In the first part of the show, Jason Hartman talks about the fewer mugging and purse thefts but an increasing number of identity thefts. He also gives his thoughts on making the governments smaller and the effect of increasing interest rates on real estate prices. Then, he interviews J.C. Watts about the struggle of doing what is popular vs. what is right in politics. Mr. Watts also shares his book, Dig Deep, which details his extraordinary efforts to help people live the best life possible.
Announcer 0:00
This show is produced by the Hartman media company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit Hartman media.com.
Announcer 0:12
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multi millionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it on now. here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for Real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to episode number 656 656, and listeners from 164 countries worldwide. Thank you so much for joining me. I’m your host, Jason Hartman. And Gosh, we got people from 164 countries. And maybe we’ve got almost as any as many world leaders who are engaging in corrupt criminal activities. Yes, I am referring to none other than the Panama Papers, the breaking story, at least $2 billion in transactions involved people in companies from all of these countries, many they say had ties to Vladimir Putin. We’ve all heard about all of the wealth he has hidden tucked away around the world, possibly one of the richest people in the world, if not the richest is Vladimir Putin. Although that’s not as visible is those people you see on the Forbes 400, right? Because Because this is government money this is money taken from the taxpayers, the hoi polloi. Boy, Iceland, Iceland, I kind of like that country. They’re pretty activist over there. They don’t put up with a lot of crap from their politicians. And when they find something out, man, they are they are booting them out the crooked remember, during the financial crisis, all of the crooked bankers, they were gone the moment that the story was revealed. So I kind of like you know, I kind of like that Iceland has been involved with Wikileaks and I don’t know, watch that. Watch that Wikileaks documentary. There’s several of them out there. But the the one that was in theaters, what was it about two, three years ago, talking all about Julian Assange and all that interesting stuff. It’s, it is amazing. And I tell you, folks, you want the answer to government corruption, regardless of what government you’re talking about around the world, just no. And I’m gonna say this as my pessimistic self here, right? I’m, sometimes I’m very optimistic. And you know what I always say it’s an amazing time to be alive. It’s an amazing time to be alive. And we see from the private sector, all of this incredible technology that is changing lives, improving lives, staving off the ravages of big government, inflationary pressures, taming the beast of inflation that would be here in massive force, if it weren’t for technology, being the counterbalance to irresponsible government spending and vote buying. But I tell you, people are fallen.
Okay, that is the nature of humanity. Yes, there are many great people out there. But there is a dark side to probably every human out there even even the late Mother Teresa, I’m sure had her dark side, we probably all do. I’m gonna throw it out there that we all have our dark side. I’ve done a few things in my life. I’m not extremely proud of either. Okay, some of them I’ve mentioned on the show. So if we know this about people, that eventually people are going to have their hand in the cookie jar here and there, right? And if we want to make government less corrupt, wouldn’t the logical, obvious thing to do? Wouldn’t it just be to simply keep government smaller? Because if we, if we take, assume that these things are proportionate, right, if government gets bigger, there’s a certain amount of corruption that goes on inside any government or in any organization in any corporation. Right. You know, there’s, there’s a there’s there are people that are steal from the till and the cash register it. It’s subway and Starbucks I’m sure and at the local bar and restaurant that you go to, right, less of that nowadays because so many transactions are non cash. But you know the concept of people kind of have their hand in the cookie jar from time to time, right? We know employee theft is a huge problem. We know shoplifting is a huge problem. We know identity theft is a huge problem, because this is a transfer effect, as it gets harder to commit one crime like mugging people on the street. And we’ve seen some stats saying that that is dropped.
Thank you two more proliferation of Second Amendment gun rights. Well, I don’t know if the rights have actually increased, but at least the number of guns have increased because of course, the guy in the White House is the best gun salesman, probably ever in history. And that’s Obama. You know, starting back in 2007 2008, we saw this meteoric rise rise in gun sales because Obama had stated as a candidate that he wanted to take away the guns are and what he did is he did an end run around that it was very interesting. And really very bright. Actually, I have to compliment the control freak comrade Obama by making ammunition more expensive. Yes, guns aren’t too useful without ammunition. Anyway, and then they tried to make it illegal for people to what do they call that like reshelving I don’t know I’ve never done it but you know, they have those machines where people can repack their ammunition and take the shells and anyway, yeah, you know what that whatever it’s called, I’m no expert on this stuff. But anyway, so you’ve got that and there’s always this transfer of crimes right? So if the criminals are worried that more people in their homes have guns or alarm systems, and more people on the streets, have pepper spray and have guns and or trained in self defense or less vulnerable and more confident as they walk down the dark street at night. Course, fewer criminals will be willing to commit those kinds of crimes like muggings and purse matchings because people are more on guard, right? obvious. And so they switch to new forms of crime. And we’ve seen identity theft increased dramatically. I mean, it’s happened to me a couple of times that I know of, God forbid, I don’t know if it’s happened Other times, but certainly a couple of times, I’ve had some identity theft problems, things showing up on my credit card statements or even on my credit report that aren’t accurate. And there are lots of forms of identity theft, not just credit card or financial identity theft. There’s criminal record identity theft, medical record identity theft, citizen ship identity theft, there are DMV identity theft, there are many insurance identity theft, there are many forms of identity theft. Most of us just think of it as Oh, you know, someone got hacked. access to my bank account or my credit card. It’s there’s way more than that to it anyway, the point being that if we look at what were we saying,
Jason, you’re on a tangent, again, you’re on a tangent, tangent alert. If we look at all these world leaders and all these governmental entities, there’s going to be a certain element with inside within that with inside Jason, fix your grammar out. Oh, yes, it will. Okay. So inside any government, there are going to be a certain number of corrupt people. take it at face value, it’s gonna happen in any business, there’s going to be some corrupt people. All right. So if we say this number is maybe 10%, are going to succumb to some sort of temptation to you know, put their hand in the cookie jar, metaphorically, right. And they’re going to steal. So if we just simply make government smaller than the size of the corruption will be smaller. And this is exactly what we see with these Panama Papers. And this story is just developing, and there’s going to be more and more of it, you’re going to see a lot of this stuff coming out. It’s just disgusting. And this is why you take a candidate like Bernie Sanders. And even though I think the guy’s actually well intended, I kind of like them in a lot of ways. But he’s gonna make government larger. And what he doesn’t realize good old Bernie, is that if you make any organization, any human organization with some fallen people inside it larger, the corruption is going to get larger. If you make that organization smaller, the likelihood is, and I would say it’s 99.9% likely that the corrupt element will be smaller. In fact, it might even be better than just proportional. So if you say that if the organization is 10% corrupt whether Be company, family, government, whatever, committee charity, anything, anything doesn’t matter. The church someone’s stealing from the table at the church. Sure that’s happening. A lot of times it’s the pastor and the whole thing’s designed as a corrupt organization. You know, we’ve got some Jim and Tammy Faye Baker people out there, right?
There’s certainly been a lot of that over the years. But that doesn’t mean churches bad, okay, it just means that people are people, right, just got to accept that. Let’s be realistic here. And so if the organization is smaller, I would bet that the corruption element will not be just proportionally smaller, it will actually be a lot smaller, because it’ll be more apparent and obvious. If the organization is smaller. When it gets bigger, it’s easier to hide the corruption. So there’s even more of it. In fact, the corruption level might double or increase exponentially as the size As the organization grows, so really just think about that. It’s a simplistic approach. But I’m telling you, that’s the way to go. That’s the way to go. All right. So we we had a big meeting in our company today, and we talked about you guys are wonderful clients, we love you. And we talked about how bright and sophisticated our clients are and compared them to some of these other rather sleazy real estate outfits out there. Who will remain nameless, because I really don’t feel like getting sued again, for outing some criminal. But in the future, we’ll probably do it again. So listen to episode number 417. Listen to episode on any of the stuff I’ve talked about my Kansas City experience which is still going on, what a joy it is to find these people. And you know, the harder the I believe that the more corrupt they are, the harder they fight because they’re really, really trying to hide something They probably they probably settle or throw a settlement offer on the table if they weren’t so worried about there may be a greater concern that might lead to a more serious penalty than just what’s what’s on the table. We will see more to come on this folks more to come.
But we were talking about our clients and the properties and just how much more sophisticated our clients are and how we use this as a way to get better inventory for our clients. Because one of the things, our local market specialist, our LMS is in different parts of the country love about working with us. And for some of them, it takes some it takes a couple of months, maybe a year, even if they’re a little slow to come around to the beauty of working with IRA network, because our clients get it. They understand they’re educated. In advance of going to look at properties or going to buy properties, they, they get it. And they’re better qualified than they are with so many of these other groups out there. Many of these groups, by the way, are rather famous. You’ve heard of them. They’ve been on television, they’ve been on reality shows, they have very famous books that we’ve all read and talked about and even like, but that doesn’t mean that when the rubber meets the road, they have the same type of client. So we had a long talk about that. We had to talk about how we can really, really get better inventory from our providers, because I gotta tell you, this challenge is getting more and more challenging every day every month. The deals ain’t what they used to be. Don’t you love it when some real estate guru gets up on stage or on the podcast and says, This is the best time to buy ever well? No. It’s not the best time to buy ever actually, it was a much better time to buy in 2009. But guess what, it’s not 2009 anymore. So we can only work with what we have. My prediction is that it will actually get even worse. I could be wrong. Some of you out there are trying to time the market and you think prices are going to drop.
But I’ve got to ask you, and and this is the equation that I had people do a little it’s a very simple math problem at jQ Jason Hartman University when we did that live in Salt Lake City, Utah and in San Diego, California. It’s a simple little equation. Okay. Ask yourself, what would be the I mean, everything’s booming. Now prices are up, rents are up. Clients are by and large. There’s a few little problems out there but believe me, compared to past times, the there are very few problems. I was out there because properties are renting. Things are going really well, by and large. Okay. There’s always a one off deal here and there, of course. But what is going to make prices? Come down? ask yourself that question. Now I have predicted. And I have said many times that I think real estate prices in the high value markets, the East Coast and the West Coast, and the Socialist Republic of California and South Florida and the expensive Northeastern areas, and the Pacific Northwest. I think those markets are largely overvalued. I’m not saying they’re at the peak. But hey, it’s getting pretty frothy out there. These prices do not make sense. No, they’re not as nutty as they were the last time around before we hit the skids and got into trouble. But in the linear markets, the simple conservative linear markets we like yes, prices are up no question, but they’re not up proportionally anywhere near As much as they are in these high flying cyclical markets that we don’t like. So ask yourself, what would make prices decline? What would make prices decline? The answer to that question is largely affordability.
Now affordability comes in multiple forms, the affordability issue. Number one, it could come from an increase in interest rates. That’s sort of the obvious one, because people buy properties on a payment, not a price. They buy it on a monthly payment. And let me tell you, I can’t believe how low monthly payments are. It is mind boggling how cheap it is to get a mortgage still, yeah, it’s still really, really cheap, incredibly cheap to finance properties. So it comes in one form in terms of the interest rate. Let me give you this equation. I’ve mentioned it on past episodes before, but it’s roughly equivalent. That 1% in interest rate equals 10% in price. Now remember that 1% in interest rate is not really 1% in interest rates. For example, if the current interest rate just use round numbers here, it’s an example if I’m not quoting the rate, if the current interest rate you would pay is 5%. And rates go down by 1%. Did the rates go down? 1% or 20%? You know the answer, right? Because we’re talking to a sophisticated crowd here. Most people out there think oh, well, it’s only 1%. No, it’s not 1%. You, you fool. It’s 20%. Or what if they go up? What if they’re five and they go to six? Okay, so that’s the thing you’ve got to understand, but that 1% in interest rate roughly equals about 10% in purchase price. So if you think that prices are going to decline by 30%, then you should look forward to an interest rate increase of 3%. Okay, now this is it’s rough math. Okay? So understand that first of all, but understand that that 1% is equal to about 10% in price. All right. The second part of affordability is not the interest rate, though. The second part of affordability is the ability to borrow in the first place. So here’s what we’ve had going on since the financial crisis. And during the financial crisis, we’ve had very, very low rates. But banks that just don’t really want to make loans. They want to hold the money, they want to hoard the money, they can make money in a much less risky fashion by simply buying treasury bills. Okay? They don’t that you know,
The fractional reserve banking scam, which by the way, we’re going to be talking about on Jekyll Island at our upcoming venture Alliance trip. And we are working on a little Jacksonville property tour Friday before that. So if you want to come as a guest, go to venture Alliance mastermind calm. And check that out, talk to your investment counselor at our company, of course, you can reach them through Jason hartman.com. Or if you already have a relationship, you already have their contact info. And join us as a guest. And join us for a little VIP property tour very exclusive in Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday, and what is that may 6, and then on the seventh and eighth will be in Jekyll Island and it’s just going to be a great time. And we’ll be talking about fractional reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, how we can invest how we can align our interests with these very, very powerful forces. So just understand that that is the issue of affordability like income property investing is a multi dimensional issue. Income property is a multi dimensional asset class. And this affordability equation needs to be diced up into multiple things. Of course, you can dice it up a lot more than that, because what’s the affordability for investors versus owner occupants? That matters. In terms of interest rate? Of course, that’s a little different ability to qualify. What does that mean to renters? everybody out there needs to make the decision of Should I rent should I buy? Should I be homeless? Should I live with my parents? That last one hopefully is a joke, but I know you know, it’s not because if you have millennial kids, they are the boomerang generation coming back to live at home as they try to pay off their student loan debt and cope with that other huge government scam amounting to one point true $1.2 trillion with a deep so yeah, we’ll talk about that. Just understand affordability is the price The primary driver of prices. There are other drivers. Of course, there’s the supply side and the demand side. And those two curves need to meet.
And that’s what creates a marketplace when the curves intersect. Supply and demand and demand is driven by affordability. supply is driven by the amount of money floating out there in terms of developers to develop new projects, how liberals zoning laws, our prices of raw materials, commodities, energy, labor, regulatory environment, OSHA requirements, that’s a whole complex set of issues, obviously, right. So we address those on the show from time to time leader is all of those different issues. So that’s it. Okay. Our guest today is congressman JC watts, and he’s a great guy. His book is called dig deep, seven truths to finding strength within. He was on the Canadian Football League and the Sooners took him to the Orange Bowl. He’s doing a lot of great stuff. So it is a political season. So we have some political guests on here. And on the next episode after flashback Friday, which by the way, this flashback Friday, you do not want to miss this one. It’s G. Edward Griffin. And we’ve got him coming back on the show for a new interview as well. He’s been on a few times. So with a Jekyll Island trip coming up and Jekyll Island, of course, for those of you who aren’t in the know, that is where they created the Federal Reserve just over 100 years ago and started scamming the entire world. So we we want to even though we know it’s a big scam, we can’t complain about it. Well, we can complain, but we can’t do anything about it. It’s much more powerful than any of us that we can align our interest with the Federal Reserve, and all central banks around the world and all governments around the world So that we can win the personal finance, the wealth creation and the investing game.
All right, let’s get to our guests. Jc watts couple websites to visit Jason hartman.com of course properties their software to help you track your investments their venture Alliance mastermind.com for the Jekyll Island trip, and here is congressman JC watts. It’s my pleasure to welcome former congressman of Oklahoma former chairman of the Republican conference for George W. Bush, the first African American elected to statewide office in Oklahoma, President and CEO of feed the children co founder and co chair of the Coalition for AIDS Relief in Africa, and founder and chairman of the lobbying firm JC watts companies and watts Consulting Group. You probably know who this is now, don’t you? That’s the largest African American owned lobbying company in Washington. He’s also former Canadian Football league and Oklahoma Sooners quarterback leading them to to Orange Bowl championships and author of the new book, dig deep, seven truths for finding the strength within. And that is none other than Mr. Jc watts. Welcome, Congressman.
Congressman J.C. Watts 23:59
How are you, Jason? I’m doing well. Thank you very much for having me on. And let me give you a little color and insight on my new book. Dig deep.
Jason Hartman 24:16
Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. And I want to hear about your career. You’ve got such a long resume as well. Why did you retire after 10 years in the house in an era of career politicians?
Congressman J.C. Watts 24:34
Well, actually, you know, when I ran Jason, I said I was going to run I said, I was going to serve two returns actually short for and after eight years. I knew it was time for me to move on. I never meant to do it to have a career in politics or to build an empire. It really was public service. And, you know, I as you mentioned in my intro, ally has served in many arenas and in youth ministry, I’ve been in politics at the highest level. And then in football at the highest level of my own home business. I’ve been on the board of some fine companies in the US and there’s one common thread in every one of those arenas. And it’s the cheer the crowd and the cheer the crowd is is can be intoxicating, and be very seductive. And it’s more intoxicating in and seductive in politics than any arena I’ve ever participated in. And so I’ve had a lot of experience with the cheer the crowd and and, you know, you can’t overstay your welcome and I was careful that I didn’t do that and didn’t become addicted to you know, approval. And so, I moved on after eight years. And I’ve never looked back. Yeah. So when you say cheer the crowd, just tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that. Well, you know, it’s the cheer the crowd often encourages us to do what is popular as opposed to doing what is right, you know, and football. The fans don’t always like it when you’re only gaining three or four yards or gaining six yards, you know, they it’s a whole lot more sexy when you’re throwing a 50 yard bomb or you’re not a 60 yard run. But in football as in life, you’re going to have a whole lot more tied yard gains and you’re going to add 50 yard games and and so you know the cheer the crowd says, Hey, we want more than the crowd says, You didn’t vote the right way and you’re gonna vote you out. Well because you You know, the chair the crowd thinks that it’s wrong, it doesn’t make it wrong or because the chair the ground thinks that it’s right it doesn’t make it right. And I think you know, you have to come to whatever arena you’re in, be in business, politics and telematics you ministry. You have to come to the table looking to do the right things, not necessarily the the you know what when the cheer the crowd tells you to do you know, the chair, the crowd will tell you that. You’re all of that and you start thinking, Man, I’m, I’m pretty good. And Jason, I’ve seen it in the ministry. I’ve seen it in athletics. I’ve seen it in every arena that I’ve been in. And when I see someone that thinks that they’re all of that I could just hear about grandmother saying, boy, you might be some of that, but you ain’t never all of that.
Congressman J.C. Watts 27:56
The get reminded.
Jason Hartman 27:57
Yeah, that’s for sure. That is a one Wonderful, grounded perspective for today’s world JC it’s really, it’s really great to hear that. So, okay, so you got out after, you know, a fairly short time by by most people’s standards. And what was next for you? Did you start your I mean, is your main business your lobbying firms your lobbying in consulting or is it authorship and you know, being a thought leader or what’s your main thing if you will?
Congressman J.C. Watts 28:24
Well, it’s not actually it’s only a portion of my income. I’m in the john deere business on a couple of john deere stores down in Texas that I still need to preach about eight to 10 times a year around the country somewhere I’ll do eight to 10 current affairs speeches around the country every year I’m in the cattle business and I do several different things in order to you know, keep my house payment made. But you know, in the on the consulting side, the lobbying side, you know, because I left Public Service didn’t mean that there were not issues or cause issues. And I was concerned about so I am still concerned about tax issues. I don’t think we need more taxes. I think we need more tax payers. So what do you do to help create more tax payers, you, you work in the government to create an environment that people can invest their money and get a good return. And, you know, it’s not over regulation over litigation over taxation. You create that type of environment, you’ll create more taxpayers. And so if you create an environment that’s hostile to investment capital, that investment capital then it won’t come to Oklahoma, it won’t come to Missouri or go to Texas, Texas, does it it’ll go to Arkansas, Arkansas, or does it ever go to Kansas but if you create a maybe it’ll go to Luxembourg or maybe it’ll go to some other offshore tax haven where exactly it will even go over. So, you bet. And so I’ve still been involved in some of those issues on the consulting side, but it is only a fraction of my, of my total income. Mm.
Jason Hartman 30:10
Yeah. Well, that’s a very good thing. And I love the way you say that JC, you, you don’t want to create higher taxes, you want to create more tax payers. And so many politicians, especially on the left, you know, they just don’t understand that this is not a zero sum game. It’s not about the way the government gets more money is not by raising taxes. It’s by increasing the size of the economy and and increasing the number of tax payers, and really their maybe their revenue. So that that’s so true. You know, I I did a speech for our last event called entitled, you can’t hear the dogs that don’t bark based off Sherlock Holmes. And that story about the dog that didn’t bark because you know that the dog knew the killer. And that’s what’s so true. In life, you know, when you when you’re raised taxes and capital flees or or maybe people just think, why should I try I’m just gonna give it all to the government and that’s the other thing you don’t hear that that’s not quantifiable but it is most definitely true right?
Congressman J.C. Watts 31:15
No question no question and, you know, Jason I, I did not the book, dig deep but I didn’t write it as a political book. I actually wrote it as you know, just kind of looking at my experiences and my circumstances that I’ve had to deal with and the different arenas and had been in from the ministry to athletics, politics, to business to, you know, own and my own business. I wrote about my circumstances and and my experiences, but the principles that I talked about, they are woven into the fabric of the earth. And if you You are to stand on the mountaintop, it doesn’t matter if you’re red, yellow, brown, black or white, liberal or conservative, there’s going to be times in your life, in your business, in your personal life in your, in your, your, your face lights and your whatever you’re doing, there’s going to be times that you’re going to have to dig deep and call on you know, summon the best of who we are, and launch ourselves into our our current circumstances, to fight another day to play another couple of downs to work through the bad business deal work through the struggles you have in marriage and and so there’s there are principles out there that you know, a dysfunctional world I am dysfunctional. You’re dysfunctional. We’re all dysfunctional. It’s just a matter of degree, but we we in being dysfunction. No that’s not that’s that’s not the bad thing in living life The bad thing is when we make our dysfunction are normal and and that that’s what we get ourselves in trouble when we say well that’s just the way I am when you hear someone saying that’s just the way I am what they’re saying is I don’t want any accountability don’t ever correct me and humility is not a part of the DNA and I think you know that that combination Jason is mad for someone running for dog catcher and let alone someone to be you know, the the leader of the free world and to run a country that’s a very dangerous demeanor and my opinion on the person says, that’s just the way I am they’re usually saying, I’m not looking for personal growth. Right, right. Yeah,
Jason Hartman 33:55
that’s that’s it ladies if they’re fixed or something and nobody is fixed in being a certain Way, what, tell us about take us through some of these seven steps, maybe not all of them, maybe we could because we won’t have enough time but just highlight a couple of your favorite or, or maybe a couple that you think apply the most today, especially in the political scene because you’ve got so much background
Congressman J.C. Watts 34:16
there. Well, yeah, I do talk about seven principles in DDD. But the one of the principal principles to talk about is is adversity. You know, Jason, you’re going to have it, I’m going to have it. Light is it can be difficult as I said, life can be messy and, and life happens. And when I was elected to state office, back in 1991, the agency that I was elected into was under an investigation. I had done nothing wrong. I was. I mean, it was two years prior to me being there. And all of a sudden I find myself on the evening news on the radio and the TV about Four times a week and and, and and it was a very painful time and I remember you today I look back on that, and I don’t look at what it did to me, I look at what that time did for me. I grew in my adversity we, you know, I’ve learned a whole lot more in football when I’ve lost than when I’ve, when I’ve won. And I all suffering and because we suffer, it doesn’t mean that we are defeated. So adversity can be good for us, it will, you know, keep our eye on the prize. And like I said, mine just selves or plunge ourselves into our circumstances and fight another day and fight another week inside another mountain. So that was one of the principles and another principle I talked about. Is is unloading. You know, Jason, we we We we carry old tradition around where it isn’t traditions in and of themselves. They’re not. They’re not bad in and of themselves, but traditions can also lock us into not going to the next level in our mental and our physical and spiritual growth. And I know in terms of wellness, I mean, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of bad eating habits. And I thought, well, you know, that’s the way I ate when I grew up. And that’s not my culture. That’s the way we cooked food. And that’s the way we ate food. And again, because you’ve done it a certain way, before 30 years doesn’t mean you’ve done it right. And so on learning all unlearn bad habits. For that, that can be tough. Because, you know, we say hey, well, my, my, my mother’s mother’s mother,
Jason Hartman 36:56
this way and that’s the way we do it the way she did it.
Congressman J.C. Watts 37:00
My my grandfather’s grandfather, grandfather, that’s the way he did it. Well, it doesn’t make it right, because we’ve done it a certain way for the last 40 years. So unlearning and rethinking is critically important for us to, you know, to do life better. And that’s really what the book is about. It’s, it’s about doing life better, just taking my circumstances, my stories, and hopefully people can take the wisdom that I’ve gained from from those things, and it will be beneficial and helpful to them. And yeah,
Jason Hartman 37:38
good advice, good advice, you know, unlearning things. And understanding that adversity can really be the call to greatness. I mean, we humans are so much stronger than we think we are. It is amazing how, when we conquer a few adversities, then we’ll experience that same adversity down the road, a bit. And we’ll think this is nothing I can handle this. I did this. I’ve been here done this no problem. It’s It’s really incredible.
Congressman J.C. Watts 38:06
You’re George, Jason and George Bernard Shaw, he said, and I mentioned in chapter three that I talked about unlearning, rethink. George Bernard Shaw, he said that progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. And I just think it’s important that, you know, when you come to the table, or you say that, you know, hey, Jason, there’s only room for one opinion, vote and guess who’s wrong? I mean, how many how many times have have we done that? And we often draw those conclusions, just based on the fact that I’ve been doing it a certain way. For so long. I remember when I was a youth pastor, I’d gone to the deacon body and in the past And then in the use met with the, you know, in what we call the big service on Wednesday night. And so I went to the pasture and the board, the deacon body and I said, I would like to separate out from the main service and have the us do our own thing on Wednesday night. And I remember when the deacon said, Well, you know, brother watch, we’ve been doing it like this for the last 20 years. And and I wanted to say, well, maybe we’ve been doing it wrong for the last team. I talked to him allowing us to do that. And Jason, we went from about 17 to 20 on Wednesday night, to where we were doing about 90 to 100. Just because we you know, we were appealing strictly to the youth and we changed our model and, and we change our thinking and young people thought you know, they’re having something especially For us on Wednesday night, and in our youth group just exploded. And so again, if we would have locked ourselves into or the pastor would have locked himself and the beacon body would have tried to lock themselves in the same, we don’t want to change because we’ve been doing it like this for so long, we probably would have had it, you know, 20 to 25 on Wednesday nights, for the whole time I was there. So change it necessarily a bad thing. If you’re changing into a good model change for the sake of change, that necessarily means, you know, doing it, doing it better, but, you know, if, you know, change for for, you know, to a better model and to a better way of thinking more of that. That’s when you really find your sweet spot in life right now, that’s for sure.
Jason Hartman 40:54
You’re the president and CEO of feed the children and the top To us a little bit about the nonprofit world if you would, in your experience, there are so many these things just turn into either exercises in ego gratification or and you’ve alluded to that before when you talk about cheer the crowd, or they become really scams Where were the people heading these groups just they they siphon the money off the top and live this lavish lifestyle. We’ve all heard of these scandals. Do you see a lot of that and what you know, what do you what do you think about that world? How do you how do you fix nonprofit? There’s just maybe those are those questions are too big, possibly, but I just wanted to throw it out there.
Congressman J.C. Watts 41:37
And well, well, I I don’t think you’re out of town simply because I think in every arena that have participated in today. You know, some people would say that anybody that’s in politics today, they’re bad. vote him out. I don’t think because a politician you know, a bad politician and that makes all bad politics. Politicians bad. I know ministers that you know in a fallen world that you know they they had difficulties now because one minister does it I don’t believe all pastors are bad that makes them all bad football players the same way I’ve seen football players in the fall and get in trouble installing the difficulty but I don’t mean I don’t think all football players are like that so I do think we have to be careful that we don’t paint with a broad brush but my mission when I became pregnant sealed see the children on February 1 I said you know we want transparency and and we want people to feel like if they invest and feed the children or if they sow seed and to feed the children that is fertile soil to sow into and I think it is that you know they’ve had some challenges over the last four or five Yours, I want to get them back to the glory days of pre 2011 2012. And I think we can, you know, we we do a lot of great things and dealing with dealing with poverty and dealing with hunger, about 90% of our resources we deploy in the United States, but we are Jason in about 10 countries and every day we feed 263,000 Kids overseas and last year in 2014, or I’m sorry, 2013 we started about 9 million kids in the United States of America. So obviously a lot, a lot to do and a lot to be done and, and, and hunger and poverty does exist. And one final thought on that. You know, Jason and many others. You and I both can say I could say we’ve skipped meals and we’ve gone without a meal but Neither of us could probably say, we’ve not known or could be able to say that. We didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. That that’s never been a part of our equation, the ball, we might have skipped a meal. But there was no, no concern that we didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. Well, there are kids in the United States and obviously abroad. They live under those circumstances every day and eat the children is at the tip of the spear around the world and rounding on estates and trying to try and make sure that no child goes to bed under.
Jason Hartman 44:43
Absolutely. Any other of the seven things that you want to talk about.
Congressman J.C. Watts 44:48
Well, you know, another one that I’ve that I’ve really learned from I told you that when I was elected to state government, I got dragged into an An investigation is very painful. And after I’ve been elected to Congress, I mean, that stuff, you know, followed me and my opponent tried to use it against me. Of course, my margin of victory continued to go up because people knew that, that finally concluded that it was, it was political. But the gentleman that kind of dragged me into that went to Congress, and all of a sudden I’m thinking, I’m supposed to apologize to him and Jason I went through some serious battles with with myself and with God and and I’m saying, God, why should I apologize to him? I did nothing to him and and so finally I gave in and I went to him and I said, Hey, when I left this place, to hide that I had for you was was was not kosher. And and I said, I beg your forgiveness. I asked you to forgive me. And one of the reasons that I saw That’s so hard is because I had thought to giving him what makes him right. or giving him didn’t make him right. It made me free. And and you know, we go around with unforgiveness in our heart. And, you know, Bill as well saying those unforgiveness leads to anger, anger leads to bitterness and bitterness leads to hatred. And Reverend gene said, No man should drive you to hate him. Because, you know, it puts us in a prison that, you know that person controls our emotions control so much about our lives and your listeners today. I would encourage them to think about this. They probably if you’ve got lizard listeners, that’s my age. 58 years old. They probably have someone that hurt their feelings or did something to them in high school. Oh, we all have that. We have no no clue. We all do, and vote and just a mention of that person’s name, puts a bird on the saddle and just warns if I Bay and just, you know, messes with our emotions and and you know, unforgiveness is different than then then Jason drinking pause and thinking is going to kill me or me drinking poison and thing that is going to kill somebody else it doesn’t it kills the person who’s not forgiving. Right? You right?
Jason Hartman 47:33
And that’s the same as I think Confucius said something like that many, many, many eons ago. So I want to ask you a question about that, though, because a lot of people say that. So here’s an odd counter question. I know we got to wrap up. But is there ever a time when it’s appropriate not to forgive people? I think there is. I think there are there are certain circumstances in life Where forgiveness is overrated, if you will. Well, you know, but when I see your point, I want you to understand
Congressman J.C. Watts 48:08
my standard is, is is is God’s word. Now, are there times that we don’t want to forgive does will not happen overnight. But let me tell you, I know people who allow people who are did that to control their emotions because they said something or they did something. Now, I am not saying that it’s that it’s easy. But I’m saying that if we are to go to the next level, in terms of our mental and our physical and our spiritual growth, especially in our, in our, in that one spiritual leg of our tripod, if we are going for to go to the next level, forgiveness, that that’s a part of it. And and it’s it’s it free So going around with that with that luggage. I mean, I have got Jason when I first ran for office, Oakland University had in a span of 45 days, several different incident incidents on campus and athletic dorm, to where three guys three black guys were involved in a raping incident one black guy one black clear shot another black player and then starting quarterback was on the front of sports illustrated in in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs on having been busted for selling drugs. Now when I ran for office, I had a I had a guy a white banker there, Norman, Oklahoma that said, when he heard I was running, he said, Hey, people are sick of blacks in the circle football players. Did that stain it did but I had no reason Not forgetting, I had no reason to hold that. against him I had, you know, there’s two things that I can control in my life. I can control my work ethic, and I can control my attitude. And let me tell you, it takes a whole lot bigger person. And we may not recognize this, at the outset in the same this, it takes a much bigger person to turn other cheek and forget than it does not to give, not to forget and when that when you truly forgive, I’m telling you, a person will see the exponential growth in their spiritual lives and in their personal development and, you know, in politics today, that’s one of the things that hinders politics. It’s, we don’t say in politics, the handbook, no law Under says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The handbook today says, do it to them before they do it to you. That’s kind of the policy politic. And where has that gotten us? I mean, it’s gotten us to a point that we that we are very sarcastic. We’re very similar, not sarcastic, but very cynical. I have not watched a republican debate probably in in four months. Because there’s all I mean, it’s about you, it’s almost like a reality show. And so I would ask the voters, where has that gotten us? You know, just holding on to those grudges and, and, and that I’m going to get him back and I’m going to get her back and she did it to me. I’m going to do occur. You know, it tena reminds me of eight year olds, nine year olds where they operate. But anyway, getting back to directly back to forgiveness.
Jason Hartman 52:10
I’m not saying it’s not not difficult, and I’m not saying that it’s easy, but it really is the best model. Good stuff. Well, JC give out your website, if you would, of course the book was just released. It’s on Amazon. Number one in categories you didn’t even expect. So congratulations on that. Yeah, what’s your website though? or Twitter handle where people can follow you?
Congressman J.C. Watts 52:34
Well, it’s on. I’m not a social media guy. Jason, I’m still pretty old school. I’ve got a six G phone that I probably do okay with a one G. But nevertheless, you can go to Regnery faith, and they’ll they’ll have it listed there. You can buy the book at obviously Amazon.
Congressman J.C. Watts 52:58
Costco has it. Barnes and Noble, they’ve done it. And we are in discussions for Walmart. And hopefully they’ll have it in the next week. Well, JC thanks again for joining us and keep up the good work good talking with you, Jason. Thank you, sir, for having me on.
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