Bonus Episode: Things I’ve Never Talked About Before
01:28:02 Share

What in the world is going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Listen, I hope you're doing well wherever this happens to find you. And today we're gonna do something a little different.

I do interviews on other podcasts all of the time, like all podcasts from all over the planet. Some of them you've heard, some of them you have not heard. But recently I was a guest on a podcast that was so great. I asked if I could just drop the entire episode as a bonus episode in my podcast feed.

My friend Ken Coleman just came out with a brand new show called Front Row Seat. And I don't say this lightly. I think he's the best interviewer in the world. He's been doing this for like 20 years and he interviews people from all over the world, presidents, rock stars, athletes. He's just the best of the best of the best. And I got to be one of the first guests on his brand new show. He asked me questions I have never been asked before. And he's...

I don't mean this in the proctology kind of way, but he's a prober. He's good at asking the question behind the question behind the question. We talked about everything from why people aren't having kids to workplace affairs to why I'm really freaking out about AI, why my wife isn't. And we talked about so much.

As you can imagine, things got off the rails in a good way. There's audience participation. It's just kind of a rad show. I've never really been a part of anything like it. And I ended up talking about things I've never talked about on any other podcast. I don't even think on this show. So anyway, I didn't want you all to miss it. So I asked, hey, can I just drop this in there? And he and his team said, rock on, dude. So do me a favor. Give it a listen and go check out Front Row Seed. It's a brand new show on YouTube, wherever you get podcasts.

I'm hyped for you to hear it. Thank you all so much. I love you all. Enjoy this bonus episode of Front Row Seat with me and my friend, Ken Coleman. Rock on. I left the back door open. We pulled into the driveway. My dad looks at me and he said, I knew it. He pulls a gun out.

85% of affairs start at work. Workplace, baby. When does risking, not just your marriage, but your job. I got some hot takes on this. The hardest battles are fought in your own mind. Mental health expert and bestselling author, Dr. John Deloney doesn't sugarcoat the truth. His published works and top performing podcast help people break free from past trauma and live whole resilient lives that aren't about avoiding hardship, but facing it head on.

My wife came downstairs in the basement and she said, I'm watching my husband die and I'm watching him cheer the whole way. The stuff that makes us human, all that goes away. The times in history when that's happened, it ends very poorly. We've created a world our bodies weren't designed to live in. And this is the exclamation point at the end of that sentence. My biggest aha moment of studying marriage over the last year has been... Somebody said this in a meeting and I was stunned. This is the data. 85% of affairs...

Start at work. Work place, baby. One in five employees confess to being unfaithful with a colleague. When does risking, not just your marriage and your relationship with your kids, but your job. Yeah. We're talking about this feels like a massive risk. Yeah. What's going on there? So we've created the loneliest generation in human history, and we've taken that to our homes.

And we've asked our spouses to be everything. They have to be co-earners, co-parents, co-house runners. You have to be hot until you're 95 and still sleeping together. You have to like the same things, go to the same things, eat the same things. No human being can bear the weight that unskilled modern marriage is putting on a single person. And so what you have is

Two people who are good at co-managing the house. I'll get little league practice. You get this. I'll make sure we call the plumber. I'll get the trash out. And you have absolutely no shared purpose or building anything together. And life becomes so quick and so fast. And then I go to work and me and you and two amazing women are working together on a project that's going to help 10 million people.

Now we have shared purpose. We're talking about how we feel about things. We have a goal. We have metrics. I'm spending more time with her or him than I am with my spouse. That's right. And the time we're spending together is rich. We're laughing, telling jokes. Oh, my gosh. Of course it happens at work. Right, because you're not getting it somewhere. And so now all of a sudden you start to project that, and you might actually get it from another unhealthy worker. That's what I'm hearing. Right.

Because my point is, don't we know that that's a risk and yet we still go, oh, I just feel so good? It doesn't matter. It's oxygen. Because of the intoxication. It's oxygen. Right. It's oxygen. Yeah. How many of us go home and we pull into our street and you just, right? Right. And so it's worth everything. It's all positive at work. It's worth everything. I'm picturing this. But even when it's negative, y'all are negative together. Right. Right.

It's y'all two versus the boss. It's y'all two versus the customer. It's y'all two versus salesman. Right. And by the way, everybody's got their makeup on. Everybody looks pretty good. That's right. We're smiling. We're joking. We're flirting, whatever. They don't see your snot rags by the bed. They don't see you not flush the toilet. They don't see any of the stuff that makes you you. It feels like when I saw this data, John, I guess that's what I'm asking. I don't want to be judgmental. I'm not judging. But I'm wondering—

Because what I want to get to is how do we guard against this? I was raised in a world where it's like you never ride in a car with a woman that's not your spouse. I was raised in a world like you don't have a meeting in a room with a closed door, like all those things. And thankfully, Dave and I are exactly the same on that. But that was drilled into me. That seems insane.

To a lot of people. I will tell you, there will be people who watch this and it will immediately create conversation, which I'm fine with. But then when we get back to the data, we have got to guard ourselves to the point that if I find a female coworker attractive, I have got to put a boundary up in my opinion. Yeah. Agree or disagree? I think for me—

It's, it's, I get those boundaries are great and they're good. I think everybody has to check themselves wherever they happen to be. And I think we've hit the pendulum really far in unsafe ways, right? Or not unsafe, but it's not smart. It's not smart. If you're attracted to somebody, don't go to lunch with them, right? Those are some low hanging fruit things. For me, I think that's symptomatic. If me and my wife were building something together and my chief purpose is here, then work becomes a thing I do.

And you become an amazing, beautiful woman. And you become an amazing, attractive... Like if this guy right here walks into any room I'm in, I'm going to feel safer. He's handsome. He's humongous. He's got great muscles. Great job. I'll just feel safer, right? Right. And so I think to not believe that's real is me not telling myself the truth. Right. It is, right? The other side of it is...

it doesn't impact me in any way because what I'm building is here. So I think you can build these things and I think they're wise and important and everybody's got their different boundaries.

this is where I wish more people focused. Right. Well, you got to have a healthy, that's right. However, I just want to point out that there's no question there's some unhealthiness going on. And so now it's medication. But I also think we could all do ourselves a favor. I'm speaking on behalf of guys. Yes. Okay. This will be shocking to everybody what I reveal right now, but I have no idea what it's like to be a woman. But I do know what it's like to be a guy. And as a guy, I don't care how healthy my relationship is. Yeah.

Guys are guys. Right. We're simple creatures. Yeah. And a woman can be completely innocent in anything she says or does. Right.

But as a dude, if she's attractive to you, you can misunderstand it and act like adult. Yes. And that's why – I think nowadays that's flipped too, right? I agree. Again, I'm only speaking – Sure, yeah, yeah. I'm only speaking as a dude here on that. So I think it's really important, but I think that this is scary stuff. Yeah. And people are blowing up their life. I think you recognizing that.

Or calling that out is I think it's the most important thing and working back like it blows up everything. Everything. And divorce has become so common. I can't tell you how many calls I take on weekends and at nighttime. Somehow somebody got my cell number and they call and we talk. I'm three months into divorce proceedings. I had no idea it would hurt this bad.

I didn't know idea that my kids won't look at me. I didn't know idea that I have to make this choice now. And I could see my daughter three days a week. And so it happens so much that we think it's just routine. Right. And I think understanding how tragic, how devastating divorce is. And, and you're going to get a bunch of comments on this. They're like, it was the best thing that happened to my house. It wasn't. No, I agree with you. When people ask like, should we stay together for the kids? Even though like, no, fix your marriage. Yeah. Fix your, like,

Go back and have that conversation. I just don't, you can't like fix that. Yeah. Right. As though it's some foregone conclusion. Yeah. And then the other side of it is you'll blow up your career. Yeah. You will be the, the man or woman who I can't trust you. If I can't trust you with that, if he can't trust you, how can I trust it? Right. And I think,

We don't think through those things. Yeah. And so recognizing how devastating it is, then maybe the right boundary for you is, dude, I don't even go in the same room. Yeah. Like, because that's what happens. The whole thing blows up. All right. Let's talk about another massive issue in the workplace. And that is...

the stress levels in the American workplace. You and I have talked a lot about this. There is this weird dynamic between a stressed out leader and then how they dump that stress on the people they work with. This is not to dump on leaders because you and I both work with leaders. We speak to leaders. We love leaders. Yeah.

But I want you to comment on this as a guy who's smack dab in the middle of mental health stuff all the time. For the person who is leading right now, let's start with leaders for a second. I want to get your quick perspective. The person who's leading, and maybe they're not very healthy. What do they need to hear from you right now on the impact they're having on people? I got some hot takes on this. Is that okay? Yeah, I'd like quick and hot. Let's go. Let's dig into this.

When it comes to the leader, if you can't treat your people with dignity and respect and you can't tell them the truth, please, for God's sakes, quit because you're ruining their kids' lives. Love that. You're ruining their teachers of their kids' lives because teachers have to deal with that kid. You're ruining the police officers' lives who have to put on a bulletproof vest and pray to God they don't get shot when they show up at that house at night because nobody slept. Yeah.

Quit your job. Stop. Because you're a massive domino. You are crushing communities with how you treat people, period. And so I think – so there's that on that side. Quit your job. Stop. If you ever think I have to yell at an employee, quit. Get out of the system because you're hurting people. Stop. Right? That's not – don't have high expectations. Don't have high demands. Don't like –

Require hard work right that's of course you do all that stuff, right? But make sure you create an environment so the seeds can grow if you plant a bunch of seeds and you stomp them out every day And then you blame them for not growing. That's just it's it's insane. Stop. Here's the other side and this is the other hot take I think that information is more telling about the state of the US worker than it is about leader and here's why we have

We pulled the strings and we've done this in the last 50 years. And so in, on a timeline, it's a, it's a blink of an eye, right? It's this fast. We pulled the thread on faith. The biggest church, we pulled the thread on like, we all mostly believed when we went to the doctor, they're trying to help us. We don't believe that anymore. We mostly believed politicians lie and they're crazy, but that they want what's best for, we don't believe that anymore.

We thought when I sent my kid to school that they would come home and not get killed at school and that the teachers weren't teaching them banant. I don't believe that anymore. And so overnight, we've pulled the thread on everything that holds the tapestry that holds societies together. And the only place we get together with a shared common mission anymore is a workplace.

And now the workplace has to tell us how to treat people who don't look like us with dignity and respect. That's insane. That should be taught to you by your parents and your grandparents and your church. We don't do that. The workplace has to have meetings about how to be sexually appropriate because our parents and our families and our churches didn't have those conversations. The workplace holds everything. But most important, the workplace holds, we've outsourced our worth. Like you hear me say this on my show, probably every show, you're worth being well.

Like, you have to believe that you're worth that because we outsource it to work. And then when you outsource that to work, and by the way, you're indebted up to your eyeballs on a car payment, a house payment, whatever. I'm so desperate for A, your approval, and B, I've outsourced my well-being for my, like. That's right. I've outsourced my roof and my food to you. Please, please, please. That's right. And so I've given you.

permission to drag me around now. Does that make sense? It does. And I will say this, and we've got to understand there's two things you can do. When you're in a situation where your leader, your boss, is

is so unhealthy in their own world, personally, and as well if they've not been trained well professionally, because that's a big issue. I say this a lot. Bad bosses doesn't make a bad person. They're not always bad people. Some of my greatest friends are bad leaders. I wouldn't work with them. Here's what you got to do. You have two responses. One,

You say, all right, I can't do this under them, and I'm going to find another place, and I'm going to be patient, and I'm going to find a healthy culture because it does exist. Absolutely. All right. The second thing is, wait a second, and I love what you just said. I'm not going to give them the power that I've always given them. In other words, if I learn how to –

Serenity prayer, right? Change the things that I can, the courage to accept the things I cannot, and you work on getting better at it. In other words, if it's not abusive, if it's not toxic, there's a difference between abuse and toxic leadership. Correct.

Sometimes it's just bad. That's right. But can I learn how to navigate that for the season of life I'm in? And I'm saying that because I want a lot of people to realize option two is far more readily available than people realize, but we don't use it. That's right. And I want people to understand if you can learn how to get healthy yourself or get some tools to be able to deal with a difficult person, hello, our friend Henry Cloud and boundaries and things of that nature, you can still succeed. But I love what you said. We've given too much.

To our leaders. We rely on them for too much. You and I, like, we co-host another show and we teach people how to, like, get out of debt, right? That sounds cool and it sounds funny. And Dave Ramsey's, you know, is like a, can be a meme and it can be a whole thing, right? We know that. But there's something beneath that, that when another grown man tells me, you will do what I, and I go, I'm not. Right. Oh, yeah.

Because I'm not outsourcing my dignity to you. And because I drove a Corolla for 14 years and my wife and I lived, like our mortgage person made fun of us back in Texas. She was a close friend of ours. She's like, hey, you qualify for this. Will you stop being embarrassing? And I said, no, no, no. We're going to buy that house. Because of that, now I can walk through my life. And for me, it's easier.

to do the serenity prayer when I know I can just walk right out the door. And it's not easy and it's not an overnight fix. For me and my wife, it was 15 years. It sucked. It was not great.

But man, you know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no question that financial freedom makes this, dealing with this a lot easier. You're right. But on the other end, like, you and I talk about it all the time. I came with this idea for these little, I thought it was a unique idea. It turns out it wasn't. They're everywhere. But conversation starter cards. Like, I've got an email that I saved. It's hilarious. That Dave Ramsey was like, you're wasting my time and my money. And like, I don't remember what it was. It was a funny response email. Like, this is not a, why are we doing this? Yeah. And then he...

has multiple times said yeah i was wrong i was wrong with a lot of zeros on the end of that one right it ended up being a great sure a thing that helps people and it sold a lot of products and so like but when he said when not him but when the whole thing was i feel like i'm fighting my company to do a thing that i believe in it wasn't a moral ethical thing it was the thing i wanted to do and they didn't want to do it right dude my wife loves me and my kids like me that's right

And I've got four same knuckleheaded buddies. Right, who have no clue about any of that. That's where my anchor is. Yeah, I agree with that. God loves me. That's where my anchor is. This other stuff. Yeah. Well, that's a good segue. U.S. Surgeon General under the Biden administration, this is a direct quote, widespread loneliness in the U.S. poses health risks as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Yeah.

costing the health industry billions of dollars annually. I would also say a little bit of research would yield that there's billions of dollars of productivity being lost in American companies as well. I would say hundreds of billions. That's right. Loneliness increases the risk of premature death by nearly 30%, and it's revealed that poor social relationships had a greater risk of stroke and heart disease.

So people that just have very, very poor relationships, meaning non-existent or the ones that exist are very unhealthy. That's unbelievable. The greatest cause of loneliness is often considered to be a lack of meaningful social connections. This was interesting. It went on to list several factors. I'm bringing this one up because one of them was transitions. Mm-hmm.

You talk a lot about the digital stuff and the phones, and it was one of the main causes, which is, you know, we can just be distracted by all of our electronic and digital devices. But the one that stood out to me was transitions. A close buddy of mine is a psychology professor back in Texas. He asked a question one time, and it haunts me still. He said, what if we lived our lives every day like we couldn't move? What conversations would we have? How would we forgive ourselves?

What little annoyances would we let fly by? But a conversation you and I have a lot, we've created this world that our bodies weren't designed to live in. We can all pack up and move. There's companies that'll come pack up and move for you and your new company will pay them to do it. It's so trans, like everything's transitory, but we have to remember, do we have these little tiny bodies that were designed to live in small tribes forever and to go around? And if your body woke up and realized that,

Let me say it this way. If your body recognizes you don't have anybody that you're all you've got, it would be failing you if it let you sleep all night because you're all you got. It would be failing you if it let you have a deep, connected, sexual moment, intimate time with your husband or wife because it's not time for sex. It's time to not die. You don't have anybody. And then we blame, oh, you got anxiety. Oh, you're not eating well. Oh, you're like...

All of this stuff, in my opinion, distills down to a brain that is screaming, you are all you've got. And if you have to be responsible for provision and security and rest and children and your body says we can't sleep because we're on now and you can't do it. One of those is you just pack up and move.

That's one. So I was thinking about that. So meaningful connection, it's not happening because of a transition. So maybe you've moved across country or one state over or a county over. Mm-hmm.

Then there's your kids change schools. I've been through that one. When you're a parent of a kid and you get locked into a school, there's community that you just become a part of. And then you transition. Now it's like, oh. And so Stacy and I went through that. We had great community at our oldest son's school.

Our middle son was there. He decides he wants to go to another school. He does. And I remember showing up the first couple of football games and we were just kind of like, Stacy and I together felt like, oh, I just don't know anybody. We sat over here. So I'm pointing this out to say, if you're watching this or listening and you're in a state of transition, maybe divorce, whatever the transition is, I'm going from here to here.

That jumped out to me, John, because I think we kind of look at the other culprits of lack of meaningful connections. That jumped out to me to make sure— You have to go first, and you have to be weird, and you have to treat it as serious as the pending stroke that it is. So what's that look like? Give us a real practical—pick a transition, go first. What's that look like? So I moved from Texas. I lived in Texas 40 years. And—

Like so much so that when I told my family, my dad and my mom, and they lived a couple hours from us, so we were all pretty close. Hey, I'm moving out. Like my dad had like a, oh, you're moving that at Texas. I mean, it was that kind of like, hey, you know, Al Qaeda is waiting for you at the Oklahoma border. And like, you don't leave Texas. Right. And so we moved here. It was priority numero uno. I have to have a couple of guys that I meet with all the time.

For breakfast, for going for walks, for lifting, for something. I have to have that. And here's another hot take. I don't think that's best at work because if you're best friends with the people you work with, that is so amazing until it's not. And if all of your human connection is at the workplace and one of you gets let go, one of you gets downsized, one of you gets demoted, one of you...

is a great friend but just can't do this particular job as it's morphed and you need to do it. You used to go to concerts together, you used to go to church together, your kids used to play together. Now you can't go to concerts, now you can't go to the same church. Like it blows up everything. So it's good to be friends and colleagues, but you have to do the hard work of having friends outside of this place where you don't have to be on. You can say, I know it's inappropriate, but it's real funny. Look at this, right? Where you can say,

Dude, my dad said he'd want me to come home for Thanksgiving. I remember distinctly, one, two, three, four, maybe four jobs ago, having a hard conversation. I was working at a faith-based university and I was going through like a gnarly season of, I don't think this is real anymore. I'm wasting my time. What I know now is a normal late 20s, early 30s guy trying to figure out what he believes.

that hard conversation was honest and vulnerable. And that guy told one guy, told another guy, ended up in a performance review, right? And so what I, my immature response was, I just didn't tell anybody anything for another 10 years. And then I almost blew up everything at my house, right? So that's a dumb response. So when you go to a new place,

You'll call the electrician, the electric company to turn your electricity on. You'll turn your water on. You have to then take it that serious. Yeah. We got to start inviting people over. I agree. We got to go meet our neighbors. We got to go like in right now is a researcher out of Florida State. His name is Thomas Joyner and he is one of the most renowned suicide researchers. And he talks about a three-legged stool and there's been some debate about it. But when you're trying to do a suicide assessment, is this person actually going to hurt themselves? Right.

And we know about means, do they have an ability, do they have a bottle of pills, do they have a weapon, like do they have that? And there's multiple conversations, but here's the one that stuck out at me. Perceived burdensomeness. When you get in your mind and in your body that those who love me would be better, the greatest gift I could give them is to not be here. Other people's lives would be better if I'm not here. And you want to go one step removed? Look at the culture we've created overnight.

If I called, not you, but if I called you at 11, it's like, hey, will you give me a ride to the airport real quick? Or you called me. My first thought would be to just Uber, right? Sure. I don't ask my neighbor for eggs anymore because I just Instacart it. I don't ask somebody to help me move. I just hire some guys. And so now we have created a world where we think we're a burden for everything. And that begins to weigh on, I'm not going to call them, dude. I don't want, ah, dude, I'm not going to bother them with anything.

And now we know the greatest gift I can give Ken is, hey, you got five seconds. Can you help me think through this? Yeah. Right? That's right. The greatest gift I can get is when one of my buddies calls. If somebody calls and asks me to move, I don't want to be your friend. But other than that, that's the worst, right? Yeah. There's got to be something. But like to feel needed is like a core human need. Yeah. And so we've taken that out and we have made it all a transaction. That's right. And so we're all walking around with this underlying low-level hum that we're

We bother other people. Yeah. And it would be better if we just did this. Yeah. And then we move. Then I'm not going to bother my new neighbor. I'm not going to. You have to or your body's going to implode on itself. It's just that simple. So good. I'm glad we covered that. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've probably heard people talk about different kinds of flags in relationships. Red flags, green flags, even beige flags.

It's hard enough to keep track of what they're all supposed to mean. Much less keep them in mind when you're trying to balance relationships with health, family, and work. So here's a tip. Don't waste time on arbitrary labels. Just focus on the values you share with the people in your life. Stuff like faith, honesty, communication, and work ethic. And if you're not even sure what your values are, therapy can help you figure them out.

find what you're looking for in your relationships, and decide your non-negotiables. That's why I recommend BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy with licensed therapists. That means you can talk with your therapist when it's convenient for your schedule. Just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a therapist. Plus, you can switch providers at any time for no additional cost. So,

Whether you're dating, married, finding friends, or just working on yourself, do it with help from BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash ken to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash ken.

All right, let's go to a question right back here. Okay, John, so you mentioned twice other men in your life. Once was when your dad transitioned from being a cop to a pastor. He kind of pushed you to go find those other men. And then also just even after your transition to Nashville, how did you find the men that you would call your close friends? Like what did you look for in those people? I tried to find people that I could add value to.

And I tried to always keep in check this sense that I'm not worthy to be in this conversation. So I know there's a common like Instagrammy thing, like find the 10 guys that you want to be one day and you go see what you can learn from that. I think that turns every human interaction into an ROI, to a 401k. I'm going to put this in and hopefully I get this out of it. And I think that's the death of true relationships. So yeah.

The joke around here that's not a joke was I had an 18-month ramp-up plan for this new job. I'd never been on the radio. I'd never been on podcast. I didn't know anything about this. I joined here late January 2020. The world melts down in March. And then just a few months later, Dave Ramsey's like, I hired you to help hurting people. Everybody's hurting. We're going to figure this out on the air.

So my first time on the radio was on the second largest radio show in America. Okay. The very first episode, maybe the second one, he said something and I don't remember what it was about, but I remember saying, that's not right. And you could feel the, and I didn't know enough to know. You don't tell Dave Ramsey on the Dave Ramsey show. That's not right. It started a great conversation. He loved it. The audience was like, who's this guy? But here's the most important thing.

I didn't, I wanted to add value to what I was doing. That's what I thought I got hired to do. And I didn't put my self-worth into whether this other guy likes me. My wife likes me and my friends like me and my kids like me. And so I think when you are trying to find other men in your life, other women in your life, those that we want to hang out with feel the globbyness of, you know what I mean? They feel it.

instead of... Nice shoes, man. And you might get some...

but there will be a guy that's like dude that guy like that's my guy does that make sense does that make sense um and so i think where can i add value to something okay let me help you with your yard or i've got a neighbor who's doing a thing like hey let me watch your house while you're gone he doesn't know me right but now he knows oh you're the kind of guy that offers to watch my house when i'm gone right hey you're kind of creepy but also you're probably my guy right and so i think it's how can you add value to somebody's life

And maybe the other way to say it is just be a good person. Right? But then the other thing is you've got to go be weird. Yeah, you've got to be friendly. You've got to go be weird. And then figure out who do I actually want to be friends with. All right. I'll put you on the spot. Okay? Just describe. It doesn't have to be fancy. What do you want?

from another guy friend? What do you want the experience to be when you're hanging out with them? Yeah, so I've thought about this a good bit. I would say, I would describe good friends are friends that are going to risk the relationship for the good of the relationship.

And the way that would play out is someone who's willing to make me feel uncomfortable for my good. Because at any point, if they make me uncomfortable, I can just up and leave and don't have to address it. But a lot of times, it's those friends that are willing to do that that I know are true, like, very good friends. And...

It's like friends that do that are rare because not many people want to have those conversations that are going to make you good as a person or make you better. But the times that I have had friends do that for me that in the moment, not appreciative of it, later on – Well, I'll just say real quick to that. The reason I asked that question is because now you know what you –

So now you know what you're looking for. And those friends are going to be very rare because you need a truth teller. Someone who's very blunt. They're very comfortable with confrontation because confrontation doesn't require anger.

confrontation is just simply, I'm going to confront what I see and what I hear, and I'm going to throw my point of view at it. So not everybody's comfortable with that. So as you begin to navigate relationships with other men out there, you ask enough questions. You're so inquisitive that you figure out pretty quickly, oh, this guy, he's not that.

So if you're needing somebody like that in your life, you got to search them out. But the way you do it is not walk around going, hey, what's your level of confrontation? How do you feel about that? No, it's just you're finding out, okay, where would some of those men be, by the way? But I also think you have to be the guy. You got to have the reputation of the guy that will tell the truth. I got to tell the truth. That's right, because you'll attract...

I get what you're saying. Not like, I'm going to call out, I'm a guy who calls out. Right. No, I'm just a guy that tells the truth. If I say something dumb, Kim will be like, that's absurd. Right. And...

not because like Ken's a guy that calls out friends, but it's like Ken just tells the truth, which is why I love Kent, right? Like I know who's gonna tell me the truth, even if it's different than what I think, right? And I think, but that's who you are out in the world. That's fair. So I think that idea there, it's- Yeah, and I just add one thing, like sounds like you've done this before, but vulnerability and honesty is an attractive quality. And it's kind of getting to what you were saying, where you have to search out those people and have real relationships to find people that are honest and honest.

like vulnerability is honesty. That's right. But I think you have to flip that and I got to go first. Yeah. A hundred percent. I wrote that down. I can't say that enough. And you got to do it enough. Right. Not just go first, but keep showing up. So I think, so let's take someone like is well-known and famous and powerful, if he was Davis. Like my dad loves me. My wife loves me. So I don't need that from him.

What I need is a trustworthy boss, a trustworthy leader who's going to lead the company. And I need someone to teach me the ropes, right? I don't know how to play guitar. And now I'm all of a sudden on stage and he handed me a guitar. I don't know how to do this. And also I happen to be by one of the most well-known financial minds of the world. So he's my, like, right. And he needs me to tell him the truth. If he calls something on the radio, I'm like, I don't think that's right. And so there's this, I'm not afraid to be like, dude, I don't even know what you just said.

And I didn't know enough. He would go through this long explanation of a mutual fund on air. And I'd be like, hey, could you say that? This is on air. Could you say that like I was a fourth grader? Because I don't really understand what you just said.

Then they're like, dude, the audience loves that because sometimes they, and so it's, I'm not scared to look dumb in front of him because I haven't outsourced. Please tell me that I've got value. That's not his job in my life. Right. Which allows us to get closer and closer and closer. And now I consider him a great friend and he's wise and he's helped me with some really gnarly stuff in my personal life, but it's because I'm not scared to look dumb. Right. But it's like going back to going first, but all of it, it like works on a dominoes. Like that's because this stuff at home is okay. And yeah,

That allows me to go out and be like, yeah. So I want to dig, and this is fun because while I know you and I know a good amount about you, I do not know about specific pain from your past. And I really believe that our pain, of course, shapes us, but I know it drives a lot of people like us. And I'm sitting here today going, in the middle of therapy, going, my drive is

is completely from some past pain. So I want to know, what drives you? What is it? The thing that drives me probably, if I were to take a 30,000-foot view, is kind of an obsession with making sure my son, who's 14, and my daughter, who's nine, never enter into a space in this world where they don't know they can't come home.

And that starts with saying the right things and doing the right things. But that also starts with me not being radioactive, right? And so what that means is I've had to do a lot of heart therapy. I've had to admit to some stuff that I want to talk about, right? I've had to be honest about stuff that happened to me as a kid. I've had to do the work to heal. And then I've had to learn, like, go down a rabbit hole to learn the stuff. So that's probably the biggest one. The second one is...

just sitting behind closed doors with people who've had everything, who've got everything, right? And it kind of happened accidentally 20-something years ago. And I think most people are pretty good. I think most people are doing the best they can. And when situations rise up, they open their toolkit and they don't have a, they don't have, they have a hammer and a chisel. It's all they got. And so they try to solve problems with what they have.

And so I think where you have a culture that tells you why you're wrong and tells you what you're doing wrong and you said the wrong thing and now you get in trouble for thought crimes. Now you can't think something. You can't ask a question anymore. And –

I just think it's important to provide a picture for here's what it looks like to not have all the answers, but to provide a picture of what it looks like to sit with hurting people. And I don't think we have that picture anymore, right? Like I don't want to yell at my kids anymore. I don't even know what that would mean to not do that. I don't have an alternative. I keep going in my bag. That's all I got.

So I think to answer your question, like to help other dads, to help other moms, to help other folks have a picture for what it looks like, right? There's the Andes, there's the Hubermans of the world who are brilliant neuroscientists. They know how to do all that stuff. That's awesome. I want to apply that so a single mom with two kids can know how I can do this one thing better with my kid.

So those are the things I think that drive me. Yeah, that's the motivation. I'm asking you. So the pull, the boat I get dragged behind is my sister was a savant and my little brother was real smart and I was a stupid kid. I was the jock. My dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator. And so I lost every argument I was ever in my entire life. And I learned. I will learn how to dance with words.

My mom was told at the family she grew up in, she was not allowed to go to college. You will not go. You are a, you, in their particular fate, like you have a role and it is to not be educated. You will find somebody to marry and you will stay at home. And then at 42, she went to college and she's in her seventies and she's still a grad school professor right now. And so I'm getting dragged behind. No, wait, I'm smart too. Maybe if I get the right degree, the right certificate, then somebody will finally turn around and be like,

Was that a result of comparison, meaning you saw that with your brother and sister, or was it, and I'm not trying to pick on parents. No, no, pick, pick, pick. Well, I'm not. I don't know. I guess my question is, is that a result of the comparison, or is it more a result of something your mom or dad said or did that you felt like, oh, I'm on the totem pole and I see where I'm at. They put me there. I'm curious. Was it a wounding moment?

The guy who's a dad now, the compassionate guy, knows that my dad was a homicide detective. He sat with people who were going to go to jail forever, all day, every day. And then he had me, who shows up as a ninth grader, playing in punk rock clubs, right? And he knew enough to know, oh, that's the trajectory for my son. I see where this ends.

He thought punk rock and he was scared? Well, so the story I always tell is— Does he think you're going to be a criminal? Well, so when you do jobs like that, when you are a physician, when you're a preacher, when you're a cop, when you're in the military, if you and I were walking in a dark alley and there was somebody walking on the other side of us, and we took that track a thousand times, 998 times—

There'd be no eye contact. We would just keep walking. One time out of a thousand, that person would pull their hood off and be like, hey, I got two tickets to Michael Bublé. You guys want to go? And I would be like, yes. And Kim would be like, please don't, John. Like, right? That's what happened. One time out of that thousand, one time out of a hundred thousand, that guy would pull out a hatchet and chop me and you to pieces, right? My dad's entire life was dealing with things that never happened, which was somebody got murdered.

And I think this is a lesson for all of us and I've really wrestled with it. When you go to work and that's your job, it's easy to become your whole life. There's a hilarious family story that's not funny at the time, it's funny now.

As like an eight or nine-year-old, we went to baseball practice, and I was late like always. I ran out the back door. We get home from baseball. I'm in a North Houston suburb. Like the worst crime that went on was like kids said bad words, right? Right. A little toilet paper after the football game on Friday night. There you go. I left the back door open. We pull into the driveway, and my dad just got back from baseball practice.

This is before, like, concealed carry. This is way back in the day. My dad looks at me, and he said, I knew it. And I didn't know this. He pulls a gun out that he's carrying and goes in and clears the house. And I remember being nine, being like, that's probably a bit much. Right? Like, but that's his whole world. And so I think when he saw a loud kid or a wild kid, it's easy to go,

Worst case scenario. That's right. Because all I do all day every day is worst case scenario. And so, yeah. You felt that? Absolutely. Did he say it? I remember maybe the hardest conversation we had was, I know you like music and I know you do this, but I can't support it. So I'm not going to tell you no, but I'm not going anymore. And I remember that kind of locked in.

Yeah, let's stay there for a second. So now doing what you do, plus you've been in therapy, what is the voice that came from that or the wound that came from that? Because you said you locked in on that. It goes back to that thing. It's funny. I never connected to that. Ken, well done. It goes back to that thing I said with Hank and Joe, my kids. There will not ever be a line you cross that you won't turn and I'm not going to be right there.

And so I knew, oh, at 14, there's a line. He's not going to support me. You can continue. I've crossed the line. But you're going on this one by yourself. And I'm going to stay here. Whether it's because I can't support you, it's because I don't like the image and reputation. I don't like whatever it is. So what do you think looking back? Mm-hmm.

that you felt in that moment what is that voice that developed out of that um i was an arrogant high school kid listened to a lot of pantera so i was like oh yeah okay right so it was kind of i can do this um was it an i'll show you no because i i knew early on that i'll i'll do it in spite of you i'll prove it to you is uh is jet fuel it burns real fast it burns hot but it it's not long um but what i did do is i started finding alternatives real quick

And so the guys who were in that little punk band of mine, I talked to their parents more than I talked to mine. So that was the alternative. Right. Like I'll find other adults. And in a weird way, my dad halfway through my childhood, and I don't remember when, he stopped being a cop over a weekend and became a minister at a large church in North Houston. And I remember him saying, which is so wise, right?

I'm now your minister. You won't be able to hear me. You need to find some men that you can trust and go to and talk to. And I did not know what a gift that was back then. But I took it like, cool, that's fine. Now with new tools and new ideas and more, you didn't go to therapy back then. You didn't go to a counselor back then unless you were quote unquote nuts, right? And so my dream for me and Hank is when he comes to that moment is I'm gonna go sit in the front row.

And you're going to have to do this looking at me, right? Like watching. And I'll tell you, I don't think that was a wise thing or I don't think that's smart or I don't think that's good, but I'm going to be right here. Everybody wants to, we talk about like, you want to be better, like you want to make more money than your kid or than your parents. I mean, everybody wants their kids to do better than them. And so hopefully I have that same sort of, my dad has that same hope that like, all right, I'm going to take that. I'm going to remember that and I'm going to keep going.

I want to follow up to where we are because I know in this room, even though I'm looking at these men and women and there are some confident people, but I just know from the data that

that one of the biggest search terms in the world of work is imposter syndrome. You'll find no more insecure person than me. Okay. And I was going to say, I've got my insecurity. So I want to ask you, what is that insecurity? What's that? You say that. Dude, I've had body dysmorphia issues since I was a little kid. Where does that come from? My parents were on—again, this isn't the blame my parents are. No. I think the meta is your kid's—

Whether you say it or not, they absorb your home. They absorb messages implicitly, explicitly. And kids are, they have to because they're a weaker vessel, right? They have to know, am I safe here? And they feel it, they absorb it.

my parents were in the newspaper for being Weight Watchers for how much weight they lost. And so there was always a, we're always on a diet. It was a thing, right? And that's back when low-fat was coming out and Weight Watchers was coming out and Jenny Craig was coming out. All these things were coming out. Jenny Craig was the first Oprah. They were everywhere. And so I think you take the message of aesthetics is really, really important.

And you combine that with me being a Texas high school football player. And so I was playing in front of 5, 6, 7,000 people every weekend. And you take that into having acne. And you take that into... I was a good kid. I went to church, but I also liked punk rock music. And so I never really belonged. I never had... I never felt like... I always felt out of sync, right? I'd been out. Even this morning, it's just me being as honest as I can. I'm working with a guy out of California now on a 2025, like the new year, new me. And...

I weighed in this, had to weigh in this morning. It was a bad weigh in. And my wife came in and she didn't see anything. I didn't say anything. She, we've been together 25 years now. She felt it. And she just walked in and gave me a big hug. She felt whatever was on me. Right. And it was those old demons like, really? Let me ask you this, putting you on the spot, but they, you know, you and I sit in these, in this stupid role that we get to play and get paid for it. Um,

It's the last great loophole of mankind is YouTuber dude. I know, right. Or people, for whatever reason, care about what we say or they look at us and go, okay. But I just have found that every biography I've ever read of a great woman or a great man, every biography, every one of them, there's enormous strength that you end up learning about. And that's why they got a book about it. But the strength came from massive struggle, massive struggle. I don't care if it's Abraham Lincoln. I don't care who it is. Yeah.

What are you struggling with right now that you're willing to share? A, struggling with the global anxiety that AI is going to take everything from me. We're going to get to that. So I've told this story, and I don't know if you and I have talked about it, but it's the blast radius from this conversation. And I'm in the middle of writing a book on anxiety. And I'm laying out for America how to not be anxious.

And my family all came for Christmas and they'd stayed. I'd invited them too long. They were trying to oblige me. And it's one of those things that we all have, like everyone's just had enough of everybody. And then I think I got COVID right after that. And then I got some, and I'm downstairs completely fried, exhausted, writing a book. And you know, book writing season is just on top of everything else. And so it's early mornings, late nights, my head's somewhere else all the time.

and i'm working out in the gym because you don't ever skip a day right like right and my manager calls and we're close to paying off our house and he called and said hey there's these two speaking gigs that we're going to be shapeshifter for our family you got i'm a cop's kid and my wife's parents were two school teachers the idea of having a no house payment was was like dragons right and unicorns it wasn't ever gonna happen he calls and goes hey man you got a second

And I was like, yeah. He goes, hey, you know, two speaking gigs, man. I chased him down. Here's the deal. And I was like, and he goes, he starts yelling. He goes, we got it. I was like, what? And he goes, I for sure. I inked this one. I'm 99% sure on the other one. I start cheering. Like I'm getting goosebumps. I started cheering in the basement. I'm sweaty, gaunt, exhausted, sick, yelling. Yeah. So much so that my wife came downstairs in the basement and she,

I'd set up this huge gym. It's really fancy pants down there and it's kind of rad. And she's smiling like, what are you yelling about? I just got off the phone and I was like, we got him. She's like, got what? And it's like, I got this thing and wherever in Phoenix, I got this other thing and wherever. And I was like, yeah!

And my wife is so, when things get wild, things get wild out in the world, I get real calm. If there's like a shooting or I got to go do something heavy, crisis, I get real calm, real still. And my wife will kind of get tense. But in relationship stuff, I get real amped up and she gets real calm. And so normally she would back up, head upstairs, knowing we need to talk. She didn't do that this time. This time she came in and got real close, like this close.

She said I'm watching my husband die and I'm watching him cheer the whole way and dude. I got mad I was like, what are you talking about? I just gave us the best news possible Yeah, and she said the pie chart for how much I love you the pie piece It is how much I love you or as how much money you make is full. It's full and she said I

You can go do these speaking gigs. I told you when I married you, I would never tell you no. Go. But don't you dare say it's for me and for the kids because it's not true. It's for your ego. And, bro, I was beside myself. Right. And I was like— It was a bucket of cold water. Right or wrong, it was cold water on you. And she looked at me, and she said, John, we have enough. She turned and walked up. And I remember yelling after her, what the hell is enough?

And it wasn't yelling at. She was upstairs. I have a rule about not yelling in the house. I was like, what the hell is enough? And so here I am two years later. That was the single most important conversation we've ever had. Because from that, I went to therapy. From there, I sat with an oracle here in Nashville who we had some, I talked about some deep, dark stuff that my wife didn't even know about that had happened to me as a kid. Just hard stuff. But from there has been a...

always asking, do I have enough? Or do I believe I've got enough? What am I putting my trust in? So that's that constant struggle. It's the constant struggle. Do I need to do this because it's right? Do I need to do this because I'm helping other people? Do I need to do this for my ego? Or do I need to say no and make sure I'm at this weird third grade play? Right. I'm not super certain. My daughter's dressed up like a blade of grass and...

I don't know what we're doing here, but I can see her see me. Right. And again, going back to my original, I want her to always know that the old man's got me. Right. And so I get all the way back as I'm chasing that bomb blast of I need to make sure I'm doing this next next thing for the right reasons and making sure that.

My wife and I are locked step on whatever the next thing is. Because what I found is it doesn't matter how much money you make, dude. The demon's still at the table, bro. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. They're still at the table. It doesn't matter how many books you sell. The demon's still have a seat at the table, and it doesn't shut them up. And so now that I know that, you read about that, you hear about that. Now that I know that, now I can make different kind of choices. Thanks for sharing that. All right, right here.

So, John, you have spoken a number of times. I like to think about it like what is the one thing to solve that solves all the other things? And I think you've mentioned a number of times, which is this stake in the ground at home. Yeah.

So if you and a partner are trying to co-create a future together, it sounds like not being on the same page or not working together are some of the reasons why the workplace has become the outlet for those things. So how would you, if a relationship is not oriented in that way,

What are either the detriments, the things that are missing that most people are like just not seeing? Or what are the impediments that you see that are there that need to be removed? Man, so that's an amazing question. That's actually that right there. That question is what's consuming. I have my clinical diagnosis OCD. I get obsessed with the question. I can't stop. And so that's the question that's haunting me right now.

About a year ago, I went to our admin that we share and I was like, go to Amazon, buy every book on marriage that exists. I wanna like figure this thing out. Best I can find so far is secrets will destroy marriages, big ones, little ones, teeny tiny ones. The things like, hey, those little hairs in the sink drive me crazy. If you just sit on it and sit on it and sit on it, right? Then it turns into something over here. So secrets will destroy a relationship. The second one is,

You have to have like the God myself. I love you. You just do all we've done. You have to be friends. You gotta be friends.

And I think friendship, it's an art, but it's also a science. It's a series of things. So here's a good example. I have a buddy that every time I go back to Texas, we all hang out and we've watched the fights before the UFC was the UFC, even pride fighting over in Japan. Like I was obsessed. We've been super fans forever. We still get together. He always, always, Tim, always,

leaves all the cans out when we're hanging out. Always. Always. My house, his house, other people's, always. We've yelled at him, made fun of him, just whatever, like, just picked him up. Now I've been friends for 30 years. I just pick, we just pick, whoever just picks up the cans. Not one time have I ever driven home from watching the fights with him.

With anger in my heart and tears in my eyes being like, what is he trying to tell me about our friendship? What is he trying, right? And then I go home and it's one in the morning because the fights went late and there's two wet towels on the counter. And I think, what is my wife trying to tell me? What is she trying to say? I put so much insane existential weight on every sneeze, every move, every snicker because the third thing is going to that root. She's the only one who really sees me.

And if I don't give her a map to tell me how she can show me, tell me, let me know that I'm loved despite it all, then I'm always going to be wondering if every little thing, every little, I wanted to make out tonight and she wanted to watch TV. I wanted to do this and she wanted to go here. I want to eat at this restaurant. She want to go here. It's setting off that little GPS pin and maybe she sees this part of you. She doesn't like it. She doesn't like it. She doesn't like it. Does she? Does she? Does she?

And so that's where all the great researchers, everybody talks about, they call them love maps. I call it a roadmap. You gotta give somebody a path. And Hollywood lied to us. There's no such thing as I see you across the other side of this ill-fated boat and I'm just gonna know your path to your heart. No, that's just dumb. It's insane. I have to say, you know what I need in this season? Like just us going for walks. My wife said something awesome the other day. She, uh,

She walked in and I was doing something and she goes, sit down on the couch. I need to borrow your nervous system for about 20 minutes. So we turn on an old Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode, the old office episode. And she just curled up against me. And then when it literally was over, she goes, cool, that's what I needed. And that was it. But she, that was her telling me, I need your warmth and your strength. And I need your, like, you're healthy right now. I just need to

breathe up against my husband. What most couples would do in that moment, and by the way, that's lots of us almost breaking up. We don't have a marriage by any means. Most couples would wish he would come over there and do that.

and they would see him on the couch and get really pissed off and then go in the bedroom and then start scrolling or then go to find what that other guy that they were dating before is doing and then and then or text just do work emails and then there's a funny emoji inside joke from a guy that she works with and now you're off to the races right and so you got to give somebody a map and by the way that map changes over time like the five love language maybe

Maybe gifts are important in this season. Maybe next season, just tell me you're proud of me. Maybe the season after that is gonna be passionate and peeling the walls off every hotel you go to, right? Maybe. And then like, so it goes in seasons, which means I gotta show back up and check in. How can I love you today?

Well, it's like, give me one thing I can do that will show you I love you today. And so it's simple. It's be friends. It's the little stuff. It's just, dude, just pick up the towels. Just pick them up. Like, good God, stop. And pick them up. And then if there are the big things, let's have that conversation. And then you begin to create a path where y'all can go. It's you and y'all two versus the world, man. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm a super driven entrepreneur.

she's a small town girl stays at home. It's like a John Cougar Mellencamp song. There you go. So I think our, our challenge has always been kind of how do we sync those where I'm like in a million places and she's like, I just want your attention. My attention's all the way over here. I don't, I, in talking with other guys, they have very similar, like I'm trying to protect, I'm trying to provide, I'm trying to do all these things while also fulfilling. So I think that, can I push on you? Yeah, go ahead.

i know a lot of dudes who protect and provide and sometimes your family or your family always needs a direct deposit they do they need that provision they need money they do and i think everybody needs to be able to take care of their family at least to get them out of a situation right they're not gonna be krav maga instructors but i need to know how to handle myself to get my family to a safe place right but a lot of times more than anything especially in the modern world

Our wives need us to provide our full attention. The greatest thing we can protect is not them from bullets. The greatest thing we can protect is their sense of feeling untethered because they feel like our job's more important than they are. And so using those same protect and provide words. And I guess what I would like, you know, when the research came out of Stanford a few years ago that there's no such thing as multitasking, it's not real.

I was convincing all of these brand new employees. Most of my, like when I was working at universities, I'd have a jillion employees, but most of them were, it was their first or second job. And it took energy for me to say, hey, if you'll not do everything, if for one hour you'll close that door and just work on this, you'll do it better, faster, and it will be way richer. And so one of the conversations I have with entrepreneurs a lot is if you'll stop for a minute,

and get this really right, you will be stunned at how it tunes your engine and how fast y'all can go. So a follow-up to that conversation in my basement, I am busier right this moment than I ever was when I took that phone call in my basement. In my marriage right now, it might not be when this thing airs, but right now, I could not have, I would have bet you everything that it would not be as good as it is right now.

It's as synced as it's ever been because it's not about the busy and the scattered. It's about, do you see me and still love me? Do you see me and still love me? And here's what that means right now. And my wife has to know that this is more important than a blog post. She does, right? And vice versa. So I appreciate that. Ian Simpkins, he's a pastor here down the street, has a great quote that he told me once when we were having lunch and I almost...

i wanted i wanted to slap him you can't slap ministers right but he said hey if busyness is your drug rest will always feel like stress man and when he said that i was like oh you can get high off being busy too right so anyway that was a really great wise answer and i was just thinking of an amy grant lyric yes stop for a minute baby i'm so glad you're mine

I know, I feel really good about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, John, I want to show you something. My friend Alex Ramosi, very popular, had a hot take on our next topic. So I'm going to let you watch it first, and then I'll...

throw an opinion at you. I was having a conversation with a famous YouTuber who is known for sacrificing all of his time and doing everything like monk mode, no girlfriend. And he called me up and he was like, you can maintain your muscle mass without working out that much. Why do you work out so much? Shouldn't you be taking all that extra time and working more on getting to a billion dollars? The answer is,

no. Under that same assumption, okay well then having kids is something that's going to make you poorer. But with most people, if you have kids, you make more money. Part of that is because you have more mouths to feed, so you force yourself to make more money. The other reason is that if you think all the way at the top of the wealth pyramid, look at Bezos,

Look at Musk, look at Bill Gates, look at Warren Buffett. Every single one of them not only have one kid, but multiple children. If it were true that having kids or working out were something that were going to cost you wealth in the long term, then the people who are at the top of the pyramid wouldn't have those things, which means the premise is false. You do have to work to a certain point. And then after you have a certain amount of work that you are able to put in, the leverage or how much you get out of the work that you put in becomes the big multiplier. Fascinating. Amen, Alex.

Amen. So the birth rate is the lowest it's ever been. It's plummeting. It's plummeting. And so here's Alex taking a hot take. I did some research. There's not a clear study that would support what he says. However— That study exists for marriage, though. I know. It's absolutely right in marriage. But I think—and so that's the correlation. Can we make the statement that, hey, a lot of young people right now that are trying to get rich and get wealthy—

and they're putting off marriage, they're putting off having children, maybe they should rethink that. 1,000%. Here's my most eye-opening, oh my gosh, they're right, is exactly what he said. My biggest aha moment of studying marriage over the last year has been, let me back up. So working at universities, everybody's real smart, and they get PhDs in these things, and they study one sliver of a thing forever. That's what they know, and they know everything about that thing.

And I found, I remember I was at a place at a party one time, whatever, and I was asking somebody like, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And I think the thing I asked was about DEET, bug spray. Like, because it's a neurotoxin, it'll kill you. Like, hey, physician, ex-researcher, do you, what do you think about, what do you think about DEET, bug spray? Oh, it's this and this. It's a neurotoxin. It melts this. And here's how it works in your brain and all this stuff. Then like a couple of months later, we were at a party and I saw her spraying her kids. And I was like, ah.

that's what you believe about bug spray. And so I've just stopped asking people what they think. I've started asking them, hey, what do you do with your kids? Because that tells me what you really think about it, what you really believe about it. Or, hey, what are you doing with your life? So if you go look at most wealthy people, strata-wise, they are married. And if you dig into the data, the single most decision, the most important decision you can make is who you marry. And if you marry well and you work really hard at it,

There will be, it is a compound interest multiplier that you can't fathom. That's right. And let me tell you, the least important compound interest multiplier is your net worth. Who freaking cares? If you have a ride or die and y'all get through life and it's awesome. Here's the thing. We try to, uh, dude, now I get all passionate about this one. No, I love it. I got to jump in real quick because you and I have looked at this. We were talking about this the other day in that room. We had a whiteboard and you were, it's, it's, it's,

undeniable that you're healthier. Everything in your life is better. And so that's wealth. And especially men. Yeah. So forget net worth. I want to know how healthy I am. Oh my gosh. That's my wealth. Everything about you is better. But here's the problem. My grandparents got married right before World War II. And then World War II set off. My granddad went off. I think he was in the Pacific, but fighting Nazis, fighting bad guys, right?

Then they had four kids and they had to survive. And then he came back and went to college, got engineering, like did all this stuff. And then when he died at 73 years of marriage, I think, my grandmother died shortly thereafter. And we had some good, fun conversations. She was a riot. But she lost a lung. She lost an arm and a leg. They were one. After 74, 73 years together, they became soulmates. Yeah.

And now we try to reverse engineer it and pick the soulmate on the front end. And then after four years, I don't feel in love anymore. Or I'm not feeling attracted to you. So foolish and stupid. When you're in a trench, I don't care how you feel, bro. We got to dig out of this hole we're in. We're married now. We have a mouth to feed. We got two mouths to feed, right? And so you can't reverse engineer it. You have to look at somebody. And I don't want to oversimplify it.

But it's this easy. You and me, will we decide for the rest of our lives that I'll wake up and decide, how can I make your day? How can I make your life as good as possible? Will you commit to doing that with me? And if we do that together for the rest of our lives,

we're going to create something extraordinary. That's right. And by the way, it's not going to be pain-free. No life is. But when the storms hit, we've got each other. When your mom gets cancer, when my dad passes away, when we both lose our jobs, when 2008 happens again, which it will, and our houses get taken from us,

We will be all the way in on the boat. So he is 100% right. The wealthiest of the wealthies still get married and they still hang in there and they still figure it out. Well, I think he's right because you know this. Parenting reveals a level of strength that you previously have not experienced. And you got to come home. You got to come home from the disco. Right. But you know what I'm saying? Marriage is one thing. Yes. Marriage is a different thing.

In the sense of, I always felt responsibility to provide for Stacey and give her a great life. And I want to make her happy, right? But there's this baton that you start thinking about. I'm not passing a baton to Stacey. I'm passing a baton to my kids. It's a different thing. Oh, man. And I just think that it gives you a level of strength and...

fortitude tenacity when you got mouths that are relying on you and then a future yes do you know what I mean dude this is I had Josie for two hours in my arms true story two hours she's two hours old I'm holding her in the hospital and I literally no one else was around me and I literally had a thought I wonder what weddings are gonna cost when she's yeah now again neurotic yeah sure unhealthy I'm sure

No. Unnecessary? Sure. No. But reality? Yep. Absolutely. That's what I mean. There is a heightened alert that comes on you when you're a parent. So I think Alex is absolutely right. I mean, it's just flat out. There's some responsibility that you get that you go, I got to step up. I know. And, dude, it's like the current world we have. I love how you said step up. It's like getting a squat rack.

And when you get under a squat bar and you're married, you look at somebody and you go ride or die, me and you. I do. I'm telling my family. I'm telling you. I'm telling God. You're my person. That weight goes, it's heavy. And then you put kids in there. It gets real heavy. But that also means you get real strong. And sometimes you fall and you get hurt, but you get real strong. Right now we have this insanity that the most important thing is net worth, job title, and then everything else that comes after it.

work should be in service to this thing that matters. And so you have a bunch of folks that have a bunch of commas and zeros in their checking account. They have no strength. They've never been under the squat rack of responsibility. That's right. And that's where life is. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. I mean, dude, that's absolutely right. I mean, this idea that every human, I think, needs to feel

I don't want to be insensitive here because I know there are people that are watching this that are single and may never have kids, but I do think there is something special about feeling the primal protection. Mm-hmm.

Well, you can feel it with adoption. You can feel it with— That's right. You can feel it with your own— You can, but it's about being in service to— That's right. Instead of about being a net drain on. Isn't that— It's so true. It's a really— I remember— Dude, I remember the— There's another hot take, and you may disagree with me on this. I remember watching that amazing ESPN documentary on the Bulls with Jordan. Sure. Right? Yeah. But I remember there was a scene with him. It's haunted me. He's in that hotel room.

smoking a cigar, laying on the couch. And there's a cameraman and down below in the lobby is packed with people. And he looks at him and he goes, you don't want to be me. And I remember thinking, oh, that guy can't go to the bathroom. That guy has no human interaction unless the person is on his payroll. He has no friends. Nobody he meets who says, I want to marry you. He'll never be able to sleep at night thinking, is this pure or not?

And then I kept seeing those like five or six like pieces of cloth hanging in the rafters of a gym. And I kept asking myself two words, a two word question. For what? You gave up your whole life for what? Shiny stuff? Cool. Like for glory? We all end up in the same box, man. We end up in the same hole in the ground. Like for what? And so when I hear these, and it's for the chance to be great, fine, good. That's a whole other conversation.

But when I talk to 25-year-olds, 27-year-olds, and it's like, no, no, no, dude, I got to make this and I got to go get this. And I always ask, for what? For what? Well, that brings up an interesting point. It's not that I disagree with you. I think that's the right question. But I also say in Michael Jordan's case, let's say that he didn't have friends and he was divorced and all that stuff. But that's like saying that you can't be super successful financially.

In your profession. That's right. In your calling and not be super successful in your home. And I think that's the question. What's the balance? So I would say a healthy Michael Jordan. My hot take is a healthy Michael Jordan or a Michael Jordan who says marriage is forever. Yeah. Till death do us part.

Above all else. So I'm the richest guy, richest athlete in the world, the most famous athlete in the world, and I can get the best counselors. And I can also say to the Bulls, I'm not going to play in the Olympics this year because – or I can say to the Olympic committee, I'm going to go be with my wife. I'm not going to play golf because I'm going to – that's right. So I agree that it's for what, but I also would say Michael Jordan represents one of the all-time greats who had a burning desire because he was overlooked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if we started off a conversation with Michael Jordan like we did with you, what drives you? Well, what drove Michael Jordan? Well, he's not talked a lot about his relationship with his father other than it was good. But then we don't know 100% what's going on. Here's a guy that's got a great gift. Yep.

But he also has tremendous drive. Somewhere, though, it didn't exist. Roy Williams, who was an assistant coach at North Carolina under Dean Smith, has said publicly he used to get on Jordan for not working hard enough in practice. Somewhere, something changed because everybody who talks about the Bulls team said he outworked us all. All I'm saying is that

We have to be able to bear the responsibility, the burden of this calling. Yes. Whatever that is. Yes. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom,

But ask the question for what? For what? And if it's about the contribution. There you go. If it's for glory, I'm going to tell you. It must be about. It's going to be a vapor. That's right. And that's what goes back to I'm busier now, but I'm not in service to this nine-year-old boy who's still saying, am I loved, am I loved, am I loved. That's right. For the first time after some good therapy, when my wife says, hey. Yeah.

I want you. That's right. I believe her, right? I believe God loves me. I believe my dad's proud of me, even if he didn't say it in this magical kumbaya way that I wish he'd said it. That's right. I believe he does. And so now I can work even more hard. I can go even, I can go further. I can go faster.

Because they're in service of something bigger than me. That's right. Right? Which is awesome. That's right. All right, let's go back here. Thank you. Early on, when you started your introduction, you used the word tools a couple times, hammer, chisel. And then, you know, we got statistic 41% of the challenges people face in the workplace.

as leaders, tell us what are the two most important tools that we can have in our bag with the understanding that we have the biggest impact on people who report to us. As a leader, if you ever forget that everything you're doing is in service to a downstream customer and then you make it about you, your position, your title, you're standing with your supervisors, your shareholders, whatever. If you ever forget, we make pizzas so that

Because we want to make the best pizza. We make pizzas at a price that even a single mom who's just trying to figure out how to feed her kids can put food on her table. If you ever forget that, whatever it is you do, then the whole toolkit, it doesn't matter what you have in there because you're just swirling to the toilet bowl of your own ego. Everything's in service to you. So if you never forget, that's the thing that I think makes Dave Ramsey magic. I don't know any CEO...

of a multi-hundred-million-dollar company that still sits with the front-end consumer three hours every single day. If the CEO of Domino's Pizza did the lunch rush five days a week, that company would look different. So Dave talks to these people every day on the radio, and then we'll be in a meeting, and I'll say something dumb like, well, I think that they will— And he's like, no, no, no. I talked to her yesterday. I heard it in her voice. And he's right a lot, right? Yeah.

maniacal about the truck driver who just has had enough with his life and he wants to change it, right? And so you can't forget that. The two tools I think when you're sitting down with your employees is A, just learn the skill of listening and don't immediately think that your team is dumb or wrong or somehow stupider than you. And they may not have the full picture. They may not have the full understanding of what's going on, but gosh, learn how to listen, man.

And then the second thing is learn the skill of letting people do their jobs that you hired them to do. Like you hired me to, I don't know, be your jobs expert. When I come to you with stuff, don't fight me on it. Right. I'm telling you, um, like, let me help you do the thing you hired me to do. And I think, uh, yeah, I think that micromanagement is burns people out. And I think the, um, people feeling like nobody's listening to what I'm, what I'm saying is

My expertise or my lived experience here at this job doesn't matter because they already made their decisions up. I don't know. You might have more to that, Ken, than I do. No, that's really great. It's a really hard question. I don't know how you just pick two tools. But I would say self-awareness. I think that the epidemic of just kind of cluelessness of leaders, they're just unaware. Not bad people. They're just unaware of what's going on with them and how they're affecting downstream. Yeah.

It's trickle-down leadership, and it starts with self-awareness would be a massive tool. I agree with everything you said. And other than that, this is based on Gallup. I mean, Gallup says that the three human needs that must be met, purpose, immediate work, recognition for your unique contribution, and third, a relationship with their leader. So I'd lump those three things into do I have the right people in the right seat?

That tool, the tool of self-awareness and then awareness of your team. That would be, if I had to simplify it to those two, that's what I would say. I loved your answer. One final question. You mentioned earlier, and I'm glad you did because I wanted to get to it, because I see it in you when we talk at our desks. The anxiety guy, not labeling you, but this is the world you're in.

You're really concerned. I see it on you when we talk about artificial intelligence. Oh, yeah. And it's everywhere. There's in the headlines that is AI going to remove tons and tons of jobs? Is AI going to make us less human? Yada, yada, yada. Why are you so concerned about it? Or shall I say, how? Mine is much, much more existential than it is artificial.

I think we all got a, everybody got a real life case study on a universal basic income. Okay. Y'all stay at home. We're just going to send you a check. They did that. And we all went mad because that's not how we're designed. That's like saying, hey, y'all quit going to the gym. We're just going to give you muscles. And then you realize going to the gym was the whole point. That's right. And so, yes, the occasion that you need to lift something heavy, fine. Okay.

There may come a day in your life when a car falls on a woman in a grocery store parking lot and you lift it up because you've been working out every day. That probably will never happen. Getting up and going to the gym every day makes you up. I mean, there's neuroscience to that. It makes you able to do hard stuff throughout your life. So I think we got a ringside seat. So for me, yes, every couple of centuries, there's technology that comes along and uproots everything, right? 150 years ago, we were all farmers and then all of a sudden we're not, right? Right.

um the pace of how fast this is happening is i don't think we're i don't think people understand that how big the wave is coming so it's fast it's going fast but bigger than that is we've seen what happens and if every one of our things that makes us us which is cleaning up saying thank you get underneath the car and trying to fix it like the stuff that makes us human all that goes away and we are left to just be um

The times in history when that's happened, it ends very poorly. And this is like something we've never seen. And so for me, it's more about we've created a world our bodies weren't designed to live in. And this is the exclamation point at the end of that sentence. I think it's valid. And I don't know. My wife vastly disagrees with me. So it's cool. Well, I don't know if I disagree, but I wonder. Sure. I think it's a valid take. I could see that happening. But I wonder if it will only...

It could, yes. It could. Increase our need for humanness. And so AI ends up, instead of being this great thief of our humanness, becomes the thing that – An amplifier. Amplifies it. So can I – Now, that's in your everyday life. Sure. You can't say that and not say this.

But I am really scared about World War because now all of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to create a war because there's no human capital. When you start getting robots shooting each other, we could be collateral damage. Of course. That part –

And I'm not trying to be dark. That concerns me. Well, I think, so let's go back to 150 years. But I tend to side with Sheila. I think it's going to actually make us, in fact, I think the human-centric jobs will get paid more than ever. Well, I think it's how many of those will be left. So we go back to 150 years ago. We all farmed. And I'm making that number up. I don't know how 100 years ago, 200 years ago, we were all farming. And then tractors showed up. And because of that tech, they didn't need us to do that.

So right now, what is it, 3% of the U.S. farms? Some minuscule number. Now, after 150 years, we all work with our minds. That's what we do. We get paid for our opinions, our thoughts, coming up with a business plan, coaching people, diagnosing people. That's what we get paid to do. And if we've just come up with a new tractor that can answer any question you have faster than any of us, more accurately, already the AI in my field can do

who's diagnosed with a mental health disorder, psychiatric disorder, can do mental, I mean, can do physical diagnostics better. They can scan you. There's retinal scan. I mean, it's coming so fast. Yeah, but they cannot sit with you knee to knee. That's it. That's it. That's it. And pull the string. That's it. That unpacks a wound that is 30 years old. Can you put a hand on somebody and say, I see you? Yeah. That's it. So will there be a moment when 3% or 5% of us are paid to think of their minds? And what's the next iteration? And my wife thinks, I think she's right, is human care.

Right. Who's going to sit with the aging population that we're about to get hit with. Right. As this generation ages up, there's going to be with that group. And so, so there's that sense of, but can I, here's, let's put a bow on this whole thing. As a young, insecure kid, the way I dealt with my insecurity, all like growing up is homeostasis. I'm going to control every variable in my life. I'm going to keep everything the same. And so what I've learned about myself is change makes me,

Like my wife craves change. She loves it. It's a gift. It's a season. It's the springtime and then the flowers start blooming. For me, it's we got to get all the summer clothes out, man. We got to put all these jackets away. I love these jackets. How hot is it going to be this year? And so I know the angst, the existential angst is inside of me. And so that's the only thing I can control here. And so for me now, it's fun to pontificate.

I don't know if it's true or not, but when the deep seek thing dropped the other day, I heard Meadow was caught totally off guard and that actually freed me. Like, oh, if the guys in the space didn't know this was coming, what am I going to do sitting here on my little acreage outside of town? Like, I don't know. And so any worry or existential angst I put on it right now is a choice to be miserable in the present. That's a stupid thing to do. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think of scripture and

you know, very clear. The admonition is today has enough worry of its own. It's a problem for future, John. Do not worry about tomorrow. You got to be present and learning to be where you are. And I think that's absolutely great. Well, folks, I started off the conversation as we do every time reminding you that

One conversation, one question has the ability to open up our minds, open up opportunities to allow us to learn, to grow, to do. And I took so much from this today, but I wrote it down earlier. When you see me scribbling, that's the big thing. The thing I'm going to work on the next week, the next two weeks, and I'm challenging you

to consider how you could use this was when John said, be the first. So I wrote down on my notes, be the first to be friendly. It's so important that we as humans, we were just talking about AI and our humanness, but my life is going to be better because of the quality of the relationships in my life. And so no matter where I am, no matter what role I'm playing, if I can always have the mindset to be the first, just to be human.

I think that's going to make me better and hopefully the people that I get to do life with better. So you do what you want with that, but that's what I'm working on this week. Hey, if you enjoy this episode and you would like to join us in studio for a live recording, check out the link in the show notes for up-to-date info on guests, dates, and opportunities. Well, friends, I know I'm better for hanging out with my pal. I'm glad you got to hang out with my pal. But let's all thank Dr. John Delaney. Thank you, man. Appreciate you. Thank you.