Feb. 28, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:23
In Which I Get TROLLED! X Space
Dr. Fraser Crane’s chaotic In Which I Get TROLLED! X Space episode begins with a live debate tease in Atlantic City (April 11th) and a caller, Becky, delivering an absurdly theatrical pet-care monologue—likely a troll act—before pivoting to Oppa’s sharp business query. Crane dismisses vendor buzzwords, advocating instead for hard data: $2,000 saved from 20 hours of implementation at $100/hour, with ROI proven in six months to two years via detailed RFPs. Frustrated by Western education’s failures—from Marxist theater school to useless modern literature—he credits self-taught lessons (Aristotle, first principles) and urges listeners to demand measurable value in all interactions, not just sales. The show’s honor-system donations and call-in engagement reflect his mission: distilling raw experience into actionable wisdom. [Automatically generated summary]
Stephanie Molyneux from Freedomain at Freedomain.com.
Would love to get your help and support for the show, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
Really would appreciate it.
That I'd like to say thank you to the Scott Adams School with his lovely ex-wife and some other great people for a good chat this morning.
It just went out for donors.
It'll go out.
I think tomorrow it was a very good conversation.
They had really, really good questions.
And I hope to chat with them again soon.
Yeah, I got a bunch of stuff coming up.
I have an in-studio show coming out with a fairly prominent fellow whose name you would know.
We'll keep it teaser, though.
That's coming out hopefully in the next week or two.
And don't forget, I will be in Atlantic City on the 11th of April for a rousing dinner debate combo.
So I hope that you will be able to make it there.
You can watch the live stream if you can't make it directly to Atlantic City.
But wouldn't it be great?
Wouldn't it be great to meet up face to face, chat, hug, perhaps hug it out a little, and do all of these kinds of lovely things face to face.
We could break bread together.
We can reason together.
And that's something I kind of miss from being a studio bandload these many moons.
So I hope you will look at that.
Word war debate.
Wordwardebate.com is where you can go for more information on that.
Of course, I'm very happy to take your questions this evening.
Questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, criticisms, whatever is on your mind.
I would be thrilled to help out with.
I won't even, you know what?
I'm not even going to say, as best I can.
I am going to say I'm going to help out very well.
All right.
Let's go straight to callers.
Becky, what is on your mind?
Hello, Becky.
You're live with Dr. Fraser Crane.
All right.
If you're speaking, I can't hear you.
This, of course, may.
Wait, Okay, no need to yell.
I'm just waiting.
Go ahead.
No, but wait.
There was a red microphone cut in the middle.
I don't know why.
I need your help.
All right.
I'm happy to help.
Let's ignore politics, okay?
Tonight.
For the first time in our lives, let's ignore politics.
Yes.
Cats Bringing Mice00:12:54
This week I had to replace a door because I had live with two bitches and a male dog.
And they had that problem.
So the male dog decided to destroy the door.
But wait a second, because the reason I wanted to hijack your space, I've got some cats which are pregnant and they're supposed to be, they were not supposed to be, and they're going to be a factory of cats here.
And I need your help, please.
I'm certainly willing to look at the potential philosophical angle of this.
So you have a bunch of cats pregnant in your house.
And dogs.
And dogs pregnant.
No, no, no.
The dogs are not pregnant.
Cats are pregnant.
They're also bringing a lot of...
I might have a bunch of mice in the house because the cats are bringing mice in the house.
Well, of course, if you have mice in the house and you have cats coming down the pipeline, isn't that a good combo?
I mean, the cats can catch the mice, the mice can feed the cats, and it sounds like a pretty balanced ecosystem.
No, no, no, no.
The cats are bringing the live mice and they let them go in the house, and then the cats go out and there's a thing.
So the cats are bringing the mice into the house.
Is that right?
The live ones, yes.
They play with them a little bit.
Do you have like a whiteboard?
Do you have something that like a marker and a whiteboard so you can try to instruct the cats that their purpose is really essentially to bring the mice out of the house rather than bring the mice into the house?
Is there like, I don't know if cats are good with arrows.
You can do incentives.
You can drop some whiskers on the ground.
Is there any way that you can get these pussies to unmice rather than remice your household?
Man, I assume I'm allowed to call you men because we all, you know, man, I'm not a man, but I'm a strong, independent woman who's not getting off the fucking bed during the night because he's scared of the mice.
You're scared of the mice that the cats are bringing in?
No.
No, I'm scared of the, well, see, that's the thing.
The mice, they're bringing mice.
The cats are bringing mice.
They let them leave because you suppose the mice are supposed to be doing the thing that bears are doing during the wintertime, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, apparently my cats got over that shit and they're bringing them in alive, semi-paralyzed, if I might say.
And then I shout at the cats, and then the cats are coming and they're licking my hand and they're letting the mice run roam-free into my wardrobe, where I know for sure that they have a beautiful nest there because it's been about a year since I haven't opened the wardrobe because I was scared to open it.
Anyway, then the cats, the cats, the same kittens, they're bringing birds.
So they're bringing mice and birds.
Live mice and semi-dead birds.
Right.
So I live everywhere in my house.
I have feathers.
It's not like the angels came to see me.
Very small angels, obviously.
Now, do you live alone?
Three dogs, five cats.
No, no, I'm talking about like another two-legged, like a biped, a human being.
Yeah, no.
No?
And when was the last time that you, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
When was the last time you lived with someone?
Uh, no.
It was about two months ago.
It was only one night when I slept into a jail cell cell.
I don't know that that's technically living with someone if you get arrested.
I mean, when was the last time that you had someone live in your environment for a consistent period of time?
I'm pretty sure no one wants me with all those dumb around.
And every time I'm trying to open a conversation, a decent, intelligent conversation with someone, listen, buddy, because I like to call them buddy because I love the body.
Hey, buddy.
Listen, buddy.
I have, well, I don't have.
They have me.
Sure, no, I understand that.
And how long have you had all these animals for?
The first one was 2014.
The next one was 2019.
The next one was 2020.
20 years.
Then, guess what the stupid of me did?
Let's left the door open.
I helped.
It was the first cat that I helped.
It was Chasing, Chasen, Chosen, Chasen.
Chasing, yeah.
Yeah, help me with English because I'm a Chinese.
I'm not the Chinese.
I have to say, I don't think that's a Chinese accent you've got going on there, but okay, go ahead.
Okay, so which was time when the first cat came into my life, it was chasing by another mean, big, huge, fat Tomcat.
Let's call them Tomcats.
That was 2021, I would say.
I don't even remember because there's so many of them.
I'm going.
You know what?
I don't have money to buy drugs if I want to buy drugs.
I don't have money to buy drugs because I have to keep the fucking cats happy.
Sorry for the cats.
No, no, I get that.
I mean, I obviously would personally argue that drugs may not be the first thing on your shopping list if you want to make wise decisions.
So what do you live on?
How do you pay your bills?
I'm basically spending most of my days scratching cars.
I'm working.
Obviously, I'm working.
I'm sorry.
Did you say to interrupt?
Did you say scratching cars?
Cars, not cars.
I'm sorry.
You'll have to take another run at that if you could use it.
Cars.
C-A-R-S.
Yeah, cars.
And what are you doing to the cars?
Exactly what you said.
I'm scratching them.
Scratching the cars.
Is that a well-paid occupation in your neighborhood?
No.
That's a passion of mine if I'm.
Okay.
So it's like if you have cats, they like to scratch your furniture.
And then when you get out, you like to scratch the cars.
No, Wait a second.
Wait a second.
About the cats.
I'm sorry.
Did I get something wrong?
Yes.
Okay, go ahead.
See, every time I'm trying to leave home to do my other, what was the other word?
Not the scratching.
The other words.
Is it something in Mandarin?
No, no, okay, fine.
Let's just say I'm trying to leave home, okay?
There are three tiny little pieces of shit who are always following me.
So every time I leave home, I need to spend about 10 minutes chasing down cats, bringing them back, either throwing them into the house through the window or dealing with one of the motherfucking dimes who's always...
So, sorry, when you say that three pieces of shit are following you, This is a way that you're referring to your cats.
You don't mean huge actual Michelin man-sized pieces of shit with legs that are following you.
This is the cats that are following you.
You have to get them back in the house.
Buddy, I can deal with the fucking men.
I can kill them.
I have shovels.
I have a space where I can bury them.
Yeah.
That's not the problem.
But yeah, you can bury them.
Yeah, the cats are tough to deal with.
I get that.
I get that.
No, I love them.
I love the cats more than I love the other right.
But then I also have the dark, the dykes.
The dykes, yes, absolutely.
And because I love it, I live in Scotland and I came here from China.
Okay.
I must say, I'm not picking up either much of a Chinese accent or a Scottish accent, but please go ahead.
Maybe I'm just missing it in the subtlety of your performance.
Give me a chance.
Give me a chance.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, take your time.
Sorry, you will have to give me some English at some point if you don't mind.
That's Scottish buddy.
You either accept it or you don't.
No, I absolutely accept that you are somebody who's in both Eastern Europe and India from China living in Scotland.
I'm down with you.
No, I have a problem with Indians, but what I just told you was my house is a little down the road.
My house, my house is that down the road.
In Scottish language, you say me no, that's mi casa.
It's Italian, isn't it?
Yeah, that's a little Italian, if you don't mind me saying so.
We're really going on quite a tour here.
I feel like we are on a business.
I can speak about five or six languages.
I can read another three.
And guess what?
When I go to the court, the fucking sheriff says, oh, I'm going to provide away a free translator.
Will he fuck down?
Sorry, you just faded out a little bit.
There's something to do with the court and a translator.
If you could revisit that one, yes.
You know how we call in Scotland and in the UK, and we call the judge a sheriff because that's what the law says.
Yeah, yeah, like Nottingham.
Yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Okay, so me, being able to speak five or six languages, being able to read Latin and Greek, and right, and I'm learning other fucking language.
I'm learning Egyptian, yeah.
You know, sure, yeah, hieroglyphics are very important these days.
Exactly.
The sheriff said, oh, honey, uh, trust me, uh, you need the translator.
Well, if you're doing Egyptian, though, you'd need a mine, right?
Because they need to act out the actual symbols, right?
No, he was just a fucking oh, sorry, that would be crazy.
Well, no, because I also told him, listen, buddy, I can draw everything and you can find a painter to translate my painting, right?
Yeah, if you want it, you can paint the hieroglyphics and he can be your translator, yeah.
Like, walk like an Egyptian, you could do little bangles and all kinds of cool stuff.
I can do more than that, all right?
I can do more than that.
I can connect a bag of fertilizer with a bottle of uh diesel and some how do you call the sparkling spike sparkles?
Um, sparklers, no, fireworks, yeah, no, the uh, the other things that they set things on fire matches, I can do that, flamethrowers, airstrikes, carpet bombing.
Chemistry Lessons?00:04:02
I'm not sure what we're talking about, but would you like to know?
Would you like to know why I know that I will tell you that I have a great deal of ambivalence about whether I do or do not want to know how you know that.
Okay, let's say you say, I don't want you to, I don't want to know how you, how I, how you know that, but I'm curious about what led you to that.
Just a second.
I'm curious and also more than a little alarmed, but if you would like to share, I suppose I can't say Buddy, are you working with the guys that sent me to the cell D35?
I do not believe I am working with the people who sent you to the cell or to be honest, any cell.
No, they haven't sent me per se sent me.
It was more likely I kind of asked if for okay, fine.
Let's get over everything.
I have a brother.
Okay.
He loves me in his own way.
Okay.
Also, also feeling a little alarmed, but go ahead.
Okay.
The books, the books that he gave me for Christmas and for Easter and for my birthday and for absolutely everything are chemistry number one, chemistry number two.
Sure.
Well, in studying three to five additional languages, you also definitely want to pick up some chemistry because otherwise you just knowledge decisions, right?
No, because I have studied a lot of chemistry when I was about 20 years ago when I was younger.
And my teacher said, you're not supposed to touch these substances anymore.
I don't know why.
I really see it.
Maybe they saw a particular gleam in your eye when you were studying chemistry, and maybe they were concerned about what you might brew up and how it might, in fact, take out a neighborhood block or something.
When I studied history, I also had the same gleam in my eyes when we were discussing about Vlad the Impaler and that my history teacher was that so right.
Sure.
I mean, if somebody has a big gleam in their eye, Vlad the Impaler, it may not be great to teach them a lot of chemistry as far as COVID-related reasons.
It was done like Latvian painter, but what?
Sorry.
I'm sorry, a Latvian painter.
I'm afraid I've been following everything perfectly so far.
I just got a bit of a hiccup in my mind on that last one.
He was that.
Oh, sorry.
Your teacher was a Latvian painter?
I wish.
I would give half of my life.
You wish?
I think we all do.
Yeah.
I will give half of my life to have the painter teaching me history lessons and chemistry lessons.
And what else?
I don't know.
Now, was he a Latvian painter?
Was he a painter from Latvia or was he a painter who liked painting Latvians?
No, I'm absolutely sure you're absolutely wrong.
He was a painter from Australia and he painted the Mother of God with Jesus Baby.
And if you really want to know, I can't say it because I'm on bail for two more months.
On bail?
Is this for the car scratching or something else?
For something else, but I would rather stay on bail instead of in.
I don't want to go.
You want to know why I don't like to go to the cells?
Because they give you expired sandwiches.
They give you the things that grow on the great grapes.
Button Help, Boredom Entertained00:03:54
And then, and then when you, You know, there's a button for help, and then you do when you're bored, obviously, because you don't have anything else,
And you do, they cut you off and they let you die in the cell in the, in the, in the, in the perfectly uh government constructed living facility.
Uh, just out of curiosity, have you listened to my show before?
No, this is the first time, but you know why uh, and i'm going to put you on my one of my lists.
What are you going to talk about?
Something else?
Or have I joked hi joked no listen honestly, I I think that you are um uh well, i'll say that afterwards.
No, I mean, i'm i'm happy to have had the conversation and I obviously wish you the very best.
Please try to refrain from breaking the law and it may be worth trying to trade in some of the cats and dogs for actual person, because i'm not sure.
I'm not.
I'm sorry, go ahead, you're gonna break up with me.
I'm not quite sure how to phrase that.
You're just a voice on the internet, so I will, but I think I will move on to another uh caller and I really do appreciate you calling in tonight.
It certainly has been an experience.
Well, at least we both had fun, haven't we?
We did have fun and I I do appreciate.
Thank you for having, thank you for having me, and hopefully next time will be better.
All right, I appreciate it.
Thank you bye, bye.
Uh honestly, that was um, certainly interesting.
You know, one of the things that I do enjoy about doing an open-ended philosophy show is sometimes you get calls that you wouldn't particularly expect.
Uh, now I gotta tell you my experience of the call.
I thought this was someone who was trolling and I I got that from the occasional breaking of character and and giggles, and I, of course, have done a lot of improv and some trolling of my own because, as you may or may not know, I spent a couple of years at the National Theater School studying acting and we did a lot of improv.
So I think I think that was an improv troll and this is why I found it quite amusing.
I don't think this is somebody with genuine mental health issues.
I've been around that kind of stuff too and I think it was actually quite a delightful performance piece and I really do appreciate I appreciate having the opportunity to roll with that.
So thank you for uh creating a very interesting and engaging opening to the show.
All right, so we have uh, somebody's been waiting.
We have two people waiting and let's start with Oppa.
I say this because my wife is Greek.
Oppa oppa, if you can unmute.
Yes sir, go ahead.
Yes um, so I have a question about uh business uh, since you've been in the business world and and sales and everything sorry, just just before we start, was your opinion of the previous caller real call Or troll call?
I'm divided.
I'm divided between being very entertained by the performance and being highly alarmed.
I know.
That's how good it was.
Yeah, yeah.
I thought for sure it was just a troll performance until she seemed almost to cry at one point, in which case I was like, she's either kind of crazy or unstable or something, or she's really committed to the bit.
I tend to go with the latter.
But anyway, I was just curious what your opinion is.
I'm hoping for the performance, honestly.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So, sorry, business.
Yeah.
Business Cases and Benefits00:15:13
So, like, you're imagine you're starting a new business, right?
So, you've done that already, very successfully.
But, my question is: how do you, like, in the business world, if you have a new product and you think it is good for your client, you think it's actually going to be valuable, but it's not something that is very common, that many people are doing.
It's a problem that exists in the market, and you've spoken with people in there, and they said that this would be a good product for them.
But if it is new, how do you like if you don't have like empirical evidence of its application, adding value to people?
How do you convince them to use it?
Sure.
Is it a sorry, is it a physical process?
It's like a software.
It's like a software/service that it will optimize a certain process that today takes a long time in a certain industry that I've worked in for since 2019.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Okay.
So, I'm going to just put out a bunch of ideas here.
It's just a brainstorm.
Some of them may fit, some of them may not.
So, if I were in your shoes, what I would do is I would talk to people in the industry that I'd ever worked with, no matter how tangentially, I would talk to the people I'd worked with in the business, and I would offer them to set them up with my software product for free.
But in return, I have to be able to measure the data and do a case study.
So, what that means is, of course, let's say that you have a product.
I'll give you an example sort of from my own business experience.
So, one of the things that I did when I co-founded the software company was we did what are called ESAs or environmental site assessments.
Like, every time that property changes hands in Canada here, you have to have an environmental site assessment to make sure that you're not selling land where there used to be some, or may still be some rusty underground storage tank or where there was a battery plant or some crazy thing, a place where they did greasy cars and all of that stuff has sunk into the ground, or that kind of stuff.
Stuff that is bad and would really lower the value of the land because you'd need to remediate and clean it all out.
So, when you want to buy and sell land, generally you'll have an environmental site assessment.
Someone will go on site, take all these notes, they'll look up everything in City Hall, the sort of history of the site, and so on.
And this process was all done by hand.
And so, I wrote software that allowed people, this is way back early in the day before there were cell phones or tablets, but you could get these things called PDAs.
So, yeah, I wrote software that you could go and get all of this information and put it down on a computer.
And this was way faster and way more efficient.
And you could also aggregate it so that you could have a whole history of this.
And it was quite a good data repository.
So, to get this going, I partnered with a company that I knew and I said, I will provide you this software for free.
But in return, and I'll let you have a license in perpetuity, but in return, what I need is I need you to track whether it's efficient or not, whether it saves money and time and effort and energy.
And I also would like to meet with you for a couple of hours to just go over the numbers.
And so, what you do is you build a business case.
And I found that this cut the cost of doing one of these environmental site assessments by about 40%.
And these things can be, you know, a couple of thousand dollars.
But, you know, if you're a big property owner, you're going to have thousands of properties.
So you're doing a whole bunch of these every year.
So there was a cost-benefit analysis.
Because of course, you know, when you're in the business world, you're not selling products.
You are giving people time and money back.
Right.
That's the general idea.
Like if somebody says, hey, man, you should dump your typewriter and you should use a word processor.
And you say, well, why?
And they say, well, you know, it'll automatically send it for you.
You can edit all over the place.
You just print out the final thing.
Like it saves you a lot of time, energy, effort, whiteout, you know, this sort of stuff.
So I would give the product away for free, but in return, have a validated business case.
And then that person puts the software in, you say, well, it saves you $10,000 a week to use my software.
You know, because you have a time savings.
That time is usually at some dollar value.
And then what you do is you say, well, my software only costs $50,000, but it saves you, let's say, $10,000 a month, which means it pays for itself in five months.
And after that, it's all gravy and it's all profit.
Now, you can just go and say that, but people won't really believe you because, well, you're in software, so everyone assumes you're a big, stinky old liar.
So what you do is you write up this business case and say, listen, I need, you know, I would hope that you would be a reference because I gave you this free software, be a reference, you know, just to somebody calls up and says, did you really do this business case?
You don't have to walk them through it, but just say yes, like a reference.
And so, yeah, you give it away for free and you measure the cost savings and you put a presentation together and then you do some research on people you want to sell your software to.
And those people that you want to sell your software to will usually, if they're a publicly traded company, they would have lots of public information.
So we looked up, you know, big corporations in Canada and America and Europe.
And we said, okay, here's how many properties they have.
Here's how many change hands.
Therefore, we know how many environmental site assessments they're going to be doing.
And if they're doing, you know, we save we save $1,000 per site assessment and they do $100 a year, right?
That's $100,000 we can save a year.
We sell the software for $50,000.
Then they save their money in six, they make their money back in six months.
After that, it's all gravy.
So you just put together a case, but it has to be validated because you have to respect your customers' time to the point where you're not just saying, well, according to my made-up spreadsheet, this is the most valuable software since Windows.
You actually have to have a validated business case with someone in the industry who's willing to say, yes, we did this.
Yes, it actually did save this money.
And so that would be your calling card.
Sorry for the long answer.
Does that make sense?
It does make a lot of sense.
So you mentioned that you were partnering with a company when you started out the business.
Is that like something that you would, if I have friends, let's say in the industry or I have people that could be this reference, they could try to implement this product.
Is this a good kind of strategy?
Especially if there's like they don't have my last name.
It's not something that is going to be immediately conflictuous.
But I think that's.
Sorry, sorry.
I don't.
Sorry, hang on, hang on.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say they don't have my last name.
It means that they're not like family, right?
So it won't be like, I'm giving out a reference as somebody in the industry that has my last name.
I mean, if I am so-and-so Johnson and then I give out the product to so-and-so Johnson, and then they reference the same, you know, you wouldn't be suspicious.
Well, I mean, ideally, you wouldn't give it to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
Right, you know, I mean, that's that's like saying I should be a model because my mom thinks I'm not sure.
Exactly, exactly.
It's not really much money.
Yeah.
So, but I mean, look, and but if for some reason you can only do it with a family member or with somebody who shares your last name, that's not a, I mean, that's nothing in business is bad if you're upfront about it, right?
So then if you say, look, I know, like I did this with my father-in-law, I did this with my dad, or, you know, so I, you know, please understand, I recognize that seems a little sketchy, but I promise you the numbers are real.
You can call them up and you can walk them through all the numbers.
And the good thing, sorry, excuse me, the good thing, the good thing with having this kind of validated business case is you can go in with confidence.
You know, there's a very intangible thing in sales, which is if you are truly confident in the product that you have, you're not begging, you're not asking, you're offering.
You're offering something.
It's like, I don't want you to pay me $10,000.
I want to give you $50,000.
Now, of course, it's kind of cheesy to say it that way.
But if you're truly confident, if you've ever been in the presence of a salesman who's truly confident in his product, it just comes dripping out.
I was 100% confident that the software, this was just one small component of the general environmental and health and safety software that I designed and wrote, but I was completely confident in the value that I was offering to customers.
And once you've done that validated business case, then you can go in.
And if you have bought them one, even better, you can give discounts.
So you give the first one free to get the first business case.
You use the first business case to get the next two or three.
You give them half price.
You know, like the first time I sold my software, I sold it for $5,000.
And then, you know, within a couple of years, it was selling for over a million dollars because you just got to scale it up from there.
And then the more you have these validated business cases, the less risk people are taking.
Because you don't want people to have to trust you in business when you're selling.
You want people to trust the numbers, right?
Like, so if you go and buy a car and you say, you know, safety is a really, really important thing for me, then they don't just sit there and say, hey, man, trust me, this car is totally safe, dude.
What they do is they say, you know, it's been crash tested by the safety board.
You know, here's the results.
Here's how it ranks to all these other cars.
This car is a little bit higher, but it's twice the price.
It's really not worth it.
Inside airbags, they give you all the facts.
They don't just tell you to trust me, bro.
And if you've got a new product, you need to get the facts about how you're going to make money for people or give them their money and time back.
Once you have those facts, you're not calling people up and saying, please buy my software.
I need to eat.
What you're doing is you're saying, I can save you money.
I can save you time.
I can make sure that your life is better at a very reasonable price.
And, you know, okay, some people, they'll say, no, they won't believe it.
That's fine.
You just bookmark them and you circle back when you have more data.
And then eventually it's irresistible.
So you got to just, you know, build it step by step and case by case.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And also in my industry, because the cycle would repeat itself in terms of when you would need to use that software in a certain seasonal way, you could offer, let's say, a very high discount on the first time, and then it could go down, so to speak, the discount as you go.
Or you could offer a permanent discount on that, which would be sort of attractive since it's something you need to use every sort of season.
That's very good.
Yeah, and the other thing which you can do, it's a little bit more dicey, but it really can work, is you can say, I'll split the savings with you.
Now, that can be a bit more tricky to paper.
So it would be somebody ideally, papers, I mean to have it in a contract, but it would be someone ideally that you had a good relationship with and you trusted, right?
So this is what they do in the movies all the time, right?
So in movies, they say, oh, we really want this star, but we can't afford him.
So we'll give him 5% points of the movie's gross.
And so we'll share the profits, right?
And so if you have someone who's really hesitant about it, then they say, look, I will do all the setup.
I will do all the training for free.
I will be available on call 24-7 if there are any problems.
And all I'm going to ask you to do is keep track of the savings.
And if you save $10,000, give me five.
If you save $50,000, give me $25,000, you know, that kind of stuff.
And if you don't save anything, then don't pay me a penny.
Now, a good negotiator on the other side will say, oh, that's fine.
But if it costs me money, you'll give me some.
Like if it ends up costing me $10,000, are you going to give me $5,000?
And if you're really confident, what do you say?
100%.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Now, that could wipe you out.
This is why you've got to be with someone you really trust with that kind of stuff.
But yeah, I would say that if you're absolutely certain that you can save people money, make their lives easier and better, you know, the old, you know, wouldn't it be nice to get home every day at 5.30 instead of 8 o'clock?
You know, this software can help you do that and so on.
But yeah, I always appreciated because I was a chief technical officer and a director of marketing and so on.
So I was constantly getting products and services pitched at me.
And I could always, always, like you're dealing with very sophisticated people, I assume, in this business world, if they're buying software as a service and things like that, they're pretty sophisticated.
So when I would get these brochures, and I would sometimes go to conferences in Vegas and so on, where you try and get these vendors to sell you, or these vendors want to sell you stuff.
So I would constantly get these brochures and you just look at the buzzwords and you roll your eyes.
You know, this is optimized for product learning algorithmic efficiency.
And it's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like we just make up a bunch of buzzwords.
And then if I saw these flow charts, you know, this is a mind map of the business optimized flow process of this efficiency matrix, you know, this kind of nonsense stuff, right?
I didn't care about any of that.
What I did care about was here's how much the software costs.
Here's the time to get it implemented.
I assume, like if it takes, you know, 20 hours to get it implemented and somebody has to be paid $100 an hour, then that's $2,000 to get it implemented.
You know, here's how much 10% support every year or whatever it is.
So this is your total cost year one.
And here's your savings.
I remember writing a very lengthy RFP.
Actually, well, I wrote tons of them, but request for proposal, it's when somebody says we need a solution and you would offer up that solution.
And I set up an entire database where I could pull in from publicly available databases company metrics.
And then I could plug in my software with the validated savings.
And I could pump out all of these charts, which says, you know, here's your ROI.
Your ROI is after 18 months.
And this is based upon verified data.
Here's the reference that you can call to verify it and so on.
And so, and I would really work to stick to that as obviously as best as I could.
There were sometimes variables outside of my control.
Sometimes we'd be ahead.
Sometimes we'd be behind.
But in general, we tried to keep it pretty accurate.
Provide Value To Be Heard00:15:40
And so if I got someone who said, rather than this optimized workflow nonsense, if they said, look, here's the money that you're going to give to me, and here's the money I'm going to give back to you.
Now, that got my attention because that showed someone who was not trying to snowjob me and actually respected my time and respected my business acumen.
Because, you know, obviously everybody who pitches you wants to sell you something and the benefit to them is very clear.
Because, you know, you want to sell this software to people and benefit to you is very clear.
And you also want to show very clearly the benefit to the customer, the clear material benefit to the customer.
And the benefits are usually pretty simple, right?
It's money and time.
Now, if you're in marketing, it's like mind share or whatever it is, reputational, whatever, right?
But if you're in this kind of business, you say, okay, here's how much it takes you.
Here's how much time it takes you now.
Here's how much time is going to take you after I put my process in.
It's half the time and it pays for itself in six months or a year or 18 months or whatever.
And after that, it's all gravy and all of that.
And so I used to say to people who'd send me these brochures and then call me up and I'd say, listen, I'm happy to do a pilot project, but is it okay if I pay you in buzzwords?
And they'd be like, what?
What do you mean pay us in buzzwords?
And I said, well, I've looked at your brochure and all I see are buzzwords.
So I assume that's what you're selling me.
And they're like, no, no, no, we can save you money.
And I'm like, well, if you can save me money, why isn't that in the brochure?
And the fact that it isn't in the brochure means that you just have fingers crossed and a wish list and a dreamscape and you need to meet your payroll.
But you haven't respected my time enough to tell me when I'm getting my money back after I give you money.
So if you put all of that stuff forward, then you have something that's accountable.
You know, we'll make your processes much more efficient.
It's like, yeah, well, okay.
So what does that mean?
What does it translate to?
That's all kind of goopy.
And I'm a hard numbers kind of guy.
And if you can tell me how much money you're putting back into my pocket, how much time you're putting back into my life, then we can talk.
And so, yeah, but you've got to quantify that.
And it can't just be, you know, a doctor with a flashlight tells you where these savings projections come from.
It has to be something real world that can be validated.
And that shows, I think, proper respect to your customers.
And I think that they will appreciate that if that makes sense.
Yeah, I like the process because my question was basically, how do I get from this currency?
I have this cool idea that is always going to make your processes more efficient.
It's all goopy.
How can I get empirical, grounded, like real data, real case study here?
So I think you're, yeah, it does work.
It does work this sort of pathway that you're laying out.
Yeah, if you can't quantify it, you shouldn't be selling it.
Now, this is one of the reasons why, you know, when I do my show, I can't say to people, you know, if you invest 12 hours into listening to Free Domain, you'll be a millionaire.
I don't know, maybe back in 2011 when I was talking about Bitcoin or whatever.
But if you can't quantify it, you shouldn't be selling it.
And of course, some things you can say, oh, yes, but Coca-Cola doesn't offer you an ROI and all of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, but everybody knows what Coke tastes like.
They're just trying to make it slightly cooler than Pepsi, so you'll choose them or whatever, right?
But if you're trying to break into a new area, then you have to just be manic, not about your product, because that's a given, right?
You have to, it's like asking a girl out.
If you go enough to ask a girl out, the fact that you find her to be a value is already taken for granted, right?
Because you're asking her out, right?
The fact that, so you find her to be a value, so you're asking her out.
But the way to get her to go out with you is to somehow convince her, and this could be any number of ways, even just by your demeanor, your posture, and your self-care regimen or whatever.
The big challenge is to get her to find you valuable enough to go out with.
So everybody is like they're in love with their product and they want to bring their product to the market and they want everyone to love their product and they want everyone to love what they've done.
But the problem is that's selfish.
I'm not saying that's you.
I'm just saying this is a common mistake that I and most other entrepreneurs have made.
I've got this product.
This is the greatest product.
I love this product.
You've got to try this product.
Blah, It's like, but no, no.
What you have to do is say, here's how this product benefits you.
I'm not selling you a product.
I'm selling you a benefit.
Right?
And usually it's saving time and saving money.
It sounds like this is the case.
So if you have something to offer, people will listen.
If you have something to sell, then people generally won't.
And if you have that approach to sales, which is I'm here to make your life better.
I'm here to make your life better.
I'm here.
Like I remember years ago, my old red Volvo that I used to do my shows in way like 20 years ago, it had a problem.
The wheels were a little wobbly.
You know, when you drive and the wheels are just like and I took it to a I took it to a mechanic and the mechanic looked at it and called me up the next day and he said, man, I'm sorry it took so long.
Just one of your wheel rooms was a little off.
I just hammered it back into place.
It's fine.
I'm like, oh, what are you?
He's like, it took me like three minutes.
Don't worry about it.
Right.
So, of course, every time I had anything to do with that car, I took it back to that same dealership because they've already established that they're honest and so on.
So they have a benefit to sell me, which is I know for certain I'm not being ripped off, which is a huge thing if you're in a field where you don't really know much about like how cars run and that kind of stuff.
So this, I mean, the reason I'm sort of hammering on this principle quite a bit is this is life as a whole.
You know, we often approach people with our needs.
I want you to go out with me.
I want you to hire me.
I want you to buy my product.
I want you to be my friend.
I want you to pay me attention.
I want, I want, I want.
And that's fine.
I'm not saying you can be a needless robot or NPC, but you have to flip it to the other person.
Because when you're trying to get people involved in your life, whether it's business, sex, romance, friendship, whatever it is, and you say, I want, I want, I want, that's great.
That's why we interact with each other.
I want to do a live stream tonight.
I want to hopefully dispense some wisdom to the world.
I want, I want, I want.
But I have to think about why would anyone want to listen to me, right?
What do you get out of listening to me?
So the I want is natural, and that's nothing wrong with that.
But that can only be the very first step of interacting with people.
It's not the I want, it's the you get.
Right?
So when we're a baby, we just I want, I want, I want.
It's totally natural.
It's how we operate.
But as you age up in life, and please understand I'm not lecturing you like you don't know this stuff.
I just want to make it a wider principle because not everyone is about to launch an entrepreneurial venture.
But what I will say is that I want is fine.
You get.
You get.
I tried an experiment, and I'll just keep this brief and then I'll get your thoughts on it.
So I tried this experiment just out of curiosity because I get a lot of complaints from women that men are just kind of duds, you know, like when men message them and so on.
So I tried creating a social media.
It doesn't really matter which one or whatever it is.
But I tried creating a social media account and set it to female and young.
And I was just kind of curious.
And people, the men, were like, hey, Sirp?
What you doing?
How old are you?
And these are men even without avatars.
Like, sorry, without pictures, just with some avatar.
And there was one guy asked the joke or tried to tell a joke and then seemed, well, I guess I'm not funny, right?
If I didn't reply.
Because I was just kind of curious, what are men's opening line?
And the reason I did it male to female is it's much more common.
What are men's opening line?
And without exception, this was hundreds of men who were contacting this account.
Not one of them said anything about anything that was in my bio or anything about my picture.
It was just like, Sir, what you doing?
And a friend of mine is a younger woman and she sort of mocks this, you know, bars like, hey, what you drinking?
She actually mimics this lumberjack accent, like, hey, what you drinking, like, like down to a T.
And that's people coming in with I want, right?
I want to be in contact with this account, but not you get.
And in business, you know, and it's perfectly natural and there's nothing the I the I want is perfectly healthy.
There's nothing wrong with it.
But you have a great desire and thirst to go out and to get people to buy your product, to set you up as an entrepreneur.
And listen, good for you, man.
That's great.
I was just saying on the Scott Adams School today about how young men and women should get together and rather than play Catan or Fortnite, they should brainstorm about how to make money because that's what's kind of needed these days.
So life gets a whole lot better when you pivot from I want to you get, right?
So with this philosophy show, I want people to be interested in philosophy.
So I say, well, I want you to be interested in philosophy.
I want to share philosophy.
But what do you get out of it?
Now, in this case, with you, hopefully you get the kind of business advice that normally people pay thousands and thousands of dollars in consultant fees for, and you get it for free.
And everyone else who's listening to this gets it for free.
And there are no ads, right?
I'm not doing a table read for some VPN or anything like that.
So people listen to what it is that I'm doing because I will provide value, the you get stuff.
So that's just a general mindset thing for people.
If you want someone to get them to understand what you have to offer and how they're going to benefit more than anyone else.
Because if, let's say, you want to sell your software for $5,000, that's $5,000 they could give as a bonus to their best employee.
That's $5,000 they could pay to themselves or reinvest in the business or upgrade their network or something like that.
So you're in competition for all of those dollars and you have to say of those $5,000, honestly, there's no better use than you can make of it than to trade it with me.
And when you walk up to a woman, you want to date her, you say, you have to have in your mind, here are the benefits that I have to offer.
And you won't get them from anywhere else.
I'm not just someone you should go out with.
I'm the best person for you to go out with.
And you need to be able to answer that question in your own mind.
So with an entrepreneur, the I want is very clear and very powerful and very healthy and very good.
But the you get is absolutely key.
Have to think about what it's like on the other side of the table, whether that table is a hiring table, a conference table, whether it is a dining table and you're on a date.
What is the other person getting?
And if you can really think about what the other people are getting, it's almost impossible to fail in life, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it absolutely does.
And I was thinking about what you said with the cost of the kind of consultancy fee that you get for this kind of advice.
Yeah, donations have to follow accordingly as the business girls.
100% I agree with that.
Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, but that's the honor system that I like to work on is that, you know, if people do find this valuable and helpful, yeah, sure, it's nice to get donations.
And if they don't, that's fine.
I mean, I know that it's incredibly helpful advice.
And also, this is like, this is hard-won advice from 30 years as an entrepreneur.
So this isn't something I was born with.
It's something I learned quite painfully and difficultly in a difficult way over time.
But yeah, just in life, think about how your interaction benefits the other person.
Just think about, I mean, you know, in the morning, so my wife usually gets up a little bit before me because she doesn't want to face me without handing me a cup of coffee, which, you know, I can completely understand.
I don't either.
But, you know, in the morning, it's like, okay, well, how can I make my wife and my daughter's day better?
How can I make their lives happier?
How can I make their lives more enjoyable?
And if you're with the right people, then you get these wonderful overlapping circles in business or in romance or really about as positive a situation as you can be in.
Because if you do a great job, then you get referrals and people are like, oh my gosh, you know, they'll tell other people about your business.
You get that word of mouth stuff.
I mean, I can't tell you the number of people I said, this story.
I took this car in.
They had it for a day.
I thought, you know, you get that phone call.
Like, I don't know if you fear more the call from your oncologist or the call from your car mechanic.
It's sort of a toss-up.
But, you know, you go in, hey, and you go into the car mechanics and they say, how's your day?
And they're like, I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me that because you got my car.
And the fact that they fixed something for free, I mean, I told probably 20 people about that over time now, now even more.
So, yeah, just if you make other people happy and you get what you want, I mean, don't self-sacrifice yourself, of course, right?
I mean, because it's got to be mutual.
It's a universal principle.
But if you work as you work on not just I want, but here's what you get, people really, really understand that.
And, you know, if you've ever been to buy a car and the salesman, you just know they want to sell you something.
Well, how about this?
Well, how about this?
Well, how about this, right?
But whereas if they spend, you know, 20 minutes looking, asking you exactly what you want, where do you drive to, what kind of safety features do you want?
How old are your kids?
What was your last car?
What did you like about it?
What did you not like about it?
And that kind of stuff.
Like, I mean, you've heard me probably a million times on call-in shows.
I do a two and a half hour call-in show.
Sometimes I don't even give any advice till the last half hour because I just got so much information to gather.
So I'm not trying to push an agenda.
I'm really trying to get information so that I can target what it is that I'm saying.
And that is me very much, I want to provide value.
And if you go through life saying, I want to provide value, yeah, there's times occasionally you'll be ripped off or there are times when you will be exploited or whatever.
And that's fine, but that just gives you the immune system response, right?
Then you get better at identifying those kinds of people.
And it hasn't happened to me since I did that tour in Australia.
And before that, it hadn't happened for many, many years.
So yeah, just that pivot.
How can I provide value?
How can I provide value?
Cold Approaches Matter00:02:46
And imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end of your pitch.
And if being on the receiving end of your pitch means you get hard numbers and real commitments, that is very attractive because that's something to hold people's performance to.
I don't buy from people whose performance I cannot measure because how do I know if they're succeeding or not?
And how do they know if they're succeeding or not?
So I hope that makes sense.
Can I ask you about the app that you or that profile that you made?
Was it like geographically bound to some region or was it like something that anybody from anywhere could send you a message?
I'm just curious about that.
It wasn't geographically bound, but I did put a country in it, obviously.
So, no, but it wasn't geographically bound.
And I guess some of it could be bots and so on, right?
I get that, but it's going to do a show.
I'm going to show over the next little while about like if you're going to, because I've done a lot of cold calling over the course of my life, which is where you don't have any contact, you don't have any information, you just know someone's phone number and what they do.
And this, you know, a lot of dating apps and internet reach outs are cold calls.
And it's something that people have to get better at.
It's just brutal.
It's brutal being on the receiving end, I think, of these.
I was just shocked at the 100% figure of like 100% garbage.
Oh, yeah.
Well, again, one guy made one joke, but then when I, because I didn't reply, I didn't want to catfish anyone.
I didn't want to get into any conversations.
I just kind of heard from people that men's cold approach was terrible.
And I'm like, it really is.
Really?
You freaky girl?
It's like, no, no, please, for the love of God.
So I'm not saying that listeners to this fine show would be in that category, but I really do need to do a show on how to cold approach people, whether it's in business or online.
Because then there's a lot of dating app stuff.
And, you know, I'm pretty good at this kind of stuff.
I have my strengths and weaknesses, but certainly cold approaches, I'm very strong at.
I got a number of girlfriends from just walking up.
And it's not like, I mean, I was pretty good looking when I was younger, but this is even after I sort of went balding and even after I'd been in the business world for a while and it punched out a tiny bit and wasn't exactly tanned because of all that fluorescent lighting.
But yeah, there's ways to approach people that put you out from the crowd.
But yeah, I mean, why on earth would you pick someone to respond to out of this YWD?
Meeting Through Cold Approaches00:02:07
What you doing?
Hey, you know, it's like, good lord, it's like an IQ test.
This is the bottom of the barrel stuff.
100%.
Yeah, I get it.
And also, cold approaches, like in real life, sometimes they're not like 100% cold.
You can say, imagine like you were in your volleyball team, or I met my current girlfriend, I met her at an event we were with common friends there.
So that wasn't 100% cold.
You know, there's already some things that you can take away from the person that you're talking to immediately from the environment that you meet them.
So I think that's something that's and so what was your sorry, what was your approach to your girlfriend?
What did you say?
Let me try to remember exactly what he says.
Hey, you freaky girl.
How old are you?
Yeah, just kidding.
Sorry, go on.
It wasn't an event that we had with common friends, but it was at a party we were having.
And so I remember just asking, starting asking the regular Questions of what's your name and so on.
And we were doing some dancing.
And so she knew some Hungarian dances.
I'm not Hungarian, but now I'm guessing I'm learning a bit of the old madyar.
But yeah, so we were going through those things.
And she thought that I spoke very good.
There's another language that we're talking, but she thought I was native from the language I wasn't.
And so we started talking about that.
And this person.
Wait, it wasn't Spanish.
Sorry, it wasn't Chinese Scottish hieroglyphics with the Touch.
It was actually ancient Sumerian that we were.
Were you summoning a demon?
Well, you know, that's a fine pentagram you go, I would use a little bit more goat's blood if I were you, but you know, that's some pretty good rituals you got going on there.
Lifelong Learning Journey00:12:35
Maybe that, maybe that explains the success of the relationship after all, doesn't it?
That's right, baby.
Do what that will shall be the whole of the law.
All right.
Yeah, that's so that clear?
Okay, so you danced.
You said, you said, what's your name?
And you danced?
I mean, yeah, and we talked about like, we started talking about like what she likes to do and what she's doing, why she's in the city.
And then she mentioned a bunch of interests and really caught my attention that she liked history.
And she was doing this, talking about literature.
And I really found that pretty interesting.
And I ended up talking more.
And I set up a date with some cultural event that I wanted to go to.
And she came and then we kept talking.
And so that's the kind of like finding common interest was, I think, a big part of why I was interested in art.
I wasn't immediately like looks 100% attracted.
It was above the threshold for me.
But it wasn't like, oh, my goodness, this is the best looking girl in the party, you know.
Well, and how long have you guys been going?
That'll be four months.
Oh, okay.
Good.
And what decade of life?
Early 20s.
Early 20s?
Entrepreneurial.
I'm reaching mid-20s.
I'm reaching for mid-20s, like 35 still.
So that's very good.
Congratulations.
I mean, entrepreneur stuff in your 20s is absolutely the way to go.
Absolutely the way to go.
Because you can work two nights straight and just shake it off.
And, you know, your energy, your brain is at peak creativity.
Like, amazing stuff is happening.
It's like parenting and entrepreneurship should all be done in the early to mid-20s, if at all possible, because that's when you bounce back the most.
So I started 27 or so, 28.
I was a little bit behind the curve as far as all of that stuff went.
And it would have been beneficial to be slightly younger when all-nighters are no big deal.
And the enthusiasm and the creativity and all of that are just tip top.
Well, that's great.
I certainly wish you guys the best.
Is there anything else?
I have nothing else, but I just wanted to mention that I can't take full credit for the decision because we did talk before and you told me to do to follow business.
So I can't take full, full credit for having decided that, but it was something that I also wanted to do.
And I think that's why I was attracted to your show too.
All the freedom stuff that you keep hammering on.
So I think I can't take 100% credit for that, but thank you very much.
And I want to move on to the next caller also taking up all the time.
All right.
I appreciate that.
And I hope you'll keep us posted about how things are going.
And feel free to call back in if there's any other advice that would be handy.
All right.
Thanks, brother.
And, you know, another thing that I kind of like about being able to do this kind of show is that I do get this really great opportunity to pass along to others what was not passed along to me.
Like there's this guy on YouTube who teaches fatherless children the basics of manhood, you know, like how to shave and how to choose a suit and things that your moms, your single moms can't really help you with.
It's really, really nice stuff.
And I remember, oh, yeah, my brother was gone for a couple of years in my early teens.
And so when shaving hit, I didn't know how to shave.
And I didn't have any male relatives around that could help me out.
So my mom couldn't help me out.
So I ended up going to the library and looking it up.
It's a bizarre thing to look up because you had to use like index cards.
And it's like there's a book called How to Shave.
I ended up getting how to shave from some old life magazine.
I can't even remember why there was an article about it.
But when I got into the business world, I had economics.
I had self-knowledge.
I'd read a lot of psychology, philosophy, and economics.
So I had some of the basics down.
But the general mindset of how to succeed in relationships, of course, I didn't grow up around relationships that were successful.
There was one family I knew that had a good marriage.
And unfortunately, the man died sadly young.
But of course, if you know a family with a good marriage, it's not like they're sitting down with you and say, well, well, kid, friend of our kids, this is how you have a good marriage.
They're not doing any of that.
And so unfortunately, all those secrets went to the grave with them.
But I'm trying sort of as best I can, you know, these sort of fairly brutally hard-won lessons from the world of dating and business and friendship and family and virtue and all of that.
I'm trying as best I can to get this information across because I've had this sort of general thought.
It's really been growing in me over the last couple of months just because I'm, you know, in the process of winding up.
I mean, it's actually been wound up for a while, but sort of the final touch is on immediate parenting because my daughter is going to be 18 this year and all of that, right?
So it has been pretty wild for me over the process of parenting, and I think this is true for a lot of people, to just realize, holy crap, was I ever not parented?
Was I ever not tutored?
I got no wisdom.
I got no virtues.
I got no values.
I got no mindset training.
I got no success training.
My business training was like trying to build a plane while it's taking off from the runway, just frantic bolting and hyperwork and focus and all that kind of stuff.
And wow, was I ever untutored?
And did I ever have to invent things from the ground up?
It's like this guy, there's a video, I think it's on YouTube or other places, where a guy decides to make a chicken sandwich from scratch, right?
Like he grows, he hatches the egg, he grows the chicken, and he makes the wheat and he grows the tomato and makes the mayo.
And it takes him like six months to make one chicken sandwich.
And I sort of feel like assembling my life was kind of similar in that I got no instruction.
I didn't find religious instruction to be helpful to me at all, like not even a tiny bit.
Not even a tiny, tiny bit.
There's nothing that I got from years of religious instruction.
And especially in boarding school, we went sometimes twice a week to church.
I was in the choir, as I've mentioned, and we were in Sunday school, and I got nothing.
I remember some stories, but nothing of practical value.
I didn't have any exposure to businessmen who could teach me anything about business or entrepreneurship.
Of course, the last place you're going to find an entrepreneur is as a teacher because the two are complete opposites.
One wants, you know, pig snow to the trough, security, and the other one wants dancing on the nebulae, risk and excitement.
There's really opposite mindsets.
And I got no advice on relationships.
And I got no advice.
I mean, even on the basics.
For me, unfortunately, it was even down to like basic personal hygiene.
Like I had to have a friend of mine's father say, hey, man, you've got to start using deodorant, blah, blah, blah.
And I didn't get any instruction.
You don't really smell yourself, right?
So I just, I was like crazy untutored.
I mean, which is good in a way, right?
Because philosophy is about starting with a blank slate, right?
You start with nothing.
You start with nothing.
Blank slate, blank whiteboard, nothing there.
And you build up from nothing.
So the fact that I was untutored gave me kind of a lot of blank space to start filling in.
I mean, they tried to, I mean, everybody tried to indoctrinate me, but I, that never really, I mean, society and its teachers and its gods and its governments and its police and its principals and its guidance counselors had absolutely no credibility with me whatsoever.
No credibility with me whatsoever.
Because of my experiences as a child and other things too, but I just didn't believe that society knew anything about truth or virtue at all.
I mean, it just seemed like a whole pompous pantomime of pretending to be good.
So I had what seemed kind of a yawning chasm when I started out in life, but however difficult that was, I got to reason from first principles because there was nothing written.
I mean, imagine trying to do equations when there are a bunch of equations already painted on the whiteboard, like painted.
You can't wipe them off, right?
Then you got to write around them and it's kind of confusing.
You've got to remember where you were.
Was that me or was that them?
It gets all blended and messed up.
I started with two plus two equals four.
That's it.
Everything after that was blank in my mind.
So I did get to build up from, I didn't have to adapt an existing building.
I didn't have to embellish an existing tune.
I started with nothing.
And having built things up from nothing to something, it's given me a lot of detail and value that otherwise wouldn't be there.
And I just, boy, do I ever not want you guys to have to go through that whole process.
Starting from scratch.
It would be like, it would be like having to invent your own language every generation.
You just couldn't really progress.
And, you know, something, I don't know when the last generation was.
So my parents were born in the 1930s.
I was born in the 1960s.
And I can't honestly remember, my friends.
I cannot remember anybody who had anything really of value to offer me growing up.
Certainly in school, no.
In church, no.
Among Christians, no.
Among parents, adults.
Again, there was this one family that seemed pretty good, but they weren't telling me about all of these sorts of things that I needed to know.
Not any big fault for them, but that's just sort of the reality of the situation.
In university, there was a woman who taught me a full-year course on Aristotle.
She was pretty good.
I did a lot of voluntary papers and we'd sit there in her office chatting away about them and all of that.
So I appreciate that.
That was good.
Not really much of anything else.
In theater school, some useful stuff, but it was too hostile and Marxist an environment for me to relax and enjoy.
And they hated me because of my capitalist economics and absolutist moral perspectives and so on, right?
They just, so, you know, we didn't get along at all.
It was very contentious and oppositional place, which is pretty tough for creativity as a whole.
And in the business world, I mean, I got a little bit here and there, but not much.
I really had to sort of just read endless books and articles and think.
And, oh my gosh, I was thinking till like blood is running out of my nose.
And I don't know when it was that people gave up on teaching the young in the West, but they sure as hell did.
They sure as hell, they just, I think back like I took years and years and years of history.
I remember nothing.
British North America Act, 1867.
Like, I remember almost nothing from years and years and years of history.
I remember very little from math other than, of course, the basics.
English, yeah, I got some value out of it, but mostly because it exposed me or had me read good books, really good books.
That's all gone now.
Of course, now it's all Tony Morrison and Why Some Caged Bird Sings and Sylvia Plath writing herself continually out of suicide and then failing.
So nothing.
Man, I got nothing from society and I had to invent everything from scratch.
And I don't want you guys to have to go through that process, which is why I've spent, you know, 20 years plus trying to squeeze all of the lessons that I had to brutally learn over the first 40 years of my life so that you guys don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you need to get somewhere.
Please Check Tomorrow Night00:01:26
All right.
I think, do we have any other callers?
Doesn't have to be a long call.
We'll be talking tomorrow night on the video live stream.
So I hope you will check that out.
WordwarDebate.com.
Don't forget to check that out.
And on X and YouTube, I think it's at Scott Adams Says.
Scott Adams School, right?
It's not Scott Adams, the live stream as it used to be.
It's Scott Adams School, which is by his request to continue things going.
And so I hope you would check those out.
Freedomain.com slash denate to help out the show.
Lots of love, my friends.
Take care.
I really, really, really humbly and deeply and gratefully appreciate your interest, your support, your questions, and your curiosity.
Please, please, please know that you are treasured by me every day that I do what I'm doing.
And probably for at least 12 minutes after I'm dead.
All right.
We'll see you tomorrow night, 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Lots of love, my friends.
Oh, and freedomain.com slash call if you want to set up a public or private call.
It's funny because I've been doing these things for like 20 plus years.
And I think next week I only have a couple.
So if you want to, now's a good time if you want to, you want to get in there because it's rare for things to open up like this.
So if you want to do that.
And if you can't do it in the times that I have set up, just shoot me an email, support at freedomain.com, and we'll work something out.