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Hard Work Beats Talent when Talent Doesn't Work Hard
42 Plays2 months ago
In this episode Patrick and Andrew are joined by Matt Bechtel (author, bookworm, martial artist, and the youngest elected official in Nebraska state history), to discuss his experience running for local office as an 18 year old, how to beat the competition who may have more talent and experience than you, and how getting involved in local politics could be the answer to saving our country.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and slaughter return
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, everybody. and Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Copybook Headings podcast. If you're a new listener, just joining us for the first time. This show is inspired by the poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. And every week we take an old saying proverb or maxim and we break it down to see what we can learn learn from it and see if there's still any ah ancient wisdom that's relevant today in these old proverbs. I am your host, Patrick Payne, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Andrew Stevens. Andrew, how are you, man? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you?
00:00:58
Speaker
doing excellent because we've got this is another episode where we have a guest. I love guest episodes. yeah so Without further ado, yeah yeah Matt Bechtel, thanks for joining us, man. Yes. Thank you guys for having me on. and I was going to say, I was delighted to hear, Andrew, that you're doing some leather work. so I wanted to just show you that I made these leather flip-flops just a couple of weeks ago.
00:01:20
Speaker
So that's kind of an art form that I've been getting into. I dyed these, I painted these, cropped them up a little bit. So it's something that I'm planning on doing more of. So I thought that that was cool that you're making some belts. That's great. Yeah. but That's really cool. I liked it. Do you have any pictures of those up
Guest Spotlight: Matt Bechtel's Leatherwork
00:01:38
Speaker
up online? Those are really cool. Yeah. How long can you do any painting and stuff? yeah Yeah. If you go to my Instagram at Matt Bechtel, you can see a little bit more of them, but I can send you stuff as well.
00:01:49
Speaker
so Yeah, those look great. I never even thought about trying to do foot flops. Do you? Oh, yeah. I could talk about this for a while, but yeah, it's worth doing. Also, Patrick, I want to tell you that in the last episode when you were talking about having to pull the guy aside for his body odor, it's how much I could relate to that because it's one of those things where you think like someone's a normal person and then they'll have something like body odor and it kind of throws you off because it's like, oh, I thought that he was
00:02:20
Speaker
Seems like a normal guy, but he just you can smell him from across the room. At an old job of mine, there's a guy just like that and nobody knew what to say. Because he was such a nice guy, you didn't want to hurt his feelings, but right you could smell him from literally 30 feet away. So so yeah, I could relate to that. It was not a fun no not a fun but a fun experience. The guy was a don't want to like to but the guy is a foreigner, so it wass like there's a little bit of a different yeah it's maybe a cultural thing there. I don't know, but yeah, he was a super nice guy.
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of a bummer, but anyway. You never know how smells go across different cultures, I guess, so. Yeah. Yikes. Well, ah yeah, so do you have a, are you selling the leather work stuff, Matt, or
Political Journey: From Leatherwork to City Council
00:03:02
Speaker
no? You know, not yet. I just, I made this pair because I got really intrigued by it and it was just kind of a rabbit hole that I went down and I brought, there's some things that I want to do different on them, some things that aren't quite right. So I'm going to make another pair for myself and then I'm going to make some for my family, but down the road,
00:03:19
Speaker
um If I still like doing it, I would definitely be open to selling them. I want to at least make them for my friends, so at some point, I should probably make money off of it. yeah It can be you know a little bit expensive, if if ah yeah because it takes a lot of time. I mean, just to sand them down the way that I did it, because I did it by hand, that took me four hours just to sand them. Oh, geez. It was a lengthy process.
00:03:44
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we if you had a you know, a little Etsy or something, we could plug it. But if you we can, if if not yet, that's what we'll have to say that for another time. Yeah, just keep your eyes peeled, I guess. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram and maybe someday. There you go. There you go. Well, hey, Matt, would you? why don't Why don't you start maybe by telling us a little bit about yourself?
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So the most notable thing about me is when I was 19 years old, I ran for city council in Fremont, Nebraska, which is where I was born and raised. I lost by 48 votes. um Obviously, people thought I was out of my mind when I ran. um When I got that close to winning, they didn't think I was as crazy. I ran again the next opportunity I could, and I got elected when I was 22, which made me Nebraskas.
00:04:28
Speaker
Youngest elected official uh before i had uh even ran that second time i wasn't even dating my wife by the end of my four years i was married and i had two kids uh a lot of life had happened in those four years and so uh and then the other thing too you know i'll be honest i was working like an entry level job at the time i was i was making twelve dollars an hour Um, and so by the time I got off, I was a district sales manager of a company that was doing well over $300,000 in business a day. And so, like I said, a lot of life had happened. I decided to not run again. Uh, but I've kind of, I've, I've stayed, uh, plugged in politically. I've written two books, a fictional one called sleep, which is on Amazon. And then this one right here, which is called how to win your local election.
00:05:15
Speaker
It's a, it's a short book. It's, um, it's not even a hundred pages really, but the reason why I wrote it that way is it's pretty quick and to the point. So if you are considering running for city council, um, you know, you're probably a busy person, so you can buy this book, read it, you know, in an hour or two, and you can at least have a game plan of running. Cause I believe that the way that this country is going to be saved is from the ground up, right? We need to put more stock into our.
00:05:40
Speaker
ah school boards, our district attorneys, our judges, our city councils, county boards, sheriffs, things like that. So um so there's that. ah The other thing is though, I've got a book another another book coming out in October. I don't have an exact date yet, ah but I am kind of the, I guess not so secret ghost writer for the autobiography of my martial arts instructor who I grew up with.
00:06:04
Speaker
And he's also where I got the quote that I wanted to use today from. So his name is James Rosenbach. The book's going to be called Sabam, S-A-B-U-M. And it's by James Rosenbach and Matt Bechtel. And like I said, it'll come out in October. And ah he had a he had a fascinating life. And i think it's I think the book's going to be a masterpiece. Nice. Well, I do want to ask you about your martial arts here in a minute, because I like that kind of stuff. But why don't you tell us what the probabilities we're talking about this week, since you
Proverb Discussion: Hard Work vs. Talent
00:06:32
Speaker
had selected it for us. so Yeah, of course. So the proverb is hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And the background on it, it's not an ancient one. So I guess I feel bad for that. So so please forgive me. If we need to pull an audible, you let me know. mo no Modern ones are cool too. No problem. Yeah. So it's, it's by ah Tim not key. I think that's how you pronounce it. It's N O T K E. He was a high school basketball coach from, from what I could find.
00:06:58
Speaker
It got popular because ah guys like Kevin Durant and Tim Tebow ah used it. I first heard it back in 2007, 2008. I was like 12 at the time. And Mr. Rosenbach told started saying it in class. And you know at the time, I didn't quite understand it or get the significance of it. So it's kind of amazing that it stuck with me, but it did stick with me. And hard work beating talent when talent doesn't work hard is basically explains anything cool that I have. I think, honestly, if I had heard somebody ran for city council at the age of 19 and yada, yada, yada, would probably assume that I came from money, which I didn't. um in In my book, I say that I graduated almost at the bottom of my class, I had a high school GPA of like one point, I don't even know, so it was definitely below two, well below two.
00:07:51
Speaker
And um I also say in there kind of a joke, but seriously that ah the only time my last name was in the paper was if one of my family members died or got arrested. um But, you know, I had had a passion and I had a willingness to just grip my teeth and work hard. And I was able to beat people who had money and have done other things. And I've been able to do quite a few cool things in my life. And it's just been from the ability to grit down and bear it a lot of the time.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, I love that, man. It's ah it's so true that um I've witnessed that a bunch of times. I've had i've heard that specific one before from like sales managers before when ah you know really successful guys that were making tons of money that had worked their way up through starting at the but bottom rung of some sales organization and gone their way up and and they credited that that saying. So yeah, I heard it and I believe it. I kind of wanted to ask you a little bit about your Your time running for city council, right? Yeah What was it that kind of prompted you to to run? what What made you want to get involved? It's I mean, I'm I don't know man, it's kind of weird. I'm weird. I guess when I was 16 I Definitely wouldn't have considered myself a nerd, right? I mean my my life ambition at that point was to be a member of Motley crew or at least we created as best as I could and Um, but I worked in a restaurant and I had this boss that was really over the top. He's a cool guy, but he would come in and be like, Oh, I just gave the city council hell last night. Yada been there. And I thought, Oh, that's pretty funny. And, um, I also had met this older couple who were super nice to me and they tipped really well. And, um, and they, again, they were very nice to me and they had told me about this, uh, tea party Patriot group. And I knew nothing about that. I was like, what, what are they?
00:09:41
Speaker
And they're like, well, they're conservative. I didn't even know what conservative meant. I'm like, do they like Ronald Reagan? And they're like, yeah, we like Ronald Reagan. And I was like, OK, cool. Because I had heard my dad talk. My dad wanted to name me Matthew Reagan Bechdel because he loved Ronald Reagan. The story real quick with that is like he voted against Reagan the first time my dad was in a union and ah voted against Reagan the second time. He had watched the union get busted. He watched all these union guys cross the picket line first. He became disillusioned of it. And then he
00:10:12
Speaker
without a doubt had to admit that you know Reagan what he was doing was working and and he loved the guys so I had always heard good things about him so I'm like oh do they like Ronald Reagan they're like uh yeah we like Ronald Reagan so I was like oh okay cool so I will go to the city council meetings to watch my boss kind of yell at people and um I remember thinking like I don't understand what any of this means um but I like kind of tracking progress and I thought man it'd be cool if one day I could actually sit in here and understand what's going on And then around that time I went to a Tea Party Patriot meeting. And when I walked in, they were all scared. I had long dyed blonde hair that was like almost white because they didn't quite get the job right that I was hoping. So I looked basically like Vince Neil. And I walk in and they all thought I was like a member of Antifa going to riot or something. And I just sat there and listened and stuff. And afterwards the leader of it was like, how do we get more people like you in here? And I was just like, I don't even know, man.
00:11:08
Speaker
um You know, I met with them. and And so then I started like coming to these meetings and stuff. And, um you know, when I was 19, there was just things going on in our town and people had approached me and said, because I was I was willing to stand up and speak. Right. Like I, I'm in a hard rock band. I've been in a hard rock band for years. So I had no problem standing in front of people and talking.
00:11:30
Speaker
And they noticed that and and so people started to say, hey, you should you should run for city council. And it actually, it felt right. um The other thing too is I kind of become a born again Christian at this point.
00:11:40
Speaker
And so i I started to realize like, I guess I can't really be a member of Motley Crew and live out the tenants of the Bible. So I was kind of looking for a way to to give back. um I had been on a volunteer fire department at that point, but I didn't really like being on the fire department. I was not a good firefighter and I had no interest in getting better. So I was trying to find something that fit me a little bit more and the city council thing, it just felt right in my heart. And so I pursued it. Nice.
00:12:11
Speaker
Wanna throw it over to Andrew. ah Do you have any questions or what did you think? Yeah. yeah it um Well, first off with the with the proverb, um I had never heard this one, but I really enjoy it. you know I think there's a lot of other ones that that tap into a similar vein, but you know with all the variations, there's always like some nuance that is is really nice that that gets pulled out. So I really like,
00:12:39
Speaker
um I think this is a good one for our our era, um that the people who who work hard and show up are going to succeed, right? um And and we we all see it time and time again. And you get a lot of people who who think, well, oh I'm I'm so, I'm smart. I'm talented. I, why am I not, you know, why am I not at the top of the pile? It's well, it's cause you're not doing anything with it. Um, that's not enough. So I really love this one. Um, I, I've got a few questions. Um, well, we'll start with one that, that just came to mind when you were talking about, um, getting involved in politics. Uh, I was wondering what your thoughts are on the way that like,
00:13:28
Speaker
ah Local politics or or local government really has been like tainted by by national politics. It used to be pretty normal. that people were involved locally and some um you know some issues aren't really partisan. They're just like, this will help the town or this will hurt the town. But now everyone is so like really invest invested in in national politics. Like how has that you know impacted local politics in your in your view?
Local Politics: Impact and Importance
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, and obviously it hasn't been great. It used to be it used to be true that
00:14:06
Speaker
on that whoever the president was didn't really impact your life as much. I remember 10 years ago, people were like, guys, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. Now that's not true. I can give you know three specific way i mean joe biden has touched my life as if he's shown up to my house um i got laid off from ah from a great job ah because it was heavily reliant on ag business and would gap prices ah ah went up i'm already getting mad so i'm i'm ah starting to start ah so yeah other women but yeah it destroyed it destroyed the
00:14:39
Speaker
and um it destroyed where i was working at people didn't have the money to buy ads and things like that so the whole company took a hit so even though my location was profitable every single month consistently for over a year, I got laid off because I happened to be a high paid employee. And sometimes I look back and say, I also wonder if it was because I'm a white man, but, you know, moving on, ah you know, another thing, I had started a ah business a few years ago and I would, I would, on the side, I would, I would work after work, I would go out at night and I was trying to sell this product or, or I would even, you know, ah go during the day sometimes.
00:15:16
Speaker
ah And trying to sell this product and people would say it's a great product great price point But they wouldn't buy it and I couldn't figure out why and then eventually it hits me They didn't have the money to to buy it because this was my focus was on small businesses, you know I wasn't selling to chains or anything like that and I realized they don't even have the money they think that they can sell this and now I have the money to buy it from me because They had bought all these other things. They didn't have room for it ah So that business ended up ended up failing Another thing, we had um for another project that I was running, we had somebody who was willing to invest enough money for myself and somebody else to to do it full time. And um he came back and said, sorry, guys, I just lost a million dollars in the stock market. I can't ah can't invest in anything right now. you know So ah those three things specifically have have shaken up my life. And that's without even discussing
00:16:10
Speaker
watching things clearly change when you when you go to the supermarket, when when you go out in public and you see your town change in in a variety of different ways. um you know ah Like I said, obviously things are not as comfortable now um going to the grocery store, the prices and everything else. And people want to blame ah corporate greed and and they try to take it away from whoever's in office. And they always make up too, if you've noticed, they make up new ways to measure data. So that way they can be like,
00:16:40
Speaker
Well, actually, technically, if you look at this from this point upside down to the side, it's not so bad. It's like, no, shut up, man. It is bad. here This has been my way to measure the economy since I was a child. How much does a Snickers bar cost? If it's over 75 cents, something's wrong. you know so So there's been a lot of power that's been given to the top. I think if we can get it more, well, it's not that I think, I know for sure,
00:17:08
Speaker
and we can If we can um kind of regain control, and I'll just be honest, like I believe all of these people are communists. I believe that they're intentionally trying, they've gotten in the pilot seat and they're trying to tank.
00:17:19
Speaker
but trying to tank it. And so I believe it's being done on purpose. And so um I think that it's only at the local level where we're going to be able to make things more comfortable, but still the the heavy hand of the of the federal government, um there's still a lot of power there. And the other thing too, man, is we have one side, and I'm speaking of the Democrats, they use power when they get it. They have no problem using the power that they've got. And then some Republican refused to. I've talked to guys who are you know that yeah like a guy who used to work with numb nuts, Don Bacon, who's one of our Congress people in Nebraska. And I was like, dude, are you guys going to start doing investigate? I mean, what are you going to start doing? And his response was, I mean,
00:18:01
Speaker
The Democrats are pretty Machiavellian, and we just don't really do things like that. And it's like, man, then how you know how how how is this working out for us to say, we took the high ground. Great, man. At some point, we're going to be talking about taking the high ground while we face a wall. So you know at some point, we've got we've got to take the power back. And the local level is very practical. There's somebody you know in my town who's who's a self-described communist, and people ask me, how did he how did he get on the school board?
00:18:29
Speaker
because you don't pay attention because you never care you know can you name your school board members can you name the members on your city council um do you know your da if you can't i want to shame you right now you should feel shame if you don't know you can't name at least like three you know a couple on the school board a few on the city council feel shame honestly and then same thing with your state legislatures as well um and then also guys we have to we just have to talk to people and For me, I've noticed that when I walk up to somebody and I say, did you hear like so supposedly like Biden said, but but what I just started to do is just show people news articles. And especially if I can get a news article off the NPR or CNN that like proves my point, then you then you've really got them. So it just gets to the point now I just send people news links. Hey, did you see this?
00:19:21
Speaker
You know, hey, did you see? Oh, that's weird that they said that the Haitians aren't doing this, because here's a video of some YouTubers going around the town and interviewing people. Oh, here's a there's a video of a cop arresting a lady eating a cat. You know what I mean? It's like, just show people the truth.
00:19:36
Speaker
um And we can start that in our friend groups and our families and get serious thought to. her you know I'm sure not everybody listening is in some major city where it costs $20,000 to run. They're probably in a a town like mine, which is between 25 to 30,000 people.
00:19:52
Speaker
So in our small communities, you can run. Same thing with ah but my, there's there's a county that a a relative of mine lives in and they always complain about um property taxes going up. And it's like, well, you realize that this is being voted on by a governing body that you can run against, right? You actually can do something about this. But again, kind of going back to the original thing and and what you had mentioned is people don't want to work hard.
00:20:20
Speaker
The reason why I got on city council is because I went to over a thousand doors and I just knocked on doors and I talked to people, you know, and it wasn't fun. I got attacked by a pit bull. I've had doors slammed in my face. But it's also it's not that bad. You know, it is hard work. But come on, man. Like, look at where are people who have descended from.
00:20:39
Speaker
you know, ah people who had a pioneer across this country and were dying from the terrain or being attacked and robbed and whatever. And it's like, we can't go door to door, you know, read a book on the revolution on the revolution that that sucked. I mean, during the Civil War, these guys didn't even have shoes, they had to use like two by fours to walk. You know, and you can't go door to door or talk to your neighbor. Like I get it, it's not comfortable. But I want to make people feel some pressure to to do something because you actually can make quite a bit of difference.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's funny funny that you mentioned like, do you know who your school board members are? Do you know who your city council members are? Because someone was making some smart outlet comment online a while ago. There's like, oh yeah, what are you going to do, like vote harder? And I'm like, yeah. Do you do do you vote in every like primary? Do you vote in every local election? Do you know who all they are? do you know Then if not, then yeah, you should vote harder to start. yeah to start And then you know get involved beyond that. So yeah, I 100% agree.
00:21:40
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that's that's a good point. and And also like, you know, volunteer do something. um I've got multiple projects going on. I mean, my my real full time job at this point is is writing this book. I mean, that's what I spent the majority of the year doing. And I've got two other two other things that I don't do full time, but are kind of full time. And then I'm also like I'm not the manager of ah of a campaign right now, but I'm probably one of the most the the people spending the most time on it, on top of it. Dude, I don't want to be doing this. I want to go home and relax. I've got three kids. I've got a six-year-old, I've got a three-year-old, and I've got almost a year old. i don't when i When they go to bed, you know I want to just watch TV. I haven't watched a movie. and
00:22:26
Speaker
Actually, ah that's a lie. um I've watched a little bit of movies the past 30 days, but I went months without being able to watch a movie or a TV show or a full sports game, but that doesn't really bother me because I'm kind of used to it at at this point. of just forward motion and I also don't mean to sound... i i don't even I don't even look at myself as that hard of a worker to to be quite honest with you and I don't want to it to seem like I think that I'm really killing it because I don't. I look back at the business that failed and I blame myself. I don't believe that I worked hard enough. Anytime I take a break away from this book I feel guilty and even tonight so I had a ah had a kind of a martial arts promotion before we started this.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I'm up for um a couple different black belts at the end of the year. And I didn't think my performance tonight was great. And I've been kind of just had like a bad feeling about it, you know, where you just like, man, I need to figure out a way to carve up some time so I can practice some of this stuff, you know, at least a half hour a night or or whatever. um So I don't know, maybe some of that's actually unhealthy, but Um, like I said, I don't, I don't even think that, um, there's plenty of ways where I see like where I could do, but man, if you were to just like, you don't have to be as deep in it, but if, whether it's you run, or even if you just help out a campaign, you know, go door to door for somebody, you can make quite a bit of difference and it doesn't have to completely take over your life.
Citizen Involvement: School Board Experience
00:23:51
Speaker
So just ah just recently in the last few weeks, my wife and I had been reading this book about like screen time and what it does to kids and like social media and how it's affecting their brains and all that stuff. and And there was a school board meeting coming up ah and one of the items on the agenda was gonna be rules for phones in high school.
00:24:10
Speaker
and So we went down there and we spoke and I was like, we don't have we don't have a big town. It was afterwards, the chairman of the school board was like, oh, can you give me that sheet that my wife was like reading off of with like all the stats and the facts that and everything? because Because they didn't know that. That was something that they were they hadn't read that book. They weren't aware of like how harmful it can be sometimes. And so, you know, trying to make good policies is going to make healthy kids. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully we did, we did some did some good there. But yeah, it wasn't that hard. I mean, we just figured out when the thing was, we put our names on the on the list, we signed up, went and spoke. That's perfect, man. That that that in and of itself is great. And you'd be surprised. It's very easy for us to say, well, it doesn't matter if I see anything, because they're all corrupt, and they've already made their minds up.
00:24:56
Speaker
Not true, man. That's not always the case. That's definitely the case sometimes, but I had stuff where one person would say something to me that stuck out and it's like, man, ah like if this guy didn't say that, I would have voted a different way. But um you know you never know. I sent out a couple emails yesterday to our our state senators and um you know again and I try to tell other people to do that and especially when you look at the federal level even as I'm writing this even I'm thinking man I don't know if this is gonna make a difference but you know what it takes you a few minutes to do it to send an email or or to make a phone call just do it you don't have to be the retired guy that calls them every day and and complains about everything but you know you should aim I think like ah probably a healthy
00:25:43
Speaker
amount would be to reach out to your elected official on the federal level, maybe three times a year, you know, with a phone call or email or or both. I think it's good to follow up with both. But then also, you know, if you can help them out um or help out on a campaign, um that means something too. I mean, you can get political influence pretty quickly by just helping out on a campaign. You know, um you don't even I'm not even talking like financially donating, just going door to door, showing up to a couple of events.
00:26:11
Speaker
getting FaceTime, whether it's a senator, whether it's ah a local, like a city council person or you know state legislature, something like that. um It doesn't take much to to have a little bit of have a little bit of influence.
00:26:26
Speaker
you know So I think it's great that you went and spoke. That's good to hear. Yeah.
00:26:34
Speaker
ah Andrew, do you have another question? Yeah, what what kind of stuff from your time um in the city council, like what kind of stuff did you find um that you were able to ah we're able to affect change with, right? Like there's so much that is out of our control locally, but not everything obviously, as as you've talked about. Like what are some things that you maybe were surprised to to learn that you could you could fix, you know, what kind of stuff? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. um For one, ah there are things where when you're on a governing body, you know,
00:27:18
Speaker
you're one vote out of, in my case, eight people, right? So um I didn't always get my way, didn't get my way a lot of the time. um But there was definitely a few things where had I not been there, had I not spoken up, things maybe would have went different. um One of the things I guess that I'm proud of that didn't work in my favor, and it's actually kind of funny was right before my term was over, they wanted to do a mass mandate and I spoke out against it.
00:27:46
Speaker
and I voted against it and it didn't go my way. They ended up doing this mask mandate or whatever, which was stupid. And then I got COVID and I had to miss the last city council meeting. So I thought, well, that's kind of ironic. um So there was that. I voted against um raising taxes every time. But one thing that i I, it wasn't my idea initially, but I felt as if I made a difference on this was one of the council members who I didn't get along with,
00:28:16
Speaker
and He kind of was like a crazy guy, but um in my opinion, he wanted to do a thing where we actually gave back some of the money to the taxpayer. and it wasn't i mean We're talking probably like 40 cents. you know it It was nothing, but you never have heard of the government actually giving money back. right um and so He had floated this idea out, and I think people kind of shrugged it off. and so um After that meeting, I called up to our city office and I had talked to our finance person or accountant or whatever and and I said, hey, I actually really like his idea and I want you to take it seriously if you could please and show us some numbers so we can maybe do this. And she did. And we ended up able to pass that. So i was I was proud of that. It wasn't my idea, but I actually felt like me just kind of speaking up and making that phone call.
00:29:09
Speaker
um I think that that's what got the numbers in front of us in a serious way and it didn't just get dropped. So I was proud of that. um And then there's a there's some other things, but again, overall, I just look at, um I would sit up there, you know, to be honest with you guys. And I believe that the Bible tells us that the people governing us can be a blessing or a curse.
00:29:35
Speaker
And so there was a lot of times where I sat there and i I said, God, please don't. I pray that I'm not being used as a judgment upon this upon the city. you know I pray that and you're using me as a blessing and and not a curse. it's i found it I really struggled with trying to figure out how to be conservative at a local level.
00:29:57
Speaker
Because there's things that you can do, I think locally that are, I've learned to find acceptable that I would not be cool with on a federal level, just different ways of spending money and and things like that. yeah um So that was that was a learning experience and it's a learning experience for everybody let alone when you're when you're 22 You know and I'll be honest too. like I don't really think that People as young as that should be elected officials I happen to know kind of what was going on just because I had years of going to meetings and and things like that, but um I wouldn't be opposed if they said hey you have to be at least 30 years old to run for office I actually couldn't really
00:30:36
Speaker
wouldn't really be opposed to that. That probably makes me a hypocrite. I wouldn't be the spokesman of it. But um I think that there's maybe some wisdom to that, you know, for sure. But so again, it's it's not I wish I could tell you that I saved the world with my one vote on city council. But a lot of the times it's just it's stuff like that. It's just simple politicking. And and you and I also learned the power of just speaking up and and just saying, hey, actually, no, or you know, learning how to talk to people, um you know, after, like learning how to, one of the pieces of advice I give to people too is sometimes it's better to just send an email beforehand to individual representatives, try to talk to them ahead of time. And and going to the meetings is definitely a great thing. But there's, there'd been plenty of times where I would think like, man, I wish that you would have talked to me before the meeting, you know, I wish that you would have brought this information to me beforehand. So I had some more time to think of it. So
00:31:33
Speaker
I would be willing to you know kind of ah table things just to give myself some time to you know look it over, whatever. But I don't know, man, it was a crazy time when I was on this particular.
00:31:45
Speaker
Governing body, we got death threats within like the first 30 days, which wasn't great. We had a giant chicken plant that was gonna come into our area and people were terrified that it was going to, that they were gonna ruin our water, that they were gonna destroy the environment, that they were gonna bring in a bunch of people from outside of of um the city to to bring them in there and completely change everything. And it all got passed before I got in.
00:32:11
Speaker
And when they were voting on this, we'd have to go from like the council hall to like an auditorium and and it would get filled out. um But when I got on, it had just gotten kind of passed. So we had to vote on things like um the road work and things like that leading to the plant. And so people would show up because their their hope was, oh well, maybe if we can like stop the road build, they'll they'll scrap the plant for this chicken plant. And so that was kind of when the the death threats and things like that came. And I'm happy to say that you know the plant did get built and it's been it's been great. you know The things that people were worried about I think for the most part haven't been founded. And I got people that I went to high school with and things like that who now have great jobs in health insurance and are are doing well because of it. So so that was good. but
00:32:54
Speaker
I hope I answered your question in there, this. Yeah, you did. And
City Council Dynamics and Political Concerns
00:32:59
Speaker
and ah and as a follow-up, you know, when people do bother to get involved, you know, show up to a a city council meeting and stuff, you know, they see that much, they see the meeting. What's it like, um you know, communication for for you on the city council, like with other city council members, like what kind of communications, what kind of deliberations do you do you guys have?
00:33:23
Speaker
Are you trying to get me arrested? No, I'm just kidding. What kind of collusion, right? Yeah, yeah. I joke with that. so lick Legally, you can't have more than four council members or the mayor together without it being considered a public meeting, so it's not like okay you you can't go to the bar or whatever. so um i'm trying to think I was thinking about discussing issues and stuff, right? so yeah Yeah, exactly. um I'm trying to think if ah You know, I can honestly say that any meeting I ever had was one-on-one I knew of other council members who were there's a group of three of them that would meet up which was technically Okay, and they would come together and you know come up with plans and this and that but yeah, I mean a lot of a Lot of the time it's just over the phone, you know a couple guys that maybe meet with every now and then to talk face to face um but Though the
00:34:18
Speaker
And then email correspondence. The other thing too is like, if you got an email with everybody on city council, you couldn't click reply all and respond to it. Even you couldn't even do that because technically, you know, you're talking to everybody all at once and that needs to be open. So, um, so there's that, you know, which, uh, I feel like people probably, uh, there was a couple of council members who I don't think cared, uh, but, but, but, um,
00:34:41
Speaker
I'm having flashbacks. But anyway, um you know, you you talked to I was just talking to somebody who had an issue with an organization that they're a part of. And they were trying to get some change done. And it didn't work the way that they wanted to. And and it was probably a little bit embarrassing for them. And I said, You gotta you gotta know what your votes are gonna be.
00:35:01
Speaker
You gotta, that's what the whip does, right? You gotta go around and you gotta count your votes. And sometimes you're successful with that, sometimes not, and sometimes you just think, screw it, I'm gonna throw a Hail Mary and just do this publicly and and pray to God that it works. But I'll say, what one thing I learned, um and this applies not just for elected official stuff, but overall in life probably, was after I had mike my first son, I stopped agreeing to every meeting that wasn't that I was invited to people would want to meet and you go meet and it was pointless and horribly boring. And one time I had a guy who showed up like a half hour late to the meeting. And then when I said okay, we're only going to get like 15 minutes of my time and he got annoyed with me. And he almost got to see martial arts in action. um But i I just started to say, well, hey, can we can we maybe talk over the phone real quick?
00:35:54
Speaker
And every single person who ever wanted to meet with me, I was able to learn everything that they cared about or wanted done within five minutes. And I thought, why? Then I started to actually get mad. Because then I was like, man, this person was going to take me away from my kid for the evening over some BS that took less than five minutes for them to explain to me. So sometimes, I'll just be honest, man, sometimes you may reach out to your elected official and be like, hey, will you meet with me face to face?
00:36:22
Speaker
They have lives. you know In my case, it's like I can't meet with all 20,000 people. I can't meet with all 10,000 people or whoever live in in my ward. You know what I mean? You do your best to talk to people. um but But I would say, you know reach now at the email or a phone call and if you can build some rapport and let them know that you're not crazy, because that's always in the back of their mind. you know Is this guy going to shoot me?
00:36:46
Speaker
yeah me with it coffee So, you know, letting them know, letting them know who you are um is a great way. And then again, um you know, I'm very much into, into the volunteering aspect and letting them, letting them see the action. Okay, this guy's serious. No, this guy does care. um This guy comes to city council meetings. Now that's, that's important too. And I'll say this in an era of zoom where almost every council meeting is, is done over zoom. It's very easy to say, Oh, I watch every meeting.
00:37:16
Speaker
sure you do you know but when you're there you're there and i can see you and especially if i can see you paying attention you know it's like okay this guy this person is is invested you know so um that's the other thing i bet with that how many people are at the school board meeting you went to oh shoot maybe like uh a dozen not many That's actually a lot if you think about it, you know, because most and I don't know how big your town is, but I would venture to guess most towns have zero people there to watch and and then they'll maybe have like one person who has an item on the has an item on the agenda, you know, my wife and I spoke and then there were maybe two or three others that spoke maybe not a dozen, maybe eight or 10. But it was it was a yeah, there's some people there.
00:37:59
Speaker
And you know i'll be I want to be fair, too. I don't want to seem like you have to live, that this has to be your life. Because you don't have to be at like every meeting. you know it's When there's a hot issue and the the hall gets packed because of it, it's like, OK, people actually really, really care about whatever's going on. But I'm just trying to think of ways. ah because And I'm actually thinking about writing a book on this. I don't know if I will. But one of the other books I'd like to do, similar to the How to Get Elected, is Basically like how to be an effective citizen. That's not the title of it. I'm just trying to think through but like ways of how you can affect change locally, you know, and so I'm kind of fleshing these ideas out as we talk because I try to think what would have worked, what would have changed my mind and what would have changed the other council members minds as well.
00:38:48
Speaker
You know, so, um, but yeah, man, you got to speak up because everybody's got an opinion. Even just, you know, uh, there's, I feel like every community now has, has a Facebook community page where people kind of just air out all of their grievances. And, um, I don't really consider that to to be helpful. You know, like go talk to somebody, send them an email over the phone, face to face, you know, whatever it takes.
00:39:13
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like sometimes a lot of those grievances are because the citizen didn't understand how things work anyway. And then they're like, well, this is stupid. And then you explain, actually, it kind of works like this. They're like, oh, oh, I guess that makes sense. That's why they do it that way. Yeah. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a quick story of maybe what not to do. I had this guy that I actually thought was really nice. But uh, around this time, you know, I'm newly married and my wife's pregnant. Um, I can't remember if my son was born or not, but my son, my first born was born two months premature. Um, he weighed two pounds, 14 ounces and a couple of members of my wife's family who were close to had cancer. There was, um, one of them passed away. There was a couple of deaths in the family. Like I was, I spent a lot of time in a hospital. My life was getting up, going to work and then driving to a hospital for at least a year. Right.
00:40:06
Speaker
um and and over a year um and there's this guy that will call me and he was annoyed because his neighbor's cat kept peeing on his porch and that is annoying you know that's that's annoying to smell cat pee I get it But he would call me, it's happening again. And it's like, I'm around people who are dying. And you know it's like, kill the cat, man. I don't care. I don't care. Call in some Haitians to take care of it. I don't care about the cat. Stop calling me. you know So I feel like unreasonable people, though, never know that they're unreasonable.
00:40:41
Speaker
so yeah me giving this advice will fall on deaf ears to the people who need to hear it the most. But that's an example of maybe what maybe what not to do. It's not that a phone call or whatever, that's okay, you know reach out. But like I said, i multiple phone calls and I had stuff going on in my life and that that wasn't his fault, you know what I mean? That's part of why I stepped down was I just realized I got a lot going on. I can't you know deal with this as much as I could. but I tell you what, when I was you know a single guy, I would have you know really been digging in there like Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out how to help this guy and the in his neighbor's cab. But you know at that stage of my life, it was like, dude, i stop calling me. I didn't tell him this, but it was like, stop calling me. So what's ah do you have further political plans? or you do Would you like to run for another office someday? or I don't know. people People ask me that quite a bit. i mean um
00:41:43
Speaker
Guys, I think we got to be pretty worried about the violence that's going to happen in November, quite honestly. I don't even i think it could get violent no matter which side wins. you know what happens if What happens if Donald Trump wins and 14 states, let's just say, refuse to certify it?
00:41:59
Speaker
you know, what happens then, what happens if if Trump doesn't win and Republicans don't believe it and they say, we're we're going to do something about it. You know, i i I want to raise my family and I want to live in peace. So I want to stay out of it, you know, and I also think that I can, I'm able to help people right now by being kind of behind the scenes or or being able to talk to someone who has ran and just say, Hey, you know, I get it.
00:42:28
Speaker
you know I've had this happen and and this and that. and And people definitely respect that. So my mind's not in that at all. I have no idea what the what the fall of America is gonna look like over the next you know over my lifetime, over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
00:42:42
Speaker
Um, I'll be honest, it's, I don't think that it's that Donald Trump alone is going to be able to save America, but for me to vote for Trump, it's less of him saving it. And it's more of, I don't think that this country can possibly afford four to eight years of somebody, you know, pumping in 10 to 30, 40 million, um, cartel members, uh, from South America or, or G hottest from, from other countries who are not interested in our way of life. Um, to me.
00:43:11
Speaker
The Democratic Party, they're no longer the Democrats. um They're no longer liberals. They're communists. Communists aren't even really communists. They're anti-humans. And they're not even really anti-humans. They're satanic. And so that's really where the fight is. I think i think that there, again, are people who are intentionally wanting to um destroy this country. And so almost to the Republican Party, it's that hard work beats town when town doesn't work hard. You can say that You know, you have the, you're right. And we're not hypocritical. It's not hypocritical when they say that they do, you know, ah calling people hypocrites or um trying to take the high road. It's not working, you know, it's not working. And I don't want to see things get violent, but um I want to say, but that sounds like I'm about to say the opposite of it. I don't want, I don't want things to get violent. I would like to see though, ah the Republicans hold people accountable.
00:44:07
Speaker
you know quite honestly and again let's you know there's changes that can be made at the local level um volunteering maybe in certain states it seems like they could use some people watching how the ballots are counted um I don't go to protests when Trump was when they raided Mar-a-Lago like I wouldn't be a guy that goes down there but I'm glad that there are people who like that out there I think that that is that is a force multiplier that can give can give tyrants some thought.
00:44:36
Speaker
you know i am yeah like um what you said What you said about ah you know the communist thing and everything, like five years ago, I probably would have said now you were kind of nuts. but So would I. Yeah, any more. Well, when you see people who are doing policies that They can't be stupid enough to think that's not destructive. And then when you're like, well, why would they do intentionally destructive things? And then you understand, like you read books and stuff about how radical revolutionaries do things. To have a revolution, you have to have things bad enough to where people want a revolution. So when people are actively working to destroy some sort of active, some society that's the societal structure now, it's like, okay, well, that's the only thing that makes any sense. Yeah.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, they they work like the devil. I don't know if any are either one of you guys Christians by chance. Yeah. So I was I remember going off a few years ago about the media because I said they work like the devil. ah You know, there's kind of a Christian idea of fleeting thoughts. I don't know if you or any of your listeners are familiar with it, but it's kind of the idea of, let's say, demonic possession. You know, you think of like the movie The Exorcist. Well, I think a lot of the times it's not really possession, but maybe oppression. And I will call it fleeting thoughts, which I think that we're all kind of hit with.
00:45:54
Speaker
A fleeting thought is if you ever have those like a thought that you're like, whoa, where did that come from? you know and it's like ah and you start like ah Thoughts are like visitors at your house. You can't always you don't get to choose who shows up at your front door, but you get to choose who you let into your living room and who you entertain. right so but So Satan is just constantly firing off fleeting thoughts into your mind. just whatever they are, um you know sinful thoughts, violent thoughts, lustful thoughts, ah hopeless thoughts. to depression you know And the media basically does that as well with the way that they constantly fire lies out. They're just constantly going to shoot shoot lies that, you know and like I said earlier, statistics, um bending them. um You're just going to be, it's propaganda. And I even look at like how much propaganda have I
00:46:48
Speaker
taken in you know or or i'll hear like about some shocking thing that happens at it like there's a um drag queen type event where there was like a pool where they're having people pee in it or something like that and i i heard this news and i'm like i missed the me that was shocked at that and there was a time where that was i couldn't even wrap my head around that i miss i missed that version of me yeah you know uh so it's like it's kind of amazing if you actually look back at all the things that you know, that we're just kind of just accepted or or are used to to to living with. um But man, what was your I'm sorry, I got off on a tangent there. But yeah,
00:47:32
Speaker
do you remember what your question was? I'm sorry. No, I just mentioned that, you know, like five years ago, I would have thought you thought that all that was crazy. But yeah, it doesn't seem that crazy anymore. Yeah, I would have rolled my eyes here and somebody talk about a communist or whatever. And the thing is, is a lot of these people wouldn't necessarily call them, they wouldn't even know that they are communists or that they're saying it, they just know that they're not happy. and And I think a lot of them, I don't, this is something too that I think about is, I wonder like, does this person know that he's trying to cause pain right now? Or does this person know that they're lying, especially with some of these guys like around my age, who you find in Antifa and things like that, who just really want destruction, and they want to see it burn down. um You know, that's, I don't know, I'm sure,
00:48:17
Speaker
i've i've got I've only been reading like martial arts history stuff for almost this entire year, um but I'm still obsessed with Karl Marx and communism and stuff like that. And
Martial Arts Influence and Political Views
00:48:28
Speaker
the first thing I'm going to start doing when I'm done with this book is just take a deep dive. I just bought, I haven't been able to read it yet, but I don't listen to, I don't actually don't listen to a whole lot of Jordan Peterson, but he had a guy on and they're talking about Satan and Karl Marx. And I'm like, well, I have to listen to this. And he was a Satanist. Yeah. He didn't he write like weird poetry to Satan and all sorts of weird. Yeah, he loved. Yeah. Uh, Marx by Robert Payne. I haven't been able to read this yet. It's, it's after the
00:48:53
Speaker
Jordan I bought it immediately like as I was listening to this interview because the guy kept talking about this book and it's really it's expensive now on eBay, but I got this and I can't wait to read it and that's a book that I would like to write in the future is the is the link between communism and Satan because a lot of these people Literally worship the devil or they definitely give a lot of head nods and and tip their hats to them and again like um'm I'm speaking in Literal terms not just you know being hyperbolic or whatever
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, he one of our one of our friends that had been has been on the podcast before, he goes by Bennett on on on Twitter. He had a tweet a while back about you know all these like veiled satanic themes and images that are on these that are posted by these people. And he's like, like every every time they're called out on, an oh, that's a joke. Oh, this is a joke. He's like, they're just a bunch of silly guys. like Look at what a but a bunch of cut up you know hilarious people these are.
00:49:53
Speaker
like Like, they're just all the all the time. They're just every time. Oh, yeah, that that was a joke. Some guy and has no sense of humor, another sense of the word. But then post these like, clearly, you know, occult images or weird stuff. And then oh, yeah, but we're we're just we're just Josh. And we're just goofing around. Well, that was always hard for me to accept because, um you know, being influenced by like, Molly Crew, for instance, they they were pretty open of that they were using satanic imagery to piss people off.
00:50:21
Speaker
you know like they want they knew that if they could piss off the parents they were gonna sell more albums basically yeah so I always thought that that's just how people work because I guess in my mind I'm thinking you know people don't just you wouldn't worship Satan the way that Christians worship Jesus because if you and admit that he exists then you wouldn't you also admit that Jesus is real or and maybe that's just not the logic and I remember asking a pastor once I said do you really believe that people out there but worship Satan the way that we worship Jesus and he said yeah and I was like wow I mean I was I was like 18 18 or 19 and kind of a new believer or whatever but I mean like I grew up in the church but it wasn't till I was 18 where I got baptized and really took it serious but um just thinking you know wow that's
00:51:08
Speaker
That's strange, you know, but yeah, these people really do and and Satan is gonna seek to destroy and kill and You see it in this belief. I mean this belief system is perfect for that. It's so dark Yeah, yeah, totally Well, I want to take a little digression and ask you about your your martial arts a little bit What what type of what type of martial arts are yeah are you into mostly?
00:51:35
Speaker
ah So Jujitsu, where I go, so Rosenbach Warrior Training Branch, some I hope somebody listening will remember in the 80s, there was an organization called Robert Bussey's Warrior International. And he started, him and James Rosenbach started this in the 80s. And they did a lot of ninjitsu stuff, but they were focused on realistic forms of combat, self-defense. And in the 90s, Robert Bussey decided to retire the organization and star And so then James Rosenbach started the ah RWTB, which is Rosenbach Warrior Training Branch. He's got a few different art forms. Growing up, I always did just his mixed martial arts class, which was, again, personal self-defense. Did a little bit of everything in there, including weapons forms, things like that. He has a hop-keto class and a kra-maga class. But started a jujitsu class a few years ago, and um i that's where I go.
00:52:33
Speaker
But it's kind of, it's not really like a jujitsu class because what we do every other week is one week we'll do boxing and stand up drills, kicking, things like that. And then the next week will be more of your typical jujitsu groundwork. And so you'll kind of have guys who you can tell, listen to Joe Rogan and things like that. And they want to get into or Jaco Willink, they want to get into jujitsu, but we don't wear geese or anything like that. And it's not the traditional aspect that they want. So they,
00:53:01
Speaker
they Those type of people don't typically last, but for someone like me, like I always joke that my biggest phobia is getting um beat up in front of my family. so That's why I want to train. My instructor and some of the other guys have cage fought. That's a quick way to learn how effective you could be because when you're when you're fighting somebody who's a ah skilled cage fighter,
00:53:25
Speaker
um You're most likely going to be pretty good in a self-defense scenario, because one thing you'll learn when guys come in off the street, you'll figure it out pretty quickly, like they don't have the coordination of the speed to throw punches correctly, land them. I mean, you can always get lucky in a street fight or whatever, but um so I think it's a great way. So for me, it's perfect because that's, I probably wouldn't want to only just do ground, you know, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which but even though I love it and I'm fascinated by it and, the and you know,
00:53:55
Speaker
I'm going to study it and i try to work on it by myself. But I'm glad that that this class does a little bit of a mix. So um this year I'm supposed to go for a black belt in this in this class and then maybe a maybe an instructor status, which is just another level of Nice. Black belt, so. No, doing one week of stand up and then one week of like traditional jujitsu groundwork sounds awesome. Actually, I kind of wish my class would do that. But but you you mentioned about how you don't want violence in this country. I think doing martial arts can like really drill that into your head a little bit more. Yeah. Because I mean, you'll have like a role in jujitsu on a mat with a new guy who comes in or something and he's like maybe real crazy and spazzy and thrashing around. You're like, dude,
00:54:39
Speaker
you're going to hurt me or you're going to catch an elbow in the face or something. And then you're like, okay, imagine that ramped up to 10 and you're on concrete out on the streets. Like even if you're like way better than him, and you could beat him like, no, thanks. Like I don't want to, I don't want to fight. And then ramp it up again. If there's like firearms involved or people are really getting hurt or killed, like who would want that? Like, yeah, I mean, yeah having tasted violence a little bit, even in a training session, like you, yeah, you don't want it. Do you ever, do you ever spar with gloves?
00:55:07
Speaker
by punching and stuff to the face. No, I don't. So if you think if you think um you learned something by like, oh, wow, you know I've really learned about street fights or whatever from being on the ground, wait till you start getting punched in the face. You'll really be like, I actually don't want to be in a fight. hey When i started I started there, and these guys are, they're bad ass guys. you know And I'd be like, do you guys just want to have something happen so you can just destroy somebody? And that they all said no. And I thought, that I'm like, whatever. You guys are lying to me. Of course you want to course you to fight. you know And then I remember after when I really started getting into this sparring aspect, which I hate. I i really don't like doing it. um But almost every time afterwards, I'd be like, I'd never want to be in a fight. and never One time our instructor was gone, and we were like, what should we do today? And I said, let's do knife sparring, where we have those rubber training knives. and um And I learned, and I was like, I want the biggest guy in class. That's who I want to be with. you know And um I learned, yeah, if someone pulls a knife on you, you
00:56:06
Speaker
run or shoot him if you have a gun. but yeah if they' clay Clay Martin writes about it in this book and one of his books, I think Concrete Jungle, where he says, if the guy's even remotely athletic, you're going to get stabbed. You're dead. Yeah. you know a we i i did Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say I did do a drill one time at a martial arts like seminar where we had like rubber train like a like a foam training knife. And then one guy had that in a ring and then he had two guys attack him. And you you you lost. I mean, I was you know, one of the two guys trying to subdue him you lost even two on one with a knife like it's just like Friday. Yeah.
00:56:43
Speaker
Yeah, I've got I've actually got one of these rubber training knives here. I'm looking at it right now. But yeah, I mean, once you start realizing about switching hands and things like that, and just like how how many like the small stabs like if you watch guys in prison when they're stabbing each other, it's not like it's usually not these bit it's just sewing machine. Just yeah a bunch of them and and it sucks. But same thing with um you know getting punched in the face. ah like I hate, I don't like punching somebody when you're not mad at them feels so weird. And especially when you're friends with them, like i don't I just don't enjoy it. And I got guys who'll be like, you're not hitting me right, man. And then they'll drop their hands and be like, you need to push me for real. And I hate it so much. But
00:57:20
Speaker
And then even just getting tagged a little bit, if you're not even 50%, it's not comfortable. you know I'm not saying that it's excruciating pain or anything anything like that, but it's not great. you know um So yeah, that's doing martial arts will kind of calm you down in that sense of like, okay, you know ah violence really isn't this... look it's Man, you know you guys probably hear it. These people that are like, I can't wait for the civil war.
00:57:45
Speaker
And it's like, okay, well, I can accept that from Clay Martin, but I can't accept that from some guy who, you know, isn't even disciplined enough to, you know, do X, Y, and Z, or, you know, maybe has no combat experience. You know, some, it's the guys who have combat experience who are like, no, I don't, it's the same thing as like I just said with the martial arts thing. It's like the guys who have actually done it are like, no, you don't want to see in America what I saw in Iraq. You know, you you don't want that.
00:58:13
Speaker
So, you know, because there's people who are like, well, I just vote Democrat because I just want it to burn faster. And it's like, I really hope that you've really walked that walk. And I hope that you've really done everything in your possible power and that you're not just some numb nut who just one day decided, well, I guess let's just speed it up because I'm tired of waiting. You know, you don't get to make that decision, man.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Not to mention, it's not just all exciting fighting and
Avoiding Civil Unrest and Embracing AI
00:58:39
Speaker
stuff. it It's also just like slow burn of being hungry and not having clean water to drink and your kids are sick and you can't take them to the doctor. Like what how does that sound glamorous? Exactly. Yeah, read read books about mass genocide read them life laid bare or I regret to inform you that tomorrow our lives will be taken. Or I regret to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. That's the name of the book.
00:59:03
Speaker
you know, read read books like that about societal. Yeah, it's it's a little bit of it's too long. But but good but um anyway, it's like, ah do the in my philosophy to kind of going back to hard work is is I'm obviously a big reader. I've got my some of my library behind me. But because to me, it's like, look, man, um and this may come as offensive to some people, but it's like to me working 40 hours a week, that's not Like, that's not just hard work. That's good, you know, that's good work. and and um And it could be physically hard or whatever. But when you're pursuing your dream, you know, you need to be reading books and things like that. So if I'm talking to somebody and and they want to be successful in any field, what I like to do is I give them a book that's like 100 pages. And I'll say, you know, some of the things that you asked me about are answered here. And I'll give them a very short book. And if they can read it and give it back to me, then I'll i'll know that they're serious.
01:00:00
Speaker
But I don't think any time I've ever done that, they've given me the book back. and they clearly hadn't read it. you know It was one of those, oh yeah, I read it. you know It's like, oh really? Because I'll tell you what, I used to go ah in my in my early 20s, I would go to all my bosses and and I'd be like, hey, what book do you recommend that I could read? and And then they would maybe let me borrow one. And then I would always try to read it like that night, just like read the whole book. Because I thought it made me look like a genius. And which um it didn't but um and then I would give it back to him and want to talk to him about the book.
01:00:31
Speaker
you know and um and that's that's kind of like my litmus test for deciding if somebody's serious or not because people always say like well i just i hate reading it's like dude it's my favorite hobby i don't always enjoy sometimes like i fall asleep while i'm reading you know it's not always but you're you're you're either not reading the right things because i can start showing you guys books right now that i get you like anybody excited like well that sounds awesome you know it's like okay well you just don't know what's out there or two You may not care about the thing enough to actually spend the boring time to read the book to learn how to do it better, you know? Yeah.
01:01:07
Speaker
um Andrew, did you have one to kick it back to you? Did you have I know you said you had a few questions and didn't have anything else for Matt? Yeah, it' I guess ah ah before we run out of time, a kind of ah a final question, bringing it back to the the proverb. um You know, when when hard work beats talent,
01:01:26
Speaker
ah when When talent isn't working hard, do you I want to talk about making your talents work hard, you know working hard at your talents. What do you do to make sure that you're working hard at your talents? you know I'm sure you've identified more than a few in your life so far and and and you keeping the focus on those and not on the other stuff.
01:01:49
Speaker
That's actually been a struggle for me because i've I'm so fascinated by everything. i just There's a book called Range I started reading and it's the first book that made me feel good about myself because it explained how a lot of top performers actually have a variety of interests. They're not just focused on one thing. People always use the Tiger Woods or the chess example of like, oh, they've been doing this one specific thing since they were three years old, but a lot of times that's not quite how success works.
01:02:13
Speaker
um I like I mentioned earlier, you know, I was in a in a hard rock band. I love to write um I started doing film acting a few years ago and um Amongst other things and I just realized that what I really love is storytelling That's I I've kind of figured out that that's the thing that I love the most is storytelling in its different forms and songs and movies you know um even podcasts and books all the things and so for me, I'm just trying to kind of soak that up. So for me, I always look towards what books can I read, you know, but you don't want to live in books, you got to get the experience, you got to get the experience of it. um So for me, it's been actually doing it. um One thing I used to do, if I could give myself some advice from when I was younger was I would think of something I wanted to do, and then I would make myself a reading list of like 20 books and be like, okay, you have to read all of these books before you can do the project.
01:03:07
Speaker
When I wrote my first fictional book, I just said, screw it. i I started to do that to myself. And I said, you know what? I'm just going to start writing this book. And it's it's just a horror. I had this idea of like, could there be Christian horror? Could it be scary, but also truly Christian? And I and i came up with an idea to write about sleep paralysis. And so and I think I did it.
01:03:26
Speaker
Um, hit the Christian horror aspect, but I started out making myself this ridiculous reading list and then I just said, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I think that you have to supplement it. You know, it's not all being the books, but the books definitely play into it. Um, I've been, and I'll give you maybe, uh, kind of a goofy example. I kind of want to get into chess. So I've told myself maybe after I'm done with, um, with this book, maybe i'll I'll look into chess a little bit more and learn how to play it.
01:03:55
Speaker
So I went on to chat GPT, so people who are anti-AI, I get it, but i've I've started to enjoy things of it. And I said, give me a training plan on how I could be a chess master as soon as possible. And it gave me this, and I said, and and include books and videos to to study. And it gave me this really detailed, like, okay, for three to six months, you're gonna play chess for an hour a day. Read this book in this time period and watch these videos on YouTube, six to 12 months.
01:04:22
Speaker
and it gave me like this really cool plan and I thought oh that's kind of cool. So I think um for certain things maybe if you let's say like with leather work if if ah you and I decide like okay leather this is something that we're actually talented in and we want to start making money on it. um Look at books try to talk to people the old timers because leather is kind of a dying art you know so try to find people who have owned like a shoe store or something like that, learn from them, watch videos on YouTube, not just about like for me, one of the guys that I watched, he said he didn't just study like how to make flip flops, he studied how to make gun holsters and other things and leather. And I think that now it's kind of cool to be able to go to chat GPT and say I want to master this craft, what are some ideas and have it kick you back some some data. It's been kind of fun to
01:05:13
Speaker
to play with. So that's kind of maybe outside of the box and maybe some people are resistant to it. But I'll be honest, I kind of am enjoying it right now. Yeah, I've never, I've never even thought to to use it that way. after Yeah, if you, my friends are showing me, yeah, they're like making really goofy stuff with it. But which I did at first, but then I started to ask it for book record. Well, what I really learned was I had a question like a very specific question, like what happened to people in prisons when the A-bomb went off in Japan? And I was Googling it and I couldn't find anything. you know that That's not a search that's gonna work on Google. And I went to chat GPT and it was giving me stories and it's like, oh, in this book, there's a chapter on this. And I was like, whoa.
01:05:56
Speaker
And then I'm like, give me 10 book recommendations about X, Y, and Z. And it kicks it back. and And sometimes they get it wrong. But I'm like, oh, wow. And then I've used it for this martial arts book I'm writing. I googled top martial arts autobiographies out there because I want to study what other people have done. And then I read i look through some articles. Then I go to chat GPT and I say, give me the top 10, 20 books out there.
01:06:21
Speaker
the best autobiographies of martial art or whatever. And then there's a lot of overlap, but I found some, like Dan Severn wrote a book. um He's an, I couldn't, I had no idea this guy wrote a book. It never appeared. to know that either Yeah, it's it's not on anything. Like if you Google it or it or whatever, like as far as like lists of best martial art books, it's not on anything. I was on Chad GPT and Robert Bussi won an award at UFC too. Cause his, one of his guys was the first non Gracie to win UFC. It's two or three. um but So I go to Chad GPT because i and now I have to read about you know the early days of UFC so I can fact check everything that we talk about in the book. and So I say, are there any books out there on the early days of UFC? I Googled it, found a few, whatever. Go to Chad GPT and it kicks out Dan Severn's book. I was like, what? I don't know. He wrote a book. you know so I don't know. That's just an example of of some of the things that that you can do with it. It's it's a very interesting research tool.
01:07:19
Speaker
That's awesome. Have to check that one out. Well, hey, man. we're
Conclusion: Reflections on Hard Work and Community
01:07:24
Speaker
We try to usually not keep you too much longer than an hour when we have guests on. But thank you so much for coming on. This was ah this was a pleasure to have you. And and i I picked up your book. Haven't read it yet, but I will will i will read it for sure. And maybe I'll read it tonight in one night and then get back to you tomorrow so you know that I'm serious. Hey, that would be cool. Now, see, now I'm worried though, I've got to spend the rest of the night with that thought of, was I quiet and mysterious as I wanted to be or did I talk too much? So I hope I didn't. I hope, I don't want to sound like, I really don't want to sound like a blowhard because like, again, I get it with some of the stuff where it's like, you do want to spend time with your family or whatever. And it's, life's not just all about like working as hard as you possibly can. You know, I probably have a, maybe a problem with it to some extent with
01:08:13
Speaker
But, but I also do want to say like, look guys, if I can do it, you can do it because I've never thought of myself as the smartest person in the room or or even the hardest worker. I've just been around people who I've been able to look at and say like, wow, that guy's smart. Wow. That guy's, you know, hardworking and, and just think, okay, well, if that guy can put in the hours, so can I type of a thing? So, um, like I said, I don't want to, I hope I didn't come across sounded like I had all the answers for everything. I'm just trying to be honest of, of as I'm working out through this stuff myself.
01:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, no, not at all, man. I mean, think I think your experience is pretty awesome, ah winning an election. and And I know there's a lot of people who are thinking about maybe feeling the call that they should run for something, but don't know where to start. And I think your book is excellent. So where do where do people find it? Amazon or? Yeah, Amazon. Matt Bechtel would appreciate the follows on Twitter, which is Matthew R. Bechtel, and then on Instagram at Matt Bechtel. And again, that's the best way to, I'll be posting like crazy when the book comes out. and Do you guys remember when clay's when Clay's episode came out, by the way? And I was joking about how he said good because he says it good. yeah I was trying to figure out a way where I could drop that in here at some point and I couldn't. So I'm just going to come out and say it. I thought your episode with Clay was very good. That was awesome. Yeah, he is great. Well, hey, man, thanks so much again for for coming on. And thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll see you guys all next week. Thank you. yeah
01:09:38
Speaker
but There are only four things certain, since social progress that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sin, as surely as water will wet us,
01:10:08
Speaker
as surely as fire will burn the gods of the copy walk idiots with terrors or tortures