The Money Mondays
Why Investing in Self Defense Is the Best Decision You'll Ever Make w/ Steve Eckert ⚔️ EP104
Mon, 13 Jan 2025
We have a special episode today featuring Steve Eckert from Operation Black Site. He has a unique approach to business, combining military strategies and business methods, which he'll share with us today. --- Steve Eckert is a Personal Discipline and Development Accountability Coach with 22 years of experience. As a U.S. Marine, entrepreneur, husband, and father, he uniquely combines military strategies and entrepreneurial methods to help over 20,000 clients achieve transformative results. Become a Human Weapon Today: https://operationblacksite.com/ --- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 Men ONLY Need These 2 Simple Things In Life: https://youtu.be/f-iacHAO3VQ John Assaraf: Train Your Brain To Achieve Anything You Want: https://youtu.be/-l-_rHfkZlg Navy Seal Ray Cash Care + Dan Dreyer on Scaling Over $100M: https://youtu.be/LwkSSfu9jm4 David Steinberg’s Multi-Billion Dollar Mission for ZETA Global: https://youtu.be/FmwbdLBgT2o Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymond... Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs... Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-... TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mo...
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays for 2025. Normally, we're talking about three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away to charity. But this is a special edition episode.
are outside here in the rv motorhome parked at black site ranch black site ranch was named based on operation black site we are going into our fifth year of operation black site and because of that we just happen to finish a three-day boot camp weekend with our guest mr steve eckert And so what I want to cover today is why should people get trained?
Why is it so important, especially with the climate of what's going on in our society, not just in California, but the terror that's been happening in London, the stabbings that have been happening, the intensity that's going on, why people need to get self-defense.
And so we're going to talk about not investing money, but investing into your skills, investing into your mind, investing into your life to be able to protect your household. So without further ado, I'm going to have Steve Ecker give you a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight into it.
Hey, what's up? It's awesome coming on. It's the perfect timing right after we just finished the class. I apologize, my voice might be a little froggy, but we're having some fun. It's needed. Some people need that. This is really what it's all about, about helping these individuals become...
yeah we were helping them make money but really to become even better husbands and wives fathers and mothers and that's going to make them be a better entrepreneur because i probably probably you probably go down the list of your guests on this show i bet i'm probably one of the least richest but i can guarantee you because of things like operation black site i am the wealthiest that has ever been on your show i can promise you that there won't be anyone wealthier that will ever come on the show because wealth
And riches to me is a whole different story. And that's the way you live your life, the lifestyle you have, the way you lead your family and do things like Operation Blacksite. It's needed. It's needed in the family structure because that's my job as a man is to be the fathering of my children and the leader of my household and learning the skills at Operation Blacksite is the foundation.
Like this is this is by far of all the so many different programs I do, even the father son program we do. This is by far the most impactful. Seeing the changes that we're making.
In three freaking days, what we've done for these men and women that came here, from when they walked in to when they left, I told them our goal was to make them 10% better in their discipline, in their energy, in their confidence, in the way they attack the challenges in life, and also that's going to allow them to... kicked their own ass from when they came here.
Can they kick their own ass from when they showed up, both mentally, physically, emotionally? Can they outsmart and outguile that person that showed up here three days ago? And absolutely, I can look every one of them in the eyes and say they absolutely can.
So what's interesting is we actually have 40% women in attendance for the last two years out of the five years. It really happened in the last two years. Why do you think that more women are coming to get trained now?
That question is going a lot of different directions. I think part of the main thing is that men have gone...
so soft really in this country i think they're not leading the way they should they're they're become too comfortable and they are not holding themselves accountable they're not leading as the husbands and fathers should and so the women have to step up they're forced to step up to be the man of the household whether they're a single mom, or even if they might even be married.
Some of these women are married, and they're like, you know what? Someone needs to step up and learn these kind of things because maybe their husband's just getting complacent. They just need to step up, and it's a crazy world out there. Especially think about a single mother that doesn't have a man in the household to at least co-dominate with. That's a scary-ass thing.
I'm a fairly capable man, and even when I go outside to get something at my car in the middle of the night if I forgot something at nighttime, I'm going out there and my head is on a swivel. I am nervous and aware. Imagine a woman by herself with her two kids in the house. There's no one to go out there and get it. She's the one. She has to be the superhero.
So when people go to boot camps, events, and learn, what is the difference for them? Why is it important to understand how to use a gun, how to at least hold a gun, shoot a gun?
Well, here's the thing. There's it's besides you could just say, well, that's their their right as an American with absolutely. I think all Americans should own guns and should carry guns. And because you know what? The bad guys certainly are. And they're out there right now.
Every one of us, you, me, every single one that showed up to Operation Blacksite, there is someone out there that is literally crazy.
training and practicing to take that person down whether it's to they're stalking them or they're gonna break into their home or even in business someone is out there training to take you down you have enemies out there like literally and figurative enemies both personally and professionally you need to be able to protect yourself you need to know how to defend yourself you create this empire what's the point of having this empire if you don't have the the discipline and the infrastructure to to defend it when did you start how did you dedicate your life to this have you always been doing this
It probably did for as far as I can remember. I was in the Marine Corps, but even before that, just thinking about self-defense and weapons and guns and knives. I've carried a knife even before guns as far as I can remember. As far as I can remember walking, I was always carrying a little pocket knife and a little Swiss Army knife at all times.
and now what it really clicked is as you can now recently know once you bring another human into this world like oh the game just changed it has changed it's now no longer about me i have something a higher calling now at this point like as men we are dependent for our significance we're dependent on something higher than ourselves it's it's impossible for me as a man or any man i think to
really have that significance unless it's something outside of themselves. And the ultimate significance they could have is bringing a kid into this world. And you now need to be the one that is not just a provider. Problem is men think that being a provider is enough. That is the price of admission. That's just to get in the front freaking door. You've got to be a protector and a father.
So when I had my daughter, I texted some of the guys in the Operation Black Site crew, and I said I would die for my family, but I would kill for my daughter.
Hell yeah.
I love that. That's awesome. It's been burned in my mind. And a lot of people told me, like, well, once you have a child, like, your brain will change, your heart will change. And I'm not that emotional of a guy. Like, I've had 40 people pass away, so I've become numb to a lot of things the last couple years. And so I didn't think it was going to happen. And then once I held her... It happened.
All of them were right. You guys were right. Whoever you guys were, all 40 of you plus were right. My mind changed, and it made me much more serious. I started training more often. I started working out more often. I texted all my friends, Andy Frisella, Michael Chandler. I texted them saying, I'm going to start working out way more often because of her. It changed my entire mindset.
you have your kids working out all the time you make such great social media content if you guys make sure to follow steve eckert like the kids are out there working out you've got them on training tell us like what does a day look like for your kids what do you make them go through yeah so we we homeschool our kids and their homeschooling is doing things like operation black site they come in here and they're helping out behind the scenes like we're sitting there holding mitts for the for the men my son 13 years old he's sitting there helping them out correcting them on what they're doing but that's that's a day in our life is
training we train seven days a week we haven't taken a day off in i don't even know that we started tracking over three years straight over every day for three years and that's when we started tracking it me and my son definitely has done over 1100 days straight through zero days off and we train every single day we need it as part of i think a man is meant to be strong he's meant to be fierce he's meant to have this energy and endurance and people say well that's over training well i could
not trained and I could all have worse things I'm addicted to. I could be watching porn all day. I could be snorting cocaine. I could be a drunk. I don't drink any alcohol. I've never done a single drug in my life. Never even smoked a drop of weed. Imagine if I snorted cocaine, what it would look like around this place. Like it would be, this place would be a mayhem. It'd be crazy.
So that's what our day revolves around, our training together. And then our education, our style of education, like things like Operation Blacksite, it's freedom. We call it our ideal freak freedom lifestyle. And our day, literally our schedule, is revolved around our training together. To me, that's the new flex. That's what I say, I'm the wealthiest person that's ever been on this podcast.
I train with my entire family, my wife, my son, and my daughter, seven days per week. We have dinner together seven days per week. That's awesome. And I'm home. I'm educating them according to the way that we want to we want to show them how to live, how to think for themselves, not what the school system or whatever else. And that's a whole nother topic tries to push down their neck.
So we're together all the time.
So there's four main things that happen during Operation Blacksite. I'm going to walk through each one of the four so you can talk to me about each one. There's learning how to shoot. And we use all airsoft guns here, just so everyone knows. Because we have an animal sanctuary with 200 animals, we don't use live ammunition here. So it's all airsoft guns.
But we have a full training center over there. We have a shoot house there. The local police, K-9, SWAT, and sheriff use it every single week. And so we've had, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 times now where the police departments come in. We do it for free for them. And they were here twice this week. And they typically bring 20 to 50 guys out to go through K-9, SWAT.
share the sheriff's and They all come here and it's great and it'll always be free to them because I want them to be to training I love you at the fire departments here as well because of what they're I mean They're saving California as we speak right now.
We're doing their best to so we do shoot training We do fight training Escape training with Chris and Carly and then we also bring in trauma So people learn about what to do in situations with tourniquets and things like that Let's walk through each one
on the shoot training side we kind of asked you earlier about why is it important but why is it important to be proficient to actually know how to handle a gun how to load it how to point it how to shoot it
People think that since they can go buy a gun, that they buy the gun and they think, oh, now I'm safe. I just actually had to go renew my CCW two weeks ago. And we're at the course, and you have to take all the guns that are on your license. And you have to re-qualify with them every two years to show you can shoot at 5, 10, and 15 yards. There was this dude there.
He shot it, and his gun literally fell apart. It was inoperable. And they asked him, when is the last time you shot this? His last time he had to do this test, which was two years ago. So he thinks just because he has it. Also, just as men, everyone thinks they can fight.
They think, oh, if it goes down, if the terrorist attack happens, if the active shooter comes here, I'll be able to take care of it. I'll step up then. But you're only going to fall back to your...
your level of training that you have you're not going to be Billy badass in the superhero you're probably going to crumble under pressure and probably cause more damage than good if you're not getting those sets and reps in with the shooting that we're talking about and the fighting all right so on the fighting side we typically bring in Tony Blowers here Michael Chandler when he's not traveling for training for a fight we bring in some serious guys like very high level guys why is it important for men and women to learn how to fight
Well, you don't always get to have the gun on. You go on a plane. You go in an airport. You check through the airport. Although I always try to sneak some stuff in that I can get in, but that's besides the point. We can edit that part out. But you're not always in a situation where you can carry. You can't bring a gun in certain places. And what happens if your gun malfunctions?
What happens if someone takes the gun from you? What are you going to do then? Now you're completely disarmed.
Right.
So you need to know how to handle yourself physically. That's part of just being that protector that we're talking about. It's just as important, making yourself a human weapon because it's just not always available to you. Also, they malfunction and they run out of bullets. Who knows what? There are endless scenarios.
And think of the level of confidence you have that, okay, I'm capable in this area, also incapable in this area. This raises your level of confidence and these things bleed into all of the areas of your life. That confidence is going to show up at your family with your wife and your kids. That confidence is going to show up
in the office with your team by doing these things that seem like it has nothing to do with business or making money. Absolutely. You get in better shape and get fit and strong and healthy. You learn how to shoot proficiently. You learn how to fight and defend yourself. You are, I guarantee you make more money. It's just impossible not to.
What I've also noticed is that the most skilled at fighting are really good at de-escalating and they actually don't want to fight. They want to fight for fun because fighting is fun, but they don't actually want to fight in like a normal street setting unless someone is wronging them or their family. Why do you think that the people that are highly skilled are so good at de-escalating?
Because they've had the sets and reps and so much in order to get that skilled and proficient. You think Michael Chandler is going to go get in a fistfight with someone at the bar or at a gas station? Hell no. But that amount of discipline to get to that level, like I said, it bleeds over into all the other areas.
He has now emotional regulation, emotional discipline to not freak out and crumble under the pressure because he's been there. He's seen it.
you also uh you're good at shooting or guys that come here that have been in in serious combat and seen some horrific things they know what it's like they don't want to be any part of that they want to be nowhere near it you want to de-escalate it and avoid it at all times but knowing that if i need to and that shit shows up my doorstep like here i am motherfucker i'm ready for it if needed don't want to but here i am
Yeah, we did an episode with Vince Ritchie, and it literally showed up at his doorstep. It was three or four guys showed up at his doorstep, and luckily he'd thrown the... The video went very viral, got hundreds of millions of views. Luckily he threw the tea in the guy's face, pulled the gun out in 1.6 seconds, and was able to defend his wife and daughter inside.
Because he went through training here, and obviously he goes through training quite regularly with Tarantico and other people. And so one less training session might have been the difference of his life.
And also putting himself in rooms. Like think about Blacksite. Yeah, I'm one of the instructors and I help run it, but showing up to a place like this where you're no longer, like a lot of other programs I go to, I'm the most successful. I'm the strongest. I'm in charge. I'm come here and around people that in different areas are such a higher level than you. It constantly elevate automatically.
Just that being in that presence elevates you. It makes you step up. You have no chance. Like you just have to stop being a little bitch and like you're automatically elevated automatically. just by being in the presence of all these different amazing individuals in all these different areas of life. Like I'm a decent shooter. I come here with the guys that show up here to teach. I'm an amateur.
And his girls won like 30 or 40 championships.
Anytime I find a couple of minutes of downtime, I'm zipping over to the shooting range when we're taking a break from the fighting stuff just to try and soak in some knowledge. Like you need to be around these people that are better than you. And you need to subdue your ego in order to do that. Do the fighting stuff. Michael Chandler comes here.
Do you think I'm going to go and start bragging about fights I've been in or how tough I am? Hell no. I'm soaking it in and feel honored and privileged to be around those people. Now imagine civilians that are not even the instructors are coming in. How, like, boom.
Mind-blowing. They're like, oh, there's Tim Kennedy.
It is mind-blowing what the growth that they could have and that they do have. The transformation that we just saw in these last three days is freaking mind-boggling. It's fulfilling. It's the most fulfilling thing we do.
escaping so chris and carly teach people about escaping and i heard today i think they actually threw them in the back of trunks after they taught them how to get out of handcuffs and ropes and things like that and tying their feet together and so they go through this training to learn how to escape from some pretty tough scenarios but then they put them in a real life setting and so i actually filmed a tv show called going public and i didn't know we were filming this section and chris was teaching me about how to escape
And luckily, I'd gone through Operation Blackside myself over the years for what had happened. And so on Going Public, you guys can watch the show, goingpublic.com. And they kidnapped me. And you'll see in the scene, but they, you know, he put a hood over my head. And I went into full defense mode. And I started spinning in circles and figured out a way to, like, escape.
And then, like, they threw me in the back. They had to, like...
get a second guy to hold my legs down because i was like squirrelly just trying to figure out how to escape and i'm not nearly as big as you guys obviously and then they finally got me into the trunk and i broke out and i i ran 100 yard dash and jumped over the fence but anyways in those moments i was calm in the chaos because i didn't know if it was what the setting was and it was very very very intense and even when you're going through training it can feel very real because your brain can't tell the difference similar to a dream
100%.
It's a thing all the time. Look at human trafficking. It's probably at an all-time high right now. And you could think, oh, well, that's never going to happen to me. I'm never going to need that. Well, until you do need it, and then it's a huge mistake from not learning how to do these things. You're not always going to be. You sometimes are outnumbered.
You can't always be in control of every situation. As much as we try and as much as awareness you have, You think you don't need something until you need it.
Until the whole cartel shows up. There's six of them.
Exactly. And you need to have these skills. But you already touched on also what it does. Even let's say you never need it. Hopefully. Luckily, you never need it. You never want to need it. You just said it yourself that the way you handled that was staying calm under that pressure.
putting tying these people up and putting them in a trunk it sounds like well that is so stupid what are they ever going to get out of that this is like just craziness why would someone pay for that that way that ability of them to control their emotions and not freak the fuck out under that pressure and figure a way out of that situation is making them such a better problem solver so much more emotional intelligence when they are freaking out their employees are freaking out or they're they're someone is stealing from the company they're not going to free it's giving them that internal muscle that that that
to emotional discipline so that they can bounce back when things don't go their way and they can hold the ground and not crumble under the pressure.
Speaking of pressure and high intensity situations, sometimes children, friends, fights do happen and there's blood everywhere. And so we've been bringing in people to teach about trauma and there's literally have fake blood all over the floor right now because it was very intense. They're training for half the day just on bloody situations, how to do tourniquets, et cetera.
Why should people learn about, well, let's just call it bloody situations.
And you could say, well, maybe they're going to get shot in a terrorism. But it's not just that. It could be a bicycle accident. Your kid could fall on a bike and something pierces through their arm. Like I've seen some crazy things just with kids, the crazy shit kids do. Yeah, baseball bat. Exactly. So that's – and again, this all ties into that same –
not crumbling under the pressure, having that emotional discipline, emotional regulation. But if you're going to carry a gun and you're going to be making holes in people, you also need to know how to plug those holes in people because I might get shot. My kid might get shot. Or maybe I'm defending my family and I get shot. Do my kids... Are they familiar with firearms and safety rules?
But also they know how to plug me up. What if I'm incapacitated? I'm down. My 10-year-old daughter, she did it here with the group today. She knows how to plug the holes. Apply the tourniquet in under 30 seconds and make sure you're set. So I carry a gun everywhere I go. But I also, with that gun, and I have it here with me. I'm strapped here with us.
I don't know who knows who's rolling up on the money Mondays. But I also carry a tourniquet everywhere I go. And so does my entire family. We all carry a tourniquet and a gun on us at all times.
Wow.
in addition to a knife, a flashlight, so we're always prepared and ready. And then there's always a tourniquet in the doors of all of our cars, in our RV, there's tourniquets all stashed around the house, you never know when exactly you're gonna need it.
So, Los Angeles is under fire right now, and this episode's coming out on Monday, so I would hope that it's out by Monday, but I don't know that it will be, because some of them are not contained at all, or less than 8% contained for the big one. At this time, there's some serious looting going on.
And people have been catching... Let's not talk about the arsonist part, but the actual looting part. They're rolling deep. They're showing videos of car after car after car, like for today, for example. The Encino and...
tarzana fires in the middle of daytime and there was six car loads of guys just showed up and luckily there was a police barricade there and they were filming it and those guys just turned around and they smiled and waved at the camera that's how ballsy they are right now how brazen they are and they're just going to go drive somewhere else to go loot those houses
I think we're in for a pretty tough situation for the next month. You know, even when the fires calm down, because I think that the police are gonna be overwhelmed and I don't know that they're gonna be able to protect those households. Why is it important to be able to protect your household in these times?
Well, this goes back to when you have those kids, it's a whole different game. You said you'll not only kill for them, you will freaking, now you die for them, you will kill for them. And that's why you need to build a community and learn from people like we learned from BlackSide, but then also build your community in your own neighborhood. Get to know your neighbors. Build your own
mini little army where you're looking out for each other and it starts right in your own home your whole entire family should know the plan like my family knows something happens where which part of the house is they're going to where do they need to retreat to who's doing what whose role is what if we needed to get out of the house it's on fire they know who is grabbing what who's taking care of what so it comes down to being prepared all the things we do operation black site 100 prepare you for every scenario that could happen there
You defend yourself with the weapons. That doesn't work. We need to know hand to hand. That doesn't work. Maybe I'm getting taken. How the hell am I getting out of here now? Because we're outnumbered because the police aren't even here to save me. No one is coming to save you. You are your own first responder. So no one's coming to freaking save you. Especially, it's my family.
I'm not waiting for someone to come and save me. There was one of the floods or something happened. I don't remember what it was. There's this picture of this dude walking through a flood or something, holding his little daughter's hand, not even carrying her. And he's out of shape and he's got this big beer belly.
And there's like, I don't know if it's a cop or a firefighter or a neighbor, carrying the man's wife out of this disaster zone. Like, holy fuck. Like... That is your job. That is your number one job. There's no greater job or job that you have more responsibility in being a husband and a father. So it is your duty to protect that family, your family and your home. That should be your safe place.
It's horrible what these people are doing. That's why you need to get your whole family on board. Someone breaks into my house, They might think they might, oh, they'll think the father might be the one to defend it. They're going to have a whole fucking four of us in all different positions knowing exactly what they need to do. So they're going to have a force.
You need to create your own little mini army starting in your own house.
So you and Bejos Kulian also have something called the Squire Program, which is fathers and sons and high school age sons, right? Talk to us. Why is it important for that father and son combo?
I can't imagine if when I was in junior high school and high school, if it was like it is now with the social media and all this craziness and people don't know what freaking bathroom to use anymore. And there's like 17 different genders and all this other stuff. I can't imagine the pressure that we'd be on. I had no friends in high school as it is.
It was really hard enough way back in the 80s and 90s. Imagine now. Those kids have so much bullshit to deal with. They need a wake-up call. They need a little more guidance. They need to know what is required of a man. How do you operate and act as a man in the world today? Because as I said, the men are going soft.
We need to start shifting the tides so we have more protectors out there in LA when things like that happen. Imagine if there were a lot of fierce men out there that came to things like Operation Blacksite, all sprinkled around the country and all around L.A. Now you're going to have a force of people who don't even know you because you're going to go and do the right thing.
You're going to go protect those that can't protect themselves. And that's the thing we're teaching these kids at a young age because they're – shit, if we don't start getting our hands on the youth, we are – this country is fucked.
So Squire program has now expanded all over the country, right? That's how popular it's gotten, how interesting it's gotten. Talk us through like why the father-son element? Why not just the sons then?
We're administering this program. It's about them bonding together. That's the number one voice they need to listen to. Not me just bringing, I'm bringing their chaos there so that they can block out that outside noise and learn to not be influenced by all these outside forces. Learn to trust
and bond and connect with their father that's the one who's going to get them through the shit and that's one that's going to show them the way of how to be a man it's not me i'm not showing them how to be a man we're just putting them together through this experience together so they can totally connect that's their that's their male role model that's their hero is their father not any of us instructors another social media influence not some freaking basketball player or lebron james or an actor or a rapper who they who they are getting influenced by we got to shift the tides and bring it back to the fathers who are leading the way
What can people do when they're not going to, if they can't go to a bootcamp or they're living in somewhere and maybe they're living international and they can't fly out here, et cetera. What can someone do? Do they go to martial arts training? Do they do workouts at home? Can they learn anything online? Like what are the things people can do in their normal lives?
I guarantee anything you want to learn, at least learn a baseline of, YouTube is the greatest resource in the world. It's freaking awesome when it's used for the right reasons. But start doing hard shit with their family. Start going on hard hikes that are 10, 15, 20 miles up in the mountains. Start learning about survival. Start having fun. doing fun stuff together that's absolutely free.
It's free to go hike in the mountain. It's free to train every day. I could get someone lose 100 pounds in an empty elevator with zero equipment and zero space. You always have a way, but connecting as a family, doing hard stuff together, training together, practicing stuff together, and then thinking about survival stuff. We have a thing we call our house survival night.
I put on a purge alarm in our house. We have 15 minutes to get out of the house. Really? And everyone, we only, whatever you can carry in 15 minutes and get out. And we have, we have to set up a tent in the backyard and we stay out there for overnight. And usually in a real, a cold time of year, we do it. And we see how fast can we get out there. And they've gotten so good.
I have to put it down to like five minutes because 15 minutes we're out there. They have fucking generators and their PlayStation five and all their shit. So I'm like, this is, We might as well just stay inside. We're not camping anymore because they learned to get all their shit out there that we need. But do something like that. It's fun. We have a lot of fun with it.
I think that actually goes back to BlackSight. All these things, yeah, they're effective, but at the same time, it's freaking fun as hell. We're having fun with every single evolution here at Operation BlackSight. I think that's something else that... Most people, especially men, forgot how to do. We forgot how to freaking live, how to have fun, how to enjoy ourselves.
Like the shit that lights us up as a young boy, we get older and we forget how to have fun and we just get so caught up in the rat race and we just become so rigid and your kids are looking at you and they're like, they don't want to be anything like that, man. Like go out and have some freaking fun with your family. Do fun shit like this. It's totally free.
Last question. It's 2025.
feel like that obviously the tides are turning we have a new president coming in we've got new energy coming in you can feel social media is getting fixed we've gotten a lot more reality checks have been coming in and even zuckerberg recently took out you know took tampons out of men's bathrooms we hired dana white as one hired dana white to join the board we're having a lot of reality checks that have come in about you know common sense things or reality things what would you say to people now that we're coming into this new wave about how to get their house in order
This is the time to do it. I know when you talk about money on the Money Mondays, you talk about people having 12 months of expenses in an account. We do something even next level in our house. Literally, we cannot leave our house if we want to for over a year and not have the step foot of our house. We have 12 months of...
food water all of our supplements our vitamins 12 months everything we're talking toilet paper q-tips razors toothpaste anything we could possibly need medication first aid batteries bullets band-aids a minimum of a year of each thing something's up to five years of we even have but that's the next goal is to get to five years right there is is what would it would how we prepare for this kind of stuff and way the way i see going forward is being prepared be prepared for anything
If the apocalypse happens, you don't have to leave the house.
And we've been doing this for a while. People make fun of that kind of thing. I'm not like some crazy doomsday prepper, but we just always want to be prepared. When everyone was around with the Coronas and they couldn't wipe their ass because they couldn't get a toilet paper. I had a year's worth of toilet paper in my house. We were good. We were clear.
Well, I mean, Los Angeles literally looks like an apocalypse right now. It's crazy. There's whole cities that are decimated. There is no Pacific Palisades. It's freaking wild. It's mind-boggling to think about the inefficiencies that have happened. I could go on and on about that. All right. Where can people find you on social? What should people be doing? Talk us through it.
It's not hard to find me. I don't even need to put a social out there. You can find me on Instagram, YouTube, tons of our Operation Blacksite stuff. I post tons of it on YouTube. It goes viral every time because it's so effective showing me and my kids training together, hostage situations, and YouTube, Instagram. Look for the ugly, bald, white guy that curses a lot. They can find me.
It's not hard. I'm sure it'll be down in the show notes down there.
All the same screen name? It's all Steve Eckert? Yeah, it's all under Steve Eckert. All right, guys, I want to do this special edition episode because Los Angeles is not just on fire. It's insane. And what's happening in London, people aren't even talking about enough. It's insane. People are literally getting stabbed in the streets two in the afternoon.
And it's happening left and right, left and right. I'm not talking about a few instances. Like when something happens in the media and it's like this rare situation or this one thing happened. That's not humanity. There's 8 billion humans. So when a one-off happens that's different, there are hundreds of people getting stabbed in London.
There are hundreds and hundreds of people getting robbed in Los Angeles. These aren't one-off situations. And I think you can hear by my voice, like, I'm very passionate about this scenario. That's why Operation Blackside is such an important thing to me. It's been half a decade of being important, but now more than ever, you have to get training. You've got to learn martial arts.
You've got to understand how to work with a gun. You have to understand what to do in these high-pressure situations because I've got friends that are literally 6 foot 5 300 pound football players getting robbed for their watches at 2 in the afternoon.
That's nuts Because they're just so brazen there because a lot of times they're 17 18 year old kids that just know they're not gonna go to jail or they're gonna go to juvie and so the amount of stories it would take me 16 episodes of how many friends got robbed in Los Angeles Wow how many people are going through crazy situations and And so I implore you, research OperationBlackSide.com.
Obviously, if you want to come here to the ranch to train with Steve Eckert and the team here. But in your own cities, martial arts training. If you have to drive two, three hours, go get gun training. Just understand how to work with a gun. It's just super important to be able to protect your household. So visit us here at TheMoneyMondays.com. Check out Steve Eckert across social media.
We'll see you guys next Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very different type of Money Mondays episode. I will not be talking about investing money. I will not be talking about making money. I will not be talking about how to give it away to charity. Los Angeles is on fire and it's very, very, very, very intense.
And so I just wanted to talk about some of the realities from a financial perspective of what's happening in Los Angeles and what's going to be happening over the next few years. Hopefully just a few years because it might take five to 10 years to rebuild. Tens of thousands of acres have been burnt.
And what people don't realize is how massive that is on the rebuilding side and the rules and laws in California and specifically in Los Angeles. So I want to talk through some of the business sides of these things. We all know that there's been inefficiencies with some of the politicians. I'm not going to get into governors and mayors and those type of things and what's happened there.
What I want to talk about is the reality of rebuilding in Los Angeles is going to be very, very, very tough. It already takes way too long, one to two years, just to get permits and approvals to make a building or a house. Well, the difference is they're already overwhelmed and now tens of thousands of homes, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.
So from a sheer math perspective of those people that are gonna now go get an architect to design their new home,
hopefully get insurance money which we'll get back into later and then apply for permitting this is going to be very very intense for many many reasons the construction companies are not going to be able to handle it they're going to be very overwhelmed there's not enough architects and designs to prepare to create tens of thousands of designs right because they're not making track homes outside of people you know making apartment buildings but individuals that are going to try to rebuild their homes with hopefully insurance money there's a big problem there
They have to have the capital to pay for designers, constructions, redoing everything, buying tile, furniture, supplies, kitchen, like redoing their homes if they get their insurance money. And if they don't, most people don't have that type of cash.
Even if you think that they're rich and they live in a $3 million house, it doesn't mean that they have $3 million in cash to rebuild or that they would. The other problem is, well, there's been a rule that happened, a new law that happened years ago.
that if someone loses their house in a fire, if they don't rebuild it within two years, the new property tax goes into effect of the new valuation of the home. Well, for a vast majority, especially in places like Pacific Palisades, Hollywood Hills, Malibu, a lot of those people inherited their home or bought it many, many decades ago. Let me give you a math example.
Let's say someone inherited their house or bought their house for $2 million, but they live in Pacific Palisades or Malibu. That $2 million house is likely to be $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, $9 million, $10 million, and sometimes a lot more than that.
And so they've been paying their property taxes based on a $2 million house, which could be around, let's call it $20,000 to $30,000 for the year. $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, depending on the area. If their new house takes more than two years, which it will, for obvious reasons, it takes way too long for permitting in Los Angeles.
And now they're going to be inundated at the permitting departments to try to approve these places. They don't have the manpower for it, which is very scary to think about.
If they don't rebuild it within two years and they were normally paying, let's call it 20, 30, 40, 50 K a year in property tax, they now have to do it based on the new valuation of let's call it 5 million, 6 million, 7 million, 8 million, 9 million, et cetera. By the way, when I say these numbers, you can adjust it based on the scenario.
their new property tax could be a quarter of a million dollars for the year. That is unaffordable, even if you think that they're rich. That is unaffordable and not realistic. And so they will likely not rebuild there. Well, if they don't rebuild there, what happens? Is that just going to be dirt? Is someone else going to buy the lot? Is someone else going to buy the lot and rebuild there?
There's so many factors from the Money Mondays concept to think about. You can hear why I'm stressed out thinking about it and talking about it. This is such a dire situation and people don't realize Los Angeles does not have the resources. And it's not like construction companies can just show up and start building.
A construction company from Phoenix or Dallas or Las Vegas can just show up and all of a sudden be prepared to go build hundreds of homes or thousands of homes or tens of thousands of homes. It's just not like that. It's not that simple. The ones that are there that are based in L.A., they are going to be inundated, overwhelmed to try to go rebuild entire towns, whole counties, whole regions.
Schools are decimated. Mall. Remember the mall in Pacific Palisades? It doesn't exist anymore. Like, I don't think people realize what it's going to take to rebuild this place. And even if something happens, which hopefully will, that Trump comes in and, you know, they try to have a lot of federal capital come in to help with the rebuilding process and subsidize a lot of the rebuilding.
unless they fix the permitting process, which I don't think that they will. And I wish that they would, I don't see how they will, where they would basically have to rubber stamp and approve. They could, if they trusted in approved builders, the fast forward way would be if this is a builder that's been building for many, many years and they are approved builder,
if they just gave them a rubber stamp, say, okay, we know that they're really good at building houses or they're really good at building apartments or the mall, for example, and they have a track record, they are rubber stamped to go build because they know that they're going to be within code.
unlikely that anyone's going to approve that or do that, especially with the current administration in our Los Angeles area. And so I'm very, very, very concerned from a financial perspective of what's going to happen to the city.
I don't think people realize, you know, there's a lot of these things you see in the media about it's $50 billion in damage or $60 billion damage, and it's going to probably end up being A lot more because the fires are not contained at the time of this episode. So could it go to 100 billion? Sure. We don't really know what that number is because of the rebuilding part. It's hard to grasp.
The tourism changes a lot. Like who's going to go visit Malibu right now when some of the... iconic restaurants like Moonshadows are gone. Moonshadows that's been there our entire lives is gone. Restaurants are gone. Stores are gone. It's like just so much is gone. And so I am been racking my brain about what is going to happen and who's going to step in.
You need so many people involved to rebuild one house.
there's the construction company there's obviously the design the architect someone to deal with all the permitting but then within a household someone's going to deal with the the trees and the grass do they have a pool do they have who's doing dealing with the plumbing who's going to bring in the sinks who's going to bring in the refrigerators who's going to bring in the furniture
Who's going to get the security systems? That sounds like a mundane thing. Like, oh, who cares about, yeah, it's easy to get refrigerators. Is it when if there's tens of thousands? Oh, it's no problem to put in a stove. It's no problem to put in the piping HVAC. HVAC companies are going to be, what are they going to do?
They're not prepared to go build tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, whatever the number ends up being, of new systems. This episode is really just for people to be thinking about it. This is not to come up with an answer right now. I've just been...
racking my brain about the situation of what is going to happen when these fires are contained and we finally go into a rebuilding phase and also keep in mind what happens this summer if there's more fires what happens next year if there's more fires we've seen arsons getting arrested arsonists are getting arrested left and right on camera setting fires up who knows if this happens again in one week one month six months etc it's a very scary situation because
We don't have the resources for the fire department. We don't have the resources from the water side, which doesn't make sense obviously because California is right on the water and there's been a lot of access to water for many, many years, but not recently. There's so many, I don't want to, this isn't about conspiracy theories. This is about math and money and reality. What are we going to do?
Who's going to rebuild this place? And we need something or someone or a group to come in. That's very efficient. with a rebuilding plan. Similar to how you saw with Elon Musk and the crew that's come in with Trump to try to basically right the wrongs and showcase to the world, especially in America,
The bad things that have happened or the corruption that's happened or the things that have been going on within the government. Well, that is going to happen here and specifically in California at a very massive scale. The rebuilding phase for California from businesses, homes, apartments, restaurants, malls, schools across the board.
Just think about the sheer amount of construction crews that are going to be needed. What about the cleanup crews, the dumpster trucks? There's just, you just think about what one household looks like of all the things, all the vendors, all the people involved to get all the approvals for one house and then extrapolate that into tens of thousands of houses.
And if they want to, you know, deal with insurance, get it done within two years, et cetera. I just don't see how it's going to happen. And so if you're watching out there, Mr. Trump, Elon, and all those guys that are out there, if one of your friends shows you a clip from here, I just want you to think about who can become the efficient group in the construction world to really make this right.
We need someone that can truly see a plan, a master architect or a master planner that can help us rebuild Pacific Palisades, rebuild Malibu. Hopefully we don't lose Encino and Tarzana because those are under fire as you're listening to this episode right now.
I think you can hear it in my voice, I'm just, normally I can see plans for things and I don't see a clear vision for this unless a group comes in and becomes the efficient one that figures out how to do massive reconstruction. It would be very different if we were just rebuilding apartment buildings because those are all the same units, right?
Someone goes and rebuilds a 600 unit apartment building, that is different because one master planner can figure it out and that's a different scenario.
individual houses times tens of thousands across entire counties where they all have so many different rules and also need so many different things it's just staggering who's going to provide all the sprinkler systems who's going to re-grass and re-sod all like every part of a household the concrete the door handles the doorknobs the window framings the garage doors who's going to do that many garage doors tens of thousands of garage doors or hundreds of thousands unfortunately could be the scenario
I just don't think we are prepared. I don't think, I know we're not prepared for the situation. And so we need to be thinking about what happens. And also if someone can't rebuild because they, let's say they don't rebuild within two years and they can't afford the new property tax, they're just not going to rebuild. What happens then to that empty lot? What happens to that person?
Do they move to Austin, Texas? Do they move to Florida? Like, do they move out of state? We're talking about so many of the wealthiest homes in America. are in this areas of California specifically, what happens if that many of them leave? They pay a lot of property tax. They pay a lot of state tax. They pay a lot of, they generate a lot of revenue and income in the, in the city.
There's just a lot to think about. And so normally my podcasts have a very clear point and I ask very clear questions. This is really just for people to be thinking about what happens next. And hopefully the fires can be put out soon. There's a lot of pressure on the fire department to make this work. I just don't see they don't have the resources for it. And so I've been very active.
You've seen me on social being very active about this. raising money for these foundations, getting supplies for these people that are going through very tough times and stressful times. I had over 3 million views on my post about bringing the animals here to the wild jungle. So if anybody's listening, direct message at wild jungle.
If you know of animals in Los Angeles that need to be taken care of, preferably not dogs and cats because there's a ton of shelters for that, but any farm animals, horses, large animals like that,
We have been accepting any and all of those type of animals here at the wild jungle and I just People are gonna go through very tough times And so if you can help people whether they can stay at your house whether you can give them supplies Whether you can donate I'm not raising capital for anything that I'm doing I'm saying that if you research what you care about research what you think might be able to help or if you see situation that you could possibly help in people are gonna be going through very very tough times and
even if the magical insurance fairy shows up with checks, which they're not going to anytime soon, if at all, it's going to take a humongous amount of time to rebuild. And so people are going to be trying to find rental houses or living in hotels, living with their friends, moving out of state.
There's just going to be so much chaos in Los Angeles, which is supposed to be the top 10 city on the planet. And right now it is under fire. And some of the counties are completely decimated. And so from a financial perspective, There's gonna be a lot going on in those towns.
And if you are a vendor that deals with any of these type of situations that you can help with the rebuilding phase, if you're out of state, maybe you should open up a division in Los Angeles.
If you do something that's in the rebuilding phase for houses or buildings or apartment buildings or restaurants, et cetera, you may want to open up an LA office or a satellite office in Los Angeles because we need you.
the city needs you and that could be if you deal with kitchens plumbing everything inside and outside of a household you should really consider setting up shop in Los Angeles not to monetize off a despair but the reality is we need the people we need the vendors to do it and so I'd rather you guys make money from being there to deal with the HVAC deal with the plumbing deal with the security systems deal with the houses the garage doors all the things we mentioned
if you know of vendors that can move there if you know of companies that can be prepared if you know of construction companies that are in los angeles tell them to load up employees tell them to get higher as many as they can humanly possible because it is coming and it's gonna be massive the rebuilding phase is gonna take years and years tens of billions of dollars who knows if it's much more than that could be 50 billion 100 billion whatever it's the number is so insane it's so hard to grasp what it's going to take
And so I just implore you, research the situation, see if there's any way that you can help. Maybe there's friends, vendors, whatever that you might know that can just get prepared for the rebuilding phase. Because we've seen this happen around the country in different types of cities. And in Los Angeles, Literally entire communities have been burned to the ground.
And so I'm sorry that this Monday Mondays is a very different type of tone or tonality. I like to focus on very positive things, but I also like to ask real questions and talk about real situations, real topics, and nothing is more real than what is going on right now in Los Angeles. The videos I've been seeing, the videos you've been seeing online,
The posts that people are making, the despair of people losing their entire houses. Some of them lived them for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. That's their entire life. And people are going through very, very tough times. And even just money is not going to replace it. Just getting a check from an insurance or the government, hopefully the federal government subsidizes.
Just getting a check does not fix, it doesn't even put a band-aid on losing your household, losing the place that you grew up, losing those memories. And it's tough. Even when you get a check, you don't know how to necessarily rebuild. You don't know how to hire the right architect. You don't know how to hire the right designer.
You might not know how to deal with the right general contractor or permitting. All the things that go on with this, it's going to be very tough. And so help people when you can. Be close with your loved ones. We're going into such a great time in our society, in our economy, coming into the new presidency.
We've felt the new wave of cryptocurrency is through the roof, Bitcoin's through the roof, stock market's going through the roof, real estate's getting better. That's why I launched the elevator mortgage at the exact same time, because it was like, okay, everything's happening all at the same time.
There's this great wave that's coming, but now there is a damper on it from this very terrible, tragic situation where our literal city of Los Angeles is on fire. And unfortunately, at the time of this episode coming out, it's still on fire.
And so without the wind slowing down and more water showing up and more fire departments showing up from other cities, I don't know if it's going to even be contained this week. And so hopefully maybe a rainstorm shows up, which would be amazing. Maybe we can manufacture a rainstorm, which is, I don't know why we can't do that because I know that people do that in other cities and countries.
But without going down too many rabbit holes, I just really wanted to make this quick extra episode for you guys to think about what can be done in Los Angeles, how you can help, have the conversations, and also just think about are you prepared in your city? What happens if a tragedy happens, whether it's fire, flood, hurricane? These are real things.
so check through make sure your insurance is up to date make sure your paperwork's up to date make sure you have a go bag ready make sure you have a fireproof safe like make sure that if something were to occur because nobody expected that to happen in malibu on the ocean but all those houses are gone it is scary to see how bad it is and so no matter where you are be prepared
Be prepared for situations. Have your friends, family, followers around you be prepared. If something were to occur, would you have all of your ducks in a row? Do you have your paperwork for your insurance, paperwork for your household, paperwork for your bank accounts, supplies, food, water, all the things you might need if something were to happen? Hopefully it never does.
But if an earthquake did happen...
tornado did happen would you be prepared and you want to make sure that means you're prepared paperwork wise online wise real life wise across the board and so again i'm kind of sorry but i'm not sorry because we need to have these discussions and it's it's the reality of the situation and it is a very grave situation in los angeles so if you can support them with products finances pet products if you know of anyone that are in the construction world they're going to have a very heavy load to lift
and have the discussion with your friends, family, followers. Visit us at themoneymondays.com and we'll see you guys next Monday.