Coronation Ball

Posting late because I spent the night at the airport due to faceless managerial chicanery that was defeated at the ballot box —

EXIT got a sponsor table at Coronation Ball this weekend, and I was privileged (and intimidated) to speak after Steve Bannon at dinner. It was a beautiful event full of beautiful people, and Lomez and his team put a ton of work in.

Huge thanks to the EXIT guys who threw in for the sponsorship or supported the event as volunteers.

the FELLAS

The thesis of my speech is that Americans have been getting more and more productive since the 1960s without realizing any of the benefits — that there is a hundred-trillion-dollar turnaround opportunity waiting for us, if the Trump Administration seizes the opportunity.

Below is the transcript of my speech.

On July 13th, 2024, we all witnessed a miracle.

Do you remember how it felt?

I remember thinking two things: first, if President Trump had been killed, I don’t know exactly how it would have gone, but the lives of everyone I cared about would have immediately become much darker.

And we would of course figure it out, life would go on — but our prospects and the scope of our ambitions would have to narrow considerably.

And it would just happen to us. We were at the mercy of forces way beyond ourselves.

But the second thing I thought, was that in the face of those overwhelming forces, something even greater had intervened. God hadn’t merely taken a hand, he had shown his hand. He wanted us to see it.

I didn't know exactly what that meant — except that God was not done with Donald Trump, and he wasn't done with America, and I shouldn't be either

Like most miracles in scripture, it hasn’t saved us from struggle. But it opened a way; it created an opportunity.

And tonight, I want to make the case that even the most optimistic of us actually underestimate what is possible if Donald Trump and the American people seize that opportunity.

Most Americans have spent their entire lives watching things get steadily worse, at a scale they felt powerless to confront, under a faceless bureaucracy that cannot be held accountable.

They made money, only to see it inflated away.

They went into debt for credentials, but those were inflated away too, with elite careers reserved for the system’s favored clients.

Their small businesses were regulated into oblivion — eaten up by multinationals who could afford the compliance burden, or send the work overseas.

When it became illegal to maintain safe neighborhoods in the city, they moved to sterile, overbuilt suburbs with unsustainable mortgages.

The mismanagement of America has diverted trillions of dollars in investment, and America’s best minds, into frothy, imaginary economic sectors, while the real America rots and rusts.

The box that we’re supposed to live our lives in keeps shrinking, and Americans — especially young Americans — keep being told to shrink themselves to fit.

And this system is headed off a cliff, because young people aren’t buying in. They’re refusing military service, higher education and even employment. They can’t or won’t start families. And the looming fiscal crisis shows that no one, young or old, is investing in the future of the system.

But this demoralization and hopelessness isn’t inevitable, it isn’t some mysterious moral sickness, and it certainly isn’t because they’ve had it too easy.

The American worker today is more than twice as productive as the American worker in 1965 who supported a family of five on a single income and put a man on the moon.

Of course life isn’t fair, and things don’t work out for everybody all the time — but there’s no reason that shouldn’t be a normal, typical outcome for an American family.

And the good news is, America has spent centuries gathering the most dynamic and creative people in the world, and they’re still here.

We just need to let them build a thousand nuclear power plants. Stop putting them through a four-year, hundred-thousand-dollar compliance test to prove that they can handle a job.

Let them work and live with the people they choose, and send their kids to schools they trust.

Let them start production businesses without asking permission from a dozen regulators.

Let them hire for competence without having to pay an HR stooge to look over their shoulder.

Stop paying them in counterfeit bills.

The government spends 18 billion dollars a day, which is outrageous — but it doesn’t even touch the wealth and productive capacity we could unlock if we unwound the distortions in America’s capital markets, labor markets, real estate markets.

We could build a world that we can’t even imagine right now.

We have a new word for what’s happening in the West, “anarchotyranny” — but it’s as old as the Book of Judges. It’s just the state of the land without a protector — where there is no law, and the powerful eat the country instead of ruling it.

And “the return of the king who will set things right” is equally ancient. It’s not that people want to be rescued — they’re up against a coordination problem. They need someone with means, and reach, and freedom of action to lead them into battle.

The return of the king doesn’t take away your sovereignty, he gives it back to you. By taking on the quest, becoming the hero of his story, he opens up the way for you to become the hero of your own. And that's what president Trump has done for us.

So President Trump isn’t the only one with a moment to seize.

We started EXIT in the bad old days of 2021, because we saw the crisis coming for our families under the old regime, and decided no help was coming. We were going to have to take a short position in that regime, and build our own way out.

So we started referring each other for jobs, building businesses together, teaching each other marketable skills, and connecting our families.

Together, we’ve created an AI boot camp, a startup incubator, Natal Conference, and we’re building a community in the Texas Hill Country.

But as we grew, we found that we had more friends than we thought, and we've had a lot of help, in terms of investment and reach, from many people in this room, including Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Lomez, REN, and many others.

And here we are.

Tonight, we’re a whole lot shorter on the old regime, and all of us will still have to build our way out — but we're going to do it together, and it's going to be a lot more fun. We’ll still have problems, but much more interesting problems.

We can break the yoke of America’s deranged politics, and turn our resources and talents back to the civilizational problems of our time. We can create a society where our children can raise happy, healthy families. We can turn to culture and the creation of beauty. We can become an interplanetary species.

What I saw in the miracle on July 13th was a defiance of our cynicism and the smallness of our ambitions. God has saved our President. Whatever flaws we may see in our society, or in ourselves, God intervened, ostentatiously, to give us the next four years. And now we get to figure out why.

God bless you, God bless President Donald Trump, God bless the United States of America.

EXIT News

• On last week’s full-group call, we heard a pitch from Muriel Space, a startup founded by some EXIT guys to build data centers in orbit — and learned more about the EXIT Business Incubator, which has been in session since October. Our teams will deliver their pitches to investor-judges in mid-March.

• On this week’s call, we had a private member Q&A with Bog Beef from Good ol Boyz, on Patronage. Recording will be available to paid subscribers later this week.

• Last Wednesday, we heard from an attorney specializing in generational businesses on How to Build a Business Dynasty.

• Next Tuesday (1/28), we will have a private member Q&A with Indian Bronson, on family offices — how to connect with them, how they assess investments, etc.

• One of the members is reviving the Scouting Program for our youth. Members can check the #scouting channel for call times & agenda.

• Houston member meetup 2/7 — more information in the #texas channel.

• RSVP link for Austin Cocktail Hour (1/26) below the paywall for Substack subscribers. EXIT cocktail hours are a great opportunity to meet your local guys, and see if the full group is right for you.