The Eric Metaxas Show - Leigh Bortins and Seth Talbott

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Ask Metaxas tops the hour with a tricky question about faith; then, Leigh Bortins has expert advice on classical education, and Seth Talbott focusing on building a more successful business.

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 pm investments.com. Taxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Uh-oh. It's that time of the week, ladies and gentlemen, where we do our segment called Ask Mataxis. Now, as you know, I am Metaxis. At least I'm the Metaxis referred to in the phrase, Ask Mataxis.

You ask the question. I try to answer the question. Albin, you are the Vox Populi. You're the voice of the people asking the question. So you are now charged. Yes. I love this. I love this.

I feel like a professor and he's asking the big ones. The big ones. The first question. The first question. This is a good one. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? Somebody's asking, how am I? Yeah, that's an open-ended. That's a...

Man, that's a big... That's an existential question. That's like a Socrates question. I'm blessed. I'm... I'm... Yeah, there's so many... I could talk for days about that one.

I guess the simple answer is I'm tired because the other night, we had a Socrates in the city event with Apollo 16 astronaut. I... Charlie Duke and I... It was a genuinely... I knew it would be.

But it was... was a genuinely spectacular evening. I was moved. People were blown away. So many people said, this was, this was astonishing, I'm speechless, this was so wonderful. And I thought, well, we filmed everything, we're going to edit it, and we're going to get it out there. But it was, you know, it was a late night. We have a patron's dinner afterward, and yesterday was crazy. So I'm tired. And so I covet the prayers of the saints, because I really am. There's so, there's so much going on right now that I have to say that I'm giving myself permission to be tired and even to admit it publicly. Yeah, and the day after you were over the moon. I mean, literally

and figuratively. Literally and figuratively. Okay. Question number two. How can we lead people to believe in Jesus Christ without using the words faith or belief? Okay, that's a strange question because I'm not sure what the implication is. Why wouldn't we want to use the words faith or belief? Actually, in the book that I have coming out in the fall, Letters to the American Church, I talk about this a little bit. Words like faith and belief can be misleading. What I mean by that is they can sometimes imply things that are not true. For example, people say, I believe this, blah, blah, blah, but you think,

well, it's not so much what you say you believe. The question is, do you believe it? And what it really means, do you trust in God? And for me, it's kind of an issue of reality and truth. In other words, we're not telling you to believe anything. We're telling you to get in line with what is actually true, independent of you, independent of your likes and dislikes, independent of my likes and dislikes. So you're really just talking about reality. Either it's true or it's not.

I mean, either Jesus actually bodily rose from the dead or he didn't. Now, it might be tough to believe, and if it's not tough to believe, you're not paying attention. Of course, that's the whole point is that this isn't supposed to happen. This is why it's a miracle. this is why God used it to blow people's minds and to say, oh, in case you were wondering if I am God, you know, 500 people saw me after I was killed by crucifixion and so on and so forth. So there are things that are challenging to believe, but the real question is not whether they're challenging. The question is, are they true?

And I think sometimes Christians retreat into this religious sphere. It's not about being religious. It's about what's true. And so is there a spirit world or is that just something we're making? up. Are there angels and demons? Is there in eternity? These things are either true or they're not. And I think sometimes we can be very, we can participate in our own marginalization by talking religiously. And it's not about religion. It's not even about what the scriptures say. The scriptures are describing what is true. This is not some religious view of truth. It's either

true or it's not. And sometimes we kind of forget. But that's a long, complicated, strange answer. So just ignore what I said. Pastors would say it's not a religion, it's a relationship. Moving on to question number three, would you be willing to discuss the health issues you battled and how you overcame them? No. All right. All right. Just this once. Yeah, no, for 30 years, I had, you know, quote unquote, chronic fatigue syndrome, which is kind of like I feel really crummy syndrome. They don't know what it is, so they call it chronic fatigue syndrome. But for many, many years, for decades, I struggled. I still struggled to some extent. And I, um, I, I, I went to a zillion doctors, and yesterday on the program, was it yesterday, yeah, yesterday,

I interviewed Dr. Hamlin Emery. He was the one to really be able to help me. But it's kind of complicated. It's Lyme stuff, Epstein bar stuff. It was really awful, and it took years of productivity from me, a lot of suffering, a lot of difficulties. How did I overcome them? Well, one way I overcame them was by visiting Dr. Hamlin Emery, that's number one. Number two, I began exercising. When you have chronic fatigue, a lot of times when you exercise, you get really sick. So you say, okay, I'm not going to do that anymore. But at some point I said, I'm going to exercise a little bit every day, every other day, but I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to do too much and then stop. I'm just going to do a little bit, little bit till I can make myself stronger and stronger. That actually worked. And running regularly,

was a big part of my getting back. Because in the beginning, I couldn't really run. I would get sick, but just walk and run and walk and run. Just do that. So that was a part of it. But there are all kinds of things, and I still struggle with this kind of stuff. But so it's been difficult, but Hamlin Emery was a big piece of that. Good, good.

Did the last Christian die on the cross, as Nietzsche said? Okay, that's easy. No. poor Nietzsche. I feel bad for Nietzsche. He was nuts. He was brilliant and then he went insane and he was angry and crazy and he made a lot of hyperbolic statements. I mean, he made a lot of statements that are kind of cute and so we remember them. He talked about the death of God and stuff. But no, that's ridiculous. I don't know why somebody's asking that question. So I'm just going to keep going to. I guess they think they're going to stump the band or something. Maybe. Question number five, who taught you your sense of stock? The illustrator of the Uncle Mugsy books, Tim Raglan, was more than anyone else by far responsible for getting me to think along sartorial lines and also to make the case that how one dresses is related to other things. In other words, it's not, you know, there's a lot to this. You know, at some point I need to write a chapter in a book on this because there's a lot, there's a lot to it. I mean, I see people oftentimes looking really sloppy or, you know, extremely informal.

It's kind of become the thing. And it says something about you. And so it's not, you know, the most important thing in the world. But it does speak to how we view ourselves and whether one thinks of oneself as a gentleman or a lady. Or, you know, so. But, yeah, the short answer is Tim Raglan. Okay. So describe your new book.

I just saw it listed on Amazon.com. The book coming out in September, it's called Letter to the American Church. In a nutshell, I have seen a lot of developments in the American Church, a number of big pastors, have decided that they think it's possible to avoid politics, and they say that that's divisive. Not only is that genuinely preposterous, it is ultimately working with evil. They are, most of them, I think, unaware of this.

And so in the book letter to the American Church, I'm trying to help them to understand what the stakes are, what happens when you do this, and what happened to the German church? The German church did precisely this. They did not say, we're going to worship the devil. They simply said, we are going to avoid trouble, we're going to avoid divisive issues.

folks, I got to tell you, there's sometimes you can't avoid those issues. And if you think you can, you're deluded. And not only are you diluted, but you are now part of the problem. You're now making it harder for people to stand for truth. Yeah, can I say, I got this on the way in on the train. I said, when you make a statement, don't get involved in politics, that's actually a political statement. Bingo. Bingo. Okay. Moving on. When did you become politically active and why? Well, I've always been politically active, but it wasn't until I saw the need to come out in favor of voting for Trump that I was shocked to see how many people thought. It gets back to the previous question, that you could somehow avoid politics. You have some hard choices to make. You don't need to like Donald Trump. You don't need to like the cut of his jib or the way he talks or tweets or the fact that he's been an adult. You don't need to like that. And obviously, I don't.

But you have to be a mature adult and make a choice. And if you're unwilling to do that, you become part of the problem. and I'm, you know, willing to stick my neck out on that issue. Oh, we're out of time. Thank you. Hey, you want to give me a 10-9 on that big pin? A neck atory big pin. You're still too close. Yeah, them bulk is starting to close up my sinuses.

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They can also ship gold and precious metal safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at Legacypminvestments.com. Folks, I have as my guest the founder of something called Classical Conversations. Her name is Lee Bortons. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. Lee, am I getting that right? You are. That's my name.

Did I pronounce classical correctly? Classical conversations, yes. Classical conversations. What is classical conversations? We're a homeschool support organization for parents who homeschool classically and Christian. We've been around since 1997, and I was homeschooling at that point, and I wanted help with my older son, who was entering high school. And like so many homeschooling parents, I doubted my abilities, but knew I wanted to keep homeschooling. And so I gathered up some friends and said, hey, let's meet once a week in homeschool together through the difficult subjects and teach ourselves how to teach classically. So that was in 1997 with my 12-year-old son. Three years later, we had 300 students on the waiting list.

Two years later, we had thousands. My husband quit work. And now in 2022, we just celebrated our 25th anniversary with over 130,000 students enrolled in classical conversations homeschool program. So tell me about this because, I mean, I've talked a lot about homeschooling on this program, friends with Sam Sorbo. And you get this over and over again that people feel, oh, I could never do that. I was just at a fancy dinner party here in Manhattan and New York where I live.

And this very educated, wealthy woman that I was talking to, I said something here about, you know, if you want to know what I would do, if I could do it over again, And I said, I'd advise, you know, homeschooling. And she looked at me, he's like, oh, I'm not qualified to do that. And I thought that's exactly the problem. We farm out everything to experts who stink. They have degrees and they don't teach our kids the basics of what we would teach them if we could. And it turns out we could.

But we need to know that we can. And so you've been encouraging people along those lines. Is there a website while we're talking? Yeah, classicalconversations.com. And by the way, Sam Sorbo is a very good friend. She's actually one of our directors. She helps me to homeschool families in her area using my model. And that parent who looked at you and said, I couldn't homeschool.

The reason why they say that I think is because, one, they don't know it's a commission from God. But the second thing is they think they have to bring school home. And that's the last thing you want to do. That's the thing that we're trying to avoid. And so for us as classical educators, what we say to parents is that you need to be able to teach grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Well, they say, well, I don't even know what that is, right? So the way I put it more simply is I say, we help people homeschool classically by teaching you how to name like Adam, ask questions like Jesus, and persuade like Paul. Any parent can help their child do that.

And then if you end up working on those arts of education, all of a sudden Latin, not so hard to teach or algebra. But we have this focus on bringing in the state school system into our home instead of looking at the biblical school system and what people knew for thousands of years before education was compulsory, how to teach classically and work with the bent of the child and the adult who was mentoring them. You can do it. This is my favorite season of the year, Eric, because I'm at all these graduation ceremonies and our students are graduating and going off to college and parent after parent comes up to me and says, I didn't think I could homeschool at all, let alone get them through high school with such a rigorous education.

Well, it is a glorious thing that's happening. I mean, I don't know if I was talking to Sam Sorbo or who it was, but was giving me statistics on how many people, because of the COVID madness, they saw what their kids were getting and they thought, I am out of here. I know I could do a better job of not screwing up my kid. It's kind of amazing the numbers of people that are opting for homeschooling. Yeah. So before the, when I say, oh, happy monster. That's why I call COVID. Felix Klopa. Yeah. So before COVID, the homeschool population was about 3% of school age children. And now it's between 9 and 11% based on actually the government statistics. So we figure it is around that number. But one thing that gives me a lot of joy is the majority of the growth came from

different ethnicities and not all white middle class. And so to see it become diverse in that way is just really inheartening because all parents love their children. And we need to be clear that all parents had the opportunity to homeschool them. Tell me again what that statistic was because that's pretty staggering what you just said. Yeah, we tripled the number of homeschoolers since COVID. And And this is with even the current year's data. So we were a little skeptical when we went from three to, you know, almost 100% of children were being homeschooled in one sense, right, during COVID. And so we wondered how many would be pulling back and putting their children in school. And the first year that COVID was really ending in schools were open, it was 11% are just committed to homeschooling. And now six months into it and getting enrollments for the next school year, it looks like nine. percent are staying committed. So to go from 3 percent to 9 percent of the population, but one of the statistics people aren't talking about is there is a waiting list at almost every private Christian school in the United States. People are opting out of public education

quickly. Look, it's astonishing and it is great news. It's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, because I said people need to know what is happening because it gives me a lot of hope. I mean, I have to tell you, when I meet homeschool kids around the country, I do a lot of speaking, and I'm always meeting parents and their kids who are homeschooled, almost every single time I'm blown away by the level of maturity and intelligence that these young people have. And I say homeschoolers, they're going to take over the world. The world is not ready. They don't know what is coming. These young people are coming up. They know more about everything. They have fundamental grasp of reality somehow. They're not, they're not ideologues. They actually understand things, how things

work, how liberty is related to virtue and faith, all these things that are vital. Homeschoolers seem to know this stuff backwards and forwards. And I have to tell you, I'm, I'm just really, really hopeful. So, I mean, so we're talking about homeschooling in general, but how does classicalconversations.com, how does that come into this? And those, if people go there, what will they find? What is this for? So, Eric, let's say you wanted to homeschool your children with classical conversations. You'd go to our website and put in your zip code. And then we would have what we call a support representative, contact you and talk to you about either joining a community that we already have nearby in your zip code that meets once a week or how you can use our curriculum without being in a community.

Or if there's not a community in your zip code, how you could start one for your family. And by meeting once a week for 24 to 30 weeks, it depends on the age of your children, it's not a drop-up program. The parent has to stay there. So what we do is by meeting together, it's like a once-a-week PTA meeting for Christian classical homeschoolers. We practice what we preach. We practice what we teach. And then parents can go off on their own for the rest of the week and know how to help their children complete their assignments. Because we really believe that, you know, the mission of education is to know God and to make them known. And that means being really good at language and at words and at ideas. And that's what you're noticing in these homeschool kids you meet. They actually are articulate.

Well, a lot of us were raised in public school. And so we are recapturing two generations at once. People join us all the time and say, I don't know how to homeschool. And we say, that's okay. You're going to homeschool with a friend. And the community that surrounds you once a week is enough. We don't need to take five days a week out of your schedule. Once a week's enough. just stick with it. So this is kind of like training wheels for people who say, I'm not sure if I can do this. Can you help me? And you're basically saying, yes, we are here to help you to make you see that you can do this. Because one of our taglines is homeschool with a friend. And we don't mean the children. It's the parents that need a friend. And that's what keeps us going. I absolutely love it.

So you are in, you, you, I mean, I think people would say, wait a minute. This one. woman, she's not an average mom. She was an aerospace engineer. Is that true? That's true. Okay. So you're smarter than the average bear, but your message is you don't need to be smarter than the average bear to pull this off. No, absolutely. And I suppose I might be smarter than the average bear, but that's not the same as being as experienced as the average parent or as having the common sense or the faith. There's so many ways each of us need to improve in our life. And I'm just so glad for the number of men and women who've partnered with me through this so that I become a better person in sharing the gospel and being, you know, that walking Bible for my children.

That's our priority because if you aim for Christ, college is really easy. And people get their priorities backwards. If you aim for Christ, college is really easy. It is so true. And I just have to tell you how it gratifies me that you've done this and that you're inspiring others to do this. I would love to think that there are people listening right now who are thinking I've thought of doing this. I needed help. Folks, this is the help. Classical Conversations.com. Please go to classicalconversations.com. It is all there. All the information. Lee Bortons,

I just got to say thank you to you for doing this. I know that there are people that are listening right now, that their lives are going to be changed. They're going to go to classicalconversations.com and good things are going to happen. Thank you so much for being my guest and for everything you do. Thank you, Eric, and thank you for all you do. Hey there, folks. Eric Metax is 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. My Slipers. They're unbelievable.

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battle for the American mind uprooting a century of miseducation. So Pete, the headline here is that you're not just an empty talking head on Fox and Friends. It's not like they say he's smart. He could do things. It gives me such joy to know that you not only get this stuff, but that you've joined with David and written a book about it and that you're using your platform to get the word out to the American people about what is happening. I think part of this has been as a father, a journey of discovery myself as a parent. Right? I mean, and that's how we've treated this book and how we treated the film series at Fox Nation as well.

David, I call him my Sherpa, you know. He's leading me through and I'm discovering in real time. very much like most of our viewers are right now. Oh, my goodness. I knew there were some problems. I didn't realize it was this big. And hopefully, because I've only more recently made some of the choices to get my kids intentionally into some of these schools. So all of us are behind the curve.

And I feel this ticking clock in my mind of every moment they're not in that education. I'm not doing what I should be doing for them. Yes, I need to be doing it in the home. Yes, I need to be doing it in church. But to not have the third part of that of the classroom reinforcing the things that I believe, I'm just losing time. And so I would urge the same thing to parents. Do the research, take a look. It's not enough to feel like, you know, your principal's a nice guy or you've got two members of the school board.

That's wonderful. We should fight those places. I don't think we should give up any space. But right now we're in a knife fight. We're in the kill zone. And they've got us surrounded and you've got to act when you're in that spot. Well, I've got to tell you, you know, that's a fact, what you just said. And there are lots of people that don't get that.

They don't have the urgency. They think, oh, you're being hotheads. how I wish that were true. How I wish that were true. I mean, look, Chesterton was talking about this stuff in the 1920s. Some people saw this, and they've been talking about it. C.S. Lewis was talking about it, and the abolition of man. This has been going on and on and on and on.

And all along, the bad guys will smile at you and say, we want to help your kids, you know, in the new world here that we're creating. to me it's the level of urgency that needs to be communicated and I know you do in the book what is the website again for the classical Christian classical Christian dot org classical Christian dot org there's just no way around it you don't have America without these ideas in other words the West the Greek tradition the geochristian tradition come together to make real freedom possible and people died for this. And when you remove those things, you know, it's a brave new world, it's China, it's death camps, but people

don't believe that. They don't seem to understand and how close we are, basically. Well, before, I mean, we tend to see what's closest to us, obviously. If we go back in history, before Christ and before this form of thought and education, it was an ugly place. It was pretty brutal. People don't. We do not want to go back there. People don't realize.

I mean, look, because my mother grew up in East Germany and my father came from Greece where the communists were trying to take over, they raised me to love this country and to understand, like, how horribly bad it can be. But I think most Americans think, like, how bad could it get? Maybe the economy will down, go down, or gas prices will go up to $10. bucks, okay? But you know what? It can't get that bad. They don't seem to understand that when you pull these things out, it becomes a satanic nightmare. They just, they won't believe it until they see it. But I think people are beginning to see it. I think American exceptionalism comes with a dose of a feeling of

America inevitability. And as a result, people say, well, yeah, it's bad, but there's no way we can be that and things will be okay. And my kid is going to be just fine. And so there, There is a complacency inside all of us. And when you start to realize the depth of the problem, you realize how small you are, which is a wonderful recognition, actually, but that means you can affect something. You can choose where your kids go to school. You can choose where your grandkids go to school.

And that's the beautiful message of the book, is there are options. I think the providence, you know, we've talked from the beginning of this interview about how this thing came together. The providence of it is that Pete and I started work on this in, I think it was February or March of 2020. So if you do the backwards math, you realize that when Pete was first discovering this stuff, and I was telling him about it, and I was learning a lot of it myself, none of the current madness was really visible yet. And as you pointed out several times, Eric, it's like the Lord has used the providence of our moment. This book took two years to get here, and when it arrives, we're in a time when people are seeing the consequences of this form of education. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. It started before the China virus even hit, and everyone was moored by reality.

By the way, it's not right to call it the China virus. It's called the, what's it called? It's called the Kung flu pandemic. Kung flu pandemic, okay? Make sure you get it right. Otherwise, it's politically incorrect. Pete, I got to ask you, were you raised in the faith. Did you come to faith later in life? Very much so. My parents, we went to a small Baptist church in Minnesota. It was a wonderful faith-filled home. But in looking back on it, my childhood, even with all of that, was effectively secular. Well, sure. And I went to a great conservative public high school. My dad was a public educator. I mean, we were, but it was a veneer of Christianity with a core of a secular. And I've careened around life as a result. And the reason we wrote this book is we want more intentional foundation and develop. of our kids at an earlier age so that they can avoid a lot of the careening around. Because we don't have that time in this country and in their lives. It's just such a wonderful thing that you guys have put the work into telling this story. Because listen, everyone in America needs to understand how this happened, what is happening. Otherwise, we're just going to keep drifting along.

But I really do think that you've done it. So congratulations. Ladies and gentlemen, battle for the American mind, uprooting a sense. century of miseducation. It's all true, unfortunately, but we can get out of it

if we're aware of what it is. Thank you for all you do. God bless you guys. Thank you for this book. Thanks for your time. Welcome to the show. As you know, this is the time of the week

when we talk to our friends at the Talbot Group, Pete and Seth Talbot, the business geniuses behind all kinds of stuff, including Relief Factor. And we're doing kind of a mini-series, 10 business questions

that are being asked today. And again, today I'm talking not to Pete and Seth, but just to Seth. Pete, this is the, we need Pete. But Seth, you're going to handle it today. You're going to handle this today. And it's that hotel Wi-Fi is killing him. I know, I know. He just can't get a good connection. Okay. Well, all right. So last week, we asked the question, why is it so hard to grow or to sell my business? Fascinating. The first week we did, what got you here, won't get you. there. Okay, today's question number three in our mini-series is, have I grown my business to its peak? Or am I missing something that's holding back growth? Okay, that seems like a kind of a big question. How do you know whether you've grown a company to its peak? I mean, it's almost how you define the company, right? What is the company? How do you answer that question? The answer is ask someone else.

No, the question is someone else needs to often help you figure that out. Because if you've grown something, it's really, really difficult to know yourself what else you're missing and what other potential there is that you may have missed. Because similar to a couple weeks ago, we were talking about what got you here, won't get you there. and the idea of having to challenge some of those assumptions and revisit that formula, this is similar in line that when you're an entrepreneur and you've grown something from scratch, you often don't really know what the total market potential is. You know, I remember there's a term Tam, total addressable market. And I remember people asking, like, what is the total addressable market?

How are you supposed to know? because every product's different, and every product is marketed very specifically to different demographics, different channels, different marketing modalities. And it's really, really, really hard to predict that. You're taking strategic guesses at best. And so one of the first things is that you need some external perspective. Secondly, I'd say it's a matter of deconstructing the model to figure out if you've got the right margin on your product and the right combination of services.

a lot of times entrepreneurs have come up with great ideas, and then they've packaged them poorly. And either they've not branded it the right way or they've branded it okay, but they've got the mix of messaging wrong because what they're really excited about, half of it the customer cares about. And they've missed the other half of what the customer would have cared about. And so there's potential there. So a lot of times we work with companies, we find a company that they've found. some movement, but they don't really know exactly how to take it and grow it because they're super passionate about, for instance, A, B, and C. But maybe customers only care about C, but they care about C, D, and E. And because C overlapped, there's some potential there, and they've grown

it to a few million dollars a year. So part of what we do is we deconstruct to figure out, what is the strategic marketing opportunity with us? What is the value there? Are we charging enough? Are you packaging the right kind of services? Are you capturing what has made you special and presented it in a way to maximize its recurring revenue, its conversion rate, the right demographic, the right customer? So there's a lot of deconstruction and market analysis that you need to do to really figure out, have I squeezed all the juice out of this fruit? So the question today is, have I grown my business to its peak or am I missing something at that? It's holding back my growth. Your dad, Pete, who isn't here, he said you have to look at a bunch of things.

He said, do you have reliable, up-to-date, external data, market research? Do you have a well-designed documented marking plan, strategic planning, brand development? Have you competitively positioned your brand? Promotion is your communication strategy properly targeted? Do you have a proactive sales plan, well-trained sales staff? Do you have well-designed customer service policies, infrastructure tracking? I mean, there is a lot here. But if you have a business worth having, you just want to know that you're kind of hitting on all these cylinders.

And I guess that's what you all do. It's hard to figure that out. Yeah, it's hard to figure that out without having done it before. You know, I've said before with our growth with relief factor, I could probably do it in about half the time. You know, it took us eight years to grow it to the level before we stepped out. And I think we could have done it in half the time. In fact, the companies that we're working with were short-cutting their growth because we're putting in the systems and the processes and from the experience of, let's do this. And now we need to focus on retention.

A lot of our customers, they come to us. They've got something. One of our customers just wasn't charging enough, like for their product. They have this killer product. They just needed to charge more. The other, they're charging the right amount, but their retention activity isn't enough because too many people are quitting unnecessarily because of confusion. So there's a variety of reasons where bringing in someone that's got some experience of having done that before just can shortcut it. That's the way we kind of present ourselves a lot of times to companies is we're your business growth shortcut because you could maybe figure some of this stuff out because most people are smart and we're not smarter than the average guy.

We just, we were very fortunate and blessed, but we can shortcut because there's those experiences we have where we know there, you know, we have that intuition based on having seen, you know, if your customer. customer service isn't right and you get 10x growth, you're going to have some serious problems on your hand. And I can tell you what those look like, but I can also tell you what you need to do to prepare for it. You've obviously lived through this. You and your dad have launched a number of businesses. And it's it just is fascinating to me how all this stuff relates to all of life, all of these questions, strengths, weaknesses, blind spots. If people want to reach you, then go to Talbot Group.com. They and send questions. There's stuff there. It's T-A-L-B-O-T-T-Groop.com. It is fascinating to me how many parts there are to running a business. So when you ask the question, today's question,

if I grow in my business to its peak or am I missing something, there are so many pieces. And then the question is also, what are you satisfied with? I mean, some people are just like, well, it's good enough. But they're not thinking about the future. 20 seconds left on the top. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to know when you're growing and you're just trying to figure things out on your own. It's hard to know what's going to come next and what that next level, when you go from $5 million to $10 million to $20 to $50, those tiers. How do you prepare for that? What does it look like?

How do you anticipate it? Again, that's what we say we act as a bit of a shortcut for people. All right. And we is the Talbot Group. You can go to Talbot group.com. Seth Talbot, thank you. Tell your father in Hawaii. We look forward to seeing him next week.

That sounds great. Thanks for having us again, Eric. Tell me how long you're going to stay here, Joe. Some people say, On the sea. Hey there, folks, before we go for the day, we want to remind you, I want to remind you, if you haven't yet seen 2000 mules,

you're probably a communist. I just want to leave it there. I've seen it. I'm twice the Patriot, okay? Yes. Well, seriously, like dear friends of mine, I won't mention their names because I don't want to shame them publicly, but they say, no, I haven't seen it yet.

Folks, listen, we're in a national crisis. It's kind of like saying, I haven't really taken a public position on slavery. I know when we're in a civil war, but I don't know. Listen, if this election was stolen, which unfortunately it was, it's your duty to understand how that happened. your duty to use your voice to wake others up. You don't need to be pro-Trump. The election was not stolen from Trump. It was stolen from the American people. That's the problem. That's the problem. And I simply want to say that it is really grievous. Now, I'm obliged legally to say that

the film 2000 Mules was produced by Salem. So we're on the Salem Radio Network. So they make money from that. I'm in the film. I get like a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of something. So technically I could participate in the back end. So I'm supposed to tell you that. But can I tell you something? I don't care about that. What I care about is that this nation, this blessed nation, has slidden into a very, very, very, very bad place. And by the grace of God, our friend Dinesh DeSuzza, working with the folks from True the Vote, explains how it happened. And I really believe that not only are you obliged to watch the film,

and I'm just telling you, folks, please, please, please watch the film, please. I don't care how you do it. You go to 2,000Meules.com, but we need to know, because if you don't know, then you're not going to be upset and motivated to do something. You need to understand how horrifying this. This is like saying you need to watch the videotape of how grandma got punched in the head. And you say, well, I haven't gotten to it yet. Well, are you doing anything about the fact that grandmothers are being punched in the head?

Or is it not your issue? If the government of the people, by the people, for the people, is no longer those things. That concerns us all. And I really do want to say there is no bigger issue. If you want to know why the country is falling apart, it's because we have a problem. fraudulent administration and because we have plenty people saying, we're fine with that. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to make waves. Folks, if you don't make waves over this, this is, it doesn't get bigger than this.

It doesn't get bigger than one party becoming so corrupt that they literally would say to you who voted, shut up, we're not interested in your vote. We're going to decide. Yeah, and don't talk about either. By the way, go to truethevote.org to participate. Go there, truetovote.org, and you'll find out how you can get involved in what you're what's going on, what's going forward. True the vote.org, that's right.

And again, 2,000 mules, but I can't tell you how many people, even relatives and friends that said, I haven't watched it yet. Have you seen the Poseidon Adventure? Have you seen Jaws? How many, are you going to wait 40 years, 50 years? Now's the time. And by the way, those are good pictures, too. 2,000 mules.

But, I mean, I really just feel like we have a duty to know what happened. And by the way, I always say this. If I'm wrong, like, I'd be delighted to think that this didn't happen. Unfortunately, I'm convinced it did happen, and so I want to get the word out, but you have to help to get the word out. So if you haven't seen the film, if you've seen the film, which many of you have, please tell your friends about it. There are all kinds of ways to watch it. You know, you can buy the DVD and lend it out to thousands of people, whatever you need to do. But this is not a small thing.

I really feel you can see that I feel very passionate about this, because there's just nothing more wicked than the greatest nation. in the history of the world would come to a place where your vote doesn't count, where we the people are no longer we the people. That's the end of America. If you don't care about that, you're cynical and you're part of the problem. I hope you do care about it. I hope you do something about it. And God bless you for being a part of the solution.

Thank you.