There is a Ploy
in every village

Good Morning Tom,

It’s 4:30am in Chiang Mai. I have watched almost every live show you and Drew have produced, normally when I wake at 4am here, which is 2pm in Los Angeles. Last night, September 7th, I stayed up and came to the live one for the first time. The connection with you — one sided as it is — means a lot to me. It is a good way to check my own north star, starting a couple of days a week with you, Drew and Ryan.

I heard something in your voice change last week. Something I heard at the end of the mindset days, but this time it hit harder. You are going to retire from doing this show at the end of the year, huh?

I am not writing this from outside the tent. I paid to join the founders circle six months ago, and the reason I joined was you.

I listened to the superchats, and to long time supporters you treat with more patience and humility than I could. What struck me was your answer — that it was “worth it if you are helping even 1-2 people become stronger or learn how to improve their lives through cause and effect”.

Fuck that, bro.

You can’t change the character of grown men. You can’t stop the K shaped economy. You can’t keep spending yourself on that kind of ROI. You are far too valuable.

So here is a different offer, and everything below it is the evidence that I can actually deliver what I am promising.

What I am not asking for

No filming. No posts, no announcement, no press. Nothing to promote, nothing to sign, nothing owed afterwards. You can cancel a week out and I will never mention it to anyone. If the movie ever gets made I don't want my name anywhere near it. This is a gift, not a trade.

And it happens either way. The storytelling competitions are already funded. The domains are already bought. I am three months into the teaching certificate and already looking for the teachers. You would not be starting this — you would be making it matter more.

What you can check in sixty seconds

• My wife Ploy owns 100% of Riverside‑dispensary.com — two locations in Chiang Mai, 3,500 real reviews, 12 full time staff paid twice the normal Thai wage. Her name is on the licence.
• Ploy’s gold medal for English Story Telling, Surin Primary Educational Service Area 2, Ban Han Hee School, 18 November 2010. The certificate and its translation are photographed below.
• Thaibeef.com — I imported cattle to Thailand for ten years. Ploy still sells some of those steaks at the shops.
• Usaenglish.com, ESLteacher.com, Englishteacher.com, Ploy.com, Transcendent.com — all mine, all donated to this if you want them.
• The trip is on me. You pick the dates, I send the itinerary, and there are thirteen seats in the van.

1. Come to Thailand this winter. It is already paid for.

   I am writing you today because I know you from your content. I love you, bro. Sounds weird, right? Don’t care. I love you. You were created to make young adults thrive. I think you have started to feel what it would have meant to be a father. I know where the kids — young strong men and precious young women — are waiting for you and Lisa. Not in need of money. In need of the light that you can shine on the truth for them.

   Please accept my invitation for a 100% paid vacation to Thailand this winter. You pick the dates, and we will send the itinerary and pick you up in our van at the airport. Thirteen seats. Real vacation, real luxury private suites for you and Lisa, real time with elephants and the beauty of Thailand, and some real days in an Isan village with the kids. Drew, you and your daughter are invited too. My kids will be with us the whole time. Ryan — if they buy your ticket, I will pay for your trip when you arrive.

   Seven to ten days around the entire kingdom, beaches to mountains, 74th floor open air restaurants in Bangkok. A country that has 10% of the opportunities the people in your chat have, but 10x the positive attitude and mental fortitude to be disciplined and positive. 20x better food.

   

   After a day of scuba diving, dinner on the beach costs less than a bloomin’ onion at Chili’s, and you will remember why Buddhists are so skilled at staying present. If you want prime beef, I have that covered too.

   

   Ten years importing cattle to Thailand — and the house I built for Ploy in her home village, Rattanaburi, Surin. That is where I want to take you.

2. Why I think the live show is finished.

   In the mindset days you eventually realized you can’t change a grown man. You can nurture and love them. You can wish every blessing for them. But something happens in our childhood that sets like concrete. It cannot be made malleable again after it forms. You can break it and combine it into a larger foundation for a new structure, but the broken pieces never get reformed — they just become hard rock in someone else’s foundation. More often they end up as crushed concrete, good for walking on. Most men live lives of quiet desperation.

   Your live show has too many broken, hard, left-over pieces in the concrete truck. When you started there were fans from all over the world who followed you to the live show. I remember you calling the countries out in the first week or two. It was great. I am in Thailand and shared the love listening the next morning. I thought of it as a collective of similarly aligned souls. I get to bed early so I never attended live — but the energy was full of people who thrived when they experienced your content. Now, when the drum of that truck spins, the hard broken pieces bang around louder every day.

   I stayed awake and joined the chat last night to see if I was right. It is worse than I thought. The room is not thriving. Nice people in there — but I joined for you.

3. Why you, and not somebody else.

   I don’t spend time on social media. I don’t want to be liked. I only like your content, the All-In podcast, a little Scott Galloway, and I love Jordan Peterson. I am drawn to you specifically because we are both story tellers — because a good “why” will get you through anything. You are a logotherapist, Tom. You are a teacher. An incredible husband. But you were meant to be a father. Same as me.

   The only reason I have three sons under three today is because I lost everything important to me five years ago. Over the course of three to five years I lost all my money, my peers, my business, my relationship, and even the respect of my father, in my early forties. It was not my fault what happened in my business, but it was my fault the way I handled it. I did not have it in me to end it, so I kept going. Eventually I transcended myself — Transcendent.com. Then the universe gave me everything back and so much more. I just needed to know what was important.

   You already know what is important. You are just waiting to find your kids. You can change more kids’ lives now than if you had your own. You were created for this.

   

   Three sons under three. Five years ago I had nothing left worth counting.

4. Who the kids actually are.

   They are in the rice villages in the poorest region of Thailand — Isan, in the north east. Our home town village is Rattanaburi, Surin. I built my wife a house there. But every little village feels the same. The fathers are usually absent. The alcohol and methamphetamines flood in on the same waves as the OnlyFans sites and the strangers offering jobs overseas, where the sex traffickers and a slave labor future are waiting. Kids stop school at 13 to work the fields. Safeguarding barely exists. The only window into the world is the cell phone glued to their hand.

   If they could speak English they could get a job instantly. But in Isan, English is the third language. There are competitions already in place across the regions of Isan where kids compete in English story telling. My wife won one of these when she was 13. I have started to put money into the events and built some websites to help them learn — Usaenglish.com. I would be happy to donate all the websites and fund the effort.

   

   

   Ploypalin Moolsri, gold medal, English Story Telling, Surin Primary Educational Service Area 2. Ban Han Hee School, 18 November 2010. She was thirteen. This is the competition I want to build out.

   

5. A Kysen tournament in Isan.

   Camp Kysen, Team Kysen, Kysen Thailand — or just a tab on your website. I want to create a Kysen Thailand tournament. This is the best way to get the boys in Isan involved, and I am trusting that your video game will help them learn the morality skills needed to get the right mindset for life. I want you to give me advice on how to create this event. I have not played a video game of any kind in 35 years. I can still hear Madden’s voice and “get over here” on Mortal Kombat. That is my level of video gaming.

6. Thirty teaching jobs, and the heroes to fill them.

   Help me find some men and women of character to come teach English and other subjects in Thailand. I don’t want to make any money or monetize a website. I want to donate the websites and my time to find people who want to come be ESL teachers here. These are real superheroes. I am personally three months into a nine month Moreland University teaching certificate, done all online. I don’t need money. I want to teach logotherapy in the top tier international high schools my kids will attend. I want young men to find their “why” before they leave home.

   If an American with a college degree, a clean background record and a teaching certificate comes to Thailand, they are immediately qualified for a teaching job that earns in the top 10–15% of all workers in the community, and is regarded with a degree of respect that few foreigners or local leaders ever reach. I know of 30 jobs available now. Real jobs, starting annually, with American English teachers regarded as the best. That may not last forever — but it is true today. What a great opportunity for the men in your chat who say their lives are hard. ESLteacher.com and Englishteacher.com are some more websites I can donate. The websites, the money and the ideas are easy. The hard part is finding the heroes.

   

   

7. Make a movie. Call it Ploy.

   Use ploy.com to publish it. You can own it all. I don’t ever want to be mentioned or given credit. Give my wife credit. She saved my soul and my life. She gave me everything that matters. I knew that her love for me was all based on my ability to make her thrive. Once a man gets a woman to give him the opportunity to play, it is up to the man to keep the game fun, safe and exciting forever. I do my job well, daily, like anything that matters — she gets my full attention at any time she needs it.

   Her name, พลอย, means sapphire. Put it on the film and every girl in Isan who carries that name — which is most of them — sees herself in the title before the first frame plays. That is the plan. Let them watch a girl out of a rice field become something, and let that be the thing that moves them.

   Ploy is the most common female name in Thailand. Make the movie about the true story of struggle, love and determination in Isan. You want to get real — talk about the dark side of poverty in these villages. The sale price of young brides. The things my wife can tell Lisa that are accepted here as the norm. Then tell the real success stories these kids are going to write.

   Tell those stories instead of spending your time on men who think their lives are hard in the USA while they watch your live shows and troll you. Shine your light where living things still want to grow and thrive. Tell a story worthy of your utility. You were born to help young men thrive. Teach them to grow up and help their wives thrive too. One kid at a time, and each story is worth telling well.