Let me tell you about the day the earth itself held its breath. I’m not John Henry—not by blood, anyway—but when I read his story, I see my face in the soot on his hammer. I see your face too.
John Henry, an American folk hero, has been written and sung about by countless artists over the years. In 1996, he was pictured on a U. S. postage stamp in a set along with Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Casey at the Bat.
In 1968, Johnny Cash released At Folsom Prison, a live album recorded earlier that year. In both sets of his live show at the prison, Cash performed “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer,” though it wasn’t until a re-release in 1999 that a 7-minute version of the song made it on the album. Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called this expanded edition of Folsom “the ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality.”
Legend reveals John Henry as a “steel-driving man,” but that’s just polite talk for what he really was: A thorn in the side of every smug bastard who thought progress meant leaving real men in the dust.
They’ll tell you John Henry died with a hammer in his hand, heart burst from the strain of outcompeting a steam drill. Bull***t.
He didn’t die. He chose.
Honor over survival. Sweat over surrender. Legacy over the cold comfort of compliance.
They buried him near the tracks, but John Henry’s ghost still rattles the chains of every soul crushed under the boot of “efficiency.” You know the type—the corporate “steam drills” promising utopia while scrapping your future for parts.
We’ve all met the descendants of John Henry. They’re not picking and shoveling in West Virginia tunnels anymore, but you’ll see them at your local coffee shops, working in factories, holed-up in cubicles at suburban tech parks—anywhere the elites dismiss them as “unskilled” or “outdated.”
These are the boys who’ve been told their hands are useless in a world of AI and app-based serfdom. The ones fed lies about “self-care” while their dignity gets outsourced to chatbots and temp agencies.
But here’s what those sermonizers forget: John Henry didn’t win because he was stronger than a machine. He won because he understood something the engineers didn’t.
Machines break. Men endure.
When that drill jammed in the shale, when the promises of bosses rusted faster than their gadgets, it was the men who rebuilt the world, hammer swing by hammer swing.
That’s why I built The Foundry. Not another mutual admiration society on LinkedIn for “thought leaders.” Not a coding bootcamp churning out debt-ridden keyboard monks.
This is a brotherhood for young men who still believe in calluses and consequences. A place where high schoolers learn to lead not by quoting Zuckerberg, but by studying the unbroken line from John Henry’s hammer to their own fists.
Our first cohort kicks off next week. In it, we’ll teach young men to out-drill the steam-powered lie telling them that they’re irrelevant.
We’ll also encourage them to build businesses that can’t be automated, friendships that can’t be algorithmized, and legacies that don’t require a viral tweet.
And yes—we’ll give them the tools to win, because inspiration without execution is just another corporate pep talk.
You think John Henry’s story is about some dead railroad worker? Wrong. It’s about your son. Your nephew. The kid down the street who’s one TikTok scroll away from forgetting his own potential.
The Foundry isn’t a program. It’s a mutiny.
Sign up today. Get my free guide “4 Critical Beliefs Holding You Back from Living the Life You Deserve” —no strings, no sermons. Just straight talk for everyone who is tired of being the butt of the joke in their own country.
As always,
Brian
