The Eric Metaxas Show - Kirk Cameron and Ask Metaxas

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Kirk Cameron has a new film, "The Homeschool Awakening," which dives into parents' influence in education; the Talbotts share spot-on business advice; and Ask Metaxas addresses eleven listener questions.

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. Uh-oh. Oh, it's that time of the week, Albin. Yes, sir. It's that time of the week.

I love this time. We call this the Ask Mataxis segment. Traditionally, because my last name was Metaxus. I play the role of Metaxus, and I answer the questions. People write us every week, and they submit questions. And we ask you to do that, folks. We love to, you know, we love to read these. And ask me questions on just about anything.

So, Alvin, if you would read the question, I will try to answer the questions. And go. Go. Okay. Any way I could meet you. I'm a big fan. I don't see that happening. Actually, of course, there is how kind of.

of somebody to say that. People don't understand. I really get nonplussed when people say their fans. It means so much to me because what people don't know is that I struggled for many, many, many, many years and to make ends meet, to try to get my name out there, whatever. So when things kind of cracked open with the Bonhofer book 10 years ago, it changed everything. And people started talking to me about, oh, I loved your book. And I just want to say to people how much it means to me. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I used to hear people say, like, oh, I care about the fans. And I never understood what they talked about, what they meant. Believe me, it means so much to me that there are people that would even describe themselves as a fan. By the way,

do you know what the word fan comes from? No. Fanatic. Oh, yes. I was going to say Fandango, but that's later. That would be wrong. Yes, fanatic. But it means a lot to me. So when somebody says any way I could meet you. Well, if you have a lot of money, when we do our charity fundraisers, I always say if somebody can give $10,000 to that charity, I'm happy to spend the evening with you. I just had a wonderful evening in Colorado Springs with someone who gave $10,000, I think to CSI, whatever, and I'll do that periodically. Obviously, most people wouldn't be able to do that. So what I say is come and meet me at one of my speaking engagements because I get everywhere. I mean, I've been everywhere, man. I've been everywhere, man. And so if you go to my website,

ericmetaxis.com, and you look at the speaking thing. Now, by the way, if you're not signed up for my newsletter, the newsletter, I'm always saying when I'm coming to your town or something. So sign up the newsletter at my personal website, Ericmataxis.com. But right there where it says speaking, it'll tell you, And I just get everywhere I can. I'll be in Washington, D.C. This weekend, I'll be in Pasadena, California. I will be preaching to church in Pasadena this weekend. I'm going to be in Seattle, Washington area.

I'm going to be in Phoenix. You know, I'm just, I just got a million-speaking engagement. So I say to people, if you can, come to one of those engagements and then, you know, stand in the book line, and it's my delight to meet people. Also, we are, because we had such an amazing experience with Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, we're rebooting these Socrates and the city stuff here in New York and elsewhere. And if you want to come to New York and come to Socrates and City event,

I will be doing a bunch of those in the fall. We have to talk about specific dates, but I'm just going to be everywhere. So it would be my delight to meet you, and I look forward to it. And again, I just want to say, it means so much to me that somebody would even say such And if you want to meet me most Friday nights, I'm in Wegman, so yeah. Okay. Okay. Who is your favorite character from Lord of the Rings and why? Okay, I'm going to blow people's minds with this. You ready? Tom Bombadil. No, actually, I'm going to blow people's minds. People are going to have a hard time with what I'm going to say right now. I know this. Get ready to freak out people. Ready?

I've never read Lord of the Rings. Uh-oh. Oh, duck. I have never read Lord of the Rings. It's just one of these things that I never got around to. I think I feel very guilty about this. And I know a lot of people have just thought, I'm not going to listen to Eric anymore because he's a fraud. He's never read Lord of the Rings. I have read everything by C.S. Lewis like a million times.

So I figure like that covers me. You know, I read Peralandra a million times. Anyway, so I'm really sorry to say that I'm a bit. embarrassed. I'm not proud of that, but it's true. Isn't that the sequel to Lord of the Flies? Actually, no. Okay. How do you combat the idea that disagreement is hate? Well, this is part of, I don't know if I write about it in my next book. My next book is called a letter to the American Church, but I deal with this issue somehow. It is a fundamental misunderstanding among most Christians today.

They have taken in this lie that when somebody says you're being hateful because you disagree with me, they often go along with it or they say, oh, I'm sorry, and you think, no, loving someone is often disagreeing with them.

If I tell you the truth in love, you might say that's hateful, but you would be wrong. It is not hateful. It is a loving thing to speak the truth. Bonhofer was shocked, actually, when he came to America, and he went to Union Theological Seminary for nine months or whatever, and he just thought that everybody was all about agreeing with each other and being nice,

and he thought, well, what about the clash of truth and reason and ideas? And in America, in a sense, we often are too tolerant. We've taken that word tolerance, and these things cease to have meaning. Truth is important, and if somebody says that if you disagree, with me or if you think my lifestyle is wrong or whatever, that's hate, it's your job to disagree with that. That is wrong. That is not hate. I don't know if what I've just said makes any sense, but at least it makes sense to me, so let's move on. East Coast versus West Coast. Well, I think it's fair to say that I'm an East Coast kind of guy. You see, this is because

my parents come from the old country. And when you come from the old country, your first stop, is going to be the East Coast, typically. And you're going to settle in the East Coast. And eventually, you know, you might make your way around the East Coast. But the West Coast, I always think that's for people. Either they've come from Asia or their families have been in America so long that, you know, now they're on the West Coast. But for me, I still feel an affinity for the East Coast because of the history, because of the 13 colonies,

and because it's close to the home countries, you know, Germany, England, Greece or whatever. I don't know, I don't dislike the West Coast, but I don't feel at home there in the way that I do on the East Coast. So I think the short answer is East Coast. Yeah, the time zone difference always throws me off too. Which book of C.S. Lewis, and I think you might have answered this, do you think is the best? Oh, do I think is the best? Yes. Well, it's interesting. Today is Thursday. Yes. On Monday, I'm going to have a long, both hours, conversation with a C.S. Lewis scholar who has written a book about Lewis's book, Paralandra. He makes the case that Paralandra is Lewis's best book, or it's a book that sort of is a distillation of all the rest of Lewis in

one book. I agree with that. In other words, if I had to pick one book, I think it might be Paralandra. Because Paralandra, first of all, it is, well, we'll say so much about it on Monday. So maybe I'll just leave it there. But I do want to say that, Albin, you and I were talking about this yesterday, I think you don't need to read all three books in this ransom trilogy. It's the first one's out of the Silent Planet, then is Paralandra, then is that hideous strength. you can just read Paralanda by itself, but I would recommend reading out of the silent planet first and then reading Paralandra.

You can skip that hideous strength if you don't want to. It's almost stands alone. But Paralandra is just, it's unlike anything else Lewis wrote. It is absolutely spectacular. Yeah. And I want to say that there's something really beautiful about finding an author and then realizing there's more,

there's something else that I haven't read. I think the Narnia Chronicles, by the way, are brilliant. I think the Silver Chair, maybe today if I had to pick, the Silver Chair is my favorite. But they are, they're not kids' books. They're brilliant, brilliant, brilliant books. And I recommend them to adults. I didn't read them until I was an adult. But the Silver Chair, all of the Narnia Chronicles, but the Silver Chair in particular, the Dawn Treader,

they are magnificent works of literary genius. I recommend them all. We're at a time. See you later. Tell me, Eric, why is Relief Factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right, designed to heal. And I agree with them. So the doctors who formulated Relief Factor for them selected the four best ingredients, yes,

100% drug-free ingredients, each helps your body deal with inflammation. Each of the four ingredients deals with inflammation from a different metabolic pathway. And that right there, approaching from four different angles, may be why so many people find such wonderful relief. So if you, You've got back pain, shoulder, neck, hip, knee, or foot pain from exercise or just getting older. You should order the three-week quick start discounted to only 1995 to see if it will work for you. It works for me. It has for about 70% of the half a million people who've tried it and have ordered more. Go to Relieffactor.com or call 800 for relief to find out about this offer.

Feel the difference. 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 866-5281903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Hey there, folks. Welcome. I have the privilege right now of talking.

to my friend Kirk Cameron about something very exciting. Kirk, what's happening? Eric, it's always such an honor to talk to you, my friend. Thank you for taking time. I've got a brand new project that's coming out, which is a great hope for everybody who loves America and everybody who believes that education is important. It's called the homeschool awakening. And boy, I hit the hornets nest when I pointed out the fact that the American public education system in spite of the good teachers who are in it, parents across the nation are realizing that the public education system has gotten so bad that they've become public enemy number one in terms of teaching kids the values that promote the kind of country that we love.

Well, I know that that's true. It's horrifying. But there are a lot of people that are busy and they're only just waking up to this. And so it thrills me, Kirk, you do a lot of good stuff. But what we're talking about here, this is as important as it gets. While we have been kind of drifting along in our lives, raising our kids, working, the public school system has gone insane. It has taken on values that are basically cultural Marxist value. It sounds like we're making this up.

It's an end-time novel. You don't know anything about end-time stories, do you? You've not been any of those movies, right? No. No, that's Nicholas Cage. It's like something we would make up, but it's right here, right now. And people are waking up, and they're saying, yes, we're going to homeschool our kids. But you are helping them to do that.

And I'm just, so this is a film that you have made, right? Yeah, this is a documentary that is documenting a parent-led awakening, a movement that is all about taking back the nation by taking back the family and saying, wait a minute, God gave our kids to us. It's our job to train them, to teach their hearts and minds. Listen, being a teacher, as we know, is a noble profession. My father was a public school teacher, and so were my grandparents. But good teachers are trapped in a system where they don't get to decide what to teach the kids. And they're pulling prayer and God and the Bible and everything good out of schools, and they're training our kids to be little Marxist revolutionaries.

But the hope is found in parents who say, wait a minute, our hope doesn't come from watching, Washington, D.C., our hope comes from the power of God working in the hearts of people. And we're going to teach our kids about truth, beauty, and goodness, and how the world works. And we're going to make the difference that we're looking for. And the homeschool awakening documents how to do it, the most commonly asked questions about homeschooling. You know, I used to think that you had to be a Quaker and wear a head covering and churn your own butter if you wanted to homeschool. But it's not. It is freedom and flexibility.

required. It's not required. No, seriously, though, what you, I talk to people, I talk to a woman here in Manhattan, you know, super educated, whatever. And I said, she said, what would you do? You know, if you had a young kid, but I said, I'm telling you what I would do. Home schooling, number one, absolutely number one. She says, oh, I'm not qualified. I thought, you're crazy. You're more qualified than anybody. Like, you know, people always act like, wow, that's like, that's like asked me to do brain surgery. I'm not qualified. It's like, no, it's not brain surgery. It's teaching your kids. And there are all kinds of ways that today you can get help in doing that. It's not like you. It's all on you. That's right. That's right. You're not living on an island somewhere and you're not

trying to duplicate the school classroom in your house. Imagine. Imagine if you could educate your kids in such a way where you knock down the walls, the whole world becomes your classroom. and you're in community with like-minded people who love your values, who love this country, who consider it a blessing to be able to teach your kids who they are and how they fit into the world to accomplish great purposes. That is what homeschooling is like. And you can lean into your children's strengths and learning styles in community. And there are curriculums that are written by educators with PhDs and co-ops and networks and conferences that help you.

And this is how America was built, folks. For the first 100 years, they didn't have a national department of education. In fact, that's prohibited by the Constitution for the very reasons we're seeing today. They're rotting the minds and souls of American children despite what parents actually want. Yeah. And by the way, folks, we're not overstating this. You can't imagine how bad it has become. It's insane.

If you don't pull your kids out of the fire, you can't really complain when they get all burned. They're getting burned right now. They're learning things that are flat out wrong, much less ideologically off. But, I mean, just they're learning a version of history, a version of American history. That's totally wrong. It's ideological nonsense. And we have a responsibility as parents, grandparents. We've got to say no.

What can we do to save our kids from being indoctrinated with Marxism? I mean, again, we're not making this up. This is happening right now. Listen, guys, this is Eric Matack. who understands about Bonhofer, he understands about history, he understands how Marxism and socialism and communism is like a cancer that destroys nations and families and individuals. And this is exactly what they're doing.

They're trying to separate parents from their children so that they can control your children's thinking and want to view them as property of the government, not your children, but the government's children to serve their purposes, not yours. Actually, you bring up a couple of things. things. First of all, the idea that anyone would dare, would dare to say, we know what your children need better than you do. That person better watch out. Don't get near me if you have that kind of an attitude, because there's a sanctity between parents and kids. And when the state decides to step in, look, that's what they did in the Soviet Union. That's what they did in Nazi Germany. When the state

begins to say, hey, parents, you're in my way. I want your kids. Well, that's when parents better wake up. That's number one. Number two, you mentioned Bonhoeffer. Yes, and they are. Bonhofer's mother homeschooled her kids. Homestooled her kids. This is in the early part of the 20th century. And I think to myself, you want to raise heroes. You want to raise amazing young men and women. Step up, folks. And that's right. Is this a, this documentary, that you have made. Tell us the title again, Kirk. It's called The Home School Awakening, and it is glorious. It is beautiful. It's thrilling and exciting. It will bring freedom and flexibility and faith and fun back into your home and not just

make your kids potentially the most amazing human beings in this generation, but it will revive your family, the time that you get to spend, and the people that you will meet. It's just, It's world changing, literally. So it's called The Homeschool Awakening. It's in theaters, June 13th, and 14th only. So you got to, it's a fathom event. So what you do is you got to go get your tickets, reserve them online, because theaters are already sold out in some cities.

There's a limited number of tickets, two days only, in theaters only, June 13th and 14th. So go to the homeschoolawakening.com. If you can't remember that, just go to kirkcamera.com. I got a link there. and then type in your zip code. It'll show you the theater it's playing in, and then you can reserve your tickets online early so that they don't get taken.

Everywhere I go in America, and I'm not making this up, I do a lot of speaking around the country, and I meet young people and their parents, and when I meet kids that are homeschooled, I think every single time I'm blown away at their maturity, at their understanding of things that I didn't learn until 10 years ago. I think to myself,

these kids are going to take over the world. They are the secret weapon. And I want to say to parents, most of what you're doing right now, let's be honest, is the little time you have with your kids, you're trying to unteach them bad ideas they got from the culture and from schools.

They're getting these bad ideas, and then they come home, and you have a little time to try to say, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, that's not true. America is not an evil, racist country. did you hear that? Where did you... And boys don't get pregnant.

Boys don't have periods. And boys don't get pregnant. Can we say that on this program? Boys don't get pregnant? No, it's so... The fact that we have this madness happening and that now parents, in the precious time we have with our kids, we have to work to undo this. And we have to kind of argue with what the teachers are being forced to teach or whatever it is. I want to say the beauty of homeschooling is just what you said before. You get this time with your kids Believe me, folks, this is precious stuff. This is beautiful stuff. If you can be a bigger influence on your kids, you will be blessed because you will see that these values that are so important to you, you can share them with your kids if you get that time.

And I just want to say, everywhere I go around the country, when I bump into these kids and their parents, I'm astonished. Kirk, I'm astonished. They are so mature. And I just think, why can't we have more of this? We need more of this. And one last thing, Eric, let me just say that in the homeschool awakening, you're going to follow 17 families, people who live on farms, families that live in urban cities, and everything in between, all doing it in a way that works best for their family. It's totally flexible, and there's so much rich community, so many great curriculums. One kid is, he's got his pilot's license at 14 years old. Others are entrepreneurial families who run businesses together and travel around the country. There's no schedule that they're trying to squeeze themselves into. They create their own schedule.

They create their own curriculum and their own processes. Tell us the title one more time. The Homeschoolawakening.com. The Homeschoolawakening.com. It's a fathom event. Please check it out. Kirk, God bless you. Thank you.

Thanks, brother. Take care you guys. Hey there, folks. Eric Metaxis here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. But he didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow. Now Mike has done it again by introducing his My Slippers.

My Slippers, they're unbelievable. I know all about them. But I got to tell you, for a limited time, you will save $90 on each pair of my slippers. They're expensive. You can save $90. This blowout sale of the year won't last order now. He's taken over two years to develop them. The My Slippers are designed to wear indoors and out all day long.

made with MyPillow Foam and Impact Gel to help prevent fatigue, made with quality leather, swayed. Call 1-800-978-3057. Use the promo code Eric or go to MyPillow.com. Click on the radio listeners square and use promo code Eric. The offer will not last long, so order now with promo code Eric at MyPillow.com or call 800-978-3057. 800-978 3057.

Uh-oh, Albin, we've got a problem. I know we do. We've got so many questions for Ask Matak. that we're going to do a bonus round right now. Yes, we are. This is not normally when we do Ask Mattaxas. We normally do it in the first segment of Hour 2. We are now well into Our 2,

but we've got these questions crowding in on us. We need to get them off our chest, off our plate, off our desk, and we're going to do that right now. Out of our craw. This is a bonus round of AskMataxis and go. What are your opinions about the potential? potential ban on assault rifles. It seems like it would make sense given the school shootings and feels like a compromise for people's safety and for people to still own other guns.

I don't agree with that. First of all, the term assault rifles. One of the things you have to do, if you want to be alive, if you want to be really alive, you have to push back on bad ideas. And you have to push back with a little attitude because there are people trying to bully you with words. with ideas, forcing you to accept things that are simply not true. Like the idea that disagreement is hate, that's a bad idea. That's a stupid idea. It's a wicked idea. The idea that assault rifles are even a thing, they're called assault rifles,

I just say, who calls them assault rifles? Why do I have to accept that? There are a different kind of rifle, and you're trying to bully me into having a bad view of them by using the term assault rifle. If you do that, I already know you're playing a game. And so I don't accept that idea of assault rifles. Assault rifles, I think, means semi-automatic rifles.

An automatic rifle is called a machine gun. A semi-automatic is a gun that you can squeeze off one round after the other with a clip, but you don't just pull the trigger and out comes machine gun. It's a semi-automatic gun. So are we being asked to ban semi-automatic guns? I don't see any reason for that. And the main reason, we covered this with Larry Taunton, is that people have to get certain ideas out of their heads.

One is that if we ban guns, we will solve this problem. If that were true, I would be willing to have a conversation. But that is a lie. It is a cheap Band-Aid. It's like, I've got cancer. Here's a Band-Aid. Here's some aspirin. It is not going to, this problem is a much deeper problem.

And I also think that more guns would be of help, not fewer guns. More guns would mean that when somebody starts doing something evil and sick, there are more people to protect against it. So I'm sorry to say I don't think that that's a good idea. Okay. Thoughts on the midterms. What do you think will happen? Well, I would say what I'd like to happen is that every single American would understand that if you do not get activated, if you don't get off your duff, your ever-loving duff, and get serious about being an American, voting, making sure that you're involved, maybe being involved in a poll watching.

if we do not take our country back from the crazy people and the rhinos, that's all the Republicans that are basically a huge part of the problem, if we don't do that, this country, excuse me, will become Venezuela, this country will go to hell, this country will no longer be America, and people will be hurt, poor people will be hurt, working class people will be hurt, the elites will not be hurt, but this to me is something that, I think God has allowed things to get very, very bad in America to wake us up and to say, if you do not take action, gas prices are going to be $20 a gallon.

If you do not take action, you're going to have no rights. You're going to be treated like a serf, like a slave, self-government. Clearly we're at an inflection point. So what I think will happen is good, but everybody has to get very serious about it yesterday. What are your opinions on the importance of mental health? I'm against it. No. I don't even know what that question means.

What are your opinions on the importance of mental health? Yeah. I don't know. Like what kind of health is not important? Mental health, emotional health, these things are important. So I guess I don't know what that means, so I'm sorry. I have no answer for that. Okay.

Can you tell us more about your book, Letter to the American Church? It is a book about which I am very excited. It is, I think we are dealing with, tomorrow I guess I speak with, I can't think of the man's name, who wrote a book about God, Caesar, and idols. And it has to do with the issue of the role of the church in America. Rick Boyer. Rick Boyer. I knew it started with a B. Rick Boyer, B-O-Y-E-R, we talked to him tomorrow.

but he covers a lot of the same ground that I cover in my book letter to the American Church. I mean, he covers all kinds of stuff that I don't cover in my book, so I'm glad he wrote his book. But it is vital that people of faith in America understand that your faith needs to be brought into every sphere. If you don't understand that, if you have been bullied by people saying, don't be political, you're not supposed to be political. Again, they're bullying you with words. You should immediately say, I'm sorry, that is a bad idea. That is a wrong idea. You're deeply mistaken.

It is my duty to bring my faith into everything. And that is how I love people by bringing my faith to bear on all of these issues. So Letter to the American Church deals with that. I'll be talking plenty about that in the weeks and months ahead. But please pre-order a copy if you're able. I would like, I'd love you to do that. Just pre-order copy, Letter to the American Church. Thank you.

Yeah, okay. And do you think faith in politics need to coincide? And I think you kind of answered that. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's any way around it. When people talk about faith being separated from politics or politics, that is a fundamental misunderstanding. If you have bought into that lie, you need to understand it is a deeply mistaken concept. It's not in the founding documents. It's the antithesis of what the founders were trying to say. And I write about that in my book. Let it to the American Church. Please, Pierre de Koppi. Thank you very much. Folks, welcome back.

We're doing our weekly segment with my friends Pete and Seth Talbot, whom I refer to as the Talbot group. Can I call you that? You can't. You're the Talbot group. And we love being here. Well, we've gotten to know each other. We've gotten to know each other.

And I don't just like you. I trust you and I respect your business wisdom. So we're doing this weekly thing where I ask, kind of a basic business question, and I throw it a day. So today's question, this week's question is, how do you get from good to great? So there are a lot of companies out there. They're doing okay, but maybe the owner or the founder has a gleam in his eye

that we could be doing great, but I don't know. I mean, I guess the first question would be, how do you even know you can get from good to great? Maybe some companies have just maxed out. They hit a ceiling, and that's it. Yeah, I think the thing that, I joke with people is with having five kids. If anything surprises you after three, you weren't paying attention. And so I think that applies to businesses. Because when I was probably about 10 years ago,

I got into startups and I was helping a lot of startup companies. And it was a great experience because you get to see mainly failure, obviously, where the failure starts to manifest, be it a bad idea, bad leadership. The product's just not interesting enough. There's not enough margin. There's not enough momentum. You know, you find, you know, people fall in love with this idea, and they sell it to some people,

and they assume that some turns into millions, and they don't realize it actually has to sell the millions for it to matter to really build a reasonable business around. So then because we did that, then we started these other companies, and a few of them became pretty successful. You start to see things that, have in common. And overseeing a variety of companies at the same time like we did,

you see the things that correlate to success and things that correlate to like decent businesses. This is what people call pattern recognition, right? In other words, you have to have done enough to begin to see patterns. And you have done so much of this kind of stuff that you have the ability to say, wait a minute, I've seen that before. I just didn't know that there was a lot of value there to be super blunt. I didn't think through that. Because we know when you're in survival mode, you're just trying to make a company work. You're trying to make an idea go. Right. You don't think about margin, frankly. You know, when you start off with a new idea and it starts to go, you're just excited it goes. Yes. You're just, you know, and so you price it typically

for survival. You put enough margin in to pay your bills. You look at your team, your staff. Well, you're playing it safe because you don't know, you don't want to be an idiot. You say, hey, let's double our margins and then the whole thing tanks because you shouldn't have done that. You know, you have to have a sense of what you can get away with. There is a distinct look in the eye of a business owner when you tell them they need to double their margin. And it's always fear. They never are like, oh, this is going to be great.

There's always, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, this worked. Why would we want to mess with it? I remember being in New York probably eight years ago and someone challenging us on one of our businesses and some of the fundamentals and saying it's wrong. You've got a problem here. And what got us there was kind of working. but we needed to actually redo it pretty significantly.

And I just run into that a lot. And so I would say the difference between good to great, when I was focused on startups, I was looking at it binary of bad ideas and good ideas. And it turns out that to really grow and scale something significantly and have to be a great idea, usually. There are some weird exceptions like major cable companies. Those aren't great ideas, but they scale because of other things.

So that's the rare exception. but typically you don't recognize the difference between good and great because you just don't have enough miles on your tires. You just haven't had enough exposure to see what really correlates to success. You know, talking about margin, what you charge, are you making enough money? It reminds me in the 1970s, the first company I started was five loaves and two fish company. We sold mills, mixers, dehydrators, juicers, and God was very good to us and went well. And then I thought, well, five loaves and two fish, I think I'll open a restaurant, 12 baskets restaurant.

And my point here is that pricing the menu was just so agonizing because I didn't know all this stuff that Seth is talking about how you price. What is the customer willing to pay the AB testing in the various. I was just shooting from my hip like most businesses do. Most ministries do. They just sit around the room. What do you think we should charge? And I threw away, even in the 70s, tens of thousands of dollars, because I didn't take a scientific look at my business.

I just, I wanted to bake bread, so I was up at 5.30 baking bread. I didn't know how to price my sandwiches, my salads. I was just shooting from the hip. Well, it's safe to say, though, that at that point, early, early, early point in a startup, you don't have the ability to turn to somebody like, like the Talbot group or something, you're sort of forced to do that. But if you have a big company, I'm guessing, the idea would be that at that point it becomes worth it. In fact, it becomes silly kind of not to do it.

Yeah, I think you get to a point where you feel like you've squeezed as much juice out of the fruit as you can. But a lot of times that's baking in assumptions that are incorrect about what you can do with your business. And every time I finally, I would agonize about raising the price on a sandwich. Matthew's Basket or Peter's Basket, the sandwich is what I called him. I'd raise it 25 cents, 50 cents, which was a lot of money back then. No one said a peep. Right. It's just, and all of a sudden I was making more money.

They're probably thinking, like, I'm surprised he didn't charge more before. It should have been. Well, that happens. We help businesses do the diagnostics on their businesses so that they can make intelligent decisions about how to grow and even scale. Is it a margin issue? Is it a sales issue? Is it a conversions issue?

Is it a marketing channel issue? Is it execution your team? There's a few things that we look at that, again, when you've built this thing, you don't typically have awareness of knowing which pieces actually are holding me back. That's the idea of, like, good to grade is what led to it, but how do we really narrow in and how to scale it?

And that's the key. So many businesses have a good product, a good service, a good something. But getting it to great, you need to do the science of marketing first. And we love helping. All right. So if people want to find you, they go to Talbotgroup.com or there's a phone number. 866 Talbot, T-A-L-B-O-T-T. Two T-T-E-E.

We'd love to talk to you. We'd love to help. The number again? 866 Talbot. Thank you very much. Make like a Mr. Milk Toast, you'll get... Alan, we're going to do something very crazy right now. I know.

It's pretty crazy. Oh, boy. We got so many questions for Ask Metaxus that we thought, let's do a bonus round. So we did a bonus round. But then we thought we've got even more questions. Let's do another bonus round. We just have people writing in with questions, and sometimes it's just fun for us to commit and to talk. So since we have a couple of...

of minutes. Let's do another bonus round. A bonus bonus round. Yep. The other bonus round was just a regular bonus round. This is a bonus bonus round. So what is the question? Somebody send in some questions. We've got a few from the email bag, right? Here's one. Top three favorite fast food chains. I'm going to, how many, how'm going to? That's a tough one, right? Because I generally think of fast food as bad. Like it's not. good for you. At a certain age, I think you need to be careful, right? But if I had to pick,

I mean, that doesn't mean I don't eat fast food, but I've just foregone the fries in this decade of my life. But maybe I'll have a couple. But right now, you know, I would have to say in and out burger. Oh, yeah? Because I got to tell you, we don't have it around here. Right, right, right, right. And when I get to the middle part of the country, I was in Colorado of Springs recently. I get to California now and again. I'll be in San Diego to tomorrow. And they have In-N-Out burger there. And when you go to In-N-Out burger, somebody told me that they have like special secret stuff on the menu that the employees know about, but it's not on the official menu. Oh. And I would get the, you know, the regular cheeseburger, right?

but with hot peppers. It's not on the menu, but it is so good. But to me, the magic, you kind of think, like, what makes something good? They put these, like, crunchy onions and whatever on it, and it's the texture. Like, you just think, what makes this better than McDonald's or whatever? It's just incredible texture. So, in-and-out burger would be, at this point, easily number one. Okay.

But I also think they have shakes that are not on the menu. And the shakes are, what do they call? it. I think they call it, they call it Neapolitan shakes, where the top is vanilla, then the middle is chocolate, and then the bottom is strawberry, or maybe the order is different. But it's not on the menu. Okay. So you just say, I like a Neapolitan shake there, and it's like Neapolitan ice cream, right? Yeah. And I just thought, what a cool idea. You know, it's kind of a cool, but it's a secret thing. You said, when you heard on the Eric Metaxas show, they will not give you a discount. But I, in and out burger definitely, like right now, my mouth is watering, thinking about it.

And then, of course, who could not love Chick-fil-A for crying out loud? Oh, yes, yes. I mean, come on. Yes. I mean, really. And then probably would have to go with McDonald's because I grew up with McDonald's. I mean, I write about McDonald's in my book, Fish Out of Water. Actually, I should mention that.

I've mentioned in a while that, you know, if I've spoken at your church on my book, is atheism dead and you invite me back, I usually will speak on fish out of water because it's the story of my life and how I came to faith. And it's a genuinely miraculous story. But fish out of water in there is the famous whooper incident. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do.

My father, I was about 11 or 12, and my brother and I went with my father to McDonald's, and my father never took us to McDonald's. My mother took us to McDonald's. on the way to Greek school. We had to go to Greek school in the afternoons, like on Tuesdays or Thursdays or whatever. So we would stop off from school,

driving to Greek, stop off from McDonald's, whatever. But my father never... So one time we go with my father, my father goes up to the counter. He looks at the thing, and he says, eh, give me one whooper. Give me one whooper. And my brother and I, at that age,

you're embarrassed by your parents no matter what. We just died because we're like, Dad, Dad, it's pronounced why. and this is a McDonald's. They don't have whoppers here. That's across the street at Burger King. Anyway, my bookfish out of water is just loaded with strange antacups like that. Anyway, we're out of time. We only had time for one question, really. But thank you for listening. We appreciate it.