The Business of Live Events & Tony Blauer's Self-Defense Philosophy 💰 EP112

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the monday mondays this will be a solo episode and i'm going to go over with you live events and the business of events as you're listening to this episode i'm about to starting tomorrow throw six events in a matter of three days so the 13th march 11th 11th, sorry, March 11th through March 13th,

I'm throwing six events, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

This episode obviously comes out today on Monday.

Whenever you might be listening to this,

it might be a little bit after the fact,

but you'll be able to see across my social media

what I'm talking about in real time.

So let me walk you through real life.

First of all, it's in Miami.

I'm throwing what's called

the 100 Million Mastermind Experience.

I started the 100 Million Mastermind back in 2019.

So we're going to our sixth year. It's $100,000 per person to attend for the year three weekend events.
So March 11th through 13th is the next weekend called the fulfillment event for the first one for 2025. Now, why would someone pay $100,000 to be part of a group? And why would some of them do it for year after year after year? Some of them have been in the group since 2019.
It's because the other members in the group are typically doing $10 million, $20 million, $30 million, $50 million, $100 million in sales. And the instructors have either done over $100 million in revenue, spent over $100 million on ads, or been seen by over a hundred million people.
So the hundred million Mashman experience is a way for people to surround themselves with other entrepreneurs and business owners. Now, literally the same night, I'm throwing a completely free event called elevator night.
I've thrown elevator night 56 times completely free. No tickets for sale, no sales on stage.
I don't even bring in sponsors. I just pay for it.
What is that? Like year 13 or 14 now, this will be the 56th time of elevator night. So I'm going to walk you through expensive events and free events, and I'm going to go through the rest of the next three days.
Okay. So the 100 million mastermind, I'm creating an experience.
That's why it's called a hundred million mastermind experience. The experience is important word.
A lot of masterminds are in a local ballroom at a hotel or they're at someone's house or at someone's office, which is fine because people are getting the learning experience or the networking experience. I'm trying to create an experience that people remember for the rest of their lives.
So I'll bring in Mark Wahlberg and Floyd Mayweather and Kevin Hart and celebrities, entertainers and performers for these experiences, or I'll go get crazy venues. I'll go get the Diamondback Stadium or the Dallas Cowboys Stadium or places like that to create experiences, even though it's less than 100 people in this group at all times.
I will create this experience because people create memories that will last them a lifetime and build relationships. But with this group, creates a lot of power.
I always am able to raise a lot of money for charity through this group, which is really, truly important to me. Each time that I throw this on the second night of the event out of a three-day event, we do either a charity poker tournament, a charity dinner, something to raise money for an orphanage, something to raise money for the toy foundation, homeless, things like that.
And so I'll tie in, whether it's my charities, friends' charities, or respected charities, a way for us to raise a couple hundred thousand dollars in these environments. Why? Well, if I'm going to bring in 70 to 100 people that have either access to capital themselves or access to capital from friends, I want to use that power for good.
And so that's why I try to forcefully get them excited to want to raise money through either a charity poker tournament, a charity dinner, etc. Through an experience to be able to raise money for, like I said, orphanages, toy drives, things like that, or the homeless.
This has been truly important to me to incorporate it because the butterfly effect of what happens if during a live event i can raise money for a charity also they've got their phones out they know other people that might be able to donate or share on social media etc the butterfly effect is very powerful if i can use that mastermind for good all right so then that night tuesday night March 11th is elevator night in Miami. We have a venue that can hold hundreds and hundreds of people.
Again, it's totally free to attend. You can visit elevator night.com.
And depending on when you're listening to this, you could actually send people to that event. If you're listening to this on Monday or on Tuesday.
Now, why do I throw a free event? 56 times. This free event cost me 20 to $60,000 on average to host.
Why would I do that? You can do the math. $20,000 to $60,000 times 56 is a lot of freaking money, a lot of time, a lot of energy.
It is my way to get entrepreneurs together in each city. I've thrown this all over the country.
I've done a couple overseas because I want to get entrepreneurs into a room to meet with investors, meet with my local friends, local ballers, local influencers, so they can all network with each other. These events are very short.
They're just a four-hour event. Typically, it's about two and a half to three hours of content, so speakers on stage.
The rest of the time, people are networking before, in the middle, and afterwards. But through this, we've been able to help raise money for companies, been able to create a lot of jobs, create a lot of investments, create relationships that led to people creating babies from these events it's really fun to just bring people together so they can network and deals can happen relationships can happen for friends couples businesses partnerships and everything in between just by bringing good people into a room and having these four-hour networking events you can host an event just like this in your town totally You can charge if you'd like, but I host this one for free.
And you can get people in town to go to a real estate event, a car event, a fashion event, a makeup and hair event, whatever it is that you might be passionate about, pickleball, poker, basketball, a running club, etc. Getting people together is very powerful and you can do it for free.
Now, let's go to Wednesday, March 12th. That is going to be Aspire Tour.
Aspire Tour is going to be around 2,500 to 3,000 people. This is a large format event.
You guys can visit AspireTour.com. And by the way, if you're listening to this before Wednesday morning, go to AspireTour.com.
You can use the free code ELEVATOR and you can get silver tickets for free. And if you're not in the Miami area or Fort Lauderdale area, no problem.
You can send your friends, family, followers, etc. The free code ELEVATOR for AspireTour.com.
This event has A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V, Cody Sanchez, Dave Meltzer, Andrew Cordell, the founder, Eddie Wilson, the co-founder. You have a lot of powerful speakers up on stage like Tim Story, etc.
Aspire Tour goes once a month all throughout the country. This is, I think, number 20 or 21 or 22 since the company started.
Aspire Tour is a very powerful tour that helps bring entrepreneurs together to learn in a one-day format event. It runs from 8 a.m.
to 6 p.m. Aspire Tour was started by Andrew and Eddie.
And then five months later, I came in to help bring in influencers, celebrities, speakers, etc. Marketing, different venues, different people, different characters, sponsorships, etc.
to help with the brand. Andrew and Eddie had already built a machine and I just added my gasoline to their fire so then that large format event happens so let's call it 2500 to 3000 people that night is a dinner we call it the vip dinner with dave melzer dave melzer often travels with aspire tour to speak at the events and to host a vip dinner after the fact typically for with 50 to 100 people those networking dinners have happened all over the country i've I've known Dave Meltzer for many, many, many, many years.
We went to the same high school together called Patrick County High School, different times, obviously. But Dave Meltzer has built up a very, very impressive career.
You should check him out on social media. And these VIP dinners are a great way to network as well.
You can notice the theme. Masterminds, Elevator Night, Aspire Tour, Dave Meltzer Dinner are all about networking.
Bringing people together, stuff happens. Magic happens, deals happen, and everything in between.
Thursday, March 13th. In the daytime, we're going to be taking over Garrett White's mansion.
Garrett White is my partner on what you might have seen me recently post about from May 17th called Man in the Arena Tour. We're taking over the Maverick Center.
I've done events at the Maverick Center twice with a guy named The Muscle. We threw what's called Limitless Arena together at the Maverick Center.
We had over 7,000 people, over 6,000 people on the two events that we threw there. Coming up with Garrett White is going to be called Man in the Arena Tour.
It's also going to be at the same Maverick Center venue coming up May 17th. I'm very excited about it.
So we'll hopefully get around the same 7000 people into that facility.

You should check out Garrett White on social media because he's been doing fantastic content.

He has trained over 70,000 men over the years through his programs and coaching programs.

So on Thursday, March 13th, we will be taking over his mansion and we will be hosting the 100 million mastermind experience in his backyard where people can learn, have some amazing speakers, some networking sessions, and what's called breakout sessions where we take small pods, let's call it five to 10 people from the group, and they go venture off into different parts of the house. And they're going to actually meet and talk about their businesses, their careers, things that are going on in their world, their problems, their situations.
So in these small five to 10 people groups, these little pods, people can have amazing, amazing outlooks on life and learn from other people that are in the group. That night, we're going to be doing a yacht event.
That yacht event is also going to be for the 100 million Mastermind Experience members. So you can see the very different tiers of things.
Also, I didn't mention on Tuesday night, after the elevator night, I'm running over because Aspire Tour is doing an influencer event. They're doing an influencer event from 7 p.m.
to 10 p.m. Elevator night is 5 p.m.
to 9 p.m. We'll probably run that to 10 p.m.
also, just because there's a lot of speakers that are going to be there at elevator night. But Aspire Tour is having an influencer event because they are going to be doing this summer a virtual summit, a three day challenge.
And so they want to bring together influencers and affiliates over to a mansion also in Miami. And it's going to be at Chris Vasquez's house.
That event is for influencers and affiliates to learn about this virtual event so they can be a part of it and the lineup for that virtual summit is unreal a lot of the people you heard me name for the actual aspire tour are speaking there plus almost every judge from shark tank is going to be speaking the lineup is just really impressive of who they got for it and so it's gonna be very exciting they'll be they'll be posting about it this week the ads just started for their virtual summit. It's a three-day challenge and they do a great job doing that.
So Andrew and Eddie will be leading that up. Okay.
Why am I doing this whirlwind? Why is there half a dozen events in a three-day period, free events, influencer events, yachts and mansions, you know, large format, 3000 person events, a free elevator night. Why is all this thing happening? VIP dinners, et cetera.
Well, I am compounding on my relationships. I'm going deeper in different relationships.
I'm building new relationships and I'm gaining a lot of social media awareness. A lot of deals happen.
A lot of business happens, et cetera. I've been doing this my entire life.
And so whenever someone asks me, what is your one superpower? My answer is always the same. I say, it's my cell phone.
Whether I want to get a restaurant reservation, or I want to invest into a restaurant, I'm one text message away from a relationship. And so I like to throw events from free to expensive, to charity events, to business events to everything in between because I want to bring people together.
In between there, by the way, this three-day whirlwind, I'm going to be inviting the local Miami friends, local Miami influencers, local Miami ballers, local Miami models, local Miami different characters to come to different parts of these six events. The ones that fit them, I will invite them to.
I'll invite everyone to elevator night, obviously. And the ones that fit to come to an Aspire tour or VIP dinner, et cetera, I'll be inviting them as well.
Now, why would I do that? It's the same concept. I'm going deeper in certain relationships.
I'm spending more time with people that I want to see. And I try to do this in every city that I go to.
But during this whirlwind, March 11th to 13th, you're going to see a ton of social media and be able to actually watch in real time everything that we just talked about. From Elevator Night, Influencer Event, Aspire Tour, VIP Dinner with Dave Meltzer, 100 Million Mastermind at Garrett White's House, the Yacht Event, and everything in between.
It is very, very useful for people to watch. What am I up to so that you can pick and choose for yourself? You might want to throw a meetup in your city, or you might want to throw a meetup in a city that you're going to.
You might decide that you're super, super deep in real estate, and you want to throw a real estate meetup. You might just want to get people together to build your Rolodex, build your contacts up, and you just move to a new city, you just move to Miami, or you just move to Chicago, you just move to Austin, Texas, great.
You could start a running club. Your running club is every Saturday at 8 a.m., you guys go running.
The first time you've got four people, then you've got 11, then you've got 22, then you've got 30, then you've got 100, and now you start to meet all these people in town. You don't want to go running? Great.
You for poker chess pickleball basketball football whatever you want it doesn't cost you anything to do but there's a certain sport that you like or a certain game that you like or certain thing that you like to do activity wise it could be yoga breath work whatever surfing you can get people together and you can start to build your network it is fascinating what happens when you build your network. The fastest way to success is through working with other people.
It's through relationships. Let's say you needed to find a manufacturer.
Right off the top of my head, I know, oh, Paul Schrader, Minimus, that's a great warehouse. It's a 3PL warehouse.
They have 100,000 square feet. You should talk to him.
He knows everyone here. Oh, you need a clothing manufacturer.
Oh, you should talk to Verid, her family, Verid Nissum. They have an amazing company, downtown LA, 300,000 square feet.
Every word that I say out loud or you say to me, I know someone that fits. Warehouse, manufacturer, real estate, design, website, accountant, lawyer, anything, any topic that you bring up to me, I've got someone in my mind and you probably do too.
Now, what I'm trying to do is become closer with those people. I'm sending them deals, inviting them to events, building relationships, posting on social media, texting them memes, texting them when things are relevant to them, texting them happy birthday.
Like I am trying to build relationships with all the things that I'm doing. So as you see me go crazy with six events in three days, just understand the basis behind it.
I want to build my network. I want to build my social media.
I want to bring people together. I want to create deals and I want people to be introduced to each other for the butterfly effect, for them to go off and do things.
Because that to me is almost like a form of charity. If I can create investments and deals and partnerships and friendships, and they go off and do all these other things, the butterfly effect stem from me, and it can literally change the world.
I have watched friends go off and do amazing, amazing companies and businesses by meeting each other at elevator nights. I've obviously watched people at the 100 million mastermind create big businesses together, huge partnerships, help them fix things and make them more efficient.
And also as you're thinking like, dang, did he say $100,000? I also have a $20,000 mastermind with Tai Lopez called the 20 million mastermind or 20 mil. So we call it 20 mil mastermind.
You can see the website, 20milmastermind.com for a hundred million mastermind. It's a hundred MME.com.
So one zero zero MME.com. You can also see the social medias for all of these for operation black site, which operation black sites going on right this second.
I'm here at operation black site. You're going to hear on this episode, Tony Blower, Tony Blower has been teaching for over 40 years, self-defense.
So he's one of the instructors at Black Sight, which is literally happening while I'm sitting here talking to you right over there. It's a three-day experience.
We've been doing it for five years. So we do it every month here at Black Sight Ranch.
Right there's the wild jungle. So wild jungle, there's 200 animals over there.
But on the left side of where I'm pointing at, there's an entire shoot house, obstacle courses, military training type sections for Operation Blacksite. You can visit the social medias at Operation Blacksite or the website OperationBlacksite.com.
So we're going to transition from right now to the next part of this episode. It's attached for you.
You got a two for one special with our guest, Tony Blower. During his 40 years, he's taught the military, the government, police department, civilians, everyone in between how to become more efficient at self-defense through what he calls the spear system.
So make sure to check out Tony Blauer for the next 34 minutes after I'm done talking here. When you go out there and you are deciding to either want to throw events, you want to consume content of an event, you want to be an attendee of an event, you want to go to a mastermind, throw a mastermind, join a mastermind, learn about a mastermind, etc.
Check out my social media, check out the different pages and accounts. Just go down the rabbit hole and see what you like.
You might want to go to free events. You might want to go to masterminds.
You might want to attend Operation Blacksite. You might love the idea of Aspire Tour, Elevator Nights.
I'm throwing all these different things so you can pick and choose for yourself what you like or maybe it's your friends, significant other, your staff, et cetera, that might wanna go with you or maybe they're not, you can't attend or you're not that interested in it, but your friend is. Maybe your friend's a nerd that loves this or your friend loves idea of getting military training or your friend wants fight training or your friend wants to be in a mastermind, you might be able to recommend to your friends, staff, coworkers, et cetera, events to go to.
Not just mine, but other events that you see across social media that you might like, masterminds that you might like, training programs that you might like, real estate events, fashion events, et cetera, that you might enjoy. Events create relationships.
Events create memories that can last a lifetime. So go out there, spend more time with your friends, go to sporting events, go to music concerts, etc.
And make sure to check out Tony Blauer for the rest of this episode. And we will see you next Monday on themoneymondays.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Money Mondays. This podcast is taking place right here at Black Sight Ranch.
Some people know it as Wild Jungle. There's over 200 animals over there to my right.
And on my left, right this second, is what's going on. It's called Operation Black Sight.
Operation Black Sight is going into its fifth year where people learn how to shoot, how to fight, how to escape. And as we sit here right now with our next guest, they're actually learning how to do tourniquets and deal with blood and trauma.
It's very intense. It's very useful.
That's why I've been doing it for half a decade. And hopefully we'll keep doing this for many, many decades because it's important for you to get training to learn how to defend yourself and become a human weapon.
Since I just said that, you might be leading into who our guest is today. He has over 40 years of experience teaching people, teaching the military, teaching government, teaching UFC fighters, teaching trainers, teaching civilians, and everyone in between how to better improve their skills, whether they're beginner, advanced, intermediate, or even at the championship level, how can they get better? And so, without further ado, I'm going to have our guest, Mr.
Tony Blower, give a quick two minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Hey, Tony Blower.
Thanks, Dan. I love doing this.
I love coming to Blacksite and the, you know, the bio at turning 65 years old, you know, how do I do a two minute bio? But I, I, you know, I start off, there's two things that are unique about our system. One is it's the foundation of understanding the psychology of fear, how to turn fear into fuel.
And I grew up afraid of everything. I was a really good athlete, but I was afraid of every single sport.
I didn't want to strike out. I didn't want to let my team down.
If I was grappling, what if the guy breaks my knee? And I would worry about all the wrong things so I never hit flow state in spite of that I figured out a system to manage fear so I could excel as a as a parent as a dad as an athlete as an entrepreneur the other part of that is I was scared to death of violence and I grew up in the 60s and so that was Batman and Mannix and the wild wild west and and it was wild, so I'd watch all these shows, and this fear connection is so important because I was so afraid that all that shit was going to happen to me that when I was watching the TV shows, I was going, if I learn to fight, all that fear will go away, so I started to learn how to train martial arts, grappling and all stuff and when I got into fights as a kid as a teenager the fear didn't go away I was like what what is wrong and I realized that we look at self-defense incorrectly and I spent my life transforming and reimagining how people can protect themselves so what's interesting is I've asked some of the most household name athletes, some of the greatest fighters of our time, this exact question about the word fear. And you hear Mike Tyson, and Mike Tyson explains that he needs fear in order to step into that ring.
He is afraid. He does have fear.
And he uses fuel to go inside and become the champion that he is and become a ferocious beast that he is. I asked Oscar De La joa he said i wouldn't be who i am without fear he said if i go in there being cocky i'm gonna get knocked out right yeah when i say to you the word fear what do you think about uh same thing and it's a it's it's interesting because if you talk to tyson or de la joa when were fighting, they might not have had that same answer.

It was when they matured and evolved that you realize, oh my God, fear was my fuel.

We have a program called No Fear and it's spelled K-N-O-W.

And it's just this reframe of that if you get to no fear, that's the stress inoculation, that's the reps. If I ask you a question about business, about betrayal in business, an entrepreneurial thing, and I've seen you teach and talk so many times, your answers are like, you're like da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, but it's because you've had so much experience with it.
When we're kids, nobody mentors and tells us fear is a good thing. Fear is there to keep you alive.
Fear releases these chemicals that make you stronger, that make you faster. But if you've got a negative relationship with it, you know, if your coaches, your mentors, your parents don't teach you, it's okay.
You got to lean into fear. But so George St.
Pierre, one of the greatest MMA guys. I was, so I grew up in Montreal and George wasyu kushikai fighter in montreal he used to bow to me in in the gym before he was rush saint pierre before he did mma and uh uh what was wild we became friends and and but he never talked about fear and psychology until after he got much older and now he talks about it I just saw a clip of him saying

he wouldn't have been a champ if it wasn't for fear so I think part of that is you as you get older you go like I think now that I'm in my 60s I think of people when I was in my 20s or 30s telling me business advice or mobility or any type of advice and I'm thinking that doesn't apply to me that doesn't apply to me so I really think that um I look at at at fear as a psychological tool uh as it as an organic fuel uh you know we like to tell people you can't be brave if you're not afraid so it's a reminder that if I use that fear it can be empowering the hard thing is when you have an experience of fear whether it's business health entrepreneurial violence the physiological change like the blood rushing to its extremities feels like you're like like that and your heart is racing and you get vertical breathing and your palms are sweaty if nobody teaches you that that's okay that's what your body's doing autonomically that can freak you out and so that's why a lot of people hyperventilate or they get that freeze response so i'm going to tell you guys a fun story about george st pierre he actually changed my entire mindset on sponsorship and endorsement deals he sent me a pitch deck many years ago and he had won like back-to-back athlete of the year not just in fighting all sports and in this pitch deck was a photo an image of his entire body head to toe and then it showed price points for each part of his body so the hat it said 100,000 sunglasses 250,000 mouth guard 50,000 shirt 500,000 watch you get the point, shorts shorts etc down to his shoes and it had a side note for stomach and it showed drinks food snacks protein different things that he would consume on the left it showed travel would he get paid for a backpack for an airline things that he would do in his life and this has been burned in my mind ever since genius that head to toe there's an endorsement deal and every part of it and i literally use it in speeches and discussions when talking with influencers celebrities athletes everyone i'm like let me tell you about george st pierre yeah and i use this story so when you mention his name it boom it comes to my mind yeah how to do endorsementment deals. After we finish this, I'll show you some really cool old picks.
I knew him before he was Rush. In fact, you know my high gear equipment that we do the four-some-four stuff? I gave him some equipment back at the gym there so he could work on his ground and pound.
I just gave it to him. And it was wild to see his career just grow.
And and and you know there's one interview that i that i use in some of our presentations where he says uh he was that the the worst day of his life is the day he has to fight that he's terrified and when you see him doing his superman punch you know punching people in the face and fighting guys if i said to you that guy this morning was terrified you terrified, you wouldn't believe it. What people don't realize about fear, and this is like the gift of this epiphany, like this light bulb moment, is that Tyson used to throw up before his fights, but people didn't know that, right? If you, you remember like what a menace, he was just like dominated everybody.
Imagine if you, and you're a betting man, you, you invest. If you and I were walking in the bowels of an arena and we opened the door and it was a young Mike Tyson, right? And, and, and, but, but wait, so visualize this.
I'm there and I go, the next fighter we see, uh, you gonna bet on to win. I'm going to bet bet on to lose and we open the door and there's tyson crying throwing up you'd have gone oh man i'm betting the other guy for sure and and but then so what i tell people it's called fear management and there's a like like a joke i make when when we do our no fear seminars is i go like you know you, you have a Costco store manager, Walmart store manager, that what we all need is like a little fear manager button that we need to manage fear.
The market changes, you're managing fear really quickly. You're being followed, you know, you're managing fear.
You're late for a flight, you're managing fear. It's a wild thing.
And the better we manage fear, the better we manage time. So time is the only resource we can't get back.
When we're in a fear loop, we're catastrophizing what's going to happen next. Oh, shit, I'm going to lose this.
I'm going to screw this. You know, like when COVID hit, it was wild because all of my contracts, most of my contracts are law enforcement military well guess who stopped doing any training at that time so we went and so like 35 contracts got frozen and i'm like a small boutique business you know i've got uh 20 trainers around the world but it's just me my wife and a couple people inside sales.
The whole thing stopped. So two weeks became two months, and I'm going, I'm going, I'm going to lose everything.
And now it was fear management, and it was like, how am I going to? So here I am, a fear management expert. I felt like somebody shoved a vacuum up my ass and was sucking out my insides, right? I was just like terrified.
And so I tell people, people i make this joke if i wanted to learn how to skydive and i don't i'm afraid of heights i told you i'm afraid of everything you know so number one fear in the world is public speaking but like you see me talking in front of a group when i'm in my zone doing my stuff there's there's i got no fear because you know your material and you know how to manage you manage the fear but if i make the joke if i'm going to learn how to skydive i don't want to learn from a red bull 22 year old red bull athlete with a death wish i want to learn from a 55 or 60 year old jump master who fought in three wars survived and has done a thousand jumps and he loves it so much that when he retired he said i want to teach people to do this right so if i want to learn investing and you know you see this you know now you like there's uh i make fun of this all the time like if i see one more longevity influencer online who has gorgeous genetics they're 24 years old right like hey talk to me about longevity when you're 100 and you look like that not when you're 24. so if i want to learn and i want to learn investing from someone like you i want to learn if i want to learn fear like i'm like like i said i've been afraid of everything am i going to be a good dad oh my god should i open my school should not open my school all my life throughout my career 60 decades you know six decades 60 decades i'd be pretty old six decades um and i tell people i go i'm going to tell you and hopefully it'll work for you what i did to manage fear with all these stages you know and there are some people that are you know people who are just not afraid of anything and they're like i call them the unicorn and if you meet a unicorn while you can be inspired by them there's nothing to learn so if you and i go how did mozar write that when he was seven if we don't understand that we're not unicorns right so we can be inspired by greatness but we can't really uh emulate what that person sees you see things differently like like math wise i've seen you up talking and you do like a computation and all of a sudden like like you see that like you're a rain man right like and if i go i want to do i want to be able to do what dan does when i look at that i go i don't understand what he's doing how did he do that so it's a zone of genius you can be inspired but i'm off on a crazy tangent but like it's important what we do when we make those decisions to improve ourselves.
There's going to be, when you move outside your comfort zone, you get a fear spike. And if you don't know how to manage that fear spike, you step backwards and you stay small.
So I think that's where I was going. So typically we talk about investing into businesses, talk about charity, things like that.
I want to talk

about investing to yourself. Why is it important for people to invest into learning self-defense, whether it's martial arts, gun training, or a combination of all of the above? What can people be doing? Why should they be doing it for themselves and for their households? Well, I think at the end of the day, whatever your political angles are, whatever your diet, nutrition angles are, uh, we are survival organisms.
If I knock you out your body, independent of your ego, your attitude, your beliefs tries to, uh, you know, re-regulate your, your nervous system and awaken. If I cut you in, you don't have to go say, Hey, white blight cells, you know, tries to heal itself if i if i said what do you say and jumped across your body without you thinking would go whoa whoa take it easy you would hit a what we call a non-violent posture and try and naturally diffuse so we understand uh intrinsically there's a survival response we I really believe because for centuries we've outsourced our safety like there's a survival response we have in it.
I really believe because for centuries we've outsourced our safety. Like 100 years ago you knew which mushrooms killed you and which ones got you high.
100 years ago you might be, you know, I go into town to sell some pelts and some bandits come onto the ranch and our wife was up there with a black rifle powder, rifle powder, rifle going, I will shoot you. But she was shaking.
She was managing her fear to protect her kids and protect her property. So we've outsourced our safety.
And I think when you realize that you are the provider, the protector, that classic language, when you know, you look in the mirror the mirror and you go i can protect myself i will defend myself and the world's gone a little crazy in the last five years if i need to be a courageous bystander and like the the i've been saying this for about 20 years the ability to protect yourself or a loved one is an arguably the single most important skill you could possess and i've had a lot of people try to argue with me and i go okay let's say you have a car collection i go keep your car collection but i'm killing your family you go okay no yeah take the cars oh you have a stamp collection like because people try to like you know you the the the the the irrational mind tries to argue and that you know be the contrarian and i'm like so to to i always like giving the substance before i get to a direct answer is why should you learn uh how to improve your situational awareness manage fear be able to handle a sudden close quarter a violent encounter uh find out that you just got uh you know you're in a car accident you're you're getting robbed and you got in a fight and you got cut or duty to care i'm gonna put a tourniquet on somebody else or holy shit i did get cut i stopped the guy how do i put a tourniquet on me the like the ability to save your life for someone else is I was like, what is more empowering than that?

Here's the transcendent part of that is,

and it's a great thing.

There was a guy that I trained.

He was a Marine,

and he came to train with me a couple of times hand-to-hand.

He retired, and he got hired by a DOD software company,

Department of Defense guys,

and he was responsible for 12 people

and their sales team,

and multi-millions of like like sales commission now he's on and they figured his background and who he knew and all of this how would that right you're like you're buying the rolodex right and and the credibility like he was there he calls me because he knows we do all the the mindset fear management stuff and he literally says that i can't mention his name but but his quote is i would rather be in a gunfight than be in this board meeting that i go to and talk about my quota he had no like so here's a guy like if i said to you dan uh board meeting negotiating or uh surrounded by bad guys with guns shooting at you. You go, board meeting, right?

So I really think if you think about this outsource safety concept,

because what do you do?

Something's happening.

You're like, 911.

What's the response time now on shit?

Like minutes.

We had a home invasion in 2009.

Cops were there in three minutes.

That's outrageous.

That was 2009. I might have come home to a completely different scenario with no family but like now like you can empty like a magazine on somebody like 9 12 14 in four or five seconds like you're you're not even finished dialing 9-1-1 and you're dead or bleeding so it's for for many people out there, they live in a bubble.
Oh, you're going to love this story. I think it'll really resonate with where you're going.
So I was really good friends with Bruce Lee's son, Brandon. And I was on the set of The Crow with him three weeks before he was shit.
You never knew this? This is wild. I'm on the set of The crow they're doing some some stunt work uh and i'm like going like like this is a dangerous set like this these guys something's off here and there was one part where they're going to throw an actor into some boxes and i see nails coming out of the boxes and i'm like i like i go over to the i go to stunt coordinator i go dude like there's two nails out of this crate here.
You're going to throw somebody in. So when I heard what happened, I was like, there was a moment where I felt like if I was there, I'm the type of guy that if there's a gun on the table, I'm going to check.
Is it loaded? Is it this? So I don't know if you know the whole story of how he died. You know, there was the dummy round, round blue when the primer blew no one cleaned the gun so there was the the uh the tip of the bullet was in the barrel when they put the squibs in to fire the close up on the gun so you get the flash it blew the uh the lead out at like so slow that it just did so much damage when it hit brandon in the stomach but i got this call like brandon's dead and i'm like holy um and um so i went out to the funeral and i'm on a red eye back and it was back in the day walkman you know so i had a walkman i i love to read i had three books it red-eye back.
I was living in Canada at the time. And I put my books down here.
I'm in business class. I got a seat beside me.
I'm like, oh, good, quiet. I'm doing this.
And before they close the door, a flight attendant, not working the flight, runs on. So she's got her name.
She's got whatever, Delta or American, whatever it was. She gets in, and I'm wearing like I got like this t-shirt jeans and she says oh that's my seat I moved my shit I'm thinking you know and then she's like fired up it's midnight you know she goes oh my god hi my name's you know Susie I'm a flight attendant thought I was gonna miss the flight this isn't my hub and I'm she's going to talk all night.
I want to sleep. And I'm like, I'm not in a good mood.
A good friend of mine just died. I'm coming for a funeral.
I'm trying to make this dramatic. And she goes, she goes, so what do you do? And we're starting to taxi.
And I look at her and I go, I'm a life insurance salesman thinking who wants to talk about life insurance just as you're taking off right and she looks me up and down she goes you're not a life insurance salesman thinking who wants to talk about life insurance just as you're taking off. Right.
And she looks at me up and down. She goes, you're not a life insurance salesman.
I'm a good reader character person. And I said, okay, you got me.
I'm lying. I'm a life extension insurance salesman.
And she goes, life extension insurance. What's that? I go, I teach self-defense and she says, oh my God, I always wanted to learn how to defend myself.
And I interrupt her and I go, no, you didn't. Because people who always wanted to do something, do it.
I said, I think what you meant to say is you always wanted to be, you always wanted, you wanted to know how to never be near a situation where you might have to defend yourself. And she goes, oh my God, yeah.
I ended up doing a five hour seminar for the whole flight home. But it was this idea that when you say to people, come to Blackside and train with us, they go, this looks cool, but then they sit there.
They don't realize the noxious effect of fear. Why would you invest in and practice something you never want to have happen? You've got to be at another level in your thinking where you go, the worst day of my life would be I had a chance to influence the outcome but I didn't know what the hell to do and that's what we're giving people here is options we're options facilitators every one of us is a human weapon we we all know how to fight we don't know how to fight we don't know we know how to fight and it's overcoming that fear first and it's the type of thing where you can come and do the training and go okay now I know and maybe I'll do one or two more gun classes or I'm going to practice once a month with the tourniquet or I am going to learn jiu-jitsu or whatever you fall in love with something but the ability to know that you can protect yourself and not be manipulated that's huge but the transcendent value is that changes your emotional psychological posture at your next meeting right so it's uh it's it's it's it's very it's it's super interconnected you know the expression the pen is mightier than the sword so i took some poetic liberty and i added a sentence to it the pen is mightier than the sword when you know how to use a sword.

For sure.

Right?

So you're there, you're going, in the back of your mind,

like you're such a strong negotiator because you know you don't need the deal.

If you don't like the person or you don't like the whatever, you're gone.

That's the katana.

I'll cut this in a second where, remember Iggy Pop?

This is one of my favorite quotes. He said, imagine if desperation were were attractive so a lot of people come in there they need the deal so bad or they need and and so they come at you negotiating with fear as opposed to with fierce like in you know it's a it's that mindset switch and you can get closer to that when you do this training because you discover that you are vulnerable.
And then you build to strengthen that and you become a better version of yourself immediately, even after two days. So you guys can see what we've been talking about, Operation Black Sight.
You can go to Instagram, it's at Operation Black Sight on Instagram and social media. And then also OperationBlackSight.com.
You can see full details. Okay, the spirit system.
You've been teaching the spirit system for many many years all over the planet what is the spear system explain break it down and where can someone go find or research or hire you or book you or come to get training etc yeah thanks um so the i i grew up doing wrestling taekwondo boxing got into some confrontations where nothing worked. They were so close.
They were so fast. One was a road rage.
One was multiple salience. One was actually in a boxing ring.
And I had this wicked tunnel vision. And I was a Bruce Lee junkie like all of us, right? I think you were the world's biggest Bruce Lee fan, but I was.
Like every Bruce Lee fan thinks they were the biggest Bruce Lee. I loved them.
I remember when I was 15, my mom said, are you going to go into the family business? Are you going to be a lawyer, doctor, cop? It was the 70s, so there were only three jobs. And I said, Mom, I'm going to be a famous martial artist like Bruce Lee.
I'm going to develop my own system. And I was on the floor looking at Bruce Lee magazine doing the splits she patted me on the head and said okay sweetheart we'll talk about this when you're older like I just knew I wanted I abhor violence um and and and I'm I'm so afraid of it that I just think about it all the time I study I'm obsessed not passionate obsessed and so I started teaching in 1977 my first paying official student 1980 this kid mitch gets dropped with a left hook dan um and i'm teaching him at the time what we all think of when we think about fighting we think john wick we think jackie chan we think bruce lee doing moves doing moves so i'm teaching him the moves and how to think and do this stuff and i go and and just visualize this i come back to his private lesson i've been training him for three months he was having a bully situation at school his dad was a friend of my family i'd known them for decades um i literally since i was born and i'm 20 at the time and he says and his dad uh joey says mitch is having a bully situation at school I need you to

teach him some stuff because you're still doing your your your martial tricks right called the

martial tricks I said yeah it's 1980 I'm making four dollars and fifty cents an hour for my father

sweeping in his in our we had a ladies import export clothing business so I'm in the back

sweeping and I would punch boxes every day we get a shipment in like Rocky this is like before

Thank you. This is really how I started my business.
He goes, how much do you charge me for Mitchell? I go, well, I'm not going to charge you, a friend not going to charge you a friend of the family he says no no no no no I want you to do this like for real and be and be serious about this and uh I go um okay I don't know I can't charge you he says how's 20 so I'm thinking five classes because I'm making five bucks an hour I said whatever that's fine he says so I'll pay you 20 bucks a class and i'm like holy shit and i'm going i'm rich like i'm like i can retire i have you know one class so i start teaching mitch suddenly mitch's brother steve goes how can mitch gets private lessons now i got that i'm in there in a wealthy area and then one day we're training outside and derek across the street says what are you guys doing next day i 30, 30, like in a week. At $20? At 20 bucks an hour.
Oh my God. And I'm 20, it's 1980.
And I'm still working 40, 50 hours a week. You're basically a billionaire.
Yeah, I'm doing, so. What? So I'm doing, I'm doing this and I'm working nine to five for my father, sometimes Saturday.
And then every single night for six years, i'm teaching privately whoa um but mitch's bully situation that kicked this all off uh i come back for a private lesson and he's sitting there like this in his room and i went what happened he jumps up here can i swear on the show not the f word okay and he's going so beep beep beep beep beep and I'm going calm down man what what's going on and he goes you know the bully and they it had been a verbal abuse and up until now no physical and um he said uh man the guy today he put his hands on me and I told him you look like the school wasn't doing anything so I was just teaching him in case it got physical he was running late for class and the bully trips him and everyone starts laughing and um mitch gets up and he and he's like what are you bothering me for and i'm paraphrasing it for for editing purposes you know what are you bothering me for i don't even know you've been bugging me since school started and the guy walks up and he goes and he shoves him he goes what are you gonna do about it to you no to to my student mitchell right so he's like and mitch is 15 years old and he shoves mitch and mitch goes back and he just goes red like someone puts your hand on you and you just lose it and he grabbed the guy and slammed him against a locker bank and said leave me alone man i don't even know who you are you've just been bugging me and then he looks at me mitchell looks at me he says then he dropped me with a left hook i I said, Mitch, I don't understand. What do you mean? Like, why didn't you parry, block, slip? And he goes, well, I was holding him with my left hand, and then he goes, I had my school books that I picked up in my right hand.
So can you imagine if you and I had to box, Dan, and I had to hold your shirt and hold books, how easy it would be to hit me in the face, right? And so, but, and I swear this happened. I said, I describe it as it was like the god of self-defense.
I was 20, 1980. I went, oh my God, we teach self-defense wrong.
And what I meant by it is we don't talk about the emotional, psychological. We don't have a pre-fight ritual.
It's just like real violence is just sudden.

It happens.

And action's faster than reaction.

What happens when our situational awareness is compromised,

and I'm going to get a little nerdy here for a second,

our executive function is hijacked,

our cognitive brain is bypassed,

and our limbic system, it's called an amygdala hijack,

goes, shit, like, and we, you know. So so we know mike tarzan been on your show many times he loves snakes you most guests here if you slipped a snake in here during the interview they'd be like what the they would do so their primitive self their primal self would react to that until you stress inoculate so i started that day in 1980 i said everything we do has to make sense in the real world and we started reverse engineering everything we would look at any real incident and go what impact does it have on our body and our mind because i don't i'm not going to stand there and and if i always tell people now if you look at cctv and video evidence you don't see it you've never seen a John Wick fight in the real world.
It doesn't exist. There's no evidence of it.
You would think if all of the, and I've been a martial artist for 50 plus years. So people think I'm hating on martial arts.
I'm just trying to make us safer. Going, look, this is cool.
I've got a gun collection. I got spears.
I got knives. But if somebody broke into my house, I'm grabbing my Glock and a tomahawk like here we go I'm not going to grab my spear or a black powder rifle where I go miss and go oh like shit right let me let me reload um so we just got to look at real violence so how did spear happen is while I was only I was doing Fight Club before Fight Club was a movie.

We were like getting once a month together.

We'd get together and beat the crap out of each other.

But it wasn't just let's fight like in Fight Club.

I'd say, literally I'd go,

Dan, what's your biggest fear in a confrontation?

And you'd say, I don't know, two guys with a knife.

And then we would do psychology, we'd do drilling,

and then we'd put our makeshift gear on. I lived in Montreal at the time didn't have my equipment company so it was like a hockey helmet gauntlets taekwondo chess guard baseball shin guards we were like frankenstein right we'd put everything on and then i'd say uh next up uh dan fleischman and you'd put your gear on and i go dan your scenario is this and two guys with a knife would approach and you'd be like oh man this is when he interviewed me and i would give you that fear and you'd see people like viscerally go and because because if i say let's spar you go hold on a second you warm up and you get ready and you stretch and you shadow box.
You don't just start. So these things were like fight club with a scenario.
And, uh, in it, I noticed we'd have a, we had a reputation. We do these once a month.
That's some bad asses from all over Montreal would come in. And a lot of them would like turn and frigging shrimp and go, go fetal and tap.
And, and I go, man, like, like I thought this guy, you know, you judge a book by cover. But what I realized is nobody understood two things here, how to manage their fear in the scenario.
But the other thing I noticed is that when people were surprised, they all flinched. And it was like, so I started experimenting with this and I developed a drill called the sucker punch drill, which would be I'd have have a mouth guard on, you'd have gloves on and we'd just be talking.
And I'd say, Dan, whenever you want the conversation, punch me as fast as you can, right? Remember the Ali video that I showed? We show a clip of that or a picture of that on here where there's a picture of Ali, like the greatest, the Freddie Starr. Have you seen this video yet? I don't think so gotta i'll send it to you freddie star is leaning over talking to ali and uh in in uh uh the interview in the uk and ali's like listening and drawn in and then star goes and whap and he throws a jab and you i got a picture of ali going total fetal but here's a guy that's fought fraser norton you know like the foreman and here's like like this little comedian who surprised him and made him flinch so we show that video because a lot of people especially male egos go i'm not going to flinch this is bullshit and i go like your flinching is your friend when your situational awareness is compromised you want something to do whoa i didn't see that so spear is an acronym for spontaneous protection or startle response accelerator response spontaneous protection enabling accelerated response i figured out almost like classical conditioning a series of drills where we uh trick the body synthetically into micro flinches and then attach a cognitive correction.
So we're converting the flinch. So instead of us going like most, uh, um, victims of stabbing who don't survive a stabbing, they'll get slashed in the arm.
And then there's always a trail down their back. So if you started hitting me, I flinch non-conscious movement, but then I want to get away.
I go like this and I turn and the person's still coming at you. So there's that, there's a forensic line all the time.
So what we do is we teach people the flinch is going to happen whether you like it or not, but then how do you convert it? So how do you attach the limbic, the amygdala hijack with the limbic system with this cognitive, like an athlete, what should I do here? So it's a micro flinch, and then there's a, like a sequence of drills we do, we call fingers played outside 90, where you drive in and you recruit this cordu extremity explosive movement, almost like a biological airbag. And we've been teaching it.
So I discovered this, like an archaeologist, in 1986, 87. And I've been refining it like to today.
When COVID started, I saved my company by teaching online. We've done almost 800 classes since.
800 two-hour classes online all over the place, man. So I just say that because I'm still, I'm so obsessed with it.
We're still coming up with wild stuff. So basically, I recognize we're all human weapons.
We all have fear. How do we use fear as fuel? How do we use our natural inclination to whatever we're going to do and weaponize fear and weaponize our startle response and get back in the fight so where can people find you on social media where can they find your website how can they get a hold of you um so best thing is is so i've got two main websites blower training systems my last name blower training systems i've been around long enough that if you just google tony blower you'll find my the lovers and the haters like any of all of us have.
Then there's Blower Spear. Of course, you can find me through Blacksite.
I've been, I think, to every single event since we started. And, you know, I love it.
Thank God I live close to here, you know, so it's just easy for me to shoot in and do it. But there's something so special.
If you're sitting on the fence, should I do this? Should I do this? Like being able to understand your vulnerability and how to turn, like the primary ingredient of courage is fear and to experience that and then to go, oh, my God, I know how to put on a tourniquet. I know how to shoot a gun.
And you're not going to master stuff, and you've got world-class instructors here, but you're going to know what you don't know, and fear of the known is a lot more manageable than fear of the unknown. Absolutely.
All right, guys. It's really important to have these discussions with your friends, family, and followers about learning self-defense.
So if you can go to martial arts training, if you can go to gun training, if you can go to gun range, learning something, at least having some basis. Obviously, we'd love to have you here at Operation Black Sight, but in your own hometown, wherever you are in the world, there is people that can teach you martial arts, shooting, self-defense, et cetera.
So at least you have some type of a basis because what you don't want to do is the famous quote from Mike Tyson. Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.
So going through experience, going through the, the, the back and forth, learning from people that actually know what they're doing can literally change your life and hopefully save your life. If, if, you know, God willing, it never happens.
But if it does, you want to be at least somewhat prepared for those moments so that you know what to do in those situations in those situations all right guys this is a very different episode where we talk more about investing to yourself into your mind and into you know protecting your household and oftentimes we overlook it until after the fact after you get into a carjacking after you get robbed in los angeles after you get into a random stabbing in london or new y where it's happening now, like you do it after the fact, it's mathematically unlikely that you're going to be the one that gets robbed again or gets stabbed again. You know, it already happened to you, like, unfortunately.
And so it's not that often you hear someone get like carjacked twice, right? There are definitely women that have been raped multiple times because that's a much more intense thing and it's more more focus happens there. But the actual like robbery shootings and things that we see oftentimes happen during tourism or in certain cities, certain territories.
And so getting the training beforehand rather than after the fact is very critical, similar to trying to be healthier before you go to the hospital rather than fixing after the fact. So the more things you can do to be preventative, to learn is critical.

Have this discussion with your friends, family, followers.

Maybe take all your staff, your coworkers together,

go out there and do some martial arts training or a day at the range.

Just getting comfortable with it.

And then if you can actually spend time or you like it,

then obviously it'd be great

if you can get into more intense training

because this is a lifelong mission.

You don't just learn once on a one-day thing

or a two-hour thing here and there.

This is part of your daily life

because at any moment, your whole life can change.

Appreciate you guys listening.

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