Time, Energy, Resources – Freedom’s Tools – with J.R. Penry – [Ep. 175]

Linda J. Hansen:  Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101®- Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics Online course, the book, the course and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.Com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement and retention, and an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity 101.Com.

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Linda J. Hansen: And if you listen often, you know I cover a wide range of topics and try to help listeners connect the dots, so to speak, in terms of how each issue affects their lives. Recent interviews have included discussions on freedom in the workplace, the immigration crisis, cancel culture, the demise of the dollar, energy issues, choice in education, and election integrity. These are just some of the issues I try to cover often to help us all understand how we can be involved to protect our freedom. I believe the policies of freedom as outlined in our Constitution and in the Judeo-Christian principles that have guided this nation, will guide us to restoring the greatness of America. How can we best steward or care for and protect our freedom? How can we use our time, energy and resources to help ourselves and others? My guest today is Jerry Or. J. R. Penry Jr. Is an entrepreneur, a patriot, and a sort of jack of all trades who has a deep heart for God and for this nation. He has been on this podcast once before and I welcome him back. Thank you, J.R for joining me again.

J.R. Penry: It's just an honor once again to be here.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, you've been a great encouragement to me with Prosperity 101® and you have shared the work with others and just been involved in really helping spread the word so I'm just so thankful to have you back on.

J.R. Penry: Oh well, thank you for having me again. That's always wonderful to be here and reengage.

Linda J. Hansen: Well, you have great insights that I think are helpful for everyone and the last time you were on the podcast you were engaged with national writer Congressman. Tell us a little bit about that and then what you're doing now.

J.R. Penry: Yes, it was wonderful opportunity that I had with them prior to COVID and it was an opportunity to get around and meet business owners which predominantly the idea was to show business owners how to really utilize their influence to help get the facts and hold their elected officials accountable. Everything from the national level all the way down to the state and local levels. And so the key is being quickly informed because business owners are so busy doing what they do they don't have time many times to do the research necessary to really get the facts in hand. So they take an awful lot with a big grain of salt at time but also with a big hooping scoop of faith that what they're hearing is true. And so the good news is with national rights of Congressman, they actually have a platform that lets them know what's going on and how things work. And it's a very easy, simple click from an email link to be able to see and respond and send an actual letter, a very personal letter, very professionally built letter that kind of prefills for you directly to your elected officials, if you so choose. So it doesn't matter which side of the spectrum you're on, whether you're liberal, conservative, whatever. The key is, is understanding the issues as they are, what they're voting on or how they voted and how you can actually ask those questions. And so what's nice about it, I kind of give you a purview of some of the things that are being discussed and what they're going to be voting on over the next several weeks when they're actually in session.

Linda J. Hansen: It was so helpful and great platform but I know that you're not engaged with them right now. Can you tell us what you're doing now?

J.R. Penry: Sure well with the COVID prevented us from going in and visiting with business owners so I had to make some changes. We did some things technologically speaking but there came a point where I needed to do some other things myself. So with all the money that was being thrown in the green energy sector, it's an old occupation or profession I was engaged in many years ago at the beginning. And so there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of false truths that are being spread around purely to pump up the profits for some of these retailers. And so the key to what I was wanting to do is because I had some friends looking into it primarily, that we were enticed by the tax credits, which is what entices so many other people, and they wanted my opinion. So once I started doing some research and seeing the pricing on it, I knew what it cost to build a system and all that. So I just reengaged in other businesses. I started a company called Green Energy of Texas. So I go throughout Texas and Oklahoma, and I will actually install solar systems that are practical, common sense solutions that are affordable. But they also sometimes I'll do a backup generator, which is the big thing for most people right now. They want to make sure they don't lose power because we don't want to be another California with rolling blackouts or brownouts. Because when you lose energy, lose electricity, it's generally speaking, the worst possible time is when Murphy shows up, when you're getting ready for a wedding or trying to be somewhere important, or you're ill, or people on oxygen, those types of things. So I've created a solution that is much more affordable. And so it's word of mouth. I don't have a bloated sales force. That's one of the reasons we can be a lot more inexpensive than my competitors. But I just custom pay loaded solutions to people. But the key to it is getting the information out to our elected officials. Again, we don't have in Texas, we don't have uniform metering laws. And what that basically means is you go from one city to the next. Some have incentives, some don't. Some are required to buy back the electricity, some only give you credit, like an energy bank, and some don't pay for it at all. And so, in my humble opinion, if you have real estate and you have the ability to produce energy and they need it, they should have to buy it from you at the same wholesale cost that costs them to produce it. So we do need some uniform laws, but it's going to take educating the elected officials to that. Because we had an issue here about two years ago in the winter, where Texas lost a lot of power across large part of the state, and it wasn't because they didn't have the capacity to produce it. And that is where the misinformation plays. And what had happened is ERCOT, which is the board that oversees the energy regulations of our state. Number one, the biggest problem is not a person sitting on that board actually resided in Texas. Number two, many of them were related to actual board members of the energy companies. Funny how that always works. But more importantly, what happened is they had voluntarily agreed to sign a moratorium on the amount of energy they could produce that was not green energy produced, I e. Solar and wind. So anytime you limit how much you can produce with either natural gas, diesel, whatever other energy source, even nuclear as a percentage, then when those two entities, I e. Wind and solar, quit producing, your threshold is just simple math. The threshold drops. They had the ability they could have fired up two additional natural gas compressors and had plenty of energy to go across the state. But because they had hamstrung themselves or handcuffed themselves to that agreement, it didn't happen. Very simple solution. But once again, people that sign those agreements many times don't think about the end game.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. And I appreciate what you said about how people need to be informed about this. This is just one example. The title of this episode is Time, Energy and Resources. They're freedoms tools. The resources that we have as individuals and as a nation, these are all things that need to be freedoms tools. And I'm really glad to hear that you're doing well and that even though you're not with national right, your congressman anymore, you're still active. And this is just one example of how you're working to educate people about issues that are important because there's so much fallacy in the green energy media mantra. And this can transfer into other areas that we talk about because as we look at policies that make sense, we're just talking about this energy policy right now because of what you're doing right now for your living. But your heart is actually an activist. You really want to promote freedom all of the time and you help to educate people and you're a patriot at heart. And for listeners. A lot of times you see, I have people who might be in the news or they might be somewhat famous or whatever, but Jr is a great example of someone who is active and engaged in doing what he does, where he is to help educate and inform people about a variety of issues. And I just really appreciate that about you, Jr. And so we think of how people can use their time to become more educated, their energy to become more involved, and their resources to help make an impact. What are some ways that you think are great for business owners, for employees to use their time, energy and resources to protect freedom, right?

J.R. Penry: Well, first of all, you've heard me say this many times before, Linda, that knowledge is power, which is a half-truth. It's the application of knowledge that's more powerful. But the most powerful, you've heard me say, is the correct application of the correct knowledge. And so, using a common sense approach, if it's done right, it wouldn't need to be incentivized. Well, the key is, first of all, get informed with the facts. Then see what you can do to apply to your three foot circle and then extend it and reach and reach and reach. But the key is too, is once you have that information, you choose to take action. You can have all the knowledge in the world. And if you do nothing with it, one of the things they could do, quite frankly, is understanding what you've got utilized with prosperity one on one. It's the basic. It's the foundation. So the key is a lot of people get upset over information that's only half true. And so that's my first word of encouragement, is get the facts and don't become emotional about it, okay? There's no reason to be emotionally triggered, okay?

Linda J. Hansen: And I would say it takes time to get the facts. We have to invest time to whether it's an issue related to the social issues hurting our nation right now, whether it's an economic issue, whether it's the pro-life issue, whether it's what's happening in our schools, all these things. It takes time to get those facts. And I loved how you said knowledge is power. It is. But the application of knowledge and there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. And I always learned that wisdom is the ability to correctly apply the knowledge that you have. We all know people who've got 15 degrees, but they're not street smart, or they don't have any common sense. And then we know people who are just some of the most wise people in the world who maybe made it through third grade, and they've just learned. And so we can use our time with the Internet. Now, you mentioned before, national, right, your congressman. It's a great tool, right? But there are so many tools out there. And thank you for mentioning Prosperity 101®. I do have the course, the book, the posters, the podcast, things that I really try to help people become informed and not take a lot of time to do it. But if we really want to be an active citizen and protect our own freedom and our own ability to make choices about whether we want a new kind of energy usage on our home or our business or whatever it is where our kids go to school, where we live, what we do for a job. If we want to protect our freedom, it's going to take our time and it's going to take our energy to just have the will to learn. We need to be teachable. We need to be able to learn. And it might require some resources.

J.R. Penry: Freedom isn't free and takes challenging the Narrative as you know, I'm here in Texas, and I call myself Country Dumb. There are some basic rules that apply, and some of them are just what you consider common sense. One is you don't buy a Ford from a guy that drives a Chevy, okay? You don't take health advice about nutrition from a fat chef if you're trying to lose weight, all right? There's simple things. You judge a tree by its fruit. And so some of the people that are pushing certain narratives, that's driving some of this ideology, look at how they live, and they're not congruent with what they preach. They say one thing, but they do something entirely different. We need to start challenging that.

Linda J. Hansen: One of the things I like to tell people, too, is especially now, I mean, we're going into an election season, okay. Where things are going to heat up in the news. And there's so many false narratives. You mentioned different narratives that people push. Right. And I really try to help people understand that whenever you see something constantly pushed over and over and over and over and over and over and I'm being redundant for a reason in the news, I would say, what is it they don't want you to know? There's always some hard sell.

J.R. Penry: Why is the hard sell necessary?

Linda J. Hansen: Why is the hard sell necessary? Not only for things they want us to do, like eat bugs or I mean, there's some of these policies that are just insane, right? And as we look at some of these, we think, well, that can't even be possible. But it is. But we need to be informed and we need to use our resources. Like I said before, sometimes it's going to take money. Sometimes it's going to take money. Or it may be just our resource of time. Like, we don't all have money, so maybe we can volunteer. Are you concerned about election integrity taking?

J.R. Penry: The risk of exposing ourselves as a patriot to those that are pushing our narratives?

Linda J. Hansen: As conservatives and business owners, business leaders who really want to support business friendly policies. We don't have to be the violent protesters. We don't have to do anything. We can use our time, energy and resources to choose how to spend our money as well. And we can see this recently with the Bud Light boycott, and they feel the pain. But interestingly enough, you mentioned pushing an agenda, Bud Light, even though they've lost billions of dollars after promoting the Trans agenda on their beer cans and really getting into this fray, they recently just sponsored a parade, a pride parade in which naked men were parading in front of children.

J.R. Penry: They doubled down is what they did.

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah, they doubled down. But again, we can just protest by not buying their products and eventually not just Bud Light.

J.R. Penry: You got to realize there's a bigger corporation overseas, bud Light.

Linda J. Hansen: Absolutely.

J.R. Penry: So you may have to go against preferences, but what are your belief systems worth to you? What is your character? What are you willing to stand for? And that's why I came up with my website, Westandforfreedom.com. So under that heading, once it's all finished and right now we're doing the finishing touches on it, there will be links to some valuable information and resources that people may be interested in. I'm trying to make it easy, okay. And I want to reach as many people as possible. And of course, your prosperity one on one will have a link there as well. But it's just having because time is what's really precious to most of us. And if you got a concern, I'm hoping to be kind of like a point the hub, the center, and they go to there. If you believe in freedom. You believe in our constitutional rights as they were written, not being misinterpreted, and you believe that you have a duty and responsibility to pass it on to the next generation. We're stewards. There should be some resources available. Okay? So I'm not trying to promote any form of activism of any kind other than be informed and then stand up for what you believe, but have a very good reason why.

Linda J. Hansen: Exactly. And that's like what I tried to do with prosperity one on one. One of the taglines is become informed, involved, and impactful. If we can become informed and we are armed with truthful information that aligns with the Constitution, then we can truly be part of the solution. Our country is run by we the People or is supposed to be run by we the People. When we stand up, you know there's more of us than there are of them. And if we stand up and say no, and we unite, like you mentioned before, we unite together and say no, we're standing for our Constitution, and we’re standing for our freedoms. We're standing for our rights. We're standing up for our children. We're standing up for freedom for the next generation. We're standing up for America's sovereignty and strength because a free America makes for a free world. These are things that we can all do, and it doesn't mean we all have to do everything. But to everyone listening, we can all pick one thing. So pick one thing. What's an issue that concerns you? Listener? What is it that really gets you kind of upset or is on your mind? Like you don't like what's happening and you don't like what the legislators are doing or what your city council members are doing or something? There's something you're thinking about right now as you're listening to this podcast, and that's a cue to become informed, involved, and impactful. To be able to of course, I'll recommend take my course, purchase a course, or read my book. But even beyond that, there's so many resources out there now. There's podcasts, there's books, there's so many online resources that people can get to actually get truth. But I would say stay away from mainstream media because they push the narrative and there's big money in what they're doing and watch the money flow, whether it's a politician running for office, who are their donors, who are their donors connected to? There's a lot of people running for president and for other offices where their donors are connected to China, and that's not going to be helpful. So it takes a little bit of time, a little bit of your energy maybe it might take a resource. You have to search for the truth and go a couple of levels down from what the media is telling you, and you will be able to find amazing information. So you can vote and act according to your values, your personal values, whether you agree with us or someone else. But at least do the research to make sure you're voting for someone that you can support.

J.R. Penry: I agree wholeheartedly. The key to it, though, is really finally making the decision to be bold enough to at least protest in some fashion, either through a letter, a phone call. And I think it doesn't matter which side of Ventron I think everybody's kind of getting tired of. You can look at the price of things. You can look at the quality of life. You can look at there are more unemployed, non-working males between the ages of 25 and 35 right now than there were during the Great Depression. Did you know that?

Linda J. Hansen: Yeah. It's heartbreaking. And you mentioned how we can each get a few friends and it doesn't take a lot. And you mentioned writing a letter like that's one way we can protest. And I'll tell listeners we don't always have to protest, either when legislators or our elected officials or even the bureaucrats are doing something that's helpful for our nation or for our cities communities, be sure and tell them thank you. Let them know you appreciate their stand for freedom. Let them know you appreciate the work that they do to support the Constitution and stuff. So it's as important to be involved on the positive side as it is also to voice your opinion if you don't agree with something. But when you write to, say, a state legislator, they think that 100 people will have your view. So your letter actually holds the weight of 100 people. If you write or call email someone at your federal level, your congressman, your senator, they look at that as there's 1000 people who hold your view. So when you take time, sometimes it takes just a few minutes. And honestly, it doesn't take very long to make a phone call either. I recommend writing I recommend emailing or writing a letter because it has a more permanent record. It's more recordable in a sense. But if all you have time for is a phone call, do that. Show up at their town hall meetings. Go to some of their events. Make sure you get to know them and hear them and hold them accountable. Ask them questions about why they voted for a certain thing or why they didn't vote for a certain thing, and really find out their background. And every bill that is out there, the state legislators or the state legislatures and the federal legislature, they all have their bills online. So if you're really curious, don't listen to the headlines about a bill. Look it up. They have numbers. You can just go online. You can look it up, you can read it. If there is a specific thing that you're wondering about, you can even do a word search and find it. And you can find out if that bill is something you want supported or whether you want it defeated. And this is our role as citizens. Our government was made for us to be able to have that authority. In a sense.

J.R. Penry: Yes what’s unfortunate now is the paradigm shift because there was a level of honorability and nobility for a lot of our elected officials when you and I were going up. We held them in a little higher esteem than we do now. You look at the trust factor right now, pretty low. Well, yeah, it's at a record low. And so used to you would give them the benefit of the doubt that whatever they saying most likely was true, more true than not. But now it's shifted. You just immediately assume the best way to handle is whatever they're telling you. Assume the opposite often.

Linda J. Hansen: Thankfully not everyone. Thankfully not everyone.

J.R. Penry: Not everyone.

Linda J. Hansen: But I don't want listeners to be so discouraged, to think that every single person in government is dishonest and corrupt. There are so many good people, and I've met so many good people. I've worked with so many good people. Question everything exactly by their fruits. You will know them. Yeah. Our time is coming to a close here and again, as we think of time, energy, resources, all of them are limited, but we can use them all as freedom's tools. And so you have a website. We stand for freedom. I understand it's under construction right now.

J.R. Penry: Revision. Actually, we're adding some things to it to make it a little more user friendly. People would get on there and not be able to find easily what they were looking for, and that wasn't what it was meant to do. And so we're fixing that. But like I said, more than anything, it's really just going to be a resource of really getting the word out. At best, we can well, and this.

Linda J. Hansen: Is just an example, you don't have to do that. You're taking the initiative to do that. And listeners, there's so many opportunities for you to get information and be part of the parallel economy too. We talked about using resources wisely. Don't spend your money with companies that you don't agree with. And again, I totally support, like Public Square. Public Square is a great website and opportunity to be a parallel economy Amazon of sorts. And I have a link with Switchaway.com. So many of our products that we use all the time, whether it's like soap, dishwashing soap, shampoo, different food products, things. Yeah, they come from all these companies that are destroying our nation.

J.R. Penry: Walmart.

Linda J. Hansen: Right. And so if you want an American company that supports American values, go to Switchway.com/P101. And you can really shop for some products that are useful to your home, but you know that you're not compromising your values by doing so.

J.R. Penry: If I may real quick, I belong to an organization called Patriot Owned Businesses. It's a source where somebody you'll see them go online and say, does anybody know a roofer? That's Patriot. So that's what they do. They promote other Patriot owned businesses.

Linda J. Hansen: Wonderful.

J.R. Penry: It's growing and it's free to join. That cost anything to join. And so it's just another resource. I think they use probably Facebook app of some kind, but I find it valuable to meet other Patriots. And they also push doing more business with the mom and pops.

Linda J. Hansen: That's great. Yeah, that's great. And I just did a podcast interview with Krystal Parker from the US. Christian chamber of commerce. So if you have those values join together. I did an interview with Shannon Royce from Christian Employers Alliance, and if you go to christianemployersalliance.org and use the code P101, you help both organizations, mine and theirs. And Christian Employers Alliance is a wonderful organization. So there's all these groups and these ways that we can align together, support one another, use our time, energy and resources to support freedom and the values that made this nation great. So J.R, if people want to reach you, they should go to Westandforfreedom.com, right?

J.R. Penry: And then my direct number is 512-269-1994.

Linda J. Hansen: That's great. And I know you're available on LinkedIn as well.

J.R. Penry: S-J-R henry P-E-N-R-Y.

Linda J. Hansen: Right. And he's active on LinkedIn and you can see his posts and be able to interact with him. So, J.R thank you for being an example of a regular guy who does great things to help our country. And you're just a good example of how you use your time, energy, resources as freedoms tools, but also just doing everything you can to help your country, to serve your Lord, and to honor God with what you do and to help others through what you do. And I thank you. Thank you for making time for the podcast. Thank you so much.

J.R. Penry: You bet.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course. You can also receive the free e-book, 10 Tips for Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks. Freedom is never free. Understanding the foundations of prosperity and the policies of prosperity will help you to protect prosperity as you become informed, involved, and impactful. I give special thanks to our sponsors Matthews Archery, Inc. and Wisconsin Stamping & Manufacturing. Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.