025: Two Is One, One is None | Redundancy May Save Your Life

One broken lighter is annoying. One broken income is catastrophic. That’s the real meaning behind “two is one and one is none,” and we’re taking it way beyond spare gear into the uncomfortable places where most of us have a single point of failure.

We talk through why redundancy matters in real life, not as a panic response, but as a quiet form of good architecture. I share the personal backdrop that made this mindset non-negotiable for me: building a fast-growing commercial roofing company, watching conditions change, and learning what happens when your security, identity, and plan are all tied to one thing. From there, we unpack what it looks like to rebuild with intention, including designing our homes and infrastructure with backups so one failure doesn’t take the whole system down.

Then we get practical and grounded. We walk through redundancy with tools you truly depend on, multiple reliable fire-starting methods, and food resilience that respects how seasons actually work. We also get honest about income redundancy and why “one job, one employer, one paycheck” can become “none” faster than people want to admit. Finally, we connect it all to the most durable backup you can build: skills. The more you know, the less you carry, and the less you can lose.

If you want more calm self-reliance and less background anxiety, start here, then pick one weak link in your own life and define what “two” could look like. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the single point of failure you’re fixing first.

Transcript

Two Is One Explained

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin. I'm Sean James here, and this is the My Self-Reliance Podcast. I wanted to uh follow up on a concept that I've been talking about for a while here on the channel, and that is the concept that two is one and one is none. I've been thinking about that phrase a lot lately, not just what it means for gear, although we'll get to that later, but what it means for life, for the way you build things, for the way you structure things, for the way you you decide before anything goes wrong, how much failure you're actually prepared to absorb. Most people hear that phrase and think, okay, pack two lighters, bring a backup knife, that's fine, that's useful, but that's the smallest version of the idea. I want to talk about the bigger version today, beyond the gear and beyond the tools and the equipment. So that where this phrase actually comes from is the military. Well, that's who's been credited for it at least. Most people credit to the Navy SEALs specifically, though the Army Rangers and the Maritimes will both tell you it's their phrase. The truth is nobody really knows where it started, but it's been in circulation for at least half a century and probably much, much longer. Because the idea behind it is older than any branch of any military. Basically, what it is is that redundancy saves lives. It's really the whole thing behind the thing. So redundancy meaning having a backup for things. So basically, if you have one knife and you lose it, you have no knives, obviously. One is none. But if you have two and you lose one, you'll still have one knife. So two is one. Simple, it's practical. In a combat situation or in a survival situation, like in a wilderness situation, that kind of thinking is the difference between coming home and not coming home, or coming home in worse shape than you started off. And there's another saying that's kind of similar, gets mixed up with this one sometimes, and that's a quote by uh Morris Gohansky, uh Canadian bushcraft instructor, one of the better ones who's ever lived. He died a few years ago now. His version was a little bit different. His was the more you know, the less you carry. It's a bit of a different idea, but it's also worth knowing. We'll come back to that one later because I think those two phrases actually complete each other and complete um like the way I look at the world. But for now, one is none and two is one. The question I wanted you to think about for the next little while is this where in your life are you holding one thing that you depend on completely? You know, where if you lost that thing or you broke that thing, that um, or if it was stolen, then how would that impact your life? Now remember my personal situation, I went $750,000

The Cost Of One Point Failure

SPEAKER_00 2:44

into debt and I had to climb back out of that. And there's some many reasons I got into that position, but one of them was related to this concept. I don't say that for drama. I said it before, but I want to say it again here because I think it's the only honest way to explain why I think the way I think now. As you know, I well, maybe you don't, but if you're been around for a while, you know that I had a commercial roofing company. I owned a commercial roofing company back in the late uh 2000, 2000s and uh uh well up to 2010 basically. And for a while it worked and worked really well. We had lots of contracts, we had crews up to over 90 employees at one point, and we had momentum. We were growing pretty steadily, very quickly. And then the conditions that made it work changed. Uh the market shift and the timing was just wrong. A few things went sideways at once, and there was nothing underneath the support that we just didn't have long enough time to have a real foundation to have savings, to have a backup plan. Like it's only a five-year-old company. And when that financial crisis hit in 2008, we were not prepared for it, neither were our customers, and that really impacted us. So that was our main business. And my wife and I both worked in the company, so that was our main source of income. But we had a couple, we had redundancy. We had a couple backup plans. We had a couple of smaller companies that were related, so in the same industry, but that were independent enough that we could continue to operate afterwards at a smaller scale and just barely cover our expenses, but at least it was there. So that was the uh two or three is one concept in that circumstance. So that's what for me, one is none looks like in life, or two is one looks like in actual, like real life, not about just gear, not a drop knife, but an actual company, which of course we had a mortgage on our house. Fortunately, like I said, we had two or three legs. That that one leg was the main one, though. And when that collapsed, everything else kind of collapsed around us. So I want to be careful here because I'm not telling you this because I was particularly stupid or inexperienced or um irresponsible. That's pretty common for business owners or for six successful people to have a number of failures in life. So I'm kind of trying to tell you that it's fairly normal, and that's uh exactly how most people build things. Like one, you have one job, you have one income, one plan for how things are supposed to go. It feels like focus, and it is, but it feels like a commitment and it is, but it's risky. So if something fails, like a job, um that's fairly normal, too. You think you're more secure to have a job to be working for somebody else and to start a business because you think that's risky. Well, I found it risky to be working for somebody that is um looking out for their family, for their company, for their employees, for their customers, and you might be in the way of that if you're not performing or things are tight and they need to be laid off. I find that more risky. And that um that's the that's the one is non-situation that I try to avoid. So the bankruptcy and for us wasn't just financial. We didn't declare bankruptcy, but it were essentially bankrupt. But it wasn't just financial. And I've said this before, too. It was structural. It's an education of what happens when you have no redundancy, when you put everything, your confidence, your identity, your security security into one thing. And when that one thing fails, you don't just lose that one thing. You lose the ground under your feet. And for us, when the dust settled and it took a while to settle, as you know, several years, I made a decision. Quietly, not in anger, just a clear, honest decision. I was never going to put myself in that position again.

Building Redundancy With Two Properties

SPEAKER_00 6:32

So part of that decision was building differently, building my life, building my buildings differently, and building it differently for me meant eventually owning two properties. So two properties that I currently own with my wife. We have the um eight and a half acres with the homestead on it, the uh a little bit more modern, not modern in the sense of modern aesthetic, but has uh utilities, for example. Although only one that's grid tied is the electricity grid, and we have backup for that. So that's uh that's the redundancy. We have several um several um parts of our infrastructure. Many parts of our infrastructure here have that redundancy built in. Um so we've got that, and then I've got the cabin on the hundred acres, of course, and that where I'm sitting right now, and that is that's the it's kind of the primary at first, but it's basically the well, either one I guess can be considered the backup. You might consider the cabin as the uh SHTF uh property homestead where where we can escape to there and have everything we need. Um that's the redundancy, like completely that's pretty major to have two complete homesteads as a redundancy plan, but it also extends beyond me into to my family, especially in the future. So that that's my um excuse or my justification for having these two properties. So both of them were built with intention, both completely built by my wife and I, with uh no or very little outside help and built as part of a structure that could survive a failure in one or the other place. People have thoughts about that. Of course, they think I'm either greedy or that's excessive. Why do you need two places when many people don't have one? Well, I'm just I'm working hard for both places. I didn't wasn't gifted anything. We worked for everything we have, and we're setting up um setting people up for the future, not just not just for my wife and I, but for our extended family and and whoever benefits from all the hard work I'm doing, even outside the family in the future, when these places maybe get um when they're when they change hands in the future. Anyway, I'll tell you what I noticed about the people who said said say that about me, that they probably have never had this kind of loss or they've never had anything to lose to begin with, and they're resentful that I have uh more than one. I'm not gonna apologize for it. Like I said, I worked hard for it, and it's not like I'm doing this and then I'm gonna burn it to the ground when I'm done with it. It's gonna benefit um future people, either my own heirs or somebody else in the future is gonna benefit and be able to live off these off these properties. So I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I'm able to have a bit of a legacy to pass down to future generations. And for people that are criticizing, I really don't not want to be hard on them. I hope they never go through what I'm going through, or I hope they ever have the opportunity to own something like I have. And I understand what it feels like to have the ground disappear from underneath them, or that they find peace in some other way. Anyway, I have had that happen to me and I build my life differently now, not just the buildings. Um, two isn't twice as much, in my opinion. That's not what it is. It's two is the difference between something and and nothing, maybe info, you know, possibly. Two is the knowledge that if one thing fails, there's still a floor underneath me. One flame can go out, two flames, one can light the other. That's not greed, that's architecture. That's understanding from personal experience what a single point of failure actually costs. I don't argue with people like that anymore who don't understand. Let me bring this out of the abstract and into the actual into reality. Uh applies not just to overall life, but into the actual physical infrastructure of your life and

Backup Tools And Fire Methods

SPEAKER_00 10:28

starting with tools. Every serious tool I depend on, every axe, every saw, every knife has a backup. Not because I'm careless with my tools, although sometimes I am. Generally I'm not. Um tools do break though, they just all handle split. The axe that you depend on in January is not the axe you want to be sharpening in January or to putting a handle on. I did that recently, put the handle on that axe before I started a project, and it was um it slowed me down, of course. I had to do that thing. So I could have just and have been in the past, just pick up another axe and get around to fixing that one when I have time. But that's the benefit of having the the two to begin with. Same thing when I'm making fire. There's you know, three or four ways that I primarily make fire, and I'll kind of go back and forth between them depending on what I have with me, but also just to stay practiced in the other methods. Um it's not a survival technique. I'm not telling you how to start a fire like friction fire, for example, although that's useful to know. It's just not likely to ever be required in your lifetime. So what I typically use, and I go back and forth, probably equally between a lighter and strike anywhere matches. And if I'm traveling or if I'm in a camping trip or hunting or fishing trip, I'll have those matches in a waterproof case. And then I of course know how to use each one. And that's you know, knowing how to pick tinder, for example, and and um kindling and so on, right up to the types of wood is useful knowledge. But uh knowing how to start a fire with either one of those, the other things I would use is a flint and steel or a little compression lighter, things that I use on a daily basis. So the person who only knows one way to make a fire. So basically one dead lighter away from being cold and a lighter. Let's say you are in a float plane doing a flying fishing or hunting trip and you go down, that lighter uh can malfunction. That flint gets uh wet or cold and doesn't work very well, or it doesn't work at all in some situations. And if you leave it out, it gets cold, it does not work. You have to get it in your pocket, warm it up for bits. Anyway, it's a little it's uh risky just to rely on that one. So at least have two or three lighter on you, if not an alternate way of starting fire like the matches, or like a fire steel or uh well, fire steel, yeah. It's um better than a flint and steel, like an actual piece of stone flint. Depends where you are and what time of year it is, whether that's being cold is an inconvenience or an actual real survival

Redundant Food And Income Streams

SPEAKER_00 13:02

problem. The other place um I like to have redundancy is food. There's the garden, and then there's the wild harvest. There's the meat that we get from our uh farmer friends that raise cattle, and then there's the wild game that I harvest. Um the root store uh cellars got two root cellars, one for redundancy again. I have two or three pantries where I have them stocked full of long-term stores of food. And storing that food from one season to the next is not just paranoia, it's honest accounting of how the seasons actually work. So, what feeds me and my wife and my family in January, February was grown through the summer and harvested in August, September, October, and then stored. It's a gap has to be bridged, it has to be planned for. August doesn't wait for you to decide if you're ready. February doesn't care whether you're planned, but your family sure does. As far as income's concerned, I talked about that already, and I'll talk about it in the future again, because it's so important when it comes to self-reliance. But and this is the one that people resist the most because it really does require the most honesty. When you have one job, one employer, one income stream, and I'm not judging anybody in that position. I was in that position for most of my life, and you know, then some but I want you to hear it for what it is, what it what it really is, and that that one can very easily become none. And that's a single point of failure sitting at the center of your entire life, especially if you're the sole income producer in your family. Like, uh, you know, I wouldn't I think that's the best way to be, honestly. I'd rather have my wife. Um, I think most women are happier if they're raising the family and taking care of the household while the men's at work making the money. But that again, that's risky in this day and age, especially. And it's not possible for most people because of the way the financial system is, the economy. Anyway, for me, because I'm preparing for my family for the future, I'm continuing to work despite the fact that if I was alone and able to fully live just a wilderness lifestyle, I'd be off on my own and have more than enough money to do that. I could liquidate assets if I needed to, but uh, I'm building a um a future for my family. So for me, this channel, my YouTube channels, has been my sole source of income for the last 10 years, along with some brand deals, products, or services that I believe in. And we have our online store. And that basically is my backup plan. It's the redundancy, it's the uh two is one, and that's to have to be helping people, selling services and products to people in order to make their path to this um to resiliency a little bit easier and to decompress from the stresses of of society. Um, that's how I provide value to people and I um get paid for that. That's part of my income. And that's doesn't take you can't set these kind of things up overnight. I've been working on this business, if you call this brand, my self-reliance of business for what, 12 years, 13 years, something like that. And I'm still building, still not uh there where it can support my family, or that they can all work in the in the business to keep it um keep it going for their benefit and the benefit of their kids, my grandkids, and so on. The other place, um, you know, the good place to focus on the redundancy is on your skill set.

Skills Create The Unlosable Backup

SPEAKER_00 16:44

This is where I want to come back to Morris Kohansky, where he says, the more you know, the less you carry. A skill is a redundancy that can't be lost. You can lose your lighter, but you can't lose the knowledge of how to make a fire without one. Just goes back to the maybe the friction fire or other methods of fire starting. You can lose your axe, but you can't lose the ability to read a tree and figure out which way it's going to fall, which way it'll go when you cut into it, and how to do that safely, and when it lands on the ground, what to do with it there. So every skill you acquire is a backup for every piece of gear you own. None like gear skills don't break, they don't get left behind, and they don't run out of batteries. I would really focus. I like I don't when I I used to plan my like trips into the bush hunting, fishing, canoeing trips, right down on an Excel spreadsheet, right down to the ounce and right down to the uh calorie and the every piece of gear now. I just grab a bag, throw a few things in it, and I go because I know that I have the skills to overcome any deficiencies I have in my gear setup. So work on that skill set, always work on it. The more you know, the less you can lose. And that's what more has meant, and that's what I found to be true in my own life.

Confidence Over Fear

SPEAKER_00 18:00

I want to reframe this around, you know, away from the fear component, because I think what the pandemic taught us all is first of all, you can well, basically you can live in fear, and we may might have briefly during that period, but then we got to work building up our resiliency and we became much more confident and uh secure so we don't operate out of a position of fear, we do it out of a position of confidence. I think that's the thing that separates this conversation from most of the redundancy and preparedness content that's out there. So it's not about fear. It's a version of everything, really. I just said that comes from fear. What if the creed goes down, for example, if the economy collapses, uh, supply chains break, you lose your job. That version is pretty exhausting and scary and stressful to think about. That version will make you anxious and isolated, strange to be around, honestly. In my experience, it doesn't actually prep you, it just worries you. I've seen that in so many people around me where they the worry consumes them and they don't actually do anything about it. It's uh I don't know, it's a bad way to stressful way to live. And I the the solution to that is not the solution that most people actually use, and that's to bury your head in the sand and just ignore it. Ignorance is bliss. I don't think that's the solution. So that's why I build everything the way I build it. Not just the way I build individual things, but how I build my life, how I structure my life. So I build that way because I build confidence because of what it feels like to know, actually know, not just hope that you can absorb a failure and keep going. That if one thing goes, there's at least another to something else as a backup. So you're not dependent on any single thing holding in order for your life to function. And that's not bunker mentality, that's a posture way of standing in the world. It's not a way of hiding from the world and taking that defensive position to your back against the wall. So I don't lie awake worrying about whether the power is going to go out. I've got the backups. Not because I'm naive, I've seen enough to know that things do go wrong, but because I've built a structure that can absorb that. The firewood's already cut and stacked, the food's in the cellar, years worth at least. The skills are there. So the backups are in place. That's what self-reliance actually gives you. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it because I think it's the most important thing. It's not just skills, it's the quiet that you get, the peace that you get from knowing that you're prepared. World gets less scary when you're less dependent on it behaving perfectly. That's the real gift of two is one, not the extra knife, but the actual quiet and the peace and the confidence.

One Weak Link To Fix Next

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Just gonna conclude this quickly so I can get back to work. Uh, you probably, in your own case, don't have two properties. And that's not the point. The point is the question: where in your life do you have one of something that you depend on completely? Like one income, one way to heat your home, one way to power your home, one skill that covers a critical need, one plan for how things are supposed to go. I'm not asking you to overhaul everything today. I'm just asking you to take a look at it. So pick one this week, one thing you depend on that has no backup, and ask yourself, what would two look like? You don't have to build it yet. Just ask the question and start thinking about it and maybe uh taking a few steps uh in that direction, even if even if you're not directly doing it. Anyway, like I said, I've got to get back to work on a nice day. The clouds are finally parting out there. Looks like we're gonna get it some dry weather after all this rain we just got that's making the uh garden flourish, but also the wheat. So I've got to do some weeding and some trellising of the the uh raspberries and the grapes and a few other things. Anyway, if you're interested in this kind of conversation, uh head over to my website, probably the best way, it's sort of a central hub where you can access everything, my YouTube channel, my more podcasts, episodes, and uh whatever other content you can find there. Articles, lots of articles as well. Anyway, cabin doors always open here. So look forward to seeing you back here at the cabin next time. Take care.