Fighting to your last breath
A newsletter on fighting the war for your life.
What’s up man.
Today we’re going to talk about what it means to be a man, about fighting for your life. Inevitably in your life as a man you’re going to face serious challenges. Sink or swim, fight or die kind of shit.
This is in fact going to happen repeatedly throughout the cycle of your life. Something Elliott Hulse once explored in a speech at The Patriarch Convention.
This is true even if you’re a cucked beta male living a vaginal life of fear and excess risk aversion, like a woman. You’ll find it 10x as true when you’re living a life of purpose, fighting a war for your chosen values. Living with a masculine edge, swinging the blade of fate.
That has been the entire story of my life since I found the manosphere in 2005 and began organizing it’s most infamous worldwide event The 21 Convention in 2006 at 17 years old, fresh out of high school.
The events have always been a vessel that bring out the best within me, that help me find the hero in my own soul inch by inch. The same is true for the speakers and attendees who showed up over the many years. The events authentically challenge you.
What you believe, what you think, how you think, what actions you need to take, what patterns of behavior need to be destroyed or changed.
There’s a picture of alumni speaker James Marshall above because he’s a man that I know has lived this life too.
When he gave that keynote speech at The 21 Convention of Australia in late 2012, he had already spoken at 21 a couple times prior. In fact I had first met him briefly in 2010 out in California at Vince Kelvin’s PUA Summit event - one of the largest manosphere events ever held in the world.
In this pictured Australia speech James refers to his first 21 Convention speech in London the previous year quite a bit. That would be this speech seen below The Three Pillars of Seductive Success. A breakout hit speech at the time.
In his 2012 Australia speech James tells the harrowing tale of what was actually going on in his life at the time of the 2011 London speech.
James was on his last leg. Barely standing. Literally spent every dollar he had buying a flight from Australia to Great Britain for an opportunity to speak at The 21 Convention. He was sleeping on a PUA’s couch from the local “lair” if I recall correctly. And not for fun but out of necessity.
This was the end of the road for James, sink or swim, fight or die.
The ancient manosphere if you weren’t aware had an underground network and worldwide "lair system” in the 2000s and early 2010s. A hidden meetup system of sorts for picking up girls and meeting with like minded men. Guys like James and I could fly anywhere in the world and local PUAs would put us up for days, even weeks at a time no charge.
Usually a small gang of PUAs would find out you were in town, they’d show you the city, all the best bars and spots to hit on girls, take you out to dinners and stuff. You might even give a speech to the local lair. It was incredible, we didn’t know how good we had it.
This system was open to average joes as well by the way, it just helped a lot if you were a known figure in this era of the manosphere.
As James tells the story though, he was truly on the ropes in London. He was a pioneer in this area of the manosphere with his company The Natural Lifestyles. Back then “indirect” and “canned” game was all the rage popularized by Mystery and Neil Strauss’s The Game.
Advocating for clear, direct, natural game with women actually made James a rebel and radical in this era of the manosphere. There was an establishment of beliefs that James and his business TNL did not fit into, they were against the grain of what guys already believed and already wanted (indirect game coaching in The Mystery Method style). This brought him serious hardship, hence the “hail Mary” to speak at 21 Convention and give it his all.
Well, it worked.
The speech was so successful on 21 Studios/YouTube that it turned his entire business around, instantly turning TNL into a 6 figure company.
James would later go on to turn The Natural Lifestyles into a major 7 figure business.
When I started building the first 21 Convention at 17 I never imagined men would be inspired to or otherwise utilize my events as a stepping stone to build businesses that big. That was not even remotely on my mind at the time, it was just a hobby event that morphed into a hobby business during college, that slowly transformed into a “real” business.
No doubt James has had many “stepping stones” and obstacles in his life, but this was a big one for him, a defining moment that helped cascade him to many others. One that he gave full credit to in his Australia speech.
Most fans had no idea at the time, but I was on my own last breath in 2012. This is me at the end of the Australia 21 Convention in late 2012.
In 2012 as the sole employee of my company I had decided to build three 21 Conventions across three continents in a six month window of time.
This was back breaking and mind breaking work at 23 years old. The talent acquisition, talent management, logistics, marketing, sales, contract negotiation, website management, building my own speeches, not to mention editing and publishing hundreds of videos on YouTube at the same time.
There was no instruction manual for any of this shit. I just figured it all out tooth, claw, and nail.
In 2012 I worked 70-80 hours a week for most of the year. It was nuts. I felt like I was going to drop dead by the end of it all.
I had some experience by this point sure, but I was still young as hell at 23 learning how the world worked. Building 3 international events at this scale, each 3-4 days long, was seriously fucking hard.
From event to event, London (June) —> Texas (August) —> Australia (November), I made it only by the skin of my teeth financially. We’re talking down to the last dollar here, like am I going to be able to get home to America when this is over? Can I buy food tomorrow? I guess I’ll find out.
2012 was the adventure of a lifetime, one of the most difficult years of my life, and a childhood dream come true visiting Australia. I always envisioned it as a bigger, crazier, wilder version of Florida.
I didn’t see any kangaroos though which was disappointing, although I did eat some.
Like James the previous year, what almost killed me, made me stronger. This wasn’t the first time I had to fight for my life or watch my dreams explode, but it was a major escalation of intensity.
In the end I won.
We filmed so much speech content in 2012 that I took 2013 off from events for the first time in my career. I was able to crank out an insane velocity of videos on YouTube and get 21 Studios some real traction, tripling the subscriber count over the next ~18 months from ~20k to over 60k.
I learned that getting pushed to your breaking point helps you find new limits. New strength. New levels of conviction. Of iron fucking will.
“Anthony Dream Johnsons is the only man strong enough to herd manosphere gurus all under one roof. Without him there would be no manosphere.”
Truth be told life as a man is never ending war. A series of battles, big and small.
You’ll win most of them if you fight hard as hell, to your last breath. Not every battle is winnable though, you’ll learn that too. Stay focused on the war for your values. Winning the war matters.
/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson