Why Investing in Self Defense Is the Best Decision You'll Ever Make w/ Steve Eckert ⚔️ EP104

0:05Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays for 2025. T5. Normally, we're talking about three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. But this is a special edition episode. We are outside here in the RV Motorhome parked at Blacksite Ranch. Blacksite Ranch was named based on Operation Blacksite. We are going into our fifth year of Operation Blacksite. And because of that, we just happened going to finish a three-day boot camp weekend with our guest, Mr. Steve Eckert. And so what I want to cover today is why should people get trained?

0:45Why is it so important, especially with the climate of what's going on in our society, not just in California, but the terror that's been happening in London, the stabbings that have been happening, the intensity that's going on, why people need to get self-defense. And so we're going to talk about not investing money, but investing into your skills, investing into your mind, investing into your life to be able to protect your household. So without further ado, I'm going to have Steve Ecker give you a quick two minute bio so we can get straight into it. Yeah. What's up? It's awesome coming. I is a perfect timing right after we just finished the class.

1:15My apologize. My voice might be a little froggy, but we're having some fun, but it's needed people. Some people need that. Uh, that this is, this is really what it's all about, about helping these individuals become, yeah, we were helping them make money, but really to become even better husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and that's going to make them be a better entrepreneur because i'm probably you probably go down the list of your guests on this show i bet i'm probably one of the least richest but i can guarantee you because of things like operation black site i am the wealthiest that has ever been on your show i can promise you that there won't be anyone wealthier that will ever come on the show because wealth and riches to me is a whole different story and that's the way you live your life the lifestyle you have the way you lead your family and do things like operation black site it's needed it's needed in the family structure because that's my job as a man is to be the fathering of my children and and the leader of my household and learning the skills at operation black site is the foundation like this is this is by far of all the so many different programs i do even the father-son program we do this is by far the the most impactful like seeing the changes that we're making in three freaking days what we've done for these men and women that came here from when they walked in to when they left i told them our goal was to make them 10 better in their discipline in their energy in their confidence in the way they attack the challenges in life and also that's going to allow them to kick their own ass from when they came here can they kick their own ass when they showed up both mentally physically emotionally can they outsmart and outguile that person that showed up here three days ago and absolutely i can look every one of them in the eyes and say they absolutely can so what's interesting is we actually have 40 women in attendance for the last two years out of the five years really happened in the last two years why do you think that more women are coming to get trained now it's probably can go with this this that question is going a lot of different directions i think part of the main thing is that men have gone so soft really in this country i think they're not leading the way they should they're they're become too comfortable and they are not holding themselves accountable they're not leading as the husbands and fathers should and so the women have to step up they're forced to step up to be the man of the household whether they're a single mom or even if they might even be married some of these women are married and they're like you know what someone needs to step up and learn these kind of things because maybe their husband's just getting complacent they just need to step up and it's a it's a crazy world out there especially think about a single mother that doesn't have a man in the household to at least uh co-dominate with that's a scary ass thing i'm a fairly capable man and even when i go outside to get something at my car in the middle of the night if I forgot something at nighttime.

3:53I'm going out there and my head is on a swivel. I am nervous and aware. Imagine a woman by herself with her two kids in the house. There's no one to go out there and get it. She's the one. She has to be the superhero. So when people go to boot camps, events, and learn, what is the difference for them? Why is it important to understand how to use a gun? How to at least hold a gun and shoot a gun? Well, here's the thing. besides you could just say well that's their right as an American with absolutely it is I think all Americans should own guns and should carry guns because you know what the bad guys certainly are and they're out there right now every one of us you, me, every single one that showed up to Operation Blacksite there is someone out there that is literally training and practicing to take that person down whether it's to they're stalking them or they're going to break into their home or even in business someone is out there training to take you down you have enemies out there like literally and figurative enemies both personally and professionally you need to be able to protect yourself you need to know how to defend yourself you create this empire what's the point of having this empire if you don't have the the discipline and the infrastructure to to defend it when did you start how did you dedicate your life to this have you always been doing this it probably did for as as far as i can remember in there i was in the marine corps but even even before that just thinking about self-defense and weapons and guns and knives i've carried a knife even before guns as as far as i can remember as far as i can remember walking i was always carrying a little pocket knife and a little swiss army knife at all times and now what it really clicked is as you can now recently know once you bring another human into this world like oh the game just changed it has changed it's now no longer about me i have something a higher calling now at this point like As men, we are dependent for our significance.

5:51We're dependent on something higher than ourselves. It's impossible for me as a man or any man, I think, to really have that significance unless it's something outside of themselves. And the ultimate significance they could have is bringing a kid into this world. And you now need to be the one that is not just a provider. Problem is, men think that being a provider is enough. That is the price of admission. That's just to get in the front freaking door. you've got to be a protector and a father so when i had my daughter i texted some of the guys in the operation black site crew and i said i would die for my family but i would kill for my daughter hell yeah i love that that's awesome it's been burned in my mind a lot of people told me like well once you have a child like your brain will change your heart will change and i'm not that emotional guy like i've had 40 people pass away so i've become numb to a lot of things last couple of years.

6:42And so I didn't think it was going to happen. And then once I held her, it happened. All of them were right. You guys were right. Whoever you guys were, all 40 of you plus were right. Like my mind changed and I made me much more serious. Like I want, I started training more often. I started working out more often. I texted all my friends, Andy for sale that Michael channel. I started making, I texted them saying, I'm going to start working out way more often because of her. It changed my entire mindset. You have your kids working out all the time. You make such great social media content. If you guys make sure to follow Steve Eckert, like the kids are out there working out.

7:16You've got them on training. Tell us like, what does a day look like for your kids? What do you make them go through? Yeah, so we homeschool our kids and their homeschooling is doing things like Operation Blacksite. They come in here and they're helping out behind the scenes. Like we're sitting there holding mitts for the men. My son, 13 years old, he's sitting there helping them out, correcting them on what they're doing. But that's a day in our life is training. We train seven days a week. We haven't taken a day off in, I don't even know, that we started tracking over three years straight, over a thousand days.

7:40for three years and that's when we started tracking it me and my son definitely has done over 1100 days straight through zero days off and we train every single day we need it as part of i think a man is meant to be strong he's meant to be fierce he's meant to have this energy and endurance and people say well that's overtraining well i could not train and i could all have worse things i'm addicted to i could be watching porn all day i could be snorting cocaine i could be a drunk i don't drink any alcohol i've never done a single drug in my life never even smoked a drop of weed imagine if i snorted cocaine what it would look like around this place like it would be this place it would be not a mayhem it'd be crazy so that's a that's what our day revolves around our training together and then our education our style of education like things like operation black site it's freedom we we call our ideal freak freedom lifestyle and it's we our day literally our schedule is revolved around our training together we to me that's the new flex That's what I say.

8:37I'm the wealthiest person that's ever been on this podcast. I train with my entire family, my wife, my son, and my daughter, seven days per week. We have dinner together seven days per week. And I'm educating them according to the way that we want to show them how to live, how to think for themselves, not what the school system or whatever else, and that's a whole other topic, tries to push down their neck. So we are together all the time. So there's four main things that happened during Operation Blackside. I'm going to walk through each one of the four so you can talk to me about each one. There's learning how to shoot.

9:09And we use all airsoft guns here, just so everyone knows. Because we have an animal sanctuary with 200 animals, we don't use live ammunition here. So it's all airsoft guns. But we have a full training center over there. We have a shoot house there. The local police, K9 SWAT and Sheriff, use it every single week. And so we've had, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 times now where the police departments come in. We do it for free for them. And they were here twice this week. and they typically bring 20 to 50 guys out to go through canine SWAT, the sheriffs, and they all come here. And it's great. And it'll always be free to them because I want them to be to training.

9:44I love to get the fire departments here as well because of what they're, I mean, they're saving California as we speak right now. We're doing their best to. So we do shoot training. We do fight training, escape training with Chris and Carly. And then we also bring in trauma. So people learn about what to do in situations with tourniquets and things like that. let's walk through each one on the shoot training side we kind of asked you earlier about why is it important but why is it important to be proficient to actually know how to handle a gun how to load it how to point it how to shoot it people think that the they can they since they can go buy a gun that they buy the gun and they think oh now i'm safe right i just actually had to go renew my ccw two weeks ago and we're at the course and you have to take all the guns that are on your license and you have to re-qualify with them every two years so you can shoot at 5 10 and 15 yards there was this dude there he shot it and his gun literally fell apart it was inoperable and they asked him when is the last time you shot this his last time he had to had to do his test which was two years ago so he thinks just because he has it also just as men we think we can everyone thinks they can fight right they think oh if if if it goes down if the terrorist attack happens if the active shooter comes here i'll be able to take care of it you know i'll step up then but you're only going to fall back to your your level of training that you have you're not going to be Billy badass and the superhero you're probably going to crumble under the pressure and probably cause more damage than good if you're not getting those sets and reps in with the shooting that we're talking about and the fighting all right so on the fighting side we typically bring in Tony Blowers here Michael Chandler when he's not traveling for training for a fight we bring in some serious guys like very high level guys why is it important for men and women to learn how to fight well you don't always get to have the gun on you go on a plane you go in an airport you check through your you're the airport although i always try to sneak some stuff in that i can get in but that's besides the point we can edit that part out but you're not always in a situation where you can carry you can't bring a gun in certain places and what happens if your gun malfunctions what happens if someone takes the gun from you what are you going to do then now you're you're completely disarmed right so you need to know how to handle yourself physically that's part of just being that protector that we're talking about it's just just as important making yourself a human weapon because it's just not always available to you.

11:57Also, they malfunction and they run out of bullets. Who knows what? There are endless scenarios. And think of the level of confidence you have that, okay, I'm capable in this area, also incapable in this area. This raises your level of confidence. And these things bleed into all other areas of your life. That confidence is going to show up at your family with your wife and your kids. That confidence is going to show up in the office with your team by doing these things that seem like it has nothing to do with business or making money. Absolutely. You get in better shape and get fit and strong and healthy.

12:24You'll learn how to shoot proficiently you learn how to fight and defend yourself you are i guarantee you make more money it's just impossible not to what i've also noticed is that the most skilled at fighting are really good at de-escalating and they actually don't want to fight they want to fight for fun yeah it's fighting is fun but they don't actually want to fight in like a normal street setting unless someone is wrong them or their family why do you think that the people that are highly skilled are so good at de-escalating because they've had the sets and reps and so much in order to get that skilled and proficient you think michael chandler is going to go get in a fistfight with someone at the bar at the bar or at a gas station right hell no but that amount of discipline to get to that level like i said it bleeds over into all the other areas he has now emotional regulation emotional discipline to not freak out and crumble under the pressure because he's been there he's seen it he also uh you're good at shooting or guys that come here that have been in in serious combat and seen some horrific things they know what it's like they don't want to be any part of that they want to be nowhere near it you want to de-escalate it and avoid it at all times but knowing that if i need to and that shit shows up my doorstep like here i am motherfucker i'm ready for it if needed don't want to but here i am yeah we did an episode with vince ritchie and literally showed up at his doorstep it was three or four guys showed up at his doorstep and luckily he'd thrown the the video went very viral got hundreds of millions of views luckily he threw the tea in the guy's face pulled the gun out in 1.6 seconds and was able to defend his wife and daughter inside because he went through training here and obviously he goes through training quite regularly with Tarantical and other people.

13:57And so one less training session might've been the difference of his life. And also putting himself in rooms. Like think about Blacksite. Yeah, I'm one of the instructors and I help run it, but showing up to a place like this where you're no longer like a lot of other programs I go to, I'm the most successful. I'm the strongest. I'm in charge. I'm come here and around people that in different areas are such a higher level than you it constantly elevate automatically just that being in that presence elevates you it makes you step up you have no chance like you just have to stop being a little bitch and like you're automatically elevated just by being in the presence of all these different amazing individuals in all these different areas of life like i'm a decent shooter i come here with the guys that show up here there's bj baldwin i'm an amateur and his girls won like 30 or 40 championships anytime i find a couple of minutes of downtime i'm zipping over to the the shooting range when we're taking a break from the fighting stuff just to try and soak in some knowledge like you need to be around these people that are better than you and and you need to subdue your ego in order to do that like do the fighting stuff michael chandler comes here do you think i'm gonna go and start bragging about fights i've been in or how tough i am hell no i'm soaking it in and feel honored and privileged to be around those people now imagine civilians that are not even the instructors are coming in how like boom they're like oh there's tim kennedy it is mind blowing what the growth that they could have and that they do have.

15:16The transformation that we just saw in these last three days, it's freaking mind boggling. It's fulfilling. It's the most fulfilling thing we do. Escaping. So Chris and Carly teach people about escaping. And today, I think they actually threw them in the back of trunks after they taught them how to get out of handcuffs and ropes and things like that and tying their feet together. And so they go through this training to learn how to escape from some pretty tough scenarios, but then they put them in a real life setting and so i actually filmed a tv show called going public and i didn't know we were filming this section and chris was teaching me about how to escape and luckily i had gone through operation blocks i myself over the years for what had happened and so on going public you guys can watch the show goingpublic.com and they kidnapped me and you can you'll see in the scene but they you know he put a hood over my head and i went into full defense mode and i started spinning in circles and figured out a way to like escape and then like they threw me in the back they had to like get a second guy to hold my legs down because i was like squirrely just trying to figure out how to escape and i'm not as nearly as big as you guys obviously and then they finally got me into the trunk and i broke out and i i ran 100 yard dash and jumped over the fence but anyways in those moments i was calm in the chaos because i didn't know if it was what the setting was and And it was very, very, very intense.

16:37And even when you're going through training, it can feel very real because your brain can't tell the difference, similar to a dream. Why do you think it's important to learn how to escape from things? Do you think people still get kidnapped? Is that a thing? Should people be worried about that? 100%. It's a thing all the time. Look at human trafficking is probably at an all-time high right now. And you could think, oh, well, that's never going to happen to me. I'm never going to need that. Well, until you do need it, and then it's a huge mistake from not learning how to do these things. You're not always going to be.

17:05you you sometimes are outnumbered you can't always be in control of every situation as much as we try and as much as awareness you have you never you think you don't need something until you need it until the whole cartel shows up the six of them exactly and you need to have these skills but you already touched on also what it does even let's say you never need it hopefully you don't luckily you never need it you never want to you need it you just said it yourself that you the way you handled that was staying calm under that pressure putting tying these people up and putting them in a trunk it sounds like well that is so stupid what are they ever going to get out of that this is like just craziness why would someone pay for that that way that ability of them to control their emotions and not freak the fuck out under that pressure and figure a way out of that situation is making them such a better problem solver so much more emotional intelligence when they are freaking out their employees are freaking out or they're they're someone is stealing from the company they're not going to free it's giving them that internal muscle that that that to emotional discipline so that they can bounce back when things don't go their way and they can hold the ground and not crumble under the pressure.

18:08Speaking of pressure and high intensity situations, sometimes children, friends, fights do happen and there's blood everywhere. And so we've been bringing in people to teach about trauma and there's literally have fake blood all over the floor right now because it was very intense. They're training for half the day just on bloody situations how to do tourniquets etc why should people learn about well it's just called bloody situations and you could say well maybe they're going to get shot in a terrorism but it's not just that you could it could be a bicycle accident your kid could be on a bike and something pierces through their arm like i've seen some crazy things just with kids the crazy shit kids do baseball bat exactly so that's and again that this all ties into that same uh not crumbling under the pressure having that emotional discipline emotional regulation but if you're going to carry a gun and you're going to be making holes in people you also need to know how to plug those holes in people because i might get shot my kid might get shot or maybe i'm defending my family and i get shot do my kids are they familiar with firearms and safety firearm safety rules but also they know how to plug me up what if i'm incapacitated i'm down my 10 year old daughter she did it here with the group today she knows how to plug the holes apply the tourniquet in under 30 seconds and make sure you're set.

19:22So I carry a gun everywhere I go, but I also, with that gun, and I have it here with me, I'm strapped here with us. I don't know who knows who's rolling up on the money Mondays, but I also carry a tourniquet everywhere I go, and so does my entire family. We all carry a tourniquet and a gun on us at all times, in addition to a knife, a flashlight, so we're always prepared and ready. And then there's always a tourniquet in the doors of all of our cars, in our RV. There's tourniquets all stashed around the house. You never know when exactly you're going to need it. so los angeles is under fire right now and this episode is coming out on monday so i would hope that it's out by monday but i don't know that it will be because some of them are not contained at all or less than eight percent contained for the big one at this time there's some serious looting going on and people have been catching let's not talk about the arsons part but the actual looting part they're rolling deep they're showing videos of car after car after car like for today for example the encino and tarzana fires it's a middle of daytime and there was six car loads of guys just showed up and luckily there was a police barricade there and they were filming it those guys just turned around and they smiled and waved at the camera that's how ballsy they are right now how brazen they are and they're just going to go drive somewhere else to go loot those houses i think we're in for a pretty tough situation for the next month you know even when the fires calm down because i think the police are gonna be overwhelmed and i don't know that they're gonna be able to protect those households why is it important to be able to protect your household in these times well this goes back to when you have those kids it's a whole different game you said you'll not only kill for them you will freaking die for them you will kill for them and that's why you you need to build a community and learn from people like we learned from black side but then also build your community in your own neighborhood get to know your neighbors build your own mini little army where you're looking out for each other and it starts right in your own home your whole entire family should know the plan like my family knows something happens where which part of the house is they're going to where do they need to retreat to who's doing what whose role is what if we needed to get out of the house it's on fire they know who is grabbing what who's taking care of what so it comes down to being prepared all the things we do operation black site 100 prepare you for every scenario that could happen there you're right you defend yourself with the weapons that doesn't work all right we need no hand to hand that doesn't work maybe i'm getting taken all right how the hell am i getting out of here now because we're outnumbered because the police aren't even here to save me no one is coming to save you you are your own first responder so no one's coming to freaking save you especially it's my family i'm not waiting for someone to come and save me there was a one of the floods or something happened i don't remember what it was there's this picture of this dude walking through a flood or something holding his little daughter's hand not even carrying her and he's out of shape and he's got this big beer belly and there's like i don't know if it's a cop or a firefighter or a neighbor carrying the man's wife out of this disaster zone like holy fuck like that is your job that is your number one job there's no greater job or job that you have more responsibility in being a husband and a father so it is your duty to protect that family your family and your home like that is your should be your safe place it's horrible what these people are doing that's why you need to get your whole family on board someone breaks into my house they might think they might oh they'll think the father might be the one to defend it they're going to have a whole fucking four of us in all different positions knowing exactly what they need to do so they're going to have a force you need to create your own little mini army starting in your own house so you and bejos kuleon also have something called the squire program which is fathers and sons and high school age sons right talk to us why is it important for that father and son combo shit i i can't imagine if when i was in juno high school and high school if it was like it is now with the social media and all this craziness and people don't know what freaking bathroom to use anymore and there's like 17 different genders and all this other stuff i can't imagine the pressure that would be on i had no friends in high school as it is it was really hard enough way back in the 80s and 90s imagine now like those kids have so much bullshit to deal with they need a wake-up call they need a little more guidance they need to know what is required of a man how do you operate and act as a man in the world today because as i said the men are going soft we need to start shifting the tides so we have more protectors out there in the in like in in la when things like that happen imagine if there were a lot of fierce men out there that came to things like operation black site all sprinkle around the the country and all around la now you're gonna have a force if you don't even know you because you're gonna go and do the right thing you're gonna go protect those that can't protect themselves and that's the thing we're teaching these these kids at a young age because they're their shit we're we don't start getting our hands on the youth we are this country's fucked so squire program is now expanded all over the country right that's how popular it's gotten how interesting it's gotten talk us through like why the father-son element why not just why not just the sons then we're administering this program it's about them bonding together that's the number one voice they need to listen to not me just bringing i'm bringing their chaos there so that they can block out that outside noise and learn to not be influenced by all these outside forces learn to trust and bond and connect with their father that's the one who's going to get them through the shit and that's one that's going to show them the way of how to be a man it's not me i'm not showing them how to be a man we're just putting them together through this experience together so they can totally connect that's their that's their male role model that's their hero is their father not any of us instructors another of their social media influence not some freaking basketball player or or lebron james or an actor or a rapper who they who they are getting influenced by we got to shift the tides and bring it back to the fathers who are leading the way what can people do when they're not going to if they can't go to a boot camp or they're living in somewhere and maybe they're living international they can't fly out here etc what can someone do they go to martial arts training do they do workouts at home can they learn anything online like what are the things people can do in their normal lives i guarantee anything you want to learn at least learn a baseline of is a youtube is the greatest resource in the world like it's it's freaking awesome when it's used for the right reasons but start doing hard shit with their family start doing going on hard hikes that are 10 15 20 miles up in the mountain start learning about survival start having doing fun stuff together that's absolutely free it's free to go hike in the mountain right it's train every day you know you could i could get someone lose 100 pounds in an empty elevator with zero equipment and zero space like you always have a way but connecting as a family doing hard stuff together training together practicing stuff together and then thinking about survival stuff they could we have a thing we call our house survival night i put on a purge alarm in our house we have 15 minutes to get out of the house and everyone we only whatever you can carry in 15 minutes and get out and we have we have to set up a tent in the backyard and we stay out there for overnight and usually in a real cold time of year we do it and we see how fast can we get out there and they've gotten so good i have to put it down to like five minutes because 15 minutes we're out there they have fucking generators and their playstation 5 and all their shit so i'm like we might as well just stay inside we're not camping anymore because they learned to get all their shit out there that we need but do something that it's fun we have a lot of fun with it i think that actually goes back to black site all these things yeah they're they're effective but at the same time it's freaking fun as hell like we're having fun with every single evolution here at operation black site i think that's something else that most people especially men forgot how to do We forgot how to freaking live, how to have fun, how to enjoy ourselves.

26:40Like the shit that lights us up as a young boy. We get older and we forget how to have fun. And we just get so caught up in the rat race. And we just become so rigid. And your kids are looking at you. And they're like, they don't want to be anything like that, man. Like, go out and have some freaking fun with your family. Do fun and shit like this. It's totally free. Last question. It's 2025. We feel like obviously the tides are turning. We have a new president coming in. We've got new energy coming in. You can feel social media is getting fixed. We've gotten a lot more reality checks have been coming in.

27:13And even Zuckerberg recently took tampons out of men's bathrooms. We hired Dana White to join the board. We're having a lot of reality checks that have come in about common sense things or reality things. What would you say to people now that we're coming into this new wave about how to get their house in order? This is the time to do it. Like I know you, when you talk about money on the money Mondays, you talk about people having 12 months of expenses in an account. We do something even a next level in our house. We try to have, we have literally, we could not leave our house if we want to for over a year and not have to step foot of our house.

27:46We have 12 months of food, water, all of our supplements, our vitamins, 12 months, everything. We're talking toilet paper, Q-tips, razors, toothpaste, anything we could possibly need. Medication, first aid, batteries, bullets, band-aids, a minimum of a year of each thing. something's up to five years of we even have but that's the next goal is to get to five years right there is is what would it with how we prepare for this kind of stuff and way the way i see going forward is being prepared be prepared for anything if the apocalypse happens you don't have to leave the house 100 and we've been doing this for a while people make fun of that kind of thing i'm not like some crazy doomsday prepper but we just always want to be prepared when everyone was around with the coronas yeah and they were couldn't wipe their ass because they couldn't get toilet paper i had years worth of toilet paper in my house we were good we were clear well i mean los angeles is literally looks like an apocalypse right now it's crazy it's crazy there's whole cities that are decimated there is no pacific palisades like it just it's freaking wild mind-boggling to think about the inefficiencies that have happened and i could go on and on about that all right where can people find you on social what should people be doing talk us through it it's not hard to find me i don't even i don't need to put a social out there you can find me on instagram youtube tons of our operation black site stuff i post tons of it on youtube it's all it goes viral every time because it's so effective showing me and my kids training together hostage situations and youtube instagram look for the ugly bald white guy that curses a lot they can find me it's not hard i'm sure it'll be down in the in the show notes down there so all the same screen name it's all steve eckert yeah it's all under steve eckert all right guys i want to do this special edition episode because los andres is not just on fire it's it's it's insane and what's happening in london people aren't even talking about enough it's insane people are literally getting stabbed in the streets two in the afternoon and tapping left and right left and right i'm not talking about a few instances like when something happens in the media and it's like this rare situation or this one thing happened that's not humanity there's eight billion humans so when a one-off happens it's different there are hundreds of people getting stabbed in london there are hundreds and hundreds of people getting robbed in los andres these aren't one-off situations and i think you can hear by my voice like i'm very passionate about this scenario that's why Operation Blackside is such an important thing to me.

29:55It's been half a decade of being important, but now more than ever, you have to get training. You've got to learn martial arts. You've got to understand how to work with a gun. You have to understand what to do in these high-pressure situations because I've got friends that are literally 6 '5", 300-pound football players getting robbed for their watches at 2 in the afternoon. That's nuts. Because they're just so brazen. Because a lot of times they're 17, 18-year-old kids that just know they're not going to go to jail or they're going to go to juvie. And so the amount of stories, it would take me 16 episodes of how many friends got robbed in Los Angeles.

30:27Wow. How many people are going through crazy situations. And so I implore you, research OperationBlackSide.com. Obviously, if you want to come here to the ranch to train with Steve Eckert and the team here, but in your own cities, martial arts training, if you have to drive two, three hours, go get gun training. Just understand how to work with a gun. It's just super important to be able to protect your household. So visit us here at TheMoneyMondays.com. Check out Steve Eckert across social media. We'll see you guys next Monday.

30:59Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very different type of Money Mondays episode. I will not be talking about investing money. I will not be talking about making money. I will not be talking about how to give it away to charity. Los Angeles is on fire and it's very, very, very, very intense. And so I just wanted to talk about some of the realities from a financial perspective of what's happening in Los Angeles and what's going to be happening over the next few years. Hopefully just a few years because it might take five to ten years to rebuild.

31:31Tens of thousands of acres have been burnt. And what people don't realize is how massive that is on the rebuilding side and the rules and laws in California and specifically in Los Angeles. So I want to talk through some of the business sides of these things. We all know that there's been inefficiencies with some of the politicians. I'm not going to get into governors and mayors and those type of things and what's happened there. What I want to talk about is the reality of rebuilding in Los Angeles is going to be very, very, very tough. It already takes way too long, one to two years, just to get permits and approvals to make a building or a house.

32:12well the difference is they're already overwhelmed and now tens of thousands of homes hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced so from a sheer math perspective of those people that are going to now go get an architect to design their new home hopefully get insurance money which we'll get back into later and then apply for permitting this is going to be very very intense for many many reasons the construction companies are not going to handle it they're going to be very overwhelmed. There's not enough architects and designs to prepare to create tens of thousands of designs, right? Because they're not making track homes outside of people, you know, making apartment buildings, but individuals that are going to try to rebuild their homes with hopefully insurance money, there's a big problem there.

32:57They have to have the capital to pay for designers, constructions, you know, redoing everything, buying tile, furniture, supplies, you know, like redoing their homes if they get their insurance money and if they don't most people don't have that type of cash even if you think that they're rich and they live in a three million house doesn't mean that they have three million dollars in cash to rebuild or that they that they would the other problem is well there's been a rule that happened a new law that happened years ago that if someone loses their fire and a sorry loses their house in a fire if they don't rebuild it within two years the new property tax goes into effect of the new valuation of the home well for a vast majority especially in places like pacific palisades hollywood hills malibu a lot of those people inherited their home or bought it many many decades ago let me give you a math example let's say someone inherited their house or bought their house for two million dollars but they live in pacific palisades or malibu that two million house is likely to be$6 million,$7 million,$8 million,$9 million,$10 million, and sometimes a lot more than that.

34:06And so they've been paying their property taxes based on a$2 million house, which could be around, let's call it$20 ,000 to$30 ,000 for the year. $40K,$50K,$60K, depending on the area. If their new house takes more than two years, which it will, for obvious reasons, it takes way too long for permitting in Los Angeles. And now they're going to be inundated at the permitting department to try to approve these places. They don't have the manpower for it, which is very scary to think about. If they don't rebuild it within two years and they were normally paying, let's call it 20, 30, 40, 50K a year in property tax, they now have to do it based on the new valuation of, let's call it 5 million, 6 million, 7 million, 8 million, 9 million, et cetera.

34:43By the way, when I say these numbers, you can adjust it based on the scenario. Their new property tax could be a quarter of a million dollars for the year. That is unaffordable, even if you think that they're rich. That is unaffordable and it's not realistic and so they will likely not rebuild there well if they don't rebuild there what happens is that just going to be dirt is someone else going to buy the lot is someone else going to buy the lot and rebuild there there's so many factors from the money mondays concept to think about like you can hear why i'm stressed out thinking about it and talking about it this is such a dire situation and people don't realize los angeles does not have the resources and it's not construction companies can just show up and start building.

35:25A construction company from Phoenix or Dallas or Las Vegas can just show up and all of a sudden be prepared to go build hundreds of homes or thousands of homes or tens of thousands of homes. It's just not like that. It's not that simple. The ones that are there that are based in LA, they are going to be inundated, overwhelmed to try to go rebuild entire towns, whole counties, whole regions. Schools are decimated. mall remember the mall in pacific palisades it doesn't exist anymore like i don't think people realize what it's going to take to rebuild this place and even if something happens which hopefully it will that trump comes in and you know they try to have a lot of federal capital come in to help with the rebuilding process and subsidize a lot of the rebuilding unless they fix the permitting process which i don't think that they will and i wish that they would i don't see how they will where they would basically have to rubber stamp and approve.

36:21They could, if they trusted in approved builders. The fast forward way would be, if this is a builder that's been building for many, many years and they are approved builder, if they just gave them a rubber stamp, say, okay, we know that they're really good at building houses or they're really good at building apartments or the mall, for example, and they have a track record, they are rubber stamped to go build because they know that they're going to be within code. It's unlikely that anyone's going to approve that or do that, especially with the current administration in our Los Angeles area.

36:52And so I'm very, very, very concerned from a financial perspective of what's going to happen to the city. I don't think people realize, you know, there's a lot of these things you see in the media about it's$50 billion in damage or$60 billion damage and it's going to probably end up being a lot more because the fires are not contained at the time of this episode. So could it go to$100 billion? Sure. We don't really know what that number is because of the rebuilding part. is hard to grasp. The tourism changes a lot. Like who's going to go visit Malibu right now when some of the iconic restaurants like Moonshadows are gone.

37:26Moonshadows that's been there our entire lives is gone. Restaurants are gone. Stores are gone. It's like just so much is gone. And so I am been racking my brain about what is going to happen and who's going to step in. You need so many people involved to rebuild one house. There's the construction company. There's obviously the design, the architect, someone to deal with all the permitting. But then within a household, someone's going to deal with the trees and the grass. Do they have a pool? Do they have, who's dealing with the plumbing? Who's going to bring in the sinks? Who's going to bring in the refrigerators?

38:06Who's going to bring in the furniture? Who's going to get the security systems. That sounds like a mundane thing. Like, Oh, who cares about, yeah, the, it's easy to get refrigerators. Is it when, if there's tens of thousands, Oh, it's no problem to put in a stove. It's no problem to put in the piping HVAC HVAC companies are going to be, what are they going to do? They're not prepared to go build tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, whatever the number ends up being of new systems. I, this episode is really just for people to be thinking about it this is not to come up with an answer right now i've just been racking my brain about the situation of what is going to happen when these fires are contained and we finally go into rebuilding phase and also keep in mind what happens this summer if there's more fires what happens next year if there's more fires we've seen arsons getting arrested arsonists are getting arrested left and right on camera setting fires up who knows if this happens again in one week, one month, six months, etc.

39:09It's a very scary situation because we don't have the resources for the fire department. We don't have the resources from the water side, which doesn't make sense, obviously, because California is right on the water. And there's been a lot of access to water for many, many years, but not recently. There's so many I don't want to this isn't about conspiracy theories. This is about math and money and reality. What are we going to do? Who's going to rebuild this place and we need something or someone or a group to come that's very efficient with a rebuilding plan similar how you saw with elon musk and the crew that's come in with trump to try to basically right right the wrongs and showcase to the world especially in america the bad things that have happened or the corruption that's happened or the things that have been going on within the government well that is gonna have to happen here and specifically in california at a very massive scale.

40:04The rebuilding phase for California from businesses, homes, apartments, restaurants, malls, schools across the board. Just think about the sheer amount of construction crews that are going to be needed. What about the cleanup crews, the dumpster trucks? There's just you just think about what one household looks like of all the things, all the vendors, all the people involved to get all the approvals for one house and then extrapolate that into tens of thousands of houses. And if they want to, you know, deal with insurance, get it done within two years, et cetera, I just don't see how it's going to happen.

40:42And so if you're watching out there, Mr. Trump, Elon, and all the guys that are out there, if one of your friends shows you a clip from here, I just want you to think about who can become the efficient group in the construction world to really make this right. We need someone that can truly see a plan, a master architect or a master planner that can help us rebuild Pacific Palisades, rebuild Malibu. Hopefully we don't lose Encino and Tarzana because those are under fire as you're listening to this episode right now. I think you can hear it in my voice. I'm just normally I can see plans for things and I don't see a clear vision for this unless a group comes in and becomes the efficient one that figures out how to do massive reconstruction.

41:32It would be very different if we were just rebuilding apartment buildings because those are all the same units, right? Someone goes and rebuilds a 600 unit apartment building. That is different because one master planner can figure it out and that's different scenario. Individual houses times tens of thousands across entire counties where they all have so many different rules and also need so many different things. It's just staggering. Who's going to provide all the sprinkler systems? Who's going to re-grass and re-sod all like every part of a household, the concrete, the door handles, the doorknobs, the window framings, the garage doors.

42:09Who's going to do that many garage doors? Tens of thousands of garage doors or hundreds of thousands, unfortunately, could be the scenario. I just don't think we are prepared. I don't think I know we're not prepared for the situation. And so we need to be thinking about what happens. And also, if someone can't rebuild because they let's say they don't rebuild within two years, and they can't afford the new property tax, they're just not going to rebuild. What happens then to that empty lot? What happens to that person? Do they move to Austin, Texas? Do they move to florida like do they move out of state we're talking about so many of the wealthiest homes in america are in this areas of california specifically what happens if that many of them leave they pay a lot of property tax they pay a lot of state tax they pay a lot of they generate a lot of revenue and income in the in the city there's just a lot to think about and so normally my podcasts have a very clear point and i ask very clear questions this is really just for people to be thinking about what happens next and hopefully the fires can be put out soon there's a lot of pressure on the fire department to make this work i just don't see they don't have the resources for it and so i've been very active if you've seen me on social being very active about raising money for these foundations getting supplies for these people that are going through very tough times stressful times we've been we got i had over three million views on my post about bringing the animals here to the wild jungle so if anybody's listening direct message at wild jungle if you know of animals in los angeles that need to be taken care of preferably not dogs and cats because there's a ton of shelters for that but any farm animals horses large animals like that we have been accepting any and all of those type of animals here at the wild jungle and i just people are going to go through very tough times and so if you can help people whether they can stay at your house, whether you can give them supplies, whether you can donate.