Podcast 525: Redefining Masculinity: Brotherhood, Fatherhood & Accountability with Agora Guild

MARTIN: Hi everyone. This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Podcast, the network that introduces interesting concepts and interesting people. And today I have both. Bart Henderson, Esquire. Welcome to the show.

BART: Great. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate you having us on, and I'm looking forward to talking a little bit about health and about community and things of that nature.

MARTIN: Yeah. Bart, you took an interesting shade toward success. You have acquired a whole bunch of degrees and proof of your ability, right?

BART: Yeah. It's funny, you say shades of success. Looking back, is a university degree success? I don't think so, but some people might.

MARTIN: Right. In my world, it's a proof of ability, right? 

BART: That's right. 

MARTIN: You can work at a level of excellence and sustain it and prove that you can do it.

BART: I agree. because so many people, a lot of young people will come to me and ask about, there's this big debate now of college or no college education and I always have the same exact answer, Martin, which is, it's really showing that you can make it through. It's showing that you have the grit to get through the degree, which is sometimes more important than the degree itself.

MARTIN: Exactly. Because you may end up in an industry other than the one in which you took the early education anyway.

BART: I know, 40, 50 and 60 year olds, you still don't know what they want to do. It's funny that we think high school and college kids should know what they want to do after high school or college. It's kind of preposterous. But I think just getting a degree no matter what the degree and then following your heart is kind of the way to go.

MARTIN: Yeah. Sometime in my forties, I took a Myers-Briggs test. 

BART: Mm-hmm. 

MARTIN: Which, it's 16 slots on the board. 

BART: Right. 

MARTIN: Anyway, I read the list of, well, you might be a good newspaper person, you might be good at advertising, you might be a good photographer, you might be good at business. I look back and I did all of them.

BART: Yeah, that's right. Rather than picking one, do a little bit of every single one, right?

MARTIN: Yeah, exactly. 

BART: Yeah. That's cool.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, so the stuff that you are good at, well, let's just qualify that not only have you taken a degree in law, you also took a degree in business, right?

BART: Yeah. So I went into the law degree thinking, maybe I want to practice law, but I always had a real passion towards business. So, I started printing t-shirts at night when I was in law school. So I would go and in my kitchen, I actually had a press, my wife can remember. I used to actually press t-shirts at night and then wake up at four in the morning to meet my study group the next day at 5 or 5:30 and do it all again. And so, by the time I graduated law school, I was in a JD–MBA program. I started my second year of law school, and as I said, I really like talking to people in business and things like that a whole lot more than I like just reading and writing all day long. Because there's this idea of a lawyer that everybody has in the courtroom and yeah, 1 to 3% of lawyers will eventually be in the courtroom. And even those court attorneys don't spend that much time in the courtroom. 

MARTIN: Right.

BART: But, I like meeting people like you, going to events and actually, interacting more so than just kind of burying my face in a book all day. So that's the path I ended up taking, rather than going down the traditional legal route, although I am barred in New York and New Jersey.

MARTIN: Mm-hmm. you speak with the proper tempo for New York.

BART: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We do things a little more with purpose and quickly around here, I'd say.

MARTIN: Yep. There you go. I remember I was walking down a street in Manhattan. I'm watching this fellow, I don't know, a 20 something year old Hispanic fellow speaking with his mom. 

BART: Mm-hmm. 

MARTIN: Standing at the corner about to cross and he's telling her, mom, you gotta hustle. This is New York. You gotta move with purpose.

BART: Yeah, that's right. We walk at a different pace. I lived in Hawaii for three years. I love Hawaii. And I'll never forget when I got back to the East Coast, at one point there were cars just whizzing by me on the highway and I said: “Oh my God, does everyone go this fast all the time?” And my friend was like, you've just been in Hawaii for too long.

MARTIN: You're bushed. We call it Bushed. I lived in British Columbia up north in the cold country. Yeah. And, if you stay too long, you become Bushed.

BART: Yeah, that's right. I wonder what the Hawaiian version of that would be, but something of that.

MARTIN: Beached.

BART: Yeah, beached. There you go. Yeah.

MARTIN: Right on. Okay. Well, great. You're still so very young, and yet you have succeeded in so many ways, right?

BART: Yeah. Well, I think my greatest success that I'd count in life would be my two young boys. I know anybody can have children, but well, anyone who's blessed enough to be able to. But,  I consider my being present as a father and a husband to be my first thing, so many people when I go to talk and give speeches or career days or whatever, they'll say: “What do you do? What do you do?” And I think it's so backwards that we all say “Oh, well, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor. I'm a health professional and this.” I'm a father and I am a husband first and foremost, and then I do all these other things too that I love. But I think that the whole work-life balance that we do in America is totally backwards. It should be life-work balance. Right? And really, a lot of modern society. So, that's my greatest accomplishment I'd say.

MARTIN: I'm actually noticing a shift as we're talking to people.

BART: Mm-hmm. 

MARTIN: And I'm noticing that people are now stating proudly how many kids they have or have raised. To which I say I'm super grateful to people, especially in your generation. Who are taking on being parents. 

BART: Right.

MARTIN: I'm being the grandparent now to two little boys.

BART: Wow. Congrats.

MARTIN: Yeah, exactly. And it's awesome. And I'm involved a lot because the parents are both working because the society has gone to the level where not working is almost not possible.

BART: Right, right. That’s the thing, a lot of people nowadays are working just to pay for childcare to continue working, it's kind of this cycle where both the man and the woman go to work and let somebody else raise their child, which, from a health standpoint, that's a whole other conversation. But essentially, I think it's really, I think there's two things that are interesting. One, men are so much more involved nowadays, like in general, at least the guys that I'm surrounded with. There were times in the last 20, 30, 40, 50 years where guys never changed a single diaper for their children, just didn't even know how to do it. Nowadays, that'd be looked at, you don't know how to change a diaper? But there's that, and then it's just the general separation. It's interesting, obviously, we've come to need those two incomes from the man and woman. But that leaves this gap. And I've actually talked about this with friends and people lately. How much do you pay for childcare this year? And they'll say, 50,000, 80,000, whatever it might be. And these are the real numbers. This is what people pay. Just to have childcare. I'll say, well, aren't you kind of just working if you're making 75 or a hundred thousand a year, aren't you kind of just working just to pay for the childcare?. What about the idea of coming home if you can do it, and then having one income because you're not paying for the childcare, So that's part of the zeitgeist and part of the conversation now, that people are actually looking at.

MARTIN: Well, you wrote a book. Has it gone out into print?

BART: Not yet. It's going to be “Retire by 40” and the gist of that is finding contentment in life. It's not just like a get-rich-quick type of advice thing. It's really about getting to contentment, and being happy in the moment, part of the journey rather than the destination.

BART: And then the other one that I'm working on is about childcare. And so I feel that there are a lot of books that are out there that talk about the health of the mother that I’ve read, my wife and I read together. But the health of the mother, but not a lot of them will talk about the health of babies and from kind of one to two, or zero to two. And so, in our book, and my wife's writing it with me, we talk about everything in health, whether it's antibiotics or nutrition or hospital decisions. Because what happens is nowadays people show up to a hospital and don't realize the hospital's making all the decisions for the parents. The parents have little to no input whatsoever unless they actually come up with a plan.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BART: And so, it's about just kind of being cognizant of that. And then also, someone like you who's such a health expert, it's about talking about health and infusing healthy ideas with children, rather than going along with the public consensus, I suppose. 

MARTIN: The standard of care that you'll receive is dictated by the insurance companies who are motivated by dollars. And it's not optimized for health. It's optimized for profit at the level of an insurance company.

BART: Exactly. That’s exactly it. Yeah. And that's what we look at in the book quite a bit.

MARTIN: Actually, I would be interested in seeing you write about from {age} minus one. Not from zero because the health of the child starts before you even conceive it.

BART: Right. Yep. Good point. We do actually, that's the first thing we start about is when the mother gets pregnant and nutrition in that sense. There’s quite a bit of things that are even published. Even the National Institute of Health, which I wouldn't necessarily say is something you should follow or listen to, but there are a lot of things that are published about acetaminophen, for instance, which pregnant mothers just aren't told by their doctors. They're not told by their doctor groups. They're not told by anybody in the hospital. And so, there are even things that are common knowledge in the white paper community, PubMed and things like that. But it never gets down to the parents. And so the parents, they never end up even addressing this stuff unless you are very lucky to come across somebody who says: “Hey, you should check out this, this paper or this book”, or whatever it is. And so it's just a how-to guide. It's not telling people what to do. It's saying “Hey, this is one, two, or three ways of thinking about it. You might wanna look at these different options.”

MARTIN: Yeah. I remember the conversations I had with my daughter. The two grandchildren that I have the pleasure of visiting with. 

BART: Yep. 

MARTIN: We were talking about pre-pregnancy, detox, whatever is going on, we need to make sure that you are actually not toxic when you get there, and we need to make sure that you have plenty of the important nutrients. One being iodine. I don't know if that makes the radar on most people's, it's certainly not a conversation maker in the general society.

BART: Right. Absolutely. As far as pre-pregnancy goes, just things that I've researched and read and looked at. There are a lot of conversations around folate versus folic acid. Now there's a tremendous amount of literature coming about, phthalates, and how phthalates can even affect the AGD (Anal genital distance) in children and genitals and things of that nature. They can test phthalates in a woman's urine. So as far as detoxing to be able to get rid of phthalates and chemicals and things that have phthalates around you, it's really about detoxifying, as you say, the environment to start healthy. 

MARTIN: Yeah.

BART: Then going healthy first, it's like when I used to talk to people two or three years ago, about health, I would always start by telling them things that I thought were useful for me. Which were tactics on working out and eating healthy and things like that. But what I’ve now realized after working with a lot of people over the years is that the number one thing is not, in my opinion, not nutrition and exercise, but the number one thing is first getting the toxins out of your life. Because in America and in North America and kind of the modern world, we are surrounded by toxins everywhere we go.

MARTIN: Yes, indeed. And yeah, you can start naming things like the Glade plugin that puts stuff in the air and the plastic bottles that you drink stuff out of. And the dish.

BART: Yeah. This one's metal, just so you know. It looks plastic, but it's metal.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. This one looks like glass. 

BART: There you go. Yeah. Great.

MARTIN: Yeah, there's more to it, but here at Life Enthusiast we definitely have the tools, right? One thing is the awareness of the problem. The next thing is realizing that you have the problem. And the third thing is, where do you go for solutions?

BART: That's exactly it. And it's not major when it comes to detoxifying, right? So, what I would say is step one in health, if you look at it as a whole, and I've actually heard some other podcasts you've done where you talk about this issue a little bit. If you look at it as a whole, it's overwhelming. Furniture in your house that has flame retardants, and then you've got sprays and you've got gas and you've got water and you've, everybody will just go,”oh, well, it's too complicated. I'm not gonna do it.” And so if you take it by some big categories and say: “Well, what are the worst things first?” That's the approach I like to take, like glyphosate, right? Try to get glyphosate out of your life would be the first step, in my opinion. Right. And that's a herbicide, pesticide.

MARTIN: Good. Good. I'm glad that you're acknowledging that. Chlorine, glyphosate, phthalate, BPA, Teflon.

BART: Yep. Microplastics in general. 

MARTIN: Right. And so it’s like air, water, food, cosmetics, and cleaning products. 

BART: There you go. Yeah. And if you look at it as one category, like microplastics, people will go, “Well I can't, my food's wrapped in plastic. My water bottles are plastic, my coffee cups are plastic, my, to go containers,” they'll just go: “I can't change that.” I say: “okay, well, what are the biggest offenders, right? Well, there's the hot to go coffee cups, 12 billion microplastics per cup. Or depending on the cup. And then there's water bottles. So look, just start there. You don't need to change your whole life. Just get a water bottle and get a to-go coffee cup. And that's probably gonna change 80% of what you do.”

MARTIN: Yep. 

BART: Yeah. It's about those small steps.

MARTIN: Yep. The 80/20 finding.

BART: There you go. Yeah. 

MARTIN: So interesting that you would throw in ‘Retire by 40.’ I would like to suggest that it would be more like ‘do your hobby as your life activity. So do what you love and do it.

BART: You just gave away the secret to the book, Martin. That's it. That's a good way to put it.

So, please expand on that, on your view on that. 

MARTIN: Well, when you are getting up in the morning to do the stuff that you're going to do that day, It's either going to be, oh God, another day of drudgery. Or, I sure wonder what wonderful stuff is coming my way to today.

BART: Totally. Right. Totally. That's it. You might have heard people say this, or maybe they don't say it as much near you, but there's this kind of phrase that I hear so often, and so you'll say “Hey, how's it going? And someone will go, “same shit, different day.” And when I hear that, it's funny because some people go, oh yeah, my response when people say that is I go “oh, that's terrible.” And they go “What? What do you mean? I said, same shit, different day.” So nothing's going on that's fun, right?  You're not excited? And they go “Oh, I didn't mean that. Nothing is…I said “well, you said it.” And so, that's kind of the approach. So many people live for this, two day a week life, right? Where they're like “oh, I'm living for Saturday and Sunday. I'm going to a sports game on Saturday, or I'm going to a big event on Sunday.” So they live five days a week that they hate and then two days a week that, that kind of is bearable enough to get them through the next five days, so it comes to retire by 40, it's finding that thing that makes you want to live seven days a week.

MARTIN: You know what's interesting with this rise of AI? It's possible that most lawyers, definitely paralegals, will be replaced by a machine.

BART: Absolutely. Absolutely. I see that. Lawyer, obviously, a lot of different trades, but anything where there's copywriting involved, it's going to be probably more rapidly replacing people than anywhere else, I would say.

MARTIN: But more so, we are going to see humanoid robots within probably four or five years. 

BART: Yeah. 

MARTIN: At a price of maybe something like $20,000. 

BART: Mm-hmm. 

MARTIN: Which will completely revolutionize factories, offices, production. So we will have to figure out what to do with ourselves. 

BART: That's right. And how to stay healthy without doing as many things. One of the plights that we see in society is everyone is sitting at desks all day long, right? And so, that's happening more and more. I read something, I can't remember the years, but it was that the average American 150 years ago had something like 30,000 steps a day, and now it's down to 3,500 a day. 

MARTIN: Yeah. 

BART: And so, it's the same thing. What are, how are we going to deal with that as that comes in, the food's going to be brought directly to you. You've gotta do that. It's almost gonna be like, just train sessions where you gotta get up, stretch and do things.

MARTIN: Right. I think we will have to introduce adversity into our life artificially, just so that we can live because we need resistance, we need adversity. We need something to push against, otherwise we stagnate and decay, and if you don't use it, you lose it.

BART: Well, that's just from the physical standpoint, but even the mental standpoint. I've read articles lately about GPSs, for instance. I've gotten in the car with people, and we'll be going, without exaggeration, like eight blocks away, and they'll put in their GPS. I'll go “what are you doing? You don't need your GPS.” And they go “oh, well I just. I don', go anywhere without a GPS.” 

MARTIN: That's how I do it. 

BART: You know how to get there. And so just that very function of not using a GPS has been shown to close off pathways neuropathways in the brain. And so it's the same thing with not writing anymore or to me it's like thinking about writing, right? Because like it's one thing to actually just write, it's another to say, well, what, what's a good word or a good way to put this?. 

MARTIN: Editing.

BART: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

MARTIN: Polishing it. 

BART: Yeah. 

MARTIN: You know what's interesting? My generation used to remember phone numbers. Today, I can tell you what my phone number was in the house in 1981. Right. And then that house in 1986 and all that, right? And I had to change my phone number when I moved.

BART: Yeah, that's right. Nowadays, I know my wife's phone number and that's probably about it. I remember my phone numbers from when I was a young kid, but that's about it. That kind of thing that's going away, I suppose. And the question is, what do we replace it with, to keep neuroplasticity and then to keep physically engaged? I would like to think that we're gonna have so much time, everyone's gonna work out a bunch, that I don't think that's where we're going though.

MARTIN: Well, okay, so let's talk about the motivation, because that's what it's about. You need to understand the why before you get to the what.

BART: Totally. 

MARTIN: And I think you're really good at motivating yourself. So how do you share that with the world?

BART: So, one thing that's really key to me is surrounding yourself with people who motivate you or keep you accountable. And so, that to me is probably the most important thing. In fact, the five people you surround yourself with are going be the average of what you are, pretty much. And sonI make it a real specific point to be surrounding myself with people who push me or people who make me want to do more. 

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you about this then, the method by which you can reach out to people who don't necessarily care about you because you are the junior trying to join some people who are more accomplished than yourself, right?

BART: So there's always value to give. And so to me, the number one thing in life is how can you bring some value to someone else's life, right? And it's the same thing with making a multi-billion dollar company. It's just someone bringing more value to somebody. And so, if you have somebody who you want to connect with, who might be out of reach for most people, the question is, well, how do you bring them value? What's going on in their life that they need solved? A really easy example would be health. There are a lot of people I know who are either deca or a hundred millionaires many times over who otherwise would be unattainable, but they know health is important and they want help from someone to keep them accountable to health. So that's the kind of thing you reach out “hey, this is something I know, something I can help people do. I wanna help you be accountable for your health.” So  that's an example. Or it could be the method by which you do it. If you find out someone likes race cars, give them an invite to go to the track to race Ferraris and Lamborghinis with you. If somebody likes Sports, I'll invite 'em to play. I play racketball, two to three times a week or something like that. And it's a very easy ask to get somebody into the racketball court, whereas trying to schedule a half an hour meeting with somebody or something like that might not sound quite as attractive as getting somebody on a racketball court. So it's what kind of value the props could be in business, it could be connections, but it's always show value first. I always, it's never “hey, can you do this for me? Can we have a meeting?. It's always, Hey, meet this person. They can help you. Hey, here's this thing that can help you.” And then, building the relationship from there is kind of what my approach has been. Thus far. 

MARTIN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I guess that would have to start with some sort of a personal inventory of what am I bringing to the world? 

BART: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

MARTIN: My assets include, and I guess if you don't know, you need to ask the five people that know you.

BART: Well, that's good. I would also say, like when I talk to young entrepreneurs, I say one thing you could always bring is connections. So, if you go to a networking event and you meet people and you write down, or you have a CRM, that tracks exactly what other people do. Then you're going to be able to connect with someone. I'll give you an example. I used to go back in the day when I was first building my business. I went to 10.

MARTIN: Yeah. Back when you were young, right?

BART: Yeah. Yeah. So I used to go to 10 business events a week before my kids came along and stuff like that. And so there was breakfast, lunches and dinners. And so what happens is a lot of people go to these events. And they'll get a card. Maybe they'll follow up if they think they're useful or not. I keep a very specific CRM, so I'll give you an example of one guy I met years ago, who does custom blinds for commercial buildings. He puts in window shades and commercial buildings or something like that. And so, I meet someone, a year and a half later. He says, hey, I'm putting in this new commercial building, I'm looking for vendors. They say, oh, I know someone who does commercial blinds. I know someone who does commercial HVAC. I know something. Right off the bat there's multiple connections just showing value. So if you're able to use the connections, that's the way in for a lot of young people to be able to actually pull on that repertoire. Because a lot of people would say commercial blinds, oh, I don't need to know somebody who knows commercial blinds or whatever it is. But if you keep it in the back of your mind and you try to always be making connections, that's a lot of value you can bring to people I find.

MARTIN: Yeah. Very good thought. Alright, so the mothers teach your sons and teach your daughters the value of being nice to people, asking them a lot of questions and writing it down and remembering it. 

BART: There you go. Right. And connecting. 

MARTIN: And connecting. Yeah. Alright. In my mind, the vector that takes a healthy person toward excellence is the same vector that takes a sick person toward feeling all right. Which health stands on, or illness I should say, stands on toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation, and trauma.

BART: Right. 

MARTIN: Those are the pillars on which it will stand. Those need to be the ones undone. And bringing it into people's lives. Super important. But having the awareness of it, we started talking about toxicity in relation to before having kids. Right.

BART: Right. Well, yeah, I think, is it harder though to bring someone from not healthy than from healthy to ultra healthy? That’s an interesting,

MARTIN: In my world, it's harder to motivate someone who's pain-free to do more. 

BART: That's right. 

MARTIN: Because they don't know unless they're motivated by some lofty goal, some kind of a big goal, then they just coast as they are. At 25, they feel bulletproof and immortal. At 35, they're noticing that things aren't working perfectly. At 45, they have some setbacks. That sort of thing. 

BART: Right. That's the exact issue, too, behind people not caring about pesticides. Right. I've talked about this so many times with bananas. A bunch of bananas is a $1.39 that's non-organic. And an organic one's $1.69. It's not 30 cents you're paying for, it's the $380,000 in cancer treatments in saving for neurodegenerative disease. There are so many more things, but people don't, they're not in pain. It's not immediate pain except for the wallet pain. Right? And so, that's the toughest challenge for people when it comes to glyphosate or paraquat or any of these, right? It's like there are these invisible boogeymen. It's like they don't even exist to most people. And so explaining, neuro health and health across the board is a real challenge if people aren't in pain.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. I remember the story of a church group that they were getting together to pray for rain because it had been a really long dry spell. Only two guys brought an umbrella. 

MARTIN: And here we are discussing health. Right. 

BART: That's great. 

MARTIN: People don't understand what they are going to need. 

BART: Right. Right.

MARTIN: On their journey. 

BART: Yep. I love that. Oh, that's great. That's a good one to step into, which is, I guess we would call it the blind spot in America on health. Right? Which is, even what people in America and I’m saying America, in the Americas. 

MARTIN: Let's call it the industrialized society around,

BART: Okay, there we go. Even people in an industrialized society, what they think is healthy is in my opinion, very much not healthy. And so it's just been so turned around. And so one of the clear examples is, people think that non-fat, sugar free, low fat, like these kinds of phrases. Anything you see as a marketing phrase on these, they think that's healthy. In fact, to me and my family, they know anything that says no fat, anything that says sugar-free do not buy that. In fact, let's go a step further and say anything that other people buy, you don't want to be buying. And so it's, it almost, 

MARTIN: Let me give you another hint. 

BART: Yeah. 

MARTIN: If it's advertised on television. Don't buy it. 

BART: There you go. Absolutely.

MARTIN: It's in the middle of the grocery store and has a barcode on it, it’s suspicious. There you go. And if it's on the end of a lane display it’s hyper suspicious.

BART: Absolutely. And Martin, you might have heard this before, but I don't know where I picked it up. you know that really little health food aisle they have in most supermarkets, there'll be, one whole aisle or one half aisle or something.

MARTIN: Yep.

BART: If, well, and most things in there aren't even healthy. But, if you look at that and you say, okay, so that's our health aisle. What does that say about everything else in the food store?

MARTIN: Unhealth aisle. 

BART: Yep, that's right. Everything else is unhealthy. If this is our one healthy food aisle, then everything else in here is unhealthy. And so the first thing if I'm coaching people on health or talking to people on health, and this is the same piece of advice I give for people planning for their children for health, is if you see other people buying it or using it. You probably don't want to buy it or use it, because it's not working.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, we need to introduce some criteria, right?

BART: That's right.

MARTIN: And the criteria are, it should be food, not a chemical, and it should be the original ingredient. So that means mostly cooking from scratch rather than having it done for you.

BART: Yep. 

MARTIN: And you can take it to another level, which would be you raise it yourself or grow it yourself, or at least you buy it from somebody who you know.

BART:  Yep.

MARTIN: Personally. Belly to belly, and you know what they're doing and how they're doing it.

BART: That's great. I like that. And then when it comes to, if you are going to look at processed food, keep it to three to seven ingredients or something of that nature. And now that's not a across the board rule, of course, but. But the less ingredients generally the better. Right? So many people when you bring this up will go: “What do you mean don't buy it if other people are buying it?” And so just a stat on Americans alone, never mind the whole Northern Industrial Nations. Only 7% of Americans are metabolically healthy. Seven. 7% of Americans are metabolically healthy. And so, that's what tells me, we know 93% are not, when I say metabolically healthy, and I guess there's the regular five biomarkers. 

MARTIN: Well, there's a degree, right?

BART: Right. 

MARTIN: You can be really unwell when you are grossly obese with high blood pressure and diabetes.

BART: Right. 

MARTIN: That's like completely... And Alzheimer's on top. 

BART: Right. But even just regular cholesterol, blood pressure, weight circumference, triglycerides, things, the five kinds of regular biomarkers, let's say, to make one metabolically healthy. 

MARTIN: Yes. 

BART: Only 7% of Americans are, so, we're doing things wrong en masse. And if you're seeing other people do it, just try to do it a different way. It is kind of the approach that I'll usually take.

MARTIN: Yeah. You said this beautiful thing, your peer group, who do you choose to hang out with?. Always be trying to do better. And it's super important to understand that the people you hang out with will help shape your opinions, your goals, your expectations.

BART: Yep. Definitely. Martin. I started looking at it as a river analogy is usually what I use when I'm talking to people about this, and it's that. A lot of us are just friends with whoever happened to be plopped in front of us when we were children, right? It could be in high school or college or whatever, but it's just whoever was in your immediate distance, that's who your friends are. And so what happens when people are friends with those people is they start to get comfortable and they live in what I call for most people a lazy river, right? We've been to resorts, whether it's in Mexico or the islands or whatever, where there's a lazy river, you're in a raft, and you're kind of sitting back and most people have a beer in that raft and you're just coasting down the river and life is okay in that river. Things aren't bad and if you miss a day at the gym, no one's going to say anything. If you're not eating well, no one's going to say anything. You're gonna be going to the bar every weekend and things are going to be okay. 

And if that's the guise by which you live, then life can be okay, but the thing is, there's this other river that exists, and this is where I like to kind of push myself into, which is there's a raging river, one of those rivers with white rapids and it's kind of, you've seen 'em in movies before or you have some up in BC, just these kind of rapids going. And that river, you're in a boat with other men, and in that boat you have to row, and you have to row harder than you've ever rowed before in your life because if you don't row, they're gonna throw you out of the boat. And so, whereas when you were in the Lazy River, you could miss a workout. In this river there's people who are working out two days a week, or sorry, two times a day, and you're like: “Oh my God, this person's working out two times a day. I'm not even working out.” Then you're in this boat and you're with someone who's eating all organic and healthy and natural, and you're like: “Oh my gosh, I don't even know what organic is.” And then you're in a boat and people are doing 250 phone calls a day for their business and you're not even doing any. 

And so you just get elevated, you get pulled up and it's anything in health. If you've been at a gala or an event and you go around the table, this might have happened to you, maybe not, but I've seen it happen and one or two people say: “Oh no thanks. No, I'm not going to take cake.” They're coming to put cake on the table. If one or two people don't take cake, you'll see like almost all the way around the table, people are like: “no thank you. No, thank you.” whereas if the first two people take cake. All the way around the table, you're getting cake. And so it's just about surrounding yourself with people that say no to the cake or that say yes to working out or just kind of elevate your game in some way. And that's kind of what I've been focused on for the last year or two in life.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. Networking your way upwards.

BART: Yep. Absolutely. 

MARTIN: Yeah, it's critical. Because you can network your way downwards. 

BART: Yeah. Very easily. Yes. 

MARTIN: Yeah. One buddy brings in the recreational drug. The next buddy says, “Oh, yeah, let me try that too.” Next thing you know the four of you are dead with fentanyl. 

BART: Yeah. That's, nowadays that's exactly right. 

MARTIN: Exactly. You think you're okay, and next thing you know you're not.

BART: Yeah. Totally. So it goes back to those five people you surround yourself with. And health is definitely one of those core things that always come first.

MARTIN: Do you do some coaching? How do you do this?.

BART: Yeah. So we do coaching. So, the main form of the network is called Agora Guild. It’s a men's network. 

MARTIN: You have a T-shirt on, Agora?

BART: Yes. Yeah, there you go. It's a men's network, and what we do is we have in-person meetings once every month or two. So we'll do fun things like we'll go race cars at the racetrack, or we'll go do a Spartan race, or, we'll do things that push you outta your comfort zone. We go rock climbing, we do all sorts of things like that. But the guys live all over the US, so we have seven guys in Miami. They live all over the world actually. We have guys in Mumbai and Portugal, and things of that nature. 

So we meet every Thursday from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM Eastern time. And, we'll go over everything. Each week will be a different topic. We might just talk about testosterone that week. Or maybe we'll talk about familial relationships that week. Maybe we'll talk about sleep cycles. Maybe we'll talk about business, whatever it might be. So we do that. 

And then one of the more robust parts of the group is, we have a WhatsApp where there's a bunch of subgroups. So there's subgroups for fathers, subgroups for marketing companies, subgroups for, gosh, just health hub. The health hub today, for instance, just to give you an example, the kind of stuff we talk about, the two things that people were popping off today about were microplastics. There was a lot of talk about microplastics today and the other thing that they were talking about was HRV. So they were talking about HRV and what's a good HRV? What's a bad HRV? What's an average? What's normal? So, these are the kind of things that when you surround yourself with men that are talking about HRV and microplastics, you're going through your day a little differently then surrounding yourself with people who are concerned about other things, let's say.

MARTIN: Yeah, it's awesome, companionship of like-minded people with a drive toward improvement, right? That's making the better of it.

BART: Yeah. And in everything, this isn't, it's not a business group. We all do business. We do a lot of investments together, things like that, but it's not a business group, and that's what makes it different. A lot of people come for this: “Oh, I refer you, you refer me,” type of thing. This is a life group where it's about getting better in family, faith, finances, fitness, everything across the board, pretty much. 

MARTIN: Right on. Sounds beautiful. Maybe I should start the local chapter with you.

BART: There you go. There you go. It's been a really nice awakening. There's been huge things. One guy lost 75 pounds. Someone started talking to their siblings after not talking to them for years. One man tripled his business. We just have achievement after achievement, just by being surrounded by like-minded people, so those kinds of things happen. And then there's also just, it's nice to have a friendly group of people who think similarly and who challenge one another.

MARTIN: So is there a business, or pardon me, is there a website for the?

BART: Yes. Yeah. So that's AgoraGuild.com. That's A-G-O-R-A-G-U-I-L-D.com. So we have men all over the world. We're growing. We just opened it to the public about 10 months ago. So, it's been around for two and a half years. It was just a group of six of us for the first year and a half, and then about 10 months ago, we just opened it to the public and we've grown from six to over 70 members in just the last 10 months. And now we're looking to continue to expand because we're having a lot of breakthroughs. We're going to be adding a real estate investors group in it. 

We're adding a health club, so it's going to be called Agora Health Club, where we talk about blood metrics, nutrition, all sorts of different things. So it's really where I've found a lot of passion by being surrounded by guys. We have this one group, it's a subgroup, and it's called the Rise and Shiners. And so it's this group of guys. And when we started it, one of the guys in the group said, “You're crazy. No one's going to do this, Bart.” And I said: “Alright, well let's just try it out and see what happens. And so this is men who wanted to wake up earlier, right?. And so when we started it like nine months ago or whatever, there were guys dropping in at 6, 6:30, 6:40, whatever. And so every morning you just put the time you woke up. That's it. It’s that simple. You just drop the time in the chat. And so now if you look at the chat and I can't show you because it has all the people's names on it, but it’s 4:15, 4:20.

MARTIN: Really?

BART: 4:30, 5:15, 5:10. It's all about, because when you are surrounded by people like that, if that's what you want to be accountable to, if that's part of your thing, then you can be accountable for that. So it's really fun to see the growth.

MARTIN: That's awesome. Yeah. All right. 

BART: It's been great.

MARTIN: Okay. Agora guild is a worthwhile thing. Funny that you would do this online. Back in the eighties, nineties. I was part of a men's group. We would get together physically every Wednesday at seven in the evening. And we would hang out, check in, talk about what's on our mind, what's new, what happened in that week? Did we have successes, failures? What do we feel about this or how do we feel about that?

BART: Right. Yep. That sounds pretty similar.

MARTIN: Companionship is a really important thing.

BART: Definitely. And that's been one of the more interesting things that came out of this. I thought when I started it that people were going to come here for accountability and drive. And it turns out the men have really, through the surveys we do, they've said what I like most is the friends I've made out of here and the like-minded individuals that we've met. And that's been the biggest takeaway. Whereas I thought people wanted accountability and work or in fitness or whatever, but it turned out they just wanted like-minded people to be surrounded by.

MARTIN: Yeah. Beautiful thing. Thank you. Yeah. I'm so encouraged to see a guy like you. You're probably my son's age if I had a son. 

BART: 35. I'm 35 now. Just turned.

MARTIN: My daughters are 37 and 40. 

BART: Okay. Yeah. 

MARTIN: And I am encouraged, and it's good.

BART: Thank you. 

MARTIN: And be proud of the fact that you are contributing to the society that you actually are raising children because no children, and I don't know, the reproductive rate in the United States is, I think about 1.7. Replacement rate is 2.3.

BART: Right.

MARTIN: So Italy is running at 1.1 or something like that. In three generations, there will be nobody who carries the tradition.

BART: And it's not being talked about or addressed enough. I think it's fueled by a couple of different movements I feel. And I do feel, I will tell you, and maybe it's my bias of the circle that's in Agora Guild and people I'm surrounded by, but I do feel there is now starting to be a movement of thoughtful people who think the other way when it comes to children and family and religion and health. 

Whereas that standpoint might've been missing from the last 30 years or generation, not missing entirely, but not as part of the zeitgeist and the people I'm surrounded by now, they're looking at homeschooling their children. They're looking at all organic food, they're looking at having more children going to church, things of that nature. And so, it's funny because you would've said 15 years ago that that's a lost thing. It's not gonna happen. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that's the case. I think that a lot of things contributed to it. There's a lot of things from different cultural means and independence, and the lack of responsibilities and wanting to be nimble and people not being reliant on anybody else, whether that's male or female. But now people are seeing it is okay to rely on someone else, that's called love. That's not a weak thing. That can be a strong thing. 

MARTIN: It’s a beautiful thingl. So here's a good example of a guy who's trying hard, that's for sure. Yeah. No, it's awesome. Well, alright. Anything more to be said? The Agora Guild, anybody who's listening to this, check it out. Well, you might find me there. We'll see.

BART: Awesome. Love it. Would love to have you. We do a free month trial for anybody who's interested, to try out the group to see if it's a good fit. It's just about surrounding yourself. We have our youngest member, he's in his twenties and our oldest members in his sixties right now. And so, it's a full gambit of everybody in all areas of life. In fact, we have this great group in the next two months of five guys who are friends, who have been married for more than 25 years each. And they're going to come in and talk about, well, how have they been married for 25 years? So you've got that. And then you've also got these young driven entrepreneurs who are in, it's really interesting to learn across the generations and businesses and things like that. So it's been a learning experience for me. Every single week I learn something.

MARTIN: Alright. Now, is that your full-time now or what do you do?

BART: It's becoming, it's interesting. I would love to make it my full-time thing at this particular point. It's where my passion lies that I've found.

MARTIN: Well it's certainly a lot better than Facebook.

BART: That's right.

MARTIN: As far as contribution to humanity. 

BART: Right, right. So the hope is, there's grand visions for the group down the line, on a healthier community, humanity as a whole. And so we have kind of benchmarks of what we want to do to get there to spread the idea of health further than that.

MARTIN: Awesome. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we could call it a day on that.

BART: Awesome. Well, Martin, it's been a real pleasure. I'd love to talk more. I love what you do in the podcast by letting people talk about the broad topics and also getting into the very detailed topics on health. So keep up what you're doing.

MARTIN: Thank you. Alright, so this has been Barton Henderson and his idea called AgoraGuild.com. Thank you.

BART: Thanks, Martin. 

MARTIN: You'll find me at life-enthusiast.com if you're not watching it on screen. Thank you.