healing from is the damage to the nervous system, being in fight or flight and what they call having a cell danger response for four years and just going through the trauma that I went through from that experience is the last piece of the puzzle. So for me today, still, I have to take a bunch of cocktail, a cocktail of medications at night to fall asleep

for a few hours, suffer from adrenal fatigue on a constant basis. So there'll be weeks where I feel good and I can hit some weights for a little bit and there'll be weeks when I'm on the couch all day and I just have to kind of surrender to that. And going through the position of, you know, the state of the world, navigating that, having to pay the bills because I'm an entrepreneur, you know, while all of that is going on has definitely been a challenge for sure. But the positives that have come out from it, the personal growth that's come from it, what I've learned about myself, what I've learned about other people, the empathy that I've developed for people going through situations like that have been completely life-changing and so much more for the better. Like I wouldn't change it. I certainly would have rather have learned the lessons in a more pleasant way. But if that's what I had to go through to know what I know now and become who I've become, then so be it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a hell of a fucking road. Talk a bit about, I mean, for most of us who have seen what we've seen in the last two years and have consumed the content that we've consumed,

that in and of itself is a really hard pill to swallow. And the only reason I can think of why I went through my dark night of the soul with medicines when I did was because it was happening in tandem, you know, like December 2020. And December 2021, it was in tandem with the world that I was seeing just all the cracks in. And that made it incredibly challenging. My wife basically carried our family on her back for a few weeks until I got better. Talk about which point did you start to really become aware and look at the things that we look at now as potential truths and see through the blinders around this shit. I know you wrote this fantastic article. If I can, I'll link to it in the show notes,

which I absolutely love. It's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, amongst many. We could talk about your foreshadowing of an event like this that came through, but talk a bit about that process as well. And you can start wherever you want. This sounds kind of cheesy, but it just is what it is.

But I, for some odd reason, have had the knowing that this, we were going to go through this as a humanity, as a species, since I was about 12. And just from back then, I had dreams about it and just kind of knowing about it and I didn't understand what it was or why or what it was going to look like but I've had the expectation of a time like this since that age and so for me I started focus turning my focus towards being self-reliant and self-sufficient in a significant way in 2007. And I could just look at politicians and I could look at people in the world and just say, these people are not honest. I can look at 2001 and what happened with 9-11, total complete bullshit. It's all, everything that

comes out of the government's mouth around that is a lie. If you're willing to actually look at the evidence, it's quite obvious. And so I think I've just been aware of the fact that people in power, for the most part, cannot be trusted. And also very aware that we as a species are completely dependent upon a highly complex system right now for our day-to-day lives. Most people don't look at it like this way, but for some odd reason, I do. I look at us as animals that go to a feed store once or twice a week in the form of an H-E-B or Whole Foods or whatever it may be. But that's our feed trough. And if that didn't exist, then most people would starve to death. Electricity is our oxygen. If the electricity gets turned off, most people are not going to make that in a very short period of time. And so we live in this highly, highly

complex world that creates dependency on this infrastructure and that infrastructure is dependent upon people that, in my opinion, cannot be trusted. And for me, I've always looked at things from a strategic gameplay perspective, almost kind of like chess. And I just want to basically arbitrage the worst case scenario, right? I'll never forget. I went and hung out with Kyle Bass in Dallas, really successful hedge fund guy, made a ton of money in the crash of 07. And Porter Stansbury, also another really successful investor. And I got to talk to these guys and they all own these huge ranches off grid. Kyle's got like 10,000 acres here in Texas or something like that with military equipment on it and all of this crazy stuff.

And he's one of, he's a billionaire. He's one of the most successful, smartest people on the planet. And I'm like, Kyle, why do you have this stuff? I'm like, Porter, why do you have this stuff? And I'm like, because it basically allows them to take advantage of opportunity. One, if you have the means to take care of yourself, your family, and other people, and you don't apply a small amount of your resources to doing that, I think you're kind of an asshole. If you're making money and you can afford to buy some extra food or medical supplies or whatever in case that should ever be needed, I think that's just common sense. You just do that. And these guys position it to me in a different way. They're like, when shit hits the fan or things go to pieces, that's what creates opportunity. But in order to take advantage of that opportunity, you can't be in a reactive mindset or a reactive state. You can't be the person in line for an hour at Walmart trying to buy toilet paper or whatever it may be. Right. And so for them, it, it was just kind of an insurance

policy, but they looked at it from a positive mindset. And that was a big lesson for me that I really took forward. Um, and I was like, change and challenges mean opportunities. They don't mean fear. And that's the mindset that I've always taken with me since then. And so after the crash of 07, I bought a 100-acre place in Wimberley and started to turn that into kind of an off-grid sanctuary. But 99.9% of the time, we were used for fun. And I had the most amazing family memories that I've ever had spending time with my parents and my kid out there and my friends, shooting guns and doing fun

stuff. And if anything ever happened in the world, then we could use it for that purpose. Unfortunately, I sold that a few years later after the divorce. And that was probably one of the single biggest regrets I've ever had because that was a property that was, I may never get the opportunity to have a property like that again. So I remember we had three giant refrigerator-sized safes in my garage there filled with gold, silver, ammo, and guns. And we sold the property, but I'm not selling that stuff, right? So that gets moved into a climate control and like the year's supply of food and all of that, that all gets moved into a climate controlled storage unit while now I'm, I'm living in the city again in a, in a downtown apartment and condo. And, um, so I always had that stuff and I always paid attention to the world, but for the most part, we went through a pretty prosperous time after, after that period,

uh, until COVID happened and then COVID happened. And it's, it's really funny. Um, when Michelle and I were moving houses and COVID happened, I started bringing, it's really funny. Um, when Michelle and I were moving houses and COVID happened, I started bringing some of these things to the house and to the garage, right? I've got N95 masks that I bought years ago. I've got all of, all of, you know, these different things that it made sense to have on hand at that point. And she starts talking to her friend. She's like, I think he's crazy. I actually am not sure I've made the right decision at this point. Well, I take that back. So before COVID happened, she starts to see the stuff as we move in together and those kinds of things.

And then COVID happened. And then she's like, oh, okay, I get it now. That was actually really smart of you to do. I understand why you have these things now. But for a while there was, it was pretty funny. But for me, it was awesome because at the beginning of COVID, when people really didn't know how dangerous is this thing and doctors are scared and the world's run out of masks

and personal protection gear and all of this stuff, right? I had the opportunity to go donate hundreds of masks to my doctor's office, which kept them open so that they could keep seeing patients. And so there's the people out there who are kind of the doomsday prepper types who think the world's going to end and whatever it may be. And I'm just, no, for me, this is being able to take care of the people that I want to take care of. And I just view it in a really positive light. I get pride out of the idea of if and when something were to ever happen and there is an emergency, I have the ability to feed and take care of 20, 30 people

that wouldn't have the ability to do otherwise financially or they don't have the mindset for it. And that fills me up. I enjoy that. Yeah. Yeah, the conversation I had with Tucker here, really finished with that. You know, like if everything,

if the writing on the wall turns out to be a complete fallacy and we're fucking way off target, you know, fucking this becomes like the next golden age of humanity with 500 years of peace and wealth. And that's the best case scenario. Yeah. If all of this goes down in that way, you know, have we done anything wrong in learning how to live off the land and, you know, becoming regenerative agriculture farmers and raising

our kids outdoors and doing anything? Fuck no. Like, we'll look back on that and be like, if I had all the money in the world, this exact way, I would have done it too. Yeah. You know, like that's the way I would want to be raised. You know, like all of the connection points we've made in the community building too.

You know, like I think since COVID, it's brought me a lot closer to my neighbors in Austin. It's brought me a lot closer to people in the community. And I think there is a sense, you know, like in Sebastian Junger's tribe, when he talks about the bombs falling, that that was the most, in England, that was the most connected they had ever felt. People that were perfect strangers they had never said fucking hello to in the same building. Now they were huddled together, making sure people had enough

water, making sure if someone was hurt that they were attended to. And that was the most alive they had ever felt. Yeah. Right. So like, can like, can we get to that place without having bombs drop overhead? And I think the answer is yes. Yeah. So we moved back to Wimberley a year ago and bought another ranch property out there. And for this reason, I see that there's a high enough probability of things going sideways here in the years ahead that it makes sense to be out of the city and on a self-sustainable piece of land to where we made that move.

And we've never been happier. We're growing our own food in the backyard, which is the first time I've ever really done that. It's phenomenal. It's just a great experience in every way. We've got cows and chickens and the kids are taking care of the animals. 16 acres, we've got a five acre pond full of fish, so we get to go fishing.

And it's just a higher quality of life in every single way. So for us, the philosophy Michelle and I have is that we believe the key to a prosperous future is found in the ancient past. And that's what this time period is doing. It's giving everybody an opportunity to look back at how people used to live and to rediscover that and to discover that, oh, this is probably actually better in just about every way. And so for us, that's what it's about

is we're building a place out there that we look at the little ranch we have as a magnet. How can we turn this into a place that just is going to attract people and friends where we can have events and dinners and just little additions to the community to great memories and great experiences and just have a really high quality of life. And there's no way we can go back at this point. We go into downtown Austin and after two hours hours we're done. We're like, let's get back, back to where we belong. Yeah, I might head to Allen's on Congress for some new boots or something like that. But after that, or maybe a bite at ATX Cochina, something draws me there.

But it's in and out. You know, it's to the point of where I need to be and then I'm out. There's nothing, there's nowhere to hang. There's nowhere to, you know, it's like, come on. I don't drink anymore. It's like, if you don't drink, you know, that, that, that phase of my life is over. So most definitely. Well, you talked a little bit in your article about having read the fourth turning well ahead of schedule. Well, and that book came out in 97, if I'm correct. I believe 96. 96. Okay. Um, and I believe they're writing a follow-up right now to it as they should,

because that would be quite timely. But talk a bit about how that alongside with these visions you're having as a 12-year-old play into the decisions you made in this time. Because as you speak of opportunities, right? You've done a very good job of selecting and seeing those opportunities and kind of course correcting aheadrecting ahead of time.

And when we look further ahead, maybe we'll dive into some of the stuff with Armstrong Economics and the Socrates Program predictions that have predicted models from AI that have been, to the day, accurate, right? To the fucking day on stock market collapse, to the day on booms, to the day on World War III potentially starting, and to the day on the demise of the dollar when it peaks 2130 and a half, right? So there are some things that we can see in the future if this has been correct,

and it always has. And there is some writing on the wall that potentially points to that, where if we don't panic and we stay in our center, that we can make some decisions that year 2007 that would be caused by real estate. And then afterwards, that's the time it was, so I didn't—whatever else was in the book, we didn't know if it was going to happen. But now, looking back, it also predicted there was going to be a giant pandemic. And the thing that's interesting about— the fourth turning is the book, right? So the thing that's interesting is that we've gone through three turnings. We entered the fourth turning around 2007. And the climax for our fourth turning cycle is going to supposedly take place around 2025, 2026.

And what's important for everybody to know is at the climax of every other previous turning, it's always been marked by war. And these cycles take place about every 80 to 82 years. And so if we go back to the previous climax of the third turning, that was World War II. If we go back another 80 years, it was the Civil War. And if we go back another 80 years, it was the Revolutionary War. And so, holy shit, this is pretty darn accurate. And now we're at war with Russia and arguably China, right, to some degree. And I believe that's only going to escalate. I've never seen global powers start to mobilize for a war and then back off and everything go back to peacetime like nothing

happened. I haven't seen that happen in my lifetime. I'm not aware of that from a historical perspective. The interesting thing to consider is that in America's previous third turnings, three turnings, they were all a fight for freedom, right? It was America was the good guy. It was the white knight showing up to free the people who lived here in this country or free other countries around the world. And thankfully, we won all of those wars and the world became a better, more freer place. But that's the exception. And I don't think people understand that.

Every large society goes through their own version of a winter season or a turning, if you will. And when you look at China's turnings or Russia's turnings, well, they ended in tens of millions of people being murdered in communism. And so a turning is literally a fight for the values that are going to dominate the next era. And in many cases, that's led to the enslavement of free people and communism. And so America, we look at our fourth turning right now, I believe we're entering that battle. I believe now it's a battle for freedom or slavery. And the really interesting part about this turning is that now I believe that this situation is the last fight for freedom.

It's all or nothing with this one because unlike the previous turnings, we now have the technology to permanently enslave humanity. If you wanted to go in a back room and conspire with someone as freedom fighters, as our forefathers did in the Revolutionary War, you can't do that anymore because everything around you is listening to you.

Everywhere you go, there's a camera. Everything you do is being tracked. There is no more privacy anymore. If there's no privacy, you can't have these conversations to make change around the world. And there's nowhere else to go. Where else are you going to go in the world, right?

So they're going to, if they end up implementing a digital ID, if they end up implementing a digital currency, and if they end up implementing the kind of surveillance grid that they have in China and that they have in the United Kingdom that they now really have here as well, that's it, game over. Those two things, the digital wallet and the digital ID, are basically our handcuffs.

And at that point, we are in a virtual prison that we cannot escape from. And I don't believe there will be an opportunity to fight our way out of that. America, I think, has the last and best shot because we're the only population that's still armed. But if you look at what happened to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and China and these other countries and what they experienced during the lockdowns versus what we

experienced here, it was dramatically different because we were armed and they were not. You look at the incredibly inspiring fight that the Canadian truckers put up. That was a moment in history I'll never forget because it's like, hey, here's the average common man who's making a real difference in a fight for freedom. And despite their efforts and the sacrifices they made at the end of the day, it was all going to be for nothing because they are not armed. You know, the Canadian government and Trudeau could just sit there and be like, cool, man, you guys honk your horns and do your thing and get as ratted as you like at the end of the day when we decide this is over, this is over. And that's what it's like for every other country in the world except America, as long as we can keep the right to bear arms, which will be a

fight that we continue to fight on a yearly basis at this point. You know, we just had the pistol brace ban come down this week. So I'm now a felon. You're probably a felon as well. Well, can't you just take off the brace? Isn't that what you do? And then your pistol no longer has the brace and it's stored in a separate place?

We can. We can. That's what I did. Right, guys? At the same time, that's just one more little step in the boiling water of the frog, right? Exactly. Right.

Exactly. Yeah, so that's where we're headed according to this book, which has been incredibly prophetic, is we can look forward to, I think, this war continuing to escalate into 2025 and 2026. And this will be the first winter season or turning, if you will, where weapons of mass destruction

have been involved. And that's the other, that's actually the reason why they wrote the book as a warning to humanity. Hey, here's what's happened the last three times. And this time now we have the means

to annihilate the planet. So we need to do something differently. And this is our warning so that we can start having these conversations now. And fortunately, for whatever reason, we're continuing to perpetuate the cycle. We're right on track. Yeah.

Yeah, we're absolutely on track. Yeah, I think it's beautifully stated. So thank you. I think it's super important that people uh kind of get a picture of why i keep bringing it up you know like i keep talking about this book i keep talking about the world economic forum and some of the changes they're doing we you know we see some foreshadowing ike always said if you want to see the future of the west look to the east this is what they're going to try to do and a lot of people have um another thing he said is if you understand the

end game the totalitarian tiptoe becomes pretty plain, right? Like the little, the fucking arm brace and things like that. Like just one little thing. You're like, yeah, that little tiptoe, little tiptoe, little tiptoe. That becomes clear. A lot of people have had trouble with taking him in because of the talk of lizard alien, whatever the fuck else he said.

It's all right, fine. But it doesn't mean that some of it isn't true. And there's been a lot of lizard aliens, whatever the fuck else he said. It's all right, fine. But it doesn't mean that some of it isn't true. And there's been a lot of other people, including Strauss and the guy who wrote Fourth Turning, that are just fucking spot on. And it is trackable. And they traced, I think, 12 of these cycles in Rome or Rome fell. They had a much longer history than we did.

But to your point, there's, technologically, everything is in place to create an Orwellian state. And when I talk with people about that, like it clicked for me in 2020 because we had bought a new house in Austin, new build in the suburbs, and every streetlight had a camera on it. And I was like, cool, man, when I travel,

my wife and kids will be safe. That'll deter crime. And who has access to that, right? Like the people that will be telling you you can't have anyone over, you have to stay in your house, have access to that. And the people that say, if you've spoken out against us online,

you don't get to walk more than 15 minutes from your house. You know, shit like that, right? It's very real and very quickly that could transpire if we don't defend the freedoms we have right now. Yeah. So one of the positives out of this was having a conversation with some friends a while ago. And one of them's former military, trained a bunch of special forces guys. And I'm like, why are you guys not in this fight? Like, why are y'all just being silent with what's going on? And this is probably a year ago, uh, you know, during the lockdowns and, and just, we see what's happening and you're from this world, you fought for this

country. Why are you not doing anything? And they're like, because it has to happen. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, it has to happen. If you want the world to become more free, there's going to be an equal and opposite reaction. And so she says, not only does this have to happen, it has to get worse and it has to get more painful in order for change to be brought about. And so she's like, it's actually, I'm actually good to see this taking place because it is the catalyst that is waking up the world. The worse things get and the more outrageous things get and the more tyrannical they get, the more it's going to wake people up. And so we look at how horrific the whole vaccine thing has now turned into.

And you and I and all of our friends knew it from day one, which is why we're not going anywhere near that shit. And we're telling the world not to go near that shit and why many of us were deplatformed from Instagram and Facebook and other places for saying such blasphemy, blasphemous things, right? And yet here we are two years later and we've got athletes and doctors falling over dead all over the world at an unprecedented rate. And those headlines are what are waking people up. So the great reset is turning into the great awakening and the great awakening is what is required in order to motivate people to actually stand up and fight back. Because for the average person to sacrifice the comfort of their lives, security of their lives, and whatever they have for their family, the pain that is required to do that is significant. And if that is not there,

nothing's going to happen. And so unfortunately, as hard as it's going to be, it is the medicine that's required to take down in order to see the change and create the change we want to see in the world. And I believe it's happening. In that article that I posted, there's five predictions, and prediction number four is that these guys may all fail. Many of them are at the end of their lifespan. power from Klaus to Gates to Biden and Xi and Soros and all of these other characters, they're all coming to their last few years on this planet, right? And these are the people who've been pushing this agenda. And there's going to be a new generation that comes in and takes over. And so we have an opportunity to change that. And you look at just, I think it was in the last couple of days,

I think their official title in New Zealand, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, I think it's Jacinda something. She was a straight up a-hole during COVID to New Zealanders. I don't know how they put up with that shit. She resigned yesterday. That's happening in other places as well. And so I think the tightest is, I think we've hit a turning point. And I think Elon buying Twitter was that turning point. Because now there is a public square where all of the deep, dark, dirty secrets around COVID and the vaccine are coming out and they're not being suppressed anymore.

And if you can't suppress them on Twitter, then they're going to leak and they're going to have to be acknowledged by these other forms. Or Elon's plan to create a social media platform where the truth can be told will put those other companies out of business. They're going to either have to force to do the same and respond or everybody's just going to go to Twitter because that's where the truth is, is, is located. Right. So man, I think, I think that was a huge, huge turning point in this fight. Yeah. He made it, he made it available, right. Accessible. You don't have to go, you know, find a name on bit shoot and sift through 50 videos to find the evidence that you need right there's links there's a lot of the prominent doctors that we saw blacklisted put on the dirty dozen are back malone's back uh recently released the book lies my government told me you know they're they're they haven't been deplatformed

as much as they were you know sandblasted and fucking thrown under the rug. They're right here. They didn't go anywhere and they're armed with even more of the truth having gone through that experience. So yeah, that's a big, big shifting point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So now the goal for me is, the reason I wrote that post is to wake people up. The first three predictions are very sobering. They're not very pleasant to read. And yet they're all backed up with proof and data in every single one. And they paint a very scary vision of the future if we don't change things. And I think that a couple of things

are required to make change. The first is awareness of what's going on. Take your head out of the sand and take a look around to understand what the consequences are if we don't make changes. And then beyond that, predictions four or five

are actually quite positive. And for me, my goal is not to scare people. It is to give them the truth, whether they want to hear it or not. And then how do we create the future that we actually want to create? What do we need to do in order to achieve that? And so prediction four, as I mentioned,

is that these guys, there's a chance they may fail. And then prediction five is, here's what we have to look forward to in the future as far as opportunities go. And my whole entire goal for this is to get people focused on the opportunistic side of things and to use it as an opportunity to become a better person, to become a leader, to go back and tap into the roots of your past, to start eating better, to start growing

your own food, to become self-reliant. Because the one thing that the system needs in order to succeed is our submission. And our submission basically requires our dependency. And unfortunately, the vast majority of people in this country and most countries are completely dependent upon the government and the technology, again, that we require on a daily basis. And as long as that is the case, they win. They have control of us. And so if we can help people become more self-reliant from an energy perspective, from a food perspective, water and financially, then we don't need them anymore. And when something happens, we don't have to be reactionary to it. We don't have to go in a fear state. We can help our neighbor out.

We can help our family out. And we can stay empowered. And so that's kind of the goal for us these days is to teach people how to do that. Yeah, that's been a big one, big one for me. And I've really gravitated towards people like yourself, Mike Glover, who's been awesome. And obviously my buddy, Tim Kennedy running Sheepdog Response and things like that. There's a draw to it. And I think, again, getting back from that conversation I had with Tucker about at the end of this day,

if none of this pans out, did I waste my time? It's like, fuck no. If I go spend five hours shooting, five hours on the mats doing jujitsu for a weekend, that's empowering. I feel better about myself. Even having fought in the UFC years ago, I don't do that.

I don't train like that on a day-to-day. But to go train like that, it's lifting. It provides a sense of security that allows me to sleep at night where I know I can protect those around me who maybe cannot protect themselves. Having a little extra, you know, I get people come into town and laugh their ass off. And they're like, why do you call that the apocalypse pantry? And I was like, well, that's what it's for. It doesn't mean the apocalypse is happening, but that's what it's for. And then we had the snowpocalypse and eight people couldn't leave town.

They were all staying with me. My buddies from a hunt, they ate fucking extra people in our house and we all ate like kings in Queens. And we just had more than enough water, more than enough food. And it was a big celebration. All the kids were out playing in the snow each day.

And I was like, that's what it's for. We don't need nukes to go off to have that, right? There are certain things, steps that we can take to provide a little bit more self-reliance where now I feel comfortable. Talk about some of the changes that you've made. In particular, I've been following you with the off-grad stance. I'm building a house right now. And we were talking about this a little bit beforehand. Talk about some of the pros and the cons. What have you learned so far in going 100% electric and doing these things? Yeah. So, you know, the property is nice because we have a 500 foot well, and then we have the five acre pond from a water perspective. So water, we're good, but the well requires electricity, right? And then from a food perspective,

we've got the chickens, you know, and there's some cows, but at the same time, I want to have the ability to feed 20, 30 people if I need to. So we've got a whole garage full of bulk rice and beans and dehydrated food and, you know, all of these different things.

And again, the goal is to go, become completely self-reliant. So the biggest piece was power. Everything we do in life requires electricity and so that was my biggest project this year was to take the entire property off grid from an electricity perspective and so we ended up installing i didn't know this at the time until the permitting came in but it turns out it's the largest residential solar battery system in Hayes County. That's a cool feather in the cap. I'll take it. Yeah. But the goal was to be able to power the entire property off-grid at full capacity, meaning during the summer, I want full use of AC. During the

winter, I want full use of heat. I don't even want to have to think about having to manage the power usage or consumption that we have on a day-to-day basis. And that's the size of system it required. So I want to say we have like 35 or 36 kilowatts of solar panels, and now we're up to 90 kilowatts of battery storage. And for simple perspective for people, a Tesla Powerwall, which most people have heard of or seen, is 13 kilowatts of storage. So we have seven to eight equivalent of Tesla Powerwall walls. And we used a system called HomeGrid. And HomeGrid is one of the only systems out there that will run your entire home with your AC units, with your well pump completely off the grid. And I'm not an expert on this by any means, so I'm going to get some of this wrong.

But the inverters that you need and the amount of power that these things can fire up and provide on a consistent basis, there's only one or two systems that can do that. And the home grid system with the inverters that we have is one of those. And this is usually seen in hospitals, fire stations, and police departments is where they're usually located. But the nice part about it is that it's expandable up to 250 kilowatts of battery power. And so that's great. You don't have to keep throwing up power walls and find wall space. It's this nice self-contained box that sits outside. It has its own little AC unit in it for the summer. And you can just keep stacking batteries up as you need them. And they're somewhat, relatively speaking, inexpensive, meaning to add another five kilowatt battery costs $2,500. So an

extra 10 kilowatts of power is five grand, which is not that bad when you're talking lithium power cells. So we had that installed probably six months ago. And here's the really cool part. This is a big price tag. It was $185,000 to do. We financed $125,000 of it. So we've got roughly $1,100 monthly payment on that financing. And then we paid the rest in cash.

Now here is the neat part, is this entire system will be free for us within five years. And not only will it be free, it's going to put over $100,000 in our pocket. And so how do you do that? Well, there's a government tax incentive right now that'll pay for a third of your system. They'll write you a check towards your income taxes at the end of this year. And so that's going to put roughly 60 grand towards our income taxes, which is great. So there's 60 grand right off the bat. Because we work from home, we can write the entire system off as a business expense. And then we're getting rid of a $500 a month power bill, which is what our average monthly power bill is. So between all of those things and the depreciation, this system will be again, free for us within five or six years. And at that point, we've got, this is a part of our home equity, six figures of home equity,

that's now a part of the house. And so we're literally getting paid to take our home off the grid and every single person, you know, with the, the requirement that you ideally need to work from home to get to your full financial incentives out of this has the opportunity to do the same thing right now, uh, which is pretty awesome. So that's super cool. What, uh, what did you come up against in the winter time? Yeah. Yeah. So we had, God, we got down to 11 degrees, 10 or 11 degrees a few weeks ago here for about a week. And we have in our main house, we have two AC units like everybody has. And I didn't really realize this because we have a big propane tank underground there too.

But our heat is not on propane. It's electric heat. We use the AC units. And I have a nice little app that hooks up to the solar system. So I can log on at any time and see the power consumption that we have. And when those things kick on to like double auxiliary mode for emergency heat, holy crap, it just, you know, the 90 kilowatts of battery in a normal day like today, we could probably power the house at normal usage for four or five days.

We didn't last a night. Like the batteries were fully drained overnight from the heat use. And so we were at 70 kilowatts of battery. That time we added another 20 and we'll probably add another 20 just to make sure. And then I also, during that same time, it was cloudy every day. And so we weren't getting full recharge the next day. Yeah, you drain it all the way out and you're not getting it back. Yeah.

It's a big one. Yeah. And that was an eye-opener for me. I was like, I didn't really understand how much of a difference cloud cover makes. It makes a huge difference. And so if you're thinking about going solar and doing it off-grid,

you need significantly more battery storage than you think you do if you want to have uninterrupted power. So those were big lessons learned and we'll just continue to add battery storage, you know, probably every quarter, a little bit at a time. And, but other than that, it's super cool because whenever the grid goes down, we've had some storms and stuff and we don't even know this, but if the grid goes down, we don't experience that because the power stays on,

but I get notified on the app. It'll say, you know, lost connection to grid. And we did that the other night, and I was like, man, isn't this cool? It was like the grid's down in the neighborhood, and we didn't even see the lights flicker. Like that felt really awesome to be in that situation. So we've got that for electricity. We have finally, we've been waiting for a year. We've got a 1,000-square-foot greenhouse being installed this week. Cool.

Full climate control. We've got three swamp coolers for the summer we've got propane heat gas heat for that in the winter time and that's the hard part in Texas man is growing food this is our first year growing food out there in the yard and in the summer a lot of shit doesn't like to grow it was really hard growing food is a lot harder

than I ever understood I thought it was not that big of a deal it's a big like to grow. It was really hard. Growing food's a lot harder than I ever understood. I thought it was not that big of a deal. It's a big deal to grow your own food, specifically just from a pest control perspective. We had to be out there every single day, flipping leaves, spraying them down, and we're using all organic stuff, right? Neem oil and that kind of thing.

And spinosad. And you've got to be out there every single day managing these plants, which I didn't expect. And then we have that big freeze and all the food we have in the backyard, boom, gone. Within two days just from the freeze, right? So if you want to grow food year-round in Texas, you really have to have a greenhouse. So I'm glad we're heading in that direction. We got a small one as a geodesic dome like Buckminster Fuller. Nice, nice. And we're just going to convert that guy.

We got the new panels and stuff like that to throw it on there and figuring out the electronics for it. So I'll probably hit you up to see what you guys went with. But yeah, that is something where even something as simple as like a Joey avocado tree does great in the grow season, didn't get beat up from the summer, snowpocalypse hit, gone. Gone. Banana trees, gone. Yep. They'll come back next year because the root system's fine, but then it's going to start from scratch.

Yeah. Yeah, the things that are underground, even like apple trees and things like that, we're doing the same thing. You're flipping leaves, it's fucking covered in aphids. We're buying ladybugs and doing that whole thing. The stuff that goes underground seems to do a lot better. And from a caloric density standpoint, obviously much better to do the yams and things like that. But the next big project here that I'm super excited is doing a proper root cellar where we can cure the yams and potatoes and stick them in there and have them all year long. I think they'll last a couple of years.

Same thing with Pemmican. And basically with no electricity, you've got a refrigerator that's the size of a bedroom. I can't wait to see that. I think about doing that and it's super cool. But yeah, I'd love to see some. I've never seen one in person. So that'd be awesome. Yeah, I'll walk you through it when we're doing it, brother. Yeah. What other decisions have you guys made in terms of a lot of talk around silver and gold as a hedge against inflation?

You've already had a lot, already piggy banked a long time ago. But in terms of what you see with the economy and the potential for the dollar's peak in 2130 and a half. What do you think around things like that? So 2130, so another 100 years roughly? No, I'm sorry, 2031 and a half. Oh, okay, okay.

I was like, man, the dollar's going to, I don't know if it's going to last another 110 years. That makes sense from a historical perspective for the average lifespan of a reserve currency. We're right on track to run into the demise of the dollar. And here's the interesting part is I think a lot of the people in power who are making these decisions have read these books and they're aware of all of this stuff. And if you're aware, as I was talking about this with a friend yesterday, Tucker actually, if you're a sociopath and if you're aware of these natural cycles that are going to disrupt the current system, what are you going to do? You're going to try to take advantage of that disruption and use it to gain more power and control, right?

So they're not stupid. They know what's coming. And I believe that their intention is to take control of these natural cycles and to do exactly that. So we all know that CBDCs are in the works. They're being tested all over the world by different countries at this moment I think the United States will be one of the last to implement them because we have the most to lose, we've got to get it right as the reserve currency

if they want to continue having that status there's rumors now that Russia I believe it's Russia and China are going to be launching a CBDC that's backed by gold, which will be maybe the death knell of the dollar. Maybe that's the catalyst that causes its demise. But either way, the dollar is going to run its course and it's going to be replaced with something else. And so for me, the question I have is, is that going to be a smooth voluntary transition or is that going to be one that is caused by a crisis of some kind? And looking at how things have gone in the past, these governments and these people love to create crises as that catalyst.

And so I think that that's a very likely situation. So for me, I really try to balance things from an optimistic perspective and I'll call it a realistic perspective. And so the way that I'm doing is just diversification. We've got physical gold and silver. About 10% of our net worth would be in gold and silver. It's not in gold stock on E-Trade or whatever it may be, but it's physical. And I don't own that because I think the price of gold is going to go up. I'm not trying to make money on it. It's literally just an insurance policy.

Above and beyond that, I'm investing for the future. And so I'm investing in companies like Tesla and, you know, ARK Invest, which is down, you know, like 90%, you know, the ARK Invest fund, which is their innovation fund, which has all of the most promising genetic companies and green energy companies and companies that are going to dominate the future a decade from now. This is the fund that targets those. And to be able to buy shares in that right now at 90% discount is really awesome. That's the opportunity that this chaos is creating, right? And then there's other companies like EnergyX, which I mentioned in that article. And so EnergyX is revolutionizing lithium refinement.

And so a lot of people right now are poo-pooing the transition to solar and lithium because China owns all the rare earth mineral rights and lithium mining is destroying the environment and all of this stuff, right? But what people don't think about when it comes to those types of innovations is they don't take progress into account. And so EnergyX has, well, I'll put it this way, lithium refinement, to refine lithium, it takes 18 months, it takes a shit ton of land because you have to create all these evaporation ponds and you only get a 30% recovery rate. So out of all your raw materials, and potential lithium that could be refined,

you only retain 30% of it. So EnergyX has created a process that allows them to capture 90% of the lithium and do it in 24 hours instead of 18 months. So imagine what that's going to do from a cost perspective, right? And all of a sudden, you can take those same raw materials. You don't need anywhere near as much of them to produce even more lithium than you did in the past. It changes the economics of everything from an energy perspective. And that's one example. So they're not public yet. They will be at some point. So whenever they do, I'll probably invest in them. There's a company called, I believe it's GMG in Australia that has created a aluminum

ion battery instead of a lithium ion battery. And this is really incredible because one of the problems with lithium batteries is they have a thermal envelope that they operate in, right? If lithium gets too cold, they shut down. If it gets too hot, they blow up. And that's not a good combination, but it creates challenges when you want to charge something, right? You can only charge a lithium battery so fast because if not, it just heats up and then, you know, bad things happen. And so an aluminum ion battery doesn't have those same thermal issues, which means you can charge aluminum ion battery as fast as you want, basically. It also has three times the energy density of lithium. And so if you look at a Tesla Model S, which has 400 miles of range, and you swap it out with an aluminum ion battery, all of a sudden now it has 1,200 miles of range, and you can charge it as fast as you want,

roughly. So in their tests, they can charge the battery 70 times faster than they can charge lithium. So I can charge now that 1200 mile range battery in two to three minutes from zero to full, where it would take hours, even at a separate charger. And that changes everything because now you can power commercial airlines with electricity. You can commercial freight liners and trains and 18-wheelers and your cell phone battery and everything. Battery tech becomes a revolutionary piece of technology moving now into the future as this tech starts to proliferate. And so we can see some of the cool technology that we've always envisioned now taking place.

And another trend that people don't, you know, really for the most part aren't aware of is, you know, they think this whole battery solar thing isn't going to work. And if you do the math, which many research companies have done, I certainly didn't do it. I'm just going off of their research.

Wind power, solar power combined with batteries is now the cheapest form of electricity that humankind can produce on the planet. It's cheaper than geothermal, which is surprising to me. It's cheaper than nuclear, cheaper than coal, it's cheaper than natural gas, cheaper than everything. And it is getting even more cheaper by the day as efficiencies in solar panels continue to increase. And again, battery tech continues to evolve and change. And so even at the state that it's in right now, you're not going to see, it doesn't make any financial sense to build any more nuclear power plants. It doesn't make sense to build any kind of other power plant at all besides wind and solar combined with battery power. So that alone is going to change the landscape because a decade from now, if we continue to roll out these types of utility level power systems, the world is going to have more energy than it knows what to do with.

And the access to low cost energy is the fuel for everything. It is the ground-level ingredient for all of the abundance that we have ever experienced as a species. And that came about when we first discovered, you know, created the first oil well, right? That's when mankind's population just went exponential. And so we now have the ability to create even more energy that doesn't have any impact on the environment for the most part, comparably. And everybody's going to have access to it there's a there's another company in australia that builds buildings out of solar panels now because to build a building out of solar panels is cheaper than to do it out of lumber at this point for them so get how this changes things if you can build a workshop a work shed a warehouse or whatever out of solar panels cheaper than you could out of solar panels cheaper than you

could out of normal building materials, obviously you're going to do it with the solar panels, but now it's not a liability. It's an asset that also produces money for you on a daily basis because you can sell that electricity back to the grid. So why wouldn't you do that? And then we're just getting started. This tech is really in a nice innovation phase in the last 10 years. And it's at an exponential innovation phase. So 10 years from now, again, just the battery tech alone is going to be radically, radically better than it is today. And people are not paying attention to this. I think if you focus on everything that's happening from a negative standpoint in the world today, you're missing these kinds of opportunities. And that's what I get excited about looking for. So.

Hell yeah. I certainly appreciate that. I thought it was interesting, you know, with, with California saying by 2030 and then changing it by 2035 and hearing, you know, there's no possible way to power all the cars in California that way, but hearing about this new technology and, you know, that being 12 years away from it, it actually, it might work, you know, and even if they have to move it back another 10 years, it's just cool to see. I mean, our whole lives, we've watched technology develop at a breakneck pace, and that's been a pretty cool thing to be a part of, and that does give me hope, you know, it gives me hope because there is a certain ease that comes from what we've been able to accomplish in specialization. And I think if that can continue amidst all the chaos and the fucking power struggles, then we'll be in decent shape as we enter into the next high. There's an opportunity for infinite abundance coming

online in the next 10 years from an energy first perspective, which needs to happen, but second from an AI and robotics perspective. And that's why I'm super bullish on Tesla with what they're doing from an AI perspective, but also from the optimist spot. The moment those things come online, the world becomes infinitely abundance because the cost to produce products

is going to dramatically plummet when you don't have to pay a normal wage. And that opens up an entirely new set of problems, right? What do you do with all the humans that don't necessarily have jobs anymore? And there's arguments to say that people always evolve and they always create other ways to make a living. And just as they have throughout any of the industrial revolutions that we've seen over the last hundred years, there's been more jobs created by technology innovation, not less. And so maybe that will continue to be the case. I'm not quite sure about that.

Having experienced chat GPT over the last couple of months and seeing what it can do and kind of version, officially version three, but I'll just say version one from a public standpoint. I always thought that as a marketer or a copywriter, my job would be the last to be replaced from AI. And it turns out it was the first, maybe the second, if you count art, right? Image, imagery, image production and art. All of this is ultimately going to come down to the values that the owners of these companies have and that the leadership that we elect has. Because the power that they're going to be able to wield is unprecedented. I don't even know if they're going to be able to control it, but that's it. It's what are their values? And the change is going to be so rapid and so exponential. I consider myself a futurist.

I can't even really predict what the world is going to look like just 10 years from now because AI is just moving so fast. I saw an image the other day, a graph that the version four of chat GPT is going to be four or 500 times more powerful than version three is. And then guess what? The next version is going to be four or five hundred times more powerful than version three is. And then guess what? The next version is going to be sixteen hundred times more powerful and that's probably only going to be a year or two after that. And once you take that AI and you put it into

a physical body, like an Optimus bot where it has now an opposable thumb, I have no fucking idea. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. Yeah, hell yeah. so yeah it's gonna be interesting yeah hell yeah brother it's been excellent

having you on where can people find you and obviously where can people tune in to your podcast which I'll be joining you for in a few weeks yeah thank you

we're not live yet but we're gonna be launching here probably in the next month it'll be the Mike Dillard show on YouTube and everywhere else and the goal is to have really deep conversations with really fascinating humans.

And so that's going to be the topic of the show. And then if you want to read the five predictions piece, that is at 2victory.com. And the goal there and the theme for us and what we do in the world right now is to help humanity lead to victory, which is a world that we want to live in, a world based on freedom.

And yeah, a world based on freedom. And yeah, a world based on freedom is really, I think, the best way to put it. That's our mission. So, yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. you