When men don't have economic freedom, as we found out during 2020, they don't have freedom, period. What can they do to find economic freedom? In this episode, we talk about the seven principles for starting a business in a world gone mad.
We'll talk about how to start a side hustle or small business, and what ingredients are needed to make that endeavor successful. We'll talk about Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, and the Hedgehog Principle—which is your guide to making money and doing work that you love.
Everyone knows how Human Resources departments have come to be the enforcement wing of the statist regime. But how do you get out of that environment? How do you break free? We discuss in this episode.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Visit PremierBodyArmor.com and use promo code HARDMEN for 10% off your order. Got questions? Reach out to customer service or send their President an email directly at alex@premierbodyarmor.com and speak to him yourself.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
When men don't have economic freedom, as we found out during 2020, they don't have freedom, period. What can they do to find economic freedom? In this episode, we talk about the seven principles for starting a business in a world gone mad.
We'll talk about how to start a side hustle or small business, and what ingredients are needed to make that endeavor successful. We'll talk about Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, and the Hedgehog Principle—which is your guide to making money and doing work that you love.
Everyone knows how Human Resources departments have come to be the enforcement wing of the statist regime. But how do you get out of that environment? How do you break free? We discuss in this episode.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Visit PremierBodyArmor.com and use promo code HARDMEN for 10% off your order. Got questions? Reach out to customer service or send their President an email directly at alex@premierbodyarmor.com and speak to him yourself.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
This episode of the Hard Men Podcast is brought to you by Premier Body Armor and by Private Family Banking. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. I'm your host, derek Kahn, and glad that you could join us for this episode of the podcast. By the way, if you didn't catch it on Patreon, dan Burkholder and IMPASTOR Dan Burkholder, we discussed a new topic in the latest Pugel List, which is a Patreon exclusive show what role should fathers play in helping their kids find a spouse? So we talk about William Gooch the Puritan, who wrote quite a bit about the household codes from Ephesians 5. And in this particular episode, dan Burkholder and I were talking about what role parents should have in helping to find and provide a spouse for their children and, likewise, what duty do children have to obey their parents? In this matter, dan and I got really practical and we're asking questions like how can fathers work to provide a suitable spouse for their sons and daughters? What are some of the exceptions? Like in a society that is super, not godly. What do you do then? What if your parents aren't involved in the process? What should you do? What if your parents object to a reasonable candidate for a spouse that you like, but they say, no, I don't like the way his face looks. What should you do? Well, gooch is really helpful on this front. So, pastor, dan and I talk about this again a Patreon exclusive of the Pugilist. You can listen to that episode now. Sign up today for as little as $5 a month and you'll get access to early release content as well as the exclusives of the Pugilist. Another one we did recently was what does Keswick theology have to do with the adoption controversy, and that was really helpful. Dan had some really good insights. We got some listener feedback included in there as well. Again, you can sign up today and listen to those episodes.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we're going to be talking about seven principles for starting a business in a world gone mad. One of the things we'll talk about is the fact that if you don't have economic freedom, we do all these things for men Right, we point you in the right direction. What is godly masculinity? What is the Bible calling you to? How do you live well and wisely in a world gone crazy? But if we don't give you economic solutions, then men aren't really free. So we'll talk about that in this episode. Sit back, buckle up and enjoy. This is again seven principles for starting a business in a world gone mad.
Speaker 1:As Michael Recton-Wald wrote in the Google Archipelago, the digital gulag and the simulation of freedom, our world is, for the most part, no longer controlled by hard authoritarian governments. Instead, what we find is our world is controlled by corporations that restrict freedom through the school-marm-wing of behavior control. We call it the Human Resources Department. Now, recton-wald's book was published in 2019 and became a really prophetic warning about what was coming in 2020 by way of the Great Shandemic to the American economy. As many workers found out. Many of you if refusal to comply with medical mandates or simply to speak out against them via social media, well, it could put you on the wrong side of the HR department, which could then threaten your employment status. By threatening men's livelihoods, these corporations act as sort of the police enforcement wing of a totalitarian government. Not surprisingly, non-compliance with the COVID narrative was a large reason for job losses in 2020 and 2021, which were, by the way, the worst since 1939. As several outlets reported, many of these job losses came because employees refused to get vaccinated. Experts even went so far as to call it the Great Resignation, which was consistent with a job cuts report that said, refusal to get the vaccine was the 10th leading reason people lost their jobs in 2021.
Speaker 1:Now the point is there's no real freedom without economic freedom. As I said, as long as your livelihood can be threatened simply for expressing an opinion that goes against the regime narrative or for refusing a highly experimental vaccine, you aren't really free. Once we recognize that giant bureaucratic corporations have become the gangster thug enforcement wing of an overgrown job of the state, it becomes obvious that a path through economic freedom must exist outside the dominant structure. Many people, including Andrew Torbay, have talked about parallel economies and will impact more of what that means in this episode. This brings me to the thesis of this podcast episode. Christians need to be strategically thinking and taking action to start businesses that exist outside the realm of the corporate gulag archipelago of filth world. It doesn't mean everyone needs to quit tomorrow. In fact, that would be heinously bad advice for a lot of us but it does mean that we need to start developing effective exit strategies and building alternate institutions in the parallel economy that are free from the control of God-hating HR departments, which are so often run by an army of Dolores Umbridge's.
Speaker 1:Well, how do you do it? While circumstances will obviously vary. I want to lay out several of the basic principles that have guided my approach as a media professional and as someone who has successfully started a number of side hustles and businesses. I worked for over a decade in the outdoor and firearms industry, in digital and print media and as a writer and editor, a photographer and fill-in TV show host Not a very good one, but I did do it. I also worked as a sports writer for Division I and professional sports teams. I've owned and operated my own freelance writing and photography business and, finally, I joined forces with Brian Savey and Dan Burkholder to start New Christian Oppress in 2022, a media company with cathedral-sized aims of rebuilding Christendom 2.0.
Speaker 1:First, we need to learn how to plunder the Egyptians. It may come as a surprise, but one of the best things you can do before you ever start a business is to do a few years on the corporate plantation. In this case, think of Joseph. He learned how to manage other people while he was existing in Potiphar's house or later in prison. Eventually, those skills would be applied as the number two in command under Pharaoh. Or think of all the education and wisdom Moses gleaned while in Pharaoh's house, which made him powerful in speech and in action, acts 7.22. Again, both men became effective leaders and developed impressive competencies while in a state of captivity. You can do the same thing while working in corporate America.
Speaker 1:For years, I worked for newspapers and digital media companies, and there I learned invaluable skills, things like how to write engaging prose, how to produce audio and video content, how to craft snappy headlines for Maximum Reach, how to manage social media accounts and how to use a wide array of editing software. I received an in-depth education in every facet of media business, while getting paid to do so, albeit for something like breadcrumbs on the hour. Yes, they treated employees slightly worse than disposable cell phones, and we affectionately referred to our time in those cubicles as working for a content sweatshop, since work was often miserable and we lived in Peoria, illinois, for part of this time. One of my friends referred affectionately to that time as Peorgatory. I knew I didn't want to work there forever, but I also knew I was acquiring competencies that I would take with me to other projects in the future. That's what I mean by plundering the Egyptians.
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Speaker 1:Second, we need to discover and maximize our strengths. Many corporations tell people that the path to success is to focus on their weaknesses and spend most of their effort trying to fix those areas. Instead, we ought to do what the Apostle Paul said we ought to figure out what we're gifted at and to pour our energy into those things so that you are meaningfully serving others. First, corinthians 12.
Speaker 1:As I discussed in a recent Hard Men podcast episode with Kevin Love, it's about finding your map, your motivations, abilities and patterns. First, what motivates and excites you? What work can you do and lose track of time, maybe forget to eat or even to use the bathroom? What work energizes you so that, when you pour yourself into it, you actually gain enthusiasm rather than lose it? Second, where are you naturally gifted with abilities that set you apart from others? And third, where do others consistently point out your gifts or strengths? In order to answer these questions, you will need to experiment with lots of different activities and types of work. You'll need lots of feedback from others about what you're good at and where they see gifting as you do. So you can start to look for those tasks that make up your map. This is the stuff you build a business around.
Speaker 1:Third, become so good they can't ignore you, as Cal Newport argues in his book so Good they Can't Ignore you. Becoming successful in any business is really less about any initial emotional response you might have to a given type of work and more about dedicating yourself to a craft over a long period of time. In other words, the more you devote yourself to welding or carpentry or writing or video production, the more you will develop a genuine competency for that craft and thus the more you will enjoy that work and develop a passion as well as a marketplace demand for that work, which will increase. This also means you need to avoid the distraction and noise of social media, constant busyness or the lie of multitasking, and instead carve out two 90-minute chunks of intensely focused, uninterrupted work before noon the ability to get in a flow state doing truly meaningful work is the subject of another Cal Newport book called Deep Work. I highly recommend this book. It is in that book that Newport quotes the quarry workers creed. We who Cut Mears Stones Must Always Be Envisioning Cathedral's Christendom will be built by men who learn how to do craftsman-level work that fits the grain of their gifting and meets an honest need in their community.
Speaker 1:Fourth, don't quit your day job. At least not yet. In 2020, I was furloughed indefinitely from a job in the gun industry and I ended up being unemployed for three months as a result. During that time, I started a podcast with exactly zero experience or expertise in audio production. I watched everything I could from Mike Russell on YouTube about audio editing. I bought basic recording equipment. I kept the barrier to entry fairly low. I started a Patreon channel Because I eventually returned to my day job. I had a slush fund to keep tinkering and perfecting the podcast without worrying about how I was going to pay the bills. After 30 days, I was making a paltry $100 per month on Patreon. After a year, it had grown to more than $2,000 per month. Two years later, I would work full-time for New Christendom Press Quality content delivered consistently over time, a day job allows you to be appropriately patient with that process while mitigating risk to your household. If you fail and we all do there's still a soft landing.
Speaker 1:Fifth, learn the hedgehog principle. At the heart of every great business is what Jim Collins calls the hedgehog principle, which he details in his book Good to Great. The principle is made up of three parts. First, what are you deeply passionate about? Second, what can you be the best in the world at? And third, what drives your economic engine? In the case of New Christendom Press, we were passionate about rebuilding Christendom, so we started a series of podcasts the Hard Men Podcast about masculinity, the Kings Hall Podcast about rebuilding Christendom, breithearth about productive households and Haunted Cosmos about high strangeness. Over time, as we devoted ourselves to the craft of podcast writing and editing, we discovered that our economic driver was actually centered around subscription-style content and later advertising. We didn't necessarily anticipate this in the beginning, but our early success has been as a podcast studio. Instead of trying to be something we're not or bite off more than we can chew, we leaned into that hyper-focused identity and strengthened our hedgehog principle.
Speaker 1:Sixth master the 20-mile march, another great Jim Collins principle. The 20-mile march is about steady progress over the long haul. You see great companies avoid the burnout ditch, which means pushing ahead in lean times but also restraining growth in boom times. Slow and steady wins the race. Such progress means developing a culture of radical discipline to your process and having daily benchmarks to track progress. Week in and week out, we produce podcasts, we edit them and we publish them.
Speaker 1:As four-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Chuck Noll once said, champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary, but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else. And that's what we've done. We've tried to become masters of the ordinary. Seventh. And finally, don't go it alone.
Speaker 1:Starting a business isn't for the faint of heart and I would argue it isn't worth doing alone, at least not for the long haul. Find your gang and build together. The real magic of New Chris and a Press, funny as it may sound, is contained in the genuine friendship and shared mission. As Chesterton said, the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. As you build an economic engine with other men together, you will share the fruit together too. Well, hopefully.
Speaker 1:That is a helpful, albeit brief, discussion of some of the ways that you can get started with a business in the parallel economy, and we'd love to hear your feedback on this, especially from guys who have done it and done it well. If you have input or advice, definitely would encourage you to send those comments our way. Love to read them. Also love to share them with other people, so that it's both helpful and an encouragement to other people who are going about this work of building businesses. This was actually one of the really cool things I saw during 2020, and following was all the men who were being courageous and building businesses, many of whom got fired from their jobs or left because it was just unworkable conditions. They didn't want to wear a mask or get a vaccine, so they had to find other work to do. It's a huge encouragement to see men putting their hand to the plow and getting work done in a way that supports their community and their households.
Speaker 1:Also, I would recommend checking out some of the podcasts we've done earlier this season with Headmaster and Pastor Kevin Love. We talk a lot about business how can Christians make money, how can you figure out what your map is, and how to start developing skills that could turn into side hustles and eventually full-blown businesses. Once again, we'd encourage people to check out patreoncom, where you can find more information, more content, and especially check out the Pugilist podcast with myself and Pastor Dan Burkholder, where we answer a lot of pastoral and practical questions about how to implement these principles into daily life. Dan and I have also talked extensively about business, so you'll find that content there as well. You can join patreon today for as little as $5 a month. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast and until next time, stay frosty, fight a good fight, act like men.