Shaun Newman Podcast - #632 - Tom Brodrovics

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

He spent his early years welding in the oilpatch, is an avid motorcycle enthusiast, has travelled extensively throughout the world and hosts Palisades Gold Radio. Palisades Gold Radio is the largest online discussion platform for junior mining, economics and commodities globally. Each week Tom interviews top experts in the energy and mining space to discuss macro trends and identify strong investment ideas. With over 20,000,000 views, 98,500+ subscribers, and listenership in over 150 countries around the world, Palisade Radio is the best place for top quality mining and economic content. Palisades Gold Radio - https://palisadesradio.ca/ Let me know what you think. Text me 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text: [phone] – and be sure to let them know you’re an SNP listener.

This is Brad 14. This is Doug Casey. This is Tom Romago. This is Alex Craneer. This is Viva Fry. You're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome with the podcast, folks. Holy man.

Was Sean snoozing at the wheel or what? We're halfway into, well, not halfway into May, but we're a little ways into May, and I hadn't changed the starting. Shows where I was last week coming off the Cornerstone Forum. But we got a new intro, no worries. I'm a little slow on the gun this month. Hey, yeah, y'ye. Must be turning 38 or something.

It's gotten maybe the, maybe the, Maybe the brain's slowing down. Probably not. Probably not. Probably not. We're going to chalk it up too. Sean was going about 100 miles an hour and not paying attention to things. Okay.

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run along. Give Shane Stafford, who is a pure beauty, a call 780842-3433. Now what else do I got for you? Substack, we are going to have a Q&A for our substack followers with Chuck Pradnick coming up here in May. If you want to get the details of that, you got to go to substack. We're going to have a post come out.

here in a couple weeks for the substack Q&A with Chuck Prodnick. It should be, I don't want to give out the day. It's in a couple Sundays from now, most likely. For all the details, sign up for Substack. Nice and easy.

In the show notes, click on the Sean Newman podcast Substack, and that way you don't miss out on the opportunity to get to ask your questions to Chuck Prodnick. We're going to do that, and we're going to see how it goes. And if that idea flies,

we're going to start to do it with some of the guests that I have on the podcast. It's only going to be on Substack. We're going to have a little bit of fun with it and see what you guys think. Okay. Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. He's a private investor from Western Canada

with background in oil and gas. He also hosts Palisade Radio. I'm talking about Tom Bodrovix. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Tom Bodrovics. So, sir, thanks for hopping on. Thanks for having me, Sean.

It's a great pleasure. and you know you and I recently met and it's it's good to good to finally connect and have a chat. Yeah, absolutely. I hear you know it's I got three older siblings. They listen to you quite often. I think they joke about who they, you know, like, oh, we listen to you, shot. I'm like, uh-huh. Okay, fair enough. Either way, they're rather excited that I finally found a way to get you on or just to connect. And yet I'm like, I bet you part of my audience knows exactly who you are. And there's going to be a huge chunk that has no idea who Tom is. So I want to start earlier than Palisades.

I don't know how you get to there, but I want to start earlier than there. I don't know where you want to start. But I would love to just hear a bit about your story before we get into, you know, probably some of the insanity today and your thoughts on it. Yeah, not a problem. It's kind of funny that you mentioned your brother. because at the conference that you recently held in Lloyd there, I kept having people come up to me and they said,

oh, I'm Sean's brother. And I thought, like, how many brothers does Sean have? It was kind of crazy. But yeah, it was really cool to meet. I think I met two of them. But, yeah, it's interesting how our paths ended up crossing. So a little bit about me. I grew up in Cochran, Alberta.

always was kind of interested in anything other than school, anything other than I was something that I was forced to learn, but anything that I was interested in, I was, you know, absolutely, you know, I knew all about it. There's no way that I could almost distract my mind from it. Came out of high school, did my first year of engineering, hated it because I, Again, I was being forced to learn things that I didn't want anything to do with, like chemistry. And then ended up going into the oil field because I was putting myself through university and never ended up going back.

I kind of did the calculation on, you know, I can be, I can be a rig welder and make how much money and ended up challenging my first two years of welding, went to school for my third. and I think that's a really, you know, important lesson. We can go there if you want to, to younger people in the audience to not only, you know, follow this path of university and think that that's the only way to get ahead in life. It certainly isn't. And being able to actually have real world skills that you can implement is now more important than ever.

but you know it's always being important and so you know had that business became very successful was probably the youngest guy doing what I was doing by a long shot and always was interested in many other things than you know just going around in circles day after day. So I was constantly listening to podcasts, listening to audio books at the beginning of my days I'd put my earbuds in and you have a 10 plus hour day of welding where you can just devour material plus, you know, let's say an hour drive back and forth. So 12 plus hours a day where I had whatever I was listening to on 1.5 speed, I could not find enough material almost to be able to listen to.

And that's, you know, how I got my education in a lot of these, a lot of these different areas that I'm interested in. You know, I definitely, I like to do a million different things. And I think that's a great way to be able to be exposed to these conversations that, conversations, topics, whatever you want to call it, that maybe you wouldn't otherwise be privy to, that you wouldn't otherwise have access to. And really putting something into your mind that's over your head and being able to listen to it two, three, four times to try to figure it out and then take,

you know, departures off of that to be able to learn and understand more about that topic, I think is, uh, is how, you know, I learn best. And I'm, I'm a, I'm a way better learner by listening to things rather than having to sit down and read them. I don't, I've always been almost like an efficiency expert, no matter what I did, whether I was working at KFC and high school or, you know, welding, whatever it was. I've always been kind of obsessed with this idea of doing things efficiently. So anyway, I applied to an entrepreneurship camp in 2013, a Simon Black entrepreneurship camp. Some people might be familiar with him as the sovereign man brand. Met my friend Colin at the camp in Lithuania in 2013. And one of the guys at the camp,

we had dinner with before, before the camp started. And he told us, no matter what you learn, it's all going to be very valuable, no matter what you learn during the camp, the biggest thing that you're going to take from this is the people that you meet. And he was 100% right. Cut to, I guess it would have been six years later after, you know, diving more into the gold industry, understanding a little bit more about it, you know, making some investments in gold miners, gold juniors, things like that.

I was fortunate enough to be down in Puerto Rico right before, in November of 2019, interesting timing, and kind of said to Colin, like, the guy that you had take over the podcast for you, the new host, because he started Palisades Gold Radio in, in 2013. And I said the guy that you had take over hosting capabilities was he just wasn't doing a thorough job, in my opinion. You know, you could have the most interesting guests, say the most profound thing. And he would just kind of blow right by it. And I didn't feel like that was using people's time effectively. So I was being a little bit critical.

And he said, well, why don't you take over the podcast? And so that's how I ended up taking over the podcast. that's interesting. You literally pushed on him and he said, I'm fine, take the job. You're like, was that in the back of your head or you were just saying, you were just trying, like, did you want the job?

Was that something, you know? I mean this from the best part of my soul, Tom. I had no background in radio when I started doing this, so I don't mean it as a criticism whatsoever. But I look at that and I go, where you pushing on him being like, listen, I can do a better job of this,

let me do it? Or he was like, you think you can do a better job? Here, go run with it then. Well, I mean, to be to be perfectly honest, I didn't have any background in it either. I always make the joke that, you know, being a welder and then talking about metals is a really easy transition, right? But no, I had I had zero background in it. And I guess I, I guess I knew that there was a possibility, but I just figured it was a very outsized possibility that anybody would kind of recognize that I knew enough about either podcast. period and or the, let's say, the gold industry to be able to handle, let's say, that

responsibility. But when I, when we kind of had that discussion, I really dove in with both feet. I do a lot of research beforehand on every single one of my guests so that I know exactly where, or I try to understand exactly where their head is at so that I can help translate their thesis to the audience, right? It's not, it's not always easy to understand everything about yield curves or drill whole results or how all of these different pieces that we're talking about fit together. You know, this macroeconomic picture is such a complex subject that I think it's valuable to have somebody able to kind of have digested the information beforehand and be able to help translate that sometimes. So yeah, I do, I do a lot of, a lot of research and work

beforehand so that I am able to help be that conduit to, to translate some of those, some of those big ideas. Well, certainly being able to put the pieces together for, you know, for the most hardcore gold speculators to investors and across the board, they hear every word you just dropped. They're like, oh yeah, I totally get it. And then there's just guys like me. And I always look for a host that can break down and ask the right questions, right? Someone call them the dumb questions. I ask dumb questions all the time because I certainly have realized a long time ago.

I don't know anything. Start to learn more. I mean, I look at what you're talking about and I chuckle in my head because I'm like, honestly, you're getting a PhD through talking to people. And because it's forcing you, as you pointed out. to go do the research, which, you know, is studying, reading, learning, and then you get to immerse yourself in, I don't know, the world with all the terms and all the, and trying to understand it with world leading experts. Like, what a, what an opportunity for you, I guess,

is the way I look at it. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm extremely fortunate. I'm extremely lucky to be in the position that I am. Um, I would say that I, I've never really lived, you know, life normally, quote unquote. I've always had kind of like, but what is normal now? Like, I mean, honestly, what is normal now? Well, I mean, I mean normal from, let's say, you know, people that have like a nine to five and they have, you know, benefits and they have this proper salary. You know, I've basically been self-employed my whole life.

if I wanted to, when I, when I used to weld, I would finish a job and I'd be like, sweet. I have whatever, now I have an opportunity to go do whatever I want for the next month or so. And I would take a month off and go do something, right? Or just have some time off to build something that I wanted to do or go travel or whatever it was. And then, you know, doing this as a quote unquote job is no exception at all. Because, you know, as I talked to a couple of people at the conference, for the last six months, I lived in the States traveling around racing motorcycles. That's my one of my biggest passions is life is racing motorcycles.

And so I was, you know, having, let's say a remote type. job like this affords me the ability to be able to travel and not be confined to one particular place. When you, I want to just go back to for a second, you know, when you're talking about welding and you're making really good money, you finish your job and you've got this big, nice, fat bank account, you're like, all right, now I, now I don't need to work for a month. Like, what are some of the things you go do? You mentioned traveling, the fact you could go anywhere and the fact you'd build things. Like, was there certain projects or certain place?

Like, I assume this is over. This isn't like, oh, you did this once. The fact you put it that way, I assume you went multiple, multiple times. What were, what were, I don't know, where did you go? What did you do? Almost anything and everything.

Like, I've never been somebody that, like, plans things way ahead, like way in advance. I kind of, I do things that are intrinsically motivating to me, let's say. That's probably the best way to put it. I've had all kinds of opportunities. For example, one of my best friends is, oddly enough, motorcycle racer as well, totally different discipline. And let's just take the tail end of 2013, for example.

In August, I went to Latvia, Lithuania, and Hungary. I had never been, quote, unquote, overseas before, but I had traveled a bunch, very used to traveling and going to different places. But at that point, I had never been overseas. So I went to Hungary by myself, went to watch an F1 race because that was something cool. And also my dad's side of the family, like my grandma on my dad's side of the family is from Hungary. So it was a huge deal for her to me, for me to go to Budapest and go visit some of her friends. Then I went to the entrepreneurship camp.

I ended up being home for a day and a half and went on a two-week motorcycle trip out to road from Calgary to Indianapolis to watch a MotoGP race and back. So I had the whole month off. And I said, you know, technically I had a job at the time. And I said, you know, if my job is still here when did I get back? Great. If not, whatever. I was, there's always that old line of I was looking for for a job when I found this one.

So it's in, in that industry. it's very much, you know, things are a lot more flexible and you move a lot more back and forth than you would in, you know, normal nine to five jobs. Then in November, I went to Singapore for one of the instructors from the camp for their wedding. I was in Singapore for 11 days, again, by myself, just went and immersed myself in that crazy city and saw a completely different side of the world and anything I think. had ever been to. I was home for 22 days, I believe. Like there was there was this length of time at that point that I literally would be like I would finish work and the next day I would be at the airport

and I would fly out. And then I would get home and then I would work for whatever two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, straight without a day off. It was there was a point at in 2013 to 2014 there where I went for three and a half to four months where I never had a day off at home. I was always, I was constantly gone if I wasn't working. So then I went to Rome for Christmas and New Year's, came back, went to, I think Mexico or something like that. Just again, so I'm very, very inspired, very inspired by having opportunities presented to me. Another, you know, another example of that was this, this past fall. I finished my race season in Alberta, kind of got organized, went to Africa for a motorcycle

trip with the market sniper Francis Hunt. And then I was home for three weeks, got all my stuff organized, and then left to the States for six months. So very much love to travel and be exposed to different people, new ideas, all of this stuff. And, you know, the podcast really helps with that as well, being exposed to all these. I have to assume then not married, no kids. Correct? Correct. Yeah. What you're talking about when I am, man, that sounds a ton of fun, right? Sit here with three kids and everything. And I'm like, I can't even, you know, I was just talking with Jack.

He's a guy who edits the podcast and everything. And he was trying to figure out one thing for a night coming up this week. And I'm like, well, I can't do that night. Can't do that night. Can't do that night. to anyone wondering the U-9 Cubs season starts Tuesday night, that should be fun. That's my son, you know, so, I mean, like they just got things that, time me down in the best possible ways. I mean it the best possible ways, don't mean it in a bad way. But I admire when you talk about being able to travel and the way you've motivated yourself, you know, when you're working, it's as hard as you can go. With the podcast, you can do it from anywhere. We both know that.

In the summertime, we go down to the States, my wife's from there. and I podcast out of country for about a month and a half. It's fantastic. It's a real change, if you would, compared to working in the oil field, as we both know, you know, you ain't working from the states while you're welding, right? Like, I mean, you've got to be on the site and all those things. I'm curious, you've traveled a tonne in my opinion. It doesn't mean there isn't people who haven't traveled more than the end.

There certainly are. But, I mean, compared to average Canadians, you've been to a lot of different places that just isn't Mexico for a week on a resort. especially living in the states again for a six-month period. You know, you start to get out of Canada. What do you then come back to Canada, right? What do you start to notice? Like when you're in all these different places and then start to stare back at Canada.

Like are you tied to it? You're like, oh, no, this is the place where, you know, or do you, when you leave, do you get harder and harder to come back? That's a lot of questions mixed in one. I'm just, you know, you're talking to very interesting people, going to very interesting places. And although I'm sure there's things holding you here, you know, when you get away from here and then look back at some of the insanity going on, I don't know, I'll let you speak. So a couple points there, Sean. You know, you're saying sometimes you're tied down with your kids and your family and stuff.

I very much come back to that quote that everything is always a trade off. It doesn't matter what, right? We have this, I think this, this idea as humans that if you're not aware of it is, I think it can be actually kind of dangerous. It's always this grass is always greener idea. You know, that goes for people's personal lives. That goes for social media. That goes for anybody's job. Everything, right?

Like, just because podcasting sounds super cool and awesome and, you know, affords me flexibility. doesn't mean that, you know, I can have two cancellations in a week and that totally screws up my whole week because, you know, somebody doesn't have respect for your time. You know, that's, I know that's something funny to be not whining about, but, you know, everything is always a tradeoff. And so when I look at Canada, or for example, when I come back to Calgary, you know, my family is all here. My nephew is three years old. He's obsessed with bikes and just loves to be around me and be able to hang out and do fun things with Uncle Tom. So, you know, I love, I love being able to be around my family and stuff.

But, you know, I had kind of this conversation with Chris Irons, the Coeth the Raven guy. And I had gone to Mexico, again, not the normal part of Mexico. this was Puerto Escondido, a little surf town. It's getting a little bit more popular now since COVID, but I spent, I think, a week and a bit there, went, you know, rented this, again, silly little motorcycle and my girlfriend and I went and I just literally picked this windy, crazy little road and went on the bike and it was barely a road. You know, I wish I would have had one of my dirt bikes to be able to do this.

We did it on this little piece of junk bike. And, you know, we have this illusion being Canadian or even American that, you know, we live in a free country. And this is the land of the free. And you have this, this maybe patriotism is a little bit too much of a or little strong of a word. But I think most people are fairly patriotic about this idea of freedom. they have. And if they've never been anywhere else, they have no idea what the, what real freedom, I think, actually is. Freedom to me means the ability to take responsibility for your

own actions and not have your handheld every step of the way. I think as effective humans and effective adults, we need to be able to take responsibility for our actions. And I think that that's something that is really missing from Western society now. So, you know, I'm in Mexico and I start to kind of get the feel for for what's going on there. Nobody's wearing helmets on their motorcycles. Few people stop at red lights. And nobody's getting upset. Nobody's getting, you know, killed. anything like that. We have. And then I come back to Canada and it's like everybody's driving, you know, as per perfectly on the

speed limit, no matter what or under. Everybody's stopping and waiting at the red light regardless if there's anybody coming or not. And I mean, this is, you know, a very trite example. But, you know, you look at somebody that wants to make a little bit more money in Mexico and on top of their normal job, they have two or three other jobs. They're slinging tacos on Friday night. They're doing whatever it is. These people hustle and they bust their ass. And I don't know, I feel like we're so comfortable in our, in our Western society here that there's very few people that actually hustle and want to really succeed. And even, you know, in some ways, have the ability to

succeed because then they're if they want to do something out of the box they're hamstrung by a bunch of either taxes or rules and all kinds of regulation like i'm very much you know let's let's let's say small l libertarian at heart the the least amount of oversight from anybody else um i think that's very very important to to have a responsible let's say respectful society that is that is raising good hardworking people there's to me just an absolute lack of people that want to take responsibility for their lives and for their actions in you know Canada and the US and sometimes it frustrates me honestly again you know going back to the example of not having to stop at a red light. It's the same thing in Africa.

It's, you know, I rode around Johannesburg and Google told me it was going to take me an hour to get to where I was going because of the traffic and you just cut between the cars and, and granted, you know, it's, you're, you're making a choice. You're saying I accept this risk and I'm going to, I accept this measured risk and I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, it's, you're, you're, to go through in the safest way possible. And that doesn't mean that my idea of, you know, a lawless society with little oversight from government or lawmakers makes a bunch of crazy people that are just constantly stealing and stuff.

No, not at all. But when there are people that have the ability to make their own choices, have the ability to say, hey, I want to go do this. and without harming anybody else, that is the best path for my life. I think that that is a super valuable, interesting way to live. And we don't experience that in Canada and the U.S. Yeah, I forget, you know, where I heard it. And I was trying to rack my brain.

I might have been tenor today, folks. I can't remember he was talking about, you know, essentially you lose freedom through about, the thousand million laws they enact, right? And you gain freedom by the big ones, right? Don't kill. You know, be nice to your neighbor. I'm talking about the Ten Commandments, being a little bit, you know.

But the big ones give you freedom, the little ones take it all the way. And what you have here in, you know, Canada is, I mean, to literally tie your shoe almost. And I, you know, not, but I mean, you got to fill, in order to coach hockey, kids, U7 hockey. Now, I'm not against a criminal record check because you don't want some pedophile in there coaching your kids. 100% agree it. You got to do like this, like this list of things. Like, just coaching you seven hockey. I mean, it's almost as tiresome to do the list.

And I know it's not that big a deal, but it's, I'm just saying as an example, it's all the little, like, like we're taking out personal responsibility, I think is what you're talking about. And it's why Jordan Peterson, when he first started, when everybody started gravitate to him, towards, you know, what was at 2016 for sure. But I mean, he rose to absolute peak of fame probably right before COVID, 2019, 2020. Somewhere in there, right? Take responsibility. Pick up your cross and bear.

I think it was before that, though, honestly, Sean. 2018? I used to listen to a lot of, a lot of Jordan Peterson. I think it was probably actually when he got on on Rogan. But I think it's when he did the Kathy Newman interview. That's fair. When he, I got you, you know, like that. And then once again, that was probably right in the time of Rogan.

So who are we kidding? We started a book club off of going to Jordan Peterson. I think that was 2018. So 2016, I think is when he had his first hearing. Am I wrong on that, the pronoun thing? So, I mean, in that time, he had a huge rise. and why? Because nobody was talking like that.

Actually, it's like the complete opposite. No, the government can do it all for you. Let them into your life. It'll be good. We're so good. But, you know, kind of what we're talking about is the ability to change your perspective, right? When you're,

when you've only seen, you know, your town or, you know, a resort in Mexico, you don't get the same perspective as you do, when you actually go somewhere else for a, you know, a decent amount of time and actually understand how other parts of the world actually function. And that's not to say, you know, obviously, I'm spoiled and I get to travel all over the world and do all kinds of cool stuff. I get it. But when you have the ability to change your perspective and understand how other places operate, I think that's when you, you're faced with this reality that you don't,

need your handheld to do a lot of these things. And that it is, it's very, you know, freeing in a lot of ways to be able to change your perspective because otherwise you have this illusion that you're living under that you're so free. When you were sitting in the audience, now I apologize to the podcast audience because obviously they weren't all there. But when you were sitting listening to McKell Thorough and Curtis Stone have the argument about where you want to be, right? And Curtis Stone is saying you don't want to be the Gringo on the hell. You don't want to be in some foreign country when it all goes to hell and you're going to be stuck and you're going to be, you know, you're going to be alone. You want to be here in

Canada where we have the lowest population density and, you know, all these things and you move here. And then you had Mikkel Thorpe going, I think you, you didn't say you're insane. That's not what he said. I want to be very clear. But me sitting on stage when I saw him roll his eyes and like, who is this guy? No, I'm telling you, I live in these countries. You want Christian values? Move here. You're a guy who's been around the world. You saw how different cultures operate.

You talk to some of the, I mean, if you haven't seen what Tom does folks, should toss a link in the show notes. You talk to some like great minds. What do you think about that disagreement on stage? And lots of people said it was the best part of the entire show. to see people actually disagreeing on something in a in a ordeal manner right it wasn't like coming to blows it was just like I just disagree with you and it happened actually several times through the day which was

wonderful but that one specifically what did you think of that so it's funny because again that's another another idea that I value very much is being able to disagree with somebody but not letting that ruin your day that's again or ruin a friendship or ruin a right like we can disagree on something it's it's okay actually i kind of like it when you know when you get a little pushback oh interesting i wonder why they think that way because when you respect somebody and they do it in a respectful manner that should give you pause more than anything but again with this age of whatever social media outrage and sure you know little kid gloves and hand holding.

Anybody that disagrees with you is seen as a major threat, right? If I can get constructive, proper criticism from somebody, I am all ears. I love having proper, you know, well thought out criticism. But if it's just something like,

oh, you're dumb, whatever. Well, that's the thing. That's the ones I don't like that. When they attack you specifically, instead of the argument,

that's different. You're an idiot. it's like, what kind of argument is that? Why do I even want to carry on a conversation if you're just going to attack me? Here's my thought. What do you not like about the thought? Hmm, interesting. Then we come back and forth.

That is, that's a disagreement. That's a discussion. When you attack the person as well. Yes. And I feel like I could be wrong, Tom, because I know, like, I've had my own growth in this. I'm not, I'm not perfect at it by any stretch. But we haven't had many people model it in the last, I don't know, I, five. years, 10 years, but I don't know what the time frame is. So it kind of feels foreign to a lot of us,

which means we have to kind of like give everybody a little bit of grace on it, but it's going to take time to get that conversation about, you know, back where you can have a disagreement with somebody and it's not all about scoring points. It's about discussing something and trying to see different perspectives on it. And then maybe there's something new that comes out of that. Well, it's funny because I actually had a conversation like I did a podcast on Friday with this guy. And, you know, I'm going through his Twitter feed and he has a lot of Canadian parliament, you know, Canadian parliament clips between, let's say, Pollyev and Trudeau or, you know, whatever it is. And I asked him, like, are you Canadian?

Like, why do you care about this? And he says, no, I'm not. I just think it's, you know, really entertaining. And I'm on the opposite side. I get so frustrated by watching any of those clips. I can't even, I pay more attention to U.S. politics because I think it's far more consequential. So what did you think of Wacko? Of Wacko.

Yeah, of Pierre calling Justin Trudeau wacko. There's a perfect example. I didn't even see that. But that's the thing. Like you're talking about having people in the public sphere. model the ability to respectfully disagree or have a disagreement, have a discussion on opposing ideas. At one point, I was trying to get Pahliav on the show. And one of the questions I really wanted to ask him was, how frustrating is it to ask anybody in parliament a question? And you have the ability to ask them four, five, six times. And at no.

point do they even come close to even acknowledging what you ask them and they just dodge everything completely you know that is not a good way to it's not a it's not a good example that you're setting for anybody in the country but for the entire nation totally right and i always come back to incentives right it it really sucks that we cannot incentivize better leaders whether it is in the u.s or in canada it's not it's not the people that are the problem it's the system that is the problem because it attracts these you know people that all they want is power and they have what how was it put the other day it was something like weak weak men can't resist evil it's something like that and you get into these situations where this system only rewards

people that want to be corrupt and people that want to just take take take from everybody else. And unfortunately, that's how the system is set up. So it's not it's not the people per se. You know, they're just a conduit of how the system is set up. And that's that's the frustrating part. I think, you know, I always tried to go back to, you know, thinking of the root causes of things. and, you know, let's say the, either the root cause or the second and third order effects of all of these situations that we're facing. And I think that's a far more valuable way to think rather than just reacting to the headline.

But I want to get back to what you were originally asking me about, Sean, was that was that disagreement between McKell and Curtis? So I've never met Curtis before, but I've, you know, I've had McKell on my show. I don't know, God, like probably two years ago or something like that. And I've made the argument from both sides, right? I've kind of changed my thinking a little bit about it. I can understand the argument from either side. But when I think about being the gringo on the hill in another country, you know, I'm reminded of either my time in Africa or,

you know, a bunch of different places that I've traveled, whether that be Guatemala or whatever it is, let's just, you know, give the caveat that if you want to find trouble, you're probably going to be able to find it no matter where you are. That being said, if you use your, if you use your head, you can probably stay out of quite a bit of trouble no matter where in the world you are. But if you want to be in a, you know, you want to be the gringo on the hill. You want to be the foreigner in a country. And let's say you set up a farm. Like I'll give you the example of when I was in Africa. At one point, we, we drove from Johannesburg to Cape Town. And that's like 1,600 kilometers, whatever, 1,100 miles or something like that. It was a two-day drive. And halfway through,

we stopped at this tiny little sheep ranch in the middle of what's called the career. which is the southern end of South Africa, there's damn near nothing there. It is a vast expanse of land that is all but abandoned in a lot of ways. And being able to see how much country there is down there, it reminds me of parts of Canada, parts of the U.S., very much so. But it gives you an idea for how much real estate there's still. is in this world that there's nobody on. So anyway, we get halfway and we stayed at this little sheep branch. They're completely self-sufficient. They have all kinds of water. They have all kinds of

solar capability. They are tied to the grid. They have all kinds of food because they have, you know, several thousand head of sheep. And I think about how if I was in that situation, how, Do you incentivize the local population that when things really go sell, that somehow they have the incentive to help protect your place? And, you know, it's not very far off from what we talked about at the conference. What you guys talked about at the conference was building community. If you have the ability to help provide for your local community, some food, some just. jobs, some shelter, whatever it is, you want to be a part of that community. And in turn, if, you know, your farm becomes a source of food for that local community,

if that, if your farm becomes a source of income for that local community, those people are very likely going to be incentivized to want to keep that going. That doesn't mean that, you know, people aren't going to be shady and steal from you or whatever it is, but it's a lot less likely that you're going to have, you know, people turn on you because they're benefiting from the continuation of this project rather than just burning it down in a way, right? I think there's a lot of problems that are solved by not facing freezing to death every day, right? if you if you have a bug out place in Canada as much as I as much as I love the Rockies I love the

mountains I spend tons of time out in the mountains there's a lot of problems and a lot of a lot of work that is spared by not worrying about freezing to death for six eight months out of the year so I can make the argument from both sides but I think the real value in that conversation was, as you said, that that modeling of the ability to respectfully disagree with one of them. It was, it was funny because I had tons of, you know, you talked to a bunch of the room. It was all you find folks who traveled from all over this green earth to come sit in Lloyd Minster. And yes, we teased Lloydminster an awful lot. It was eclectic. And for all of them to enjoy that because they don't see it anywhere is a wild thought when you think about all these people.

who are listening to tons of podcasts, watching tons of shows, traveling all over to meet different people, and on and on and on and went. And for that to stick out to them, it's really interesting. And then you brought up the second point that I think is really interesting as well, and that is building community. So you do the Jordan Peterson, you clean your room, you start to work on yourself and, you know, and clean up your life, and then in turn, clean up your house and on and on.

The next step after that is you realize you can't do it along. You need community because that is healthy. And that's been a missing part as well. You know, certainly it's there. It's not that, like it's just sitting right there under the surface. But in our world, we're going so fast, so very fast that we almost forget about it. You know, that, you know, being kind to your neighbors or even, heck, meeting your neighbors is a foreign thing. I just got told the other day, Tom, that this is funny.

The guy he met at a show, he got talking. Here, they've lived side by side for eight years. Didn't know. And I was like, think about that. That's wild. And I had to look, I'm not judging him because I'm looking into my own life. And I'm like, do I know all my neighbors? Now I don't.

And why don't I? Right? Because you get too busy. Or, you know, it's kind of awkward now. It's kind of awkward to go meet in a city your next door neighbor when that isn't the thing. It used to be, you know, when we first moved into our house, I give it, it was an older couple,

and they had their family over for Christmas, and we moved in on December 23rd with a six-month-old. And so you can imagine we had nothing in the house, whatever. I don't know. I think about this now. They've since moved on. They're no longer in the house. But they brought over Christmas dinner to us on two plates

like you used to do for all the farmers, who are working the field, you know, and then the wife brings out like a plate just stacked with food. They brought two of them over for us and just said, hey, wanted to meet you. Thanks for Merry Christmas and here you go. And I'm like, you know, you think about that. And how much does that happen in our cities these days?

I would argue probably not that much. And the community part is huge. And that's the thing is that, you know, again, when we, sorry to be so blunt, but when we pull our heads out of our house, and get off of our phones and actually regain the ability to connect with people, that is super powerful because there are so many people that are just so immersed in their phones, they don't have the ability to actually have a conversation with anybody anymore.

You know, I was doing some work the other day in the garage. I had my garage door open. And this girl came up and she was, you know, raising money for guide dogs, like guide dog awareness. or not awareness, but to be able to help give the people that need guide dogs, have them have the access to these dogs, whatever it was. And I ended up having like an hour and a half conversation with her because she was curious. She started asking questions about what I was doing. And we kind of got into this discussion.

And, you know, of course, I have, you know, so many things to be able to teach to, you know, this, this younger generation. And, you know, I gave her the example of inflation and how it's destroying our purchasing power. And that blew her mind. She had no idea. And then, of course, there's a million rabbit holes that you can jump off of from one simple idea like that and really try to understand how the world works from a simple example like that is such a powerful thing. But you cannot do that without without the ability to have a

conversation and to connect with people. You know, when when you were at the at the conference, I think it was it was great when you asked where everybody was from and you gave all of these people and the rest of the room the ability to understand how far people traveled to be there that day. And I thought that was that was really interesting because it shows you the the power of how how important that idea of community really is and how those people wanted to be involved with that community. Some days I have low days. You know, I'm sure everybody has low days, right? Last night was a low day for me. I don't know why. But at the end of the day, it was like 8 o'clock and I was just in this funk. I didn't like the funk. Wife said,

just take the dog for walks. I took the dog for a walk. Came back. I'm just going to back. I don't know why I'm in the funk. And one of the reasons why I first did, hey, stand up where you are. I just kind of want to figure,

is I'm like, I get lost in the day, you know, like I pay attention to time. I understand the importance of time. No way. People make fun of me about that. But I'm like, you cannot understand the importance of it until you've been to a bad show where they don't pay attention to it.

So I pay attention extremely to time. So until the video comes out from it, I actually don't know half the stuff that was said there. Like, I'm going to watch it and actually hear things and have the time to sit and, like, ingest what happened. And one of the things that brings me up at the end of the day after I have been so focused on making sure nobody goes over time, we stay moving, it's a fluid thing, you know,

things are moving this way, that way, but the show carries on is I want to know where everybody came from. it's such a moving experience to be on stage and realize, you know, majority of that audience came from well over two hours away, and then to realize this time alone, and every time I've done it, Tom, I've been shocked how far people will travel to things. But you started it off. You know, if I hop away from the show and I go back to your story,

you started it off. You traveled to, I think it was Lithuania for an entrepreneurship camp. you think about that. How many people, you know, I'm sinking in my head when you said that. How many people would do that? I understand it was, you know, and you can talk all about it. I understand it was probably a pretty prolific entrepreneurship camp to draw you in. But at the same time, I go, that's super rare to go to a different country, let alone a different town for an entrepreneurship camp, course, event, conference, whatever we're calling it.

And I guess if I tie it in, that's what I take out of that. It energizes me for the rest of the night because by that time, my brain is mush. And I'm like, I've been staring at a clock for eight straight hours or whatever it'd been. So it's super moving on my, where I stand. I find it really cool that you and others pay attention to the meaning of it as well. You know, but when you travel to Lithuania, I mean, if they did that, I'm sure people would be like, holy crap, this guy traveled from a long way away. or am I wrong on that? And everybody that went to Lithuania

was from all over the world. Yeah, I mean, it was, I think there was something like 37 different countries represented at this camp. That's pretty cool. 50, 55 people, something like that. And pretty tight-knit then. Yeah, and it's a young entrepreneur's camp.

So, you know, technically I was a year too old to be there. Kind of cool. Like that year there was a 3.2% acceptance rate for all of the people that actually applied. And, you know, as you're as you're saying that, though, it's, it ends up being, to me, the important thing to take from that is that we can't be scared to step out of our comfort zone, right? Like, whether it's Lithuania or Hungary or Singapore or Mexico or whatever.

Or Lloyd Minster. Or Lloyd Minster. I would probably have a lot more in common with, you know, people in Lloydminster than I would, let's say, in Singapore. But, you know, when when you have something, an opportunity in front of you that seems very daunting, don't be afraid to step out and put your feelers out to to experience something new. You know, if there's one thing that, you know, I'm kind of, let's say, taking away from the theme of our conversation today, It's to not be scared to experience new things. And the way that you build that confidence is you put your stupid phone down and you go and you meet people and you talk to people and you actually get involved with something else outside of, you know, 20 second sound bites.

Because there's a whole world out there that we have the ability to explore, that we have the ability to actually interact with and be moved by. and it's way better than anything you're ever going to get in your phone. And then it becomes addicting too. It's like, you know, lifting weights or, or whatever. I used to,

um, when I played college, I used to have to come home and run with, uh, my brother's dog. I was living with him and that dog every Lucy, she's no longer with us. But every time I come home,

she'd be like just, just waiting for me. Because, you know, I was in pretty, I was in pretty tip top shape back then. And we would run. We would run full out for long.

time me and that dog and you know I had a couple days where I was like I don't know but then your body craves it like literally wants it and the dog wouldn't let you off Lucy would not let you off and pretty soon you're out and you're running and when you get talking to people and that type of adventure you realize one of the beautiful things about this world is you want adventure I'm going to steal your term put the phone down walk out your front door and it's all around you it could be as simple as that absolutely and but You know, what you're saying there is, you know, sometimes you need somebody or or a dog or whatever it is to keep you accountable. And then once you build that habit, it's a lot easier to,

to continue. And, you know, there, in some ways, there are a lot of problems that we're facing in this world today. But most of them have a solution. And one of those solutions to some of the biggest problems that we're facing is to have conversation, is to connect with people, is to figure out that, hey, you know what, that guy that I might disagree with, he's not crazy. He just sees things a little bit differently than I do. And once we have a conversation, we have the ability, you have the ability to see where that guy's coming from. And maybe you can find some common ground and think, hey, you know, you're not the evil guy that I thought you were. It's actually this other entity that's actually the problem that is taking away our freedoms or taking away our ability

to make choices for ourselves. What's the biggest problem you think we face in the next year? I was asked, that was a big thing I pushed on the speakers at the cornerstone. I wanted to know, you know, I get five, I get looking further and further out, certainly talking to Martin Armstrong, he talks about 2032 an awful lot. But I'm like, in the next year, what does Tom see as the biggest problem we face here? Here as in Canada and the States or Canada or Canada? Canada. Yes. Honestly, I think it's the unknown. And I think a big part of the problem that we face is the inability of people to to let's say get together and understand that we need to change. change something in this in this government.

I don't think that the solution is to just have some quote unquote Messiah that is going to take our, you know, that we just put all of our belief in that this one new leader is going to change everything. That's that's not going to happen. You know, I can I can give plenty of examples of you know, the idea that just because somebody's paying lip service against Trudeau doesn't make them all good either. But I think a big part of it is just the unknown. The, the uneasiness with which we have a lot of daunting stuff ahead of us, you know, May being a big, there's a lot of things that can happen in May in the rest of the world that can affect everybody else in this world. But that's the thing is, I'm not necessarily afraid of a CBDC. I'm not necessarily

afraid of those types of extrinsic forces that are that are on the horizon. I think we need to be able to, and I was actually discussing this with a group of very smart, very capable people. And even they were saying that sometimes they get just paralyzed by the fear of the risks of what's down the road. We need to be able to understand what is very likely on the horizon, figure out the best ways to mitigate that and then move forward with your life. and not be, I think the best way to say it is paralyzed by the fear of not being able to understand or have control over exactly what's going to happen. You have to do your best to understand what are the likely things that are going to happen. You're not ever going to be worse off for buying gold, buying some extra food,

having some rations, whatever that is, whatever that looks like in your head, having access to clean water, you're never going to be worse off for doing any of those things. But guess what? If you do it and the shit does hit the fan, you're going to be really glad you did. And it doesn't matter if people think you're crazy. It doesn't matter if you're criticized for doing these things. if you have the ability to take action to mitigate some type of risk, that is super important. And I think that rather than focusing on the risks of what we could face, I think the ability to not be paralyzed by fear and to actually be able to take action to mitigate the consequences of those risks is far more important than, you know, saying, Oh, my crystal ball said we're going to be facing another lockdown or a CBDC or whatever it is. And that crystal ball ends up being wrong again.

I've had countless conversations where we end up, you know, the can gets kicked down the road or somebody's projections don't come true. And that's not saying anything negative to any of the people that put these, these projections out there. Not at all. You know, we need those people to help us understand what is on the horizon. However, again, far more important to take action. Yeah, the paralyization of fear is a big thing, right? Actually, when I got thinking about Cornerstone, like when I was first putting it together, I was like, listen, I don't know why I use, I say this over and over again, I should stop it,

but I don't know why I use a boat analogy. I live in the middle of the prairie, I'm nowhere near the sea. But all I can think of is like, you're looking out, we have to travel that way, we're about to hit rough waters. What can we do to make sure we, you know, we get through the storm as best possible? Are we going to have a couple problems a long way? Yeah, there's going to be things you don't see for sure. But to just walk into it and be like, wow, we're going to, you know, we're just, you know, we'll just see what happens.

It doesn't make any sense to me. You know, I had an old farmer tell me in the good times you prepare for the bad. And to me, that makes complete sense. And I bring up Noah a lot because what did he do? God told him building an ark. and everybody thought he was nuts until it flooded and then all of a sudden he didn't look so nuts. And so, you know, you bring all these people on, you get them to give their projections or their looks at, you know, this is some things that are out there. This is what they're saying.

This is what it could mean. And from there, it's supposed to spur on some ideas so that you can take away the fear and go do some things. You know, it was Doug Casey's last newsletter that I read. I probably wasn't his last. A few ago that said, you know, acquire skills. Like, you know, when you have, you know, whatever the end of the world looks like to you, right? However tough it gets. If you know how to get clean drinking water, you're going to be happy you have that skill.

If, you know, you got a little bit of, you can build a garden, you know, and having a garden and maybe you don't eat the same diet. All of a sudden, you get the skill, though. Nobody can take the skill away from you. They can certainly disrupt supply chains. They can certainly do some different things to make life difficult. you know, like, all you can do is, is look into it and try and navigate. That's what people have been doing for thousands of years, I think. You know, you mentioned May as being a month where a lot of things can happen across the world,

and that's going to shape some things for Canada. What are some of the things happening in May that Tom's staring at? I think the other Tom has a lot better way of explaining that. Tom Longo, obviously. You know, there's, there's, I listened to, one of his podcast yesterday. Honestly, I would have to go back and refresh my mind about that. But, you know, there's certain things about, you know, the removal of Zelensky from,

from a legal standpoint because Putin is, Putin, as Tom put it, follows the letter of the law. Because technically he deferred the election that Ukraine should have had. you know, there's, again, a handful of things that can happen in May. There are other, let's say, research houses that are projecting more volatility in the stock market and, you know, a possible big downturn. We've had a million different projections like that through the years. That doesn't always necessarily pan out. But, you know, there are some fairly, some fairly,

big things that can happen. And of course, I think all of 2024, I think the U.S. election being probably one of the biggest pieces of that. You think Trump's winning? Honestly, I don't know. I've, I've looked at this from many different people's perspectives. I just wish we had a better, a better choice, really. It's not that I think Trump is completely flawed. You know, everybody, many of the leaders that we have currently are all very flawed. But what's that, what's that old saying? when he who counts the votes decides the election, that that rings true a lot of in, in my mind

quite a bit. The people that have power don't want to give it up. The people that are in power that understand the way that the world is going are incentivized to, A, keep that power and be really they're being pressed into a corner, I think is the best way to put it. And you can see how that desperation is starting to play out. We've never had more access to information as, you know, the average person. Again, that can be both a good and a bad thing. You can get lost in a lot of it. But for you and I to be able to have this conversation and for all of the people listening to us,

whether it's your show, my show, or this particular conversation, to have access to these ideas. And maybe it does spark some action. And they have, you know, the ability to organize within their community and say, hey, we need to push back against whatever it is. that that makes the people in power scared and they're they're not done trying to to push back against that we are facing a lot of a lot of crazy risks and I was actually thinking about this yesterday while I was driving to to be able to distill what is going to happen in within a tweet is it's impossible, right? To be able to understand if we get hyperinflation first

and then your mining stocks become worthless because of the currency that they end up being priced in, there's an order of operations to how this thing, how all of this stuff is going to play out. And nobody has the ability to predict it perfectly. And again, that kind of comes back to this idea of preparing for let's say 80% of the possibilities and knowing that we're not going to see how all of this exactly plays out.

Man, I've enjoyed this. If you got a couple extra minutes, I'm going to slide over to substack. So if people are listening to this, we're going to slide over to substack. And me and Jack, St. Louis Jack, who had a sit, we were talking about this. And we did our substack and he pushed me into a conversation that was a little uncomfortable for me, and it was a bit of a disagreement. And we've been talking about this entire time, about how it'd be great to model disagreements and just see where it goes. I don't know if me and Tom are going to disagree on something. But what we're going to try and do on substack

is I'm going to try and pull them into one. We'll see if it works or not, because I've really enjoyed the conversation. I'm like, oh, man, like, you know, it's funny when you talk to this many people, you start to slide, I feel like, that's not true because I stare at some people in Alberta in their podcast and go, I don't know how the heck they ever get to that, that side of the coin. Either way, we're going to take a brief pause, and we're going to slide over to Substack, and we'll see if Tom disagrees on anything. So slide with us there if you so choose.