076: Making Men Stronger with Elliott Hulse

Joining us is the living legend himself – Eliott Hulse! Eliott is a husband and father of four, strongman, strength coach with a YouTube following of over 2 million. His mission in life is making men stronger, something we talk about on the show today.

Also on this episode of Awesome Health Podcast, we talk about his early days and early influences, as well as what he’s up to right now. Eliott’s mission came to life back in 2006 when he started a gym out of the back of his van! He trained people in city parks using things like old tires and sand bags. He also started filming these workouts and posting them online so his clients could share them with family and friends, and Elliott could secure more referrals.

He wasn’t thinking about how to become a YouTube sensation or be a social media star, he wanted to grow his business and put food on the table for his family. People (mainly men) began asking him questions and commenting, and he answered them. The questions were about the usual lift techniques and the like, but men were also asking about their personal lives.

Elliott really enjoyed interacting with his followers, and word spread. He recalls how things really took off around 2012 and 2013 when he had some videos go viral. We also dive deeper into his background and how his uncle influenced his athletic interests and his life as a whole.

Elliott tells us about those early days and how he persevered through many, many challenges including a home foreclosure, $90k of debt and living on food stamps. Internet marketing shifted his mindset and helped him learn sales processes and sell his first online product. He also got great advice from the Hodge twins about adding commercials to his YouTube videos: he earned an extra $18k the first month he did that! He started creating more videos per day and things really began to take off.

We shift from that conversation into what things make someone the strongest version of themselves. We also touch on what alpha male really means and why it’s important for boys to experience rights of passage rituals into manhood.

Elliott shares his thoughts on those topics plus the necessity of mentorship and more on this edition of Awesome Health Podcast.

Episode Resources:

• Elliott Hulse’s Website: https://elliotthulse.com/
• Elliott Hulse on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elliotthulse
• Elliott Hulse on Facebook: https://facebook.com/ElliottHulse
• Elliott Hulse on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/elliottsaidwhat
• Masszymes: https://bioptimizers.com/product/masszymes-250-caps/
• P3-OM: https://bioptimizers.com/product/p3om-120-caps/
• Awesome Health Course: https://bioptimizers.com/awesome-health-course/

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health podcast. And today we have a living legend, strong man, family man, philosopher, an all around great guy, a leader of men and king of kings, my friend, Elliott Hulse. Welcome to the show.

Elliott Hulse: Thanks for having me Wade.

Wade Lightheart: Elliot, it's been a while since we last hung out I remember. But I think the last time we were running around in Sedona, Arizona shooting a bunch of films stuff, and then of course we connect up in Florida and of course life's got all kinds of crazy. You're doing so many things. You're one of the original YouTube sensations and I think kind of before YouTube became a sensation, like you were one of those early pioneers that went out and do it. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about the backstory of Elliott Hulse? Like who is Elliott Hulse? And that's a great question. And then how did you become this kind of influencer and kind of a real leader particularly for young men?

Elliott Hulse: Well, I'm a strength coach and I teach men how to grow stronger. And as a result, I wanted to own a gym. I started my gym out the back of my van training people, guys and athletes in the city parks using mostly trash, Wade drag sleds, tires that I found, tire sleds, old used tires I've found in the around the city, sand bags. And I'm also a pretty good marketer or I had to learn how to be a marketer if I wanted to survive back then. And so I started making videos of the workouts that we were doing in the park. This was back in like 2006, 2006-2007. Right? And YouTube had just come out. And so a part of my marketing strategy was to make videos, and by the way, you know, that's like a big camera back then and we didn't have cameras on our phones. Man times have changed.

Elliott Hulse: One of my strategies was to make videos of the workouts while the guys were doing them in the park, because the things that we were doing were pretty unique and then upload them to YouTube so that they could share it with their friends and family. And mainly what I was looking for were referrals. So, hey, check out this cool workout that I did at the park with this guy named Elliott. And so my objective was to have them pass it around and then bring in their friends and it worked fairly well, but little did I know that millions of people worldwide would have access, right? You know, I wasn't thinking that way. You know how people now, like they start a YouTube channel and the first thing they're thinking is like: how can I get a million people to see what I'm doing?

Elliott Hulse: I want to be a celebrity. That was not in my mind at all. It was literally about putting food on the table by getting more men to join my strength camp. And as it happened, young men throughout the planet, throughout earth, started commenting and sending me questions about fitness and lifting, and bodybuilding, and getting stronger, and sports performance. So I started answering the questions, you know, I realized that I could probably just do some good by answering these questions for the guys in my comments. And of course, as a coach, you recognized that one of the things that happens is the relationship with your clients evolves, usually evolves from, hey, I'm teaching you how to lift to what do I do about this issue in my life? What do I do about, you know, school and girlfriends, and parents, and all these various things. So as the young men in my gym asked those questions, I love to answering them. The young men on earth who found my videos, ask those questions and I enjoyed answering them and apparently they enjoyed my answers. So my videos became viral back in like 2012, 13, 14.

Wade Lightheart: Well, there's a lot more to that story too, because you're very humble about your accomplishments. But I think for a lot of people who might not have known, you are quite an athlete to start, and you had developed an incredible physique and you had a position of authority just by how you looked, what you're able to do. Do you want to talk a little bit about the backstory, that kind of, you know, how you became to the point where you decided you were going to start coaching people?

Elliott Hulse: So I grew up on Long Island with both my parents and which is a blessed thing in itself. My uncle, my mother's brother was coming up on some hard times, he must have been about like 24, 25 years old when I was like 3, 4 years old. And he came to live with us and he was a athletic badass. He was a black belt in Northern Shaolin, Kung Fu. He was a marathon runner. He was gymnast. He won all kinds of awards in gym and gymnastics. I mean, just super athlete. He grew up in Belize. Both of my parents grew up in Belize. So, I mean when he came to America, he was used to swinging from vines, climbing trees and, you know, jumping off like that. When he went to school, he was like so much stronger and more athletic than a lot of the kids that he grew up with. When he came to live with us, he would take me and my brother down to the basement gym which was pretty old school at the time. I remember he had like the chest expanders.
Wade Lightheart: The cables, those things that you get. Like we had all four. I don't know how you could open that up. It was so strong. I remember that.

Elliott Hulse: Springs, and then you could like pinch yourself with those springs. Those things are dangerous. But he would do, he would work out with that and, show us some workouts, he'd have us do pushups and sit ups. And I would also watch him like chop bricks with his hands, and do backflips, and beat up a heavy bag. So, you know, I was a little kid and we were down there and he would do those kinds of things with us. And I'm grateful and I'm blessed to have really good genetics, you know, that come from him and his side for athleticism, but then also to have him there teaching me how to do these workouts when I'm like four or five years old. Really built up my self esteem as an athlete, you know, in school, I was the fastest, I was the strongest.

Elliott Hulse: I felt good about myself in terms of athleticism. And when I got into high school, I wanted to play football and it would just so happened that my uncle, around that time, I was about 14 years old, he had come and gone and has had changed careers. And he decided, this is back in like 1993, that he's going to become a fitness trainer, a personal trainer. This like was a brand new career. It did not really exist. He was kind of like a pioneer in that. And he came over to the house once a week and he would teach me and my brother how to lift barbells. My dad bought us a barbell set and teach us how to lift barbell so that I can get bigger and stronger and play football, which turned out really well.

Elliott Hulse: I did really well in football to earn a college scholarship. And I knew, especially, you know, seeing my uncle as an example, and as 14 years old, that that's what I wanted to do, I wanted to be like my uncle. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like him and when I was a teenager, I wanted to be like him. I wanted to train people. I thought it was the coolest thing. My uncle earns money by teaching people how to get stronger, I mean, what could be better? There's nothing cooler than this. So when I went to collegeeven in high school, I would bring all my buddies over, all the kids on my football team, and I would teach them how to lift. And I had it in my mind that I knew back then, this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life.

Elliott Hulse: I was going to teach men how to lift barbells and grow stronger. And so that's kinda like the foundation from which I built my football career. I was a professional strong man for a little while. When I started making YouTube videos, I realized, I discovered that if I took my shirt off, that the aesthetics attracted a lot of people. So it was totally a marketing ploy. I didn't go into it with the mindset of being a bodybuilder or celebrity. It was - how can I get more clicks so I can put more food on my table?

Wade Lightheart: That's an incredible backstory to have that influence. And I think it's so powerful today where there's so many single parent families, no fathers and houses and things like this. And you had such a rich influence, you know, with both parents and also to have your uncle coming in as an outsider to that regular dynamics to give you this kind of guidance and to bring you along the way when you started that career. Now, I think a lot of people under today's world think that they're going to just start a YouTube state, they're going to do three weeks of working out, they're going to read an online course, and then they're going to be a coach. And here you have a whole, almost what? Almost a 20 year history. You went to university and before you even got started in being a professional authority. But what was it like in those first little while, cause' everybody's kind of see you today as this kind of YouTube celebrity and this guy that's kind of quote unquote made the big time? What was that early stages like? Was there some struggles? Is it challenging? How was that?

Elliott Hulse: Well, at the age of 14 I fell in love with two things. I found the barbell. My uncle taught me how to lift. And I had a girlfriend at the time and I fell in love with her. And so at the age of 23, we got married. You know, we've been together, today is our 18 year anniversary, we've been together like 26 years. We got married and two years later, we had our first child and we were living in her father's basement. And, you know, I had a decent paying job as a personal trainer there, but not enough to like pay rent. So we had to live in our dads basement, my father-in-law's basement. Colleen became pregnant with Isabelle, my parents moved down to Florida and I decided that, you know, maybe this is my chance to start something for myself in my life.

Elliott Hulse: And so I moved down to Florida and I took a job at a personal training gym it was called Lifestyle Family Fitness. They were bought out by LA fitness now. And within six months I was the top trainer there, but it was for a specific reason, of course, you know, I was good at what I was doing. I was a very good trainer, but I studied sales. Like I realized that, okay, the guys that are winning in the fitness gym, are the guys that know how to market and sell. So I was in their gym, but I use that as an opportunity to sharpen my sales skills, because I needed, I wanted clients, cause' I wanted to get out of what now was my parents' house in Florida. I wanted to raise my family, I had a daughter, in our own home.

Elliott Hulse: So I had to hustle. I worked seven days a week from time to gym opened to the time the gym closed. I remember one of the managers said: Elliott, you're going to burn yourself out. And I was like, it does not matter. I just was hustling and hustling, and hustling. And so I got to the point where I saved up a little bit just enough that allowed me to at least think that I could go out on my own and I didn't know how difficult that would be, but I was armed with marketing knowledge and the internet had just came out. Again, it was brand new. And so I figured out how to create a website. And how to get that website to rank for personal trainers, St. Petersburg, that's where I lived.

Elliott Hulse: And so as a result, I was able to get leads and I was able to get some clients, and I was able to survive a little bit on my own. I was $90,000 in debt brand new growing a new family. Yeah, it was tough, man. I mean, there were times where I foreclosed on a house. I took a little bit of the money that I was saving and we were way over our heads, but I bought a townhouse, cause' I wanted to have a home for my family. And we had to foreclose on that. Luckily I didn't have to go bankrupt. I paid off the $90,000 in debt. We had student loans between she and I plus just tons and tons. We were living on credit cards.

Elliott Hulse: We were at a point where I had to get food stamps, right? Like I had to get government assistance. And so it was very challenging, but I had it in my mind that I was going to make it work. And just with time and effort and persistence, I was able to go from training guys out of the back of my van to a little warehouse gym in South St. Petersburg, we had crackheads and prostitutes that would come up to the door all the time. And slowly, I mean, it really was an evolution over the course of 10, 15 years where you know that I went to another gym, which was a little bit bigger. Now we're in a 5,000 square foot gym and of course I got million subscribers on YouTube, but it was a decade of struggle to get to this point now.

Wade Lightheart: It's fascinating. And I think it's so important for people to understand, to kind of honor the struggle. I mean, I think a lot of people have this illusion and kind of this instant, I call it the Instacart world. You just press a button and something shows up at your house. I think a lot of people think you just press a button and success shows up. And even though you were an accomplished athlete, even though you were a good coach, even though that you knew sales and all those things, you still had to struggle. At what point did things start to change for you? When, do you think hat there was a moment where you went, something's changed?

Elliott Hulse: There're a bunch of things that converged. So this may have been… I have four children. This may have been about the time my third daughter was born. Things were still… I mean, that was when we were on food stamps, my third daughter was born. Things were still very difficult, but because I had studied internet marketing to get people to come to my gym, right? I had come across this idea of information marketing. I'd never heard of this before. I mean, I didn't know anything about it, but because I was trying to figure out how to get my websites to rank and I learned how to get leads and use squeeze pages, and then I learned sales processes. You know, it was in that whole mindset I come across… I think the first place I came across, this was Mike Litman. I don't even know if anybody knows who he is any longer, but he had this internet marketing CD that my uncle lent me. And in the CD, he was talking about various different ways to use marketing. I was just trying to get more clients for my gym, but he said that you can sell a digital book and you don't need any publishing. You don't need a publisher. You don't need any, there's no overhead.

Elliott Hulse: That's what I'll do. I can sit down and I can write. I can write digital books. I can make workouts. And, you know, I had enough information and had enough experience as a trainer to give good, solid advice via this PDF file that I could sell to people. So about the time that I was learning about creating an ebook, writing sales copy. So now I went from, you know, belly to belly sales and you know, sales processes. And you know, when you're talking to somebody there's a scripts and there's ways to go about closing them so that they can become a client. I discovered that, okay, now you take that and you put it into words and you put it on a website and it's called sales copy. You write a sales letter that basically sells person, you know, they would say that, what is it?

Elliott Hulse: What is it called?

Wade Lightheart: Objections?

Elliott Hulse: Thank you. You're a marketer, you know. Objections. Breaks all their objections and give, you know, just the process you follow the process. And so I wrote this thing and I had this PDF, and I put it online, and I went to go sell it. And of course there was nobody who wanted to buy it, cause' I didn't realize, I didn't know how to get that page in front of people. But when I started making the YouTube videos, so like that was like on the back burner, it was there. I was like: all right, I know how to make this digital thing, I just need people to buy it. And then I started making YouTube videos and there were people there and my subscribers were going up little by little, little by little.

Elliott Hulse: And so I decided: okay, I will just try to sell my digital book to the people that are watching my YouTube videos. So at the end of my videos, I would make an offer. I would make an offer and say: Hey, click the link down below, learn more about my workouts, click the link down below, subscribe to my emails, click the link down below… Every video I would make was mainly to get people to click the link so that they can buy this digital thing that I made. And so that started to take off a little bit around 2012, 2013. And then about early 2013, these two twins called the Hodge twins.

Wade Lightheart: Those guys are hilarious. I watch their videos a lot. They're great.

Elliott Hulse: They were up and coming. They were up and coming guys. And I guess they watched a couple of my videos and they, Keith the older one, but the one that's like more alpha in the videos, he decided to reach out to me and said: hey man, I like what you're doing, you really should become a YouTube partner. And I was like: ah, what's that? Why would I want to do that? I sell these eBooks and doing okay. He said: listen man, if you just become a YouTube partner, which basically means now your video has as commercials on it, like ads, people can buy ads on your videos. Turn on your ads and then email me back in a month and tell me what you think. So I was like: alright, what am I going to do?

Elliott Hulse: Earn like a couple pennies per video. I was like, all right, well, it can't hurt. I just turned it on. And so my first month of doing that, I mean, I made like $18,000. Holy shit, I've been leaving almost 20 grand a month on the table. And so I got really motivated at that point. And I started cranking out, a friend of ours, Matt Gallant said to me, he said: Elliott… At the time I was making little bit of money. I was making like two or three videos a week. He said: make two or three videos a day. I was like: Whoa, okay. So I started making two or three videos a day and so that tripled the amount that I was making from YouTube plus I had links in my bio that people were buying my eBooks and that's like when it all took off.

Wade Lightheart: Amazing story. We've got that side, cause' I think it's a fascinating history. I mean, cause' there's so many people today that are trying to make it in the YouTube, but they're not maybe necessarily willing either to establish the authority, learn some sales and marketing and grind it out. And you put all of those things together on top of your credentials and ability. Let's talk about the athletic side, the strength side. What is the essential components from your perspective in order to become quote unquote, a stronger version of yourself?

Elliott Hulse: Well, if we use my holistic point of view that became popular in my YouTube videos. I would talk about becoming the strongest version of yourself through the four layers of strength. I would say that there are four layers of strength and you gotta acknowledge all four layers if you want to be fully strong, you know, the strongest version of yourself. And so the first and the most superficial layer was neuromuscular strength, What can you do is computer. The software and the hardware that you got. Training the, the muscular system and training the muscles is concomitant with training the nervous system or so motor recruitment patterns and primal patterns. And then, you know, building a solid foundation of flexibilities, stability, strength and power. That was really it was all about, so that you can be a bodybuilder, a powerlifter, a strong man, an athlete, whatever's that you want. Start from that foundation flexibility, stability, strength, power. And so that's neuromuscular strength then there is boy it's been awhile. I don't make so many videos anymore. I'm on to other things, but then… So there's neuromuscular strength, and then there is physiological strength, right? Because that would only make sense. I'm getting too much in my head. Is your health, like what you got, what's your about Wade? You can't throw out your diet and the physiological component, so your sleep.

Elliott Hulse: Today they call it biohacking, like all the biohacking stuff, you know, eating the right foods at the right time, getting to bed, drinking the right kind of water. These guys now are like tracking their circadian rhythms. You put me into a whole lot of stuff. Taking the right supplements and I learned a lot from you in terms of physiological strength, because that really wasn't my expertise. It was the lifting. So you know, there's a physiological strength, keeping your stress low, getting sunshine, like all these things, it just add to a healthy life. And then the third layer of strength was what I would call energetic strength, but it's really the mind. Having the right mindset. And then finally the top layer is life mastery strength. And really today I spend most of my time speaking and teaching towards life mastery strength, you know, a combination. I started out with the strength, with the neuromuscular strength. I got very popular for that. Physiological stuff is kind of associated with it. So I talk a lot about, you know, eating right, fasting and all these cool things.

Elliott Hulse: But then today, most of what I talk about it and the niche that I'm in is mostly life mastery and mental strength. For men in particular, you know, we've got a crisis on our hands, a man crisis. And it stems from, it starts in the family. It starts from the top. We have a lack of fathers. We've got a lack of strong fathers. We have a lack of families. And so I really feel like, you know, my calling today and where I spend most of my time coaching and teaching and inspiring is in terms of, I'm still making men strong, but how to make men strong men, alpha males, good leaders, you know, good husbands, good fathers, good businessmen, just righteous men. So, that's really the whole gamut. That's the whole picture.

Wade Lightheart: This is a great topic and I want to really dive into this, because I'm in agreeance with you. I was fortunate enough that I had both parents in my life and I had a strong alpha dad. And there's a lot of talk out there with toxic masculinity and there's a talk, there's this kind of concept that alpha males are kind of these guys that walk around and club beta males and grab women and carry them back to their caves. And that's not really what an alpha male is. Can you break down what a strong man in a strong expression of manliness and leadership, and the things that you teach? Can you share with our listeners what that is? Because I know there's some people out there thinking they don't even know what that is. They don't have an example of it. They might feel something that they should, but society is like telling them that that's bad or that's not. Just explain what that is to our listeners.

Elliott Hulse: Well, one of the things that we got to recognize, and that has been totally lost is that our ancestors understood that boys cannot become men without other men, right? It's not a biological thing in on its alone. It's not a biological thing by itself. There is an initiation, there's a rights of passage. There's meaning and there's purpose, and there are stories and there's religion. That's all been given to us as a means to teach a wild fiery testosterone bleeding through his eyes little boy, you know, who now all, he wants to fight and fuck, into taking that ball of energy and turning into something dignified, and powerful, and strong, and with integrity right? Now, the type of young man that is lacking today, because we've got so much estrogen in our food and our water.
Elliott Hulse: I mean, we're being chemically castrated from the time we're in the womb. I think I read something about the amount of plastics that are found in a woman's a womb when the baby's in there that basically makes, boys are coming out like girls. A part of me thinks that this is orchestrated, but it's been created this way that we, if you want to destroy a culture, you want to destroy a country, you destroy the men, because the men are the strong ones. But anyway, our ancestors prior to all the pollution, that's turning us, literally turning us into women. Our ancestors understood that for a boy to become a man, there are a couple of things that were needed. The first thing is this pattern that is according to anthropologists, Mircea Eliade and Robert Moore and his incredible book, "The Archetype of Initiation" talks about how there always is a literal and a figurative movement away from the world of the mother and what that all represents, softness, sensuality, beta male stuff, which is okay, because when you're a baby, you gotta be a beta male.

Elliott Hulse: You know, you're soft, you're dependent, you're needy, all these kinds of things. Most men, they never get rid of that dependency and needy. And it shows up in all kinds of addictions. But there needs to be this movement away from the world of the mother and this atonement with the father, the world of the father. And this isn't just the father itself, right? This is the father and all the men in the society, all the men in the tribe, as well as an introduction into the ancestors, you know, God, the father. This is where we get the God, the father, the terminology from. God is as a pattern, right? And we need to be introduced to that pattern. The world of the mother, the world of the matrix, the world of matter, material. Matriarchy doesn't provide that, it's okay.

Elliott Hulse: We need both. But for a boy to be a man, he must go through a… There are a few things that are required for that passage, from the world of the mother and to the world of the father, which of course our society doesn't offer any longer. There has to be austerity, challenge, right? And then a sense of meaning before he can come back in. So there was always some form of pain that's associated with going through this rites of passage. My brother he was a native American Sundancer. He was introduced to this rights of passage when he was in high school. You know, he's 17 years old and he's fasting for four days in the hot sun. And they drew a circle on the top. They took him to the top of a cliff and drew a circle and he had to sit on a rock in that circle.

Elliott Hulse: He had to do that for four days. He was not allowed to leave. They called it a vision quest and they brought him back and he had to, still fasting, he had to like dance and pound the ground. And then they pierced his skin and broke his skin open, cause' they tied him to a tree and blood was given. It's all very symbolic stuff. This is painful, hard, challenging, austere stuff. But it's for a reason, because there's a number of reasons why, but men don't know so much by you telling them. Men, we're doers. That's why school is failing boys, because we're not designed to sit down and just take shit into our ears. We're designed to get up and do with our hands, experience the things.

Elliott Hulse: This is how we gain wisdom. So this process, which has austerity, has challenged, difficulty teaches at a deep level. It's not just head knowledge. Today we think we're so smart, cause' we can cite so many different books, but this is deeply embedded based through experience tthat would happen for a young man. And then what that also does and one of the things that's lacking in our society right now is trust of men. Men don't even trust other men. And maybe it's hardwired into us, but our ancestors recognized that trust can only be built through an experience. So when the boy is like, you know, being eaten up by fire ants and and the usually older men are like dressed up and they're scary to him.

Elliott Hulse: Maybe knock out one of his teeth or cut him and, and create like some kind of a tattoo or just painful shit. While he's going through all that and he's really suffering when he can't handle it anymore the men come and they also teach him that you can be nurtured by men, not just your mommy, cause' he's usually crying for his mommy at that point. Not just your mommy, but look, hey, they take off the mask and say: we love you. You're a part of us now. You've been through it. You've passed the test. They heal his wounds and tend to his pains, and then start teaching him, because only until you are humbled, and this is, this is for all of us, particularly for men only until you're humbled can you come to the father.

Elliott Hulse: You can not come to the father when you're arrogant. This is why we got to go through a lot of pain. Today I wear a Christian Cross. It took me a lot of pain to come to Jesus. I couldn't go before, cause' I was too arrogant, was too full of my head. I couldn't approach the father because I knew everything. So, you know, I answered this has understood that about boys. So they get to the point where they broken him down. He's totally humbled. And then, and only then do they start embedding into him - meaning, purpose, legacy, austerity, responsibility, because you are stronger than the women. We are more powerful than the women. We have more authority than the women and you have more responsibility than the women. And you need to know how to carry that with integrity, the way the fathers have, the grandfathers have, and the ancestors have. And then he's allowed back into the tribe. And you know, one of the things that Robert Bly talks about in Iron John and where he describes this process the women play along too. So when the young man comes back to the tribe, the women pretend like they don't recognize him. Whoa, who is this man? Where's our son? We can't find him. And he usually gets a new name. And so it's literally a death and rebirth process that now allows that boy to truly be a resourceful man within that society. We've lost all that.

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. Well illustrated. And I know you're a great study of the philosophical aspects, the cultural components, and you teach that. So what's the answer to this solution? And I know that you're on the, literally on the front lines of what I would say is the fight to regain masculinity, positive masculinity in the world. What's the answers for people and how do you go about sharing that process for young men today?

Elliott Hulse: Well, there's that secular nature in our individual life, right? Initiation doesn't just happen at age 12. It happens again at age 24, it happens again at age 36, it happens again at age 49, every 12 years ish. You start to recognize that, you know, something ain't right in my life. I'm missing something. And usually there's a death to self and a rebirth. When I met you, I was at about 36 years old. And I started at the time, I started flipping out. I wasn't sure of who I was anymore. And like I had all this success, but something was missing. So this is what really introduced me to this. Well, so there's this, all of life happens in spirals. We know this because look, there's sun is up right now, but in 12 hours, the sun will be down.

Elliott Hulse: Look, it's summertime now, but in a couple months it will be winter. Life just does this. And so it does it on a grand scale as well. And there are anthropologists who have recognized these, they say about an 80 to a hundred year cycles that happen. And it's been described in a myriad of different ways, but one of the ways in our circle that it's typically described is that hard times create strong men, right? But what happens to get to that right is a cycle. So you got hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create strong men. We're literally at the top of that clock right now. We're weak men. You know, there's no question about it. We're weak. We are mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally.

Elliott Hulse: We are weak. We are soft. We are a bunch of big babies, who've never been taught how to be men and it shows up in a myriad of different ways. Why? Because things have been so good. There's no reason for us to be tough. There's no reason for us to be strong. There's no reason for us to be challenged. All that is silly. I don't even have to go and have the challenge of meeting women, cause' I can just flip open my screen and jerk off to some porn. Everything is handed to you. There's no reason. So we're literally, in my opinion, we're going to see over the course of the next, I think five years this initiation is going to happen globally, but I think, you know, America is right at the… Where we go on where y'all go. I really believe that America is going to be the example, because we're suffering big time. But anyway weak men are a result of the good times that we've experienced as Americans for the past 60 years or so, and hard times are… <…> What's going on in the world right now today with the rise of domestic terrorist groups and, you know, the type that's the exorbitant amount of young men that commit suicide, drug addiction, porn addiction.

Elliott Hulse: I mean, it's bad. Families don't work. There are no fathers. Single mothers are, you know, the way these days they say that like something like 70, 75% or more of divorces are initiated by women. And then something like 80% of men that are in prison come from single mother homes. I mean, like it's clear that the family has been destroyed. We're going to see some hard times as a result. So I'm kind of doing my part, because I can see what's going on and I like this stuff. And so I talk about it on my videos and I create programs to help men navigate what's going on, but it's going to be thrust upon us. It's not like something we need to do. It's going to do us. And when the wolf comes to the door, you're either going to perish, literally, I really believe that a lot of us are not going to survive this. And what will be left are the strong men to now pick up the pieces and create good times once again.

Wade Lightheart: I think you're a hundred percent and I feel very, very strongly about this. One of the things that you learn through the real strength training, athletic performance and stuff, and having coaching and going through the pain of doing this, there becomes an opening and generally philosophy starts to come in and you start to see these historical patterns. And I know you're a great philosopher and you study an incredible amount and you're very well learned not just learned as a book, learned an application as well. In these tough times, they're coming out with… I used to have a shirt that said tough times don't last, tough people do. And those old bodybuilding shirts I got out of a magazine, I was so proud of that. You know, wear that every day and I'd go to the gym and it had stains all on it. And I loved it.

Wade Lightheart: In this time, maybe there's a young man listening to this right now. He's exactly what you described. He's soft. He doesn't have confidence. He's watching porn all the time. You know, he doesn't know what to do with his life. Where does he start? How does he decide right now, today's the day, I want to be a stronger version of myself. I need to? What's what's the steps that he needs to follow to get out of this? I agree this global pandemic is the loss of humanity, the loss of the family, the loss of strong males, loss of strong females. That's a whole other topic. But tell me about this. What do they do? How do they get started?

Elliott Hulse: Well, you gotta a little bit of time between the ages of 14 and 24, right? 14, you're still living with your parents. You're still pretty much a boy. But an interesting thing starts to happen, testosterone levels should be coming up. And that is called man juice. It's literally what makes us men. It separates the boys from the men. It separates men from women. We have an epidemic of low testosterone, low sperm count. Like I said, we're chemically castrated. One of the things that you can do and that you should do, and I encourage all young men to do. I did it, and it was a saving grace for me and I became popular on YouTube as a result, is to start lifting. You gotta train that body.

Elliott Hulse: There's no such thing as a flabby warrior. If you're fat, lose weight, if you're weak, lift weights. You gotta get stronger. You gotta put that. The fact that you can produce testosterone, you got to put it to use, which means lift, biohack, right? Get to sleep on time, eat right, take care of your body first. I would say that, above and beyond all the philosophy or trying to learn anything, you know, a lot of our ancestors believe that you had to wait till the man was past age of 30 before you started giving him too many spiritual ideas, cause' then they spend all their time in their fricking head. Right now you're supposed to be red. You're supposed to be hot. You're supposed to be fiery. Get stronger, get in the gym. You have to do it. So right when that testosterone hits, right around the age 14, you gotta start lifting.

Elliott Hulse: There's no question in my mind. And I say, lifting, I'm a strong man, powerlifter. I liked the barbell, but whatever it is, if it's gymnastics, body weight training but it has to be anabolic. I'm not talking about, nothing against running marathons and stuff, but I'm talking that's more catabolic. I'm talking about stuff that builds you up. If you train the muscular system that way your body starts producing those anabolic hormones. So take, you know, age 14 to your mid or to your early twenties, right? Take those few years to do what you're supposed to do. You're still a beast of burden. You've got to listen to your mom and dad. But lift, don't get addicted to girls. Don't get addicted to porn. Lift, right? Cause' that's when they want us having sex very early so that we lose ourselves in the vagina.

Elliott Hulse: And this is what happens to men and they never recover from it. They're addicted to women. They're addicted to sex. They're addicted to approval from women. This is why we stay in that mommy mindset, cause' we go from wanting to please mommy, to wanting to please girls. It's the same thing. So I'm not saying stay away from girls, but you'd be better off if you kept your distance. Build yourself up. Build your body up. Build your mind up. Then when you hit your early twenties, you got to move out of your parents' house. You got to move away, literally move away from mommy. You're building yourself up to be able to do that from age 14 to 24. Once you get to age 24, you have make it your top priority to move out of your parents' house. I say, even if it means living in your car. That process that our ancestors understood about ripping the boy out of his mommy's arms so that he can become a man.

Elliott Hulse: It doesn't happen for us anymore, unless you go to the military or something like that. Which I'm not against. You know, go to the military. It's a good idea. I told my nephew and it was the greatest thing that he ever did. He had to get away from his mother. He was just loafing around as a 20, 21 year old. And I was like: dude, go into the Marines. Now he's fucking crushing it. He's using all kinds of powerful guns and weapons, I'll never get my hands on. And not only that, because he was never a good student, but because he's a good kid, he's been promoted twice. Now he's like in charge of men. Here he is 22 years old in charge of like weapons that could blow up half a city and the men that will pull the trigger. It's incredible. But he's forced to be.

Elliott Hulse: He left his mom's house and he's forced to be around men, to be with men, to be led by men and to lead men. Powerful, very important stuff. But if you choose not to do that, then thrust yourself into this struggle of life. Go live in your car, be homeless for a little while, get a job. You know, you don't have to love your job. You don't have to be passionate about everything that you do. I think that's kind of one of our Mickey Mouse Disney bullshit lies that we're taught, all of us. Need to love everything that you do and be passionate about everything you do. No. Go wash dishes, go sweep the street, go pack boxes in a warehouse and make just enough money that you can buy your dinner, right? And you can put gas in your car and that's your home. You know what I'm saying? Like, go struggle, go suffer, go and get on your own two feet and get away from your mother.

Wade Lightheart: You know, that's just so pertinent. And I'm so glad that you're kind of illustrating this because, there's a lot of mumbo jumbo that's being sent out to people. People want, they want rights, they want freedoms, but they don't want the responsibility it takes to get them. And they don't understand that you need a little pain sometimes to motivate you. You need the sucky job. You need the terrible situation. You need that thing. You like, man, I got to find a better way, cause' this sucks, you know? Yeah. And I went through that, my own journey when I was a young man I started lifting exactly at that time, 15 years old, I was training in my barn, freezing my hand and to the bar in the winter training, in a snowmobile suit. And then when I was first year university, I went tree planting in Northern Ontario.

Wade Lightheart: The bugs were so bad. I had a tape myself up. Like tape your neck and wear t-shirts on your head and sweep dead bugs and you'd be bitten in all the places and it was cold, and it sucked, and I got hypothermia, and my car blew up, and it was terrible. My dad called me up. I talked to my dad one day and… Like, you know, we'd come out of the woods once every 10 days. And we'd just full a pitch. It took me three months to get the pitch off my arms. And I remember my car blowed up. I had hypothermia, everything went wrong. And my dad said: you know, I'll come get you. I was in Northern Ontario where the rivers run into the Arctic. And I remember at that moment, I said: no, dad, I got myself here.

Wade Lightheart: I'm going to figure a way out. And I made a deal and I went into town and I saw this little car and I talked to them, I got another old car and I had to navigate all this money. And I made no money by the time the whole 10 weeks was over. I think it was 10 weeks or 10, or 12 weeks. And I got myself back home, but I came home a man, I had figured out it sucks. I didn't make money, but I got experiences that I could solve difficult problems and that led me to, you know, start the next level of my struggle. It doesn't end. You just get a little bit of confidence. You know, I was like, okay, I can do this. And a fire. You get a lot of testosterone at that time and just you know. Talk to me though. I think there's another piece to this puzzle, I think is really important, and that is the role of a mentorship. And, cause' there's a lot of guys out there that don't have a male to go by. They're not hearing these things online. They're not seeing this on the television. They're not getting this from their peer group or their education system. How important is it to you to have someone to be your guide, to help you in those really, really what I think critical years?

Elliott Hulse: Well, it's really important. It's indispensable and whether or not it is something that you're blessed to have, had either through a good coach, or maybe an uncle, or a neighbor, or, you know, just a man in your life, literally in your life, a grandfather, if you didn't have your father, literally like a man in your life, if you're lucky enough to have that recognize that. If you have a father, recognize the blessing in having a father. Now here's the thing. It's not about having a perfect father, having a perfect mentor, having a perfect grandfather, having a perfect male leader in your life. That's not the point at all. The point is that you recognize that you're blessed enough to have that, to have a man to watch. You know, Robert Bly says that when a young man is in the presence of an older man or his father, that it isn't just what the father teaches him.

Elliott Hulse: It's his mere presence that he calls it transfers a kind of soul food to the boy that. And I remember even to this day, like my dad smell, the way my dad would smell or the way my dad would talk to himself while he was working on something. My dad didn't like bring us into the garage and work on cars with us together, cause' he was just doing his work and he would rather be left alone. But every once in a while, I'd go in there and just kinda like look around and stuff and he'd be like talking to himself, like. So my dad's temperament in some of his teachings would just be, you know, I couldn't stand my father, because he was so strong and he was such an alpha male in a world that hates men.

Elliott Hulse: And I was raised in, you know, the beta school system, mostly by women. So I learned how to resent my father and it wasn't until I was much older that I realized, wow, what a blessing it was to have such a strong father in my life. So the reason why I say that is, because forgive the men in your life and be grateful for the fact that they're there, regardless if your dad is a drinker, regardless if he left and you hadn't seen him in five, regardless of any of that. Atonement with the father is not about having a perfect relationship with your father. Atonement with the father is recognizing that that's the seed from which I come. That is the essence, the pattern, the word paternity comes from pattern. That's the pattern from which I am patterned after whether I liked that, like him or not.

Elliott Hulse: I think that's an important thing for us to acknowledge. The men in our lives, particularly our fathers. One of the greatest things that I think I've been able to achieve in my programs where I mentor young men is I encourage them to go back to their fathers, even if they haven't seen them in 10 years. And so many of them come back to me like: wow, that was the greatest experience in my life. I didn't know that about my dad. I didn't know what happened to my dad. I didn't know the struggles he had. I didn't know what really happened. All I had was my mother's stories about my father. And you cannot atone with your father if you're living with your mother's mind. Your mother's opinion of your father should not be your opinion of your father.

Elliott Hulse: Right? There's so many young men that like once they heard that and that light bulb went off, they were like: that's right. All I can think of my father is in terms of what my mother told me. Go to your father, go to your literal father. But then in terms of the world that we live in and the access to masculine leadership, masculine teaching, masculine temperament, we do have YouTube. We have videos. We have, you know what, I wouldn't be able to say this if I didn't know myself as this. So many young men say: never had a father Elliott, but I watched every single one of your videos and my life would not be the same. Recognize that, because I was trying to do that, but I recognize what has happened. And so I have been a digital mentor to all these boys. And it makes me think about, in "Think and Grow Rich", I think it might be Napoleon Hill said: that it's good to have a mental mastermind of some sort. I think that's what he called it, but a mental mastermind.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. That was the original mastermind. He used to have like Edison and he'd have Lincoln. And he created this mastermind in his head where these people would take on their own life and give him advice and information in exchange. I always find that very interesting about the Napoleon Hill's version of masterminds and how that's turned into a different kind of experience nowadays with masterminds.

Elliott Hulse: Yeah. Study great men in history and then ask yourself, what would he do? Core study the life of Christ? What would Jesus do? That's a big thing people like to ask. But also Marcus Aurelius or whoever that you see, you know, you said Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Edison, or, you know, great athletes. Just study great men in history, dead or alive. Ralph Waldo Emerson. We've got a beautiful picture of him right here, was like a mental mentor to me, the guy who died in like 1870, but I've read so much of his work that like, I quote him off hand. I think, you know, a part of me, I can't help, but think what would Emerson say or what would Emerson do in these instances. So Ralph Waldo, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bruce Lee, you know, who are these powerful men that maybe you no longer with us, but left us a treasure trove of books and words, and ideas so that we can literally have them be a part of our consciousness

Wade Lightheart: Beautifully said. So just to make that transition again. So they start in that physicality, they have atonement with the father. And then, okay, we've got that. We've kind of cleared the decks on the past. And we've got ourselves to express ourselves in our masculinity and the testosterone factories running. Now, what? Now, what do I do, Elliott? I'm ready. Where do we go next from here?

Elliott Hulse: Well, to me, the mark of a man, the highest pinnacle of being a man is being a father. And so when I talk about, you know, I talk a lot about being a king and things like that. Really what I'm talking about is that pinnacle of being a generative man, a father, a king is a generative man. And what does that mean? That means that I no longer simply live for myself. I live for the next generation. I live for future generations. Rather than trying to enrich myself I work to enrich and empower the children, coming up, be it my children or the children in my neighborhood, or the young men that I'm mentor to on YouTube. The whole idea is that you then go from, you know, you go from being a page to a warrior, then to a king, and then to an elder. When you're a king, it's still a lot about me, me, me, me, you know, my kingdom and my grandiosity. But then the final form is elder.

Elliott Hulse: And that's when you get the pay back, that's when you get the payback the young man. I think in terms of that, I'm 40 years old, but I know it's going to take me another 40 years to be an elder. And so when you asked me, what's next… I'm a fan of family and I think it's important to ground it in that. God says to be fruitful and multiply. I've been married 18 years. I think marriage is a good idea. There are a lot of problems with it in our feminist world, our gynocentric world that has destroyed the family by making it easy for divorce to happen. Like I said, something like 80% of divorces are initiated by women. I think that that feminism has destroyed women and has destroyed the family.

Elliott Hulse: And as a result, has destroyed generations and generations of young men and young women. So, I am a, hopefully, a living example of what is possible in terms of family, marriage and family. Living the promiscuous lifestyle, you know, where you're hopping in and out of bed with a hundred something. Sometimes these guys, I talked to them, they've slept with hundreds of women. I'm like, this is pure mommy addiction. It's like addiction to anything. You know, you're just using somebody else's body to get an emotional or sensational rise. You know, if you're addicted to crack, it's no different. And so they're just hopping from body to body, to body, to body. I'm a firm believer in monogamy. I think monogamy is going, I know what will make it come back, because when men are strong and times are tough and men are becoming strong time too tough.

Elliott Hulse: So women can't be as promiscuous as they are, right? The women, they will actually need men again. Now they think they're so cool without men with their middle management jobs and they're rotten eggs by the time they're 40 and trying to get in vitro fertilization. All that will go out the window when times are tough and women, once again, have to rely on men. And as a result, men will be imbued once more with the authority and responsibility that is inherent in being a man. And so taking that responsibility not taking it lightly and leading your wife and then make children, make babies. You know, I don't believe this myth. I say, it's a myth. I don't believe in overpopulation. I don't think the planet is going to die, because there's too many people here. I think that we need, actually in America, we need more babies. And I'm going to get a little political and maybe strange to some people here…

Wade Lightheart: Go for it, go for it. I'm with it. I'm all about free expression. And I saw something the other day, 62% of Americans are fearful of expressing their political opinion. It's like, how can you have a conversation about the differences that was set up in this country if people can't say what they mean and not be condemned for it? So have at it, go for it.

Elliott Hulse: Well, there is a faction on the planet and in America that wants to see America destroyed. And one of the ways they're doing that is by lowering the fertility of the American citizens and opening up the borders for more third world people to come in. And what's happening is white people are being displaced and, you know, I'm mixed, I'm half white and half black. And I acknowledge and appreciate white people for making America. I don't think if it was in the hands of the natives, we'd have gotten what we've got right now. White people brought their technology, they brought their intelligences, they brought their military prowess and they conquered this fricking land and built up a great, great place to live, great society. But over the past 60, 70 years, there are a number of things that have happened, including feminism and the destruction of the family.

Elliott Hulse: But it's this replacement of the white population. And you guys, you know, I say you guys, I know you're a white guy too are, are being displaced by Muslims, Mexicans that are coming here and having eight, 10, 12 babies. Meanwhile, these highly educated white people, they're so smart that they don't make any babies and very quickly, and we were starting to see it right now not only are white people being physically displaced, but they allow themselves to be brow beaten and turned weak with all this guilt from so-called slavery, or, you know, people are wanting reparations and all kinds of what I think is bullshit. So you got white people, not making babies and making themselves feel, look, and behave like weaklings kissing people's feet and bowing down. I think it's a recipe for disaster.

Wade Lightheart: You bring up a lot of really salient points there. And one of the things that I'd like to inquire for our listeners is, what do you feel, how do you feel the interaction of marriage has served you as a man and served your wife as a woman? I'd like to hear your iteration on that, because I think what's interesting is you're not just talking about some ideas here. You're not just read a book. You've actually applied this in your life from start to finish. You've been with the same woman since you were a very, very young man. You're a father of four children. So, what have you learned in that journey as a man and both the challenges and the benefits, and of course the responsibilities that you've taken on as, as a husband and as a father?

Elliott Hulse: Well, we're better together, you know, and that's very evident in all of nature. You could look at the yin yang. You could say night and day, male female, positive negative. We go together. If you have all positive charge, there is no electricity. You have all negative charge. There's no power. There's no power in men by themselves. There's no power in women by themselves. And there definitely isn't any power in men and women being against each others. That's what we got today. We got flacid and women have grown hard and masculine and the sexes have been, the genders have been disoriented. We're living in a time of what I call diabolical disorientation, where up is down and down is up. Men think men are women and women are men. And I think this is by design. Satan has created this by design and it's coming through our media.

Elliott Hulse: It's coming through our music. Is coming through our schools. Is being pounded and pounded into our head. I have three daughters and it's painstaking for me to constantly remind them that you are better off being a wife and a mother like your mother is, rather than, you know, waiting until you're 40 years old when your eggs are all rotten, because you've climbed some corporate ladder. It's realized that that's a man's game and it's not fulfilling to women. It's fulfilling for a woman to be a woman. And it's fulfilling for a man to be a man. And we have our roles. Positive has it's role, negative has it's role. We need to know our roles, remember our roles. We've totally lost them and play our parts for things to happen. And when, and only when that happens, can a family work.

Elliott Hulse: Like I said, I've been married 18 years. And probably the reason why it works is because my wife is a woman. She has babies, she cooks, she cleans. She takes care of the family and the home and she's the nurturer. Me? I am a worker. I am a provider. I am a protector. And the roles are not reversed. We're very clear who's responsible for what. Until that happens, I think family is not going to work. The fruits of that are to have, first of all, had I not met and married very early, I would hundred percent, I'd have all kinds of baby mamas out there. It would, my life would be a mess because I'd probably be playing all kinds of child support. I would have so many legitimate children. I think one of the reasons Saint John Chrysostom says that one of the reasons why God gave us marriage is so that we can satisfy our appetites, but not lose ourselves in it as a result.

Elliott Hulse: You don't want to be mingling with so many different people. For me to have been with one woman all this time has allowed me to consolidate my power, consolidate my energy. It's like investing into the same bank account rather than, you know, spreading it out all over the place. You going to say like, well, I don't know if that's a good investment term, but it's like digging. If you're trying to dig for water, it's like digging in the same hole rather than digging a little here, digging a little bit until you get to it. You know, that same, that one place where I invest everything, I give my all to my wife. I have no, there is no double thought. There's no double thinking. There's no backdoor. They say that it's hard to be 99%, but it's easy to be a 100 percent.

Elliott Hulse: And it is the same thing with marriage. Marriage is easy when both partners are a hundred percent. So it's a hundred percent has allowed me to build my business. I don't think I would have been nearly as successful as I am in business had I not had the pressure of having to put food on the table. I probably would have been far more degenerate. I would have spent far more times out drinking, out partying, wasting my twenties away rather than working my twenties away. So I think Jordan Peterson says that when a man forces a woman or a woman forces a man to grow up, forced me to grow up very quickly. You know, a lot of people that were astonished at the amount of success and wisdom that I had, even at a young age, like, wow, this guy knows so much.

Elliott Hulse: Well because I put myself under the pressure to get things done. When most of my friends were out there in New York city clubbing, you know, I was working seven days a week. So there's that. I think we put too much emphasis on love, right? I think there's too much and, because I think what we call love is really lust, and it's what can this other person do for me, and it's the feelings that that person gives me. And so there's that, there's the benefit of that, but that taken to the next level is knowing that there's someone that has your back a hundred percent. We love each other. We love each other immensely, but it's the honor that we have for one another. It's the sense of responsibility we have towards one another. And to know that someone has your back in a world where most of us are lonely.

Elliott Hulse: And not to say that everybody needs somebody. I always say either marriage or monk. I think those are the two most honorable ways to live as a man. It's like you're going to sacrifice yourself in marriage, or you sacrifice yourself as a monk. And that means celibacy. That means using all of your, another Napoleon Hill, transmutating all your sexual power or doing something great for time, wasting it, spilling it out all over the place is a completely degenerate waste of time. So, I don't remember where I was going with that, but these are some of the gifts.

Wade Lightheart: This your relationship with your wife and what relationships I can, it's kind of interesting that it is your anniversary today. Thank you for coming here for that. And then I want to take the next step is the benefits and taking on the responsibility or the experiences and challenges of being a father to four children that you've been able to father and raise under this environment. What has that been like for you and express that for people so they can hear what that is?

Elliott Hulse: It's a sacrifice. To be a man is to be a sacrifice. And that's why when I talked about the rights of passage and initiation, one of the very first thing that the boy learns is - holy shit, I got to sacrifice my comfort. I have to sacrifice my neediness. I have to sacrifice my selfishness. I have to sacrifice. I have to sacrifice all the things that I hold so dear. And this is what the men teach the boy, that you don't matter so much anymore, because you're a man. And as a man, responsibility comes before your pleasure. Pleasure is out the window. And so, like I said, marriage or monk, both of those require sacrifice. Anything in between is living for pleasure. And I don't believe, and I know for a fact that men are not called to live pleasurable lives. That's not how we hone our skills.

Elliott Hulse: It's not how we sharpen our swords. We don't sharpen our swords with pleasure. And that's why so many men are so weak, because the pleasure, you know, Saint Thomas Aquinas calls it a feminice. A feminice that's associated with always seeking pleasure and always having a version to challenge. When you have children, it is purely sacrifice. I was thinking about, you know, the other day I was having a conversation with my wife. And I'm thinking about like all that I've worked in sacrifice for literally, I'm talking about working money. By the time my four children leave my house, I'm sure I would have invested a million dollars into each one of them. Literal money, not just effort, energy and you know, mental, it's the amount of money. When it's all said and done, I'll have nothing. I'm not going to have a large nest egg at the end. Why? Because I sacrifice every dollar that I have into making a family, creating a great life for my children. And then the sacrifice don't expect, do not expect to have gratitude, do not expect thanks. It's a thankless job. Do not. One of the things that, you know, a lot of men will lament over it's like: I give my life to you, I do all this for you and what do I get in return. Bro, you got to get it in your head right away that you're not doing this for thanks. You're not doing it so your children can admire you. You're doing it because that's your vocation. That's what you've been called to. That is a sacrifice that you're meant to make. And as a result, once you get that in your head, now you can be the type of father that allows himself to be hated. And this is a strange thing I had to learn. I learned it by watching my father and my experience with my father, but your job as a father, even if you make all those sacrifices and you try your best to create a great life for your children is not for them to like you.

Elliott Hulse: In fact, the more you try to spend your time getting your children to like you, the worse off you and they are going to be. What does that mean? That means you're have to constantly fight against the world, the world and all of its demonic, degenerate, fucked up ideas that are trying to destroy our children, destroy their gender, trying to destroy their mind, their sanctity is pummeled on them, through their friends, through the music, through the media constantly. And you have to stand there as a rock and you have to battle against that consistently. I have to consistently tell my daughters, no, that's wrong. I don't care if Cardi B does it. I don't care if your friends say it's okay. I don't care if it's all over the media, all of the music, it is wrong. And so there's a lot of, I don't want to say fights, but there's a lot of pushback.

Elliott Hulse: And I get some resentment, not from all my kids, but from some of them at certain times as they grow up. And so that's another sacrifice. That's another part of being a strong father, is not needing them to even like you. One of my things my dad used to say when I was a kid and now I get it, you know, you have to grow up and you have to have the experience to understand it. My dad used to say, and he sounded like Scarface. I think he was a big Scarface man. He say: I'm The bad guy in the house. And he'd be like: I'm the bad guy. I'm just going to be the bad guy. I don't care if you hate me, this is the way it's going to be. And so, you know, I find myself saying that a lot of times I'm like, it's tough love. But a lot of times I gotta be the bad guy. It took me a while to figure that out. My kids, you know, when they were little, especially little girls, I wanted to give them everything. But as I started growing up, I realized: Whoa, they're going to go way of the world if I'm not a bad guy. And it teaches you how to have detachment. You have no choice, but to be an alpha male, if you're going to be a strong father. It taught me a whole lot about how to handle myself in business and how to handle myself in social media as a celebrity, cause' I realized: Oh, okay, it's better to be hated.

Elliott Hulse: So speak up, say, what's right. Do what's right. Even if they don't like you. I think Donald Trump is a great example of that. I'm a Donald Trump fan. And I think a big part of the reason why the world hates Donald Trump. I don't love everything he does or everything he says, but I admire him because he's an alpha male leader that's willing to do what he believes is right regardless of if everyone hates him. That is the mark of a true alpha male leader, you can all go against me, but I know this is right and I'm going to stick to my guns and we're going to do it the right way. And so in a world that hates the father and especially hates strong masculine leadership you're fighting an uphill battle, but it's well worth it and it's deeply sorely needed.

Wade Lightheart: I think those are very powerful observations from a life lived by a very astute set of principles. So what's next for Elliott Hulse? What are you up to these days? Where's things going, what's kinda got you juiced up? I know that you have a very specific routine that you follow, like you kind of a ritualistic kind of person and there's study and there's, you're walking in the morning. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what's coming in the future and then I want to follow up what's your daily routine. And then where people can find out about you, what's going on. So let's get into that space. That's a lot of questions, but I want to kind of set that all up.

Elliott Hulse: Well, you know, I love the work that I do and I do the work that I do, because I'm called to do it more so than anything. There's some times I don't want to do it. There's sometimes I don't love it, but I do it, because I know that's what I'm called to do. And that's to speak to men, to mentor men, to lead men, to be an example for men. I sort of have an aversion to is the fact that it's all done digitally and I kind of suffer in that way, because I'm a physical man. I like to be around people and I want people around me. In other words, I would've much rather be a man with a helmet and a gun, and charging through the fire line with men by my side than standing behind this microphone and preaching all the time and putting up pictures on Instagram that proves that I'm well worth following.

Elliott Hulse: The digital world is so fake. Social media is so fake. The internet is so fake. I'm grateful for it, right? Remember I told you, I was able to sell PDFs and make real money. I was like: wow, this is crazy. It's not even a freaking book. It's bits on a screen. Poof and I make money. So I'm grateful for the magic that it is. Something's missing as a result and we're living in an avatar world, a fake world everybody's made up. Very few of us are actually who we are in real life with the images and pictures and the pretension that we display online and I've grown weary and tired of it. And as a result, you know, I quit making Youtube videos on a consistent basis back in like 2017. I was like, this is garbage.

Elliott Hulse: This is fake. And although I'm quote unquote doing some good work I wanted something different. I wanted something more. And so these days, I don't want to say I continue to do it reluctantly. I do it because it's my job and I continue to do it. But what I'm really looking forward to and what I'm really excited about, and what I really see coming down the line is what I was talking about before, in terms of these easy times with weak men are quickly turning to hard times where men will be forced to grow stronger. And I have seen, my wife says, you know, a lot of people complain about how things are getting out there with pandemic and with the riots and all the crazy shit that's going on in the world, the global conflict there's so much going on the world seems like it's crumbling. You know, when people would bring it up and ask Colleen Elliott's opinion about it and why he's, you know, why I am the way I am.

Elliott Hulse: She would often say: he's been waiting for this moment, his entire life. And I really am. I'm kind of excited for the conflict. That's good for the hard times that are coming. I am curing up for it. You know, I started to learn how to use firearms. I've become quite a prepper. I've learned how to grow things in my garden. The reason why I keep turning over here is, cause' my dog who's causing a mess out there, barking at the cat at the window. I got my protection dog and like, I've always wanted a homeschool. And this is the first time because of the pandemic, my children are homeschooling. So it's almost like everything, that everything that people are resisting and fighting and upset about and the world is changing as a result of, I like it. I want it. I know I sound crazy when I say this, but I want it to collapse.

Elliott Hulse: I want collapse. I want shit hitting the fan. I'm almost kind of like begging for it. Let the shit hit the fucking fan so that we can get rid of the 90% of the population that are just weakened useless. And like your t-shirt said, that's when the tough men now get to do what I've always been meant to do, which is if I got to blast motherfuckers, I'll blast them. If I got to starve and fast and I got to be resourceful, I've got whatever it is. I want to struggle. Right? Like that's how a boy becomes a man. And I'm a man becoming an elder. And I want to struggle. I want that last vestiges of struggle as this world crumbles and collapses. And that's why I've made good with God, cause' he can take me out in any moment and I'm not afraid.

Wade Lightheart: Powerful, beautifully said. And I think very pertinent for the times that we live in. Elliott, where can people reach out to you, find out more about you, get mentorship from you, find out about it? I know there's a lot of men out there that need your message and that need your guidance and they're aching to be a strong man. And you're a great example for it. So where can people find you and connect with you?

Elliott Hulse: Well, I would say the best place to follow me is on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram. If you like, what you see, stick around and I'm going to make an offer. I'm going to offer you either my lifting programs, or most recently I have a new mentorship program and I ask you to message me the word King. Message me the word King and join my mentorship program if you like the things I'm talking about, because I take that very seriously. Like I said, it's my vocation. And it's my objective, it's my mission. It is my purpose here on earth to make men strong again. And I'm not doing it on YouTube no more. I'm not doing it for free anymore. You got to hire me. You got to pay me. You got to have skin in the game. You know, there's this whole idea that everything should be free the part of the freaking problem. Right? You can get anything that you want. And people complain about me a lot about that. Like, why don't you just do what you do for free? Well, not only because I need to put food on the table for my children. I got expensive children, I told you I'm gonna spend a million dollars on each one of them. Not only that, but you have nothing invested in it. So if you want more Elliott Hulse, pay me, come to my programs, join my mentorship program, investing yourself, and you see the difference.

Wade Lightheart: Brilliantly said, and you know, I had the beautiful opportunity to speak at one of your events a number of years ago in Florida and I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and the inspired group of men that you were leading to become stronger versions of themselves. Many of these men, I have seen built families, built great careers, built athletic bodies, and most importantly, built confidence within themselves. And I believe in these times that for any man that's listening to this right now, or any woman that is connected to a man that you kinda know that he needs a man, Elliott Hulse is the man.

Wade Lightheart: Thank you so much for joining us today on the Awesome Health show. We'll put on all the show notes for everybody where you can get access to Elliott and find out about his programs and if you're really out there struggling in this crazy times that we live in and you don't know where to go, you need some guidance on how you can be a stronger version of yourself Elliott Hulse is the man. Thank you so much for joining us today with another episode of the Awesome Health show at BiOptimizers I'm Wade T Lightheart, we'll see you at the apocalypse.