776 – Wisdom Coach and Star Wars actor: Tom interviews Marc Wendt

Episode 776 – Marc Wendt
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 776 of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Marc Wendt and I got to tell you, I've seen a lot of coaches in my day. I've been around a long time, but I don't think I've ever seen someone take as much training for themselves to be a better coach than this guy. So many people get into coaching because they think it's an easy buck and they just put out a shingle and they're clueless, you know, idiots that have never did. What gets me is the life coaches that never did a thing in their entire life and they want to be your life coach. So I've been ragging on coaches quite a bit, but I've researched this guy and boy, he really improves his skills continuously and I really appreciate that. And plus, how many people do you know who've been in a Star Wars movie? Huh? Think about that. All right. So we'll bring him on in a minute. Hope you to miss Episode 775 Christine Vartanian. She's a fashion expert, but she's also a set designer so she can show you how to make gorgeous sets for your remote or zoom calls right from your home office or home studio.

[00:01:35] So make sure you listen to that. And if you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. She was 775. Pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree it will save you. You might as well just say I'll say you're welcome right now because if you do even a portion of what's in this book, you're going to save hundreds and literally thousands of hours. If you are in business for a long time, not fighting with your computer. And then follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok.

[00:02:12] All right. Let's get to the main event. Marc Wendt is a men's wisdom coach, podcast host and entrepreneur. In addition to his coaching career, he has a diverse background. That's what makes a great coach. I got to tell you, he's a musician, a songwriter. I don't even know what an archivist is. I'll have to ask him what that is. Theatrical technician and screenplay writer and life has given Marc a unique perspective and ability to connect with people from all walks of life. Marc, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:02:44] I'm ready to screw.

[00:02:46] All right. I'm always. How's it going, man? How's it going?

[00:02:50] It's going really good. Summertime in California. Loving it. Oh.

[00:02:54] Well, what's the difference between summer and winter? I don't. I don't even know. Yeah.

[00:02:59] The fog lasts a little longer in summer.

[00:03:01] Oh, I see. I see. So I met Marc doing his podcast Moped Outlaws. When I saw it, I didn't know what it was about, but I thought I got to be on this podcast. So. So tell him about that.

[00:03:17] Well, it's quite a ride. My partner Greg and I interview the cream of the crop of humanity and we are unafraid to tackle difficult subjects with an open heart and an eye towards the comedy of errors of life. You know, it's like there's so much going on, so many ways to be fearful or consternated or upset, and we just want to poke holes in the need to suffer about life, but also at the same time talk about important things that we're all learning as human beings.

[00:03:47] Yeah. And, and so we had a we had a blast during my, my my episode. But, but I understand I don't know if you're aware of this, but Greg got in a little trouble with his friends on the graphic he made for it. Did you know about that?

[00:04:02] Uh, I think that was me that he got in trouble with. Oh.

[00:04:06] Oh, oh. Because there was a gun on it. Well, not.

[00:04:09] Because there was a gun on it. I'm not. You know, we have merch that has guns on it.

[00:04:16] Okay? What it was is it's a.

[00:04:18] Video of a 45 pointed right at the viewer. Very sinister. Oh, my.

[00:04:23] God. I didn't know that.

[00:04:25] And it just felt sinister. It didn't feel like it was going to attract people to the episode. And so, you know, I got a listener left us a message saying they were going to not be on, they were unfollowing us and that they were disappointed. And so I thought about it and I called Greg up and we had a conversation about it. And, you know, I really love his artistic output. You know, he makes all the nfts for us and stuff like that. But in this particular case, it was just the wrong it wasn't an attractor, it was a repeller. And that advertising needs to be an attractor in this case.

[00:05:03] Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know it was pointing at anybody, but I was. Was thinking just now. I was thinking the other side of it. Yeah. If you had enough guns, you could force people to listen to the point. Yeah, I don't think that's. Yeah, that's the idea.

[00:05:18] Wasn't there someone in Germany who tried to do that long time ago?

[00:05:22] I've heard. I've heard.

[00:05:24] Yeah. I think we dealt with him effectively. I'm not interested in that. That type of mentality.

[00:05:29] So. So and, and just so people know, what we're talking about is, you know, I live in Virginia and, you know, the and I came from Pennsylvania and six years old, everybody's toting guns and and hunting and everything else. And so I was in gunfights and knife fights when I had the nightclub business. So I'm very safety conscious, put it that way. So so anyway, so how did you come up with that name, though? Moped Outlaws. Yeah.

[00:05:59] Well, we had this comedic idea and we had been tossing around another name name and we got some feedback from someone we both respect a lot that the other name was really not a good name because it had some implications about slavery that we just didn't want to portray. And so we were just kicking around and trying to figure out a new name. And we were on the air live on Facebook talking about it. And one of our good friends, Lauren Gonzalez, coined the term in the chat and we just went, that's it. And so kudos to Lauren for coming up with the name.

[00:06:37] Yeah, it's funny as hell. Like I said, it really grabs you. Yeah. Like I said, I really like it when a coach has a varied background because as I said, so many coaches are out there that just hang a shingle out and think it's an easy buck. You've taken an opposite thing where you're going to really live a life and improve your skills all the time. So tell them about some of the coaching you've taken.

[00:07:04] Well, I started coaching when I was nine. Okay. My parents used to run weekend workshops in the early 70s in the San Francisco Bay Area and it was all based around emotional intelligence, and they had raised me to be a man who had feelings and was still a strong man, but also someone who could understand how to communicate with emotional literacy. And when they would run these workshops, they would have parents that would come and the kids would be in the daycare with me all day. And so I would teach the principles that my parents were teaching to the kids. I went on to have a normal childhood, ha ha ha. After that. But I, you know, I went through pretty much a normal life. I, I went to school, I worked in the restaurant business and I was studying editing when I got an internship at a place called the Bill Graham Presents Archives. And during that period of time, I learned how to be an archivist. And then that.

[00:08:03] What does that tell us? Tell us what that is exactly.

[00:08:06] Well, it's kind of like a librarian for objects. So paper, it can be recordings. Magnetic film. In this case, it was merchandise samples because in order to protect your trademark and copyrights, you have to be able to provide proof of use. And so I was working for a company called Lucasfilm after I got my archiving act together and I became the supervisor of archive services for the licensing division there. And the licensing division kept one or more of every Star Wars or Indiana Jones Howard, the Duck Willow merchandise sample that was created. So it was literally my job for 21 years to collect Star Wars toys.

[00:08:51] Wow. And there how would you house such a thing? Is it has to be in some type of secure facility, right?

[00:08:58] Right. Well, for a long time, the archive was at Skywalker Ranch. And then it got to the point where it was too big for the ranch and we had to farm out and have some other facilities during the prequels. And then there came a time when we kind of. Pulled it back a little and kept everything we needed to. I ended up for about ten years running. I would be one of the main sources for Toys for Tots because I had all this stuff that was new and packaged. Even though some of it might be a couple, three years old and, you know, I can't really talk a lot about it, but I was lucky enough to meet the Marines every year and do some work there. And so we would do a good job. Part of archiving is knowing what to keep, how much of it to keep and how to preserve it. So over time, it expanded. At one point I was about 22,000ft² and then got it back down to around 9000ft². And that's when things changed at the company. And that's how I was in Star Wars. I mean, I could tell that story now.

[00:10:09] Yeah, do it. Do it.

[00:10:10] So while I was working for Lucasfilm, we were making a film called Attack of the Clones and and it was one of the first fully digital productions. And we George had gotten to a point where he had a scene with a bunch of Jedi and he didn't have enough of them in the scene that he'd shot. So the call went out within the company with people with martial arts skills, And they didn't tell you it was about being in the film, but it was just like one of those things. Periodically there'd be cattle calls for different things for ILM, and I went down and I'd been on the fencing team in high school.

[00:10:47] So what's what's ILM.

[00:10:51] Industrial Light and Magic, the effects house for Lucasfilm. Okay. And they were busy trying to composite all those, you know, all of the different Jedi that needed to be in this scene. And so they, we there was some auditions by the assistant director and about, oh, about 20 of us were approved to be Jedi in Attack of the Clones.

[00:11:11] And not only were you, you were a Jedi. Oh, man, you're the first Jedi we've ever had. Yeah.

[00:11:17] And it was a lifetime dream come true. It was a lot of work because after I passed the audition, I trained for six weeks. Be able to perform because it was grueling. It was a we appeared on a giant blue screen field with multiple camera angles. And one of the things that was there were eight points of the compass that were on the floor. You couldn't really see them except if you were standing around on top of us, on top of them. And so I had to do my routine on what's called a kata eight times for three different lighting setups. So that's 24 times through the routine. And that's that was a lot. It was it took a lot of stamina and eventually had a.

[00:11:59] Bunch of costume on, Right.

[00:12:01] Well, it was cheaper than going back and doing reshoots, right?

[00:12:05] No, I know that. But I mean, I'm saying about the difficulty of doing the katas. You were dressed up like a Jedi, right?

[00:12:11] Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I was in pretty good shape, but I was a lot younger than I am now. And I did a good job and I managed to be, you know, make it past the cutting room floor and turns out I'm in the film for about 36 frames or 1.5 seconds, and I have some photos. If you look me up on Wiki Wikipedia, you'll find the name of my character, Ichi Tan Mukoda. And you know, it's an honor to have worked there during the time when it was led by George. He was the Disney of our time and is the Disney of our time and. It was amazing family, like the people that worked there that I was colleagues with. They put in so much time, energy and attention into what they did. It was one of the best independent film companies that was also a small business, which is kind of an odd thing to say, but that's really how we ran it. And lots of us wore multiple hats and did anything we could to make it work and to preserve this, the spending habits. You know, George spent his own money on those films, and I really admire him for that. And his success is well deserved. And he loves kids. Those films are all about creating archetypes and modern fables of how to have a moral compass. And I always got that and I always appreciated it. And to be able to be a Jedi in a film was a dream come true.

[00:13:40] I bet. Yeah.

[00:13:41] The coaching path resulted because right around the time that George sold the company to Disney, my wife of 20 years also wanted to divorce. So I was in a real pickle. My longtime commitment to my work was changing drastically, and I was no longer going to be married to the woman I loved. And that put me in a really challenging position. And so I started to investigate what had I done to create the result in the marriage. And, you know, it would have been easy to blame things about her. She had her own issues, but I was much more interested in what I had done to contribute to the demise of the marriage. And that had me call up a friend and my friend Ken, who had at that point had been a coach for about 12 years. He said, Hey, go right now and sign up for this weekend workshop called the Ignited Man Workshop. And you know, I think it'll do you a lot of good. And it did. And while I was there, I began to transform myself. And that started a long journey of about two years of my own self work.

[00:14:48] And particularly in men's work, you know. Robert Bly There's lots of different ways that people access men's work, and it was really the thing that I needed because my mom had raised me primarily. I mean, my dad was there and I spoke to him a lot. And he a very academic man. And I'm grateful to him for the intellect that I have. But I didn't learn a lot of the things that most traditional masculine men learn. And so I had to develop that myself. And it was challenging. And while I was doing this work, I started to realize I had an aptitude because I'd be in these group sessions with the other men, and I would be asking these really pointed and insightful questions. And I realized that I had a talent for helping people move through the difficult transitions that they have in life. And so that's when I embarked on a training schedule, a certification path. I had found another job working for a company called the Internet Archive with my archive skills, and I was the storage manager for them for about two years. You may know them from the Wayback.

[00:15:52] That's the Wayback Machine. Yeah.

[00:15:53] And so that was really challenging because that was tons and tons literally of materials that had to be scanned or were scanned that had to be cataloged. And then a system for identifying where they were located had to be developed. And one of the things I love about that company was that they were all bootstrappers and coders And, you know, their mission is to provide access to knowledge for free. And that really resonated with me. And so while I was working my butt off in the warehouse for them and helping them develop a system for tracking all the physical materials, I was also training as a coach. And so I went through something called a coaching dojo, which my friend Ken ran that was a year long coaching process. And then I began to sort of coach a little bit on the weekends and at night. And then I went through a bunch of other certifications which you can find if you want to look at on my website, you know, men's wisdom, coaching, certification, meditation instructor certification, and then something I belong to called the Remember Institute, which is a deep dive into the history of racial injustice and indigenous cultures and how to find your way to your own indigenous nature, especially if you're white.

[00:17:13] And and that really gave me a lot more tools to navigate the world. And I'm currently involved with something called the All in man initiation, and I'm both a graduate of that. That's not on my website yet, but I'm also now someone who assists the main teaching group. I'm an event producer and I help, you know, take men through this process of becoming. Powerful in the areas of health, wealth and relationships. And that's what I do now full time. And that allows me the privilege to do art. Like I still play music and I've got a screenplay that I've written that I want to get made. And I live with a lovely, wonderful artist woman who I adore and who adores me. And, you know, that's kind of the story. My motto. It's changed over the years. But I'm a man devoted to inspiring creativity and energizing people. And to do that, you have to have gone through your own processes. And I continue to challenge myself in order that I might be a powerful, masculine leader.

[00:18:22] And you sure do. I said I saw this. Credentials that are on there now. And now you're even adding more to them as we speak. So. So, yeah, I really appreciate that. Now, a couple of things I want to unpack here. Well, first of all, I just want to mention that one of my video guys retired from Hollywood probably before you were around that was an editor on Star Wars. So he was a video editor and he retired from there. So. So that's kind of cool.

[00:18:50] What was his name?

[00:18:51] But Gary Smith is his name. He was 25 years in Hollywood. He got an Emmy nomination for the Winds of War, and he was working on the original Star Wars. Yeah.

[00:19:01] Yeah, that was before my time.

[00:19:03] That was a long time ago. Yeah. Now, now this. I heard you say the word indigenous. And so there's something in the news right now. I don't know if you're aware about Ben and Jerry's ice cream place. Yeah. Yeah. Have you heard that? What do you think about that going on? And. Oh, I haven't heard.

[00:19:19] What's going on, but I know who they are. What's going on?

[00:19:22] Okay, well, Ben and Jerry's came out on the 4th of July ragging on the United States, saying we stole all this land and we ought to give it back and just making, you know, big, fat asses of themselves. And they got just reamed and they're Unilever, who owns them, lost $2 billion in market share on 4th of July because of this. But it turns out that their headquarters is on stolen indigenous land and you haven't heard a peep out of them since. So that's what's going on.

[00:19:56] Oh, okay. Is there anything that I mean, everybody in America is on non ceded indigenous land.

[00:20:06] Exactly. I mean but like I said, they they, you know, I don't know what their motivation was, but on the 4th of July to come out like that and cost $2 Billion in market cap from their their owners just my latest book I think I mentioned on your podcast is called Highly Educated idiots. You know doing things that just hurt rather than help the situation so so I just wondered if you because that's certainly an indigenous thing that they brought to light.

[00:20:37] Well, I think it's important to have the conversation for sure because as a man who understands the genocide of Native American people and the ramifications of that and the idea that a lot of the generational wealth of the people of the United States is the result of the labor of slaves, we have some work to do to understand it. But in order to unpack it and actually create a new awareness and to have people who are resistant or unable to understand it, get a handle on it, we need to do this in a way that is powerful and also takes the right approach, which is one of the things that, remember, Institute does a great job. It's very challenging, but it also allows room for people to experience what it is that they are experiencing and confronting. The revelation of really the mass murder that was part of the formation of our country. And I think that we can't go forward at the level that we want to. We can't really fulfill the promise of the declaration and the Constitution unless we have some sort of truth and rights, reconciliation, where we all talk about it and we all understand what the price that's been paid by the cultures that were here before us. And we need to do that in a way that's actually functional and that people can digest. Because what what you're talking about with Ben and Jerry's, it just inflames everything. And people pick sides and then they.

[00:22:05] Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Because off your website and how you work with people, I noted one bullet point. It says practical skills. Practical is the word is the key word. So coming out and doing that on the 4th of July is not practical at all. Right? It made it it just caused everybody to pick sides. Like you said, it caused enormous amounts of loss to people that may have invested in them and and didn't help anything. So that's that's not practical. It kind of reminds me of the state that you live in and saying, oh, let's give everybody $5 million. Well, that's bigger than your whole budget of your.

[00:22:46] Well, it's not everybody. It's it's indigenous cultures, it's black people.

[00:22:51] And Yeah, but there's no definition for that. Don't even pretend that there is, you know, who's going to be included in that. You know, if you're this, you know, my 42nd cousin was Daniel Boone. All right. So how far does it go? It's just ridiculous. In other words, is what I'm saying. It's not practical to implement. And then people like me make fun of it. And the rest, most of the country makes fun of it because it is stupid, you know, highly educated idiots putting out these these things. So as you said earlier, it's not health. Hoping to to come out with something so outrageous to get people talking because all they're going to do is fight rather than come to a really realistic solution. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

[00:23:35] And I think I would add that it's important to be disagreeable enough that we have the conversations because too much of this is being shoved under the rug and people who don't want to deal with their uncomfortable feelings around it have too many places to hide. And honestly, the shareholders are the ones who tanked the shares, not Ben and Jerry's, because no one said you had to sell, but you chose to sell because what someone said, that's on you.

[00:24:05] There, no question about it. But I'm just saying that nothing good came from that, from running their fat mouths and it wasn't reasonable where people could. And that's that's kind of the way that things are nowadays. If I don't if if somebody doesn't agree with me, I'm a bad, worthless piece of shit. That's the atmosphere that we live in nowadays. Instead of having reasonable debate and talking like it used to be, that's that's a that's a pretty tough thing to to find nowadays.

[00:24:38] I agree. I think that to a certain degree, we need some unreasonable debate. But when we polarize each other, we just pick war sides when we do that. And that is not going to help us. We actually have to be able to have this conversation in a way that people can digest, like I said before. And but unfortunately, you know, people have a lot of peccadilloes and they have a lot of fragility and they're just not willing to even look at it. And, you know, as much as I feel like what Ben and Jerry did is is clumsy and isn't necessarily the the the best way forward, we are actually talking about it, you and I, Tom, and the people listening to this now. So there is a ripple effect there. I personally think we need, like I said, like the South African Truth and Rights Commission, we need to have a long conversation in this country where descendants of slaves and descendants of indigenous people who were murdered by the church have the opportunity to present in a public forum and people come forward and talk about it. And we have reparations of some sort. You know, you want to criticize $5 million per person in California as unrealistic. I hear you. And there needs to be some reparations because people were killed and land was stolen and people profited from that. Families to this day are still alive who have profited from that wealth. And it's just it's not how I want to live in the world. And it doesn't reflect the true principles that are enshrined in the Constitution. That's not really what it's about.

[00:26:10] Well, yeah, and I'll agree with everything about that. In addition, though, I would like to see homeless veterans who purposely sacrificed their their time and life and limbs to to help move the country forward. Somebody take care of them. I mean, you you sit in the heart of homeless America, you know, so those all those people need help, too. So it's and that's current stuff that we could save their lives as opposed to 300 years ago. So I'd like to see a balance there. But it seems like the people that scream the loudest, you know, the squeaky wheel kind of syndrome get get the attention when all those people, you know, I mean, the pretty much the world thinks that that the San Francisco area, the Los Angeles area the Chicago area are are dog shit nowadays compared to what they used to be. One of the most beautiful cities in the country. And you can't walk around without stepping in, you know, human feces, you know. So it's I'd like to see at least equal amount of effort put in to help those people that are live now. And and do you dispute that?

[00:27:30] No, not at all. In fact, I really appreciate what veterans have done for us. There's a lot of untold stories that we don't get to hear about. I had an interesting life because my parents were hippies and part of the 60s antiwar movement, but my uncle and my grandfather were both Air force decorated Air Force people.

[00:27:50] Wow. You got to see both sides of it.

[00:27:52] Yeah. And so Thanksgiving was a really interesting time for me. And, you know, I'll bet I really appreciate what my uncle built with his life. I mean, after he won the Distinguished Flying Cross with 43 clusters in Vietnam. Wow. He went on to train America's fighter pilots for as long as he could until he retired. And then he was an investment services administrator, someone who helped people preserve their wealth. And I think there's a lot to be said for us helping the people who have served this country. There's a lot of. Social problems that are the cause of homelessness, that are left to fester because people don't want to deal with it. We as a culture don't want to take responsibility for what's going on and the veterans who are homeless, that's a huge problem and it needs to be addressed. And then the mentally ill who are homeless, right?

[00:28:55] Yes. Yeah.

[00:28:56] Also needs to be addressed. And we have the resources. I have some ideas about this, but I prefer to speak about them privately because they're probably a little bit controversial. But I think there's a way for us to change this. And as a Northern California resident, someone who visits San Francisco frequently, there are still amazing, beautiful places in San Francisco. And it's not just poop everywhere. You know, there are issues there.

[00:29:25] Well, that's just the word that the media is putting out. So, yeah, we don't live there. That's all we hear.

[00:29:31] Again, it's that part of that polarization idea that if it doesn't fit with what we believe, we're going to make it wrong in public. We're going to talk about it as if those people are idiots. And the truth is, we're all idiots trying to make it through this world. And it's just a matter of developing the language skills and the the ability to be productive and to create wealth and to create life, really, that is holding us back. And so, you know, that's what I coach to. And I think that it comes from this idea of, you know, my mission is to make the world a better place, one human being at a time by helping people unpack their own limiting beliefs and the things that have them believing that they can't do it or that they won't do it, or that it's not. You know, people get stuck in their victim story. Right? And that's a big problem in our culture that people want to perpetuate their victim status. And there are real victims in our culture and we have to help them. So, you know, it's a big, complicated problem and it's going to take all of us to get in the game with each other and not be just willing to point fingers at the other guy, you know, like, I mean, this.

[00:30:46] That's the hard part right there. That's the hard part. And I practice what I preach. Like I some of my friends who remain nameless, they want to say bad things about former President Trump. And you know what? There's lots of bad things you can say about that guy. But I've had the courage to sit down and say, you know, he did some good things. Um, one of which is stopping the Pacific Treaty that was about to take place that would have taken the sovereignty of nations of nation states away and put them under the review of an international tribunal. And, you know, there's other things that he did that were beneficial to our culture. And there were a lot of things that really, really, really, really, really disturbed me that I don't like and that make me consider him to be someone who's not fit for the office. But if we just have a conversation where it's my team is good, your team is bad, we are never going to fully understand the the depths of the challenges that we face as a nation. And, you know, it's basically the the roaring 20s right now and on repeat. And you know what came after the roaring 20s in the 20th century, right?

[00:31:59] Yep.

[00:32:01] So we're sitting in a really precarious spot and not a lot of people have figured it out yet. And we need to do the things that are that are hard. You know, we have to rebuild this country and we can't do it from putting up walls and having another civil war. That is not going to be the answer. So we have to sit down and have the conversations with each other and we have to create wealth together. And, you know, one of the beautiful things about capitalism is that you can bootstrap your way into creating a business and creating wealth and that there are ways to do that. And so and but your victim story is not one of them. Unless you want to write a book and complain all the time on podcasts.

[00:32:42] Yeah, that's for sure. Now, can you think of anything good that Biden has done?

[00:32:48] Um. Well, yeah. I mean. I think, you know, standing by the people of Ukraine is important. I think that.

[00:33:01] Uh, that's a good point. Let's stop on that one. Is it helping? Is it more important? Is it more important than helping our own veterans?

[00:33:08] Well, he has helped our veterans to some degree. I mean, it's not enough yet. You know, the infrastructure bill was probably his great achievement. Right. And but that was again, that was Congress. But he signed it. Right. And that that is important. Like one of the ways that we helped beat back the Depression was because we decided to invest in this country and it created a lot of jobs and it put people to work. And we could debate about whether government spending is and infrastructure projects is a healthy way to approach creating an economy. But the truth is there's a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed, and we have a lot of people that need work that aren't necessarily, you know, computer engineers or AI technicians. And so, you know. Honestly, I'm really not looking forward to voting for Biden again. I would rather not. But, you know, it's a mixed bag with pretty much any politician. It's like most of the guys that would hate Paul. Most of the guys that we good at are women that we good at it don't want the job.

[00:34:12] And anybody that wins at the highest level. I've always said this my whole life. They have to be two faced because they can't possibly get enough votes if they take hard stances all the way one side or the other. So they got to try to please everybody to get enough votes to win. And so by their nature, most of them are, you know, will blow with the wind just to get to win. Well, and that yeah, that.

[00:34:38] Speaks to another problem. You know, like I have this idea I didn't really put it forth in my bio, but I've come up with something called Democracy 2.0 and we really need to fix the way that elections are done in this country. I mean, the Citizens United ruling really messed us up and having money be the governing factor in in how people get elected is a big problem. And the way that we do elections, the way that we tabulate the votes also has to be upgraded.

[00:35:06] No kidding. Yeah. I mean, I witnessed it when people say, oh, was the election fair and you're an idiot if you say it wasn't. Well, there's a lot of evidence of trouble in it and on video even, you know, so so but but if you ask the question, you're all of a sudden a conspiracy theorist.

[00:35:27] Right. And this is the problem, the demonization of debate. Right. Because that's the foundation of a democratic republic. It's reasonable debate.

[00:35:37] Exactly. Yeah. And one of my favorite t shirts is I need more conspiracy theories because all the ones I had came true. Yeah.

[00:35:48] Well, and when you think about it, any time a prosecutor prosecutes someone in criminal court, it's a conspiracy theory until it's adjudicated by a jury.

[00:35:58] Yeah. And and speaking of that, that's all these prosecutors. I mean, you know, again, I come from a small town, 500 people. Your handshake meant something. Yeah, You did something wrong. The whole town is going to be on your head. All right? And then we see guys like me from small town America, which is most America. See, looters can go and steal up to legislated up to a certain amount of money, can go and steal. We're just like, what? What's the world coming to? We can't fathom such a thing. They would probably in my small town, never be found again. All right. If they tried to pull that stuff. So how people can justify the moral decline of, you know, do not steal. All right. That's pretty simple, right? And they're stealing and saying, oh, well, that's part of reparations. Oh, okay. Well, well, no.

[00:36:53] That's conflating those two things. Well, that's.

[00:36:56] What they're saying. I mean.

[00:36:57] Would not be necessary if reparations were done.

[00:37:01] Well, but it's still happening. And so people like us can't see, you know, like I said, there's no debate about it. There's just screaming and people stealing. And now and but they don't. And they're so stupid. They don't see that it's hurting them in the long run because who leaves Walgreens and Rite Aid and and Wal Mart leave town and now there's no place for anybody to shop. So it's it's a very short sighted thing.

[00:37:33] Think Yeah. Like I said, there's a lot of complexity and difficulty in our culture right now. And we we have to have honest discussions about how we're going to solve these problems. And I think right now our democracy is in deep trouble and we need to take the money out of politics and we need to get public servants, people who actually want to help and have good ideas back in jobs of changing the way society runs, not career politicians, whose only thing is to raise more money and get make more promises to people who have, at best marginal intentions around the shape of our country. And honestly, you know, monopolization and big business controls way too much of the way our republic runs. We have to fix that and we have to stop allowing big corporations to stifle innovation because it threatens the market share that they have. You know, there's there's all kinds of things about free enterprise and about our system that are not functioning according to the blueprint. And if they were, there'd be lots more opportunity and there'd be lots more communal wealth and there'd be lots more health and safety and all of the good schools and all of those things. Like when my grandfather, he was a, you know, a member of the Rotarians and the Kiwanis clubs and a mason, and they got together and they raised barns and they they built hospitals and they they did things out of their own wealth. And now it's this like hoard stuff and buy, you know, fancy cars and nobody's putting back at the level that that generation did. And that is unsustainable.

[00:39:17] Yeah, it's definitely an uphill battle. No, my my brother is dead pretty much because of a big corporation. He worked I won't say the name the corporation or the I'll be dead, but yeah, he worked with Plutonium 238, a highly radioactive substance back in the 70s. And then they encouraged you to work overtime but to take off your radiation badge so it wouldn't add up to how much radiation you were getting. And he ended up dying from Hodgkin's Lymphoma Direct, pretty much directly related to radiation poisoning. And if you sued him, you'd be in court 50 years, literally 50 years, you know, So so it's kind of these these big corporations have so much power. It's it's kind of what you're talking about is a pretty, pretty uphill battle.

[00:40:06] Well, it used to be that when you were a granted the opportunity to raise capital by becoming a corporation and selling shares, that there was a five year limit on your ability to be incorporated. And after that all the shares became something else. You reverted to a business ownership structure, so everybody that owned the company shares owned the business, not just the shares. So one of the things that that we did was we made it possible to be perpetually in a fund raising mode with the way that we use the trading of shares and incorporation as a tool. It was meant to just be a tool to to foster innovation so that someone with a good idea could bring in other people with to help get that good idea going. And now the trade in corporate shares is its own business itself, which produces nothing in terms of tangible products. It just produces more money which in on a short term basis wouldn't be so bad. But like the fact that, you know, IBM is still trading was not how it was intended to be at the beginning. It's supposed to be a fundraising tool. And then then you have owners not. And if you want to sell your ownership, it's a different story. It's not like trading securities back and forth and using algorithms to print money, basically. And and so there's a lot of structural things that are not working right. And we need really smart people to get in the game. And really smart people are too smart to get in the game on some level because it's so corrupt. It's really tough. My value system and my ethos is to show up, have powerful conversations, speak truth without denigrating other people, and try to put forward solutions. You know, one of the things it says on my website is I'm a solutions generator. If you go to my LinkedIn, it says Solutions generator. And that's how I coach. Like let's take complex problems, break them down and find solutions.

[00:42:09] Yeah, I was going to ask you, like, who is your ideal coaching client and how do you work with them?

[00:42:16] I like executives or software engineers who are really devoted to creating a powerful culture in their company and whose families are suffering because they're working so hard. So my one of my mottos is Happy Homes Make Productive C-suites. So I work from the premise that emotional literacy and emotional intelligence among male leadership in corporations or in software development teams helps people become better at relating to each other, and that that is the last 20% of productivity gains that are possible. Because when people are invested just for the wage, their productivity is X. But when people buy into the why of things and they get motivated from the mission of what they're doing, then that can be X plus 20%. And when you're not at work worrying about why your wife is pissed at you, you're doing a lot better work. And when you're at home and you're not worried about work because you haven't been doing your job, you're a lot happier at home. And most of us have a really bad work life balance. And so that's where I put my attention. I love the work of Chris Voss. He wrote a book called Never Split the Difference, which is all about negotiating. And he talks about tactical empathy in there. And then I work with that. And I'm you know, there's a book that I use a lot that's called Beyond Victim Consciousness, which talks about the drama triangle and how we create all this drama in our lives and at work. And so learning how to come from a powerful place of embodied emotional intelligence and negotiate properly with people you love and have and build homes with and people you work and build businesses with is the key to changing the world.

[00:44:09] Very, very powerful. So how how do people get in touch with you? Plus, plus, folks, this is quite a quite a different episode than we're usually have. It's usually hard core how to entrepreneurial skills. But this all this stuff is important. And I can tell you for sure, myself and Marc probably differ 180 degrees on many topics. But you saw hopefully you saw an example of a nice respectful debate and trying to see the other side of things. And so that's I think that's one of Marc's mission. So how do they get a hold of you, Marc?

[00:44:47] Well, entrepreneurs are what make this country great. People build businesses and they create life through that. And so I admire that. And I love working with businessmen who own and run companies or business women who own and run companies so they can be more productive, help more families create the kinds of lifestyles that we want. If you want to talk to me, you can book me at Marcwendtcoaching.com. There's a button right there where you can just book a free 60 minute call with me and we'll just get on the phone and we'll talk about what's going on and if there's a connection there, we can figure out how to work together. One of the things that I've learned is not to hustle, like those shingle throwers that you were talking about before. What I do is I have a conversation with people much like our conversation Tom, where we find out where the touch points are, where the overlap is, where the common denominators are, and then we get to work.

[00:45:42] And that's where I noted from your thing practical, you know, it gets some results rather than just a bunch of big theories that go nowhere. So. Awesome. We'll have it in the show notes and thanks so much for coming on and enlightening us Marc.

[00:46:08] Thanks for having me Tom and thanks for showing up the way that you do in people's lives. I know that you're working on important stuff that helps people protect themselves and that continues to help people build businesses. And I'm glad we met and that we're both in this game of trying to make America better.

[00:46:27] That's the story. So, again, we'll cross paths again. All right, everybody. We'll catch y'all in the next episode. See you later.