In this episode, we discuss how a man gains or regains his sovereignty when he lets go of other people and takes it upon himself to become the most sovereign version of himself. In order to gain sovereignty, a man must let go of the influence of others and take charge of his own life and finances.
00:01:07.580And first things first, you're listening to this podcast, so that's good.
00:01:11.200Hopefully you have a desire to grow and build yourself as a man, whether you've been here for years and years,
00:01:16.360or this might even be your very first episode, our job, my job, is to give you all of the tools necessary to achieve more in your life.
00:01:24.820So you're joining us at just the right time.
00:01:27.560Today I'm going to talk with you about how a man gains or regains his sovereignty when he lets it go.
00:01:33.880So, and sovereignty, guys, is free from the influence of other people.
00:01:40.960It's free from financial burden and the stress and the weight that comes with owing money to people.
00:01:47.180It's free of health hardships that are unnecessary because you're overweight, out of shape, not getting sleep, not eating the right foods.
00:01:55.460It's freedom from ensuring that you're not swayed by what I call the doctrine of popular culture that would have you slip into a pattern of degeneracy,
00:02:06.380whether that's addiction or pornography or stepping out on your significant other or any other vice that you may have fallen prey to.
00:02:15.440My job, I consider it, is to help you become the most sovereign version of yourself.
00:02:21.980In 2016, I wrote a book called Sovereignty, The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men.
00:02:26.620And that's what I really want more of us, millions of us, to be thinking about as we continue into 2025.
00:02:33.860How do we regain our sovereignty in all ways?
00:02:36.700So I'm going to give you some tips today and some things to consider.
00:02:39.720And this will help you regain or gain, maybe even for the first time, your sovereignty in your life.
00:03:01.920But if you do, it's purely happenstance.
00:03:04.420It's not something that you can replicate over and over again.
00:03:07.760It's just something that you've stumbled into.
00:03:11.160And I'm not going to say you got lucky necessarily.
00:03:13.580Maybe you've made a few right choices.
00:03:14.980But the problem is you can't replicate it.
00:03:17.160And when I was working in my financial planning practice, I got some mentoring and coaching early on.
00:03:23.840And one of my mentors said, your first appointment, your first potential client appointment should always be very similar.
00:03:32.980And the reason is, is because you need to be able to determine what works in those meetings to convert prospects into clients and what doesn't.
00:03:39.920If you're haphazard and you're random and you're just kind of winging it or shooting from the hip, the ability to define what is helping you win is hard to do and to define what is holding you back.
00:03:55.380So the first thing that you need to do if you have not done this exercise is to really sit down and just think about what you want for the year.
00:04:03.400And you can extend this out if you want to look at it over your lifetime or the next 10 years.
00:04:07.540But ask yourself, what kind of financial position do I need to be in or want to be in?
00:04:12.240What does my body and my physique look like?
00:04:41.300And once you start thinking about the vision, and you can do that in a lot of different ways.
00:04:45.160You can write down, again, your aspirations, or you can write down the type of person you want to be.
00:04:51.100You know, for example, I show up powerfully for the people I love.
00:04:54.460I am not stressed in my life because I know I don't have any creditors chasing me down and trying to get me to make payments because I've paid all those things.
00:05:05.780That way I can create financial abundance and prosperity for me and my family.
00:05:09.200I'm able to enjoy the vacations and trips and experiences and hunts that I want to participate in.
00:05:16.580When somebody comes to me with a problem, I don't take on their problem as my own, but I help them work through that problem they're having.
00:05:23.900When I'm tempted to stray from my plan or make bad choices, I'm reminded of this vision and my goals and how those decisions, bad decisions, impact me negatively and also impact negatively the people around me.
00:05:38.840These are just some ideas that you might incorporate into your vision, but the most important thing is to ensure that it is emotionally charged.
00:05:47.780That when you get that thing out and you read it, you might even get chills on your arms or feel a little teary-eyed or a little emotional.
00:05:57.280And that's how powerful it needs to be because you are going to be tempted with some challenges this year.
00:06:02.840You might have financial hardship, medical diagnosis, breakups, breakdowns in relationships.
00:06:30.540Your objectives are exactly what you're going to do or accomplish in order to realize that vision.
00:06:37.520I just talked with one of our guys inside of the Iron Council and he has this vision over the next five to ten years to start homesteading.
00:06:45.940And that's a little bit of a ways out.
00:06:47.900So what can we do now to ensure that in five years he can realize that vision or that dream he has for himself?
00:06:53.940Well, it's getting himself in a good financial position, stashing some money aside so he can put a down payment on a nice piece of property, a nice piece of land with a little house on it.
00:07:03.500It might even be learning how to garden or looking into homeschooling his children or looking into how to raise cattle or goats or chickens and other livestock.
00:07:52.700But it's also long enough that you can actually begin to see results.
00:07:57.020So if I said, what do I want to do in the next two weeks?
00:07:59.000I mean, unless I got lucky, there's not a whole lot that I can produce that's meaningful and significant in a 14-day window.
00:08:06.680I can put myself on the right path, but I can't achieve a whole lot in that 14 days.
00:08:10.820But in 90 days, you better believe I can achieve quite a lot.
00:08:15.380And then what I do at the end of the 90 days is I either continue on that course of action, if it's working and driving me towards my vision.
00:08:22.520Or if it's not, I do what I call an after-action review.
00:08:26.000And then that will allow me to pivot and change and make adjustments to my objectives in order to either get me back on path or to find a different path that will be more effective.
00:08:36.920So that's a quick overview, but you have to have a vision and you have to have objectives.
00:08:41.960Again, your vision is long-term, either or a list of things that you want to have or be over the next 12 months, 5 years, 10 years, or how you personally want to show up, the characteristics that you want to exhibit and portray in your life.
00:09:02.520And then you back up into your quarterly objectives.
00:09:08.860All right, number two, guys, train hard, eat clean, and sleep well.
00:09:14.620I did a fitness challenge with our guys inside the Iron Council over the past, it's about six months, six, seven months or so.
00:09:21.060And some guys did very well, and some guys did not do as well as I thought they would have done.
00:09:26.660But the guys that did well did these three things.
00:09:29.800They trained hard, they slept, excuse me, they ate clean, and they slept well.
00:09:35.240If you can get those three things right, you don't need to worry about what supplement you should use and what biohacking mechanism is going to be best for your situation and doing ice baths and sauna and all that stuff.
00:09:48.680And I'm not saying, by the way, that any of that is bad, but that's ancillary to the three things I just shared with you, which is, again, train hard, eat clean, and sleep well.
00:10:22.100And again, this ties back into our sovereignty.
00:10:24.180If we're healthy, the odds of us having to visit our doctors, the odds of us getting diagnosed with some sort of heart condition or being obese or running into diabetes is significantly reduced.
00:10:37.020And those medical causes or medical problems are at the top, always the top of the list when it comes to premature death, heart problems typically, which is a direct reflection in many cases of being overweight and obese.
00:10:54.720So, if you train hard, okay, you eat clean and you sleep well, that's going to eliminate 90% of your problems.
00:13:34.420You just need to make a decision to do it.
00:13:36.600And once you make that decision, it just takes consistency until you build reps.
00:13:40.880And one thing you'll notice, at least I do, is when I eat clean, let's say I have a lunch, a clean lunch, like I just shared with you.
00:13:47.600So my afternoon, my work afternoon, and even my afternoon with my kids goes so much better than if I go to Burger King and I get a double bacon cheeseburger of some sorts with a large fry and a Diet Coke.
00:14:04.600Like, don't get me wrong, it's really good, but I don't feel great after that.
00:14:09.220But I eat it anyways because it's all about that really quick fix of, oh, this is delicious, and that taste rather than how is it actually making you feel.
00:14:18.080So document that and see how you feel when you eat certain foods.
00:14:21.540And then sleeping well, most people will recommend seven to eight hours.
00:14:26.640If I can get seven hours, I feel energetic, I feel alive, I wake up on time, my alarm usually doesn't even go off because I wake up a few minutes before my alarm even goes off, which is around 5.30.
00:14:41.400And I'm up, ready to get after it because I've slept well.
00:14:44.900And there's a lot of other podcasts on how to sleep well, but you sleep in a dark environment, shut down the electronics before bed, keep the thermostat around 68 degrees, and find a mattress that's suitable for you.
00:15:27.340I talk with so many men every single week, every single day about what's working well, what isn't working well.
00:15:36.120And a common theme that I hear among many men who aren't achieving what they want to achieve is that it's somebody else's fault or problem.
00:15:44.500My marriage isn't going well because my wife fill in the blank.
00:15:48.100My business isn't good because my boss is blank.
00:15:51.600My financial situation isn't great because the president or the economy is blank.
00:16:02.620The guys who are out there tearing it up, they're achieving their dreams, they're reaching their vision, they're hitting their objectives, they've got their nutrition and their sleep and their training schedule dialed in.
00:16:16.160And you might wonder, are they not complaining because everything's good in their life or is everything good in their life because they're not complaining?
00:16:32.440They pick themselves up, like it says in the Order of Man intro for the podcast, and they go right back at it and they fix the problem.
00:16:38.980Now, that's not to say that we need to turn a blind eye to people who might take advantage or manipulate us or hurt us in some way.
00:16:44.720But you've got to get rid of those excuses.
00:16:49.480Anytime you find yourself justifying performance, justifying the way that you feel about yourself, saying like, oh, well, you know, I was tired or I deserve this or I deserve that or everybody this and woe is me.
00:17:04.580Those are all justifications for underperformance.
00:17:07.260And that's a good indicator that you're starting to make a lot of excuses.
00:17:11.560The problem with excuses is it doesn't lead to sovereignty.
00:17:14.540It actually leads to reliance on other people.
00:17:18.020See, if I make an excuse that my relationship is poor because my girlfriend is blank, then I have to just sit back and wait and hope that she changes in order for this relationship to work.
00:17:28.780That's not a great way to go about relationships.
00:17:31.540If, on the other hand, I say, well, here's some things that I'm deficient at.
00:17:34.880Here's some things that I can work on.
00:17:38.720Then, lo and behold, the relationship tends to get better.
00:17:41.780Not in all cases, but in most cases, that's true.
00:17:46.140If you're blaming your financial or economic status or position on who's the president, I mean, really, how much say do you have over that?
00:18:47.540Or waiting for your boss to change his mind to a 55, 60-year-old man and you think he's going to change all of a sudden because you're not satisfied in your career?
00:18:57.000It's time for you to go out there and get after it and stop blaming the things that aren't working on other people and start taking it upon yourself.
00:19:06.440Next, number four, tapping into the spiritual realm.
00:19:10.000I have found and I've interviewed, gosh, over 550 highly successful men and women at this point
00:19:16.740that those individuals who succeed have a longer-term vision for their lives and what their purpose on this earth is than those who are not successful.
00:19:31.800And I'm not saying all of them are believers, by the way, but they see themselves in a very long-term perspective and, in many cases, an eternal perspective.
00:19:40.020So, the power of that is that they might lose a battle because they make a good choice and decide to do something right.
00:19:54.440There's a lot of things that could happen in the micro if you make those right choices.
00:19:58.960But in the macro, over the long haul, those people tend to do better.
00:20:04.040And I think that's why it's so important to have this spiritual component of your life.
00:20:09.120And not only that, it represents an unwavering litmus test against how you can measure your life.
00:20:19.160You know, for example, I'm a Christian, so I believe in Christ.
00:20:21.920And so, if I follow what He is doing and I follow His example and I follow His gospel,
00:20:27.720then I will be able to make choices that are more aligned with something that is going to be absolutely, unequivocally good for me and good for the people around me.
00:20:39.100But if I don't have that eternal perspective and I don't have that spiritual guidance,
00:20:45.540really, I mean, it doesn't matter what I do.
00:21:24.620So if you can pray with God or open your scriptures and find some problems or solutions to your problems, that seems pretty worth it to me.
00:21:34.520And again, to go back to the sovereignty thing, I'm no longer dictating my actions on what other worldly people would tell me to do.
00:21:56.860And I've been vocal about those things when I do make those mistakes.
00:21:59.420But this gets me back on track faster and allows me not to worry about what so-and-so is saying or what the tide of culture is going towards.
00:22:07.580It's that eternal perspective unwavering does not move.
00:22:10.280Next, guys, and this is the former financial advisor in me speaking up here, tighten up your finances.
00:22:17.640You've got to tighten up your finances.
00:22:19.960You cannot allow yourselves to be a slave to the banks or the financial institutions that just want to keep you under their thumb.
00:22:27.320You have to break free from those shackles.
00:22:29.140And it's hard if you're strapped with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt.
00:22:50.680I can't remember who said it, but some people, and I'm butchering this phrase, but something like poor people have interest working against them.
00:23:03.320Rich people have interest working for them.
00:23:05.600So you've got to get out of that poor mindset of using interest or borrowing other people's money and paying high levels of interest.
00:23:13.540So here's the hierarchy in how you manage your finances.
00:23:20.940You have to know how much money is coming in and how much money is going out and where exactly it's coming from and where exactly it's leaving.
00:23:28.480Men have an incredible ability to overestimate our own performance and overestimate how well we're doing even financially.
00:23:36.600But then when you actually start looking at the numbers, most people have no clue of where their money's going.
00:24:31.860Well, I can save you 7.5% on your money just by taking the $20,000 of savings and applying it towards the $20,000 of debt.
00:24:43.380Now, again, I'm not saying to do that because it might not be prudent based on other savings you have in your financial situation.
00:24:48.880But I'm just using that as an example.
00:24:51.260Paying off debt is a huge wealth booster for you.
00:24:55.080And it might not get you ahead, but at least it gets you back to break even.
00:24:58.740And if you're behind, if you're in the red, we got to get you back to even.
00:25:02.100And then we can start worrying about getting you into the black.
00:25:04.520So you have debt, then you have savings, making sure that you, and we've all heard the conventional wisdom, and I think it's good wisdom, is having three months worth of living expenses.
00:25:13.960So if your living expenses are $4,000 a month, do the math, you should have about $12,000 in savings.
00:25:23.440That way, if one of the kids breaks their arm and you have to hit a deductible on health insurance or the transmission on your car goes out or Christmas comes up and you spend a little more than you thought, you've got a good buffer there.
00:25:34.420And you're not going to be crippled in a moment's notice.
00:25:36.480You're not going to be homeless just because, you know, you lost your job.
00:25:39.320You've got 90 days to find a new one because you've got your expenses covered.
00:25:42.160And then next, we get into investing, stock market investing, investing in real estate, investing in businesses.
00:25:49.620In fact, I just invested in a business called Black Flag.
00:25:53.860And I have other businesses that I'm invested in, and I have rental property as well.
00:25:58.700So find a way to invest, but only when it's appropriate.
00:26:03.380You should not jump the gun and start investing if you don't know your budget, if you have excess debt and you don't have any money set aside.
00:26:12.160And that will keep you free from that financial and mental burden of just being under financial stress.
00:26:20.520And then guys, so that's really what I want to share, but I have a bonus for you.
00:26:24.280And one thing that is that I do every single quarter is we open up our brotherhood called the Iron Council.
00:26:31.860And inside the Iron Council, we have channels that are dedicated to each and every one of these topics that I shared with you today.
00:26:37.780So having a vision and setting goals, we have the battle planning channel and our battle planners, including an app called the Battle Planner app.
00:26:45.660We also have, when it comes to training hard, eating clean and sleeping well, we have our fitness and nutrition channel where there's hundreds, if not thousands of guys in there who are talking about what kind of workouts they're doing, what they're doing for meal prep, how they're taking care of their food.
00:27:02.660In fact, we just did a fitness challenge that wrapped up the end of December and someone is going to win $12,500 for winning that fitness challenge.
00:27:12.020So the return is there for sure, if you do it.
00:27:16.340Eliminating excuses, obviously we're talking about that because there's accountability built into what we do in the Iron Council.
00:27:21.720Tapping into the spiritual realm, there is a spiritual channel where these guys are talking.
00:27:25.300It's non-denominational, but they're talking about their spiritual health and then the finance and entrepreneurship channel to cover that last one I shared with you.
00:27:32.960But remember, all of this under the umbrella of building sovereignty.
00:27:42.220I want you to unshackle yourself from unnecessary burden and hardship and medical conditions and debtors and creditors calling you and hounding you.
00:27:49.760The mental and emotional struggle of just being underwater physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, financially.