Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great

Books podcast, episode number 98.

Yes. We are crawling, tooth and

nail towards our penultimate 100th

episode. You're gonna wanna be there for that.

With our book today, written by an author who went

to his grave, defying modernity, postmodern

fame culture, and the Internet and social

media. This book was penned by a writer who,

if you were alive and writing today in his thirties, you probably

wouldn't have heard of him because his choices and posture

defied the algorithm that runs so much of our buying

and creating behavior.

The author who, much like his contemporaries Tom Wolf and Nora

Ephron, marched to the beat of his own

drummer. Today, we will be covering we'll

be summarizing. We'll be talking about the ins and outs

of Charles Portis' True Grit.

Now we will be joined on this march into the literary wilderness

at the open of our month of March, with our returning

guest host from episode number 52, when we cover the way of the

samurai by in a zone to Toby, John Hill,

aka small mountain. How are you doing,

John? Dude, I am so ready for this

conversation. Congrats honestly on

getting to 100, first of all, because we need to talk about that. Like, most

people don't do 10 of these kinds of things before they bail. So

98, significant achievement, my friend. Well done.

Well, you know, it's one of those things where I thought

I always had the vision in my head for this show. I I essays thought,

okay. If I could do 5 years' worth of episodes, that's a

corpus. That's a thing. And I can do anything for 5

years even if no one listens to it. Even if I only have, like, a

1000 listeners, it doesn't matter because I did 5 years

of something. And then I can notch that belt, And it's way more than

that, but, you know, I can notch that belt and I can move on with

the rest of my life. And it's like, for me, it's like,

writing a book or cooking a meal. Right. It's something

that's going to take time. It's going to flow over the course of time. And

I'll be honest. There are days when I get up and I come to this

microphone and I'm like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna do this today. But

then I get to talk to awesome people like you and our other guests who

have been on and about halfway in, I'm like, oh no, this

is fine. Actually, I'm usually about 10 minutes in. I'm like, oh, this is fine.

This is, this is going to be interesting. Or I'll get a guest. And

again, all of our guests have been great. Occasionally you will

get a guest where, or you'll get a guest house, like our guest host, Tom

Libby. Who's now our, our almost semi-regular co-hosts are actually

not semi regular. He's our regular co hosts now.

You'll get Tom on and we'll be talking about a book before we hit the

record button and he'll, he'll say something to me like, I don't know how we're

going to get anything out of this book. And then at the end of the

recording, at the end of an hour and a half long conversation, or at the

end of a 2 hour long conversation, he'll look at me at the end of

the recording and he'll say, ah, okay. I

saw it. So okay.

I have a hard question as someone who makes a lot of content and, and

I've also struggled with some of that stuff myself of, like, is this worth doing?

Yeah. Do you think that that is your superpower, is being able

to, like, pull stuff out of people to make the conversation great?

Do you think that that's what makes him a great cohost for you? How do

you split that in your head? I think

that like most things in the content

creation business, and you and I were talking a little bit about this before we

hit record. People are always looking for the hack or the

shortcut or the thing that will, and this is why we're going to cover true

grit today. The thing that will make the algorithm like them. And I

don't I've never cared about any of that nonsense.

I don't really care if the algorithm likes me or not. I don't really care

if I get 10,000 likes on a platform. Would I

like to get that for sure? I'd be crazy to say no, that I don't

want that. Not where I don't want that for the show, but

I'm going to keep doing this regardless of what the algorithm

says. I'm going to keep doing this quite frankly, if I get no

feedback from it, or if I get a lot of feedback from it, or if

I get a little bit of feedback from it, because I believe in the show,

I believe in the value of what we're doing here. And so I think that's

my super. I also think that,

the, and this is the dark side of that. The dark side of this is

sometimes it could be a little bit self indulgent. So you're going to have to

like work, watch out for that. And there have been some episodes that I've done

where I did step back a little bit and I was like, well,

I could have pulled some more out of that for other people versus that just

being, you know, kind of, oh, I'm gonna do this for myself and it'll be

fine. But, but I'm constantly going into

the books looking for what can I give our

listeners? What can I give a person who 10 years

from now might pick up this might pick up this in a search for a

particular book? This will pop up on Google. They'll be like, oh, I didn't know

what that is click and they'll listen to it and they'll go, oh, I didn't

know that this particular insight could be pulled from this book. That's the game I'm

I'm playing. So I love them. And I I think I think that the order

of operations there is the important part. Right? You said,

you know, would I like to have those kind of results? Yes. But you're not

making your content purposefully to go try to capture those results

because the work itself is worth doing in the way that you're doing

it. Plus, I think that

I was actually going to post this on Facebook today and then I decided not

Tom, but it is an insight that I think is

worthwhile. It probably should have more, more traction

or more popularity. But it is an eye. It is this

idea that these large language

algorithms that we're using to

aggregate all of the

teratrillion of information that we've put on the internet in the

last 40 years in the Western world anyway.

Those algorithms are going to expose who's real and who's

fake. 100%. 100%. And,

and the people who are real, And I mean, genuine people who are

genuinely real. And we already saw this a little bit with Google Gemini, not to

date this podcast, but if you're listening to this in the future, you may want

to go Google, go Google that. But,

you're going to see who's real and who's fake. You're going to see

what people are doing. That's that's genuine and actually making a

real connection and a real human style level of engagement

versus people who are just playing. Quite frankly, playing the

algorithm game in order to get virality and then to just take off and

go. And I would, I would, I would also say that What those

large language algorithms will do is it will separate the leaders from the followers and

the leaders, the leadership and leaders have always been a tiny group,

but my fear is that that group is just gonna get smaller

rather than the franchise expanding. And we need the franchise to expand.

That's a super interesting point because,

you know, I try to go watch the longest form

content, read the longest form content I can because I know how easy it is

to get good writers. Right? I know how easy it is to sound like, you

know, you're talking about over a 32nd clip, which is why,

like, I love the Rogen style format, those super

long forms because, like, if they run out of talking points,

you know. You can hear it. Right? Like, some of the people who,

I'm not fans of. I'm not gonna list any names out here. But, I love

to go watch their long form shows because it's like, let's see if you can

hold it together for longer than 3 minutes. Because if not, I now

know kinda really where you are in the grand scheme of things, and no

judgment. Right? Like, you know, it's great. You can have great writers, but

I only wanna deal with people whose, like, IP is actually attached

in a meaningful way. Well, and we talk we're we're we're we're we

talk a little bit about this. We've talked a little bit about this, without going

too much into the details of like the secret, not really secret sauce, because there

was no secret sauce, but sort of the nuts and bolts of the show. Right?

This show, yeah, I write a script. Like the show is dead simple. I read

a book, I write a script, I send it to the guest. The guest has

areas where they can comment. We have a conversation before we start and then we

press record and go. And then I read the book or read excerpts from the

book or increasingly, read summaries of the book because I want to go get

through the whole thing. And then we talk about a bad book and forth, bring

forth ideas, pull things from it, and then we move on. It's dead

simple.

But dead simple and holding

someone for 2 hours or 4 hours. Like you and I have talked for

4 hours and we talked for 4 hours about a book that was.

What a 100 pages, maybe me and motors, massashi's, you know, a book of 5

rings, that's maybe a 100 pages, maybe. Short re short read for

sure. But when you look at the lasting impact of it, you look at, you

know, like, it doesn't have to be long, which is

something I'm I'm always trying to be better about myself because I am not

succinct in my writers, in my content creation, or anything. And so

one of the coolest things about it is we can talk for 4 hours, and

we can probably go again for 4 hours. Right? We could bring we could bring

another actual practice martial artist, and we could go for 12 hours

because of the depth of that book. Right? Oh, yeah. Which I think is

important to to keep in mind that it doesn't have to be long. It

doesn't have to be, you know, thinking fast and slow by Conumen for it

to, like, have value. You know, sometimes it's just a slog

because it needs to be a slog, but choosing to force everyone on

a slog because you can't do it a different way also

has some limitations. Well and and you talk about long form

versus short form. For me, the content that particularly in the

podcasting space that is not working these essays,

And God bless all the people who are doing it and who are struggling, but

there's a massive tranche between. The people who were doing

micro short content. And we do, by the way, we have these 2 formats on

our show. So we have the micro, you know, 6 to 10 minute sometimes.

Well, 2 to 4 minute, 4 to 6 minute at Tom max 10

minutes, micro content that you can just pick up. And it's just me talking,

no guests, no music, just going. Then we, we, we

cross the trench and we go up the J curve all the way into

that 4 hour space, which has names in it

that John is not going to name. I'm not going to name. It's okay. You

know who they are. You could find them. Right?

And it and and and in between those two polls are a

bunch of people doing half hour, an hour long shows. Yep. And

and God bless people who are in the leadership development space. I'm

not quite sure how you can talk effectively about leadership. And I'm

going to say it, I'm going to say it, and maybe I don't get invited

as a guest onto those shows, and and maybe that's fine. I've got my own

show. It's cool. But I don't know how you cover the depth and

breadth of leadership in under in in 30 minutes. I don't know how

you do it or in an hour. I genuinely don't. And that's

and maybe it's because I'm just not good enough to be that succinct. That might

be it. Just like you, I'm not succinct either. I like long conversations with

interesting people. So maybe it's a me problem, not a problem of the format.

But I do see a lot of those shows in that in that deep

that deep ditch between what's happening at the 4 hour

end, what's happening at the, at the 10 minute end at that micro micro end.

And it seems like that's a place where a lot of shows go to die.

And I I I'd never wanted that for this show. So Man, I

cannot tell you how many times I've gotten feedback because I've done a

couple of hour long things. Right? We had a podcast and then the live stream,

and they were longer because I I like the longer conversation as

well. And the advice from everyone, oh, man, you gotta make it shorter. You gotta

make it shorter. I don't wanna make it shorter. I want the depth. You know?

And, we're launching a new show, and it's supposed to be about an hour long.

But I'm choosing very intentionally, at least on the front end, people who I

know have the traits and characteristics of

a long form conversation. They're deep, they're thoughtful,

extremely aware of themselves. Right? They're not trying to be too

polished and professional because I think that if you if you,

in poker, this is called bum hunting. But in poker, you're trying to find the

easiest opportunities to make money that you possibly can. So

I wanna make a really high level show with deep thinkers and people

sharing kind of what has worked for them. So at least

during development, since the show is not live yet, you know, I'm being very

intentional reaching out to people who I know already make good content, already are

capable of having really deep conversations without it needing to be 3

hours. Because I do think that some people will they need that time to walk

into the depth, and then some people are just ready to jump in from Yeah.

From the deep side. You know? So I'm trying to shortcut that a little bit

because I do know how much time it takes to, like, you know,

to get people excited about a 3 hour show. Right? I know it's not for

everybody, but, you know, I'm also trying to,

interview, like, revenue people. So, like, hey, can I have can I have half of

your day? No. No. Which

is fair and fine. I get it. You know? Because because, honestly, if it takes

half a day as me, as the interviewer, to get greatness out of

people, I'm I don't think I'm doing a very good job as an interviewer. Right?

As an interviewer. Yeah. So I think I think that that's the other part of

it is who is getting value out of it? If no one is getting

value out of it, then, you know, then, you know, there's some hard questions.

But Yeah. Distribution and the algorithm do play a big part on, like, is

anyone getting value out of it kinda thing. You know? Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. We can, we could talk about this all day, but I'm sure people would

like to hear about the book. I mean, compared to us complaining about, like,

algorithmic issues, I'm sure that everyone would rather hear about this book. Everyone would rather

hear about this book. And, and Charles Podcast and

his literary life. So, let's do that. Let's

so let's let's do that. Let's pick up with, let's pick up with true grit.

So, this is an excellent

book. This is an excellent novel. It is

probably one of my top

5 at minimum, top ten at max

books. Oh, yeah. And

there's many, many reasons for why I love this book.

But let me start off for those of you who have never read it. Maybe

you haven't seen either of the films. I also have a an object here that

I'm gonna share for folks who are watching the video, I'm gonna show you something

that I pulled out of a, I pulled out of a shop in Texas.

So Charles Podcast and, and true grit, true grit begins.

Now the movie actually, the Joel and Ethan Cohen movie begins with

a quote from Proverbs, Proverbs 28, 1, the wicked

flee when no one pursues. Now there's a

comma there or semi colon, depending upon which version of the Bible you're

reading. And then there's, there's a, there's another line behind there,

which the Cohen brothers did not put at the, in the opening their cold open

to the film, which I think is actually important for what Portis was

trying to get to in this book. So Proverbs

28, one, the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous

are as bold as a lion.

When you open up true grit, Charles Podcast begins

with Maddie Jesan. And, he opens up with

this description. People do not give it credence that a 14 year old girl could

leave home and go off in the literature to avenge her father's book. But it

did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every

day. I was just 14 years of age when a coward going

by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down at Fort Smith,

Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and

$150 in cash money plus 2 California gold

pieces that he carried in his trouser band. And from

there, from that compound sentence, we are off. Maddie

Ross is the driver for this book.

Now her perspective is one of a middle aged

woman looking back on what happened to her when she was a teenager,

kind of a little bit with incredulity, kind of a little bit with righteousness.

And we're gonna talk about her Sorrells, her sense of moral righteousness because that's a

huge driver for everything that happens in this in this

novel. But you begin to see just

how just how righteous she is

when, she gets on the train and

takes the train, from from Yale County,

all the way to, all the way to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and

begins Tom, well, she begins to walk

around and start talking to people and begins to assert herself,

in in a way that only a 14 year old girl, who has

no knowledge of sort of how the world is, quote, unquote, supposed to work

does. Now I have, you know, full full disclosure. I have

a 14 year old girl, a 13 year old girl who lives in my house.

And so, eats my food. And so I

know what I'm talking about here. And, there's a certain

level of moral authority that she brings to all of her

interactions. In particular, her interactions with

the, the man who owns the, who

owns the, well,

he owns the the wagon loading

place slash horse trading place, right, horse

trading location, in Fort Smith, a man

named colonel, Stonehill. And she goes

back and forth with colonel Stonehill, about the,

about the value of the horses, about the value of the ponies. By the way,

this is demonstrated both in both versions of this book that

we're turning to the movie, one starring, Jeff

Bridges. That's the Ethan Cohen film that was just recently released. And

then, of course, the the the older film with,

with your friend in mine, John Wayne.

And, and she threatens colonel Stonehill with the attorney. She

threatens him with lawyer Jane Noble Daggett of Dardanelle, Arkansas.

And and and she threatens him in such a way

that he

well, he's got his own principles of negotiation and what he

wants to get for the horses, and she's got her own principles.

And the principles meet and clash.

And the thing that you see in the first part of this

book is that Maddie Ross

and I'm going to be very gentle about this. Maddie Ross is no Gen Z

er stuck to her phone. She's no millennial who wants to

be liked by everybody. She is fine with being disagreeable.

She's okay with that. And that sets the tone for many,

many things that happened later, including,

the entire, testimony that,

Rooster Cogburn, who was introduced in this first part as well,

gives, in a trial where he

shot 2 men and then maybe or maybe

not moved them to a fire. And, of

course, when she meets rooster coming

out of the trial after he has been, questioned,

by the lawyer about how many men he has killed

and whether or not he always works in

reverse when he's backing up. She says to

him, and of course, this is the title of the book. They tell me you

are a man with true grit. He

actually doesn't know what she means. And by the way, both Jeff Bridges and John

Wayne nailed this part about rooster Cogburn's character,

but they nailed it in different ways. He actually doesn't understand what

she means because he is who he

is.

Let's open up with the literary life of Charles Portis. So who was the guy

who wrote this book? Well, Charles Mccole Portis was born December

28, 1933 and died February 17,

2020. Yeah, that's right. He died before everything kicked

off with COVID. And, he was an American

writers. And now this is directly from his Wikipedia entry, which is

very, very slim. I think Portis would have actually really,

really liked this. He was the literary peer of Toni Morrison,

Philip Roth, and, interestingly enough, the man he's always compared to,

Cormac McCarthy, which, by the way, eventually, at a certain point, we will read The

Road, on this podcast. We'll get to that.

Charles Portis lived, observed, and was hyper aware of the contradictions and

complexities of the American south and west and the real people

who lived there doing real things. Now Portis

wrote 5 books total. His 2 most famous were Norwood, written

in 1966, and, of course, True Grit in 1968.

And he is an author who was well,

he had his own sense of weirdness.

And I quote, as Tom Wolf says in the new journalism,

one day Podcast suddenly quit as London correspondence for the Herald

Tribune. Now he was a he started off as a journalist. Right?

That was generally regarded as a very choice job in the newspaper business.

This is Tom Wolf speaking. Portis quit cold one day, just

like that without warning. And after writing his first two novels, Portis

actually went out to went on to live the fantasy, Wolf says. Portis did it

in a way that was so much like the way it happens in the dream.

It was unbelievable. He sold both books to the movies.

He made a fortune, and

then he moved into a fishing shack in Arkansas.

It was Tom, pardon my use of the word, it was too

damned perfect to be true, and yet there it was, which

is to say that the old dream, the novel has never died.

Close quote. By the way, Portis made

$14,000,000 from the movie adaptation of true grit

with John Wayne. And that was $14,000,000 in 1960s, 19

seventies money. And I quote also from

Justin Taylor in old wheeled America who was writing in 2023,

quote, Hortus is a comedian of the highest order, but he is finally, as

all comedians must be, a moral philosopher. Because

comedy, like prophecy, is always grounded in a critique of the

world as it is based on a vision of the

world as it ought be. And that comes

through, I think, tremendously in his character of Mattie

Ross, and less so in his character of

Rooster Cogburn. And then there's

this. So I am holding up

for those of you who are going to be watching the video. I

found in a junk shop in Central

Texas the original,

Capitol record

soundtrack to the original true grit starring John

Wayne, Glenn Campbell, and Kim Darby as Mattie

Ross. On the back, of course, is the

pictures of the, of the folks, and all the songs on here are

sung by Glenn Campbell. Now in the Joel Ethan Coen film,

Glenn Campbell's role was played by Matt Damon. Matt Damon did not sing.

John Wayne's part was played by Jeff Bridges. I already brought that up. And, of

course, Kim Darby's part was played by Hailey Steinfeld. I hope

I'm saying her name correctly. But this is, this is a

great, album. Side 1 is true grit with vocals by

Glenn Campbell, Rooster, Maddie and Literature Blackie, a

dastardly d, d, papa's things, side 2 is true grit,

Chen Lee in the general, big trail, Cogburn country, and then, of course, true

grit b side vocals by Glenn Campbell. So I'm holding it up on the

video. It has a great cover. I've been holding on to this for the last

6 months because I knew I was gonna be doing this podcast, and I've been

waiting to show it to John and he is laughing right now on the video.

You'll be able to see it because it is an example of old, weird America.

I just I could not when I found this from Paramount Pictures,

when I found that album, I was, my wife was like, what are you doing?

We don't even have a record player at home. And I was like, I need

to get this, though. It doesn't matter. I need to have this. So I have

it now. So with that, I'd like to kick it over

to John. Go ahead. Yeah. I you know, you said

you had something to show me, but you didn't give me any advanced

notice, which I now appreciate. But I do feel a little bit

broadsided by this because, me and my wife are

big record collectors. And every time we go anywhere, including antique stores,

she's digging, digging, digging. Like, doesn't care about

anything else other than salt and pepper shakers and old vinyls. Like, it's

crazy. And so we have quite the collection here. She would lose her mind.

And we were rewatching the movies over the weekend and readers some

trivia and going a little bit deeper about it. And, Glenn Campbell

is quoted as saying, you know what? Before that movie, I've never I've

never acted in a movie. Upon seeing it, my record is

still the same, which made

me so like, I

like, I saw that movie at a time. Right? Like like, my my

my mom and my grandmother are are both huge John Wayne fans.

Okay? So I had seen the movie is, like, part of learning

about the greatness of John Wayne. Right? So Yeah. My my grandmother

was just obsessed with, like, the western style of John Wayne, not so

much the war stuff, but, you know, McClintock. I'm a quiet man. And

then, you know, they're always saying, like, fill your hands. You know? Like, this kind

of this thing. And then I was like, where is this from? And then we

watched the movie. I didn't read the book until leaders, and it was kind

of a because the the original movie doesn't really follow

the book as closely as the Coen version does, which I kind of forgot

about. Yeah. No. It does not. And that was, by the way, a

a knock against the original movie is that it seemed too much of a John

Wayne vehicle. Yeah. Because it's not it's not really meant

to be about him. If anything, he's he's the belligerent

antihero. Right. But I think that

and I'll go ahead and say it early. I think the thing that the John

Wayne film has that the Joel and Ethan Cohen film doesn't

is that sense of

that sense of moral righteousness. Like, there are some there there there's

there's elements that are in the book. And, yes, the Ethan Coghlan

the Joel and Ethan Coghlan book or movie heumes very

closely to the book. But Joel and Ethan I think it was Joel

Joel Joel Cohen that wrote. I don't think it was Ethan. I think Ethan produced

that one, although I might be wrong. I'd have to go back and look. But,

I think they stripped the more moralistic elements out of

it. And without that, which you do get in Kim Darby, by the

way, you do get in her in her portrayal of, of Maddie

Ross, you do get the sense that she's

a moral actor in the world. And her moralism comes from

and we're gonna talk about this a lot today, but it comes from a particular

a particular spot in her in her perception of

the world. You know? Agreed. And you Yeah. And you kinda get at the end

of the Joel Ethan Cohen movie when when as an and as a middle

aged lady, you know, and I'm not giving anything away here because you can go

watch the movie, but, you know, she she walks up to,

oh gosh, the old west shooting show or whatever. And, Frank

James doesn't get up. She's like, don't get up, trash. Yeah. You

know? You know? But there were elements of that all throughout the book where she

was talking to people like that the whole time. 100%. We

my wife and I watched both of them again, and I was kinda talking about

the pacing differences between the two films. Right? Because the first one is so much

more back story and everything. The newer version, yeah, I would say is

closer to the book as far as like the overall view, but the pacing of

it is very different. But the John Wayne one does do

a better job of like showing that no matter what had happened

to her father, Maddie would have carried out those same actions.

Whereas in the Jesan movie, it kinda seems like, hey. Like, it got you

know, she seems a very stalwart, right, person. Right?

It's a great word. But it kind of seems like she's

almost forced into this because of the nature of events. Whereas I think the first

one does a much better job of being like, Hey, this is just who she

is and she's going to move people, you know? And, I think,

I think there's weight to that because I, I, I do think that a lot

of people are much more concerned about being themselves and being direct and

different things like that. And when you're not brought up to be that,

it's harder to step into that spot and when when and if you have Tom,

professionally speaking. Right? Right. Because Maddie was brought up

as the smartest person, you know, on that farm. She's handling the book.

She's doing all these things. She is brought up with a with a lane of

authority that creates this righteousness and and, you know,

thinking that I think most people today don't have until they find it

much, much later professionally. Well and and, you know, Kim

Darby was I mean, she was in her twenties. Yeah. She was

21 when they when they made that thing. And, apparently,

John Wayne was not a fan of her because he wanted his daughter to be

in that role, and they told him no. And so, apparently, they didn't say,

like, 2 words off camera to each other, which is kind of an interesting thing.

But, apparently, John Wayne was not the greatest human on set, you know,

just going back and looking at some of that stuff. Not here to judge the

guy. Not you know? I wasn't there. But It it book me many years. You

talk about growing up with your your grand your grandmother being a really big fan

of John Wayne. So we're it's weird.

So, in my family, my

father was a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, but didn't care a whit

about John Wayne. And, and it kind of Sorrells makes sense

because my father was from me. My father was born in, in the in the

the, late 19 forties. And so Mhmm. For

African Americans in the late 19 forties were born at that time and then came

of age in the late sixties and went to Vietnam in the seventies,

yeah, they grew up watching John Wayne, but it was more like an American

institution that was representative of, quite frankly,

white male culture. And they and they wouldn't have framed it that way. That's how

we frame it now. They would have just said, John Wayne is racist Doesn't like

black people. That's how they would have framed it. And they would have just moved

on with the rest of their lives. Right. Whereas Libby Eastwood seemed a

lot more. Oriented. You're right. A lot

more realistic. That's interesting. I've never thought about that before. I've

never really been a Clint fan. Like, I've never really done the

job. It's never really done anything to me. And honestly, like, rewatching

this and, like, recently rewatched McClintock

recently for, like, the first time in years, many, many, many

years. And, I'm like, oh, yeah. That doesn't have the same pull on

me that it used to. Right? Yeah. I don't know how much of that is

just age or that being out of time or my shifts.

Just I think it's probably all of that, but I also think

that John Wayne

is fundamentally in a different way than Clint Eastwood fundamentally

essays going to be, a frozen

in his own era. Yeah. And and because because the

movies he made, it's easier to kind of put them off to the side, I

would say. Right. Right? Because, like, everything is about him being larger than life. Right?

Like, you watch, like, Writers and even The Shootist, which is, like Mhmm. Like

like that's that's movie star movies from a guy

who's, like, the first movie star almost. Whereas Correct. You

know, the way that they've worked with, like, Clint and everyone else now,

they're way more approachable. They're they're they're human beings in and of themselves a lot

of times. Well, not only that, but, like, Clint also did movies

that were much more of a challenge for him

because he couldn't step over John Wayne. Yeah. John Wayne was too

big a star, so we had to go to Italy. You know? He he did

raw hide in the fifties, couldn't get hired to do anything in

America, runs across Sergio Leone and goes to

Italy. You know? And he's like, okay. Well this. Yeah. He's handling that information

for me. Yeah. He's doing the movie's there. And it was

there that he figured out, I think, although he's never said it,

but I think it was there. He figured out that, oh, there's something more to

this movie game than just showing up and being the guy from raw

high. That's fundamentally

different. And and actually, I would trace Eastwood's growth and

direction alongside or parallel to sort of

the new directors, when they were new of Scorsese,

Spielberg, Lucas, well, Lucas was Spielberg and

Lucas were the next generation, but Scorsese, what's his name,

who did Apocalypse Now? Coppola, thank you. Knew eventually I would have it.

But Scorsese, Coppola. I like how you thank yourself.

Thanks me for the help. I would like to

thank me for showing up every day.

But it's it's this it's this parallel

idea in in Eastwood's career that you don't just have to be

a movie star. Right? There's not just one path. There's all these other

paths. John Wayne was very happy being directed by John Ford.

He was very happy being the the guy. Yeah. He just wanted to be

handled. He just wanted to be handled. Yeah. He didn't wanna

and, you know, we're speaking a little bit of the school because the because the

guy's gone, you know, but, like, eventually but you see this with everybody, though.

Right? They build the team. Right? DiCaprio

loves, you know, working in Scorsese films, and Scorsese loves writing

films for him because he knows what he's capable of doing and stuff. And, you

know, I I sometimes see people go after people. Right? Because even the

Coen Writers have their regulars who they love to have in movies and stuff like

that. And people are like, can't you find someone new? It's like when you know

who to write for, like, and you and you

can trust them with the book. You know? There's there's something

special and unique that if you've not created something creative that has to

be performed by someone else that you probably don't actually understand yet.

Now once again, we have talked about the movies, so we have not talked about

Podcast. Portis would be happy about this. He'd be like, yeah, that's fine. I'm gonna

take my $14,000,000 Tom go to my shack in Arkansas. Absolutely.

I love that about Charles Portis. I love it that he only

wrote 5 novels. I love it that he said the $14,000,000 was

enough. I'm going to retreat and go do the thing. Like

there's a, there's a, there's an article in one of the links that I sent

you or an essays. One of the links that I sent you, I think it's

from, it's not for old weird America. It might be from the literary hub

where they were trying to reach out to him. The author, the journalist was trying

to reach out to him and, you know, he's like,

well, I mean, yeah, you can come to Arkansas and interview me if I have

time in my day. And you could always find him at the bar, like having

a drink, just hanging out. And no one would know that he was Charles

Fortis. The man had 0, apparently social media presence didn't care about

any of that nonsense. I'm sure the Cohen's

reached out to him and his essays, when they,

when they did the, when they did the film and I'm sure he was like,

yeah, that's fine. Just make sure the check is signed with my name.

I never had a wife. He never had kids. He just wrote his books

and hung out and fish. And I think that that's what got, what got Tom

Wolf. I think that's what got taught because Tom Wolf is so the opposite. Tom

Wolf wanted to be.

Well, you mentioned handled. Right? He wanted to be handled by the New York

literature press folks. Right. Bonfire. I mean, you don't

write a book like bonfire of the vanities where you're just lambasting everybody in New

York in the eighties without wanting to attract some attention to yourself. I'm Sorrells. On

the other hand, everything that I've read about the man,

he didn't care about any of that. And by the way, dollars

14,000,000 the interest on $14,000,000

is fine. The interest payment is enough to feed you for a year. What do

you what do you need? You have you have no expenses. Well, I mean, in

one of those articles you sent me, it talked about that he got $300,000 at

the time just for the rights of that movie. Like Mhmm. That man doesn't need

to do anything else. If he's already, like, kind of planted the flag and said,

you know what? I don't wanna do it this way anymore. Like Mhmm. I

think I think there's a big story here for everyone who is, like, starting a

business right now, because I think there's a lot of people who were deluding

themselves Tom points of failure because they're trying to

go build a big, huge conglomerate and things. That way it's going to be sexy

and everything else like that. When really you just need to show up and do

your job. Right? Do the writing, do the outreach. Writers? Whatever

that looks like. It doesn't have to be great and sexy, but it

needs to book. You know? And there's a lot of

people, I think, right now who we were kinda talking about this before we hit

record. They're doing it for the star power. They're not doing it for the sake

of the work itself. And the thing that I I I appreciate this about this

book and, the essays you sent over because I read

them gave me a whole new perspective on the guy because I don't really know

that much about Portus. That this book, like, this book, my

copy of it is, you know, because we're collectors. You know?

And Mel had read it as well, and so she came home with this very

old version. I don't even know the date on this thing of mine, but and

we're it's just always been on the thing, but I've never read anything else by

him yet, but I'm going to now. And

it's just if you're doing it for the sake of the

work, it shows up differently than when you're doing

it, like, the star power kind of, like, situation. And and we see this with

actors, and we see this with musicians. We see this with

everybody who's doing anything. There's the there's the marketing path. There's the, hey,

look at me path. And then there's the, hey, like, I do good work and

I don't care if you like it or not. And sometimes they can be together.

But more often than not, you do have to kind of go pick

1 or the other. This is something that I have been hit

with with hit with as

feedback, particularly sharply in the last couple of years.

So consistently over the course of my career, such as

it were, the last 20 years of me doing stuff, I've

always been accused intermittently, usually of being

spread too thin, which sometimes I am like currently I'm probably spread too

thin, and not focusing on one thing nearly enough.

And if I just focused on this one thing, I'd be genius. Okay.

And, and, and really in the last couple of years and within the last 6

months, people have been coming to me saying, if you just focused on this, you're

just focused on this. You're just focused on this. And

I've always pushed back on that. And by the way, it's

personal feedback. It's also professional feedback. So it's becoming at me for a lot of

different areas. Right. And I always push back on that by saying, thank you.

I appreciate your perspective on what I'm doing out here. I'm

peripatetic. I have multiple different interests in a lot of different areas, and I

like to do a lot of different things. And

I'm focused on doing the work for the sake of the work. And I like

it, how you made that distinction. I'm doing the work for the sake of the

work. I'm not doing the work for all of these other multiplicity

of things. I'm doing the work to get famous. I mean, if fame

comes, okay, I'll take it. But I'm not doing that.

I would be doing these 5 things that I'm doing currently

If anybody were paying attention to me or not. 1000%. Because this

is the book. Yeah. For me, that's the work. And I get it for you.

You have to, you know, put on a suit and get in a car and

drive somewhere, or maybe you put on your flip flops and you show up on

camera and you get on Zoom somewhere. Like, whatever you gotta do, I

get it. And that's the only thing you have in your in your psychological space

to handle. I get that. That's okay. I

can handle multiple things in my psychological space. I'm

okay. But are all those things aren't paying you?

I I really do. You let you let me worry you let me worry about

that. Yeah. I, you know, I, you know, if you

have the view of my bank accounts, then, you know, we can we can talk

about all the data points. Right? Which is the other part that people kinda

get lumped in with this. Like, I'm, the thing that I've learned about myself,

is that if I don't have an outlet of some way, shape, or form and

for a long time, that was martial arts, and before that, it was poker. For

a long time, it was those things together. But when I stopped training martial arts

in my first school, it was as I was starting this business. Right? And I

also was not playing poker. So what that meant was all

all all of my focus, all of my thinking, all of

my concerns and fears and you know, was put into

just this very small box, which is my business.

Right? And, if I don't have a puzzle

to work on, I will create one inside of the business. Right?

Mhmm. And my grandmother who passed away, in February 2020,

she's the one who was the the reason why I read true grit and and

have seen all these John Wayne movies. One time I was working at a job

and she goes, what happens when you get it figured out? Right? Because I job

hopped a lot. Right? As a salesperson, you know, it's not quite as detrimental to

job hop. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, you're gonna get

bored, and you're gonna figure this out, and then you're gonna get bored. What happens

then? You know? And, you know, I was 24, 25, and

I was avoidant of this quality about myself. So I was like, no.

No. Those other jobs were were garbage, bad leadership, bad

bosses, you know, all this other stuff. And she was like, okay.

And, like, was just can can fine leaving it just

like that. You know? Fast forward, you know, she's gone. I'm doing some journaling and

thinking, and and this comes back of, like, holy crap.

I need the puzzle. I need something to engage

my mind in a worthwhile way. And when I don't have it in front of

me, I will create it. So to that end, the past

year, I've been practicing guitar. I got a guitar, and I'm working with a

coach, and I'm also starting to do woodworking as, like, a as a more

physical outlet because guitar is great, super great for my brain and my

thinking and stuff like this, but it wasn't it wasn't in my body

enough to really kind of take over for the martial arts. So now,

actually, this weekend, I spent kind of building my workbench for the

garage because I'm gonna get into, you know, woodturning and building

bowls and cool stuff like that just as another way to

have a puzzle outlet. So that way I don't create it inside of my business.

But I I think, first of all, I think if you're

running a business and you're not making content, you're choosing to make it difficult for

no great reason except your ego. And when you can make your content around the

things you'd be doing anyway, like the work, you know, reading the books

that you would be reading anyway, taking the like, publishing the notes you would be

writing anyway, publishing the interviews with other peers in the same spot who are

capable of having qualified conversations, why not make

that content? You know, why not try to help out, help out other people?

And that's when I think it really gets beautiful and good. But I think when

you're making content, because, like, you think it's gonna help the business, not because it's

something you're you're really invested in doing is when you start trying to chase that

star path. Right? And then it's gonna hurt when you wake up and

realize that the, that the sexy business thing that you're trying to make sexy, but

also keep real is not hitting either one of these marks. It also

moves you away from the fame machine that social media is.

1000%. For sure. And this is the

this is the love hate. And I don't know. I I really shouldn't say

love. It's neutral than hate for me. It really is. It's neutral than

hate. Most of the Tom, I'm neutral about social media platforms because I

readers they're businesses and they're gonna do what they're gonna do. Mhmm. It's fine. Algorithm

gonna algorithm, to paraphrase. Right? Like, it's fine.

Whatever. And,

I'll post content and I know content gets suppressed. I'm not complaining about it

because algorithm going to algorithm. It's fine.

But when you're creating content for the business and the content

is a lead generator to something else, because it has to serve a purpose.

Now you're going to get caught in the, in the, in the virality trap. You're

going to get caught in the space of trying to do what

TikTok wants, which is not what's best for your

business. It's not what's best for your leadership or your team. It's what's best

for TikTok. And I think that that's a point that's been made

multiple times by multiple people, and it always needs to be

made again because your people need to hear it. Absolutely. Writers? There's always a vanity

metric, and there's always a metric that matters. You know? I have a I have

a podcast. It's a 0.01% podcast in the world of sales and

business. Right? We have 85 episodes and everything else like that. But in the grand

scheme of things, you say those things, it's not that big.

It's really not. And to your point, I think, I

think the other side of this that we're kind of not talking about is that

if you post enough, if you create for long enough, you know, your sample size

becomes indicative of what you should be expecting. Writers. Right. And

the thing that you said a second ago about doing this for 5 years, I

can do anything for 5 years, and then I'll know. Like, that is you collecting

a big enough sample so that you're not lying to yourself. You're not choosing someone

else's best practices over what you're able to do. And I talk

about this with people because I post about consultative selling,

not flashy selling, not high pressure selling. I don't talk about marketing. I don't talk

about all these other things that people are, like, super excited about. I talk about

having better sales conversations, which most people are trying to get away

from sales conversations entirely. Right? They'd rather market all the way to conversion

versus, like, having to have a conversation with people. Yeah.

So I'm not gonna get the reach that other people are, but when you do

it, I've been posting daily on LinkedIn since 2017,

2016, somewhere around there. Like, I can go look at my data

now and I can tell when I'm actually being algo suppressed versus like, I'm just

not writers well, you know, I'm not connecting with the actual people who

normally read my stuff. Because if you do enough to actually

collect a collect a benchmark, the benchmark stands on its own

merit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's you and sometimes

it's the algorithm, but very often, if you're going

to take ownership, we actually just did a short episode about this. If you're going

to be a leader, you need to take ownership and accountability. And of course

it doesn't start with the algorithm. It starts with Absolutely.

You. Just like with Maddie Ross, it started with her. Just like with Rooster

Cogburn, it started with him.

Real quick. What I love Yeah. Is they talk about this very

topic in the book. They do. I have notes on it here. I'm so

glad we kinda segued here because I thought that this was amazing. Okay. I'm on

page 40. Yes. I'm on page 40 and 41 of my book, which is a

hardback. It's it's an older version. But essentially,

let's see here. Where'd it go? Where'd it go? Where'd it go?

But the magazines of today do not know a good story when they see one.

They would rather print trash. They say my article is too long and

discursive. Nothing is too long or or too short if you

have a true or interesting tale or what I call a graphic

writing style come combined with educational aims. I do

not fool around with newspapers. They're always after me for historical write ups, but

when the talk gets around the money, paper editors are most or,

the for historical sorry. The paper editors are most of them are

cheapskates. Mhmm. I think because I have a little money, I will be happy to

fill up their Sunday columns just to see my name in print, like Lucille Biggers

Langford and Florence Mabry Whiteside. And, and then it

kind of goes on again as well. It says, where'd it go?

The paper editors are great ones for reaping where they have not sown.

Yes. Absolutely. What an insight. I by the way, I I I've

I've marked that too in my in my copy. I did. I did too.

Another game they have is to send reporters out to talk to you and get

your stories free. Yep. I know the young reporters are not paid well, and I

would not mind helping those boys out with their scoops if they could ever get

anything straight. She thought about the same stuff. Right?

With without and it was funny because when I jumped back in and

started reading this book, I, like,

I don't I wasn't ready for how it's written because it just drops you in,

and you were Oh, yeah. Going. Right? And they do a really good

job of showing how rigid and

how moral and how righteous that she is and how she carries it. Right? From

the jump all the way through. But I was reading the first, you know,

up to that point of page 40 in my book, I was kinda like, oh,

this is gonna be a slog. This is gonna be a slog. Like, this is

not well like, in my head, I was like, this is not very well written.

But when you take into consideration what it's supposed to be Mhmm.

Right, a memoir for 30, 40 years later

from a very direct woman, which is not always easy

for women to be direct now because, I coach I coach women in

in sales roles who struggle with being direct because, you know, sometimes that's

not okay. They get labeled as a business bitch to you know, it's not

my language, but it's common in the in the place of being too direct, too

focused. And, Maddie is a really great

representation of, like, what a direct woman can

be. Right? The other part of this is you just have to make the decision

that no one else's opinions really matter. Right? Tom Maddie is steeped in that.

But until you make that decision, you're you're probably not as

rooted as you think you are in your conversations and your thoughts. Let's talk

about that because this is where we're going now. This is, again, the segue

into beautiful segue into into the next pieces of,

of true grit. So as we move forward in the book,

by the way, when you read true grit, and this is just a

structural thing that you're going to notice, There's no chapter headings in the book.

So when you go in there and read it, there's no chapter headings. And

that goes directly to that whole idea that John was just talking about. It's a

brilliant, brilliant, observation of it just

dropping you in, and you're, like, you're in the car and you're going for the

you're going for the you're going for the gold. Right? And Portis, I think

writers it this way because, he wanted

you to get the sense that you are, you are, you are inside

events as they are occurring. And you're

also experiencing this person's life as it is occurring.

And then you're going to drop right back out again. You're gonna drop in and

you're gonna drop out. And and that's it. There's bookends on Matty

Ross. Right? There's bookends on Rooster Cogburn. There's

bookends on Libby. Right? You know, the Glenn Campbell slash Matt

Damon character. Like, there's bookends on that. Right?

And so, but, but inside those book, what happens inside of those

bookends is critical. And so in the next part of this

book, as we are going from rooster and Maddie

meeting outside of the courthouse, we move into

rooster's life and we get a little bit of a glimpse as to how he's

living. And now this book was written in 1968.

Now there was there there are terms in this book that

if you read them will offend modern ears. Right.

But because we actually

I believe fundamentally in free speech. I always have to say this at least one

time per episode. I fundamentally believe in free speech. I also

fundamentally believe that we have to take the author as he was in his

time, which is why I don't get upset about Ernest Hemingway

using the n word or Mark Twain using the n word. We

could talk about it in the terms of 2024, but neither of

those gentlemen were writing in 2024. I have a

random question about Yeah. Go ahead. You because I've never gotten I've never

gotten asked this before. Yeah. Go ahead. How do you

feel about guys like Quentin Tarantino and how they use

that that word? Because, like, I know he gets a lot of flack for it,

but, you know, I'm also I I'm only asking this because you

said the thing, you know, like like, I'm taking them at their Tom. You

know? So you're talking about Django Unchained. So

I'll let me give you my I'm talking about just in general because, like, you

know, like, that's not the only movie where he's a little bit prolific. It's not

the only movie, but it is the movie that sort of put the stamp on

the on the on the on the rear end of the on the southbound

end of the northbound cow. That was where he was going. Right.

And,

and I read the script. I got a I got a

unreleased script for Django, through some connections that I had

and, previously leaders ago and read it, and they

wanted me to give them feedback. And the feedback that I gave them

was, I don't think you could make this movie.

I don't think this movie can be made. The cultural sensitivity

that is current, the, and this was way back. This

is like probably 2,004, maybe 2,005.

So it was early. It was early before this movie got out. Right.

Yeah. And I used to have those deep connections. I don't have them any anymore

because I've moved on and done other things in my life. But I was like,

I don't I don't think you can do this. I don't think this movie can

be filmed. I think he's leaning into something

here that doesn't necessarily need to be leaned into

because this was way before this was in the

this he was writing this script during a time when the backwash

of the 19 nineties film culture was still fairly strong.

And so you could be a little bit transgressive,

and no one would kinda jump on your stuff.

And then he released it. I can't remember when Django came out. I could find

out, but he releases it and he doesn't get nearly

as much flack for it as I thought he would. And I

thought, well, clearly, I was wrong about that.

And the reason I think I was wrong, it's taken me many years to kind

of understand, but the reason I think I was wrong is B

is multivariate. But I think the core of it is

that

What we do now,

we are not thinking far enough ahead

in the future of the ramifications or the consequences. Oh, yeah. So it's

so it's easy to look at the past,

And this is why I'm never a fan of statues being torn

down or bases being renamed. I will never support

that. This is why, because when

you rename the base or tear down the statue,

what you're saying is we are better morally than those

people then, except the problem is

Django Unchained or pulp

fiction or name your movie

here may be censored in the

future by a group of people with moral claims that

don't match what's here currently.

So let's step a little bit lightly on the moral claims.

Let's try Tom contextualize utilize what actually happened in the

past. Let's raise people to understand that historical

context and appreciate it. And then here's the other thing.

If you want to put a statue next to the one that

talks about what's going on with that statue, do that.

Spend a little public dollars doing that. You wanna rename the base?

Actually, here's a better idea. Put the one name of the base on the

top and then put another name of the base on the Tom.

Do that because here's the thing, just erasing the

history. Doesn't eliminate it. And it actually doesn't eliminate the hurt that

may have been caused by that history. And by the way, the people who may

be hurt by that history, not all of them, but many of

them are no longer in this mortal coil. Agreed.

Meanwhile, the people who are dealing with

Jamie Jamie Foxx dropping the n word every 5 seconds are alive

right now. Yeah. And that's eroding us right now.

I I I so I so I I think it's multivariate, but I think that's

that that for me, that's the core reason right there. It's this high sense

of moral superiority while we've got this other thing going on over

here that we're just like, oh, that's just entertainment. So it's

like virtue signaling in your opinion?

Yes. And virtue signaling to what end?

Well, I think, like, I like the things that by the way.

Maybe I'm wrong on that. Maybe that's bad analysis. I've been willing to listen to

different analysis on that. But for me, I get

I like I said, I read the original story, and I thought this can't happen.

We're we're we can't do this. And, apparently, I was wrong.

That's interesting. I, like, I wasn't thinking about, like, statues and and

bases and stuff like that. I mean, personally, I

and maybe this is weird, but, like, the the line I've been drawing in my

head because, like, I'm not really heard so much about, like, renaming bases, but, like,

I see a lot about the statues coming down and stuff like that. Mhmm. And

maybe this is head trash. Maybe I'm making this, like, a convenient easy way

to hide, but, like, I think a a statue is

reverence. There's an argument to be

made for that. Yeah. It's it's leadership almost. You know? Like like, holding

this person up as, you know, the example, you

know, versus a base with a name, you know, like, some of

the some of the and and maybe this is me just trying to make it

convenient, so please call me if that's true. But, like, you know, a base that

has a name that just might be leading back to someone who's who's

had some, you know, less than stellar experiences with people of the

world is different than, like, a statue saying, like, hey. This

guy this guy is worth public

public homage. Well, okay. Let's talk about

statues for just a second. So

university no. It wasn't university. It was Penn State. Penn State

University. Joe Paterno. Okay? No. Almost no one

remembers this now. But at the time when Joe

Paterno's, was being Joe Paterno's legacy was

being tainted by the scandal of, child abuse by one of

his coaches. I can't remember. Stuff. Right? Jerry's yeah. Yeah. Jerry

Sandusky stuff. Exactly. Mhmm. At the time, I

was coaching rugby at a college that I will not name

here. And, the the I was assistant coach

on staff and the the coach, she made the

point, female coach, she made the point and it says stuck with me for years.

She said, this is why you don't put up statues of people while they're alive.

And she just walked away. Oh, dip. And I was like,

that's an excellent point

because when someone's dead, what you're

doing by putting up a statue to your point is worship and reverence.

Absolutely. For sure. There's a very strong argument to be made about idol worship around

that, which I would object to that just be if it if we were if

we were object if we were tearing down the statues because they're idol worship, not

a problem with that. I'd be I'd be all on board with that. I'd be

like, yeah. Absolutely. That's that's correct. That's the correct alignment of where we're thinking about

the reality. But when we

are putting up statues of people who are alive currently,

We don't know the whole story. The first report is often the

wrong report. Absolutely. For sure.

And so we don't need a first report. We need a second or third or

fourth report. Now the statues that we're talking about tearing down, like Robert e

Lee, we've gotten all the reports on Robert e Lee.

Agreed. We're never gonna be able to go get Robert e Lee's

ghost and make him be 2024. Like, it's never

gonna happen or 2025 or 2026 or 2027 or whatever you're listening to this

podcast. Mhmm. It's it's never gonna happen. And so what

exactly are we trying to do by tearing down the

statue of Robert E. Lee? Are we trying to tear down that object of

leadership, or are we trying to do something else?

And I just I want us to be honest in our

sales process of what you're selling

because I'll buy it if you're honest. Yeah. But if you're

not, we're gonna know. We're gonna know. And we may not know where the dishonesty

is. We may not know where to spot that, but Absolutely. We we've

got a sense. We we've been selling to each other ever since well, either

Adam and Eve were the cavemen depending upon what your perspective is, but we've been

selling to each other since the beginning. 1000%. Right?

We're really good salespeople, and we could spot a scam. We may not know where

it is, but we could spot a scam. And, you know, I think

about this a lot. Right? Because both and I both you and I live in

Texas. Right? Not not super far apart from each other. Right? Like like,

if we decided to hang out as humans

nothing crazy. But, like, reading this book

really brought to light this thing that I think about.

Imagine not having access to global news. Right? Like,

I try to put some pretty big walls between myself and the news cycles and

stuff like that because it just winds me up, and then I can't do anything

about it. I'm trying to be a stoic person. Right? Yeah. It just

doesn't serve me. But imagine, you know, only being

able to read the Granbury Gazette, the

Fort Worth Tom telegram. Right. Right? You're not.

The the info you're the the information you're actually getting news

on is a microscopic pen

in relation to the actual events that are going on around the world. But that's

what I like so much about these two things is or or those two points

is they're talking about how

tightly the narratives are confined. You know?

And not you know,

the the thing we're talking about it now is when you wanna be real with

people, you just don't get, like, the mileage and the push. But, like, back then,

if you wanted to be real with people and didn't fit their agenda, you just

didn't get anything. You didn't get anything. Writers. Well and people were

comfortable pushing back on you. And and this is again reflected

in in sort of how we how we look at the book.

So, you know, colonel Stonehill.

Right? You know, Matty Ross tells him, you know, you're not looking at things in

the right light. And he goes, I'm looking at it in the light of god's

eternal truth. Who says that out loud?

Well, you you know what? I can tell you exactly who says those kinds of

things. Right? Writers the people who say those kinds of things are the people who

go all over salespeople because they're because they're doing a job. I

can't believe you would ever think that I

need your help. Can you? Right? And they get all high and

mighty. Like, it's salespeople have to deal with trying to be

like Maddie Ross without actually being like Maddie Ross the

majority of the Tom. Because sales leaders and lots of leadership, especially

people who think they understand how sales works but haven't ever actually stood in the

stream, love to task everyone else to go be die hards that they're not

willing to do themselves, which is eternally frustrating as a sales coach and

trainer because they're not even capable of

showing up and doing these conversations to the level of quality that they're

expecting of everyone else to do so. And then it's convenient because they get to

say, well, I'm not I'm not I'm not really a salesperson. You know? It's

like, book. But you're gonna go put massive goals on other people

around things that they cannot control because you think you can read the

math, but you just told me that you don't know how to do this job.

Like, all day long, man. It's it's every conversation I have. It's very

frustrating. And I have to tell most of those people, no, because

my my only real big role is I won't work with tyrants. Right? And if

you're gonna tell someone else how to how like, what to do on the stream

that you've never stood in, you are a tyrant. I'm sorry. You need to take

some calls. You need to take some conversations. You need to realize what it's like

to move a meeting and have that potentially, like, ruin your

month before you start telling other people, just don't take no for

an answer because that's not actually how the real world works. So Right.

I love this negotiation piece of Maddie and the, and the Colonel

because she's given it to him. Right? Oh gosh. She's yeah. She is delivering

it. She has a plan from the jump. She like, and I think that the,

I think that the first movie does a better job of showing just how

strategic and thoughtful and intentional she made. She went into that

conversation with a plan. Right. And I I have to talk about this with people

all the time. If you don't have a plan in a conversation, you are someone

else's plan. Correct. So she goes into there with a plan.

She's pushing and pushing and pushing, and she knows the levers that she can do.

Like, you know, I have a lawyer. We have a refund. You know? It's it's,

you know, you know what what is gonna play and what's going to advance and

what's gonna get it shut down. But I'll that exchange in the book

and then in both of the movies, I think is very well done

because our culture is not built around haggling. Right? And we're moving

rapidly in a direction to where people are doing everything they can to

avoid salespeople. Now salespeople have kinda done this to themselves. Right? Like, I'm

not I'm not saying that, but, you know, the people who were just

doing the job versus the people who were who were handing out all these touches

and outreach and goals and everything else like this, you know, we gotta give the

people who are just doing the work a little bit of little bit of it

literature benefit of the doubt that they're not making all the decisions because they probably

wouldn't be doing terrible, terrible outreach the way that they

are currently. Well and here's another character who's who's living with

who who needs the benefit of the doubt. And you what you what you

said to me about, you know, the leaders who don't

have no clue what it is to sit in a essays

and, you know, potentially have that fall off the cliff.

Right? We've gotta talk

about Libby. Oh my god. We gotta talk about We gotta talk about

this guy. Okay. So first of all, what, a piece of trivia that I learned

which blew my mind was that Glyn Campbell was not supposed to be the actor.

It was supposed to be Elvis. Did you know

that? I did not know that it was supposed to be Elvis. Yeah. It was

supposed to be Elvis. But it but he couldn't do it. So so that's where

the Glenn Campbell thing kinda kinda came along. And then

Wow. Yeah. Like That would have been a totally different movie. Totally

different movie. 1 I mean, astronomically different. I don't think

I don't think he could have done the job that Labief does

in the first, movie well. Now I think Matt Damon does a

better job than Glenn Campbell, but he's a better actor with with better skill.

And and then also the movie being paced so differently is is very Yeah. The

pacing is different. I struggled a little bit

with Matt Damon in his role in in in with him as

Libby only because I thought

and this is a John McWhorter linguistic, you know, sort

of critique. You've got 19th century words falling out

of a 21st century guy's mouth. Yeah. He's like Brad Pitt in

Troy. He doesn't do a good job of, like, affecting, you know,

an accent. Tom makes sense. Right. You're Brad, you're I'm

glad you brought that analogy because, you know

and I know Brad Pitt's, like, 60 now, so he's not he's he's he's

now I mean, he's now grown man. He's long since a grown man. But,

I always thought of him as an actor as just being a sort of a

glorified pool boy, basically. Oh

yeah. Oh, yeah. Whereas Matt Damon,

Matt Damon has worked to

reinvent himself multiple times over in multiple

different films. Right? Okay. So and I can give him

credit for that, and I appreciate the

fact that he's done that while also seemingly,

you know, avoiding scandal, avoiding political nonsense that sort of ruins

actors' careers these days. I don't think the guy tweets. I

appreciate that. I suspect who he voted for, but I'm

not it's not confirmed. Thank god for that. I can go watch a movie with

him, and it's fine. You know? I don't have to be seen there the whole

time thinking, you know, like, I don't I don't under I don't have any of

that I don't have any of that any of that, what do you call it,

mileage with with Matt Damon. Do you carry that

a lot in movies and stuff? Do I carry that? No.

Well I I I tend I I try. Right.

Right. We're way off topic here, but I try to give topic. We're in the

weeds. I try to give people credit for the art,

And then I try to give them a wide berth. Now, like some

people go too far. You know? Like like, I still have Kanye

albums, but I'm not listening to his streaming stuff. You know? Like but I'm not

gonna go burn the albums because the musics are Right. Amazing.

Right? Like, sorry. Not not gonna even kind of equivocate on

that. But then it's like, you know,

I know people who really high who who really hate Kevin Hart because of some

of the stuff that he's kinda said about, you know, the the gay and trans

community and stuff like that. And, you know,

I'd I'd rather someone be real than than get a fake apology on social

media because, because your publicist or your team told you that you should go

apologize out of fear of being canceled. Like, well, I think

ideally we don't make stupid, stupid statements anyway over the megaphone of social

media, but, you know, he is meant to be a polarizing figure because he

is a comedian. Right? Right. I really

thank you for the for the essays on this because I was not really able

to kinda think about this book as a comedy until

I've heard those 2 things. But it very much is, like,

it's absurd, kind of absurd to think about. Yeah. Well,

like so talk about absurdity. Libby, you know,

runs into Maddie Ross. Not in In the middle of

nowhere. In the middle of nowhere. And knows who she is and knows her

mom and, like, everything is okay. And, like, in the movie, she just wakes up

and she the guy is in her room. Right. Creepy as

hell. Book, creeper. Like,

that's okay. Now I'm off put just from the jump on that.

1000%. Yeah. And and by the way, I think both Kim Darby and

Hailey how how Hailey Steinfeld, I think

they both captured that, but I think that's just that's just the thing that women

have about men who show up creepily. Like, I don't think that's anything to them

as as far as their their acting chops go. I think that's just how

women respond. Yeah. And then to deal with it as a woman, I would say.

I would say. Exactly. And then Labeouf doubles down with

Rooster Cogburn. And he doubles down with rooster Cogburn, which

is amazing in this part of the book. He doubles down with rooster

Cogburn on number 1 being a Texas Ranger, which amused the heck

out of me. But then number 2, on being

a Texas ranger. He had nothing else. Nothing. Nothing else underneath his

character to kind of lean him. And,

I think Damon gives more depth to that character, particularly

at the end where he shakes, he shakes Maddie Ross's hand and then sort of

rides off. That doesn't happen in in the original film.

Glenn Campbell kind of kinda plays it a little more.

I won't say goofy, but he does play it as a

grown man who's dealing with a little kid. Mhmm. And he's like, why am I

dealing with this little kid? I'm a Texas ranger for God's sakes.

And that ties into what you were saying about

leadership understanding how sales works. I don't have to understand

how sales works. I'm the leader. That's Libby.

That's that's him. And so, you know, he his character gets pushed

along. He gets pushed along. And, you know, eventually,

rooster, decides that, that, you

know, we've had about enough of this. Right? And I'm not gonna not

gonna deal with you. And, of course, he draws down on him. Mhmm. And

Labeouf backs off. And now there's this constant tension between these

two men, and it is I mean, you can read into a

patriarchal tension, which is typically how most people would read it, I

think, these days. But at a deeper level, this is a

tension of competency. And that's what you get in the true grit in the

in the Ethan Cohen movie, the newer one. Yep. You don't get so much

of that tension in the original, but it is definitely there.

And I think they don't get it there because the time in which that

movie was made, 66, 67, 68, I think it was shot in 66 and

67, and then it was, of course, released in 68. But,

but I think that that tension didn't exist because

and here's what's different about our time than it is than it was

then. If you were

a 20 year old guy, you were a grown

man. Yeah. That's the that's the most

fascinating part of this, right, is realizing just how different

we are. She's 14

going off and doing this thing. And while, like, it's part of the shock of

reading the book is just realizing my daughter's 12. Right. Like, man,

I'm not hey hey, dad. I'm gonna go no. You're not. Well,

I'm going I'm going with you. Let's go, you know, kinda situation and stuff

like that. You know? So part of it was just this kinda shock and, like,

it's funny to bring this up because, like, as I'm reading it,

I'm having this moment of, like, oh, is my dissonance here

just because her age or how much of it is

because it's a woman or a female, right, you know, in the book?

Because you read, like, you know, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, you know, these

other kind of heroic younger kid going off and doing

adult things on their own and stuff like that. And I've I've not read those

books in a very long Tom, and maybe maybe it would it would ring the

same alarm bells as a parent and an adult that reading this did. But, you

know, I'm also trying to test to, like, figure out, like, is it weird

just because it's a little girl and I'm not used to that? Or is it

weird because, like, she's taking off and crossing state lines and going into, like,

territories that, like, we don't have any jurisdiction in.

And I'm gonna go into the Choctaw Nation. Good luck. And

literature can't like, is so righteous and so driven, can't

even understand where the perilous nature of this

thing is. Right? Yeah. And then the you know, he's challenging

her. Hey. There's not gonna be food and inns and beds and stuff like that.

And she's like, well, we went on a hunt last summer. It was fine. And

it's just like, oh, man. I I can remember being a very

young salesperson trying to sell investments to people, you know, and I'm

talking about, well, you know, you can you can do this over here. It's gonna

be fine. And, you know, I'm talking to people that were alive during the depression

who have books older than me because they were alive during the depression, so they

don't throw anything out. So, of course, I don't resonate.

Of course, it's BS. Of course, it's like talking to their, you know,

nephews, grandson kind of situation. Right? It was

Yes. It was it was, you know, I didn't I

didn't realize whenever I was doing that job. You know, I was 30 years old.

I looked all of 22. I didn't have the hair or the beard yet. And

also, like, I wasn't really settled as a professional. You know?

I was just out there trying to make some money, you know, and keep things

moving and stuff like that. So, you know,

if you there's a way to communicate with other

people who are on the level that lets them know that you're on the level.

And I talked about this in my in my coaching and teaching world

because, like, if you're doing outreach to people and you're trying to get a meeting,

if you can't communicate that you're on the level, the default

assumption is that you're not even worth being, like like, talked to.

Well and and and Rooster, let's talk a little bit about him because he's the

old grizzled veteran. Right? He's that old grizzled

veteran sales guy who shows up with the rumble suit. He's

got a 2 day old, you know, whatever beard. He

smells vaguely of the last beer he drank. You've run across this

guy. But he walks into the room and he closes.

And then he walks out, and he says, you have a good day. And he

goes right back to his hotel bar and posts up there, like in

Glengarry Glen Ross, greatest sales film ever May, has another

drink with Jack Lemmon, complains about how hard how hard sales is.

Right? Yeah. And you're sitting there, and you're going I don't

like, Matt Damon in Ocean's, I think it was Ocean's 12,

when he walked in and he insulted the, I always think about the scene where

he walks in and he insults the, the the the whatever

whoever it is that Brad Pitt and George Clooney are trying to scam and about

their daughter and something, and he walks out. And Brad Pitt and George Clooney are

messing with him, and they go, you just insulted his daughter. Yeah. Blah blah blah

blah. You said this. Yeah. You said that. And and this course, the 2 grizzled

veterans screwing with a rookie. And Matt Damon goes, no idea what

just happened there. Yes. That is that is

every person after a cold calling session. You're right. And

Rooster knows what happened there. He knows exactly what he knows

let's see. Rooster knows exactly what's gonna happen with Choctaw Nation.

He knows exactly how hard it is to go get Tom Chaney or Chelmsford,

by the way, played in the, in the Ethan Cohen film by Josh Brolin,

in a in a in a great not a great role. I don't think they

gave him enough to work with or not Josh Brolin. Yeah. It was just Brolin.

Yeah. Yeah. It was Didn't give him enough to work with. Yep. Didn't give him

nearly enough to work with. Right? Like nearly enough. That dude is an amazing

actor. Right? And I had forgotten who played him in the newer one. Right? Because

in the old movie, you know, not a big part. You know?

Yeah. I you coulda you coulda walked an extra on and given him a SAG

card, you know, in for that performance. But, you know, Brolin, I

was expecting a lot, and it just kinda seemed like he was, you

know, trying way too hard to play a half wit because there wasn't

really enough to really do anything else. Tom, man,

you know, the other part is is, like, as a

culture Mhmm. We do spend a lot more time

on a on a hold on. Let me say this the right way. On a

path of education.

Might not be correct, might not be valid, but, you know, we we're

connected a lot more to sources of knowledge, good, bad, or

or otherwise than people were back then. Right? So whenever Right. It's so

funny, in the book when he's lamenting and talking about how

nothing goes his way. Writers. The, the auctioneer does

the same thing. It's so funny because Maddie in the book, you know, she keeps

running into these people who were just victims of uncontrollable situations.

Yes. And she's such a force of nature. It creates this real

really interesting contrast. Right? Now Oh,

by the way, the original Yeah. Sorry. The original pardon me. The

original, Tom Chaney. I I forgot about it, and then I had to look on

the back. Robert Duvall. Or no. Robert Duvall with Book

Ned Pepper. Tom Chaney was played by

I think it was Strother Martin, if I remember correctly. I think that was the

guy who that was the guy who played it. Is. Dennis Hopper's in that movie

as well. Yes. Right. Yes. When they when

they're when they're they're, shooting the 2 guys over the soft key and all yeah.

Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. I'd forgotten I'd forgotten that he was in that movie, and

then I was watching the credits. And, I was like, Dennis Hopper? That's crazy. Well

and Libby Ned Pepper was such well, anyway no. Sorry. You're so you're talking about

Josh Brolin talking about pursuing education. Mhmm.

I think that and and and to the larger

point, you know, Cogburn knows all these things. Right? He he knows all of

the stuff, and he knows it so well

that he can sleep in a bed, and both Wayne and Bridges got

this. He can sleep in a bed that's broken down,

shoot a rat, live with a Chinese immigrant, and

get up and go do his stuff anyway. Now there's this section in the

book which is kind of touched

on in the original film, and then it's totally completely abandoned in

the Ethan Cohen version

If you put it in. And he's, like,

making it up on the spot. We'll change it to this person because, yeah, I

think I shot that guy once, you know, kind of thing. And and, like,

playing fast and loose with your expense reports, you know, is such like a it's

such a sales thing. Right? Like, you know, like, like, we can

expense this thing and then it gets, like, snapped out the half cord, and then

you're you're trying to justify why you spent the money. Like, man, I've

I've I've been on both sides of that, honestly. Well, like, he's out he's

out in the middle of nowhere. No one from back east

knows. And this is the other thing. I'm I'm fascinated with the old west pipe

for a number of different reasons, but the one of the biggest ones is

and and you and I both you mentioned both you and I both live in

Texas. There are Texas is so big

that there are parts of Texas that

I don't even know where the heck they are.

Yeah. And I live here, Much less

living on the East Coast, it's another universe out

here. And that's the brilliance of and I

always talk about well, not always, but one of the things I'll talk about sometimes

around this area is manifest destiny. Manifest destiny gets crapped on a lot

these essays, as an excuse for colonialism, racism,

sexism, bigotry, patriarchy, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

Okay. But

but manifest destiny was also

rooster cogber making it up as he was going along and

ensuring that a variation of

civilization was allowed to continue

so that people like the, the guy in little house

on the prairie, who's just trying to live, can actually live

there, can actually live there and actually like

make a living. Right? Now were there Indians there? Should we

not have taken over their land? For sure. Should we have done a better deal?

For sure. I'll caveat all of that if you will

caveat to me that no one back east knew what the hell was going

on. Oh, man. Like, I have a

clue. I'm from Texas. The expense sheets and pay rooster.

Yeah. Like, I've lived here my entire life, and until I joined the military and

went to Georgia, realizing

just how different it is Yeah. For people on the

coasts. Right? Yeah. We had a we had a particularly heated

moment to where, a white guy

who's from Seattle, Washington. Right? Very,

very not the south. Yeah. Says

to an African American fellow that he looks a little bit

like a monkey. And he has no idea

about the weight of that term because

he was he was just giving the guy crap. You know? He wasn't making

a a bigger judgment call. But, man, I've never I've

never seen sides chosen so quickly, right, amongst the group of guys that

are all supposed to be on the same side. You know? And it's you know,

he has no knowledge about that. But

to your point, there's there's cities in in in the state that we both lived

in that if you walk into the biggest hub of

commerce Mhmm. In that city, you would

probably be looked at just like you would have a 100

years ago if you'd walked into that situation in the same thing. Like,

it's still there. You know? And some people

are choosing to create it for themselves, which is a whole other conversation. But

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I and and, yeah, that's a whole other that's that's

that's a little bit that's a little bit beyond where we need to That's a

whole other podcast, Rob. That's a whole other episode.

But I think that Labeef represents

that civilization too. He represents that civilizing force,

but it's a civilizing force. It's cocksure and arrogant. Mhmm. Whereas

Rupert Cogburn is the civilizing force that knows

kind of like John Wayne in in the man who shot Libby Valance, another

great film where, you know,

Libby Stewart is gonna bring the law book,

and none of that matters in the

particular situation that you We used to love that. I think I think I think

that I think that is the nineties eighties kind of,

like, time period. Right? You know? And so that's why people love

Clint Eastwood and John. You know? In in these kind of movies to where it's

about the street smart guy telling the book smart people that they don't really know

what it's like and stuff like this. But,

man, you know, we it's so easy to just look at that,

you know, plot device Mhmm. And be

like, oh, yeah. Right?

Some people are bad. You know? Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Some people need a shorter leash. Right? They don't need

the the, you know, the loudspeaker Sorrells media. They don't

need all of that stuff. Right. And, I like what you said

that, he doesn't tweet. I appreciate that. You know, he doesn't,

he doesn't do any of these things. I think I think that's in

care about any of that. Sorrells didn't care about any of that. He cared about,

he just wanted to writers. He just wanted to share his stories. It like the

way that I talk about it now with people is like, he was fine making

art. Yeah. And I I've shifted a lot on

this because in the beginning I was very much kinda, why doesn't my stuff

get more of a push and all this other stuff? And why why is everyone

holding me down and all this other stuff? Right? Part of it, I was choosing

to because of how I wanna talk about the work. Right? Right.

But, man, I I think that part of it

is

it's tied to, like, so much of the other stuff. Right? Mhmm. How are you

doing that work? And is it unpopular because it's unpopular, or is it

unpopular because you're wrong? You know? Right. One of the things that I talk about

with people is, like, okay. If no one likes the girl you're dating,

nobody. She's probably not

great. Right? And you should probably but you can't tell your friend that.

No. When you're dating. Right? No. Yeah. But, like, afterward, I told you, bro.

Told you. Told you. Everyone tried to tell everybody. Everyone Everybody knew.

You're the only one who didn't get it. Yeah. You know? Right. Right. So there

is that thing of, like, are you doing are you are you are you unpopular

because you take unpopular stances? Are you unpopular because you're actually, like,

not on the level? Well and and and Maddie,

to turn back to her for just a second, you know, she's narrating this book

and looking back as a middle aged woman. Right. And so you would

think that that moralism would be softened over the

course of time, because that's what we say. People get older, their, their

perspectives become more nuanced. They get to be a little bit more,

whatever, soften the edges round off. Writers.

But not no. No. No. Not Maddie Ross. Like The

She she locked in, and and she was

uncompromising. And the thing that we, we sort of skated around it, it skated around

it, and now we need to actually hit it. The thing that made her uncompromising

was her religion. It was her Christian Christian religion.

And that's the other thing that makes this book an anachronism. And I, I

worry that over the court, not worry. I wonder if

in 50 years, anybody will remember Charles Fortis. They'll

remember the movie, probably. For sure. But in the book,

I doubt it. I don't think anybody's gonna read it in 50 years if because

we now live in a for good, better, or or or or or for

good or bad, we now live in a post Christian

America. We do. We live in a world where the the thin

veneer of cultural Christianity that used to bind

people together, even people who didn't believe,

they would at least nod to cultural Christianity. They would at least say, yeah, the

10 commandments, our laws are based on that. That's cool. We're

way the heck away from that now.

And, I think the further and further we

get away from that, the more and more we're gonna struggle with meaning. We talked

a lot about meaning this podcast last year a lot,

because I firmly believe that without the Christian underpinnings,

because I'm I'm a partisan for Christianity, I say this at least once an episode.

That's my thing. You know, that underpinning

for me is the

is the cornerstone in Western civilization. It's the thing that if

you if you pull that sucker out, the whole thing the whole thing falls

down, because what are you going to

appeal to? Like, maybe it is okay for

me to eat my neighbor if my morality and their morale, if morality is just

relative, then I can just eat my neighbor. Right? Like, there's not a problem. There's

no issue there. Man, I have said I have a very polarizing

opinion to you on this because I am not a spiritual person at all. I

am not religious. Right? I spent my time doing Southern

Baptists and then realized that I got tired of, like, constantly

being sold. Right? Sure. That's what it felt like. You know, lots of lots of

pressure, and don't you want it, you know, blah blah blah. Can't why can't

you just believe? Why can't you just sign up for Jesus today? Yeah,

absolutely. Right. I, I, I know a couple of really

cool people that I knew during this Tom. And because of

these interactions with them, my perception of them is colored because

while I'm sure they're great people in and of themselves, it just felt like a

sales rush the entire time. And I don't

I I hate the conversation of, like, well, if you're not religious,

you don't really have any morals. Right? Because a lot of people go there and

it's, like, way too polarizing of a situation. Because I will say

you have I will say you don't have any morals. I would say if you're

not religious, where is your moral bed bedrock then?

That's a good point. Right? And and Where's the lie? So important distinction. Right? Like,

I'm not trying to say that you were saying this, but people have asked me

this question before. Well, John, if you're not religious, where do your morals come from?

You know, the laws book know, the laws have a big part of

it, And now that I'm now that I'm older and I've done the kung fu

path, right, Tom to instructorship, and now, like, I try to follow stoicism

and, you know, like, I've got I have a a guide and a

compass. Now what's hilarious is, like, this last week, I was talking to someone about

this thing on Facebook. Mhmm. And, he kind of got a little high and

mighty around the idea that like, Hey, if it's not attached to God, you're just

wasting your time. And it's like, cool. We can't have conversations anymore. At least

not about this. You know? He works in the same space. Right? So we can

refer back and forth, but, you know, after being told that Tom

that my work on my own philosophies doesn't matter because it's not attached

to, you know, an an idol that he sees absolutism

in, you know, like, why would I go back to that conversation with that

person ever Sure. Again in the future? Right? Because I'm not

I I don't expect anyone to shift in their thinking to my way, but I

do expect to be treated as an adult who has some thought and some intention

in how I go about making my decisions. So whenever people just

kinda backlash with, like, well, if you just read the Bible or if you just

went to church, you wouldn't have Tom it's like, no, I would still be doing

this work even if I was thinking in that way because the work

itself is important. Now, the place that I've come to

because there for a while, I was fairly I was fairly vocal

about my lack of faith, if you will. And now the place that I've gotten

to is you look at the positives

in all of these areas, whether it's stoicism or Christianity or Buddhism

or anything else like this, and you look at the negatives, and it's alarming

how much they line up of being consistent. Mhmm. Now the trappings and

the labels and some of the practices are going to be very, very different, but

the structure of these things is more aligned than it's not.

You know? And, I think I think if I had

not read all the philosophy stuff and not been in a in

a role that is so focused around performance and your mindset and your

behaviors and your attitudes around it, I think I'd be a lot more

probably stuck. But I've had I've had sales managers and

sales leaders tell me, hey. We've we've already hit our goal on that one.

Go tell them that we're out so that way they'll buy this one. I've had

I've had people try to get me to go lie on their behalf so that

way I can hit a number for them. And I and I don't do

that. Right? And then it's like, well, John, you know, you should do what I

tell you to know, man. Sorry. I'm not gonna compromise myself for your goals.

And And that's the thing you see with Maddie Ross. Yeah. That's the

thing I was getting to is her comp her uncompromisingness

comes from her religious bedrock. Yeah. Your uncompromisingness

comes from your exploration of philosophies

and worldviews and, you know, sort of cobbling that

together. And

we talked about this a little bit in the episode that we just did on

Malcolm X because Malcolm X, his

entire worldview came from Islam. Yep.

And you know, it was interesting. We, we pointed out on that episode that,

you know, he was converted to Islam in prison in the 1950s

when he was serving an 8 to 10 year bid came out,

started talking, hooked up with Elijah. Mohammed, struck up with the nation

of Islam, you know, changed his name to Malcolm X from Malcolm

Literature. And then during the course of time between, you know,

the time he got out of prison and his assassination in, in the in

the mid 19 sixties, he went he actually traveled to

Mecca and and went on the went on,

went on the pilgrimage. Writers? Came back and was

changed because he saw the differences between what they were doing

in Arabia, Saudi Arabia, with their version of Islam

and what we were doing here or what, you know, the black nationalists were doing

here with the nation of Islam version of Islam. And he saw the

the cracks in the, in the facade. In the veneer. Yeah. In the veneer. Right?

Absolutely. And

the point that we made on the podcast, and this is where I thought you

were going to struggle with the book the most, and this is where I think

most folks will struggle with the book, particularly in, again, a post Christian,

postmodern era. I genuinely think we're there. I think we've been

there for a minimum 10 years, probably max 15,

for a whole variety of social reasons that are way too deep to get into

right now. Do you quantify like, how okay. You say that you say that

statement. Right? Yeah. And then the the person that I am. Yeah.

What illustrates that? Like Oh, gosh. If we if we went and we

tried to do a quantified analysis, would that mean that that

more than half of our nation is not I will give you

I I will actually give you a statistic here. Please. 8083,

folks were surveyed. I think it was about 2 or 3 years ago.

Only 17% of the sample survey. And I can't remember, I can't remember how big

the sample survey was, but only 17% of the survey attended church

more than more than once a month.

So 83% of that sample attends church once a month or

0 and still calls themselves Christian. I don't

think you can you can effectively engage in that

space

without some more buttressing

of the belief system. Now now on the on the backside of that

now what wait. On the backside of that too, I'll also say this is the

other data point on the backside of that. We saw this with post COVID.

The numbers of churches that are declining in membership, and we don't

see it in Texas. So you have to go Of course. Writers. You have

to go outside of Texas to see this. Yeah. The

megachurch. Come down to Texas, guys. Right. Come down to Texas, guys. But if you

go on the I mean, I lived in the East Coast for I lived in

the East Coast Tom the northeast for 25 years. Mhmm. The number

of megachurches there, that concept doesn't exist.

So when you say the line that you said Yeah. The the

bigger concern is you have people or in and if and if I'm way

off base, please correct me. Sure. The the major concern is you have people going

around saying that they're making decisions based upon Christianity,

but they're not steeped enough actually in the knowledge, the

values, the morals to really to really know whether or

not their actions would line up with that, but they're kinda hiding. For

sure. So so is that the concern? That's the

concern. Okay. So it's not that so it's not that you think that

people, like, need to go to church. No. I'm not saying that. If you're gonna

go out and be like, hey, I'm making decisions from a biblical stance, you need

to be in church. Yeah. I I would think that that would be helpful. Yeah.

Probably. I I I mean, here's the thing. You know, if I think

that would be helpful, actually. Yeah. Like, you know, we're both martial artists,

and we both have, like, shifted our lanes. Right? And while I while I still

do my forms and everything else like this, it would be absurd for both of

us to sit here and be like, you know what? I'm just as good at

my old art as I am and, like, the stuff I'm working on now because

you're not putting on the practice, you're not putting on the work, and rest

accumulates on on anything. You're not showing up at the dojo. I'm not

showing up at the studio to do my old art. Yep.

Like And if you if you're not running forums and figuring it out and building

a community for yourself, those skills are decaying. Just like, you

know, if if if I stopped taking my own calls and setting my own meetings

and everything, eventually, I would become one of these people that I don't like.

Writers? Exactly. Which is why I will always have a lane of either

setting my own meetings so I'm attached to that book, and I know how much

it sucks whenever it doesn't go your way. Or, you know,

eventually, I will be hopefully selling at a place to where

my stuff has got a little bit of growth to it. You know? Like, not

like a household name, but, you know, one of the bigger names. But at that

point, what I would like to do is, you know, sell under,

like a, like a pen name. Right? So that way I can still come on,

but not there's this one video that just drives me crazy

where it's a Grant Cardone video. Right? And he walks in and someone's on a

call, and Grant Cardone just he he he's like he's like, hey. You wanna call?

He just grabs it. He's like, yeah. This is Grant. And then closes the deal.

And everyone's like, yeah. It's his name on the

entire sign. If he can't close that deal, that would be the

problem. Right? Like like, all of this stuff around

authority and content and everything else like this, like, leads to a place to where

you're you're you're you're making it easier to be heard. You know? But by that

same token, Grant is Grant had that guy and

everyone else who's selling on their authority and their name and their prestige absolutely

is as disconnected from what it actually takes to be a salesperson than in the

day to day as these leaders who were looking at data points all day in

Salesforce and HubSpot and wanting to tell the salesperson, hey. You know what? We'd really

like you to, like, improve your close rate a little bit, but not give him

any information or knowledge on how to do that. You said the word there,

authority. That's the word I've been that's the word I've

been I've been leading into. Maddie Ross takes her

authority from the Bible and from her biblical belief,

grant Cardone takes his authority from grant Cardone.

Although recently I heard he's a Scientologist. I did not know that. That was an

interesting There's a lot of people in the coaching space who are pushing Scientology

with, like, their own labels. Like, it's it's really common than you would think that

it would be. I know a I know a mega coach who it's it's Scientology

rebranded under his own stuff. Interesting.

Yeah. Did not know that. Thank you for that data

point. I'll put that in the back of my head and chew on that

for a little bit. But Grant Cardone is selling off of I'm Grant

Cardone. Okay? That's where he's getting his authority

from. Where are we the the thing for leaders is

from where does your authority come? And Yeah. A guy like

Malcolm x spoke with moral authority in questioning the United

States during the civil rights struggle because he came

from a position of moral authority based on his

religion. Yep. Maddie Ross came from a position of

moral authority based on her religion. And by the way, as a female

character in literature, I rank her as up there with, like, you

know, Wendy and Peter Pan, Alice and Alice in Wonderland, and most particularly

Dorothy in the wizard of Oz. Very rarely do you have a woman. I

mean, think about the wizard of Oz. I love this movie because everything

moves in the wizard of Oz because of something Dorothy

does. That's really interesting.

Same thing in True Grit. The forward motion of the novel

is because of Mattie Ross. You know,

not to be the sales guy in that when you're a sales guy, everything's a

sales opportunity, but, you know, most of them are.

As as I'm reading this book and I'm seeing her run over,

right, certain people. Right? Oh, yeah. And then,

you know, she tries to run over Rooster, and it doesn't work.

Right? They they eventually become kind of collaborative in their

negotiations. And it's so funny because,

I feel like Maddie and most of her conversations can push people around just

like most people can do in a b to c type sale. Right? They're not

aware. They don't do this a lot. It's easy to manipulate them and talk them

into the things and force the value perceptions and stuff like that. And so then

you think like, oh my gosh. I can I can sell b Tom b? And

then you go and you meet Rooster Cogburn, and you try to move him

with your ideas and your agendas, and it just doesn't work. And that's

what, like, selling b Tom b is. These people are savvy. They've been here

before. They they have had more of these conversations than you have,

and you're just going to show up and be like, is it a question of

time or value, and think it's going to get heard well? That's not how this

works. You know? They have more authority than you do

in those situations, and so you can't you know, there's a lot of talk

about framing and forcing authority and taking authority away and everything

else like this, but you fundamentally can't put

authority on someone who has real authority

and isn't concerned. Not only

that. And I've been selling b Tom b my entire training career.

All I do is sell b to b. Mhmm. I would I I mean, I've

done projects where I've sold b to c before, and it's Sure. To me, it's

so easy. My god. It's it's easy to go backward. If they

come to the meeting, you're good. Oh. Right? Whereas in b Tom b,

like like, if you're if if they come to the meeting, great. They got an

opportunity to take a break from the real actual work. It doesn't mean they're invested.

It doesn't mean that they're they're aware of a problem. It doesn't mean that they

see you as someone who help them or anything else like this. They just were

like, well, I don't wanna do cold calls, so let's go to the webinar. And

then you got some poor sales guy over there, like like, telling everyone, I got

one. No. You don't. You don't have anything. You got nothing. You got someone

who's avoiding of the work and they're coming out with you so that way you

can be avoiding of your prospecting. Congratulations. We're all You got 4 more

meetings. That's what you actually, no. It's not 4 more. You got 4 months more

of meetings. Yes. That's what you got. And then a and then a a disappear

into the ninja vanish smoke. Into into the Ninja Vantage spoke. Into the Ninja Vantage

spoke. I had that actually had that happen to me, like, 2 weeks ago. Disappeared

into the Ninja Vantage spoke. I was like, well, okay. I got 2 big noes

last week. Right? And I I think I think that this is an an important

point if you are a leaders, if you're in a leadership shop, you have to

talk about that it still happens to you. Right? You know, because people are

like, well, John, you don't get what it's oh, you want to talk about how

I don't get it? I can show you my DMs where, like, I I booked

on a wrong thing, and a guy wanted to, like, try to sue me because

I booked on his free discovery and not like, hey, chat with us kind of

thing. Like, when you when you're rooted,

and this is the part that I love about the book, and I don't think

anyone else is gonna get this point except for maybe you, when you are

rooted, everyone else moves. Yes. And if

you are not rooted Yes. And this is what Seneca talks about. You're not

gonna find yourself in the crowd. And until you do find yourself, the crowd is

the last place you need to be hanging out at, and once you do find

yourself, you know where you know where you don't want to be? The crowd. The

crowd. Right? Because you're you've ruined it for everyone

else. You're the poker player who's read one book and understands all the math and

play, and everyone else is like, man, can you believe how lucky that guy is?

You're the sales guy who who has done hundreds of thousands of calls and

conversations. And then whenever someone is like, well, we can meet if you're cheaper, and

you realize that's not worth going to. That's actual practice authority

and knowledge and stuff like that as opposed to, you

know, trying to cultivate hope. Right? Right. When you're a revenue person

and you're cultivating hope, you're just setting yourself up to fail and get fired. And

you have to be no nonsense. You have to be, I'm gonna push as hard

as I think that I need to push, and then we'll we'll make

adjustments. And I love how they do how they show that in the

book. Right? I think they do a better job of that in the second movie

than they do the first one, right, of her being thoughtful and strategic and

intentional and stuff like that. Because it's not all hard talk. She's working

towards a goal. She knows how much money she wants from him for this entire

situation, which is allowing her to have that, no.

My lawyer, Jane Noble Daggett, would not be happy with me accepting anything less than

$300. That's right. Yeah. You know? Like, it

it's that having a clear goal, being practiced, and then

also running wild with that authority, whether it's

actually true and validated or whether, you know, the fake

it Tom you and make it stuff of sales and marketing and entrepreneurship, like, kind

of bothers me because, like, people will just lie to try to get a deal

and stuff like that. But on the other side of it, you do kinda have

to, like, drink your own Kool Aid a little bit. Right? If you're putting yourself

out there and hanging a shingle, you're you're supposed to think you're good enough. Right?

You go to a restaurant from a chef Well, and you're supposed

to, you're supposed to be able

to no. Not even that. I'll frame it this way. I tell

young entrepreneurs, the

first sale I just told us to somebody last week, the first sale you have

to do. I don't care if it's B2C, B2B, whatever your business is.

That's almost irrelevancy. The first sale you have to do

is your partner. Your, your, and you've, I've talked about this before on the podcast,

but your wife, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whatever situation you've got going

on, that's the first husband, whatever. That's the first

sale you've gotta do. If you can't close that,

don't bother with your project. Mhmm. Because the because the

dynamic at your house is gonna be a

constant distraction, and you're

gonna be you you talked about this earlier. You're going to be going to your

business to solve all the games that you have to play or to solve

all the puzzles that you have to play, and you're gonna wind up hiding in

there because, you know

or or even worse, you're gonna be hijacked by that business,

which is even worse. Yep. Now,

yeah, you have a $100,000,000 company, but you

hate it. You hate it. You hate your clients. You hate the team. Like, I

was talking to someone about this because he, he's like, man, I gotta go I

got a great podcast out to you. I was like, great. What's your goal? And

he goes, well, to make the podcast. I was like, great. Start. You don't need

anything else. Start. Yep. And he was like,

you know? And when when you put in poker, this this is called being

putting someone to a decision. Mhmm. Right? And there's an allegory in sales

that you need to put people to decisions. Hey. Mhmm. You don't want this. I'm

leaving. That's putting it to a decision in the form of a takeaway, you know,

kind of situation. And so the guy goes, well, I said, okay. What

happens if you make a 100 episodes and you don't make any money? He goes,

that would be fine. I said, cool. Start. What are you waiting on? You know?

Let's do the Jocko thing. You don't need anything. You need conversations.

Go. That's it. And he goes, well, you

know, as much as I'd be okay doing that, I'd still rather do the show

that makes a bunch of money. And I'm like, cool. Like, you're not really clear

on what's important then. Right? So so anything that,

you know, a shiny object syndrome that could have a little glint to it. It's

gonna pull your focus from the thing because you're not sure that it has it

over here. And that's okay as long as your goals are aligned with the

idea that you're not making art, because art you make for yourself and

the individuals that will appreciate it, you are making a business focused

podcast, which means your decision trees are gonna be fundamentally different.

Back to the book for just a moment. Yeah. Sorry. We get we get super

tangent. Like, we do we do conversation. I like, I've been I've been I've

been making notes. I've been I've been practicing myself of, like, making

sure we talked about some things because I,

like, I there for a while, I was trying

to become my version of Maddie, this person. Right? Whenever I first

met my sales coach and I found out who I was and started doing assessments

and on a path of self awareness, I realized that I do have this

little nurturing aspect to me. Writers? And then I decided, you know what? I'm gonna

murder this person so that way I can be all business, brass tacks type. You

know? And I spent probably 4 or 5 years trying to, like,

kinda destroy that side of myself in the form of

being more businesslike. Mhmm. And now finally, I

can turn and I can face that and appreciate that it does make me different.

It does make me, like, wanna come onto this this conversation

and talk about a book that no one is reading and hasn't read for a

very long time during the work day because, you know, business John would be

like, no. More outreach, outreach, more meetings, and everything else like that.

So it's I think it's I think it's easy when people

see that that Maddie character. Right? And they either turn

away or they turn to it. You know, it's important to know that

depending upon the work that you're doing and your pattern and precedent and

path, Maddie was never in a situation where she didn't have that

authority. So then when it came to people who didn't know who she was, it

was already there. But I like the thing that you said, you have to

go sell your partner on it first. I think you actually have to sell yourself

on it first, because if you're if you're not yourself sold on the fact

that I am enough, my opinions and my knowledge and my experience is enough for

you to pay me on my own merit Tom my own rate. You're not

going to sell your partner on it, and you're not gonna sell anybody else on

it either. It's gonna be a lot of maybes and a whole lot of, you

know, smokescreens, which is what we call them in sales. No. That's a good

point, and there's a line

in Braveheart. Man, we're brilliant at all the movie references today. There's a line in

Braveheart where, where,

Oh gosh. I can't remember the character, but it's the old syphilitic old man. That's

in the, that's in the house, you know, I don't

remember any other. Yeah. I don't remember. It doesn't Robert, the Bruce's father. That's

who it was. And, Robert, the Bruce is like, I want to go off with

basically, basically, I want to go off with the Braveheart. I wanna go off with

Mel Gibson because he fights and he's uncompromising

and the father goes, yeah, it's easy to admire uncompromising

men, but you have been passed land and title because you

compromise. And when I was

15 maybe and saw that movie, I was like, I

said it. I remember I said inside myself, yeah, I'm gonna go off and be

on compromise. I'm

gonna be 45 this year, kids. I guess I might as well publicly announce that.

I would never thought I would say that out loud.

And, you know, after 30 years,

I see Robert the Bruce's father's point.

Same. Now with that being

said, I believe that sometimes

compromise and I've, I've, I've said this in a couple of different podcast episodes, episodes,

couple of different episodes I think in America, we don't know how to hit the

center of the target on much of anything politically, culturally, socially. We

swing wildly back and forth, and we have for numbers of years. Tom might actually

just be part of our national character. It seems to be such a thing with

us. Right? We all waffle a bit. Oh my god. We're all over the place.

We wanna have it essays and both ways and up and down and side to

side. Mhmm. And maybe that's because of

the conceit and the creed of freedom that just so runs

through, through our, through our, our, our national, our

national documents and international character. Okay.

Freedom to engage in hedonic pleasure, but also freedom to be accountable and responsible and

the, the ambush, and they meet Quincy and moon

and, and those kinds of guys. Right. Look. Cause, so those, those are sort of

that little group waiting for Ned pepper is sort of representative of,

I think that was Charles Portis's dig at the 19 sixties radicals, actually.

Like you're gonna be, you're gonna be these people who are gonna like, just wait

and change the world. Well, like, he doesn't like hippies. This. Yeah. No. He does

not like hippies. And they're kinda and they're kind of the hippies of that book.

Right? Because they're not they're not they're not part of, like, normal society with,

like, the marshals and everything, or they're not, like, really bad because they're

because they're still young. You know? They've not, like, actually turned to a life of

crime yet. Yet. I had not really thought about that. But, you

know, that really is kind of the first part in the book to where her

momentum in and of itself is not enough for things to make sense.

Right. And they are and they aren't convinced in any kind

of way that her momentum has any authority

whatsoever. And it's really interesting because

regard I'm gonna frame it this way. Regardless of what you may think of what

has happened over the last 4 years

since COVID Mhmm. One of the

more interesting responses by Americans,

and I really didn't think I knew there were going to be,

I knew there was going to be a slice of America that would do this,

but I didn't realize what the percentages would be. The numbers is always the

issue. Writers. What are the numbers? Right. I didn't realize that there was a

sizable chunk of Americans who were just going to pull

a rooster Cogburn or a,

Well, no, we'll use rooster Cogburn who we're just gonna pull a rooster Cogburn and

go, those guys back east don't know what they're doing. We're gonna do whatever the

hell we want. And I didn't because that's

that's also part of that freedom piece. That's part of the slice. It's

all embedded in there. It's and it comes from, honestly, we talked

about this last year on the podcast with the Rollo Jesan. We were talking about,

the, the declaration of independence and the federalist papers and the anti federalist

papers. So the person who was the leading Anti Federalist

charge was Patrick Henry. Patrick Henry didn't

trust the founding fathers. He was actually invited to go to the constitutional

convention. This is an interesting historical thing. He was invited to go to the constitutional

convention by Thomas Jefferson because Thomas Jefferson couldn't go because he was over in, over

in France. Mhmm. And Patrick Henry wouldn't go because

he, quote, unquote, smelled a rat.

And by the way, that's the anarcho libertarian strain in

America, and we talked about it on podcast, Rolo and I. And that's the kind

of people who go up into the Kentucky mountains and you leave them

alone. Just leave them alone. Just leave

those people alone. Right? They're they're book crap crazy

sometimes. You know, their their principles don't line up with logic or reality,

and they all will all fight their cousins. And God help you if you go

and you turn up the Sorrells or that hornet's nest Yep. Because then they'll all

turn and start fighting you. Yep. And I thought that

that strain around COVID had actually been

bred out of Americans, and I was shocked to discover

that it was still there. Because because to me, from my perspective,

from where I'm sitting, that's been buried for a while or it's never been it

hasn't been pushed hard enough. It it wasn't really pushed hard enough in the eighties

or in the nineties because everybody was getting rich. And then in the early 2000,

you saw a little bit of it start to show up in, ironically enough, occupy

Wall Street. Mhmm. That's where it first started to show up. And then occupy

Wall Street gradually floated over to being the Tea Party,

which gradually floated over into some other things that we're experiencing

politically in our culture right now. And and by the way, that's a strain that

unites the anarcho libertarian

writers and the socialist anarchist

left, both share the same DNA in our country, and

that's really weird for people to see. And so

you look at Maddie Ross and you look at her engaging with

the the the folks in the in the in the house, Quincy and Moon

and all of that, And they're they're it's the

19 sixties version of that sort of libertarian, a narco. We're just gonna

kinda do our thing, and we're just gonna kind of ignore you. And if you

just go away, leave us alone. We're gonna eat our soft key, and and you

can just sleep. And rooster Tom we're gonna be fine. And rooster cawburn has

nothing for any of that. He's like, no. I'm not just know.

Just know you gotta play. Just know. Yeah. And then Ned Pepper

shows up, which

ties into something that I said last year, which is, okay. You

you're you're basing your meaning on on external

authorities. That's fine. Go ahead. Base your meaning on external authorities.

What are you gonna do? And we looked at this with crime and punishment, and

we looked at this also with the Gulag Archipelago. What are you gonna do when

genuine evil shows up? Because it always does eventually.

And, like, I think I think that they do I think they do a

better version of this in the Jesan movie. Yes. Mister

Cogburn and Ned and Lucky Ned Pepper are the same

Jesan, just Yes. As a a couple of different

coin flips and decisions gone the other way. Right. And then you

have Maddie who's who's righteous. Right? I mean, she's almost like the person who

you ask, like, hey. Is it is it is it wrong to steal bread to

feed your family? And they've never been hungry before. Right? So, of course it

doesn't make any sense. You've never, like, actually had to be put to that situation.

You know? So it's this, like, philosophical knowledge that she keeps running

into around the whole thing. But, in the Jesan

book, you know, like Ned Ned is as practiced and

as competent as as Rooster, like that ain't gonna fly. You got 5

minutes, Get out of here. And he's like, we're gonna need longer than 5 minutes.

He's like, you better get going. And he goes, I'll lead him astray, I think,

for, like, 6 hours. He's like, nah. Nah. Nah.

Like, he knows where he is. He like, they're they're the same

character just Yeah. With with a black hat and a white hat.

Right. Right. And that and that also is part of the dynamic

of the, I think that's part

of the dynamic of the the 19

sixties that's playing underneath this Oh, interesting. Okay.

Underneath this, underneath this this novel and then

fundamentally underneath the first film, less so underneath

the the second film only because and this gets back to

my assertion about, you know, being post Christian. I think we've kind of

muddled we've kind of merged and muddled. And this has happened over 20 years, by

the way. We've kind of merged and muddled our meetings together, and we've kinda, like,

made it a we'll all just be a a soup kind of thing.

And then when a person like Maddie shows up and says, no. We're not

gonna be a soup. Now you're the nail that's sticking

up that's gonna get hammered down. Yep.

And, you know, again, religion is easy place to make this, but you can also

honestly, you can. We're speaking, like, well in the future. So so

all these things have kind of come true that you can't just, like, go out

and do whatever. So, you know, we're we're kinda, like, speaking, like, hey. Gravity works

when we already know that gravity is, like, very well established. Right? But, like Sure.

She's going around, right, in, like, in period, going around telling people that they need

to be law abiding citizens when no one around them is abiding by any laws,

and there's no real pressure to do so because you're days

essays away from a lawman. Right? Well, like, the the

speeches that the guys give who get hung.

Writers? At the beginning when she first shows up to a Fort Smith. Right? She

goes through a hanging. And they don't have the speeches in the first movie, which

which I thought was, like, a huge bummer. The okay. So

the other part, 2 things that I wanna make sure we talk about.

Can we talk about the weirdness of the random hanging person in the middle of

the of the forest than the second one? Yes. That is that was weird

to me. And then, you said something else that I think is very

interesting. The my wife made this comment that the John

Wayne is kinda Disneyfied, the the movie. Right? Because,

like, on the exit, she's just talking to him, and he runs off with the

horse and jumps the fence and everything else like this. Right? Whereas, like, in

the book, right, and she doesn't lose her arm Mhmm. Either. Right. Right? No. She

doesn't. Yep. I think it would be very interesting.

I think she is still that Jesan, much, much older

because of the trauma of in the in the the

life change of that injury. Right? And and then I'm sure

she carried around all, oh, yeah. You wanna make fun of me because I lost

you know what? I lost this arm doing. And then she's as bad as as

every veteran who I've who I've ever met. I'm also a veteran, so don't come

at me. Like, who wants to, like, go around wearing shirts that essays, don't mistake

my kindness for weaknesses, like some sort of weird billboard that you're tough.

Writers, book Lord, put it down, go find something

else. But like, I think, I think the Jesan book

does it or the, the, the second movie does a better job of kind of

showing that staunchness of how it plays out. But I think it plays out

because of the trauma of the injury and the righteousness that comes forward after after

a big injury like that. So I think

the application to leadership is this.

I think that

at a certain point, you have to

book, whole, right? You have to,

you have to bring all the disparate parts of yourself together.

Writers. That's a lifetime process.

And one of the things that the Jesan film

shows and the book Tom, is the struggle that Maddie

had to kind of unite

and and and and negotiate all those pieces of her. Yep.

Never had her. I never married. I never had time for it.

Right. And how she talks about it at the end of it? Exactly. People wanted

my men wanted my money, and I wasn't interested in any of that. Now, by

the way, you could read that through a feminist lens. Oh, you can read that

through a sales lens. John, we don't talk to salespeople here. You can fill out

the bid, and then we'll oh, we can't even have a conversation about what you're

really looking for. Absolutely not, John. We don't talk to salespeople before the decision step.

Like, because you just wanna sell me. No. I'm trying to figure out if I

can actually help you or not. But when you wanna see it as a sales

conversation or a guy who wants to take your money, it's going to have a

remarkably, like, very consistent effect, like, showing up that

way. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you shouldn't be surprised. Imposing it.

Yeah. You shouldn't be surprised that it's showing up that way. Yeah. Whereas

in the first movie, I I find it interesting that your wife said Disney fied.

I would say the thing that was missing in

the Cohen film is the thing that makes the original,

the original how Wallace production,

robably more

loved, and it's this sense of humor. I

think that's one of the big things with that with the with the Ethan Cohen

film. The humor was kinda drained from it, like the Roger Deacon's photography.

Roger Deacon is a great cinematographer, but everything that he shoots

for, the Coen Writers is is drained of it's

drained of color. Like, everything is drained of color. Okay.

And and so I think that that that sense of humor and I think that

that was missed, by the way, because the podcast is was writing this

tongue in cheek. He actually loves these people.

Yeah. And he wants you to laugh at them and laugh with them,

and he wants it to be obviously a rye. He wants there to be some

humor in there. You know, he kinda knows he's kinda giving you the nudge and

the wink about the morality with Maddie. And, you know, he's putting her in these

kinds of situations. You don't get any of that. The, the Collins take it dead

serious. Whereas in the how Wallace production

with John Wayne, Yes. You're too old and too fat to be

jumping fences. By the way, we used to say this all the time we had

in college. One of my college buddies, he was a

smoker from Tennessee and I've never talked about him on the podcast before, but

man smoked like a Reagan chimney and he loved old

westerns. He loved, he loved all of them. And he, I mean, he knew obscure

Writers that I didn't even know about. And I thought I had like deep film

knowledge. And so we were talking about true grit one

Tom, and and we're standing outside. This is in Northern

Minnesota, and it's cold. And he's smoking, of course, because that's what he does.

And I said something to him, like something to the effect of

it's guys essays around with other guys. Right? Mhmm. I said something to him, like,

you're too old and too fat to be running around out here smoking.

And and he literally pulls the cigarette out of his mouth. He blows the cigarette

smoke all over the place. He goes, well, come by and see a fat old

man sometime. And he just walks away. That's

amazing. Like, it's so funny. Amazing. It's so

funny because, I think there

there is this weirdness of John Wayne out of time. Right?

Right. He's a he's a big personality. He's a big person. But, like,

in the movie, like, he doesn't seem so

old. Like, that was how most people were back then. Right? Like, you know, like

like, they're not going to the gym. You know? Like, the gym is your regular

chores. You know? And so If every ad in magazines was

either whiskey, cigarettes, or cars with big fins,

if you look at the magazines from, like, 1919 Yeah. 55 to, like,

1975, that's it. That's all people did in America, apparently.

Live live the lifestyle because, like, hey. No consequences for any of these

actions. You're gonna be just fine. And David Ogilvy will write all of

the copy underneath all of those ants. Yes. He will.

Absolutely, he will. But, like, in the in the newer

one, I feel like they did a better job of showing bridges, like, kinda

later in life, kinda washed out, and stuff like that.

I think the book does a really better job at kinda showing in a really

interesting way some of the insights of his backstory about, like, talking about

how all the buffalo are gone, which, is a guy who really likes Buffalo and

has one tattooed on his arm. I was like, oh, very interesting of

like tying that to a place in time. But I

think I think Bridges does the part of looking a little bit

older, disheveled kind of situation. They were,

k, I found this out, about the same age when they were filming that.

Now, apparently, Reister Cogburn is supposed to be about 40, which back in that

time, probably 40 was was like 60. But both both

Bridges and John Wayne were like late fifties. I think I think Bridges was like

actually 60 whenever he was filming the thing. If I if I remember the

data correctly. Well, he looks I mean, he does. He looks

he looks like he's Yeah. Whereas John Wayne John

Wayne's still like like, his coats and his wardrobe and everything, you know,

like, like, they're trying to make him look a little disheveled with, like, the eye

patch and everything, but, like Yeah. He's wearing that crystal clean

brown kinda like, you could you could go down to down to

north side Texas. Right? Down to north side Fort Worth, like, down the street from

me, and you would see people in Carhartt's that look exactly like that jacket. Exactly

like that jacket. Writers? So it felt very,

like, it felt very much like an old Writers movie that everyone

knows as a movie. Whereas I feel like the newer one is like, they're trying

to immerse you in it. And I think they do a better job of it,

but that one part of them being in the middle of it and seeing that

person there, and then there's, like, the the weird trapper and everything, like Mhmm.

That part. Now it only makes sense because of the plot device of having a

breakup with Libby and everything, which doesn't happen in the book and the original movie

and everything. So Yep. That to me would be a very interesting

conversation of, like, how did you decide the

thinking behind the choices with the pulls essays and the and the

things you decided to keep the same? I think that would be a very interesting

conversation. Alright.

So, we've resolved nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing at nothing at

all. And we are we are at the end of our we are at the

end of our time today. So okay. I have some

questions for you. Can I go first? Go ahead. Yeah. Go ahead. Ask me some

questions. I know. I just ruined your whole format of No. It's fine. It's fine.

The format is l below. This is what this is what makes me the best

slash worst guest. If if you were going

to sit a brand new leader down and you, and you tell them,

Hey, this is forced material. I need you to read the book. I need you

to watch the movie. I need you to watch the newer movie. Mhmm. Which one

do you do you put that person on? And let's take away the idea that

reading is a deeper comprehension level than just watching a movie. Right? Just for

how it does and tells the story. Which one do you think is the best

place for a new leader to kinda sit in?

Honestly, I would probably have them watch the Cohen film.

Same. Only but only because I

think a new leader in the year we're in contact

context. Right? I think they're going to resonate more with, with that

perception of. Of, of Maddie's

moralism, the perception of, you know, having a plan

a kind of fail and having to fall back to a plan B. I think

they're going to resonate with the idea of,

how do we assert moral authority and what does that actually look like? I think

they're going to resonate a little bit more with, the

concepts of. Particularly if I tell them a little bit

about Podcast, not, you know, linking external success and fame

to the work like we've been talking about. I also think

that, they're going to resonate with,

Jeff Bridges as rooster Cogburn, his bold actions there.

So, you know, the word grit is a word that,

Angela Duckworth made famous in the business world, but it

is a word that unfortunately due to the

course due to the passage of time, is now no longer

referenced. And I think that's very interesting

because right now, what we need, and I would in

particularly say to male leaders, particularly young male leaders, young male

leaders, and by young, I mean

18 to 34 young male

leaders need a lot of grit right now.

And I don't mean grit as an authoritarianism.

I don't mean grit as in, as in being abusive or being over

weaning. I don't mean any of that. Andrew Tate and Harvey Weinstein book

share the same DNA. Not talking about that.

I love that. I'm not talking about that. Okay. What I'm talking

about is the grit to take on ownership

and accountability for everything that is within your sphere of influence.

Yep. And to do it in spite of the fact that the slings

and arrows will come. Yeah. You're going to get that

from, understanding Charles Portis' life, understanding the

book, and understand and seeing the new movie kind of kind of, I think, delivers

that message a little bit better in a little bit better way. Yeah. But, yeah,

I would hit him with the new movie first, and then I'd be like, yeah.

You gotta go you gotta go read the book to get the whole idea here,

but that's what I would do. I agree. I'll I I think I think the

book I think the second movie does a really good job of just that juxtaposition

of, you know, everyone thinks that they can just run

around like Maddie, and it's going to work. Right? And then and then if it

and then if it's not working, you need to go do something else. Whereas what

I talk about people with is, you know, you can't force that on

on anyone. Writers? You have to meet them where they are. So

I would pick the same movie just because I, you know, I

think most people need to understand that you're gonna have

hard days as a leader. You're gonna have to go say some things that aren't

popular. You're gonna have to go let some people go that you

potentially brought onto a team. Right? And I think I think

that that second movie does a really good job of showing how you have to

live with the actions. Right? Past it. You know, you don't you don't get to

ride off on a horse and everything is okay and there's no lasting impact of

it. You know, these the everything that

made him great as far as, like, being the being the hero that she

needed leads to all of his other struggles. Right? Right. And you

have to as a leader, you have to know that you're carrying both. Right. The

greatness that is you is also attached to the things that are going to

drive some people nuts and that

that's how it has to be. Writers. No one is just going to lay

down for you all the time and people shouldn't. Right.

They're supposed to push back. You're supposed to kind of have to give a reason

and a thought behind why you're doing what you're doing. If we're not doing that,

we are tyrants. Right? We're just expecting people to run and jump and do certain

things be because we said so with no contextual reasoning

why. Well, and and and in the world that we live in today

and by the way, I'd like to thank John Hill for coming on the podcast

today. We could have talked about this book for literally hours, and and

we just began to to scrape the surface. So go pick up your own copy

of True Grit by Charles Fortis. Watch the Cohen movie.

Watch even watch the the Hal Wallis, John Wayne John Wayne film.

Take a look at that one as well, and read up a little bit on

Charles Fortis and his life and the kinds of decisions that he made.

There's a great scene at the end, and it's in the close to the end

of the book end of the 3rd act in the Jesan film,

And then the back end of the 3rd act in the first film where and

in the book where, where John Wayne,

rides out against against Ned Pepper. And Ned

Pepper challenges him. He says, you know, I I I love this line, you know,

you know, 4 against 1. Right?

You know, what's your intention? Do you think the 1 on 4 is a dog

fall? And rooster says, I need to kill you in 1 minute, Ned, or see

you hanged at Fort Smith at Judge Parker's convenience. Which will you have?

Lucky Ned Pepper laughed. He said, I call that book talk for a one eye

fat man. And, of course, rooster said, fill your

hand, you son of a bitch. Yeah.

Which, you know, he gave him some options. He gave him options. It was

not, like, as I tell everyone, as a consultant, your job is to give people

options and then help them understand the weight of those options. But

if you're running around as a coach or a consultant and people are like, they

didn't listen to all my advice. Welcome to the party. That's how it works. Right?

That's right. And honestly, that's your first learning lesson that

not everyone is gonna hear it the way that it naturally comes out of your

mouth, and you might need to put in some work and some effort into how

it needs to come out of your mouth. That way, it can be heard regularly

and consistently. Well, in the 4 that you are fighting against, the

dog fall you're fighting against in this world is the algorithm, of

course. It's social media, it's

circumstances, but it's also other people.

And book, we are supposed to engage with other people. I

fundamentally believe that in order to lead them. But we are

also supposed to have accountability for those exact same people.

We're supposed to have accountability for what they do and for what they don't do.

A non decision is still a decision. And so

even a sales guy. And I'm not even a sales guy. Like, like, you're not

even a sales guy saying that. Like, I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh. Are

you allowed to say that? Like, but that's true. Said it out

loud. I'm gonna say it out loud. If they can't make a decision,

that's a problem. Right? That's a problem. And if if you can't figure out

that, a, if someone is just not decisive enough to make a decision versus

someone who doesn't want to wasn't to give you the decision that you want, you're

not even on the level. Like, Like, you're not you're not ready to be a

leader. You're not ready to be in sales. You're not ready to do anything else,

and you're definitely not ready to get on your high horse on LinkedIn and go

around talking about how people don't get it.

The less of that from everybody out there

and, more of listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast. Because

this podcast will help you

figure out where the dog fall actually is. So

once again, I'd like to thank my guests, John hill for coming on today.

Look, connect with him, connect with him as a, as a

consultant, as a consultant, connect with him on LinkedIn. We

will have links to all as usual, to all the places where you can get

ahold of him. Go buy his book. Go listen to his podcast.

Go hire him when you wanna figure out how to be a

better sales leader.

And with that, my name is Ehsan Sorels,

and we're

out.