[00:00:01] Luke: How did growing up in Jehovah's Witness impact your character and your, I was going to say outlandish, your pension for creative thinking and freedom, and then sovereignty and things that you're pursuing and helping people learn now?

[00:00:21] Landis: So growing up as Jehovah's Witness, the-- so I'm going to give a little background on it because I don't think people quite understand how that works. So when you become a Jehovah's Witness, you're only supposed to associate with  Jehovah's Witness. At a friendship basis, you may go to work and work with people that aren't Jehovah's Witness, but your whole social order ends up being in their church. And so there's dress codes and standards by which you're supposed to conduct yourselves.

[00:00:53] And then everyone reads the same-- every week when people meet. They used to meet on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays every week. And people would prepare for these meetings in which they'd be answering questions and things like that. But the materials are all printed by the Jehovah's Witness, so everyone's reading the same thing.

[00:01:14] And the questions that they're answering are all the same questions. And so, yeah, millions of people basically learning the same information every time they go and every time they study, and everyone's thinking that the exact same thing. And so as a kid, there was always a right answer and "right answer" that you were supposed to have as your answer.

[00:01:36] And so as a kid, when I would go out and do things or see things, I would find that oftentimes the things that they were saying were actually not what I was experiencing. And so that created a gap for me. And that ended up being something that showed up a lot in my life. I'd say, I can hear what you're saying, but then when I experience it and I actually feel it and I have my own experience, it doesn't actually line up.

[00:02:05] And so growing up inside of it, there was always this pressure that you've had to conform because what they call their religion is the truth. And they said, "The religion is the truth." And this is what we believe. And if you don't do this, there's two paths. One is that you will be able to live in this paradise on earth that will happen after God comes and destroys all the evil people, or you'll simply be dead and gone. And so I would ask my mom questions. She'd say, "No one's going to die." There'll be no disease. Animals won't even get ill. It will be great.

[00:02:41] And I was like, "Will you be able to have kids?" And she'd go, "Yeah, of course. People will be able to have kids." And I'd say, "What are you going to do about beetles?" And she's like, "What do you mean what am I going to do about beetles?" I was like, "Insects are perfect and they're not going to die. Isn't the whole birth feeding get overrun by the insects at some point?" There's some weird logic in this that just doesn't quite make sense.

[00:03:01] And so oftentimes my parents, specifically more my mom early on, but she'd get very mad because she's like, "We have the answer. This is the truth, and this is what you have to believe." And so when I would see these things, I'd go, "Okay, it just doesn't quite make sense for me. I don't feel it." When I was around 14 or 15, a lot of times they push people to-- they'll say, "Hey, around this time you're probably going to start hearing from God, and it's going to be the time to get baptized."

[00:03:33] And their organization is actually like a private membership association, which a lot of people don't understand. So they've had some scandals in which they've never been able be to be taken to court because a private membership association handles all its matters internally because everyone volunteers to be in it.

[00:03:50] So much like the system that we are in, which is voluntary, their system is also voluntary. So when you volunteer into it, the way you volunteer is you become a member through baptism. And so at that time, my mom wanted me to-- she basically forced me to have a bible study with what was called a ministerial servant in there. They call him kingdom halls, same as a church.

[00:04:16] And this ministerial servant, nice guy, he was in his 20s, and he wanted to help me be able to hear God and leading me towards baptism. And I remember telling him, he said, man, "We've been studying together now," which I hated. I didn't enjoy it at all.

[00:04:34] And he's like, "We've been studying. Are you hearing God?" And I told him, I was like, "If I was hearing God, I'm pretty sure that I would know, and I'm not hearing anything. I'm just hearing you asking me." And so some of my friends started to go down that path. And probably two elements that ended up opening me up was skateboarding.

[00:05:02] Jehovah's Witness, they may have changed it, but they weren't allowed to play organized sports because if you did, you'd be playing with kids that weren't  Jehovah's Witness and that would be associating with people that were outside of the church. And so if you did that too much, you could be what was called publicly reproved, and that would be like being shamed in front of the congregation.

[00:05:22] But what would happen is I'd end up going to people's houses and meeting their parents. And so I meet these Mormon people's parents and the Christian people's parents and all their different parents. And what I started to realize was like, none of these people are bad, and they all seem to believe just like we do.

[00:05:38] They end up having different versions of it. And I started to see, I'm like, "There's different versions of this, kind of same story. This is weird." And so as I did that more and more, that started to have more questions for me, but my father ended up getting divorced.

[00:05:56] And so my mother ended up having an affair with the head elder of our church. He's called the presiding overseer of our church. And my father, he was irate. He was super mad and also going like, "What the hell? This guy's supposed to be the leader." And in that moment, there was a gap, and that gap allowed him to seek out something else.

[00:06:22] And so he ended up finding this book. Our gentleman named Bernie Bergman, he used to have this Bergman's Automotive in Escondido. He did the fastest Volkswagen turbo engines. He gave my dad this book and he is like, "Hey, read this. Maybe it'll help." And so my dad read it and it opened his eyes to new possibility, and he suddenly realized, he is like, oh, I could have a relationship with Christ and I don't necessarily have to be part of any particular church. It doesn't really matter.

[00:06:49] What matters is I'm like reading my Bible and doing those types of things. And so my dad went on to pursue Christianity, but he ended up giving me two rules when I lived with him. He said that if you're going stay out all night, call me. And if you need to be picked up by me, let me know. I don't care what time it is.

[00:07:06] And so I went from being in a culture where, like how my hair was cut to who I could talk to, or most of all my life was put into a certain box to having almost complete freedom and being able to do whatever I want. He really didn't mind, for the most part. He didn't care if I drank beer. He didn't really care any of those such things. So he gave me a tremendous amount of freedom.

[00:07:32] And that allowed me to see more of how people were living and how people were interacting because I was quite free. And then growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, one of the biggest fears people have is sales or talking to people or being in relationship. Well, I had been knocking on people's doors since I was born, so we'd go knock on people's doors, and it's a weird experience to have to knock on someone's door and be like, "Hey, do you read the Bible?"

[00:08:01] And no one on a Saturday morning wants to have that conversation, 8:00 or 10:00 AM. They would rather do something else. And so when I went out into the world, I had that capacity, a bit of a fearlessness of dealing with people. So I quickly met lots of people and experienced a lot of different cultures with just different groups.

[00:08:25] But what was interesting is that as I got older and I started to look around, the basics of mind control, you usually come down to a few things. One is isolation. You take a group of people and you isolate them. You then isolate the information that they'll learn, so they all learn the same thing together.

[00:08:44] There's no room for like other sources. And the source always usually comes from a single source. So no other information comes in. They see and think the same thing. The other is that they usually look the same. They will say, "Hey, this is the standard by which you have to conduct yourself."

[00:09:00] So it may have changed, but for a long time, Jehovah's Witness's men never had beards. They could have a mustache, but they couldn't have a beard, which I always found funny because in their books, the pictures of the guys always have beards. So I was like, "So it was cool for Jesus to have a beard, but we can't have a beard now because that means we're part of the world?"

[00:09:18] That's how they say it is, you're worldly. The other is the language ends up enveloping you inside of it. Well, growing up in San Diego, we had skateboarding culture, surf culture. In surf culture, they say things like bru, chaka, all these things. There was clothing that you wore. There was bands that you listened to.

[00:09:37] Skateboarding had their own things as well. Baggy pants, and this lifestyle and culture that was shaped around it. But in each group in a way, what I started to notice is that while the Jehovah's Witnesses at this point, I don't know if they've made it past, cult them, they have millions of members now.

[00:09:54] But every group in a way is like cult. And people come together in order to organize, in order to do things together, to get things done. Society survives because people actually come together in some form. What usually happens though, I guess part of the conversation that we're in is that when people come together and they're not really looking at the source of the information that is coming from, usually things get weird at some point.

[00:10:24] We start seeing weird things showing up inside of that group. And it may not necessarily be bad. It's just that because they're only getting information from one source and they're not taking it in from other places, they're missing. There's a big gap of what's actually going on around them. And so they can only see things one way.

[00:10:42] So we had been talking a bit about this earlier, and I think it's somewhat related, is that right now when I talk-- I talk to a lot of people on the phone about trust and the artwork and all the things that we do. Many of them are quite afraid.

[00:11:01] And so in a cult or in a group, usually what they use is shame or fear in order to keep people to stay in it. So Jehovah’s Witness is what they'd say is, "If you don't practice right, then you're not going to make it. And if you start misbehaving, God's listening and God's watching. He's keeping score the whole time."

[00:11:21] So if you don't get here 10 hours in a month knocking on people's doors, He's watching. And so people in the background have this fear that is actually motivating them to try to do the right thing. So they're not bad people, but the fear is actually what's driving them to take action versus with what I think is more true to nature is that in everyone us, if you try to stop breathing air, you'll die.

[00:11:52] If you tried to stop being interacting with nature, you'll die. You could say that if you tried to disconnect from God or this universe, you would die. So we're all in this game together where we can die. We're probably more close to a game of Minecraft in some ways where you can make your own rules than we are truly in a situation where there's rules that truly exist.

[00:12:13] Because we have the power ultimately to create, and that's what we get to do. And so humans are really good at getting together and creating things together, creating groups together. And when they create groups, they end up creating traditions, cultures, and practices.

[00:12:28] But oftentimes what happens is that either people lose track of where those came from and why they came to be the way that they are. When you get into biblical stuff, you start to realize a lot of these things came from a long time ago when people believed the Sun was the God and Christmas falls on the same day in which they wish the Sun God.

[00:12:48] And it's all over the place. And so the stories that we have in the past often fragment and people hold them tight and it ends up not allowing them to see more possibility. You see that in companies a lot of times. So you'll see a company, they'll do really well together.

[00:13:04] They'll build a team. They'll do really well. They'll be making lots of money, and they'll build and develop all their practices and their culture, and they're so good at that culture that something shifts in the market and those practices don't actually match what's now happening as a result of the shift.

[00:13:19] And so what you see is a decrease in profits. So what ended up happening with me was, in a way the arc, how that started was that while I was in the church, because I was going to meetings, there are meetings on Tuesday nights for one hour, on Thursday nights for two hours, on Saturdays to go knock on doors.

[00:13:41] That usually took two to four hours in the whole scheme of things. Back on Sunday for two hours. And we were preparing so that we could answer all those questions. So I started looking at the math of it all and that's like we could have got doctorates in-- been able to practice medicine by the time I was probably 12 given the amount of effort that we were putting in.

[00:14:02] And so what ended up happening and what ended up shaping me is as I started to walk out into the world, I started to see people in this way because I ended up leaving their church altogether. I decided-- I was like, I don't want to do that. And my dad was supportive of that. That ended up estranging me from my mom because my mom's like, you're worshiping the devil.

[00:14:22] And then all my friends that I had grown up with, because I was born into it, were like, you're no longer part of the church. We can't be friends with you in the same way. But I was young and so I was able to give up my social network and everyone I knew and start afresh.

[00:14:38] Whereas my dad, when he left, he was born into it as well, and so he at the time was about 40 and he lost all of his friends. And for a while, some of his family didn't talk to him either because he had left. And so this point of isolation, this point of fear that was basically controlling all of them to follow the truth and do the right thing because that's the way you have to do it, is really what was keeping them in a group.

[00:15:04] And so he and I, or for me it was easier because I made that transition. I was able to see how it worked. So the art part of this was that initially I would draw during their meetings. I'd draw on the books. My mom whipped me a bunch of times because I drew in the Bible and did all these things.

[00:15:23] And it was a way to keep my mind to myself. And because I was in those meetings so long, I had no other outlet. So I'd constantly be doodling and doing something. Coincidentally, I did end up reading the Bible many times as a result of being there because that's one of the things we did, is read the Bible.

[00:15:42] So what ended up happening is I went to school for graphic design, and having seen these organizations and these cultures and having a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, I didn't really want to be part of the group, and so I always ended up doing business of some kind or having companies or something of that nature.

[00:16:04] And the skill that I ended up developing was the ability to see groups of people and breakdown what their story was actually about, to see them anew and create the language around it. And I could help them transform the trajectory that they were headed in their business by changing the language that they were speaking about what it was they were doing.

[00:16:27] So I would go into a company and they would be doing the same thing, but I could change the language around what they were doing. And suddenly new people were coming in in order to get help or provide the thing that they had already done. The only problem they were having was really a language gap. All groups, I think, have that as an issue.

[00:16:44] So people growing up in the United States right now, they're born into a culture, so they have a background that they're born into. At the beginning of it-- well, we can't even really figure out where the beginning is if you really are honest about it because, yes, we have the Constitution, but this game's been going on a long time.

[00:17:05] It's taking different forms. It ends up taking different shapes. But a lot of people go, "Oh, we have a constitution." But the separation from when that document was created in the spirit of what it's been created and the time that has been on and the control over the information that people are receiving and the control over the practices that people are doing, in a way it's no different than a cult or a group thinking.

[00:17:26] And so in the  Jehovah's Witness, how did we get motivated to keep doing this thing that I can't imagine that most witnesses think it's fun. I would doubt that they truly find it enjoyable to go to church as much as they do. If they were truly honest about it, they'd probably tell you, oh, we're doing God's work and that's all good. But the way that they keep people there is through fear.

[00:17:47] That's ultimately how they keep people in the church, is through fear, is this idea that you're going to get reward sometime in the future as a result of doing-- right now, when you look at how power is structured, it's really not very much different. So people, their whole lives, when they're children, they're now being sent to schools. The schools start with establishing authority.

[00:18:10] So you have to ask another authority to go to the bathroom. That authority is going to tell you what you think. And the kids are learning from people that they don't actually like, they don't trust, they don't even want to be around, but they have to respect that authority.

[00:18:26] And so as time goes on and on, they just go deeper and deeper and deeper into this situation where they basically are trained to ask permission from an authority about what to do. They are actually not thinking. That's what I've also seen, is that when you memorize something and you're able to say it back, it doesn't mean you actually know anything about it. It just means that you can regurgitate it and say it back.

[00:18:51] So like in the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're like, we're spiritual. And I would argue, I have nothing against the Witnesses. I think that in some ways they have good qualities, but I don't know that they have any connections to God in the sense that God is all around us. You can't have it quite that way.

[00:19:09] And when you start experiencing things, you become curious and you start to find your own path. Things start to reveal themselves to you, and you begin to have something that's uniquely your own. So in our country right now, we have people that are like in games.

[00:19:24] So we have these two sides to this goal. We have the Democrats and we have the Republicans. There's choices that are presented to the people that they can make, but those choices that are being presented are effectively already from one group.

[00:19:44] And so you can either have chocolate or vanilla, but they're selling the ice cream. So it's the same company. You can either be a Democrat or you can be a Republican. And so you don't really have a choice. You're forced into it. And the punishments for both sides are basically the same.

[00:20:01] You have the legal system that's set up that says what you can and can't do, what you volunteer yourself into. You become a member of this organization, taking a pledge of allegiance to it so that you're going to abide by all of those rules and laws. And you don't know why you're doing it.

[00:20:21] People don't know why they're doing it anymore. They're lost in it. And so the group mentality, what happens is each member will actually whip the other members. So when I was about 16 or 17, this Jehovah’s Witness came to my house and said, "Hey, I heard that you have crystal meth." And I said, "I'd never taken crystal meth."

[00:20:45] And he is like, "Yeah, we've heard that you take all these drugs now." And there was this gossip that had emerged from me leaving the church that I was suddenly a drug addict. I worshiped Satan and all these things. There was no truth to them, but what was happening is they're policing themselves just like now people are like, "Oh, you're a conspiracy theorist, or you saying you're a sovereign citizen," all these words and all these things.

[00:21:10] The people will actually beat themselves. And what they're actually afraid of that's funny is the controller of the whole thing. They don't want to disappoint that because they're afraid that there'll be some punishment that they'll receive. And so I noticed this sort of dichotomy working with the groups that I'd worked with in the past, the companies that I'd worked with, and it really stemmed from being a Jehovah's Witnesses where I had this really deep experience from childhood where I had this thing I was told to believe in a social network in which I was born into.

[00:21:44] Generations of family, friends, they were in it, and I was able to leave it behind. And when I left it behind, it took a while, but it allowed me to reflect and see how an organization like that worked. And then I ended up seeing that companies I worked with and different organizations I worked with, many well-known ones, it was really no different. It was just a different version of the same thing.

[00:22:06] When you look close and you take away the packaging and you just look at the actions that are happening, they're almost the same. And I think right now, where we're at, living in the country that we're in, which I feel so thankful to be here on this land, it's not much different.

[00:22:28] We're basically in an indoctrinated way of thinking. And so the powers that be have been giving us choices, which we've been taking and not really going through and thinking of ourselves, we accept them. And so now, here we are, where when you look at some of the things that are happening in the world or the situations that people are finding themselves without enough resources to take care of themselves, not having choice per se, about how their health is going to be taken care of, a whole variety of different things, whether they own their sons and daughters or not, you're in this game, and the game is always controlled by the people who created it.

[00:23:06] And so they're always pushing that down and limiting the options that you actually have for yourself. And so I guess in the beginning when you're asking the Jehovah's Witnesses how did it have effect, it gave me that gift to be able to see that we're social beings and we're always going to organize.

[00:23:25] And so on one hand, while we may have troubles now, or people are starting to figure out that they can operate privately, let's say we all figure it out. We're going to all figure it out and then for, I don't know, 20, 30 years, it's going to be rad. And then everyone's going to organize again and create some other thing because it's the nature of what we are.

[00:23:44] It's the nature of what we are to organize and to create groups and for people to work in different ways. And maybe we can structure it better than we have before, but there will be no time when humans are alive that they won't end up forming groups of some kind.

[00:23:58] And at some point what happens is that, like I was mentioning with  Jehovah's Witness, things get weird when things get contained too long. Not to them, but from other people looking in, they're like, well, it's odd. What ends up happening is there ends up being friction because the people that are sending the solutions in and telling you what you should think and everything, it doesn't end up lining up with what we're actually experiencing on the outside.

[00:24:22] And so that's what's happening to many people now. They're making actually enough money to live, but after they're taxed and after everything happens, they don't have enough. And so then they have to make a sacrifice somewhere. And so as people sacrifice more and more, it becomes unbearable.

[00:24:36] And then what happens is, or even in a company when the profits don't come in and customers aren't happy and things don't work right, it fails. And so we're in one of those interesting states right now where the solutions that they're providing aren't providing enough value and people are suffering as a result of it. And so people are really looking for alternatives that they can find in order to take care of the situations that they find themselves.

[00:25:00] Luke: Beautiful. Damn, dude. That's a really great foundation. Yeah, you just made my job easy. That's a great place to start. There's so many different threads that I want to pull on, one of them being this idea of mental programming and indoctrination and that slow boiling of the fraud. As you said, these institutions have been built incrementally going back probably prehistorically.

[00:25:31] And we find ourselves volunteering into all of these social and institutional contracts because that's what everyone else is doing. I've talked to people about the issues I have around taxation and the response from your average person is, well, who's going to build the roads, the hospitals, the schools? And people don't even know that income tax is going to pay the national debt because we have this whole scam of a fiat currency when they hold the gold in 1933.

[00:26:03] I know very little about history, but with what little I know it's starting to reveal, wow, so many people will go along to get along. And in your experience of having a unique perspective around the world and the way that we coalesce and organize as people due to your upbringing, I think there are many of us, myself included, starting in around 2020, some funny things happened.

[00:26:30] Many of us have started to question, what is this system that we're all going along with? And there's been such a cataclysmic divide amongst those people who are just staunch advocates for the system despite their detriment. And then you had the fringe people that were already questioning everything.

[00:26:52] But there's this huge swath of middle ground people, thankfully, I think are going, hold up. And maybe some of those conspiracy theorists had something right. Because you're watching these conspiracies just become so transparent. Not even conspiracy, it's just like, oh, this is the way things are. There seems to be a very small group of people that are creating the left and the right and these so-called options, but they're still serving us the ice cream. You know what I mean?

[00:27:18] Landis: Yeah. They win either way. You pick one or the other. They presented you only two choices. So they're like, "We're happy."

[00:27:25] Luke: And they also know that by creating the false paradigm, say left and right, they're still the same bird.

[00:27:35] Landis: Yeah, I love that one.

[00:27:38] Luke: But they also know just the social animals that we are, if they can get us in conflict, then we're not able to see [Inaudible] behind the curtain and the one that's orchestrated all of this con. It's another interesting dynamic of cults, I think, right?

[00:27:57] Landis: Yeah.

[00:27:57] Luke: The infighting actually serves the empowerment of those that created it. And we think we're fighting one another. Meanwhile, it's like, it's them we should all be uniting against. But anyway. There's so many things I want to talk about with you. And for those listening too, I want to mention the show notes because we'll probably be referring to lot things that people want to go look up. So we'll call this one lukestorey.com/landis, L-A-N-D-I-S.

[00:28:25] And I want to talk about trust because that's something that you've settled on as a way to help empower people or educate people about public versus private and things like that. But I think it is important to create a foundation where we know the why it matters.

[00:28:42] And what's exciting to me over the past couple years is really just not part of my natural constitution to look at things like law, and I've done episodes around common law, not even within the realm of politics, but just how can we operate as free animal beings in this world with less restriction, right?

[00:29:05] Landis: Yeah.

[00:29:06] Luke: And so it seems to me that regardless of someone addressing their political or citizenship status and all of those things that are in that movement, that trusts are a way that somebody can actually change their life in a pretty meaningful fashion without having to actually even learn everything you need to know about law and the history of this country and how we've been deprived of our rights as a result of just not knowing them and not claiming them.

[00:29:40] Or the false belief that the government is, that is what gives us our rights. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong. The job of the government is supposed to be to protect our inalienable, God-given rights. But there's really something special here. And when I found you, I think on Instagram, I was like, "Wow, this guy has a real knack for conveying complex ideas into tangible and actionable ideas."

[00:30:06] So I guess that'll be a way to take us into the idea of trust. And how did you come into that? Because it's going to be very new to a lot of people listening and watching that only know the word trust from like, oh, this kid has a trust fund.

[00:30:20] Landis: Yeah. Trust fund bunny.

[00:30:22] Luke: Yeah, that kind of thing. For me, for people that want to be free within the system, this is probably the number one most important thing to learn. And you don't have to tear down the government to fight the system. It's like you have to have an understanding of the system and how to work within it while also being apart from it. Wherever you think is a good jumping off place for that particular topic.

[00:30:50] Landis: What shows up for me is a couple of things. So you touched on rights versus privileges, and that's a confusing thing that people don't understand. So when we're born, we have rights, fundamental rights, and we have property that we don't realize that we may own that is ours. So things like our hearing, that's actually our property. The things that go into our brain are our property. The things that we create end up being our property.

[00:31:16] Our thoughts are our property. Our voice is our property. Our body is our property. And so, when we begin to understand that we are actually the property, this is the body, the vessel that we use, and it inherently is there with certain rights, we are able to exercise those in ways that we can actually have more freedom.

[00:31:40] The difference between a right and a privilege is that a right is something you just have because you're born with. It's God given. By virtue of you having breath and being on the earth, you have a right. A privilege is where you take a right and you exchange it for a privilege. So a privilege is like, we're going to give you this government cheese, but you're going to give us this. And so it's more like an exchange because they're saying you're going to give something away in exchange--

[00:32:10] Luke: You're signing up for a benefit.

[00:32:12] Landis: And it often times starts out in a way that makes sense. One that I think probably started out and made a lot of sense to people was the DMV. They were like, "Hey, it's probably a good idea to have people trained in order to drive motor vehicles." But what you don't realize is you have the fundamental right to travel. So you have this right to take your body however you need to to go where you need to go. They're dealing with something that's in commerce.

[00:32:40] And what you start to learn is there's different realms inside of the game we're playing. And so until you can see them-- and the way that you see them is not necessarily with your eyes, but it's with your listening and your ability to see and know the meanings and distinctions of the words that are inside of them.

[00:32:58] This other component I'm going to weave in and then I'll take it back around is that you-- I think the other thing is, Lynn and I, she's my beloved, when we started really going into this more and more, we initially were thinking that you needed to do paperwork and you needed to have things all set up in order to be able to actually become free in a way.

[00:33:19] Luke: Things like status correction?

[00:33:21] Landis: Yeah. And it's helpful. It creates an artifact and a piece of paper that says, "Hey, I'm letting you know, because at one point I told you that I was this, that I'm not that anymore. And because I'm not that, that means that I'm no longer participating in that way with you. And I wish you well."

[00:33:38] Luke: Right. So just to unpack that, and people that have heard some of my prior shows with Brother Truth or Brandon Joe Williams will be somewhat familiar with this, but when you're born, you get a birth certificate, and this fictitious entity is created, a corporation, essentially, of your all caps name.

[00:33:56] And most of us go through our entire lives thinking that's who we are because that's how the system addresses us and deals with us. Meanwhile, there's a living man or woman behind that, and we don't know that it's possible for us to be the trustee of that entity. We've only been the grantor, speaking in trust language, because we're the ones that were born and this document was created that created this legal entity.

[00:34:22] The trustee is the USAG, for most people, unless they do something to change that, and then you're the beneficiary. So the system is supposed to take care of you, the beneficiary, the living person, on behalf of this entity that was created. So there's a mistaken identity issue that we have.

[00:34:42] And so what you're saying is, one way is to correct that relationship through that trust, which is more in the status correction. But there are other ways to still leave that intact as it is, but to learn who you really are and what rights you have as a living, breathing animal on the land.

[00:35:01] Landis: That's really where it starts. At the very core of all of it is that you are alive and you're a man. And so you don't necessarily have to do status correction. You just have to know that you're a man or woman that's alive. You're living. You have blood pumping through your veins.

[00:35:16] And you have to know how to speak what it is that you want to convey to who you're talking to because in most of these scenarios, what we're really talking about is someone speaking to a judge or being able to deal with an issue in law. That's where most of this sits. And law will recognize you as a man or woman that's alive, but there in the explanation you just gave, they're actually seeing you as an entity or an artificial person.

[00:35:39] And so you can do all the paperwork. I've done most of the paperwork. I've corrected my status and those things. But as time went on, I learned it doesn't actually matter that much. It matters, but what matters more is you could have all the paperwork and you could have filed all the things, but if you can't speak and have someone else hear, then you could just get railroaded with all that stack of paperwork. It won't matter.

[00:36:04] Luke: Or you could be written off as a sovereign citizen patriot person and just laughed out of the room.

[00:36:09] Landis: Yeah.

[00:36:10] Luke: Especially if you don't know how to act with diplomacy and some level of sophistication and just general decency.

[00:36:18] Landis: Absolutely. And so how does that play into the trust? The reason I wanted to share that first is when you recognize that you're a man or a woman and you're not the entity, what you start to realize is that you could almost think of the state in a way like a business or a company of some kind. Some people say that it's a corporation. Some people say it's an association. Some say it's backed into-- there's all these things that people say, but in some ways it doesn't really matter. In one sense, it matters, but it doesn't matter. What matters is that you realize that you're a man or woman that has rights that are fundamental to you and they're providing you services.

[00:36:54] And you can choose to use their services or not. So when many people like in business, they go, "I want to start a business," what an accountant will tell you is that you should set up an LLC. You should set up an S corp, or you should set up a C corp. And they're right because that's what they were trained to teach you to do.

[00:37:13] They went to school. Those were the options. And if you want to operate in that system, in the government system, or what I refer to as the public system, if you want to do that, then that's what you use. But what happens is that you have to go and register and pay to use that entity. That entity is actually their property.

[00:37:32] So I guess it was last year when Trump, they shut down his LLCs in New York, and his trial hadn't even happened yet. And you go, "How could they do that?" Well, they do that to people all the time because it's actually their entity. They can decide whether you can operate there or not.

[00:37:50] And so there is a type of law a lot of times people don't know that it exists. There's a type of body of law called equity. What most of us are operating in is what is called commercial law. I know Brandon as well. Brandon's excellent at explaining commercial law, the whole thing, how it all works.

[00:38:07] At the same time, you have people like, let's say Amir. Amir talks all about equity. Equity is a body of law that's been around longer than commercial law. And so equity will actually treat you as a man and equity is made up of 20 maxims. My mind is much more able to process things that are, I guess, a little bit more-- UCC codes and statutory codes, they're very prescriptive and precise what they mean.

[00:38:38] Equity is actually just maxims or principles that guide you towards an answer for something. And so one of the maxims of equity is that equity doesn't aid a volunteer. And so when we volunteer for something-- let me step back a little bit. Equity can take jurisdiction over any matter. So it's higher form of law than commercial law.

[00:38:58] So you can turn a court into a court of equity by the words that you use while you're there. And so it can take jurisdiction over any matter. So it's higher than commercial law. It can overturn change or make a decision that will take away a statute or a code. So if you're practicing inside of equity or you're not practicing inside of equity and you volunteer for something, they're going to say that you chose to do it and you're responsible for whatever choice that you made.

[00:39:25] So when we're volunteering for an LLC, S corp, C corp, anything that is a government product, we volunteered to use our entity and follow all their rules. We're okay if they change the rules on us as well, and we're volunteering to have that entity pay taxes to the Franchise Tax Board, to file a tax return. Because that's what you're agreeing to when you sign up.

[00:39:44] You register with the state, and then the state Franchise Tax Board ends up granting you permission in order to use the entity. It's all their product. The alternative is that a lot of people are starting to realize that it is possible, and it starts with you understanding that you're a man.

[00:40:05] As a man or woman, the only authority you actually answer to is God. And so it doesn't matter if you're a Christian, or if you're a Muslim, or anything, here in the United States, whatever your higher power is, that's what you answer to.

[00:40:20] Luke: And one of the rights is the right to contract indefinitely, right?

[00:40:24] Landis: Yeah, exactly.

[00:40:25] Luke: And that's what makes it voluntary. I go, oh, cool. I'm going to contact the Secretary of State and I'm going to volunteer to contract that I want to create this entity so that I have an insurance policy liability protection and so on, and that's the benefit that I'm getting. And I'm going to give up something in order to get those benefits, especially if I don't know there's any other way to do it, which is where you come in.

[00:40:46] Landis: Yeah. So because of the background I had as a Jehovah's Witness, I began to see that people were making everything up. The reality was a creation of man, and it's an attempt to take care of concerns, or to guide power, or do anything. I don't even see it as malevolent anymore. I don't see it as war, or it's--

[00:41:05] Luke: I want to get there.

[00:41:06] Landis: Yeah. It's just a phenomena that's happening as a result. And so because we have the power to create, we can create our own entities. We can create our own entities or organizations that we want to use. The way that an entity gets created-- an organization can be created without-- it's a little different than an entity.

[00:41:27] So like a tribe of people that are down in the Amazon, they're a group of people. They're not really an entity. An entity usually shows up when you take and express through your words onto paper some sort of intention about how something is going to be done or how something's going to be used. In most of the time, what's happening to us in law is that things are being implied.

[00:41:51] So someone walks into the court and is trying to handle some situation, doesn't actually understand what's going on, and there's all these things being implied on them and they don't even know it's in the background. It's like already running. So in a trust, when you take the time as a man or woman that's alive to actually write down what you want to have happen with your property or the powers that you want this entity to have, it can have them because you actually took the time to write it out and say what it is.

[00:42:18] Like, I want it to have the power to do this, or I want it to have the power to do that. The only thing you can't do because it's fundamental across really-- is why logs at all is murder, steal, commit fraud, or destroy other people's property. And that's pretty much true no matter where you go in any place in the entire world.

[00:42:37] Luke: Yeah. And most people who aren't psycho or sociopathic would be happy to abide by those guidelines.

[00:42:46] Landis: Yeah. It's funny when you look at who's doing those things on a larger basis, you go, "Huh, that's funny." Someone who's willing to take the time to think through what they'd like to have happen inside of a trust is usually a person that's pretty conscientious. There's someone who is not-- they're willing to slow down a little bit and actually take the time to think through what's important to them, what it is they're living for, what it is they're working for, so that they can have that articulated. And so the trust as an entity is really an expression that comes from you. So when people buy one of my paintings, for people who don't know, if people buy my paintings, we give them trust.

[00:43:26] And so when people come to us, while we start with a format, what ends up happening is that's transformed into a trust that is your own because it ends up being your own words. We don't have to use legalese. We don't have to use statutory codes or any of that stuff. We can pull it completely out of there. And what we start doing is really honing into what's really important to you.

[00:43:49] How do you want your loved ones to be taken care of? How do you want your trustees to be able to take care of things where there's going to be exchange that's happening amongst other parties? How do you want contracts handled? You can do really whatever you want.

[00:44:08] I thought when I got into this being in software at some point, software is a little bit of what I've been into in the technology, but I thought that we had this template in a way that no one was going to want to change. And so far, everyone's changed it. And it's all over the place.

[00:44:26] Some people have these super detailed family plans where they've figured everything out and we help guide them and we prompt them and help them figure those things out. But some people are really simple. They're like, if our trustees have a problem, play Rochambeau, paper-rock-scissors, and whoever wins that's the direction we're going. We don't want it to stop.

[00:44:45] And so it's not in people's nature to think that way. And partially why I talked about the Jehovah's Witnesses in the beginning or this idea of being in a group or a cult where you have effectively surrendered your ability to create, and you're just living in a cosm of choices that other people are giving to you, when you're just accepting other people's choices that they're providing to you, you don't really have to create anything in a way.

[00:45:16] You're choosing it, and you're dealing with the implications, but you're not necessarily creating anything new. You're just existing in the system with what's there. But with the trust, you end up actually writing out how you want it, how you want everything to be, and that shift is very hard for people because they haven't ever practiced that.

[00:45:38] Luke: They're not used to taking responsibility for themselves and their choices. Nor do they want to face, speaking for me, at points in my life, I'm not creating a judgment. I'm judging myself too. It's easier, again, to go along to get along. When you start looking at how you're actually going to set up yourself as a private person and how you're going to contract or not contract and participate in commerce and look at your legacy if you have a family and so on, there are some difficult questions that you have to answer to yourself.

[00:46:14] When we created our first trust, which was a revocable trust, and we'll talk about the difference, we had to talk about our death plan and what's going to happen. Not just the will, but where we want to be buried, how, if we want to go to a morgue. If we're going to donate our organs, which of course we're not. A friend of mine taught me that long ago. When you do your driver's license--

[00:46:34] Landis: You might die sooner.

[00:46:35] Luke: He's like, "Do not." I was like, "Well, I'm a good person." He goes, "You don't want to do that organ harvesting." But these are all things that I think we just want to go punch the clock and get our paycheck and just be left alone, some of us. And then some of us that are more irritated by the imposition of these institutions, of the state, [Inaudible], whatever you want to call it, capital T, capital S, the state, however you want to frame that, some of us are just wired to know, like, ah, this isn't right.

[00:47:01] I know I have these rights, and I don't know that I'm giving them up, but I know that they're being infringed upon. How do I get out of that? And when you hit up against that reality, then there's a certain level of responsibility that can be terrifying because you're used to outsourcing all of your safety and security, or at least what you think is safety and security to the state.

[00:47:21] And then it's like, well, if they're not going to take care of me because they're screwing me and I don't like the way they take care of me, then that means I'm going to have to truly embody myself as a sovereign man or woman. And what that entails is a certain level of education and responsibility that I don't think some people are cut out for. And not that everyone needs to be, but for those of us that are, it's like, wow, get ready. If you want freedom, there's a price to pay because you've unknowingly given your freedom away.

[00:48:10] Landis: If you've been in a system your whole entire life, that's all you know. And so when you are presented this opportunity where you're like, hey, you could create it and you could start to define it, and it can be the way you want it, in a way you have to die. You have to give up what you had before, and that's going to make you look weird, that's going to have people judge you. That's going to have people try to shame you. That's going to have people sometimes not want you to be around in some cases. Sometimes depending on your network, people are totally cool.

[00:48:18] Luke: You're not paying to fill the puddles.

[00:48:19] Landis: Yeah, that's what I mean. And people have a hard time with that because they want-- people have used this analogy so much, but is the crabs in the bucket. You want to keep crabs trapped, you throw a few in a bucket and they won't let the other ones get out.

[00:48:33] And so why I mentioned Jehovah's Witnesses, when I divorced that as my knowing, it was at a young age. My dad had a harder time because he had grown up and he basically had to give away all his friends and family. And so in some ways, when people are looking at this other option or this expanded version of living, let's say, it's just another way.

[00:48:54] It doesn't mean it's good or bad. It's just another way. It has its own challenges in some ways because of what it is. But if you do that, you have to give up how you knew yourself. You have to give up what you knew before. And that's really hard for people. And then you add to it that there's these punishments that happen that you think are going to happen to you.

[00:49:17] What you don't realize is because you gave them permission, which you can take away, that's the only way they can punish you. And so you can take away that power if you want. Unless you murder, still kill, destroy any of that stuff, they can still punish you. But for the most part, you can stay out of those crosshairs.

[00:49:31] People just don't realize that that's possible because of TV and the fear, but they literally think they're going to go to prison or die, or maybe something bad is going to happen or their family. They're going to have misfortune. It's all those things that everything that we're working for, people don't want to lose that or change that.

[00:49:45] And that fear is really what keeps us trapped inside of a cycle, whatever it is. It doesn't matter if it's this or something else, but that piece is the piece that ends up holding people in it. And until you start to realize that you're a man that's alive or a woman that's alive and that you have a choice and you can change how you want it to be and take a small step of some kind, even if you're afraid, afterwards what you'll start to see is there's not much to be afraid.

[00:50:17] The first year that I went through all this with the trust, I was afraid that maybe people were going to show up at my house and knock on my door and jump over my hedges. I started my first business when I was 19, and I've been an entrepreneur until now that I'm 46. And so I've had entities of all kinds set up. I've raised money. I've had C corps, S corps, LLCs, numbers of them. The process of doing that, that's all I knew.

[00:50:47] And so when I first did it, I was like, "Oh my God. What's going to happen?" But what ended up happening for me is when I looked at the situation I was in, it was like, even if this doesn't work, what's going to fundamentally change? And I realized nothing. I was like, if it doesn't work, I'm still going to pay taxes and I'm still going to do all these things the same way.

[00:51:08] I'll just owe it. That's the only thing that will change. And so what ended up happening was nothing. What ended up happening was it just was quiet. Actually, the level of mind power that I used to have to think through in order to have all those things happen with the IRS and all those voluntary systems went away.

[00:51:33] And suddenly I started to have more space in my mind because I'd make a deal and suddenly I'd have to think, well, how do I spend the money? I don't get to just sit with the money and wait till I find the thing that I want. I got to go buy something. I got to go spend it on something or else I'm going to lose it. And that ends up being this cycle that you're in all the time.

[00:51:53] Luke: Brutal. Yeah, that's something that I've realized, is when you're working through an entity, an LLC, S corp or whatever, it's not advantageous to be profitable because you're going to pay taxes on your profit. You know what I mean? So it's like at the end of every year, you're like, "Oh, there's a little money in the bank."

[00:52:11] Better spend it on something. It's a really bad business strategy. And you think, well, what's the alternative? Giving part of it away? I don't want to do that. So at least if one spends it, whatever you spend it on, technically you own, or we can talk about what you own and what you don't own.

[00:52:29] But yeah, looking at it business wise, not just as a person who has a job and a W4 employee or something, but as a business owner, it's like, man, it's excruciating. It really is a hamster wheel because it's like you're penalized for being successful. It's horrible once you start to understand that. In my own experience, it's like, wow, is there any way out of this thing? And thankfully there are, which is the basis of our conversation.

[00:52:58] Landis: Absolutely. I think on one hand, the culture in everything that's around us, if you look at it as a form of power, power just means a capacity to act. You do these shows now and podcasts and so you know how to do it. It's like a form of power that you have. You could go do it anywhere. But when we're born into society, it gives us certain powers. Having the roads are nice. Having bridges are nice. Having things around us is forms of power that allows us to do things.

[00:53:36] As time goes on and those little things are set up though, we start to lose track of why they were created in the first place. But the trust and the thing that we're talking about, ultimately, you have the power to create what you want. And that's the part that people have a really hard time dealing with.

[00:53:58] And so if a trust is awesome for business in the sense that you could use it for an entity to-- when I started getting into it, I had a consulting business. I use the trust instead of having it be me. That was great. Suddenly I had much more freedom. I was able to work with international businesses using that structure.

[00:54:19] I was worried at first. I thought that maybe they'd be like, "What's this deal with the trust?" Because I'd never seen one before. You'd kind of touched on you'd set up a living trust, and most people think of trust as something you use when you die. And dying is--

[00:54:31] Luke: An estate planning.

[00:54:32] Landis: Yeah. Versus something that you have as a tool that can be used while you're alive. And so when you start to learn how you could use it while you're alive, it's actually quite freeing. It gives you more power capacities to act. What also is unique about the trust is that when I was talking about expressing it, you get to choose who's a party to that agreement or not.

[00:54:53] So like Luke, you'd mentioned, we have the freedom to contract with whoever we want. So when you go through the registration process with a LLC or any of those entities, you're bringing the state as a party to your agreement. They're a party in it. But within your trust, if they're not included as a party to that agreement, then they're not a party to that agreement.

[00:55:14] So they would have to have proof that they have an interest or a party to that agreement in order to make any type of request. And if they're not mentioned in the charter of the trust, then that trust has no business with them. The trust ends up becoming an entity unto itself. And so the burden of proof is on them to prove that they have some interest in it, which is nearly impossible.

[00:55:38] They would have to have a copy of the charter and your trustee would never give them a copy ever to talk about that. They would never share that with them. So they'd somehow have to come up with that. And how do you do that?

[00:55:50] Luke: And this is the defining factor of what a term some people might be familiar with is like piercing a corporate veil, since if you have a traditional entity and you've contracted with the state in whatever capacity, then they have access to everything. There is no veil because they're part of the deal. You've voluntarily made them part of the deal.

[00:56:09] Landis: Yes, exactly.

[00:56:10] Luke: Whereas there's a veil, and we're going to define privacy and public and private at depth, but in the case of an irrevocable complex trust, what we're leading into here, because they were never made a party to that contract and they're never going to be, it's impossible for them to pierce that veil, so to speak.

[00:56:29] Landis: Yeah. If they came requesting something, you'd say, "Hey, I appreciate that you've sent me this request. We read our trust charter and nowhere can we find any mention of you. Unless you can prove otherwise, we have no business with you."

[00:56:43] Luke: That's so good.

[00:56:44] Landis: And so they might send something back that sounds threatening, but it really, it's an offer to contract. And that's actually with all this, you start to realize that as you start reading things, one of the things that changes is that you realize that most of these things that they're sending are offers to contract with you. They want to contract. They want your business.

[00:57:00] You're what's valuable. All the debt in the United States is based on your value, not on the value of anything that they're doing. And so you're what's precious and all that. We're actually what's valuable in all this.

[00:57:13] Luke: Despite how terrifying some of this can be because of the programming that has to be undone, there's such an empowering element to it in realizing that your ability to create, to dream something and act something into existence, is what gives you your value and the value that you contribute to society. And then when you look at the nature of the parasitic system, is largely run by people who lack the capacity to create.

[00:57:41] So they create a grid, a matrix, an infrastructure by which to siphon the creative energy or future labor interest, however you want to frame it from people like you and I, and probably the vast majority of people listening that just don't realize their intrinsic value and their ability to contract, their ability to create.

[00:58:00] So out of fear and out of a lack of knowledge, out of ignorance, we allow ourselves to be parasitically siphoned from by this system because we think it gives us a protection of rights that we don't need because we're the ones that own our rights, right?

[00:58:17] Landis: Yeah.

[00:58:18] Luke: It is such a mindfuck.

[00:58:20] Landis: When you start understanding this, one of the things that ended up happening to me is I started to go back to the Bible, Jehovah's Witnesses and reading it again. And when I started reading it again, I started to realize it was a book of law.

[00:58:33] And the Old Testament is very prescriptive, almost like statutory law. Don't covet thy neighbor's wife or whatever the thing is. And the New Testament is actually much more like equity where you have grace. Jesus brought grace. No longer he who is without sin cast the first stone.

[00:58:56] But in Genesis 1, what's interesting is that it just describes his creator. It's like God wants to create the earth. He starts creating stuff out of black, and then he puts a firmament over the earth, and then there's the water, and then he creates man and women in his image.

[00:59:15] Luke: They took the word firmament out of my Bible. I just bought my first Bible and I was like-- I forget what it is. It's right in the beginning. I was like, "Oh, I want to find the firmament thing." It says our atmosphere or something weird. I was like, "Wait, hold up." Yeah.

[00:59:28] Landis: I always laugh about that too. Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

[00:59:31] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[00:59:32] Landis: Yeah. But it says that we're creating God's image. And then you have Jesus who was saying, “Hey, God is in each one of us. God's inside of us. We're all part of that.” And you go through all the religions and you realize they're saying all the same stuff, but that inherent nature is to create. And so when we're busy doing other people's tasks and we're not creating, we're not using the power that we have inherently in us.

[00:59:58] We're taking our energy and giving it to someone else and almost treating them like God versus ourselves acting as God and creating on our own. And so in a way, inside of all this, there's a transformation that happens. It's not just about creating paperwork or a trust. You actually have to start transforming yourself a bit and understanding your position in it, because you as man or woman, there's only one thing higher you in that hierarchy, which is God.

[01:00:30] And then the equity is actually based on Christian principles from the Bible. And so if you read Genesis 1, and that's the only thing you do, Genesis, the first chapter, it's saying that you're creating God's likeness. And so your power is to create. And so why are we in the situations that we're in right now?

[01:00:49] Well, partially is because people aren't creating. Because there's not enough solutions out there that are solving the issues that people are dealing with, it's because-- I'm not saying no one is creating, but at the capacity that we could create, the potential of what we could create is so much higher than we are.

[01:01:10] And so to your point, I think siphoning is the right word. The value you have is your time and your energy, and that's being siphoned off into things that oftentimes don't matter or make your life better.

[01:01:21] Luke: A lot of it's the programming to consume rather than to create. Because when we consume, it's like we're inherently more dependent. And the need to create is decreased by the availability of consumption. You know what I mean? It's like we're just offered more. Here, eat this. Watch this.

[01:01:40] It's just like consume, consume, buy, buy, buy, and the value system that's been created helps facilitate more consumption rather than us being left, some of us dissatisfied with having tried the path of consumption going, "Hmm, this doesn't feel good because when I consume, I'm beholden to the entities that have offered me the things to consume, but I want freedom." And then you realize, oh, shit. Freedom means going back to taking responsibility for my ability to create, right?

[01:02:08] Landis: Yes. Because it takes energy and effort. It's not as though freedom means that you're going to get off easy. It doesn't mean you get to slack off, or you suddenly don't have responsibility. It's not like you suddenly don't have to take care of your kids, and you're not-- it actually takes a higher level of responsibility to act from that because it means that you have to take personal responsibility over your life.

[01:02:32] You have to be responsible for it. If you create your own trust, it's an entity you created based on your intention with your power to create. And so whether it ends up being successful or not as a trust is always going to be up to you. That's really what it comes down to. There's not like a quick fix for that. We're all the ones that are in charge of having that happen.

[01:02:51] Luke: Yeah. And in the case of your life, we've all unknowingly allowed the state to be the trustee, right?

[01:03:00] Landis: Yeah.

[01:03:01] Luke: And I guess where you're going is you can still keep that in place and not do anything to change that and just go over here and create your own trust outside of the birth certificate trust and all that. We don't even know that we've done that. Yeah, if you're going to be the architect of your trust and you're going to be the trustee, then with that is the responsibility of the whole thing.

[01:03:22] Landis: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:03:23] Luke: Because if you don't do your job, the state isn't doing their job. Some of us have chose to fire the state and become the trustee of our original estate, our original trust. But then in this realm, it's like, yeah, it's not just going to magically do things for you and create your freedom. You're the one that's actually establishing--

[01:03:40] Landis: It's just paper. It's just a thing that you've created in order to create a distinction about how you see reality going. And in that sense, this is why, like I said, in trust we God. And as a joke on the money, it says, in God we trust. But in a way, in trust we God, because we are acting as the God on this paper.

[01:04:00] We had a situation where someone had to go to court that had a situation with a trust, and I never recommend that you would give your trust to a judge to read. It should never go there. But the beneficiary had an issue, felt like there was something they were supposed to get that they didn't. And usually where you have problems with the trust is actually with the people involved, like anything.

[01:04:23] But she thought that she was supposed to receive something that she didn't when someone passed away. And so she gave a copy of the trust to the judge. The judge said, "I want to let you know, I can read this, and I can tell you what I think it means, but I can't change anything about it. I can't make any judgments about it. I can just interpret it for you."

[01:04:42] Because the words that she put on the paper were higher than the authority that they had in which they were working. And so I'm not saying that getting status correction is bad or not helpful or doing any of the things that are bad. I think it's all helpful to go through the process of doing those things if you feel called to do it. But I also think we have to step back fundamentally and realize that that's just part of the system, their system that they created.

[01:05:10] If you really go below that, you have to realize that you are a man or woman that's alive. That the only thing that you're supposed to answer to is God. And so from there, you have the basis now to do any of the other things that you want. And so when people come to us initially, if they come to our class, what we try to do is say, look, we want you to see all the options first before you go out and really try to do something. Because we're all in different situations.

[01:05:36] You don't have kids and I have kids. And so I have different concerns than you have. We may have overlapping concerns in certain areas, but we're all a little bit different based on the situations we're in. And when we got into this, the first thing, I got gung ho and excited and I want to do all this paperwork and everything.

[01:05:52] And as time went on and I continued to study, I realized, I was like, oh, it doesn't matter as much per se, the paper work. If you're going to do it, do it right, but you have to fundamentally first get that. And then you have to get that you're the creator. Then when you get that you're the creator, then you can create things like trust. So you can create paintings or you can-- it's just in everything.

[01:06:12] It starts to show up in everything that way. And so then with the trust themselves, like you had mentioned a characteristic like irrevocable. One of the things that was helpful for us in the beginning, my beloved is a voracious reader. She cranks down so much information, and I really get the blessing and the gift of living in her wake, is truly, truly how it is.

[01:06:41] And so I wholeheartedly believe that she's smarter than me. She's just really intelligent. And she not only has the ability to take and read things, but she can remember it, organize it, and turn it into something. I tend to have to read things a couple of times and then I have to take notes. And then I get to that point.

[01:06:59] But she can do it like basically reading something once in most cases. What we started finding is when we listen to people talk or they were talking about their approaches, we were getting very confused. Because what was happening is they were showing us a path, but we didn't really know why we were doing what we were doing or where we were going even.

[01:07:23] And so there was like, we're just acting on faith in a sense, like, ah, we hope this works. We'll see what happens. So we had to step back a little bit and be able to see how these all connect together. You'll hear me say public or private, and so we look at it from the standpoint that this is all the same game.

[01:07:45] It's just the game of life. These are just different ways that you can handle the things that you need to handle in order to take care of your family and deal with what you're going to have to deal with from the time you're born to the time you die. So these things are created for the sake of that.

[01:08:00] And so there's what is called the public domain. And that's what most of us all know. That's the state, that's the government, that's those systems. And so we register ourselves into those in order to use them. On the other side, you have the private. And basically what that means is that you're a man or woman that are operating in your private capacity and you're contracting with whom you choose to contract with, and you're aware of it.

[01:08:23] When you see both of them, both sides, where I've arrived at is neither is good or bad. They just exist. And so some people say you have to be totally private. You got to live out in the woods. You have to do all that. Well, credit's pretty rad.

[01:08:40] Credit is a cool tool to have when you don't have the credit, or the tangible, the real money to exchange in order to get the thing that you want. And so credit can actually be a really great tool. And then you start to learn the whole economy is based on credit and debt anyway, since there's no real money, fiat currency, but in the public, the public deals with credit. In the private, there's ways to get credit, but you have to do it privately.

[01:09:05] You're not going to be able to interface quite in the same way. And so I go to people. People ask me, "Well, what's the answer? What's the truth?" Well, having come out of going all the way back to the beginning in the Jehovah's Witnesses, Jehovah's Witnesses are like, we are the truth, we are the way, and this is how you do it.

[01:09:24] Well, you have a completely different set of concerns and things that you have to take care of, so your truth is actually different than my truth. And so when we take people through and they see the whole game board, they can pick out the things that they need to help them. And so some people want to do status correction, some people do revocation of election, some people get a trust.

[01:09:43] And so it's not really about doing one thing or the other or which is right or which is best. First, you have to understand what you are, and then you have to be able to how the game is being played. And there's a lot of people sharing this information in different ways. We came from the standpoint of once you see how it's there, then you can go figure out how you want to do that thing.

[01:10:04] And so we don't help people with status correction. We don't do revocation or any of those things. We just do the trust. And so we tell some people, you don't need a trust. Because if you don't have any property to put into the trust, of any kind, you could still find value in it in some ways. But if you don't have any property to put into it, then it may not be your first best move.

[01:10:24] Maybe doing revocation of election where you revoke your consent or your election to be a taxpayer is a better move because it suddenly puts more money in your pocket to do other things. Money's the wrong word. I know it's currency. But for those out there, that's effectively a method of exchange.

[01:10:41] And so I always look at it from that perspective with everyone, where they're with. I don't know, I feel like going on this tangent a little bit. So during COVID, the business that I helped create, my partners and I had just a falling out and we had a difference of opinion on what that meant.

[01:11:03] And bless their hearts. They did what they did and I did what I did. But I left that situation feeling like I don't want to have this old life anymore. I had started my first business when I was 19, and so I've had some businesses that I've sold. I've had some businesses that have failed. I've had the whole experience.

[01:11:23] I've raised money. I've been in it. I wanted to not do that anymore. I was like, "I'm going to actually do everything the opposite." And I was like, we built a technology stack where we had everything automated or marketing. We had a whole video team that produced our videos, all these different things, very immersed on that side.

[01:11:43] And I was like, "I'm going to do the complete opposite." I believe that if you go and you just relate with people on a one-on-one basis in relationship, and you actually talk with them, you could do all the same things you could if you have high technology. Maybe you do it a little faster or a little quicker.

[01:12:00] But what I find is people are very relationship driven. And so one of the things that has come out of all of this as I began to learn is I now talk to people on the phone typically. Well, for a year and a half, I've talked to people every day, four or five people. And so I've talked to with people who are dealing with this situation where they're super afraid or they're wanting to make the change, or they've been studying it for two years, but have never done anything.

[01:12:23] And I talked to them and find out what's going on with them inside of the situation. Well, when I left the business that I had created, I was like, "I'm going to start collapsing everything that I do into each other. I'm not going to work anymore side load. I'm not going to put on a suit. I'm not going to do any of that shit. I'm going to paint. I'm going to figure out how to paint and do something else that's interesting or helpful."

[01:12:45] And I saw that the corporate structure is actually-- when I was talking about a cult where it weird, it got really weird. When you see where they're spending money on things and for the sake of what, it's hard to understand why they're pushing us towards certain things inside of the culture.

[01:13:03] And so men and women who have concerns about their families or their communities, if you're using those structures that are created by the state, you're in a way playing in that game. And I think as more people start to move out of that and begin to define and actually create their intention about how they want to live their life and how they want to take care of their family, then they're actually changing the future. They're actually doing something to change it.

[01:13:28] Because one of the things that I noticed inside of this whole community, which first off, I'll say that anyone who's willing to talk about this, my hat's off to you because it means you're brave. And so we might not see it exactly the same, but that's okay because we'll never see everything exactly the same, and that's fine.

[01:13:46] But one of the things I see is we're in some ways getting caught up to what has happened, but it's been happening for hundreds of years. What we're not doing because we're not creating enough is we're not creating a future that we all want to live into.

[01:14:01] So while we're getting caught up, you start hearing about these different agendas and these different groups and these people that are bald and say that they want us to eat bugs and they are busy writing the future down on paper and getting people organized behind it, they're creating.

[01:14:18] They're actually the ones who are sitting in the creative hot seat and they're using their resources in order to create a future for us. The only way I can see that you can create a future for yourself is if you take the time to think about what you want. And so when we're helping people with the trusts, the trust helped them think through that.

[01:14:38] What makes the trust unique is-- okay, I'm jumping around a little bit, but I think I can connect this together. When we first started doing the reading, we thought that there was a certain kind of trust you had to have. We thought that there was a perfect trust.

[01:14:53] And so we were on the hunt for it because we had always went out and discovered other people's options that were created in order to do the thing we wanted to do. So we were shopping for cars almost. We're like, "Oh, we need a four-wheel drive and these features." What we realized after reading trust is there's characteristics and trusts.

[01:15:11] Irrevocable is a characteristic and a trust. It means once you put your property, you can't take it back. The trust ends up owning, and it's an important component for a separation between you and your property. And so the trust itself, the characteristics of them-- okay, there are characteristics and you could have whatever characteristics you want.

[01:15:36] There is no such thing as the right trust. There is your ability to express your intents in the trust and then you can use characteristics in order to have certain things happen inside of the trust. And so I say this because some people that I talk to are trying to find the perfect answer.

[01:15:53] And that, again, is taking you back into asking for vanilla or chocolate. And it's not about vanilla or chocolate. It's about you, and it's about what you want to have happen, and then it's about applying the characteristics you need into it so that you can have those things available to be accomplished as a capacity to act or a foreign power for your family or that organization in the future. And so I don't really worry too much about the characteristics. You hear these popular ones like non-grantor, irrevocable, complex, discretionary, spendthrift trust.

[01:16:27] Luke: Statutory, non-statutory.

[01:16:28] Landis: Yes, statutory, non-statutory. It's private. It's common law. It doesn't actually matter because we could take right now a napkin and we could write on it. I could say, I entrust this tea to Luke and Luke is now going to be the trustee. I'm still going to be the beneficiary because it's my tea, but he's going to make sure that nothing spills out of this cup. And once it's signed and we've created it, it's been expressed and we have created a trust. There's a trust relationship that has occurred.

[01:17:00] And so it doesn't necessarily have to be complex. I'm sorry, complex is a characteristic. It doesn't necessarily have to have lots of words describing every single thing. Trust relationships can be very simple as well. And so when you're out there, if you're looking for trust and you're looking for that type of help, don't get worried if you don't understand all the terms.

[01:17:21] What I tell people a lot of times on the phone, because some people can't afford a painting, and that's just is what it is. I have limited time. My family has limited time in order to help people. And so we can't help everyone, unfortunately. Maybe we can help more with things that we're doing, but what I say is download some trusts.

[01:17:39] Just download them and dispel the mystery of what the trust is actually. After you read a few, what you'll start finding is there's a lot of similarities between them. After you read four or five, you start to go like, okay, I'm starting to get an idea about how maybe I could use some of these things.

[01:17:57] So I've given something away in here that is super valuable that some people might not get, but because you're expressing it and you're not including the state as a party to the contract, it's almost impossible for the state to ever get involved in it. So even if you fuck up, who's there to tell you that you did? Do you know what I'm saying?

[01:18:19] Luke: Yeah.

[01:18:20] Landis: And so in some ways, when you get on the path of creation, and you get connected to the creator and the source, and you start to become curious, and you start to go, you know what, I'm going to put my mark on this, I'm going to start to shape this in the way that I want it, you can't really mess up. You can't.

[01:18:38] And so what you're worried about is being in that old system, being in that old cult, being in that old thing, and you're worried about the shame, or the guilt, or the pain, or the suffering that you're going to feel. But in a way, when you really understand what you are, that God is inside of you, at least from the law standpoint, that's how they're seeing it, is that there's the creator and then there's you, you can't mess up. And so that's the funny part about all this, is that after starting this six years ago, this process and sitting in it now, knock on wood, but it's been surprisingly uneventful.

[01:19:14] Luke: Yeah. That goes back to the Wizard of Oz. It's like behind the curtain, we think there's this scary mastermind behind there and it turns out we actually have a lot more freedom than we're aware of. Going into, just for people that have never even heard the word trust other than a trust fund or something, my understanding of a trust fundamentally is a contract.

[01:19:40] We have the unlimited right to contract. It's one of our God given rights. It's a contract between two parties for the benefit of a third. You have the settler or the grantor of a trust. You have the trustee who runs it, and then you have the beneficiary, the one who benefits. Would that fit in your understanding?

[01:19:55] Landis: Yeah. Someone is conveying a piece of property to another and they're effectively going to take care of it. The grants were. So I use the word creator because grantor is a legal term.

[01:20:08] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:20:09] Landis: So non-grantor means effectively that the grantor is the person who's creating the trust. They're going to grant it into existence. They're going to use their language in order to create it. I use creator because we're alive. So the creator from a non-grantor standpoint, once they have created the trust, what's going to happen is they're going to relinquish their interest in the property that they've conveyed into the trust.

[01:20:34] And then the way that we see it is that it's also good to use the characteristic of making irrevocable because that means you can't take it back. And so what ends up happening is the creator of the trust conveys property into the trust, and there's a true separation between the ownership, the control, and the benefit of that property.

[01:20:55] And so the creator can choose one of two roles. The creator can either be the trustee or the beneficiary, but not both. If you have created a trust and you conveyed your property into the trust and you have both control and you benefit, then it's really no different than you still owning it.

[01:21:14] And so a lot of times when people are setting up what are called grants or revocable trusts or living trusts, the grantor has the right to change the trust and take the property out if they want while they're alive. But the state has and can penetrate those trusts and say, that's your property still. You own it.

[01:21:34] And so what happens in the situation that we're creating is what we're doing is we're creating an entity unto itself. We want this entity in which we wrote the rules for to exist. And so we're going to bring it to life, into existence. So as the creator, we create it, we convey the property into it, the trust ends up owning the property, and we can either choose to be a trustee or a beneficiary, or in some cases, the grantor just goes away altogether.

[01:22:00] Or someone has someone else act as the grantor for the trust. That can happen as well. And so when that happens, the separation has occurred. And now what will happen is you have trustees inside of the trust. Those trustees are there to take care of the affairs of the trust. So you might write in your trust that the beneficiaries of the trust have the right to have a refrigerator full of food whenever they need it. Some people say, you can't do fun, food, and fashion.

[01:22:29] There's no law on the private side that says that. If you have a registered entity, and your partner is the state, and they say you can't do that, and you're doing that, then you're lying to your partner. You're cheating on your partner. You broke the agreement that you made. But in your trust, you can write whatever you want.

[01:22:44] So you can decide how you want it structured, how you want it set up. And so the trustee's job is to follow the rules that you've created. And so in many cases, people will set up multiple trusts for different needs that they have. But the trustee can do things that we would commonly do in business.

[01:23:01] They can buy property, sell property. They can operate a business inside of the trust. Their job is to grow what is called the res of the trust. So the res of the trust is the cumulative total property that is held inside of the trust. So property is an interesting word as well because the government likes to use the word asset. Asset, from my understanding, is means property assessed for tax.

[01:23:26] Property can be anything. So property could be all this equipment that's around us, the paintings on the walls. Your voice is your property. Your thoughts are your property. Anything that's your property, you can actually convey to a trust. So you might say, anything that I say is always owned by the trust.

[01:23:45] And you could write that in and then that's like the law of the trust. It now has an interest in you because you wrote it and it's in there. But property, it's important to think about it that way because when you say asset, you're basically saying it's property assessed for tax. And so property could be anything.

[01:24:02] So a lot of times people end up putting like gold, silver, currency. They start putting intangibles or tangibles, their home, real estate, any of those types of things they start putting in there. Usually I suggest to people, like, if you have things that have high liability, don't keep those in your primary trust.

[01:24:21] Make another little trust for that. We teach people how to create their own trust when they go through the process. And so they start out with two and what ends up happening is, is that if they have a situation where, let's say they start a new business. They don't want to put all their property at risk, so they start another trust as they need it.

[01:24:37] And so they can have that business operate out of that trust. So the trustees, their job is to grow the res of the trust, follow the rules of the trust, and then to provide benefits to the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries, their job is the easiest. They're just simply supposed to benefit.

[01:24:51] They're not supposed to be involved in the day to day affairs of the trust. They can request for things like an audit of the trust to make sure that things are being handled properly. But beyond that, they're not really supposed to be involved in the affairs of the trust itself. They're only supposed to benefit.

[01:25:09] There's another role, which is called the protector. So the protector's job is actually to be an advocate for the beneficiaries. So let's say that the trustee is taking the res, property from the trust, and using it for something that's nefarious. Well, the beneficiaries, because they're not operating in the trust and they're not handling the day-to-day affairs, they're not able to just go in and say, "Hey, don't do that."

[01:25:34] They're able to call on the protector and the protector can go in and investigate and see, did, are they not following the charter? Are they doing something outside of that? And depending how you write it, what powers they have, they could either seize property that they may have, or they're using. They could also fire the trustee.

[01:25:52] And then your trust will have some process for bringing a new trustee in in order to take care of the role. When you take your property and you convey it to the trust and you've separated your ownership from it, what's unique about the trust that makes it an entity unto itself is that when people die, the trust doesn't die.

[01:26:14] And so you can have successor trustees and successor beneficiaries. So there's some really old trusts out there in the world people don't know exist. One of the most famous ones is the King and Queen of England. When the queen died just recently, they had a whole succession plan where there was trusts that they basically were having new successor trustees and beneficiaries step up.

[01:26:34] What you notice is their titles changed. And so they were in charge of different things. And so inside of a trust, the trust never dies, but there's always a succession. And so if your trustee gets too old or your trustee passes away, or they just move and don't want to do it anymore, you'll have a plan inside of it in order to have another trustee.

[01:26:54] You may have situations where your sons and daughters are beneficiaries and maybe sometime in the future they become trustees. But what that does is that when title changes hands and when you're operating in the public as an entity or you're operating as a person, anytime you change title, like if I sold you my car and I gave you the title, then the public, you'd have to pay tax.

[01:27:21] So every time title changes hands, you're having to pay a fine or a fee or something like that for nothing. It's already been paid for. But in a trust, the title never changes hands. So title ends up being held inside of the trust. Title is something interesting because most people don't really understand what title is, or that it really exists.

[01:27:43] So for example, when most people buy their home, they get a fee simple mortgage, and they'll go through and pay off that home. And when they pay off that home, they only have the legal title. The state holds what is called the equitable title to the home. So this legal title actually goes into kind of what you've been touching on about this relationship about the trustee and the beneficiary relationship that exists, because this is actually happening all over the place inside of the state and the arrangements that we're making. We don't realize it.

[01:28:21] What they're doing is they're holding the equitable title, which makes them the beneficiary. And so what happens is you think you own your land, but actually what you own is the building on top of the land. You don't actually own the land beneath your feet or the mineral rights or the sky above your head. You only have the building.

[01:28:43] So if you don't pay your property tax, which they're essentially saying, "Hey, we're the beneficiary and you're the trustee, so you're going to have to handle this in order to handle the affairs on the land, and this is the way we benefit," then they can take the property from you. You could take the house off the ground, I guess, if you could get it out of there, but they have the equitable title. So there's guys like Ron Gibson.

[01:29:05] Luke: Yeah, yeah. The land patent guy?

[01:29:05] Landis: Ron has been in it for years. Yeah. Guy's amazing.

[01:29:10] Luke: Yeah. That's cool stuff.

[01:29:11] Landis: He helps people actually be able to claim the title to things. And so when you start realizing that, what starts to happen is you start taking the title of the things that you used to own. Let me make a little clarification here. So the state sees you as this entity.

[01:29:28] Your Social Security Number effectively creates an entity. It's like a sole proprietorship. So they don't see you as a man or woman that's alive. They see you as a piece of paper. And so you carry around their pieces of paper that they own, but they see you as a piece of paper. And so any title that you hold inside that person, they see themselves having an interest in it.

[01:29:50] And so the reason they're able to go and take things from your bank account or take things from you is because they see themselves as having an interest in it. They see it as their property as well. So when you create the trust, they're not a party to it. They don't have any interest in it.

[01:30:04] So when you take title from the public and you put it into the private and it's conveyed, and now it has private ownership and they don't have an interest in it, it's very hard for them to take it. Because now the trust has it, not them. But if you only have the legal title to something, you're missing the equitable title as well.

[01:30:22] And so people are starting to learn, they can get the equitable title for their car. They can get effectively the equitable title for their land. They're finding that they can get both of these things and actually have control over it. It's not that they have control over it. The trust has control over it. The trustees are able to use the property that's inside of it.

[01:30:40] The trust owns it. What you leave behind is the idea of ownership actually. Because ownership doesn't actually exist. Fundamentally we die. And so because we die, we can't own anything. Our soul has no pockets in it. You can't throw something in and take it with you when you go.

[01:31:01] At best, we get to use what's on the earth. And by having things sitting inside the trust, this invention, this creation, this thing, it doesn't die because people can keep using it. So the things can stay there. Now, if you're a beneficiary of a trust and you have some sort of need that needs to be handled, and the trust says that it can handle that for you, then it can.

[01:31:21] And so the trustee can provide that to you. And so if you were to look at your entire life and think of all the expenses and things that you have, you could end up probably writing rules that would take care of those when you need to by the trustees. So you move into the situation where you don't need to have anything anymore.

[01:31:38] You don't need to own anything anymore. And so the trust can own it all and the trust can now take care of you inside of it. And that's a completely different dynamic because the state can't go in and take the property from it. They don't have an interest. And you're not using your person or your entity in order to hold property.

[01:31:54] The worst place to own something is in your person, because the state can take it. If you don't own anything, it doesn't matter. I talked to a lot of startup people and they're like, "What should I do?" I was like, "First, probably get some profit coming in, but do revocation of election. At least then that thing's gone. And now you can take that additional money that's coming in and invest that into what you're doing. And then when you get to the point where you have something or before you have something, set up a trust and start putting the things in the trust."

[01:32:23] You don't always have to do it at once. But for people who have things and they're completely in their person, those are the people I say, you're the one who really could benefit from having a trust, is because you have something that could be taken away from you, so you might as well put it in there and have that as the way to protect the property that's inside of it.

[01:32:42] Luke: Or in the case of operating an irrevocable trust as a business trust, if you're someone who doesn't need the liability protection, say you-- example one of my teachers uses is if you're blowing up buildings or you have a big construction company, you have a lot of employees and liabilities, a dangerous job, then operating through a business trust would probably not be very smart because you actually need that liability protection.

[01:33:06] So you work through your S corp, LLC, whatever, so it's not a one-size-fits-all thing, but of course you're always thinking, for your own perspective, the business that I own and run has zero liability. It's just me sitting here talking to someone most of the time.

[01:33:25] Landis: If I was going to reset it up again, if I could do it all over, what I would have done is first created a trust. Right now, most entrepreneurs don't understand what a trust is. So if you're trying to raise money, and you're like, "Hey, I want you to put in my private trust," they'd be like, "Huh." It's already hard enough to get someone to give you money.

[01:33:46] So that adds a layer of complexity that's hard. But the trust can own interest in other entities. And so what you can do is you can have the trust own an interest in, let's say, an LLC. And so you might have the LLC run payroll and those things where there's optics into it from the outside that you don't want to have on the trust itself.

[01:34:06] But when there's profits, you can distribute those to the trust. Or let's say that you had a brand. You could have the trust own all of the brand. It could own the brand, the name, the logo. It could own the processes, the procedures, the tools. It could own the building in which the business is being handled in, everything.

[01:34:27] It can own all the property, and then license, lease, rent, all that stuff to the LLC and receive payment for it. And so then if some person has a contract with the LLC and the LLC doesn't fulfill on the contract and there's a breach of that contract, the LLC could just go away. They can't take the property that is owned by the trust from the LLC.

[01:34:50] And so if you need another one, you can set one up. So oftentimes what people will do is they'll have multiple partners or things, and I find, as I talk to people we've helped, one partner ends up setting up a trust and conveys their interest of that entity into the trust. And so the trust also gives you the ability to interact with the public and be able to utilize those types of things or hold those types of things as property.

[01:35:15] And so you're not really limited from that respect. If you're trying to go completely private and you don't want to have anything to do with the state, then you just stay with the trust. But there is benefit to using-- if you have an ambition that's large and you need access to capital in order to have it and you need investors and things like that, in this moment of time, using a trust would be probably confusing for most of them to try to get them into.

[01:35:39] You're probably better off just using an LLC, S corp, or C corp, something like that based on what you need, and then have your interest owned by the trust so that if you were to sell that business, the capital gains, the trust has no contract with the state. This is anything about capital gains.

[01:35:57] And so if there was a sell or an accident event, it's not going to have to worry about that. And so I usually look at that with people based on their situations. If you're a one-person thing, like you're a chiropractor and it's you and one other person, run all through the trust. But if you have 60 employees-- one of my business side has 11 employees. This is a little bit of a sidetrack, but at 11 employees, I didn't know about any of this at the time, and I was paying them really well.

[01:36:23] We built e-commerce websites, did a lot of branding, positioning work for a lot of pretty well known businesses. And I paid them at the top of their salary ranges. People are making six figures. And I said, look, I can't go any higher with you guys. I've taken you to the top. You get to work from home. And so this year, instead of giving you a bonus, I'm going to give you a bonus, but it's going to come in a different form.

[01:36:49] If you're willing, I will have an LLC set up for you. I have an accountant. He'll set it up. I'll pay for it, and each year I'll pay to have your taxes done for the LLC. And what will happen is you're going to get 20 or 30% of what you had paid in taxes back. And so I had 11 employees, and guess how many of them accepted?

[01:37:13] Luke: How many?

[01:37:14] Landis: Zero.

[01:37:14] Luke: Are you serious?

[01:37:15] Landis: No one accepted.

[01:37:17] Luke: What?

[01:37:17] Landis: Yeah. And I was confused. I'm like, this is best. I was like, "You're going to make more money. What's the deal?" They were like, "I just don't want to deal with the work. It's just going to be a hassle. I'd just rather you take it out then I don't have to think about it."

[01:37:32] And that was eye opening for me a little bit. That was prior to this, and I was like, "Ah, okay." That also made me learn that, because a lot of people get frustrated when they get in this because they're listening to their family talk and they're so trapped, in a sense, and they want to show them and they're so excited about what they learn that they're pissing their family off because they won't stop talking about it and they can't figure out why.

[01:37:57] You can't make people do anything. And I learned that. I was like, "You really can't make people do anything." You can help them. You can provide it. You can let them know there's something there, but until they're willing to make that step, they usually won't.

[01:38:12] Luke: I like this topic you brought up that you can't really own anything. I think that's something we lose sight of because we don't want to face our mortality. And we think we want to build this big collection of toys and that we're going to take it with us when we leave here. It's like the planet owns it.

[01:38:32] It's like, who owns this couch, this table, your car, the house? It's like, well, no one really owns it because of the impermanence of this particular incarnation. And I think that's something we have a hard time facing. And there's a certain liberation that comes with that and a further level of liberation in the legacy of what you're building. If you're using your creativity to add value to the world and it's being reciprocated through stuff that you then understand you don't own, it's what's the point.

[01:39:02] But in the trust model, because the trust lives on indefinitely, and the trust can't own things because it's not going to die. Unless somebody just neglects it and ignores it into non-existence. It's motivating to think, wow, there is some value here. And if you have kids, obviously, and descendants, then it's going to live on through them. And if you teach them right, and they have an interest in operating in this way, it is something that can actually carry on beyond.

[01:39:29] I think most of us think, I paid for this car. I own it. I bought this house. I worked hard. I own it. Which brings me to another, I think falsehood that's going to be shocking to some parents, I think-- I don't have kids yet, but I hope to, is that people think you own your kids. You can or you can't.

[01:39:46] Landis: Yeah.

[01:39:47] Luke: Talk to us more about this idea of ownership inclusive of this idea of owning your kids and the rights you have or don't have to direct them in their lives.

[01:39:59] Landis: Yeah. And one thing to that too is like with the trust, we had talked about this a little earlier, one of the things you have to face is death. Actually, the hardest part of the creating the trust is not whether you have the right characteristics. It's if you can think through what it means to have a good life and also what it's going to mean when you die.

[01:40:18] Because when you die it will affect other people. And it's been proven over and over that if you write down your goals, even little ones, the likelihood of you having them happen goes way up. Trust is like that. You might write your trust and it might not happen the way you thought, but the likelihood of it being closer to that is higher.

[01:40:36] But you have to face your death, ultimately, inside of it. And that's actually the thing that usually takes the most time. But what you asked about is-- you don't have children, you don't have kids, you have sons and daughters. What happens is that when we go and get our marriage certificates, the state actually ends up having an interest in our marriage. They're the third party that doesn't actually join you in bed.

[01:41:04] Luke: Yeah. If you look at marriage certificate, it's on bond paper, just like the birth certificate. It's spooky. You realize like, oh, we just contracted with this third party. Rather than say, in a common law marriage where you're contracting between one another and God. It's really interesting.

[01:41:20] Landis: Yeah. Now with it I look at it. It's like my beloved I'll never get married. We don't have to. There's no reason to. That's something else that someone created for some other situation. You can still be with someone or you can just ask God like, God be here now. We're going to get married. Nice. Done. It's that simple. But what happens is, when you start reading the language inside of it, what you find is that the state is acting as a third party and they're relegating you instead of being a father or mother to a parent or a guardian.

[01:41:51] Luke: It's all in the language, the legalese.

[01:41:53] Landis: Yeah. And so this is why you'll hear these situations where families are having their kids taken away. Schools are teaching certain topics and they're having a certain type of care that the kids are saying they're requesting without the parent's knowledge. When the parent goes in to actually confront the state about it, the state is going in and taking away their kids. How is that possible?

[01:42:16] If the mother had the child come out of her womb and is born and the father's sperm was the one who was there to conceive it, you would think just naturally that that would be impossible. You couldn't make someone give up their kids. When you sign that contract, you've been relegated to a lower status than what you were. And so you gave up that right. And so they see your sons and daughters as children and property of the state. And so when they--

[01:42:43] Luke: Through the marriage license or the birth certificate or both?

[01:42:46] Landis: Both. Yeah, yeah. Because you come together and now the property that you create through your union they have an interest in. And then you go further and register your son or daughter.

[01:42:57] Luke: By getting the marriage license, you're creating a contract that is in its own way a trust.

[01:43:05] Landis: In a way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In court, the trust relationship happens in a really distinct way that most people don't realize. When you walk into the court, what happens is they don't say this to you, but they're asking your person's name. They're saying, "Are you Landis White?"

[01:43:26] Really, that's the all caps version of your name. There's capitis maximus and capitis minimus. Capitis maximus means all caps. And when your name is written in all caps, it means you're dead or an entity. Entities are dead. They're dead. They're not alive.

[01:43:44] They're not blood pumping through their veins. And then capitis minimus, when your name is written in all lowercase, actually means that you're free without any obligations. You're a free man or woman.

[01:43:56] Luke: That's where you always get bills of exchange directed to you in the all caps.

[01:43:59] Landis: Yeah, always.

[01:43:59] Luke: You never get a bill that's not all caps.

[01:44:00] Landis: Yeah, never. No. Commerce doesn't work that way.

[01:44:04] Luke: Yeah.

[01:44:05] Landis: When you see it, after you know it, you pick up on it immediately and you're like, "Oh, this is commerce. This is an invitation to contract or it's a contract. So what's happening is people are going into court and they're understanding equity or they're understanding statutory law at a deeper level.

[01:44:20] And part of what's happening is that when you walk in, they're saying, "Are you Landis White?" And what I'm actually saying, if I say yes, is I'm the trustee over Landis White, this entity. And in a trust, the trustee always has to handle the matters or the business matters of the trust or any of the affairs of the trust. And so I'm acting as the trustee.

[01:44:41] The trustee is the only one who can pay the bills or pay for the things. And so what's happening is they're putting me in the seat of the trustee and they're saying, "Okay, Landis. At 12 o'clock at night, there was a stoplight that you drove through, even though no cars were coming and there was no injured party, but you owe us $500 because you drove through the light. And we saw you with a picture. There's no injured party, but we got the picture of you, and so we're charging you $500."

[01:45:03] But really they're charging the trust $500, but you're paying it thinking that you're responsible. You can actually walk into the court and say that you're the beneficiary. You're not the trustee. You're the beneficiary. Your signature created these licenses and these things. It's their property, ultimately. You're the beneficiary of that, not the trustee of it.

[01:45:29] And so what's happening is people are starting to understand that dynamic. And when you're sitting in the beneficiary seat, you can't handle anything. The beneficiary is only there to benefit. So a lot of times what's happening is the beneficiary is then telling the court, you prosecutor are holding a bond in your hand, the ticket or the thing, and I am going to have you be the trustee. And as the trustee, I need you to handle the matter. Well, they don't want it.

[01:45:57] It's like now you're in a game of hot potato. They don't want to be the trustee role because that would mean they would have to be the ones to pay for it. And so this is one of those things where, when I talked about earlier, implied versus expressed. So if you walk in and let's say you have a stack of papers and that stack of paper says that you're a living man, that's free and it says that you did a status correction and you've done all the things right, and then you get in there and the judge starts asking you questions and you can't speak, doesn't matter. You'll lose because what's going to happen is most of the time they don't read the papers. They just talk to you and they're going to try to railroad you through the system through their words.

[01:46:43] And so that is something over time that I realized is probably the most important, is the ability to communicate these things. So if you are jumping out into this and you're thinking that like, "Hey, I'm just going to get the paperwork and it's going to be okay." You can, but you're going to at some point have to put some time in to really being able to think through and communicate.

[01:47:03] Some people say you have to learn it all. You have to always continue to study. I tend to think that you should study the areas where you have interest or where you have liability versus trying to learn everything. But once you know that there's an area, you're going to have to be able to speak it. Equity having the highest jurisdiction, you act in personam, which means you act as man or woman.

[01:47:23] You're coming there as a man or woman. And so the way that you act as man or woman in front of others is through your language. You might evidence something with the papers, but when you start seeing it, you start to realize like a lot of this does exist in language. Language is actually the thing that allows us to create, organize, and do all these things around ourselves.

[01:47:43] I'm sure someone said it at some point, but it's like the word spelling. You're casting a spell. The language is what creates the reality around you. A lot of times people think that they have an income gap. But usually what it is they have a knowledge gap. And because they don't have the right knowledge, they can't communicate in a way that allows them to have greater capacities to act, or greater power in their lives.

[01:48:05] And so the language that they don't possess is actually what's keeping them from being able to move forward. It's not move forward. We're all perfect where we're at. There's nothing we have to do. But it doesn't give them access to certain things. And so a lot of times people are thinking they're running out of money.

[01:48:22] Well, the powerful and the elite, they made-- money's fake. It's not real anyways. What they're doing is accumulating knowledge and power. They're always looking to increase their capacity to act, but that always comes through relationship. It could come through relationship. It could come through knowledge. It could come through the use of property in different ways, but power is usually in one of those forms, but it's always a knowledge gap. That's what's keeping you back in anything.

[01:48:45] Luke: How does this pertain to going back to owning your kids and even your marriage, having your primary relationship be susceptible to interference?

[01:49:01] Landis: With the state?

[01:49:01] Luke: Yeah.

[01:49:02] Landis: Here's part of the challenges we have. Part of the challenge is that in some instances, to get your kids into a school, you're going to fill out paperwork. Some people don't know that you don't actually have to have a marriage license in order to be married.

[01:49:19] You can basically just ask and have. You're like, God, allow us to be married or God be present or however you want to do it. It's up to you to decide that. The union happens because you have God in you and that creation is already there and it happens. When you take and have registered your kids and you have the birth certificates and you've effectively said that you're giving up your kids' rights and they're becoming property of the state and the state has now an interest in them, you've relinquished that.

[01:49:49] What you have to do is you have to establish that you have an interest in the kids in some ways. So the ways that people do that is like they'll take a bible or a holy book, whatever it is. They'll write out their family tree. They'll try to go back, if you can, three generations and map it out. Some people will publish the fact that their sons and daughters were born, even if it's been some time that's passed.

[01:50:14] What you need is evidence that they're in your family. You need evidence that they're actually part of your family. And so the state ends up having evidence that they have an interest in the kids because of these contracts that you've made. But most people haven't ever evidenced that their sons and daughters are theirs. If the state comes to take your kids, what they're doing is they're committing a trespass.

[01:50:35] And so trespass is a word that some people don't quite understand that's happening. So if you have property and someone steps into your yard, you're saying they're committing a trespass. And sometimes people think that means you're just going someplace you're not supposed to. But the trespass is you're violating some sort of right that someone else has in some sort of way.

[01:50:54] And so you have right over that property. So your sons and daughters are effectively-- it's a little weird the way that this thing is because in one hand, fundamentally, how can you own another person? It doesn't make sense. But on the other hand, until they're like adults and of age--

[01:51:11] Luke: Rather than owning them, you could think of yourself as the trustee and them being the beneficiary in the trust of life.

[01:51:19] Landis: That's actually where they sit, is that father is considered-- this is an equity. In equity, the father is considered the grantor because he put the seed into the trustee. The trustee is the mother because she births the child. And when the child is born, the child is the beneficiary.

[01:51:35] Luke: Interesting.

[01:51:36] Landis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how that flows through that.

[01:51:40] Luke: Wow. That's cool. I'm sure many parents are listening now, especially over the past few years and all these mandates and things like that. And I know people are very concerned about protecting their kids, but some people aren't in a position to homeschool or send their kid to a private school and so on.

[01:51:58] So just like a lot of the stuff we're talking, for someone who's an employee working for someone versus someone who has a lot of assets or their own business, it's going to be, as you said earlier, everyone has a different path and different barriers to entry and different processes with which they're comfortable and are appropriate for where they are.

[01:52:17] But for people that have kids and are struggling with being able to protect their kids from indoctrination, harm, etc, are there any actionable things that one can do or start to study or pursue?

[01:52:31] Landis: Part of it is being able to show that you have an interest in something. So it's like, hey, this-- what you'll notice with the royal family, when a new son or daughter is born, there's an announcement. They don't necessarily say the name.

[01:52:45] They're like, a new baby boy was born into the family on such and such date and is healthy and is now in da da da. In your birth announcements, you don't necessarily say the names of your kids as you're doing it. You're saying that a new member of your family has been born into the family so that you have this record of it.

[01:53:03] The part that I think is challenging in the execution of this right now is that most people end up getting birth certificates and they've set themselves up that way. So they don't have proof of some kind that they could say, hey, I have an interest in it. But if you're taking your kids to public school, that's their business. Do you know what I'm saying?

[01:53:22] And so you're taking them into their place of business in order to-- you're contracting. You're going to fill out a registration of some kind, and you're going to agree to some terms that are inside of it. And so I see where you get more stuck inside their system, is like, if you go to public school, you're saying, "Hey, government. I want you to teach my kids what you think is valuable." And so if you're mad about it, you put them in it. Do you know what I'm saying?

[01:53:52] So in private school, you have more of an option based on the-- and this is actually an area where I think there's huge growth and opportunity. I'd actually say in all of this, there's huge growth and opportunity because these things affect so many areas of our life.

[01:54:06] And so for people who do have an entrepreneur spirit or are wanting to help and have both, I see that I would consider myself selfishly altruistic. On one hand, I have to take care of my family and the things around me so that I can have a life that's good to me. And on the other hand, I have to help people in order to have that happen.

[01:54:27] And all of us have to deal with that at some level. And so I don't think anyone's completely 100% altruistic. I think we have some part of us that's selfish and some part of us that's altruistic. Do you know how many Americans there are in the United States right now?

[01:54:42] Luke: No idea.

[01:54:43] Landis: More than 100 million, close to 200 million, somewhere in there. Very little of them know about these things. And so for those who are out there going, how do you do something? We really need more schools, private schools, for people to go to. We need alternatives to do that. There's all these areas where we actually need people to come together.

[01:55:04] The cheapest thing that people can do initially is just be willing to work together. Even if there's no money involved, just being willing to add a little time, even it's a little at a time in order to improve something. But school and education is a massive one because the kids aren't really learning.

[01:55:20] They're regurgitating this system that's been perpetuated on and on and on and on and on. And so your kid is going to come out with a knowledge that's weak, flawed, and incomplete. I'm not saying all public schools are per se bad, but if you don't want certain elements to be put into your kid, if there's certain types of things that you don't feel are okay, if there's certain types of surgeries you don't want your son or daughters to be able to have until they're an adult and can choose, there's what is called the age of majority and minority.

[01:55:55] So someone operating from an age of majority is of sound mind and is able to act in personam and handle their matters. Someone who's acting from a minority capacity is someone who's incompetent and not able to handle their own affairs. And so your sons and daughters, until they can do that, they're considered minors.

[01:56:12] And when they're at an age of majority, which most of us never step into from a legal standpoint, because we get represented by lawyers and things like that, when you start to realize that the education system that people-- if you are entrepreneur and you want to make a difference, that's a right place. That's a really right place, because parents aren't happy. It doesn't matter what side of the bird you're on or if you're even on the bird. It doesn't matter.

[01:56:37] Luke: Something that's been encouraging on that front is I've observed that for people that aren't in a position to homeschool their kids, they're just grabbing a teacher from a Waldorf school that is dissatisfied with that and they're creating these homeschool pods, where it's more of a communal cooperative thing where they are learning and out of your hair so you can make a living if you work from home or you have to go to a job and things like that.

[01:57:03] I think that's a really cool emerging avenue for people that's not exactly pure homeschool where your family's just teaching your kids and you're not sending them to a private school that's really expensive and still get the socialization and things that are an important part of that. You're not just caving your little family in your home. Again, as someone who's not a parent yet, I'm always looking at this from afar without personal experience [Inaudible].

[01:57:30] Landis: We have multiple sons and daughters, and all of them are a little bit different. And each of the situations they're in is a little bit different, but with our middle son, we sent him to a private school. It's been good in some ways. There's ups and downs about it. It's not perfect. I tend to look at things from the standpoint of we make gradual improvement, and just the same way we're in the situation we're in today, it didn't happen at once.

[01:57:55] And so something about the trust, the trust you have to be patient about, I think is one of the things you start to realize, is that you're thinking in horizons of time. So when you think past what's going to happen when you die, you don't really know, but you're trying to create the best possible situation for the future.

[01:58:11] And so I think with the things that people are doing right now, they might not be perfect, but they're actually creating, and so they're thinking through how maybe it could be better than it was. And so I haven't been completely satisfied with what we've dealt with the public or the private schools. But at the same time, it's better than the alternative, and they're working to improve.

[01:58:32] And so I think as more people put effort in, then it will improve at some level. And so then it will keep going up and up from there. But most people aren't used to it. It's a newer thing. And so a lot of the people that are willing to do it are pretty courageous because they're going up against the state.

[01:58:48] And for the parents that are willing to take it on, it's really courageous because the most valuable thing that we have-- in my life, the thing that I'm willing to give my life for right now is my sons and daughters. And so if a parent is willing to also put their kid in there, they're saying, "Hey, I'm willing to put my most important thing that I've ever created into your school." That's also courageous of those parents to do that. But I think it will improve over time. I also think we have the internet now, too.

[01:59:17] The promise of technology was that it was supposed to make our lives simpler and give us more time. And it seems like it's done the opposite. I imagine, if everyone was really creating together and we weren't just waiting for someone to do something for us, and we started to imagine what society could look like, we could have these off grid communities that are also integrated in with technology.

[01:59:42] We could be using technology to facilitate different things for our kids. My oldest son is 17 now, and he has autism. This last year we put him into a high school because he wanted to go to high school and have that sort of experience.

[01:59:58] But prior to that we had him in an online school and he made more progress at that online school, and it was only three hours a day, than he'd made in any other school. And so I was like, "We're putting our kids in school for eight to 10 hours a day and he was getting more value out of three hours a day."

[02:00:15] And so I tend to think like our whole paradigm around these things should shift so that they're getting better use of their time. And I feel like we can figure out ways to have them socialize. I'm on Instagram, but I'm not necessarily hanging out with real people, but there's got to be a way for those who are entrepreneurial and creating and testing and working things out to build these situations in which the kids can socialize and parents can actually handle it.

[02:00:46] Education, when you really look at the public school system, you could really consider it like mass production. It's not valuable anymore. It's common. All the classes and everything are basically the same. And so that whole thing is old. And so it's not that valuable anymore. Teachers are like, "I'm valuable and a teacher." They show up. And I'm not saying they're not valuable or some can't do better, but what they're teaching is mass production.

[02:01:13] It's not super innovative. It was created a long time ago. It hasn't changed much. And so that area is super ripe for people to help because so far the world keeps having kids if we want to be on this, whether it's a round earth or flat earth. That's not going to change.

[02:01:33] And so those areas are really big. The other ones too, I tell people-- this is an area where this would be like the wrong thing to say, but if you want to learn about status correction or we were talking about trust and things you can do or these things on the tax side and all these different things, there's so much you can do and there's so many people right here that don't know.

[02:01:58] And so if you want to make a difference, if what you're guided to is making a difference, if you start learning about this, you can teach other people. And I believe in exchange. I believe that people should give something back and forth to one another for the efforts they make.

[02:02:14] There's a lot of opportunity in these problems. And so instead of looking at it as like we're being held back or we're being held down or someone's doing this to us, if we were really look at it and go, "Wow, I'm a creator. I have the power to create, and I can create something that's a little bit better than what was before." If everyone did that a little bit, it shifts the whole thing. And now when you start looking in horizons of time, let's say 100 years, the whole thing totally change. The whole course totally change.

[02:02:43] And so to think that the government or anyone is going to provide a solution that's going to solve all your problems-- the Jehovah's Witnesses believe there's a savior. I believe the only savior you have granted you saving in the moment you were born because you're already connected. That's done.

[02:02:57] That deal was done. Don't waste your whole life trying to prove it. By virtue of being alive, you're spiritual. By virtue of being alive, you're here. God loves you. So use that power in order to create new things. You don't need to create the old things anymore. And inside of that, for the people who want to do more freedom things, they might feel like they're not making money or whatever it is that they're feeling. It's just starting. This thing is starting.

[02:03:24] In five or 10 years, it won't be worth anything because everyone will figure it out. But at the same time, this is how we can be innovative and we can solve new problems. Because if you don't like what you see when you hear about the agendas that are out there and all the different organizations that are trying to push things a certain way, then you have to create something else.

[02:03:46] You have to start doing it. And if you don't and you don't talk about it or you don't know what it is-- and I don't know what the answer is. I only have little bits. So we all need different people that have these interesting thoughts about how to handle these things to really go out and start doing them and seeing what happens.

[02:04:05] There's plenty of bounty. And people go, "Where does money come from?" It comes from the earth. It comes from our minds. The earth is so bountiful. There is so much here. The access of it is through the creation of value to other parties.

[02:04:23] There's this funny movie. I can't even remember the name, but it's in Mongolia and this Chinese guy, he's like, "I'm going to teach you how to get gold from the hills of Mongolia" And he's like, "Gold from the hills. How would I do that?" He's like, "It's out there. There's so much gold. You will never be able to get it all." And so at first he goes out into Mongolia with some basic goods and he's trying to figure out what's going on, where the gold is at.

[02:04:46] And he starts trading with the Mongolians and the Mongolians, the only thing he'll give them are sheep. And so then he's like, "This isn't gold. I have got all these sheep. What do I do?" It turns out that the Chinese like to eat sheep. So then he starts selling them the sheep for the gold and there's his gold. Well, right now the challenge we have is really where the gold is at.

[02:05:06] And so if we look at it like that, or if we're willing to like face into that and that way, we can solve these things. But we shouldn't expect that it's going to happen overnight. And I think having worked with trusts and having to deal with people and thinking about their death is that it's okay. We don't have to worry about it going fast. It's okay. It's like do little bits each time, a little bit each day. Or read a little bit.

[02:05:31] Read for five minutes. If you don't brush your teeth, brush one tooth, and then you'll start brushing the rest of your teeth. But if you just do a little, then it actually adds up because we're a collective. And the thing is, when we isolate ourselves in little groups, and we think we're only one thing, or we're this-- Dr. Seuss has this great book, The Sneetches.

[02:05:50] There's the star-bellied sneetches that live on the beaches, and some of them have a star on their belly and some don't. And this guy named William McConkey McBean, with his fix-them-up chappy machine shows up and suddenly he gives the sneetches that don't have stars on their belly stars.

[02:06:06] And the ones that do have stars are like, "Hey, we're this exclusive club. Now you're trying to get your way in." And they go to this McConkey McBean and ask him to take their stars off. And suddenly they're changing stars the whole time. And eventually they run out of money to pay him.

[02:06:21] And as soon as they do, he runs off. And so they eventually find that they're one, is what happens. They're like, "Oh, we're all sneetches, it turns out. Now we're broke because we gave it all away." But when we start to realize that we're actually-- the differences and the things that we think are bad or whatever it is, we can actually come together.

[02:06:38] And it's those little changes that can really turn things actually pretty fast. It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be completely different than it was. It's just going to be like us doing it. And then at some point, whatever we create that we thought was so awesome is also going to be problematic.

[02:06:54] Luke: Right.

[02:06:54] Landis: And it's okay.

[02:06:56] Luke: There's two really great overarching philosophies there, first one being, as you start to learn about these escape routes from the matrix, for me, it's like I got so fed up with being in the prison and I learned that there were these different openings to get out. I'm just like, "I'm doing all of them tomorrow." And it can be so overwhelming.

[02:07:21] And then it just gets decision fatigue and the fears and you're trying to undo the programming. And all of the brainwashing and all of the things, it's really overwhelming. So I'm glad that you brought that piece up of just incrementally study, make a little move, make a little move. Don't do anything too drastic. Know that in my lifetime, it took me 54 years to contract my way into slavery, into free range plantation.

[02:07:48] And I'm grateful that I'm at least free range within the plantation. But man, knowing that you can actually get outside of the plantation, call it the private, it can be really exciting and enticing and overwhelming. So I like your perspective of just incremental moves.

[02:08:01] And then the other thing is, I think those of us that are dissatisfied with the plantation, we're fucking pissed. And so our natural inclination is to go tear it down piece by piece and to actualize our resentment toward the different players. The bald guy that wants you to eat bugs, all these people.

[02:08:23] It's like, ah, I know with myself, I'm working on a higher level of understanding, knowing that they're just playing their role in the duality. They're part of God's plan to give us playground here in earth school In other words, we need something to push up against.

[02:08:39] But if you start putting too much energy in the pushing up against, you're ignoring all of these avenues to freedom of creation and collaboration. I like your idea of like, cool, you guys do your thing over here. I'm not going to try to tear it down. I'm just going to build something that eventually becomes superior to more people and people choose what we're building.

[02:08:58] And the thing that has been built that we've been duped into participating in becomes obsolete. It loses its allure, its value. And the man behind the curtain shows his ass, and we all walk down the yellow brick road. By the way, have you ever seen the symbolism behind the Wizard of Oz?

[02:09:17] Landis: I have seen some of it from all the memes that I've--

[02:09:20] Luke: I saw a video the other day. It's a whole thing. Anyway, we'll put it in the show notes at lukestorey.com/landis. Yeah, there's some really great little short videos on the metaphors in that. It's really interesting. The Tin Man and the whole thing. It's wild. Relation to the Federal Reserve, and it's deep. Man, what an epic conversation, dude. I'm so glad that I made time here.

[02:09:44] Landis: I'm so glad you came.

[02:09:45] Luke: Yeah. For people that are listening and watching, we're sitting here on a hill somewhere in San Diego, and there's an Air Force base out there, apparently. And so if anyone's heard bombers going by, that's why. But before we jam, I'm a little bit aware of how you work with people and help people. And so I want people to understand if they want to learn from you and create their trust that you're available to them, or at least some of them, depending on how you vet people and find whether or not those relationships are appropriate.

[02:10:18] But I'm also curious as to how and why you integrated your art. For those watching the video, you'll see that we're in Landis's living room here, which is also part art studio, or at least this is the display area. The art studio is downstairs, which is super cool.

[02:10:32] I almost want to do the videos down there, but you have these paintings, and people that follow you on Instagram can see your incredible artwork. And that's a way, as you described earlier, that you're able to tie in doing something that you love and also something that allows you to support yourself and your family and be of service and make a contribution. That's really beautiful, I think, the way you've merged those two. So give us your spiel on how that all happened.

[02:10:57] Landis: It was the dissatisfaction that I had with the last business and wanting to have a real change. And one of the things I realized is I was trying to compartmentalize myself. I was trying to be Landis the businessman or Landis the artist. And suddenly I was trying to make time for these different parts of myself.

[02:11:13] And so I started to really think. I was like, what if-- I'll ask these what if questions. I was like, what if I just didn't do that anymore? What would that mean? It would mean that I'd be painting. It would mean that I would be doing these things together. And when I paint, I can talk or I'm thinking a lot or spending a lot of time doing that.

[02:11:31] And so when I started putting out content, my business partners at the time had basically said sayonara. Here's your severance. Good luck. And I was like, I have to do something, but I don't know what to do. And so I feel that I talk with God. Some people might find that's weird, but I hear things and then I act on them and then stuff happens.

[02:11:54] And so I just felt called to start making the videos, and I initially was like, they could be shitty. I don't care. I'll just try to make them a little better every time. And if you go back and look at my early ones, I think they're not as good as the new ones. And so it's true of all things. And so when I started making the content, I realized the people that were talking about trust were actually pretty boring. That's what I felt.

[02:12:21] Luke: I would agree. Anyone talking about the law space was extremely boring up until about a year ago. And you have some colorful characters coming forward now that are sharing information in a way that's palatable to each person.

[02:12:34] Landis: Yeah. And so what I did is I started painting and recording the videos. And then I had this aha. I was like, wouldn't it be cool the-- two ideas came to me. One was what if I could paint my own money? That was one thought that came to me. And the other was, is like, what if instead of you buying a trust, you're buying a piece of artwork and you start your trust with an actual piece of property in it.

[02:12:58] Luke: Oh, cool.

[02:12:59] Landis: And so part of the process is that we'll teach you how to convey title to the trust using the artwork. So there's always a certificate of title that's created for each piece, and it's authenticated. And that's really the first property that goes into your trust. I just thought that was cool.

[02:13:20] I was like, "No one's ever done that." And to say that you're buying a painting, that will mean that I have to paint. And so now I have to paint. And sometimes I'm like, "Oh God, I have to paint." But what it means is that craft that I wanted to do, I can do. And it's actually producing for us.

[02:13:38] So Alynn, my beloved, she actually writes the trust. And so what I suggest to people when they want to interface with us is twofold. I think that whoever you create your trust with, you're going to have a lifelong relationship with of some kind. And so I think that you should get to know whoever you're creating your trust with.

[02:13:58] And so the class that we do is actually led by Alynn. It's not led by me. Her and I will do QA at the end together. But you get to see into her mind. And so when we do the class, she's on. I've limited the class sizes initially to 20 to about 25 people, and we charge $500 for it. I recently did a thing where it was $50, largely because my son got injured.

[02:14:22] We had mentioned offline, but my son had a severe brain injury. And so many people were praying and sending messages and I was pretty affected. I felt called to do something to give back to the people that have been following me. And so we did a special on that and a lot of people came through and started learning.

[02:14:41] But I do the classes for $500 for one reason, is that you have to be serious and want this at one hand. It's a little bit of money. It's more than a dinner. It's more than some things. And so the reason I came to $500, funny enough, talking about God is I was like, "God, what should I charge for this?"

[02:14:59] Alynn was like, "Two grand." She always wants more. And God said, I was in the shower-- God talks to you wherever, doesn't matter. This is the thing with talking with praying. I believe you just talk to God when you're praying, whatever your faith is. You just start talking. And then if you just be quiet, then something will come back.

[02:15:16] You don't have to do anything formal. It doesn't matter. And so I just talked to God like that, like his my homie. And then he's like, charge the same as a PlayStation. I don't know if he's a he or not, but charge the same price as a PlayStation. That's what you should charge. So I looked it up. I don't have a TV. So they're 500 bucks. And I was like, "Oh."

[02:15:35] Then we had called our class the game of life. And so I was like, "How funny this little coincidence." But what will happen is you get to meet Alynn inside the class. It's two hours of instruction. It's super dense, what's in that first part of the instruction.

[02:15:51] You get to ask us questions then afterwards. And so we are usually able to answer everyone's questions because it's a smaller group size, which I think is important. I've been in a lot of events where there's lots of people and you can't get your question answered, and that's frustrating.

[02:16:05] And then what happens is if you decide that a trust is appropriate for you inside the class-- we don't pitch. If you've heard me today, I hope I don't sound like I'm like pitching, pitching. I just talk. And if it's appropriate, it's appropriate. I don't ever do follow up with people. So you'll never get an email back from me after our first meeting. I'll give you my number. You can call me whenever you want. I gave up any of that stuff. I was like, it's too--

[02:16:29] Luke: Putting people in a funnel.

[02:16:31] Landis: Yeah, I just gave it up. I was like, "No, thanks." You want to be in a relationship? Cool. If not, cool. If you're willing for me to call you sometime just because, then cool. I've sent one email to everyone one for a larger group.

[02:16:45] Luke: Online marketing world is funny. Sometimes I partner with all these different brands because I find cool stuff and I want to share it with people. And they'll ask, "Well, how big is your email list? And what's your email marketing?" And I go, there's a lot of people on there, but I don't sell anything.

[02:17:02] Every Tuesday I go, "Here's the podcast. This is what it's about. And here are the links." And people are like, "Oh, you could be monetizing that list." I don't even know what that means. I'm talking to people like you. I want more people to know about it. So someone on my team makes an email and sends it out and says, "Here's Landis White. Listen, enjoy. Bye. That's the end of it." It's probably not that smart of business wise, but it feels a lot cleaner. Maybe someday I'll have something to sell. When I put my book out--

[02:17:29] Landis: There you go.

[02:17:30] Luke: I'll be emailing the shit out of them. They'll be funneled to death.

[02:17:34] Landis: Yeah. The money that you pay for the class will apply to the cost of the artwork. So that way, if you feel moved, you go, "Okay, this sounds like something I'd like to do." Then that's a credit towards it. So you're not out of pocket. It covers the time with Alynn.

[02:17:50] She's actually the expensive one. I won't go into her background, but she's done quite a lot in her life. And so I can't get her to do anything for less than that. And she's already a little upset sometimes when I've charged that. So I have to manage that. But we give you the credit towards the artwork.

[02:18:11] For the artwork, it's usually $7,500. And so that includes, as a gift to you, two trusts. When people call me, people can set up appointments with me. If you do a paid appointment, I'll also credit that towards the artwork, if you want to meet. I was doing free appointments for a long time.

[02:18:30] When my son got injured, two months ago I had to cancel almost all of them. And so there's some people that are a little upset at me right now because I had to cancel and they waited a long time. And I apologize for that. But I had to switch it to where it's only paid now for that.

[02:18:47] And so I'm doing less meetings, but that's giving us time. Because what we're going to do is we're going to actually change our whole system. So one of the things that's come up with our son is he's going to need a lot more therapy this year and we need more time. And so we're going to make more of a do-it-yourself version with some interfacing with us versus meeting with us one-on-one.

[02:19:06] When you go through the process with us, currently you meet with us once a week. Usually, you're meeting with us about 10 to 12 times. And the whole process ends up taking about two and a half to three and a half months. I'm hoping that we can take that and turn it into a process that takes about a month to a month and a half. And so you can get there faster at your own pace if you really want to move.

[02:19:26] And then we'll have some interfacing in there. But instead of maybe having 10 meetings, we might have two or three. And that will be able to have us have a lower cost option so we can serve more people. And then what we'll do is we're going to have-- we'll probably raise the cost of the one-on-one because of the time it takes.

[02:19:42] I want Alynn to actually move from writing the trust to actually taking and creating more things because she's got so much more and people are learning that they can get rid of their mortgages. And there's so many cool things that you can do, and I'd like to bring some more of those things out for people as we go forward.

[02:19:58] So probably towards December, January, we'll have an offer. I'll make something special for you too. It'll be our website /luke, and then we'll give you credit for whatever happens through there.

[02:20:14] Luke: Hey, [Inaudible], man.

[02:20:16] Landis: You scratch me, I'll scratch you.

[02:20:17] Luke: I want to get your information and let people know that there's a path. And just for context, having created a couple of trusts now, one of them, which now I found is actually not that useful, the living trust, the estate planning trust.

[02:20:33] It's useful for avoiding probate if me and my wife happen to die and all that, God forbid. But not in the context of operating in the private as we discussed here with the irrevocable. But that trust, the single one was much more than what you're charging through a bar card. And then to create another one was almost that much in and of itself.

[02:20:56] Landis: Yeah. We purchased one for over $50,000 one point in time. So they can go all over the place. The reason I charged what I charged is that there's small business owners and families. While it's a little bit of stretch for some of them, they can afford it. And then there's some people where it doesn't matter at all.

[02:21:13] And so I think that when you look out there, it was a little bit important to me to make it accessible. And some people might go, "It's not accessible at all." That's still a lot of money to them. And everyone's in a different place. But when you start having things, I was like that's an amount that most people can afford.

[02:21:28] The other thing that's probably the most valuable, two things that come out of it. When we're done, you can create your own trusts. You have more money coming in. And so now you have something to do with it. And so let's say you buy an apartment building or a rental house or an Airbnb, or you start another business or you do something that is going to provide you something, a lot of times what people do is create another trust. And they're like, I'm going to put that Airbnb in that trust so it doesn't put my other trusts at risk. And you'll know how to operate them. You'll know how to create them.

[02:22:01] Luke: That's epic.

[02:22:02] Landis: We want you to have that as a single--

[02:22:03] Luke: And that training is inclusive of getting an EIN for the trust?

[02:22:09] Landis: Yeah.

[02:22:09] Luke: That's epic.

[02:22:10] Landis: We'll take you all the way to getting your bank account set up.

[02:22:12] Luke: Wow, That's rad. We didn't talk too much about non taxable entities, but to me, I think many of us are motivated by our being able to keep the resources that we create in the world.

[02:22:26] Landis: Choose what you volunteer for.

[02:22:28] Luke: Yeah, exactly. But that's a whole other element of irrevocable trust that's just fascinating to me. And I'm just beginning to learn about it, but if you cross your T's and dot your I's, you can be absolutely 100% ironclad compliant and also not have a tax liability.

[02:22:45] Landis: My understanding is the only taxes they actually have to pay is if you're working with the federal government. They require that in their contracts. If you're trading securities or you do a distribution to a taxpayer, the taxpayer is effectively required to pay-- they treat it like ordinary income.

[02:23:03] And so anything that's going into the trust is it's sitting in the trust res. And until it's been distributed to a taxpayer or someone that's like that, you might not be one. But if you are, that's how that would work.

[02:23:15] Luke: People have to look up the definition of that word.

[02:23:17] Landis: Part of why I have been big on one-on-one meetings with the people that we talk to is because private actually means private. It means we're having a conversation that's not going to be placed out into the public. And so I start all my calls letting people know, anything you share with me, I will never share. It will stay private. I ask you to do the same. And if you're okay with that, I'm okay talking about anything.

[02:23:43] In that, whatever is shared, one of the things that happens with Alynn is she never knows who the heck I talked to once they've bought a painting, in our exchange for a painting. And she's has to learn it all again. But I like having that now, because I would like to be in a situation where-- we're not at this yet, but I want to sell 1,000 paintings.

[02:24:06] And I want to have collectors that we're really close with because what will happen is if those thousand people to get together with that type of mind, private thinking, and it will happen, then we can do a lot of things together. And so that's kind of where we're headed, is I would like to have a group of collectors to collect the paintings.

[02:24:27] And then we have other things that we can do as well, because everyone wants to do things. And as more people come on, not just with us, but other people are doing things too, but be able to build something or create something together that will be grander. And so I haven't-- in my own past, I always ran things based on the numbers.

[02:24:47] I was like, "We're going to be profitable and going to work till it happens and everything." This one has been really an act of just letting go. I've just been like, let's just move, and as we move, we'll know what to do next. And it's actually so freeing. And I think that's one thing that people may not realize, is that when you take out the state and all of the things that they make you go through in order to do things, it's actually a lot easier because you're not dealing with all that anymore.

[02:25:20] So on one hand, the fear that you think you're going to have of all the loss, you don't lose anything in a lot of people's situations. You really don't. I don't know quite how to translate that, but once you realize that, it just makes everything way easier.

[02:25:40] That's all I have to say about it. But privately, the reason some of the things I don't go into as much detail is like, those are the conversations that I have with someone privately. And then they're not put at risk. No one's saying I'm giving them financial advice or tax advice, because I'm not. At best, we're entertaining one another.

[02:25:59] Luke: Totally. Well, man, I love your energy. I like what you're contributing to the world. I'm so glad that I stumbled across your Instagram.

[02:26:07] Landis: Thank you.

[02:26:07] Luke: It's not typically how I find and vet podcast guests because you're just in your own ecosystem out here. It wasn't like, oh, you got to learn about this guy or a friend of mine. It was something about the way this guy presents this information that's really, really life changing, potentially, for the right person who resonates with it and wants to apply their effort and due diligence to it, but you really have a knack for sharing information that would be otherwise really hard to understand.

[02:26:36] And as someone who has a certain capacity for learning, a certain style of learning, the way you convey information gets through to me. And so I think, well, there's got to be somewhat of a collective mind of the listenership of this podcast. And I'm sure many people listen to me in the way I talk to people because they relate to my perspective or the perspective of people that I invite on the show.

[02:26:59] So I'm really excited for people to find you and your work and follow you on social and take your course, look into working with you. Because man it only takes one person at a time to create a movement. And I think we're really at the precipice of meaningful change because of people like you just empowering people with information that actually matters.

[02:27:23] Landis: Vice versa. When I saw the spirit in which you were communicating and the things that you were talking about, I felt that you were getting at the root of things and bringing different perspectives in in order to do that. And so to me, when you reached out to me, I was like, "Yes. I was super stoked." Yeah, it made my day.

[02:27:41] Luke: Cool, cool.

[02:27:42] Landis: And I felt honored.

[02:27:43] Luke: Have you been on a podcast before?

[02:27:44] Landis: No, that was my first one.

[02:27:45] Luke: Yeah, I love that. I love popping cherries over here. I probably shouldn't say that. I guess at the end of a couple of hours I might get away with it, no better way to say it. But that's fun, man, because it's like a lot of people, and God bless them, they have something they want to sell.

[02:27:58] It's like people have a business. A lot of people are very pushy about being on a podcast because they're going to benefit in that capacity, and I respect that. But I find it more fun when I find someone, because I think of you as my discovery. I found this crazy painter dude in San Diego on Instagram talking about trust in a way that's relatable. I'm going to be the guy that brings him into a certain level of the public sphere. So it's really fun when that kind of thing aligns in an organic way. That's just one of the things I really get off on.

[02:28:33] Landis: When I was seeing your creativeness too in the approach of it all, I was like, "This is great," to be willing to have conversations with people and be able to draw things out as an art and a skill. And I don't know. I was just stoked. I was like, "Okay." A few people had asked me before and I didn't feel called to it, and I told them, I was like, "Look, I don't want you to take it personally, but maybe in the future, if I do feel called to it, may I can reach out to you." But when you reached out to me, I was like, "Yeah, I want to do this."

[02:28:57] And I had talked to Alynn about it too. I was like, "Do you think I should do this or not?" I don't know. I'm in my own bubble and it's nice, but then I was like, "If the bubble's going to burst-- I won't use the word cherry, but if the bubble's going to pop, then--

[02:29:12] Luke: I didn't [Inaudible] part out.

[02:29:13] Landis: I didn't use that.

[02:29:15] Luke: I'm not politically [Inaudibe] I'm but I don't know. Sometimes I say things and I'm like, whoa.

[02:29:19] Landis: One of the things I'd like to do before you go is gift you a painting.

[02:29:23] Luke: Oh, wow.

[02:29:24] Landis: Yeah, yeah. There's only a couple that I can't downstairs, but I'd be more than happy to have you choose one, and then--

[02:29:31] Luke: It'll be a welcome gift and certainly a first in nine years I've been doing this. But before we go, I have one more question. Who have been three teachers, philosophies, teachings in general that have impacted who you are and the work you do in the world?

[02:29:49] Landis: Mm. One of them, they're not famous, but was my martial arts teacher. My martial arts teacher, Nick, we've had a rocky relationship, but I ended up living with his family, they're Buddhists, for two years, and it was interesting because coming out of the Jehovah's Witnesses, like I shared, we knocked on people's doors and tried to get him to come to church. He not once invited me to go to any religious thing that he was part of even though he was part of it.

[02:30:18] Luke: Very Buddhist.

[02:30:18] Landis: Yeah. And so I--

[02:30:20] Luke: Non-attachment. We're not attached to getting more members.

[02:30:23] Landis: Yeah. So living with him was really interesting because it had me see a different perspective that I had seen before, which has been quite influential on me. And I still practice martial arts. I have one person that comes and trains with me here at the house. And when I talk about little efforts, his practice was always about being soft and gentle to start.

[02:30:46] And so when I approach things, I try not to have injury and I try not to have force in order to do them. And in that way, I can build up my stamina and my capacities. And then at some point you can always add force. But you can do it safely. And he opened my mind to a lot. So I would thank him for that.

[02:31:07] There's stuff that he pisses me off about, but that is all true of all life. My father too. My father gave up basically everything. He died alone, and it was hard for him to reconcile in the end because he was seeing the matrix, is what was happening. But he didn't know how to say it.

[02:31:26] And when you lose everyone-- for a while his dad didn't talk to him. My grandma did. He grew up a Jehovah's Witness, so imagine that you're 40 years old and then suddenly everyone that you know won't talk to you again. It's quite isolating. And so him being willing to give me the freedom to do the things that I did, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. I don't know what I'd be exactly. So he was very much a huge influence in my life.

[02:32:02] This one is a weird one. Some people might not like this, but one of my favorite artists for music growing up was David Bowie. He was so out there that when I heard his music and saw him, I was like, how could someone be so bizarre and get away with it? And so when I saw the Ziggy Stardust album, that was the one where he's dressed in the Japanese clothes. I didn't know they were Japanese at the time.

[02:32:31] Luke: I didn't either. I still don't know that until you just said it.

[02:32:33] Landis: Yeah, they're all Japanese, the clothes.

[02:32:37] Luke: Really?

[02:32:38] Landis: Yeah. And his music for whatever reason, the lyrics and things were so odd, but he was seeing something that he had tapped into that was really his. It was his art that he was putting forth. I know he wanted commercial success, but at some level he didn't care.

[02:32:56] And I think that that has always been something that is important to me, is that like any the art, I try not to paint for anybody. My attempt is always to just paint to have the thing come out that needs to come out. And I always felt like his music was like that. And so when I heard albums like Ziggy Stardust and then I heard Lodger and I heard some of these other albums, Low, and then you get into some of the newer things, the older ones I actually like a bit more.

[02:33:23] Then his last album when he died, he knew he was dying, and he didn't tell anyone he was dying. And he ended up making the whole album while he was dying of cancer. And it's just so dark, but morose, but so honest. You can feel that he was dying. And then, I think it was Flood, one of his guys that he had worked with over the years, and he didn't even know he was dying.

[02:33:51] And he sent him the album prior to dying, a week before, and he listened to it, and he's like, "Oh my God, he's dying." And he realized it, and I was like, "What an interesting way to--" People told him he was-- they called him names, all kinds of stuff, and he had whatever difficulties he had.

[02:34:09] And I think that for all of us in a way, we're out there and we're all weird. We don't actually fit in, none of us really. And so it's okay to be as weird as you want. You can be weird. It's okay. You can be whatever you want to be. And it actually seems to work out better than not being that way. More things open up. And so I don't mean that in being dangerous or harming people, but you can express yourself.

[02:34:35] Luke: The power in authenticity.

[02:34:38] Landis: Yeah.

[02:34:38] Luke: That's such a great example. And I'm quite sure that you're the first person that cited him. Because I ask this question just about every time. Every once in a while, I forget. I just started doing it in the beginning and then I can't find a good reason to stop. I don't even know if it's cool or people like it, but it seems like a nice bow to put on the package at the end of a show.

[02:34:58] But one thing about David Bowie that has been really inspiring to me is a quote. Shortly before he died, in an interview the interviewer asked him if he had any regrets about his career. And without missing a beat, he said, "Yes, playing to the audience."

[02:35:16] Landis: Ah.

[02:35:17] Luke: I was like, "Bingo." Meaning, playing the hits instead of just playing what he felt called to perform. And that is something I've done my best to follow in the way that I conduct these podcasts and how I build this channel, is not so much based on what I think people are going to want to hear, but what I'm interested in hearing. Talking to the people with whom I have some rapport or interest in, people such as you.

[02:35:45] There's people that are really famous that might be more interesting to some people, but they're not interesting to me. So that would be playing to the audience. So it's like, no, I just figured out, man, I can apply that David Bowie thing, even though this isn't music, to just talking about the things I feel like talking about, the things about which I'm passionate. I'm passionate about trust and about all of the things we talked about. You can't feign that. You can, but it's not going to land the same way.

[02:36:14] So even though a topic like this and a person like you might be a little bit left field for the things that I normally talk about, I'm into it. Therefore it qualifies. This is might not be my biggest hit song, but it might just be the biggest hit because of the authenticity with which we're approaching it. So yeah, it's funny. I love David Bowie's music. And also just think about an artist that reinvented-- and I didn't like all his iterations.

[02:36:41] Landis: No, some of it was awful. Yeah, yeah.

[02:36:42] Luke: I was going to say, "Oh, I love every David Bowie album."

[02:36:44] Landis: Dancing in The Street with Mick Jagger was so self.

[02:36:46] Luke: Yeah, yeah. But there's a few in there where you're like, wow, but man, talk about an artist just unabashedly reinventing themselves and giving zero fucks along the way. There's not that many artists that have really just stepped out of box upon box upon box and just went, "Here I am, like it or not."

[02:37:03] It takes so much courage to do that in whatever way you're expressing yourself, to really do it for yourself and the joy that it brings you. It's a great lesson for all of us, man, whether we're a bean counter or we're wildly creative Salvador Dali. It's like everyone has their own-- we're all creating. With every thought, every word, every deed is all an act of creation.

[02:37:27] Landis: And when you create--

[02:37:28] Luke: Do it for real.

[02:37:28] Landis: When you create, you destroy too.

[02:37:30] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[02:37:31] Landis: So that's the other part, is you always destroy as you create.

[02:37:35] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[02:37:36] Landis: That's how it all ends up tying back together. Though he destroyed his last self and moved on to his next self. That's how it happens. Yeah, yeah.

[02:37:48] Luke: Cool, man.

[02:37:49] Landis: Sorry I cut you off, but I couldn't help it.

[02:37:50] Luke: That's how the game gets toward the end when you get excited.

[02:37:53] Landis: Yeah.

[02:37:53] Luke: All right, man. Thank you so much.

[02:37:54] Landis: Thank you, Luke. Yeah.