Why Men Are Losing Their Edge — And How to Get It Back

0:00Did you know that driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal? Driving high will get you a DUI. And if you're wondering if law enforcement can tell you're driving high, well, everyone else can. Friends? I can tell you drove high. Parents? I can tell when you drive high. Relatives? I can tell. You drove here high, didn't you? So what makes you think law enforcement can't? I can tell. If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, get a DUI. Paid for by NHTSA. So we're in the middle of our seed round. We're looking for three. We have mill, check-in, hand-in bank already, all like 25 to 100 checks.

0:39And then we're looking for about a million and a half. Did you just start? Yeah. Yeah. So, yep. So we got that first million with a lead, which is great. That basically puts everyone at ease. I already have a couple of the strategics in. We're going to collect those all at once. I'm doing the rounds on the funds. I'm trying to stay in this round inside the insurance industry because insurance, particularly property casualty insurance, it's so nuanced, dude. There are certain things about the insurance industry and particularly property casualty that are just like it only happens this way in this space.

1:18And I've been CEO of fitness companies. I've been CEO of tech companies. I've been in business for a while, done a lot of different – a few different industries. But this space, which for some reason I keep coming back to over and over again, I've been technically in it for 20 years now. Like there are just certain aspects of the business that if you don't know how they work, you don't understand why you have to do certain things. Right. And I've raised money from people outside the industry before. And it tends to not work because they get very frustrated. And it's like, guys, we're not selling T-shirts.

1:53Right. You have 50 different states with 50 different regulations. You have 5 ,000 carriers. Every single carrier has a different process for how you work with them. Everyone pays differently. Everyone's product is different. You then have 36 ,000 independent agencies spread out the country who all work in different ways, who all sell different things, who all have different issues. There isn't a one-size-fit-all solution. So you have to build your products in a way that matches that particular unique characteristic as one example. and so we're trying to stay in the industry which limits our pool of investors but i think we'll be able to get it done pretty quickly here no but it does matter who you raise money from i do a lot in the bc space just defense tech yeah i'm in the middle of a 500 million dollar raise right now yeah that's a little different than what we're doing i'll send you a link or email to our latest press release it's a bunch of guys from tesla and derol doing advanced manufacturing dude i love what Andrew's doing.

2:50I had lunch last week with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Do you remember him? Yes. From the Bush Obama era. He's the only Secretary of Defense who worked with both Republicans and Democrats. One of the most brilliant people. He said it is the most perilous time in American history since World War II. I firmly believe that. People have no idea of that but that's where we are today and it's because of manufacturing. China's outproducing us 10 to 1. I had a conversation with a good buddy, been a friend for 25 years, super smart guy. Anytime I'm raising for any company or whatever, when we get to the strategic part of it, there's a group of buddies.

3:27I always just offer it to, dude, throw in 20 ,000 if you want, just, you know, if I can make you some money, I'd love to do it, you know, whatever. So we're having, we're talking last night on the phone and we get done with that portion of the talk and we, you know, kind of swings over to like life and stuff. and I'm very interested in like politics and what's happening in the world and very pro-America, very pro, you know, especially where we're kind of headed now versus where we were headed. And I just, like, I find it intriguing. Like, I'm just interested in it, you know? And he was like, I don't even, so I mentioned something that would be like base knowledge for you and me.

4:08I can't even remember what topic I brought up. And he had no idea. And I said, bud, what do you mean you don't know what I'm talking about? And he's like, I don't pay attention to any of that shit. And I'm like, dude, you have two kids. You have a wife. You own a business, right? Like, how do you not at least have your periscope up a little on what's happening in the world, right? He's like, oh, I find I'm happier if I just don't know. And that, it dawned on me in that moment. Not that this isn't something I thought about in the past, but like it really hit me hard because this he used to be like when we first got done playing baseball, we all moved to Washington, D.C.

4:46I wasn't interested in politics at the time, although I wish I was because I probably would have gotten involved. I just find politicians fascinating for how fucking nuts they are. This guy's a former press secretary for a senator, right? His first job out of college was as a press secretary for this. He was a horrible liberal senator out of Minnesota who didn't even last. He lasted one term and he was gone. but he I was like how do you not know and I think that mentality of people just there's so much stuff going on in their life and a lot of that is problems that they make themselves that they then can't even handle thinking bigger which is how we find ourselves in these fucking positions I appreciate the entrepreneur mentality of like hey I'm just going to put my head down and focus on my thing but it is that's a limiting mindset when you have a mindset like that because what your friend's doing, most people live their lives doing one of two things, either running from pain or running towards pleasure, right?

5:41When you're running towards purpose, that's when you're focused on like, man, what's the one thing that I can be a part of that I can continually be a part of, bring more people into. And that involves community, that involves country. I would say your friend may be very focused and might be very effective in the short term, but when you get what you want. When you get away from the pain, then you start to find emptiness, which is the most demotivating thing in the world. Yeah. It's like you can only play so many rounds of golf and I love golf. I'm not one of those guys who hates golf. I love it.

6:13I find the discipline associated with the sport to be, that's what captures me. You know what I mean? I'm not there for the beers and the laughs, although those can be fun too, but those aren't even my favorite rounds, right? I like the focus that it takes to get through a round, navigate a course. I find it very intriguing, but you can only play so many rounds of golf and it's like, what do you do now? Right? Like what's, what's the thing now? And I just say to myself, like, I hope it never happens, but if I got to defend my people, I'm coming with max effort to defend whoever tries to fuck with my people.

6:47I stay physically fit. We call it an overwhelming force of action. Yes. Yeah. If you shoot at me, I'll drop a bomb on you. Yeah. But it's, it's Edmund Burke. This is like the quote that sparked me into the military at a young age, and I would say it's relevant to your friend. You've finally broken loose from work. Three friends, one tea time, and then the text. Honey, there's water in the basement. Not exactly how you pictured your Saturday. That's when you call us, Cincinnati Insurance. We always answer the call, because real protection means showing up, even when things are in the rough. Cincinnati Insurance.

7:26Let us make your bad day better. Find an agent at CINFIN.com. And Burke said, evil prevails when good men choose to do nothing. Yeah. Dude, this might sound trite, but I think it's relevant. At some point in the early 2000s, we lost the social contract that if you say some stupid shit, I get to punch you in the face. When I was growing up in the 80s and the 90s, there was a social contract that if you're out on the wiffle ball field or the basketball court or recess at school and you said some stupid shit and you crossed a certain line with that individual, there was a consequence for that action.

8:07Right. You write a check, you're going to have to cash it. Right. At some point, that social contract got broken. I'm sure there are people smarter than me that know when it was, but it happened sometime between 2000 and 2010. And I firmly believe that that with a whole bunch of other, we'll call them unspoken social contracts, that were created that have destroyed, like, particularly men's disposition for aggression and defense of what's theirs and what's right. right? Like somewhere in there, men started outsourcing that to, to faceless, nameless entities. There's been a long run of outsourcing and I'll tell you where it really started is in the seventies, which is the beginning of like, if you look at stock market growth, the seventies is where all the big pension funds, big index funds begin and people, they don't invest.

9:07They just put their money in an index fund. They put it in the S and in the S &P and it'll just perform for me. And what that created is the shareholder society where you have people who have subjugated their capital, they've subjugated their values, and now they've subjugated their parenting, they've subjugated their beliefs. I don't want to have to do the work. Somebody else will just do it for me. When you put your money into an index fund and just say, hey, you guys make me the money, you might get a good return, but you've also lost the ability to invest in moral things. Dude, and I think this applies to our current time with AI.

9:43I was reading an article or an essay, I guess, that Paul Graham wrote where I thought he was right on the button with this. And I don't agree with everything Paul Graham says, but I do think he's an incredibly intelligent guy. And he wrote this article, it was titled Rights and Write Nots, right? That was the title. And I'll link it up in the show notes, guys, so you can go check it out if you're interested. I just assume we started the podcast at this point, so we'll just keep rolling. There are going to be people who utilize AI to be better at what they do. Awesome. And there are going to be people who outsource what they do to AI.

10:14And he said, neither is necessarily wrong, except for the fact that the individuals who completely outsource the skill to AI are going to lose the skill. And now all of a sudden you will reach a point where you can't write. You don't know how to articulate a thought. You don't know how to make a convincing argument or get someone to buy something or know how to negotiate because you have an outsourced. I can wrestle with AI and say when it writes for you and say, I don't like that. But if you don't have a basis to wrestle with it against, you just get whatever it gives you. And I think that goes to what you're saying about the shareholder stuff.

10:51People don't know how to analyze a stock or analyze a company or even. It comes back to the economic principle of there's no free lunch. yeah and at the end of the day if you want something to be easier there's a cost associated with that ai is great but you cannot outsource your function one of the core skills that's going to be around in 2030 is still the ability to problem solve and the ability to creative think and if you just give everything away to ai you're not going to be very valuable if all you can do is write prompts. Yeah. And the other thing too is AI can't think nonlinear. Maybe it will be someday, but essentially that's AGI, right?

11:30You can listen to Sam Altman and then you listen to other people who, you know, where we are at. I'm sure we're closer than we think, but whatever, it doesn't matter. I don't know that for sure. Right. I know in our company, what we're building, you know, we're not open AI level tech, but we're pretty close for our deep vertical niche. You know, We're doing stuff. We're building all agentic models, which is fascinating tech. And it's really fun. But like I wrote this post on LinkedIn today. And, you know, basically the idea was this that this whole concept of while AI can think linearly, and that's great.

12:04We as humans are the nonlinear problem solvers. And we can't we can't outsource that skill, right? A couple of the comments were like, well, humans, you know, just think and I'm like, No, you're missing the point. AI can't think at a second level today, for the most part. Humans that don't think at a second level are just simply lazy, right? Those are two completely different things. And because you don't want to take the time to think deeper about a topic and go to a second or third level, does not mean that you should outsource all of that ideation to a computer and just expect it to produce the right answer.

12:39Again, you're losing that skill. And that's what I keep trying to push, particularly to the insurance industry, because I'll tell you, the industry that I work in, the insurance industry is particularly susceptible to tools, AI, drastically removing the need for humans in places where they have been necessary. And, you know, my pitch to them is always, whether I'm doing a keynote or whatever, this is a massive opportunity. But we have to keep the humanness of your business or you will lose it. And then you are just like everyone else. Yeah, and I would also compare it to technological literacy.

13:14Let's start with the beginning of literacy. Just because you knew how to read does not mean that you know how to comprehend. You do need to have the ability to read, but then you need to know how to be able to use what it is that you've read. That's the beginning of literacy. You and I grew up in an age of expanding technological literacy. It wasn't hard for us. We were teenagers. We were in high school when cell phones are becoming a thing, and so it was kind of automatic to us. Where we could, this is the first time for you and I that we're looking at AI and saying, man, if I don't learn this stuff, I'm going to fall behind.

13:45So you have to have this mindset of one, I want to engage in what's new, and I need to grow my technological or artificial intelligence literacy. But also there's a responsibility on my part not to just understand the tool, but to know how to use it well. Completely and utterly agree. And this is actually a point that I make in my keynotes to particularly to insurance agents, because they tend to be in for those of you who aren't in insurance, you know, use this example as a microcosm, there might be some similarities to whatever industry you operate in. But the insurance industry in particular tends to be technological, late majority or laggards, right?

14:17And they vote and because you know, they, they base that on were, you know, risk averse, which is all nonsense. It's just the nature of the industry. And I don't want to bore everyone with those problems. However, my point is, I firmly believe that AI is the first piece of technology that has been brought to humanity, but certainly to our industry, where the early adopters who gain the expertise and the ability not just to use the tools, but understand where the tools fit into their business, they will create so much distance between themselves and the laggards that the laggards are going to struggle to catch up, right?

14:53Because each new advancement in AI, those early adopters who've gone through the pain of figuring out what works, what doesn't, how to implement it, how to train your people, et cetera. They're just going to get exponentially better with each advancement. And you're not going to be able to outpace them and catch back up. There's a real chance that it will marginalize a significant portion of that space. And it's hard to get that through people's heads. They're like, well, I got to do this and I got to do that. And I have all this busy work to do. And if you could pull back for a second and take a broader view, there's so much opportunity.

15:25And I struggle whether or not I want to be in the convincing game because I kind of don't like that game. But it feels like a message that needs to be shared because surprisingly, there are so few people sharing it. It's hard to make people be hungry. Yeah, if someone's not hungry, you can cook them great food, and they're still not interested. Yeah. For those that are hungry, they'll go out and get it. And that's what it takes in the AI field. That's what it takes in any field to stay at the front. We see that you see the same thing in battlefield warfare, right? The stuff that guys were doing when I was in 10 years ago, it's way different now.

15:57The warfare has completely changed. And if you're not paying attention to the tactics at the very front, you fall behind so quickly. If you want to be at the edge, that's for the people who are hungry. So if you're listening to this and you want to be great, those are the people that I like to talk to people who want the best, not just people who want to be good. You do have to have that hunger to stay at the front. And it takes a lot of effort to do that. So Garrett, I'm going to change directions a little bit here. So much of your work is coaching and teaching and training and helping people become the best.

16:26You operate at a very high level. You have some incredible people. You're explaining how one of your coaching clients, you helped them come up. Now you're doing a podcast with them and they have all these incredible contracts and all this kind of stuff. I'm really interested how, like what framed your belief structure, your mindset that you use to approach to business, right? You have military career. Faith is a big part of your life. What were the inspirations or what helped you frame? Like when you look back, you're like, these were the experiences, these were the ideas, or these were the people that really helped me frame the set filters I use to operate in life on a daily basis.

17:08Yeah, let me tell a little bit of a story here. Please. So I'll Tarantino a little bit. I'll start in the middle or the end, and then I'll go back to the beginning. when I was towards the end of my SEAL career I spent a lot of time with tadpoles. A colloquialism for Navy SEALs is frogmen and so the the guys who want to be frogmen we call them tadpoles. They're wannabes. We'll see if they become frogmen or not. I spent a lot of time with tadpoles and I enjoyed mentoring those guys. I spent a ton of time with them. Any free time I had I poured into these guys and eventually they would all ask me the same question, right?

17:41They would all ask me Hey, do you think I'll make it some people would ask me after a week? Some people would ask me after six months and what I would say to all of them is If my opinion matters to you, you probably won't make it And in fact all the time that we've spent together has actually had very little impact on whether or not you'll make I've just been trying to make you a better man in the unlikely event that you make it to the SEAL program I hope you'll show up as a stronger man in the likely event that you quit or fail out of the program you're going to have to be a strong man to deal with that because it shatters your world when the dream that you had is ripped away from you.

18:19But in that lesson with mentoring these young guys, I discovered that every man and every woman is asking themselves the same question. And that question is, am I who I think that I am? We all think something of ourself and we're looking for mirrors. We're looking for reflections that can tell us that I actually am that person. So let me answer your question by going back a little bit to the beginning of my story. I jumped into SEAL teams in a little bit of a non-standard way or into SEAL training in a non-standard way. I saw the Discovery Channel documentary, Buds Class 234, on YouTube, and two months later, I had a contract to go into the SEAL program.

18:55The first SEALs I ever met were my instructors. That's not the standard story for a lot of people. Most students, the average age is 24 years old in the SEAL pipeline. guys who have been mentored by a SEAL for three four years spent lots of time preparing athletically I always tell people I thought I was an athlete until I met one I was a good athlete in high school which means you're not very much of an athlete if you're not a great exceptional athlete in high school you might be a good athlete so anyways I made it to the started into the SEAL program with a lot of confidence my recruiter the guy recruited me into the Navy he said I was the most arrogant kid he'd ever talked to because I walked into his office and I said I need you to write me a SEAL contract.

19:37And he said, well, you know, look, we got to test you. We got to do all these things. I said, okay, I'll take the test. I'll fill out the paperwork. Then I came back and he wanted me to do different programs. I said, I'm not interested in any of that. Are you the one that's going to help me or do I need to go to another recruiter's office? And like I had to convince him to write me the contract. So then I get into the Navy, get my SEAL contract and face nothing but discouragement. My roommate through the beginning of the SEAL program, this was his second time to SEAL training. He had quit earlier.

20:05He was the number one athlete in our class and his dad was a master chief Navy SEAL. Okay. So this guy, like how great you would think that's great. Like, man, this guy has a lot of experience, knows about this program. Well, he told me every single day, Ryan, he'd say, uncle Buck, you have no chance here. I was in the bottom third of our class athletically was not great in that category. And he was number one and his dad was a famous Navy SEAL. You'd think he would know all about the program. So fast forward a little bit, we make it to San Diego. And as soon as we get to San Diego, this is where SEAL training happens.

20:40The first day that we're there, I see this class that has finished Hell Week. Hell Week is one of the most difficult parts of SEAL training. You stay up for five days straight. It starts on a Sunday night. You go all the way until Friday. You'll sleep for one hour Wednesday and for one hour Thursday. And in that time, you'll run over 200 miles. The majority of that is with an inflatable boat on your head. I could go on and on about how brutal the training is. It's tough. And I saw this class that had just finished and they looked like they had been run over by a bus and then the bus pulled over them and then backed over them again and then pulled over them.

21:14These guys could barely walk. They're on crutches. Guys are coughing up blood. I mean, it crushes you to go through this. And when I saw that, I immediately got a picture of what I wanted. And I said to myself, I'm going to make it through this program, but I won't look like that when I finish. And I faced all kinds of discouragement. People telling me, hey, you don't belong here. Hey, you're not good enough. We finally get to Hell Week, which is, you know, I'm fast forwarding through a lot of the pieces here, but we finally get to Hell Week. I'm one of the youngest in the class. I'm one of two guys under 20 years old who makes it to this point.

21:48And I don't have very many friends at this point. The guys who had been my friends had all quit. I wasn't a top performer, so I wasn't well looked at. Right before we're about to start Hell Week, my boat crew were sitting around talking to each other. They put you in this classroom where you wait for four hours, for five hours, for Hell Week to begin. So I can tell you one of the lessons that you learn in the Navy is the hardest part of pain is the anticipation of the pain. They let you sit in there and brew before you go through the most difficult military training you'll ever go through. And so my boat crew were having a conversation.

22:20You know, the guys are asking each other, hey, do you think you'll make it? Do you think you'll make it? Well, my boat crew finally asks me and they said, you know, Uncle Bob, do you think you'll make it? I said, I don't think I'll make it. I know I'll make it. And on Saturday, when everyone's at med checks, when everyone's on crutches, I'm going to go for a run on the beach by myself. I created this picture for myself of where I wanted to be. And fast forward to the end of Hell Week, I did that. Literally, you know, guys from my class went to the ICU after Hell Week. We started with nearly 100, finished with 44, and most guys were in brutal shape afterwards.

22:59On Saturday, I went for a run by myself on the beach. I didn't even have any chafing, believe it or not. Most guys, the inside of their legs looks like hamburger meat from how chafed up they are. I didn't even chafe. And if you've ever been to Coronado, I ran down the beach and I sat on the rocks right in front of the Dell. And what I realized for myself was this is what I call my superpower, the superpower of perspective. I sat there and realized it didn't matter what other people had seen. It didn't matter what other people had spoken. It matters what I had seen. This is one of my favorite stories in the Bible, Ryan.

23:32It is a very similar story. This is the story, if you know it, of when the Israelites have left Egypt and they're about to go into the promised land. And before they go into the promised land, God tells Moses to send in spies. So send in 12 spies. The 12 spies go. The 12 spies came back. 12 spies, they all saw the same thing. but 10 gave a different report than the two. They saw the exact same thing but 10 of them said man this place is beautiful and wonderful but there's no way that we could occupy this place. We don't have any weapons. We're not an army. These guys have weapons and fortified walls and cities.

24:07There's no way that we could take this from them. Two of the 12 said surely this is the land that God has for us and again this is the power of perspective right. When you look at your life, when you look at the world, what do you see? And I'll tell you what informs perspective, and I'm circling back to answer your question, is beliefs. Beliefs are the things that you know are true, but cannot prove. And I mean prove in the scientific standpoint. Verifiable, demonstratable, repeatable, that's what science, you know, science has kind of lost its reputation in the last decade. But real science, the way that it was created, is supposed to be things that you can prove.