The Eric Metaxas Show - Charles Thorngren and Steve Adamson

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

It's a potpourri of "Ask Metaxas," followed by Charles Thorngren of Legacy Precious Metals, Steve Adamson of Erskine College, and Seth and Pete Talbott of the Talbott Group.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. The Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Holy guacamole. Halbin, it's that time of the week again. It's Thursday.

It happens once a week. For 10 minutes, we do a segment. Hour two every Thursday. That's the time now we do our ask. Metaxus segment where I play the role of Metaxus, and you ask me the questions that people have sent in. So we only have a few minutes, so let's go. This is my favorite time of the week except the other times I spend with you. Right. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Question number one. Is it true that you wear a wig? Can you tell I'm wearing a wig? Now, if you're watching this on the radio, you can't see nothing. But I'm here to tell you that, you know, Dolly Parton once was asked, she said, what do you feel naked without? And the answer was my wigs. And that's exactly how I feel. Of course, I have several of them. One of them is being dry cleaned right now.

The one I'm wearing right now, it has a kind of a waxy look that I don't like. And we're going to have this one steam cleaned. But the answer is I really can't, I can't be honest about that. So can we go to the next question? Question number two. Where will you be traveling in the next two weeks? And by the way, let me just say thank you for a non-

wig-related question because I was just really becoming uncomfortable. The thing is that even if I'm not wearing a wig, I style my hair so that it looks like I'm wearing a wig. So I just want to say that that's very important to me. The next couple weeks I'm traveling like crazy. I'm going to be, let's see, today is Thursday, which means I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota, doing an event tonight, a Salem radio event tonight in Minneapolis. If you go to my website,

Eric Mataxis.com, and you look under speaking, you can find out where it is. And if you're in the Minnesota area, you can come there. And, of course, I will be signing books until people are bored

and don't want me to sign books anymore. Because that, to me, is the most fun thing, you know, because I'll speak, and then I'll do Q&A, but to get in the line and to meet people. And to sign,

some of the books you sign are your own. I sign a lot of my own books. Yeah. Why should I farm that out when I can do it myself. But it is, so I'm going to be, so today I'm in Minneapolis. Tomorrow I fly to San Jose, California, where I'm speaking at a freedom rally. And then on Sunday, this Sunday, I'm speaking at Mike McClure's church, Calvary Church, up in San Jose, this Sunday.

After that, I fly down to Palm Beach, Florida, Because some of you know, Dinesh D'Souza's film is coming out, is called 2,000 Mules. It is going to change America. And I hope everyone will see it. I'm in the film. I play the Bert Reynolds-style rogue. That's the character I play. And when I cross the Nevada border, I fall in with some lady truckers, and it just gets crazy.

Exciting. And there's choppers. But anyway, 2000 Mules is coming out. And the premiere of 2000 Mules is going to be at Mara Lago. Yeah. By the way, I play the back end of one of the mules. Is that right? It's a son of a gun.

Sorry to say. Well, where were we? So, yeah. So the premiere is at Mar-a-Lago, and I've never been to Mar-a-Lago before, but I'm going to be there because I'm actually in the film. There's going to be like a red-carpet event. So that's actually very exciting that we're going to be there. President Trump, of course, we'll be there.

And after that, there's going to be a virtual premiere on May 7th in Las Vegas. Yeah. And I believe I'm going to be going to that. So I've got miles to go before I sleep. You do. I've never traveled so much, like a daisy chain. And then... Or Robert Frost.

And I hope I get to meet with... You know, you remember we have a friend, Pastor Mike Thompson, who's in Las Vegas. Yes, right. contact him and see if he is around because I don't get to Vegas very often and the reason is I hate Vegas. Okay, next question. Okay. Go

to the website because here's this question that says, how can I subscribe to the newsletter? Yeah. Oh, okay. So just go to Eric Mataxis.com and again, I cannot encourage you strongly enough. We send stuff out via that newsletter. That's my personal newsletter that we cannot send

out. We can't talk about on the radio. So please go to Ericmataxis.com and sign up that. Okay. Will you consider writing a book about responsible environmentalism? I feel so many people, definitely myself, are searching for a reliable, truthful, and balanced understanding of how we might best be responsible stewards of this amazing planet, while not getting caught up in political fanaticism of global warming. So the question is, will you consider writing a book about responsible environmentalism? And I'll have to say, not on your life. How's that for an answer? No, I mean, I think it's not a subject that particularly fascinates me.

And it has become so politicized. I can't even talk about it. It's preposterous. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that you want to be responsible and, you know, do things right. But it has, of course, become so politicized that I wouldn't even dream of writing a book about it. But thanks for the question. And my twin brother writes about that all the time for different publications.

Yes, he does. How do you feel about Elon Musk buying Twitter? It's a couple days ago, but still. I know. I was going to say, we're taping this early this week, so I don't know. By the time this airs, of course I feel good about it. I think it's nice to have a billionaire or two who isn't all in on the Marxist, George Soros, destroy freedom, satanic conspiracy.

Wouldn't that be a great thing to have a billionaire who's not in on that? And I think Elon Musk is that billionaire. So we'll see. Honestly, I think it's going to be, it can only be positive very. very positive, but the details I don't know. Okay. How should we respond to people when they say we should do something, as in the vaccine, et cetera, for the greater good?

Okay. You know, a lot of Christians, I think, have been duped into thinking that getting the vaccine or whatever, you're doing it for the greater good. That is absolute nonsense. That's like saying cutting myself is for the greater good. Honestly, the vaccines, there's been so much actual disinformation, not fake disinformation, like when I say something and they say it's disinformation, like actual disinformation. So I think, first of all, Johns America has been very clear.

They've all been made with, they wouldn't, none of these vaccine lines was made without using aborted babies. Okay. So you can look up Johns Merak at stream.org, look into that. but even if you didn't know that, the downside, the potential downside of getting the vaccine, I mean, people have literally died from getting the vaccine and this information is suppressed because they say, well, that's an outlier. We don't want to talk about that. So I'm just astonished how many Christians have bought into this and have, you know, got scared. Like, oh, if I get COVID,

I'll die. I mean, honestly, I'm, um, I'm, uh, I'm, uh, I think the less the said, the better on that. Yeah, I know. On the subways, they had signs saying, show respect for your fellow passengers, wear a mask. Yeah, and don't forget to say Heil Hitler very loudly. Otherwise, you might be thrown into a concentration camp. You don't want to be known as anti-Furor, do you?

No. Not for the greater good. No. What are you most looking forward to in the next few months? Wow, that's a great question. Yeah. Actually, there's so many things that are ahead. I honestly, I think going to a beach someplace would be a nice thing.

But that's not until the summer. We love the summer, and we love to get to beaches when we can. So there are so many things I could say to that. But I'll say this, actually, because the Twitter thing is an example of it. I believe that God is answering the prayers of the saints, that people have been praying across this country. They have seen how horrible things have gotten. And many people don't want to know, but I'm telling you, many of us know. We've seen what happened.

We never dreamt America could go down this path, that you could have an election stolen through vast criminal conspiracy. And then everybody says, oh, it's the safest election possible. get the vaccine. All of this madness, I think that God has heard our prayers and that we're going to see amazing things in the months ahead. And I want to say to everyone, pray for this country every day, ask God to have mercy on this country, because we're the last best hope of earth, according to Abraham Lincoln. There's no America waiting in the wings when we go down. I think we're at a time. Yeah. All right. So I'll just say Christos Anesti. Alitha Sanesti.

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They were planning to pull off the greatest scheme of election fraud in history. They didn't think we would catch them, but we did. Find out what they did and how they did it in the new documentary film called 2000 mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh DeSuzza and executive produced by Salem Media Group. With research from true the vote.org, 2000 mules tell us the story of the ones who try to hijack a presidential election. You'll see the actual video surveillance tapes. You'll see how we tracked their cell phones to box after box as they got paid to carry out this illegal scheme. Watch the movie and decide for yourself. Attend a limited release premiere of 2000 mules in advance on May 2nd or May 4th. To see the movie in the theater, you must buy tickets in advance at 2000 mules.com. Tickets are not available. available at local theaters. You can also attend a virtual premiere on May 7th, including a Q&A with Dinesh DeSuzza. Buy tickets for the virtual premiere at 2000mules.com. That's the number 2000mules.

Outside the rain. Hey, folks, welcome back. You know, normally I have guests on the program who are talking about something that I probably know something about. Sometimes, you know, for the sake of the conversation, I'll play dumb. But on a day like today, I don't have to to play dumb. I'm really dumb because we're talking about investments. I don't, it's just not the sort of thing that I can say I know a lot about. One of the sponsors of this program, as I hope you know by now, is Legacy Precious Metals. And I thought, people always ask me, why do you talk about, you know, the economy, Eric? And I thought, well, because I don't have much to say, but I thought, aha, I do know someone who may help us. He's the CEO of Legacy Precious Metals.

and here he is. Charles Thorngren, welcome to the program. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me. Well, I know the basics, but I thought there was an article recently that I read where Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was just talking about the economic chaos that lies ahead. I mean, I think most people know the economy is, to use the technical term, El-Stinko. And so, you know, you're a, your financial expert. How did we get to this place? And what can people do about it?

Because people are asking me, and I don't have the answer, what, you know, what should I invest in? Yeah, that's a big question. But, you know, I think if we look and we really are honest about how we got here, it's several administrations worth of bad money management. We have run a deficit in this nation that's unsustainable for quite some time. And we've seen that become even hyper exaggerated with this new administration. You know, with $9 trillion in debt, you put yourself in a situation where your dollar doesn't have the equity that it's supposed to. And ultimately, when we talk about our economy, we want to talk about the lives that we're living, how it affects us.

the quality of our life. And that's what we lose by having a weakened dollar. We parlay that into our retirement accounts and where we keep our money, usually in the equities markets. The market is so over-exaggerated in its value right now from years and years of quantitative easing and free money and easy money, that that has to come into play and be corrected. That's just the normal cycle of things. And with the, the, the, past being what it has been, we've skipped a couple downturns. So as with anything, you don't get to go and skip something. You have to go back and make up for it. So we will see this next recession, this next pullback will be hyper exaggerated as well. So that sounds bad. I know we've talked about

it. Investing in gold is safe. I know that the market has just gone way down. Gold prices have increased. Why is that? I mean, for somebody who doesn't understand how these things work, why would gold increase? You know, basically gold has an inverse relationship with the dollar. And we want to look at it as such. When the dollar gets weaker, it takes more of those dollars to buy that gold. Okay. The gold has an absolute value. It's worth something around the world. It's never going to be worthless. It's always got value. So, the weaker our economy gets, the weaker our dollar gets, the more dollars it takes to buy that gold. So that's your hedge.

Because when you turn around and you sell that gold, you're getting more of those dollars. So it puts you in a position where you basically you save your purchasing power. And that's what people, most people think about when they think about their money. What can I do with it? What will it afford me? You know, so that's how that kind of works. It's kind of like a seesaw. So can people, I think you mentioned this another time that you can switch your IRA to a goldback IRA or how does that, how does that work?

Because a lot of people already have their investments set up. Sure, absolutely. And you know, the great thing about it is this became allowable when the 401K was established by Ronald Reagan. He at that time also started creating a new gold coin for the United States. So we didn't have one for many years, but in 1986, he said, we should have a gold coin again. be from the mint of the United States. So in that process, he said, not only can you fund your own retirement, you don't have to rely just on the pension from your company, but you have assets that you can put in there. It doesn't have to be just stocks. It can be real estate. It can be precious

metals. There's quite a few things that are available. And we deal with precious metals because it's probably the easiest of all the assets to maintain and liquidate when it comes time to take your money out. It also is the one that gives you that value against the dollar. So basically, you take a 401k or an IRA, we roll over to a new custodian that will allow you to use precious metals. And then it's basically the same thing. No tax consequences, same tax benefits. But a different asset in there. Instead of stocks, you'll have gold and possibly gold and stocks. So you have options. That's the great thing about it. Okay. So I want to to remind people, it's legacy p.m.investments.com, legacy pm investments.com. And I'm talking to the CEO,

Charles Thorngren. Charles, I have to ask you, we just got a report days ago. The economy has gotten superlatively bad, like unbelievably bad. So from your point of view, this is my question, how bad is it, right? That's not like a Johnny Carson thing. It's so bad. How bad is it? But I mean, what are some of the numbers? What are we looking at? How do they compare to where we've been in the past? The best way to put this is, I mean, we have inflation that we haven't seen since the 80s. And that is the killer of your investment. That is the killer of your savings, you know, inflation. I know they're reporting it just under nine now, but if we go back to the 1980s and use those same numbers, we're well over 16% inflation.

Now, how can they fudge the numbers so that we say it's nine and you're saying, but really it's 16? What is going on? Right. Yeah, it's kind of silly, right? It's not basic math. It's like statistics. It's called dishonest.

Like what is it, you know, what, what, what, how can they do that? What does that mean? First of all, when you say it's not nine, it's 16 or whatever, what do you mean? 16 what? 16% inflation. Over, over what period, I mean? Over the past year. We're talking 16%.

percent inflation on your purchasing power. So everything is costing you, if you average out everything, 16 percent more this year over last year. Okay. That's like historic. It is. It's historically bad. So you're saying we haven't seen anything like this since David Stockman was at the Treasury?

Absolutely. That's absolutely correct. You know, think about one important things to consider, right? We're looking at how bad the economy is $9 trillion. That is the debt. $9 trillion. That is unheard of. That is unheard of.

If you go back to the last time we actually had a balanced budget, it was in the billions. They balanced out a budget deficit of $800 billion. We're in the trillions now. I mean, it strikes me that if somebody doesn't do something about this, it's the end of America. you can't sustain this. I mean, what, we're in debt to whom? There's a question. And that's the tricky part, right?

We are in debt to China. We are in Russia, too. Russia holds quite a bit of our governmental debt, our governmental bonds. The world holds it, England, France, but also the Federal Reserve. They bought their own debt. Amazing. But yeah, they had released bonds to the market. The market didn't buy them.

They bought them back themselves. Exactly. They created money and then bought the debt. Because we have to remember, the Federal Reserve is a corporation. It's not the bank of the United States. So the Federal Reserve creates our money. We gave them the ability to do that. They created the money.

They told the government, you need this much money. And they said, well, no one's buying it. And they said, okay, we'll buy it back. You owe us now. We made you buy these dollars reprinted. And then we're going to buy them off of you and you pay me interest on it. I mean, I can see why, you know, a simple person like myself, and I'm not being coy, I mean it. When it comes to this stuff, you'd want to buy land, you'd want to buy gold, you'd want to buy tangible things.

Because this sounds like a con game. It sounds like a Ponzi scheme, you know, people buying debt. And you start thinking this is really, it seems confusing because I think it is confusing and because I think there's a level of unreality to it, and it's going to lead to bad things. I guess I'm assuming that's what you've concluded, which is why you recommend people go to gold. Absolutely.

You know, the analogy that you can use is, if you've ever known anyone who was in financial trouble, and they say, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and file bankruptcy. The first thing they do is they max out every credit card they have. Because if they're going to go out for a while, they're going to get all the stuff they want. that's the period I think we're in right now.

We're saying that it's so bad that whatever comes, we might as well load up the coffers and make sure that we get what we want. It's unbelievable. Anyway, I'm glad to have you not just as a sponsor, but as a guest, we need to, at least I need to begin to understand this stuff. Folks, let me recommend you. Go to legacy p.m.investments.com. Obviously, you can find out more.

their legacy pm investments.com. Charles Forngren, thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you. It's a very nice. When you have someone to hold your hand, you know where I stand, you know I'll always be... In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble and you need to take steps to protect yourself.

If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real. It is physical. It's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I, trust for investing in gold.

They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. As promised, I have a special guest for this segment. Some of you know if you follow my schedule. I'm going to be going to do West.

I mean, I got to read this, due west, South Carolina, to Erskine College. I am somebody who's just getting familiar with Erskine College. And I said, why don't we have the guy who heads it up, Dr. Steve Adamson, on the program so that we can all get to know him. So Dr. Adamson, welcome. Thank you. And I'm glad to be here.

How long, I mean, we should probably tell people, I'm going to be speaking there. I don't know that I have the date in front of me. It will be May 14th. It's the Gold and Garnet Forum. Is that what you call it? That is correct. And I know my subject is Christian thinking in a secular society.

So I've got some work to do to think about what I want to share with you all. But tell, just for my audience, familiarize them a little bit with Erskine College. because I get, when I learn about something like this, I kind of get excited about it. I want to tell other people. So do me, just give us an overview of the college and how long you've been there. Erston College actually began in 1839. So we are closely approaching 200 years of existence. It was started by people in the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church,

with two goals and two focus. One is to train up people to be servants of the Lord in the church. And another is to provide a liberal arts education for people in this general area. And that was an importance way back in the beginning, South Carolina in the 1830s. Yeah. It's kind of important now. But most colleges that started with these ideas, I think of my alma mater, or Yale, they started with the same idea in about 1701, and they got off the rails pretty

quick. So it's kind of impressive to me. Again, one of the reasons I'm excited to come to Erskine College, that you all have stayed on mission for coming up on two centuries. Yeah, and part of that is a function of a connection with the denomination that has stayed true to the inerrancy of Scripture. also with our board of trustees, the structure we have in our bylaws, and the strategic plan that we have in place that sets guardrails to make sure that we stay focused on the mission of serving God, serving the kingdom, to train up people either to be servants and leaders in the church or also to be servants and leaders within the broader community to help influence society. Well, I guess one question I want to ask you, and I don't know what you want to say about this,

but what's a little depressing is to see other colleges that are today ostensibly Christian committed to biblical principles that have begun to go off the rails or to struggle with that. Why do you think Erskine has been successful in this? Because this is not a small thing. This is the battle of our day. You know, there's certain aspects of being very focused on your mission. There's also aspects of maintaining a certain size where you can fully influence the students and you can have your faculty who are all of the same background, the same perspective. You have to be very intentional about it.

Sure, there are going to be pressures from the outside to. accommodate. And sometimes those pressures unclothed in the idea of, well, if you accommodate in this way, that might help enrollment or that might help in your donation dollars. But the reality is, is at the end, if you're true and faithful to God, and a servant of God, he will bless you if you stay true to the course. Right, but you have to actually trust in the Lord. That's the problem. There are a lot of people that they talk about that.

But when it comes to this sort of thing that you're describing, they have a kind of corporate mentality. And they do not. I mean, it's amazing to me what you just said, because it's, it kind of makes you think, do I really believe this or don't I believe this? And a lot of colleges, as I said, ostensibly evangelical Christian colleges have really strayed. And I think it's a leadership issue. So I guess I want to thank you for.

for getting this, for understanding what's at stake. Now, I know I'm speaking at the commencement and at the Golden Garnet Forum, is that right? Correct. Can anyone come to the Golden Garnet Forum on that evening? Yes, anyone can come. They can go to the college's website at erskin.edu, and there'll be a link there on the main page. And it's open for people to come. And do West South Carolina, do me a favor and explain to me where roughly are you?

What big cities are you close to so we can orient you? If you were to roughly look at a directional somewhat southwest of Greenville, Spartanburg area, about an hour. And so it's within reach. And there are some other larger cities around us, but Greenville, Spartanburg is the main area. Now, is this something you do every year at commencement? Yeah, this is actually the first time that we're doing this. In the past, it's been just the commencement in the morning, and then the students go off and do their celebrations.

But it's such a unique opportunity to be able to have you available and with the books you've written and the stance that you have on Christianity and its interaction in how Christianity deals with the secular culture around us and higher education. Dr. Adamson, thank you, and I look forward to being with you in due west in a few weeks.

Thank you, Herr. Appreciate it. And I enjoy seeing you and here as well. Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my, friend Mike Lindell. Well, Mike has just announced that you will receive one of his books and the book is next level insane. It is called What Are the Odds from Crack Addict to CEO? It's his story.

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If you know my friends Pete and Seth, but you know what I'm up against. Bottom line is when we started out this relationship, I just didn't like them that much. But why are we here? Why does we agree to do this? Because you've grown on me. Somehow, the more we talk, the more we realize, like a bonnetical?

You really do know what you're talking about, and I'll be the first to admit it. I see that. Actually, all of your ideas make sense, but the last one, what did you want to talk about today? Because this one actually kind of got me, the title. Well, basically,

how great ideas can sometimes be terrible businesses. I think most people listening to this program, like everybody has had great ideas that they think, I know I have, that would say, that would be a great idea for a business. You're saying, uh, maybe not.

Yeah, I think, you know, when you look at what goes into making a good business, it starts with, it has to be a great idea. But the truth is, is that we've had more failure than success by far. And that I think probably about, seven, eight years ago, I realized that one of the secrets that I would say leads to success, eventual success, is repetition testing of ideas that don't necessarily bet the farm. So non-fatal testing, and it's a repetition, it's a numbers game.

To me, if you've got good strategy and you learn with your mistakes and you have enough time to experiment, and it's repetition, repetition, repetition, you can find some just good ideas and turn them into great businesses, but usually it's a lot of great ideas. I've had, I mean, I've had some ideas where I'm like, this is it, this is it, and it just goes absolutely nowhere. And a lot of business owners structured the business and structure their business plan and wager at all. It is like putting it all on black and hitting the roulette wheel.

And what we became really passionate about in our businesses internally was starting to figure out, you've got an idea. And I remember having this conversation in a conference from a couple of years ago, where an idea was proposed. And it was a pretty good idea, but it had some negative baggage with it. I would call collateral damage potential with it. So it had some real good upside and some downside. And so what most entrepreneurs or small business owners don't know how to do is to distill an idea down and deconstruct it to figure out how to test that good idea. while mitigating and lowering the downside. But again, these were things that I started learning. And again, we talked about this last week about how one of the major drivers for me was, I don't want people to go through what I went through. And once I started realizing it was a volume game of testing ideas, I realized, okay, well, how do we test without risking everything?

This is so classic Talbot and true confessions. I'm sort of the throw it all on black or throw it all on red. Are you trying to tell me you have a gambling problem? Is that what this is about? Metaphorically. That's for another show. Okay. That's for another show, quite literally.

But my point is my natural state as a risk taker and as an entrepreneur was if I had a good idea, I would, if I had a hundred grand, I'd throw 100 grand at it. Right. Or sometimes a lot more. I'm actually writing a book. I've just started a book called How to Fail Successfully. See, now, what my son has done, we've been working together now for about 18 years. Too long.

Wow. Too long. And what's happened is, get me, get me out. We have failed. We have failed like in the last 18 years, even with our most success. successful companies, which we've recently sold. But we failed more than me. We failed a hundred times.

Yeah. But thanks to him, we weren't putting a million bucks out of whack. We'd sometimes take $5,000. Test this. Test this word. Test this phrase. This is big for you guys, as I'm picking it up over the weeks. The testing, like limited testing.

Test to just repeat. Just to just repeat. Yeah, I would say you want the boldness to go. heavy, but it needs to be strategic. Yes. And I think the trick is, is ideally you find a partner, really, where you don't have the timidity and the hesitation and indecisiveness. I'm super decisive, but I moved away from being knee-jerk reactive to things a while ago

because I found that a lot of times I didn't have enough information that my knee-jerk turned into an embarrassment thing later. But I also found that, okay, let's be strategic, but bet. big. We actually were talking about some of the bigger bets that we've been making our last years over dinner. And so you want to find that right dynamic where when you find something, go hard on it. But do it strategically. And most people that lean towards betting hard don't do it strategically because they're not wired in a way to deconstruct it to figure out how do we go precise. So where our combination really played well is that when I have an idea and I've kind of researched it,

I don't have a timid business partner that's like, oh, well, oh, what do we do about this? He's ready to roll. And then he's amazing at the creative and the execution of this idea so that we can go and attack it. But most business owners don't really know that. So they're wired in a way where you've got people that are super cautious. And so then they don't know how to bet and pursue something and to take the appropriate amount of risk. And one thing you learned in marketing is if you don't put enough dollars into a specific marketing attempt and hold it there, you don't actually get a valid test.

So the people that are really, really timid that are wired in a way of like test, test, test, test, we'll put their toe out, they don't get results, and then they pull it back. Or you get the super knee jerk that's going to bet it all on black and hit the spin, and they're going to ride that ship all the way down to the bottom of the ocean, regardless of the results. Right. So it's a matter of finding their right combination. What we love to do is to work with business owners or leaders, CEOs, sales managers. Yeah, yeah.

To walk through that process, we talked about it before. The first step to solving the problem is defining the problem. We're very, forgive me for saying this so boldly, we are very good at that. We are very good at the science. It has to be the first step. And we love walking through this process with business owners. We just love it. This is what we live for.

You have a track record. I mean, it's why we're talking about this, that you have been tremendously successful. and it wasn't luck. You've been very self-critical. And I also know, and I want to say this for my audience, I know that you care about this. This is not about, hey, we've got a business. No, you actually care about helping people do good things better. So anyway, I should direct people to the website. Talbotgroup. com, Talbot group.com, and you can call them at 866 Talbot, T-A-L-B-O-T-T. Thank you. We'd love to talk with them. We've got a two-minute video on there. that they will really enjoy.

At Talbot Group.com. Yes. For someone to tell you everything, sit around and wonder what tomorrow. Hey there, folks. Albin, do you want to wish somebody happy birthday? Yeah, my friend Jack in Pittsburgh, I just want to say, happy birthday, Jack. I hope you get another like 60 more. Thank you.

Well, I want to say, I don't want to forget to mention this again in case people are just tuning in. I am over the moon. I use that term advisedly. I'm over the moon about the fact that on May 31st in about a month, we're doing a Socrates in the city event in New York City. Folks, if you can get to New York City, this is the event. It is going to be with Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke. He's a man of Christian faith. He's the 10th man to walk on the moon. You'll have a chance to meet him, to get a picture with him.

I just can't tell you, we found out yesterday that he and his wife, Dorothy, they're celebrating their 59th wedding anniversary that weekend and they wanted to come to New York City or not that weekend, that week. So this is a Tuesday night. We don't have the registration page up yet. It is going to sell out. I'm just warning you because a lot of people want to meet a man who walked on the moon. And I'm one of those people.

So I am just telling you right now, it's going to be up at Socrates and the city.com. maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but when it gets up, you get your, if you get your tickets, I think within a week, you get like an early bird price, which is significant. And then it goes up to the normal price. But I'm going to tell you, I just can't get over the fact that we have this opportunity. This is like a dream of a lifetime for me to get to meet this man, to have a conversation with him at a Socrates and City event. We haven't done Socrates in the city in, you know, over two years since COVID.

I think Peter Thiel was the last one we did. and then the lunacy happened. So we want to mention Socrates and the city.com. If you go to my website, Eric Mataxis.com, and if you sign up for the newsletter, you'll get all this information. But I'm warning you, it's going to sell out. This is truly an opportunity of a lifetime, folks,

to meet this man. It's the 50th anniversary of his walking surface of the moon. I'm hoping he brings his suit and he lets you climb into it. That would be so hard. He'll bring a couple of moon rocks and it'll pass them out to the kids. Yeah. So we want to say that. Soxie said, this is, I'm telling you, change your plans if you got other plans.

This is, you want to come to New York for this. This is so exciting. May 31st, Tuesday night, Charlie Duke, General Charlie Duke. He is going to be my guest. And I just can't get over it. It's amazing. It's going to be at the Union League Club. Anyway, all right.

So we should mention a couple of films that you might want to see. You go to SalemNow.com, whose children are they? That's must-seeing. Wait till you see it. There's a film that I'm in called 2000 Mules. It is going to change history. It's one of these things that it's going to change history. People are going to be forced to deal with the fact that something happened in America

that's never happened before. This is criminal activity on a level that should make us weep for our country. Dinesh D'Souza has made a film about it. Obviously, I mentioned I'm in the film, but I don't have much to do in the film, except comment along with my radio host of colleagues, Sebastian Gorka, and Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk and others about what took place. And the evidence, the evidence is just, it's incontrovertible, so people are going to have some problems.

You can stay tuned. People can have some problems, but you want to see the film. Alvin, what else are we forgetting? I do. It's today's Thursday, yeah. So I don't think of it. I'm traveling a lot.

I'm traveling a lot. Tonight. I'm speaking in Plymouth, Minnesota, tonight. Then I go to San Jose, California, Calvary Church. A lot of stuff coming up. Go to my website, Eric Mataxis.com. You can check it out. Don't forget, Neutrametics.

this month only. We got three days left. It's 30% off if you use the code. Eric, Neutrametics. Don't forget Mike Lindell. Mike, don't forget Mike Lindel.com. Use the code Eric.

And we're out.