The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Cypress Survivalist

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.facebook.com/matteroffactspodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/mofpodcastgroup/https://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabhttps://www.instagram.com/mofpodcasthttps://twitter.com/themofpodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/cypress_survivalist/https://www.facebook.com/CypressSurvivalistSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastPurchase American Insurgent by Phil Rabalais: https://amzn.to/2FvSLMLShop at MantisX: http://www.mantisx.com/ref?id=173*The views and opinions of guests do not reflect the opinions of Phil Rabalais, Andrew Bobo, Nic Emricson, or the Matter of Facts Podcast*Several months ago, Phil and Gillian launched another phase of the mission Phil set for himself years ago, to spread knowledge and indoctrinate more people into the preparedness lifestyle. This Saturday, Cypress Survivalist is hosting their firt 'Get Ready' event, and the entire crew has been burning the midnight oil. Tonight, Phil and Gillian sit down behind the mic to talk about the experience, and where this little venture is going.Matter of Facts is now live-streaming our podcast on our YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices. Intro and Outro Music by Phil Rabalais All rights reserved, no commercial or non-commercial use without permission of creator prepper, prep, preparedness, prepared, emergency, survival, survive, self defense, 2nd amendment, 2a, gun rights, constitution, individual rights, train like you fight, firearms training, medical training, matter of facts podcast, mof podcast, reloading, handloading, ammo, ammunition, bullets, magazines, ar-15, ak-47, cz 75, cz, cz scorpion, bugout, bugout bag, get home bag, military, tactical 

Welcome back to the Matterfags Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Raveley. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts. Hi, long time no see. Every time, you ever notice that every time

my wife is my cohost, we start off an episode with me giving her a look. It's usually because we're having a conversation right before we go live and she's usually... He's telling me I was being petty. You were being petty. I am the queen of petty. Petty is her middle name. But anyway, I traded in Nick and Andrew for a cuter co-host,

so we've got that going for us. Patrons, always gotta thank them. Thanks for supporting my sociopathy. Thanks for supporting the shit show and keeping the show on the rails as best y'all are able or as much as I allow y'all to because sometimes this thing just comes off the rails. If you're into merch, those links are in the show description. I can almost never say that without stumbling over my words

but the links are down there because I do at least do the prep work for the show really well. It's once we get live that it just goes to hell in a hand basket. Why do you sound so nervous? Because I'm beguiled by your beauty. We didn't turn on the lights either. He's just, he's lost his mind.

Well, it's been a long week because of Cyprus Survivalist. Cyprus Survivalist, that's what we're here to do. Yes. So we've been up to our literal eyeballs for several weeks now and a couple of months before that getting ready for our first event, which is coming up day after tomorrow. Saturday. Yeah, Saturday.

Because if you're watching the stream, it's day after tomorrow. Saturday. Yeah, Saturday, because if you're watching the streamings day after tomorrow, if you're listening to this in audio, it's the next day. But I did have to change the banner though, because we were going to host this outdoors at the big pavilion at Fount Blue State Park in Mandeville, Louisiana. And those plants have suddenly had to be altered because Mother Nature just decided no. Yeah, it's supposed to rain hail the whole nine yards. We were supposed to be outside all day to do this event and then, no, no, we're not doing that. I still have a fear of thunderstorms from Ida. That's still very much a thing. So the thought of being outside trying to teach a class while thunderstorms were rolling

in, no, not for me. Yeah. So for anybody who's watching this or listening to this that was planning on attending, please check your spam folders because apparently that's where our notification went for everybody. Some of them, yeah. I can see how many people have opened the emails and whatnot, but because, I don't know, just because of some email services and things like that, it could be in your spam folder.

Just check that out. But if you're listening or if you're watching this, maybe on Instagram, Facebook, wherever we're going to post this later, we've moved it from the pavilion to the meeting room. So when you go to pay your fee to go into the park, which is $3 per person, then just ask them where the meeting room is. It's one right-hand turn. You go all the You just, it's one right hand turn. You go all the way down and it's going to be the last left. Well, the second to last left.

You'll see the signs. Look for the signs. It says, get ready North Shore. We will put up signs on the side of the road. I'm actually going to swing through the pavilion to pick up any stragglers that might be out there and lead them to the promised land. But we're trying to get the word out because like I desperately don't want y'all to be sitting out

there at like 730, 745, like where the hell is this and where are these people? Because, you know, it was our original intent to have this event outdoors, mostly in my insistence, and because we didn't realize the classroom was an option until we were in a scramble to figure out where we were gonna move this thing due to weather. And the Gillian was like, you know they have a classroom there, right? And I was like, I was today years old when I learned that.

Yeah, they have a classroom, but that's for the Rangers who do educational classes during the day for campers and things like that. But the meeting room is where we're at. So don't look for the classroom, look for the meeting room. That's where you're going. Also, again, signs. We'll have signs out.

And the email has a map in it. Yes, I did include a map. So yeah, that's the long and short of it. And we are backing the event up from 8 AM start time to 9 AM for the same reason. Can't get into the, we can't get the keys to open the place up until, you know, zero eight. So that kind of backed up our whole timetable a little bit.

But it'll work out. We'll make the best of it. Yeah, I think it's going to be great. I think having it up here or having it, I say up in the meeting room because it is a raised facility. That is one thing I found out today. There is a wheelchair accessible lift. It is out of service. So, yeah, so we're kind of just working with what we've got at this point. Had the weather stayed pretty, I think we could have kept it at the pavilion. It's not for me to say, you know, it's obviously it's not a

handicapped accessible facility, which is their problem. It could result in fines. I don't know. But anyway, the lift is not going to be available on Saturday to get anything, anybody in a wheelchair. So I'm kind of hoping that we don't have that. But if not, then we can figure out a way to get you up the two flights of stairs because it is a raised, it is a raised building. It is right on Lake Pontchartrain. So it floods whenever we have a thunderstorm go through. Yeah. I mean, I guarantee you, every time we have a good hurricane, there's probably six to eight feet of storm surge right underneath that building. Well, the storm surge is what took out the cabins right on the lake, right there. They're 100 feet,

100 yards, not feet, 100 yards from where we're going to be. But it's beautiful and it's going to be really nice. And so yeah, we've kind of been working on this nonstop since we've incorporated, which was back in October. What do you, I guess, what do you want to talk about? Are we talking about the event? Are we talking about the business? I kind of want to talk about the whole thing because like, you know, when, when we started this thing, it was kind of a, it was a, it was a wild ass idea. And it seems to have taken on a life of its own in the meantime, like I had originally envisioned this as like, yeah, we'll just do an event, you know, as a

couple of knuckleheads and see if we can get some support from local community. And Gilliant, my wife and my sister, both vetoed that idea hard and were like, no, no, no, no, we need to make this legit. We need to set up a nonprofit. We need to incorporate. We need to file paperwork with the IRS. By the way, if you don't already not like bureaucracies, don't start a nonprofit in this country. Nothing will turn, nothing makes me from a happy little libertarian into a borderline anarchist faster than having to do government paperwork. And there's a lot of it involved. There is. And there's a lot of upkeep too. So lots of reports. There's a lot of, there's a lot that goes into having a nonprofit, which I'm, you know, Phil and I have had a lot of conversations since we started this

whole business venture down this road. And I guess really to start it off, this, this was a dream and something that Phil has been wanting to do since he started Matter of Facts, the podcast. And what we discussed, and I think we discussed this a little bit on raising values before we went off the air with that podcast for a little while. What we discussed was that Matter of Facts has reached a good amount of people and it's done what you set out to do. And now we're looking at doing these

small events in almost like a pod situation kind of thing or a larger pod. I don't know, like tomorrow, well not tomorrow, Saturday we'll have about 25 people there. Which for our first event as a nonprofit who incorporated less than six months ago, that's pretty good. But our plan is to build on that and possibly have a hundred people at one of our events one year. And you know, just kind of figuring out, do we host one event a year, do we host two events in a year, do we keep it at Fountain Blue? So we're gonna learn a lot on Saturday. We're gonna see what works and doesn't work, see how much effort we can put into this because we are volunteers in our own organization

and this does take a lot of time and effort to do, you know, because it's not just it's not just filing paperwork with the government and it's not just making sure your minutes are written up after your board meetings and finding board members and volunteers and all that stuff. There's a lot that goes into social media and you got to look at, there's just a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into. And the thing that's been very instructual, because like when we first started this, I was very emphatic with you about the fact that

you are the only one out of the four of us that's ever done this before. So we're kind of gonna be looking to you like, you know, with the goofy look on our face, like, does this work? Is this the right thing to do? Does this what we should be doing? Because it's like, I told Gillian just today,

I'm like, I have worked at zero nonprofits, I have done this zero times, and I'm learning this at full speed, you know, right along with everybody else, which is very much the way I learned how to podcast. Like I literally, for those of you who haven't heard the story, I was off work for a day, something got into my head,

and I Googled how to start a podcast. Because that's what millennials do when you don't know what you're trying to do and don't have anybody to teach you. And I feel like I'm right back where I started, but now you're Google. You know, like, how do I do this? How does this work? What are we supposed to do? Like there, to me, you have some experience with this. To me, there is no roadmap for this. It is just put the car in drive and

see where we go. And no, I can't do that. I can't put the car in drive and just see where we end up because it just doesn't, it's not going to work like that. And I have, I've probably added more stress upon myself than, um, I needed to, but I want this event to be, you know, this is like your first impression of a company that you're putting your trust in to teach you about things that you obviously care about. So I want to make sure that we're putting our best foot forward, um, on Saturday and,. And you know, we'll see

what happens. It can only get better from here. We've done, I've done a lot. I've worked in nonprofits my entire life and, or my entire career since I graduated from college. And graduated from college and yeah, we'll see what happens. It's a lot of work. We have comments to hit. Oh, okay. This one's probably pertinent. RaggleFraggle asking where have we advertised because he's literally only heard us talk about it.

So again, I'm a one man, one woman show. I am the one who's been working with the government, getting our forms together. I'm in charge of social media. I'm in charge of the event, all that stuff. And so we've only advertised on social media, Facebook and Instagram. And it hasn't been a lot. I mean, those of you who follow Raising Values knows that I am horrible as being a social media manager. I don't want to do the advertising.

I don't want to do social media, but obviously that's where we're going to hit our biggest market. We had some other plans to advertise, like on the radio there we have a station here that people actually listen to the radio still and so we had thought about that but with my dad's heart surgery and then the the kind of I guess not fallout but the fallout after that it's just been very difficult to juggle my dad and this event and work and I'm a mom and you know, it's just and and and so We've really just been doing Facebook and Instagram and the podcast talking about it on the podcast

I mean that was what I was gonna point out was that like when we had when we had originally conceived all of this It was probably a month after that that we found out your dad was gonna have to have open heart surgery Which well we we incorporated in October My mother was hospitalized for the entire month of November My dad found out that he had to have heart surgery that first week of December He had the heart surgery in January He was in the hospital for over a month or about a month. And then here's the event.

And then it's March. So yeah, we know you do what you got to do. Yeah, I mean, and what you can do. Yeah. And thanks. Thanks, Terrence for reminding her by if you don't hit the like button, the Rougarou will get you in your sleep. And if you don't know what the Rougarou is, you're not from Louisiana. Facts. Facts. That Rougarou man, he likes, you know, to make sure you hit that like, follow and share button, right? He also is watching too, if you are going over to the Cypress Survivalist Instagram and Facebook pages and like following and sharing there too. Just FYI, that Rugeroo, he'll get you.

See you're so much better at this than I am. What? What did I do? Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So I mean that's kind of a lot, a lot of what I guess I wanted to talk about for as long as this runs was like,

you know, try to get the word out about the fact that we are making some last minute adjustments to our first event. Um, and you can still register. Um, the, we, we can, we, our capacity is 50 for this event. That includes the four of us and you know, whatever. So the capacity is 50. We're at about 25. so we still have room if you want to come to the event you can there are links on our social media

we don't have a website yet we're getting there i'm getting there promise but i don't know phil probably has the form link to register for the event you do need to register just so that we have an idea of who's coming. Make sure we have enough parking. You know all that kind of stuff. Registration for the event. So I've already learned a couple of things. Once we get a website we'll make sure to put the hold harmless and rules about events and all that stuff on there. But as of right now seeing how we're only five months old, almost six months old, when you do come, you will have to sign a hold harmless agreement. Just basically what it says is we can take your picture and use it for marketing.

It means that you're not going to take the information and do something stupid and then sue us later. If you try to use a turn to get for a head wound That's your fault. Not ours. Yeah that kind of stuff Um, and then you know, but there's just all sorts of things It just means that you're taking your life in your own hands with this not that you're gonna have to Take your life in your own hands. We're not doing anything dangerous. We're just Teaching and talking so speaking of teaching what are we of teaching, what are we going to teach?

What are we going to talk about? Yeah. So because of the change in the time schedule, we did have to drop one of our classes, but fortunately, it worked out because it was a class that I did not advertise for because I guess I just didn't realize that Phil had a fourth class that he was going to teach. So anyway. It was a boring one anyway. So we're gonna start the morning off with, oh, I can't remember, oh, intro to medical.

The first class is gonna be practical prepping. So it's gonna be an intro to what is survivalism, what is prepping, what is this lifestyle about, what. I call it the base layer. Yeah, it's the foundation of what we've done as a family and what most people we, you know, most people that we know that are in this lifestyle, just the basics. That's what we're going to go through. And then Becca is going to be teaching, Becca is Phil's sister and she's the vice president on the board.

She's going to be teaching Intro to Medical. She is an extremely brilliant paramedic who has been, God, I think since she was 15, she's been doing some sort of medical something. So and ever since she's been with her current employer, I think every single time they've gotten the call to like send a jump team out for a major natural disaster, mostly hurricanes down here. She's been on those teams. So like every yeah, she actually goes all over the world. Yeah. Every every time there's a bunch of people that are hurt

She winds up in the middle of it. Yeah, I want to tell you extremely brilliant and then this is how Different we are we were at dinner the other night at their house and she was talking about some Something she worked that the day before the couple of days before or whatever, and she's just like gung-ho, it's the coolest thing ever, his bone was sticking out of his leg, and I'm just going, oh, I can't.

Yeah, so, oh, and then she was showing us, it's gonna be really cool. So a lot of the things that we're doing is hands, they are hands-on classes. You will get to see things, you might get to try things, you especially will get to try things with Becca, and her get to see things, you might get to try things, you especially will get to try things with Becca. And her Intro to Medical, she's got a training dummy there.

And you have to use a tourniquet to stop the bleed. So she will be teaching, you know, about stopping the bleed and all that stuff. I'm telling you, it's going to be a very interesting class. I think people are going to walk away going, wow, I didn't realize, I didn't even think about that kind of stuff. So after intro to medical, we take a little break. And then I come on board and I'm teaching harvesting from nature. So I'll be talking about my life as a herbalist, I guess you could say, that I am. Nature nerd. Nature nerd.

And it's again basics on how to harvest from nature, what plants to harvest from nature, what are they used for, how do you, you know, what is the process of it? So you harvested it, now you need to dry it, or are you going to use it fresh, and then what do you make out of it? And then what do these plants actually help in healing? And so we'll talk about that. I could probably teach an eight-hour class on that. But Phil gave me a 30 minute. Phil gave me 30 minutes to talk about harvesting from nature. I did tell you if you wanted an hour, we'd just pull it from somewhere else.

Like that was on the table. No, so we'll do harvesting from nature with this event. And then, well, remind me to talk about thoughts for a second event in the year. That's a March 9th. We keep saying that's a March 9th. That's a March 9th question. That's a March 9th. We keep saying that's a March 9th. That's a March 9th question. That's a March 9th. We had to install that guardrail because like the closer we got to the event the more the more hanging

chads we found you know I'm saying? Yeah. And we just had to get to a point where we were like everything from here to here is a March 9th problem. Yeah. But when I wrote my curriculum out, I actually wrote not just harvesting plants from nature, I wrote about what insects and bugs and alternate sources of protein can be harvested from nature. If you're like in a situation

and you just don't have anything to eat, you can't find anything to eat, well, there's tons of things that you can like in a situation and you just don't have anything to eat, you can't find anything to eat, well there's tons of things that you can eat in nature if you know what to look for. And so I really do want to teach that class. That might be a class for the second event that we host in the year. All right, so after that we come back from lunch, which we're giving a pretty nice chunk of the day to lunch. And the reason for that is two hours we're doing, we're breaking for lunch. And the reason we're doing that is because we want to sit and talk with these people. We want to talk about the things that they're here to learn. We want to give ourselves more time plus food. Hello, Louisiana. We

don't need an excuse to eat. We just need to to you know, we just eat so a two-hour lunch to kind of visit with the the the attendees and things like that anyway, so we'll come back and After that we have intro to you're the one that oh wait. No, I think I'm I think I'm before lunch and after lunch harvesting from nature and then... She's the one that wrote the schedule. I have to get a printed copy of it so I know what's going on with it. Then we'll have use of force with Ross who is one of our board members and Becca's husband who is Phil's best friend since they were 15. It's a really sweet story how his

best friend married his sister that he didn't even meet until he didn't meet his sister until you were what 22, 23. So it's sweet story. Anyway, he is a deputy here in St. Timoney Parish. I think I can say that. and so he'll be teaching use of force and the laws that you have to consider when using force. Those will be very specific to Louisiana which is I mean the whole the whole idea of this was teaching a local event that's really tailored to what we have in this area but I feel like with use of force, a lot of the principles can loosely apply to other areas but

obviously if you're not obviously, if you're not from like, if you're not from Louisiana, then things you learn in that class might require some interpretation. Yeah. It's your locality. After that, Phil comes back with financial readiness, which is something that we- The most boring class that I never, it never ceases to amaze me that people are actually interested in that class. Well, and I think that's something that we always harp on on especially on matter-of-facts and we harp on with raising values podcast is The financial stability that you need to create for yourself And so Phil's gonna talk through that and see oh talk through that and see what questions might lie there Kind of like Dave Ramsey Jr.

He's going to get up there and I'm going to have to be like, you're done. Like your 30 minutes is up. Get out of here. Like, we can't talk about this anymore. They're falling asleep in the back. They're leaving, Phil. I don't. And that's the funny thing because like maybe we should have put that in the morning.

We talked about this on Matter of Facts every so often. And like like i don't even feel like it's so much like dave ramsey to me it's just a lot of like i don't know it's a lot of common sense but it's also a lot of if you don't do it it will screw you over in the end which is why i harp on it right oh excuse me it's been a hard week being off for marty girl I promise you I've let her sleep Okay, so after that then I'll come back on with prepping with kids Which is one of my I wouldn't say I'm an expert in that but I do that seems to be where when I'm asked to do like special events or you know when I did the

special events or, you know, when I did the women who prep conference, that was what they wanted me to talk about was prepping with kids. And so I'll discuss what it's like to incorporate your entire family into the lifestyle. I'll talk about the emotional needs that you have to remember. So you know, talking about prepping is not just rice and beans. You know, you got to have some chocolate in there. You got to think about their clothes. You got to think about they're going to grow. You got to think all of the emotional part of it.

And so I'll be talking about prepping with kids and then Phil's going to round out the whole day with coms, which is another thing I'm going to have to be like, it's four o'clock. I need you to stop. Maybe we should get you to talk about coffee. We'll never leave. We'll never leave. But no, I mean, and... I'm joking with you.

I know you are. But I was thinking like, I think part of the reason why you always get asked about prepping with kids is because like, you've been working with children since college. Yeah, tell me about it. I mean, look, that's the line of work you chose. I don't work with kids for real.

I work with adults that act like kids, but not children. Sometimes I wonder if that's better or worse. It's worse. It's much, much worse. But because at least when they're kids, like legitimately kids, you can get into that hole well, their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed yet and try to give them some grace. Do you remember, do you know how many times I tell myself that on a daily basis?

They have no prefrontal cortex. They have no free frontal cortex. I mean I say that about my co-workers sometimes but I get told that it sounds ugly when I say it. They may not have their prefrontal cortex. Some of them I'm pretty sure don't. But I think that's why. You've been working with kids basically your entire adult career and you were also in a

lifestyle that most people, they might have kids, but it's like the preparedness is administered to them. They're not an active participant. Does that make sense? Whereas in this family, we are very much in the mind of everyone has a job, everybody has a thing to do, and there have been moments in our marriage where we have, in a microcosm, had to test that. And Piper has consistently, when it's go time, that little girl, her boots hit the floor

and she's going. She did it the other day I know that's not what this whole conversations about but I was I made one of the dumbest mistakes I still kicked myself up over this. I was cleaning a knife and stupid me decided to Who makes me want to vomit I? Decided to I don't know if you can see me here am I I decided to... Who makes me want to vomit? I decided to... I don't know if you can see me, where am I?

I decided to clean the blade like this and I ran my hand down the blade and I cut this finger all the way open. There's blood everywhere. It was not a little cut. I still have a scar. I have a scar anyway. I told you it was kind of scar. Oh, it was so bad. I was screaming and hollering. I wouldn't let Phil look at it. I wouldn't let go of it. I was applying so much pressure to it that I was afraid to take my hand off of it. It was awful. But there's my kid. She's like, ready to go. If we got to go to the ER to get stitches, let's go, mom. You know, I'm ready to go if we got to go to the ER to get stitches. Let's go mom

You know, I'm ready to go. I later apologized to her. I was like, I'm so sorry I scared you tonight and she goes oh you didn't scare me. What did she say? Oh, you didn't scare me. I Just nearly shit in my pants or something like that. That's what she said something like that Well, and again not not to sound like I'm poking fun But the way you were screaming, I fully expected to see your bone poking out the tip of your finger. And then when I finally saw the cut, I was like, oh, we're not going to get a stitch. That's a little cut.

We'll just go deal with that here. Whatever. I went into a full blown panic attack, which is most of what Phil and Piper saw was the panic attack. That's why I gently grabbed her by both wrists and literally like holding her by the wrist brought her to the bathroom. He had to pry my hand off of my finger. I didn't pry. I talked to I talked you off the ledge and eventually you let go. Oh it was awful and I think what it was it was more mental because I felt that knife go through

I felt that knife go through the skin and fat of my finger. And I will never forget what that felt like. Ugh! I think I'm going to take a walk when Becca does Intro to Medical. That is not me. Interestingly enough, that was the impetus for me and Nick doing a whole like kitchen, a whole bathroom sink dump of all of our medical supplies. Okay, well, good. Glad I could be of service. Hey, you have a pretty little scar on my finger. This is a little scar. But yeah,

I mean, I, I feel like what we're teaching is a good cross section of like the prepared the idea of preparedness. Because I saw I saw Joe I think jokingly asked a CQB land nav and counter sniper um so here's the thing like I don't there's not many things I rule out of that huge umbrella that is preparedness I think if you do it for the purposes of like trying to mitigate a threat to you and your family you could put it under the big tent that is preparedness. I think if you do it for the purposes of like trying to mitigate a threat to you and your family, you can put it under the big tent that is preparedness. But I think that especially for people that are just coming into this, I think the things to really hyper focus on, I just knocked a whole bunch of stuff off the edge of my desk

with my elbow. But I think the things to hyper focus on are the most mundane things that people that have been in this lifestyle for a while Are probably gonna roll their eyes at it's like it's Do you have a home budget? Do you are you out of debt at least to the degree you can be? Do you have a couple extra months of food and water stocked away? Do you have a medical do you have some medical stuff in case somebody gets hurt in your house? Like I really feel like we hit those basics we hit the very mundane topics. We dig into a lot of concepts like that's gonna be a lot of what i talk about in comms it i'm not going to sit there and teacher by how to build a radio from scratch.

I'm not gonna teach her by had a bill nintendo from scratch most yellow don't care. What i am gonna teach. Is a lot of principles of communications, having communications plan. I'm going to mix in some military concepts like signals intelligence and comm security, which by the way, also applies to social media. Like I know you and I've talked in the past about how like we don't make a habit of being all over social media too much while we're on vacation because we don't want people that are watching that to be like, oh, the rabble-eys are out of town.

Great time to go rob their house. And we don't advertise ahead of time that we're leaving except to a few trusted people. We try not to. Well, those are all principles that come directly from communication security. It is controlling the information you let out so that people who might act upon it in a negative way don't have that information, or that information's not useful to them.

It's like, why do you think we wait until we're on our way home before we blast social media with all the pictures we took, because by the time anybody realizes we're gone, we'll be home. But again, what I'm seeking to do with this whole experience with the Get Ready event is I'm trying to give people that are already in this lifestyle a smattering of subjects so that maybe somewhere in there is something they hadn't thought about or they didn't have experience in and they can improve their position.

But I'm also trying to make it super accessible to a brand new person and be like, hey look, this is a big tent, everyone fits under it. If this is what you're interested in, then go do that. And if this is what you're interested in, go do that. And you should probably do a little of everything and be a jack of all trades. But I want this to be an event that entrenches people

who are already kind of curious about this lifestyle and an event that entrenches people who are already kind of curious about this lifestyle, and an event that brings people in who maybe didn't think much about it in the past, or they had a connotation in their head about what preparedness was. And I want to break that down for them and be like, no, no, no. If you have money in your savings account, that's preparedness. If you have a 401k in a retirement, that's preparedness. Preparedness is a huge tent. For a lot of years growing up, there was a stigma attached to it where people didn't

feel like it was a big tent. They felt like it was a little tent and if they didn't fit in under it, they didn't fit. I want to break that down so that people understand that everyone can fit. There's room for everybody. There's a hundred ways to do this and there there's not many wrong ways. Yeah. Except to not be prepared. What else? I loved, um, Ragglefragle's comment about, I won't eat bugs.

I don't know where you're from, um, but if you like a good- He's from Louisiana. Are you? Well, how about that? You know, it is my favorite bug season, those crawfish, which we're going to a crawfish boil next weekend. And I swear to God, raggle fraggle, if you're over there typing, that's different. All I can tell you is because this little lady worked alongside a lot of biologists and entomologists over the years, genetically there's not a lot of difference between crawfish and insects. They're arthropods.

An insect is an arthropod. A crawfish is an arthropod. I just said there's not a lot of difference between them. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I must have misheard you then. They are delicious.

They are very similar. They are delicious arthropods. So are shrimp, although I'm not misheard you then. They are delicious. They are very similar. They are delicious, Othropods. So are shrimp, although I'm not a big shrimp eater. But I think that will be a class I do teach at one of these events. And maybe, maybe somebody will be like, oh, yeah, OK. Why do they look like lobsters? Well, a lobster is an Othropod as well.

It's all in crustacea. They're all crustaceansans and they all taste delicious. Very much so with a little bit of that crawfish sauce. Woo, can't wait. It's my favorite time of year, crawfish season. I don't really eat lobster though. I just wait for the little buggers to come out. Only in a gumbo stew kind of thing.

Cabo the boil? Cabo the boil? What does that mean, Joe? Oh, can't do the boil. Can't do the boil. Can't do the boil. Joe, you need to come back down here and then let's do it properly. That's all I'm saying. Andrew came for one of our crawfish boils, my brother-in-law's crawfish boils, a couple of years ago and... There's a picture of me and him in lawn chairs, past, smooth. I think his life changed that day. I think it was a miraculous, life-changing day with the Budan and the shrimp and the crawfish and... It couldn't have been that good. We didn't convince them to move down here. We had two cakes and, yeah. So anyway, yeah, I think that's a class.

So we're talking about doing two events a year. Potentially. Depending on our sanity levels at that time. Potentially. But making it, or at least doing, maybe doing one event a year and then expanding it into two days because you know, Fountain Blue State Park where we're hosting this is a pretty big state park. There's campsites, there's RV sites, there's cabins, there's not a lodge, but there's beautiful cabins on the water, all that stuff. We literally live four miles from Fountain Blu, so that makes it really nice to just

wake up in the morning and we're four miles from the event. If we make this a two-day event, then we can have a sort of more of a bonding atmosphere and actually teach more classes that we feel like we're kind of just, you know, we've run out of time during the day to teach everything that we want to teach. And if you can get people to commit to a weekend, that's going to be easier than getting people to commit to two different events during the year. So anyway, we got a lot to learn and a lot to figure out after this event. That's a March 9th issue. We will see what happens after that and just you know, like I emailed one of our

attendees this morning, or yesterday, just keep watching social media. I can send newsletters and things like that, much to Kyle's chagrin because I haven't gotten a newsletter for matter of fact or raising values, but I might do something. I might not. I don't know. Again, this is a lot of work. Yeah. But I will say that like, you know, the thing I talked about earlier was the whole reason that we pivoted towards doing these in-person events.

Like, I feel like there are, there is always only going to be so many people we're going to be able to reach on a podcast, especially a long-form podcast, through streaming, we're gonna hit a ceiling sooner or later. There's no, there are no, and especially the podcast market is so hyper saturated. But I really feel that by pivoting towards doing in-person events and with the Envision model we have of being able to do like an event here in Mandeville and then do another one in another part of the state and move this around a little bit. Somebody slamming a corridor? Yeah, but it sounded like it was our house.

Anyway, anyway we have the ability to catch a broader audience in a narrower focal area. We're not just blasting out to the internet to people all around the world. Now we're kind of hyper focusing in on, we wanna get people here on the North Shore, Lake Pontchartrain. We wanna try to get people maybe out towards Lake Lafayette, Lake Charles.

We wanna try to get people maybe up towards Alexandria. And every one of those is another little market that can be tapped to try to link people together in that community and get them into a good base layer of preparedness. Because what I envisioned down the road is, the day after Hurricane Ida, we had the biggest crap sandwich to eat on this whole street. We had trees down in the yard, trees on the house, we had lots of problems. But in spite of the fact that we were in that rough of shape, we were better prepared than

anybody else on the block. We were in a better position to help ourselves, to help our neighbors, and we had lots of problems but we weren't freaked out about it. We were just kind of like, oh, this is going to be a freaking mess to deal with. I want a rabble-A family in every community so that when things go to hell in a handbasket, there's a family out there who is indoctrinated in this lifestyle who can help themselves and help their neighbors.

And I think that if we can use this organization to build that kind of that local community power, then this will have accomplished exactly what I wanted to. Because ultimately, one family of people that are in the preparedness lifestyle living on an island isn't going to do much good. What we need to do is have several families in an area who know each other, who have plans together, who are all kind of on the same page, and when the flag goes up, they can all help each other.

That's my ultimate goal. I'll get there. Okay, is there anything else you wanna chuck in here or? No. Do you need a cup of coffee? Yes, I'm sorry for Yon and so much. He just keeps me working even on my breaks never get a break. I did sleep really late today though Don't let her fool you. I was up at Oh 600 this morning for work. I've worked the entire break

We have both worked the entire break Mm-hmm We have we We have. But anyway. Well, we'll go ahead and pack this in. I really wasn't sure if we were going to be doing a podcast episode this week because of all the insanity but especially with the last minute pivot in the time and the specific location of the event, it seemed appropriate. We will wait and see if we're talking about this again next week, like some lessons learned or whatever else, or if Nick comes back from his well-earned vacation and we just hit the ground running with normal matter of fact topic stuff. We'll

figure it out. But I can't say that for everybody who's supported us in this effort and there have been people who've offered You know like just to help get the word out to come attend the event themselves to support us a kind word Encouragement is all been super super appreciated because I'm not gonna lie I've had like many panic attacks three or four times or I'm like, oh Jesus Christ. We're about to do this Really? Oh, yeah, yeah, this is a lot. I don't even have one of my speeches written yet. I didn't do that. Just gonna wing it like I did here.

I mean, I bullet pointed all my classes out months ago, but now we're getting down to the wire and I'm telling Gillian, I'm like, okay, I need to copy the class schedule because I have no earthly idea who's going where because that all got moved around. I need to print all my classes. I keep myself on track it's just you know you could have made yourself a powerpoint like I did well until two days what was it until yesterday we didn't

even know that we were gonna have a a monitor that that was gonna be an option so you know well I gotta go get some coffee she's gonna gonna get some coffee. I've got to go, I don't know, to do founder of nonprofit stuff, whatever that winds up being. Well, I'm glad you had me on. It was nice to be behind the mic again. Maybe we'll get raising values back and up back up and running eventually. People have asked about you. I know. Any Sunday you're ready. I'm not ready. You need your therapy hour though.

I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready. So anyway, it was good to see all you guys. I hope y'all have a great rest of your day. Yep, and hopefully we'll have an uneventful event. Stop it. Bye, guys. Bye, guys. So Thanks for watching!