2972: The Lonely Chapter — Why Growing Up Feels So Isolating (And Why It Should)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded health, fitness, and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is a special one. Michael Smoke came on the podcast. He is a public speaker and podcaster. His show, The Higher Up Podcast, is one of the fastest-growing podcasts currently happening right now. Michael was a fan of Mind Pump. Now he's got his own stuff. You've got to listen to this guy when it comes to fitness and just also improving your life. He's very intelligent. We had a great conversation. We know you're going to love this episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by MAPS Fitness Products. So right now, you can buy a MAPS 15 program and get any of the following MAPS programs for free. So let's buy one, get one free. So you get a MAPS 15 program. Then you can get either MAPS 15 Minutes, Symmetry, Strong, Powerlift, Performance, Muscle Mommy, or 40 Plus for free. So it's a buy one, get one free. Head over to MAPS15bogo.com. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Mike. Welcome to the show, dude. Thanks for having me, guys. Let's go, dude. This is rad. Such a cool full circle moment. It's awesome. So I want to know how this all started for you because in a very short period of time, you went from starting putting out content to having a pretty large impact, like a relatively, actually not relative, a very large impact in a very short period of time. How did that start? And let's talk about that. To the internet, it looked like a short period of time, but brother's been doing this for a hot minute. Four, yeah. So overnight, what's that? The long, long, long journey, overnight success. Ten-year overnight success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, first off, thank you for the acknowledgement. I appreciate it. It means a lot coming from you guys. And you guys play an instrumental role in the quote-unquote success that I've had on the internet. And I guess I would typically ask, how long do we have? But this is a podcast. I can tell the full story. You're all captive. But about 10 years ago, I was fed up with how I looked and how I felt, and I tell the story all the time, and he hates it, but he's one of our best friends. My best friend, Will, is here off camera with us in the studio today, but one of our best friends, Luke, I was getting to a point with my body image where I felt bad physically. I definitely felt bad mentally, and we were at my house hanging out. Everybody come home from college, and my house is the place we did that, and I went upstairs to grab a water or something, and I overheard Luke, my still to this day very best friend in the world, talk to him right before I came in here, he said, and I quote, damn, smoke is getting hot. It's getting big, and I remember in that moment, words can only hurt you to the degree that you believe they are true. That's a great quote from Peter Krohn, and I remember thinking, I noticed, and now other people are starting to notice, and that's when the shame started to become too big to ignore, and so the first step was I need to get my health in order, and I struggled with image and confidence from as early of an age as I can remember being seven years old and not wanting to take my shirt off at the pool because I was just a pudgy kid, and so the first step was I needed to learn how the hell to lose weight, and I did all the conventional stuff, the bro meals, six meals a day, go to the gym six days a week, still didn't have a concept of a calorie, just ate the boring bro foods, and then I discovered, I would say, two major players. I discovered Grego Gallagher, Kino Body, who taught me about how I didn't have to live in the gym. I could just train three days a week. I could just walk. I didn't have to run or do stairs, and that intermittent fasting might be great if you have a big appetite, which I did, and you guys. This was 2017. I found out that I was going to lose weight. I found you guys' podcast, as did he shortly before we had met or around that time, and I just started absorbing information, and I became obsessed with not only the way that when I realized over the course of 10 months I would end up losing about 60 pounds and getting stronger through intermittent fasting, controlling my intake, controlling my protein, and training hard and walking, I realized people treat me differently. I treat me differently, and that was the first piece of understanding that confidence is evidence-based. Over that next five to seven years, because this is 2017, and the first video didn't hit the internet until 2023, so over the next five to seven years, I became obsessed with longevity, understanding prolonged fasting. I was listening to your podcast with guests like Stephen Cabral and Rhonda Patrick and Ben Greenfield and listening to Dr. Sachin Panda, and I just became obsessed, but to no real avail, I wasn't able to go take what I had learned and share it with people. It was just to my benefit, which was great. I was able to understand the power of nootropics before big tests or big events and competitions in my college and big meetings in corporate and doing prolonged fasting for various reasons, but I wasn't able to use this and help anybody, and so it was very isolating. It'd be like when you find a new study or a new peptide that you love or a new training style, and you're pumped, and you try to go tell your friend, and they're like, hey, man, I don't care. It's kind of a sad feeling, and it feels very lonely, and I spent most of my early 20s obsessed with taking care of myself and learning from you guys, and really, my only outlet was Will, who's in the back here in the corner with us, and we had these things just called Neat Chats. I told you about him yesterday. We'd text each other. He graduated from Cornell, the Ivy League up in Ithaca, New York. I was at Kennesaw State, so we're 900 miles from each other, Georgia and New York. He didn't have a ton of friends up there outside of the lacrosse program, and I really didn't have anybody here, so we'd text each other that one acronym that we got from y'all, Neat Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Walk, and that was the cue. It was like the bat signal. It was like we'd pick up the phone, call each other, catch up on school, catch up on the family. We'd walk while we did it. We were always walking while we did it, and we'd just download on what we learned from you guys, from Huberman, from the guests Rogan was having on, and what we were doing was we were absorbing a great deal of knowledge, and then we were immediately testing our retention through bouncing it back and forth, and that's where this big knowledge base over eight years was born, so to your point, people see the knowledge, they see the knowledge, and they the three-year span of zero to three million followers across platforms, what they don't see is the seven years that I was obsessed with it, absorbing thousands of hours of content to get me to the point where it seems like I can just recall it easily, but that's where it started, 2017, and in March of 2023, after four months of worrying what I'd look like or if I'd be corny or if they would judge me, whoever they is, I posted my first TikTok March 7th of 2023, and by the July 21st of 2023, I'd built the TikTok to 200,000 followers, quit the job at the end of the month based off a promise that I made myself, I had to make a certain amount of money by the end of the month on the internet, and I've been full-time on social media for three and a half years now. Now, was it isolating, because you're, you know, let's see, 10 years ago, how old were you, 19? Just turned 29, so I would have been 20. Okay, so you're 20 years old, was it isolating because most dudes your age are not really into that stuff, so you don't have a lot of people that you could sit down and be like, let's talk about this deep, weird stuff? Yeah, when you're 20, you're wondering what the next frat party is and, you know, what the girl you're talking to is doing if she wants to hang out that weekend, and like, I was still kind of in that life, I was 20, and we were having fun and going out, but I began to want to do that less so I could have a good training session, or I was tracking my caloric intake, so alcohol and eating out didn't really fit, and I remember my friends just chirping me like crazy at the beginning, and then this sort of weird transient period of being between my old life and my new one, what Chris Williamson and Hormozy would call the lonely chapter began, and it lasted for three or four years. I'm obsessed with this thing, I still kind of have these childhood friends, I've got Will at Cornell way up there, we like the same stuff, but he's not here, I'm not there, and so it was isolating because I had a passion and no one to share it with. One of my favorite pieces of scripture is Proverbs 13, 12, hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. I felt like with this passion, and now what I know is information that can really help people, it can give them their agency. If they just understand something as simple as what you guys preach of understanding your calories and training, a lot of people still don't know what that can do for them, and so I had all this information that was changing my life, and I had nowhere to put it, and the videos were simply nothing more than almost like a cathartic release for me to say, I've got an idea, let me just post it, and I had no idea what it was going to become. I didn't know you could be an influencer, I didn't know that being a podcaster like you guys was ever in my reality. I was like, well, I wasn't a high-level athletic performance background. This was never in the cards for me. Like we said it last night at dinner, this is a life beyond any conscious plane of existence I ever thought possible. So obviously the 60 pounds was the catalyst that kind of lit the fire, but then you still had a long, and I imagine it didn't take that long for you to get the 60 off. How long was it? 10 months, he says. 10 months, and I probably could have done it faster, but I still was going out and stuff. That's an intermediary. So you accomplished that, but then you still go for a period of five plus years. What kept the fire stoked? Did a switch go off? You go like, I'm really nerding out on this, and I really like, because that's not normal, right? That's what probably connects. We are so different, the three of us, but there is a part of us that connects on that nerdy level of geeking out. Did that switch hit? You go like, oh, I'm different. I like all this, and I want to pursue it as a career in the future. Are you even thinking this could be a Not even a little bit. I felt super connected to you guys, and when you would reference new studies you found, I would go look at them. Or I would listen to a three hour Huberman and summarize it or listen to it twice and then be like, why doesn't everybody want to do this? Because it's boring as shit to most people. So it simply just turned into an obsession. I became obsessed with feeling good. And I realized that there were all these tools and tips and tricks and you guys would discuss nootropics and hacks you could do before cognitively demanding tasks. It felt like I was building a video game character that was myself and it felt fun to add to the stat lines. But there was nothing, no part of me that thoughts would be a career. I mean, I graduated with a bachelor's of business administration in something called professional sales, which is only about 30 schools in the country that do it. But the whole premise of the program is sales, mock sales calls, human psychology and public speaking, all things that I use now. So it was just a genuine obsession with building myself. Maybe a little bit of a conviction around. My grandmother died in 2019 of Alzheimer's and I started learning about the lifestyle factors attributed to Alzheimer's and it became less about how I looked and more about the fact that that was in my family. And I think maybe it might have been one of you guys the first time I ever heard someone say that some physicians call Alzheimer's type three diabetes. It's so lifestyle dependent. And I remember seeing my grandmother and how torn up my dad was about what was. Happening to her and how evil that disease was and just thinking, like, I can't imagine being in a capable body with a broken mind. And so I tried to learn what I could do to mitigate the risk of that and then thereby longevity interest was born. Talk about the transformation through that and just your character, because that's a that's a big transformation. You're sacrificing a lot of things that kids your age at that time want to do. You're saying no a lot more than you're saying yes, probably. The illusion of it's harder. And I call it the illusion because we put people off and think it's well, it's harder to do that. But, you know, it's actually it's actually harder to not do those things. But it's not so evident when you're in your 20s and you get away with a lot of that kind of stuff. Like, talk about what that did for your character and maybe how that plays a role into what you do now. Yeah, it was like an identity crisis, man, because you've got people. I have people in my ear, my friends, some of which I'm still friends with today. But they're Stephen Bartlett is a great quote. He says, when you go on the mission of improving yourself, your self-improvement will hold. Up a mirror to everyone around you and reflect back to them what they are or are not doing. And when you're in college and you're a young guy, you're just insecure anyway. You're trying to figure yourself out. You have a lack of a sense of identity as is. And I was trying really hard to be better. But I had all of my friends that had been with me. I mean, our friend group, me and Will, like we have guys we've been friends with for 10 years, 20 years. And so when they're telling you like, hey, man, just come out. You're being lame. This isn't the right thing to do. You're obsessed. You're obsessed. This is strange. You're not cool. Now, like you want to believe them because their word means a lot to you. And that's where I think a lot of young men are, too, is this this paradigm of I have to leave my old life behind because my new life is going to cost me my old one. And just staying vigilant and sometimes giving myself grace to still go out and do those things, maybe in a different way. But I'll say, Sal, I don't think that I also did it in the best way. You and I talked about it a little bit on the walk, but I did the classic discovering the calories, being a fat kid and then getting a little bit obsessive over tracking. And that led to, well, I can eat fifteen hundred calories here and have six hundred calories of tequila at the bar. Just looking back on that's so fucked up. I can't believe I ever did that. But all that ultimately did is I created more and more rules that I had to adhere to. I think our brain is wired to push boundaries. It's how we survived as a species. The more rules I told myself I had to follow, the more I found myself breaking those rules and binging and restricting and using fasting in a disordered way. And so I got. I got the weight off over the course of 10 months, but I was still going out and like starving myself and drinking. And I'm not proud of that, but that's a real part of the journey. That's actually a very common step in the journey. A lot of people don't come out of that. A lot of people stay in that. So how did you make the transition? Because that's a tough one, right? So somebody loses weight, gets in shape, changes their life, but they're super strict, maybe orthorexic at times, you know, not really functional, more of a dysfunctional relationship with food and exercise. When you come to the realization, like, wait a minute, I got to like revamp. I know it worked for this particular thing, but this still isn't healthy. Yeah. I like to think that now I have a really healthy level of body dysmorphia. Me and body dysmorphia have a great relationship and we didn't used to. But jokes aside, I think, you know, in sales, they teach us in the college I went to and in the sales training I did afterward. The root of every sale is pain because pain drives change. No pain, no sale. Your job is a sales rep. Whether you're a trainer trying to get a client or you're me selling cybersecurity to businesses is to uncover people's pain. And we as human beings will not change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change because both hurt. That's right. You said life's hard either way. It's hard to understand calories and this J-shaped learning curve of getting fit. It's very steep and it levels out once you learn. But calories, progressive overload, do I need to fast? What foods are best? It's a lot. And it's painful because it's uncomfortable. And it hurts our ego to feel like an idiot that's incapable. So for me, it got to the point where it was so painful to stay in this binging, restricting route and it got bad. Binging, restricting, binging, restricting, getting more steps just to earn more food, doing exercise to earn more food. It was so painful and so consuming at one point. I don't know if I've ever even shared this with Will, but I just got so tired of it that I took all the breaks off. I said, well, I'm this far on the end of the spectrum. Let me take all the rules off and figure out what my bare minimums are. And this is something I preach now. I think that we live in a society that romanticizes grand gestures and minimizes the impact of daily decisions. I mean, the phrase death by a thousand paper cuts is super common, but there's nothing on the positive side of that spectrum. So I tell people in a world that glorifies ceilings, 75 hard carnivore diets, New Year's resolutions, instead of reaching up and grabbing for ceiling goals, can you find your floors? Can you find the things in your business, in your fitness, in your life that you know and I know I can adhere to no matter what life throws at me? And so this disordered eating, binging and restricting left me and I was with, can I walk 10,000 steps a day, hit my protein goal and train three times a week? Just those three things, nothing else. Anything beyond that's a net positive. And taking all the rules and pressure off myself just started to naturally heal my relationship. Now, what? What often happens when people do that, because again, that's a natural, that's a step that people have to take. What often happens with that is they swing too far in the other direction. So without the guardrails, without all the rules, suddenly they find themselves going way too far. And people are afraid of that. And in fact, I coach people. When I coach people, I tell them, we're going to go off tracking. And what's probably going to happen is you're going to go a little too far in the other direction. Totally normal as you start to feel this out. Did that happen to you or was it okay? You move away and you were good. Yeah. The obsession with tracking happened at about after probably eight to 12 weeks of tracking. And then I realized once I took the scale away that my awareness of food portions, I do think everybody, everybody for at least a month or two should weigh their food. The average American. They have no idea. Has no idea. They over under report their food intake by 50%. Yeah. Easy. That's astronomical. Yeah. It's crazy that people are walking around and still have no idea what a label. On the back of a bag of chips or a piece of ground, a package of ground beef. And by the way, I don't care how long you've been doing it for. I bring this up on the podcast. I'm in the right now on a kick and I'm, I'm weighing and track again. And it doesn't, I don't care how many times I've done this and I've done this probably more than most. I start waiting. I'm like, oh damn, I was, I was off and I'm so good at looking at a plate. These guys ask me all the time, Adam, what do you think that is? And I can, I can get pretty good, but you just, you get, you start getting heavy handed and don't realize it. And then all of a sudden you, you track or they go, oh shit. Yeah. That's 10 ounces. Yeah. It's about a good 800 more calories total for the day that I thought I was actually in taking. And again, I did this at the professional level. So take the average person who's never done it. Come on. Fitness is not about suffering. It's about raising your awareness. And a lot of people think it's about suffering, cardio, boring meals, no social life. For me, it was just about being aware. One thing I was aware of, I'll give two practical tips for what changed it for me to maybe help someone who's struggling with this. The identity piece and self-confidence is huge, but practical. I let myself gain a little bit of body fat. I was lean, like veins from the stomach to the neck. After I had soy sauce type of lean, I was lean. And I remember the same guy who called me fat. We went on a lake house trip when I lost all the weight. And he was like, dude, you're cut up, but like, you're kind of tiny. And I was like, dude, I can't make you. Every guy needs that friend. Yeah. Yeah. He's honest at all costs. Yes. But I let myself gain a little bit of body fat is you guys talking a lot about leptin and ghrelin and how out of whack those guys are. And I realized if I could just eat as much whole food as I could, it would be really hard for me to enter a big surplus. That's right. So just taking, you know, James Clear talks about atomic habits, increasing the friction between the thing you want less of and decreasing the friction between the thing you want more of in you. And so getting the process shit out of the house, leaving the whole foods in. And I was like, I can load up on cottage cheese and beef and berries and 2000 calories of that stuff. And my stomach's going to hurt. Yep. And so that helped. That helped to reset the relationship. And then over the years of going through real hardship and growing up a little and building a sense of identity, I was able to just make food less of a priority, man. I realized that. really hate the phrase relationship with food. This is just me. I think words have a ton of power. Life and death is in the tongue. That's in scripture. And when I say something like, oh, I'm trying to heal my relationship with food. I think that that gives food a ton of power because now you've added an emotional layer to a logical piece of your life. I have a relationship with you guys, my best friend, will my girlfriend, I don't have a relationship with a fucking turkey sandwich. And when I viewed it that way, it made it really painful because it was all I thought about. And I, food is fuel is a very common phrase, but when I just stopped caring so much about the emotional aspect of food, it helped me to relieve the weight from it. Yeah. So when you finally made the decision to do this on social media, what was it that, what was the thing that made you make that decision? And then a second question, there's two fears that I could imagine that you might've had. One is putting it out there. And the second one is like, oh no, a lot of people are listening to me. What do I do now? Yes. I actually said it in my first viral video. It was my 15th video on TikTok. I got lucky. I went viral early. I guess a really commonly asked question in the fitness space, because when I started 100% of my content was fitness. It was neuroscience, longevity, calories, training, nothing else. It was all I wanted to talk about. Now it's diversified a bit. But when I started, I said in the video, and this is the answer. I realized I'm 26 years old. I'm having a quarter life crisis because I've got all this knowledge stewing around in my head that I'm incredibly passionate about, and I'm doing nothing with it. And this channel is that. And that video, then I went on to say, how much protein do we really need? And the answer, I just said, keep it simple. One gram per pound. It's just going to cover most of your bases. Sure. Unless you're overweight, then go for goal body weight. That video got like 1.8 million views. And that really catapulted me and started to change things. So that was the, the, why I started the tipping point was like, I can't take this anymore. I'm trying to talk to my girlfriend at the time about what I'm learning from the most recent mind pump episode, Huberman lab. And she's like, is she bored? That's great. She's eyes just glazed. This is sucks. I need to, at least if I put it out there, someone can find it, who cares about it. And the thing that really plagued me, I think this is the fear that holds a lot of people back in multiple aspects of their life. It's not the fear of failure. It's not the fear of rejection. It's the fear of being perceived. If I say something stupid in this chair right now that I think is dumb, what are you guys going to think of me? And Gary V said to me once, when you realize everybody's just a wounded little 14 year old running around here, the playing field becomes level. We all want to fit in with the cool kids. We all want to be liked more importantly, is what you think of me going to confirm deep down what I fear most about myself, that I'm not enough, that I'm too much, that I'm not worth love. And that was my fear. I, my whole life, I was risk averse. I wanted to fit in with the cool kids. I just wanted to be liked. And I was always sort of in between transient friend groups until I got older and met my friends now, which were, were brothers in every capacity of the word and social media. For me, it was that biggest fear overcoming that hump. And in time, what I realized is that posting the growth was great, but it was never about growth. It became about freedom because posting on social media, constantly looking at myself and hearing myself speak, hearing myself speak back to me a really weird experience. It's super weird. Yeah. But it freed me from myself. It freed me from the fear of perception because I got to voice my thoughts, understand myself better and constantly put myself in the court of public opinion, which got me to authentic expression, which yes, led to people disliking me, but it also led to people loving me for me and finding some of the deepest, most meaningful friendships I've ever had. So that's what it got me to, but it was that fear in the beginning. How much of it do you feel like was performative? And then when did you feel like you actually started to have your own authentic voice as you're putting content out? Yeah. We talked about, you said you struggled with the pot in the beginning about being comfortable in a setting like this. And people ask me all the time, how do you get proficient speaking on camera? Because most of my content is just front iPhone. There's no editing. There's no lighting. There's nothing to hide behind. So my quality, we look at quality and we think about lighting and cameras and sets. The quality is also in the spoken word. So I had to rely on that. I had to rely on the quality of the content. I had to rely on that. Dude, when I started, I, uh, I don't know if you guys know this, but on the Tik TOK app on your phone, which is where I started creating, you can only sort by latest and popular kids. The only two options on the computer you can sort by oldest. And so I did that like two months ago for the first time ever. You saw some of your old stuff. First video. Don't ever do that. That's really hard, dude. I can't do more than I swore. I cannot do more than 10 minutes of our old episodes. You can do more than 10 minutes of our old episodes. But when you asked, was it performative? It was, it was a little one. It was a little bit cathartic to look at this version of me. It was like looking at an old diary and going, this kid has no idea what he's about. Holy moly. But watching the early videos, I couldn't look at the camera. I was looking all around. I was holding it down here in case somebody saw me in public. I was going, uh, um, uh, constantly. It was so bad. And then it became about this weird level of animation. I would have almost to kind of hide my real personality. And then as I got more comfortable into the groove, it probably took probably six months before I felt like I was really showing up as a version of me. And I realized I was using this username higher up wellness, almost like a mask as a way for me to show up as myself online. It began to turn into that to give myself permission to be me. It's like Kobe's performance coach talked about the Mamba, being someone else when you're in your setting. And I didn't really know how to be myself in my life. And so it went from once I got comfortable on camera, expressing my real thoughts, which got me in trouble, but also led to growth. And now I feel like I've started to sort of mend the two together three years later. You, um, you know, you're, you're definitely somebody likes to self-examine. I think you value self-awareness and you said something earlier about wanting approval growing up, wanting people approval, people like you, and you've essentially placed yourself, uh, in the most dangerous place, which is, uh, having a large audience of people who put out, um, do you ever think about that? Like, okay, uh, I'm putting myself in this kind of place where maybe this thing that I know about myself, this may be a challenge. You know, I don't anymore. And I think my, my theme for the year, I try to pick a theme or a line of thought for the year and remind myself of it constantly. And my theme for this year is to remain childlike in everything that I do. And it's one of the pinnacles of our faith. Matthew 18, three says, like the little children for, they will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And I think the beautiful thing about the words of Jesus is there's so much to take from that one sentence, be childlike in your faith, meaning believe without wavering. Don't even question it. But also I think oftentimes to when I was seven, when I was seven years old, I did whatever I want. Children are such a beautiful example of pure God-given inspiration. They do whatever they want. They're not worried about what you guys think of them. You know, one of your little ones might run into this room and go, watch this and do a jump. And you're like, that was awesome. And it's goofy, but they don't care because they're not an adult. They haven't had the filters and the programs of the world impressed upon them. They're not worried about judgment. They're operating purely from inspiration. So that's what I remind myself to do is that do what God calls us to do, which is be childlike. And if I'm operating from that place, like my home screen on my phone is, I think it's, yeah, it's right here. My home screen on my phone is, oh, it's off right now. I turned it off so no one could call me, but it's me. It's me on the beach when I'm six years old with goggles on, smiling really big at the camera. It's every time I open my phone, I see me. I see the kid that I'm doing it for, the kid before the world. That verse is one of my favorites. It's actually one of my screensavers. And same thing, it reminds me that I don't need to know everything to follow his will, which is really hard for someone who wants to know everything. I feel like you're one of those guys too. You like to know things. Is that a tension of follow with faith, but I also want to know why? Yeah. I mean, it's tough to not get wrapped up in that world sometimes, the world of knowing why, knowing what's going to happen, and also just the world of what we do, the world of attention, the world of dopamine. I mean, those apps are engineered to capture us, and they do. Sometimes I'll blink and I'll go, shit, I just got caught in a 90-minute doom scroll. I've got to go outside. I've got to see grass. But I mean, ultimately, the thing that really drives my life, guys, if I'm being honest, is a lot of these questions come back to the level of ego you have or don't have. If I have a level of ego, I want to feel like I'm the man in control, and I know why, and I understand. And ego can be really dangerous. And I just think that the honest truth that might be a boring answer that at this point for me might sound redundant is that my ego got crushed over the course of two years. I do think if I hadn't gone through what I went through between March of 2024 and January 19th of 2025, who knows? Maybe I would be an egomaniac who's trying to grip life and take agency and control everything. But I was sanctified through the most tribulation-filled nine months of my life. I'll share it. I went from a five-year relationship where I lived with this person. We had a dog. We had a house. We had a life. And this was the girl I was supposed to marry. And I blew it up. Something in my heart was like, you can't do this. And even though I was the one that ended it, it was hard because that was all I had known as an adult, 23 to 27. That's like very formative years. We met in college. dated for the first four years of our real adult lives. I blew that up and I moved home and I said, I'll go home, I'll lick my wounds, I'll figure this out, spend time with mom and dad. I'm going to move to Tampa. That was the plan. Move home and I haven't seen my dad in maybe four weeks because me and my girlfriend at the time were working things out, trying to. And he just looks different. Something's not right. He's kind of pale. He looks a little thin. I was like, what's up with you? What's going on? And he had been in and out of the hospital telling me he's fine. He's just getting tests done. Hadn't told me anything. And he just said, I'm sick, bub. I don't know what's going on. We're trying to figure it out. So I, truthfully, taking a great deal of what I've learned from you guys over the years of wondering if it's just lifestyle related because my old man never prioritizes health. Trying to work with nutritionists and holistic doctors and getting on calls and spearheading all these medical meetings with physicians, gastrologists, hepatologists, trying to figure out what's wrong. with my dad and he just continues to get so this was mysterious yes wow yes and now you're trying to figure it out you're like hey look i know health i know yes i'm gonna try and troubleshoot this we put him we put him on a crazy gut protocol because he's complaining of bloating and fullness and he's getting thin and we think he's got really bad gut dysbiosis and an infection of the gut so we put him on this insane protocol mind you he's 70 so we're trying to change his habits 70 years yeah tough yeah trying to get him to exercise more he was never an overweight guy active but smoker ate whatever he wanted grew up in the 50s they didn't prioritize health he would always say as a two-sport college athlete he played football and ran track at georgia he'd always say i did my workouts i hit my quota for the rest of my life i'm done okay pop that's not how it works but uh the long and the short of it is we continue to get on these calls with nutritionists and then the western medicine side hepatologists gastrologists they just kept saying we don't know what's wrong with your dad we don't know why he's getting bloated why he can't eat why he's losing muscle at an alarming rate and ultimately after probably four mris and six rounds of blood work oh man they ended up diagnosing my dad with cirrhosis of the liver my dad does did not drink i've seen my dad drink three times in my entire adult life so that's just the out of nowhere out of nowhere and that's what we're working with and so they're like oh it's you know he's 71 he's got three or four years get him on a high protein diet get him strength training and stuff like that and they're like i'm gonna slow this down it'll be okay he just keeps getting worse and finally there's a procedure called a tips procedure which is a stint in what's called the portal vein of the liver i have unfortunately became a quasi-hepatologist throughout this process on the liver but the main vein that feeds deoxygenated blood to the liver as a complication of cirrhosis which is liver failure for anybody who doesn't know is the portal vein gets obstructed and gets what's called portal vein thrombosis it gets clotted it gets stopped up so they put a stint in to open it up so they're going we're going to go give your dad the tips procedure we're going to put the stint in it's really going to help these symptoms because at the time he was getting a build-up of bodily fluid in his abdomen ascites yes and we'd have to have it drained off of him yeah and that's a family member that had to do that it was it's hard it's gnarly like every week you got to go in and get right now every week we're pulling a gallon of bodily fluid off which is painful and it builds up yeah but he could eat for a few days it made him comfortable they said it would stop all that or slow it down and he goes in for the procedure they said it'd take three hours i leave and 25 minutes later they call me and they go your dad's out of surgery and immediately you knew something i knew something was wrong and so i go in and we're sitting there with him and he's like it's over already he's fine cognitively he's just thin and sick i was like yeah pop we're gonna wait on the radiologist to come in and talk to us and i'll never forget this day the hepatologist walks in and he says good news dad's liver is fine he doesn't have cirrhosis bad news your dad's portal vein and this is the exact word he used your dad's portal vein is obliterated i've never seen anything like this we don't know what's caused it and there's nothing we can do good luck to you and then he walked out there's no bypass or anything like that you can do with that i mesorex bypass i went through every procedure i took him to emory which is the best medical facilities in the south that with every hepatologist and what had happened was it some point three years prior to this a clot had lodged in my dad's liver in his portal vein we don't know what caused the clot and hardened and just killed the vasculature slowly and looking back he started to have weird complications a year and a half two years before he died and so that day mid-october of 2024 was the day we found out that my dad was going to die and at that point it became comfort management and that was when i really started to feel the another two weeks past i'm trying to get him to train and move and he stopped me and he said i think it's time we face the facts and i said what and he said i'm gonna die there's no way out of this just let me relax and so the next four months he continued to regress and on january 19th with no diagnosis of what really caused that he died and i confirmed the time of death and checked his pulse and his pupils and called the undertaker and through that process i was also grieving a breakup in another relationship that blew up and the whole time my dad was dying and i was moving home and caring for him and so people ask me about ego and how i handle success or even how i handle hate on the internet because i get a fair amount it's it's a little bit maybe morbid but the truth is like i was bathing and feeding my father when all of this was happening i don't care about any of that yeah i really don't because i remember when everything was blowing up and i was like all i wanted was my dad to be better i didn't want anything else i didn't give a shit about how well things were going because he was dying and i knew he was dying and so my ego is just completely shattered and i'm thankful for that because now even though i'm grateful like being here with you guys is such a full circle moment for me being a 10-year listener of the show and the foundation of will and i's friendship who's here with me today getting to share this with him having you guys in my ears as a young man giving me the knowledge that i'm not alone that helped make my dad more comfortable i want you guys to know that too like you guys help me make my dad more comfortable you still means nothing in comparison right yeah but you guys you guys gave me the tools i needed to care for him help him with his diet keep him active and keep him comfortable you were instrumental in that and i look back on everything that's happened and it's made me detached from an ego standpoint it made me capable to care for him and i thank you guys for that but i thank the worst thing i've ever been through for dissolving my ego so that i could show up and do what's god what god has called me to do what was your relationship like with your dad were you really close with him oh dude i mean we we joked that you know only two of us spoke the same language and one of us goes we have to figure something out like he was my best friend my biggest idol and in a way like he was i doubt he was a form of idolatry for me i depended on my earthly father so much for counsel for wisdom for peace that i really didn't look to a heavenly father until he got sick and you know something that my friend gabriel said to me that i'll never forget was what if probably six months before my dad died when he started to go downhill gibbs said what if god's will for your life is your dad dying that was really hard to hear but i look at my life now and how i've been able to go on incredible platforms like this and talk about how i made it through grief how i made it through the worst thing i've ever been through the thing that i've ever been through and how i've been able to go on incredible platforms like this that i feared from the time i was a little boy and now i can turn around and use it to help people he was right this does feel like god's will for my life and it's giving me a dependence on my heavenly father that i never could have had with my earthly father still guiding me through if that makes sense you guys know what the videos that he did with his dad when did you do that how far where was he at during that process november yeah so it's another thing i'm grateful that god gave me the platform that he did because he gave me the awareness to understand that i have a podcast and i realized my dad wasn't going to make it i i'm 28 at the time 27 at the time and there's so much it's such a weird time for a parent to die because i'm not a kid but i'm not a man yeah i don't have a wife i don't have a family you know there's things that he was supposed to be here for he's supposed to be there on my wedding day he was supposed to marry me he was supposed to be the ordained minister he already was ordained because he had done it before and so what i did was about this would have been around thanksgiving so 60 days before he died uh i he was too weak to hold i have those those sure mv7 mics for my pod he's too weak to hold it so i put a little lapel mic on him and i used riverside my podcast software and i set my camera up and i sat on the couch with him where he'd sit all day and i asked him every single question i'd want to ask him can you talk to me on my wedding day can you tell my future wife what she needs to know about me gosh um yeah it's hard i still get i still get a little choked up thinking about it um can you talk to my kids and it is the worst and the hardest thing i have ever had to do and it was really hard for him because he knew why we were doing it but now i have that forever and you know it's sort of to the tune of what i said earlier about confidence being evidence-based when i think about all the heat i get on the internet and all the things people say about me and the things they think they know about me i made it through that i made it through my father's eulogy i am the one that gave the eulogy as a 27 year old man if i can do that. I can make it through anything. I have evidence that I can go through life's hardships because I've done it and I can lean on that. So highly recommend anyone out there with a parent that's still alive, interview them. And you'll have that footage forever. Someone told me that the hardest part of grief is when they're gone, you forget what they sound like. And so I have my dad's voice forever. Oh, that's have you tried to watch it? I'll be honest. I haven't. I imagine. Yeah. It's hard, man. Cause he also looked, he looked jarring when my dad got sick, he was six to 185 pounds lean, healthy. When he died, he was six to 115 pounds. It's a very jarring. He was cachexic. So he was very skeletal looking. And in November he looked that way. So it's, I'll be honest. I think that's the next step. I think that's the next thing I need to go and visit. Cause I have this mantra, you know, if you can't, if you can't talk about it, you're not healed from it. And I pride myself on my ability to share the pain that I've been through because I processed it. But I know that's a piece of it that I'm avoiding. And I think that I need to go into that and experience it, but I haven't yet. I haven't. Yeah. You got to give yourself time. Yeah. That's tough. So you come out of that, you're doing your, you're growing your business. You're saying you're getting hate. What do you get hate for? I can't imagine you get hate because you don't really say anything worth getting hate for. Can you tell like 75 million people I have the internet? Yeah. I mean, you're not, I mean, you should see some of the stuff he got. I hate for, which is wild that how, uh, unbelievably balanced, uh, stuff was, but I mean, it's just, it comes with the territory, right? At some point you get to a certain size and people are going to hate you for whatever reason they choose. It's a reflection of themselves. Like you said, I mean, what was the first one? What was the, I don't know what the very first one was the first time I ever got trouble. And I'll, and I'll make this disclaimer because we can address nuance in podcast settings. I'm aware consciously that some of what I say, if someone's in this, and they've heard me and maybe they don't like me, I'm aware that some of what I say, say sometimes comes across crass or tongue in cheek, or maybe even a little bit insensitive. It is sometimes intentionally hyperbolic social media. It works. It's also how I feel. It is my inner dialogue not being filtered. So the first thing that I got heat for was the elbow problem video. And that went nuclear, but that's like, you don't have a hormone problem. You don't have a, you have an elbow problem. Yeah. I said, it's like a 12 second video. It says, this is a friendly reminder that it's not your insulin. It's not your hormones. And it's not anything else other than your elbow. Every time your elbow bends, your fucking mouth opens. Yeah. And to be, to be fair, that is insensitive. Sal went woke on me. I'm cooked. And I said, and the thing people leave out at the end of the video, I said, those things do have an impact on the game, but they do not change the rules of the game that you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose weight. There's your hormones. That was not good enough. PCOS specialists and doctors got ahold of it and called me a misogynist. Apparently I hate women. Don't tell my mom. And that was the first time blew over. Everybody forget. Honestly, it was really good for the brand because half the people hated it, but half the people were like PCOS girl here. He's right. Take ownership of your health and love of God. And so I realized that if, if you have something that you stand for, you know, Oliver Emberton said, if you're not pissing anybody off, you're not doing anything very important. And so that's not me telling creators to be polarizing or be a dick for the sake of it, but be honest, say what you believe. And I do, I do believe that. And so that gave me the first cancellation, but then the first launch of the brand. And then there was the, the big one in February where I was pressed to speak on political issues. And I just said that it's not my responsibility as a content creator to be the mouthpiece for what you guys want me to say. You follow me because I give fitness advice. I give self-development advice. And I I'm not even in that world. I'm not qualified to speak. And you don't want my opinion. You want to watch the first eight seconds of my video and decide if I'm your enemy or not. And then they all proved me right on that. And that got me heat for probably eight weeks. I mean, people were so crazy that he got so much heat from that. It's crazy, dude. People telling me that I think you're learning a valuable lesson, which is just doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. You can't get canceled if you just don't pay attention to it. Was, was there a challenge? Cause you, you started in fitness and then you started in fitness. And then you started in fitness and then you started to move as you yourself started to evolve. Obviously your content starts to evolve. The things that you're into, what you're learning. Was there any challenge with sharing your faith? Cause that could be a scary thing. I mean, I went through it, right? That's going to be a scary thing to share when you don't start that way. Like what, okay. What, what are people going to say? Really glad you brought this up. I told you yesterday, there was a story I wanted to tell. Yeah. And it's, it's so interesting. You said that God's got to show up for you in really direct ways you're hardheaded for sure. And I think that I tell people the first step in building faith in a relationship with God is asking God to reveal himself to you and not in a watered down way. You know, uh, pastor Phillips talks about watering down prayers. Just speak to God with what's on your heart. He already knows what's there, right? Yeah. And so I was ringing out my heart and it was August of 2025, the platform had hit a certain size. I think we had just crossed 2 million followers on Tik TOK. The Instagram was growing and it was like in unison. I got a conviction to talk about my faith. Like it had never been there. And then all of a sudden, so this is your first time you're about to really share it. Yeah. And I was scared because I was like, there's no way everyone that follows me as a Christian. Yeah. Like I'm going to piss people off. Sure. And I was scared, dude. I was, I was very scared. I didn't want to lose the brand. I didn't want to tarnish it down, but the conviction wasn't going anywhere. And I was also battling a breakup and the, the, the second breakup with the relationship I told you about and some retroactive grief of my dad. And I remember I was in upstate New York and I just said verbatim, big man, you got to show me something. I need something right now. And you texted me and we hadn't talked in a long time, at least two months. There was no prior conversation. Weirdest thing, man. I wish I didn't turn my phone off so I could pull this up quickly, but with, with no prior explanation or context, he sends me your video testimony. Oh, wow. And how that's after you asked for this was with 24 hours after I said, show me something. Wow. And you discussed, it was the, I think maybe the first I learned about your coming to Christ and your newfound belief and the fear you had around sharing it on the platform. And I was like, Oh, that's about as obvious as it gets. One of the guys that I respect the most had the same fear as me. What is my excuse? He's doing it right now. And he said, don't know why just felt like I had to share this with you. Really? You just randomly said, you can find it in our text. I'm looking it up right now. Cause I, I, I recall this and it was, I, it was at least two months. We hadn't spoken, bro. There was the last time we had spoken, bro. You want to know what it was? Last time we was spoken was January that, uh, and then this was in August. Yeah. And I literally did not actually even say, send anything with it. I just sent that. That's it. There's no text attached to it. And then you go, bro, that was awesome. Really inspiring for me to really inspiring for me. I've been talking about my faith more and sometimes get, could get cold feet about it. So I appreciate you saying this is just teared up listening, going through some very trying times in the personal life. The timing of this is crazy. I said, I have no idea why I was supposed to share or send to you. I just thought of you and good thought. I'd share God bless 24 hours after I prayed that prayer. That's what happened. Wow. So you helped. Oh, so thank you. Well, I don't know what else happened. I didn't know. I did that. Now you do. Um, and that was exactly what I was dealing with was the cold feet on the platform. Then I started doing it and being bold about it. And what I found was God rewards obedience. I didn't realize this, but I'd built a lot of trust in my audience of being the analytical logic based guy as y'all have. Sure. And what I had done is I'd planted seeds with, with atheists. They said, you're people were DMing me saying you were always a by the science guy. Thanks for sharing this because if you believe it might be worth looking into. So the trust I had built on the platform gave me credibility. I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. This is my ability to say, and I believe in God. So it was a beautiful thing. Wow. That's wild. Just so you know, I just got to say, this is like the 10th time this has happened to me. When, what you just said right now was definitely a blessing for me because I'm currently going through my own struggles and he often reminds me that he's there and he just did right now just by you sharing that. I had no idea. That's super, super wild. So you did that. What was the response? Were you, cause I, I mean, I remember we did a bunch of, we did a YouTube series. It was my turn to do one. I don't want to do one, uh, because they were all fitness based. And I remember telling these guys like, that's going to spin me out, dude. Like I have my own challenges. You're gonna have me work out on video. That's going to throw me. And I remember Adam being like, just talk about that. Talk about your faith and why this is going on. And I did. And I expected like full stop to get hate. I'm like, all right, well I'll do this, but it's going to hurt us. And it did the opposite. There was like a huge response that was positive, which I did not expect. Did you get similar? Yes. Wow. I would say it actually was alarming the amount of positivity maybe a little bit amount of negativity I got around sharing my faith. It turned out I could see the people were waiting for someone. Cause it's just, you gotta be, you gotta meet people where they're at. And I think some pastors and some advanced theologians, it's like someone with an incredibly refined level of programming or Olympia experience that can't meet somebody. I mean, you guys obviously can, you're experts, but sometimes you get on such a level that you can't meet someone at level one. And I think I was at level five and they couldn't connect with a Christian at level 50, but they were at level one and curious about God. And so I could meet them where they're at with, Oh, this guy's. a bit crass and maybe he curses sometimes, but he loves and believes in God. So how did that happen? So did you, were you, did you had recently become a Christian? Yes. I was an atheist. So like me. Yes. Wow. So the progression of it was 20, basically until I was hit 2018, I was just didn't believe in anything. Just didn't care to think about it. Didn't even think about it. Yeah. Just call me an atheist because I never thought about a God period. Wasn't even really agnostic. Then I went to Wyoming, I went out West, I went to Yellowstone and I remember this might be silly to some, but I did a hike called the Cascade Canyon trail, which dumps you out into the base of Cascade Canyon, which is where the Teton mountains are. It's the most breathtaking thing I've ever seen in my life. It's the first time I had seen real mountains in the West. And I remember looking up and going, this was not on accident. This is not an accident. This is so awe inspiring that it can only be created by a creator. And that's where the curiosity started, but it was years, man, of just like kind of believing in a God. And it was through what happened to my dad that I finally surrendered my life to Jesus. There was a moment in the car after the surgery went wrong where I was in so much pain and I realized that the pain that I was in so much of it outside of just missing my dad and grieving him in advance was I was causing because of my desire to manipulate. The outcome and it not working. It was like, I was holding a hot pan and going, why is this burning me? And all I had to do is put the pan down. And that was when I understand the power of surrender, actually surrendering. And it was the battling with the doctors, battling with the nutritionist, battling with my dad, trying to get him to clean his life up and, and follow my habits at 70 years old. And when I just surrendered and I said, God, if your will for my life is for him to no longer be here with me, I know. You'll allow me to use it for good. I'm giving this to you. And I just put my dad's life at the altar and he died 70 days later. But the supernatural peace following that sentence in my car almost immediately. So that's where this, this piece that is beyond explanation that Christians talk about Philippians talks about that people would say like, are you okay? And I'd say yes. And they didn't believe me. Like, are you sure this is a horrible thing, but it was the peace and the feeling of feeling close to Christ and close to God. You know, he is near the broken hearted that I feel. That saved me. It's a wild experience to feel peace and joy while suffering and feeling pain, which is very hard. You would have been impossible for me to understand before because I would have equated joy to happiness. But I had a very similar experience with my grandmother passed away, which is I felt this incredible peace and joy while feeling this terrible pain to lose this just wonderful matriarch of our family. Yeah. Do you know, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with this. You're a data guy. But you see that. There's a revival happening with young men. Yeah. Talk about it. What is the data? Actually, I don't know the percentages or anything. So young men are turning to Christ at rates that we haven't seen in a long time. It's not happening to young women, but it's happening to young men. And we can kind of explain it away. You know, maybe it's because they've been hammered for so long. Maybe they feel so lost. Maybe pornography has had its role and guys are just like, I need a sense of purpose. And I, you know, I would say it's the Holy Spirit. But you're definitely seeing this resurgence and revival with young men. Do you ever think that, and maybe this was just too much weight, but do you ever think that maybe you're a part of that, that you, because a large segment of your audience is young men. Yeah. Do you ever think that maybe that's why he grabbed ahold of you the way he did? All I know is, I mean, that's what we're all called to do. Matthew 28, 19 says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. That is all of our missions as believers, as Christians. All I can attest to is when I think about God's will for my life and practically what that looks like. And that's a big part of the seminar tour. The whole title of the talk is the purpose progression because everybody wants to know why am I here? Right. What's my purpose in this life? Why does God have me here? When I think about the practical tips of how I know I'm in alignment with God's will, it's another question I get a lot. How do I know if I'm doing what God's called me to do? As soon as I started making videos for the first time in my life, I was like, I'm going to do this. I began crossing paths with devout believers. Like the first podcast I ever went on was a guy named Hampton Dorch, and he is a devout Christian. And I was not at the time. This was early 2023. And I remember thinking, sorry, Hampton, if you listen to this, cause we're still buddies. I remember thinking like, why is this Bible thumper so interested in me? That's literally what I thought. And then I met Gabriel, who is still one of my best friends to this day. I just went to Russia with him and he's devout. And God just started pushing me. He started putting all these people in my life, never had done that before. And it felt like the content being the vehicle to talk about him, put me in alignment and in obedience, which then he began planting the people. And it's funny, I was shaking it off and ignoring it, but he's like, you idiot, you're going to need these people in a month or in a year when your dad gets sick, you're going to need these people. Sure enough, Gabriel's the guy that gave me my first Bible, brought me to 2819 and helped save my life, really. Cause I don't think I would be anything other than bitter and resentful about what happened to my family. And I was like, I don't know what to do with this guy, but it wasn't for that guy. And Will started to explore and become a closer Christian. And now we were already best friends. So now we're bonded over that. So do I think I'm a part of it? I think we all are. And I think that for whatever reason, I have the platform as a vehicle to further the kingdom. And as long as I don't make it about me and detach from the idea of growth or virality or anything, the better things seem to go. It's a good transition because I've been waiting to ask you. I think one of the things that young men in their mid twenties, heading into their thirties struggle with, I struggle with this. I get, I used to get a lot of questions around this is, um, and for me, what, uh, the big transition was, I remember hearing that, uh, you're the average of the five people that you hang out the most with. And, uh, I remember that was really difficult for me because I had bought, I had a lot of bonds that went all the way back to like elementary and high school, had a good group of guys. And we, uh, like loved each other to just, I think I connect with, um, what is it? The Goodwill hunting, the group of buddies like that, that were attached like that. And uh, but realizing that they were, they weren't going where I wanted to go. And so that was a major transition in my life to, to change that, that circle of five. And I think it had a big, a big part in my life. Um, did you ha and people always ask, like, did you break up with those people? Were there like, how did that look like for you? Did you evolve in your circle and you have some core people like will, who've been there and share the faith and, and have only strengthened that, that circle and bond. But I imagine that with some of those, those buddies you were partying and hanging out with, aren't the best influence, like how did that transition? Has there been a transition? Do you still struggle with that? Like how, how would you speak through that? Yeah. Cause I think a lot of young men are struggling with that too. They, they, I've gotten messages about, cause Chris and I, when we did the modern wisdom podcast. We talked about his lonely chapter podcast episode, cause it's so important for young men, this period of life that every young man seems to go through where you're building your life and the path to your goals feels incredibly lonely. But I believe now in retrospect, it should be, it should feel lonely. It's a benchmark of your progression. And I look back now and all those car rides and time by myself, just going to school, going to the gym and going home that got me into this room. It's all a part of the plan and I can only see that now. Yeah. Looking back. Yeah. I think the best part about my life is that it only makes sense in reverse, but you have to live at Ford's and trust that everything's going to make sense. So for me, there was never a formal breakup. It, you know, those guys were all at my dad's funeral, every single one of them. And we hung out afterward and it was a really beautiful night. It was very nostalgic. One of our best friends, the guy who called me overweight, that triggered the change. Will and I's friend Luke just got inducted into our high school athletic hall of fame. So two weeks ago, we all went back to our hometown, got together and celebrated. It was a great day. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. So when I first get a client who assess the way they eat and, you know, you look at it and I tell them, eat normal, don't impress me, I want to see it. And you just, you know, it's just shit everywhere, you know? So it's a mess. And instead of being a coach where I'm just like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do that. I go, add this. I don't actually tell them to take away or break up with anything. I start telling them to add things into their life. And what naturally happens is that bad stuff falls off. And I feel like that's similar with, you know, if you're somebody who struggles with a circle of people who, you know, probably are not ideal with you, or they're not going where you want to go, is instead of thinking you got to break up with those friends, start seeking out other relationships with ones that are going places you want to go, or are already at places that you want to be and spend time with them and start to build those. And it'll naturally organically happen. You don't have to have this awkward, weird, we can't be friends. anymore because you're still stuck in our hometown. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, take the pressure off. That's right. You can still have love for them. It crowds things out. Yeah, exactly. And I still got love for those guys and everything like that. And absolutely with occasional, you know, high school reunion or something like that, we'll all meet up. But yeah, my time just started to get filled up with those that I think that were filling my cup and growing me as a man. Mike, you just bring one of my favorite proverbs to mind. So I'd love to know your opinion or your thoughts on it. It's Proverbs 27, 17. Now, you'll hear different translations, you know, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. But the real literal translation is, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. So it's actually pretty gender specific. How do you feel about that proverb and what that means? I think if you're the smartest, most successful, or most badass in the room, you got a problem. You need to find a different room. All of my friends have, they inspire me in different ways. I've got Gabe and Will who inspire me to build my life. I've got Gabe and Will who inspire me to build a stronger relationship with God and build my theological knowledge. I mean, you guys saw it yesterday, Will's recanting of scriptures. I mean, it was crazy. Actually, I talked to my wife about it. I'm like, this dude's like quoting scripture left and right. Yeah, he's like biblical rain man sometimes. That's such a great thing. You're not so bad yourself considering you're barely into that. This guy blows me away with his two years in it. I'm like, man, I've been in it for 30 years. I can't break it. I'm going to go brush up again. Yeah, dude. It's inspiring. But Will's also got a bigger bench than me. It's like, I got to lock in on that too. But I've got Gabriel who's like borderline theologian. And then I've got Colin who's done Ironmans and 100 milers. I'm like, I got to push my body in that so I can push my mind and my spirit. And I realized like, I look around and all my friends are just more badass than me in different ways. It's cool. Bigger, stronger, faster, more spiritual fortitude. And I hope I give them a modicum of the same in something. And so for me, that is my life. And it's not that I'm constantly seeking out someone who's better than me. It's that I want to show up authentically and be loved for who I am. And I'm going to do that. And I've ended up attracting people who do that. And a byproduct of people like that is that they do crazy shit like run ultramarathons. You know what I think is cool too, is I love to look at like what we know, secular studies on human psychology and does it actually back up what scripture says? And here's what's interesting. I think you might find this interesting too. Your buddies can speak to you in ways that your girlfriend or wife never could. Like if my wife is going to criticize me, she needs to be soft and gentle and respectful because if she comes at me harsh and I'm just like defeated. Now, Justin and Adam, they can come to me and straight up tell me you're being an idiot or you're weak, pick your crap up. And it hits different when my buddy says it. So when I read that proverb, I'm like, yeah, dude, men need men because nobody can speak to a man like another man. And we receive it differently. And it calls us up differently than when our wives speak to us, which, uh, they have a different, I think a different role and a different way of communicating to us. So. And you speak to another aspect of Proverbs that is really important is that sometimes men who are sad or are lost or trying to figure it out, they hear the monk mode mentality, or they just tend to isolate themselves when people are depressed, sad, or they're told you got to go monk mode and lock in. And isolation, I think is dangerous. You need to push to be around guys that have you, even just in a community setting, sometimes like on the worst days that I had with my old man, I didn't have anything to contribute to Bible study, but I just went because I just needed to be in a room with guys. Yeah. There's another proverb. Well, I don't know if you can recant the chapter off off camera there. A man who isolates himself seeks his own desires, 18, one, but, uh, but a man who obtains wise counsel seeks favor obtains favor from the Lord. Yeah. And for me, like just even when it feels uncomfortable, because I think that's when the enemy creeps in, when you're weak and you're sad, I can feel that desire to want to be alone and just sit in the thought, but I have to fight the resistance and go towards the inner resistance and go into the community. What are your, uh, what are your challenges and weaknesses? The enemy comes after you, or it's your flesh or it's you. What do you struggle with the most right now? You know, I think if I had to be really honest, I think the thing that would, that would cut the deepest is this is just my ego and my flesh. Like the idea of being, who I am in the room as a human and who I am online. Someone did say that, uh, that I had a disagreement with is I'm just being very honest. I had a disagreement with, and, and they just said to me, they were like, I don't think the same of you that I used to. I think that some of the things you say online don't stack up with who you really are. It's just the truth. And that really hurt me. Sure. And I realized a little bit of ego. They were probably hurt too by something I did. I'm definitely not perfect. But vulnerably and honestly, like that is a part of me is, is the, I still struggle with the fear of perception. You know, I want to be perceived positively. There are multiple levels where I want to be perceived positively, but not at the expense of showing up differently than I feel called to. But for every new level, there's a new devil. I really don't think that we ever conquer our insecurities and our fears. That's why we need a savior. I think that there's only a greater level of stimulus that triggers the same fears and the same wounds that we have. Yeah. I'll throw a twist at that, by the way, because I could feel that way. And I had a crazy realization recently. I went to something called Better Man. It's this program that churches do. And the whole thing was on integrity. And at the end of it, it said, where do you find your integrity challenge the most? And everybody at the table said, publicly. For me, publicly is actually the easiest. It's easiest for me to say on this mic, my challenges, my struggles and whatever. It's harder for me to do it privately. And I said, that's weird. What is that? And I said, oh, crap. And this is how the enemy can get you in either direction. I perceive it as a virtue. So me being honest on this podcast is for my own self. That's like for me, feel good about myself. Like look how virtuous I am. Talk about getting hit in the gut. This was literally last week. And so he'll hit you in every direction. You're totally right. Everybody needs a savior. You're screwed either way. I also think what you said too, like for every level, there's a devil. I think there's, you're always evolving. And changing and growing, especially someone who's self-aware and growth minded. And one of the things I love about that, we, we, we do, we we've all chosen professions that put ourselves out there. I can't tell you how many times I've gone back now, almost 3000 episodes and heard something I said and questioned my own, like, do I really feel that way? Or do I believe that? I mean, when I said it, cause I pride myself on being radically honest and saying what's on my mind. And I'm sure when I said it, I did believe it. But then when you hear it back, sometimes you start to question it deeper and challenge it and go, maybe I don't totally feel that way. And so I don't think that ever changes. I don't know if we could ever win that game. Like no matter. And I think, I think caring and being honest that I want to be truthful. I want to be radically honest. I want to be authentic is, is the main goal, but I don't think we could ever fully accomplish that if you're always evolving and growing, because you're going to change thoughts. You're going to change opinions and you're going to say things that maybe were inconsiderate two, three years ago, that maybe you'll be more considerate. Like, you know what I'm saying? We can't win. We can't win that game. I don't feel like one of my favorite verses and it's a, I'm going to butcher it, but it's when David's praying and he's like, search my heart and show me essentially is paraphrasing it. And so, uh, that's one that I do because I'm like, show me what I don't want to see and let me see him. Please be gentle because I can only handle so much, you know? Well, there's a, there's a moment there. I think, I mean, my, my brain's going to tell me to go back and listen to this and wonder if I showed up properly, you know, you're doing a good job, bro. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. But I'm going to critique, I'm going to worry about tonality and pitch and all the communication stuff that I coach people on. I'm going to be hypercritical. And this is why before every podcast, I pray the same scripture over every pod, every interview, every conversation, every speaking engagement. It's Matthew 10, 19, 20. When the time comes, worry not about what you will say for it will not be you, but the father speaking through you. And it's another practice in surrender. I'm trusting whatever is said or not said is exactly what needs to be. But I am curious. Cause we talked about this outside. You struggled with this, with how you were showing up on camera. What was the point for you? How did you decide that it was finally worthwhile? Like what changed? Oh, yeah. I got money and fame and fortune. That would be funny if that was true. It's repetition. Yeah. For me, it's always been like trying to seek out hard things to be able to I was going to ask you to, um, you know, you, you just went to Dagestan. I want you to get into that story because this kind of falls in line with like my own ethos. those like forever has been, I want to challenge myself to be better. And you're not going to challenge yourself to be better if you don't seek out your weaknesses, if you don't really like seek to improve. And, you know, and I left my comfort and went way out to Chicago. I didn't know anybody, you know, reinvented myself, went through that whole journey. This was another extension of that. I felt like I didn't really, I didn't really have a lot of opinions. Like I was, I think that was the biggest thing was like, I have a lot of knowledge in terms of health fitness. And I felt like I was a good coach and, you know, it wasn't like an imposter thing from that aspect of it, but it was more, am I going to convey this information where somebody is going to be able to receive that and get something from it? You know, I really wanted to make sure that that was like a high priority for me. I wanted like, I wanted to get good at that. Like I, it's, it's a struggle. It's a struggle for me to, to convey. Information and, and to really be articulate with, with the way that I speak. So yeah, it's been a process, dude. It's still a process. I still struggle with it. It's, it's hard. It's not, and I say, you know, it's more natural for these guys. Like it's, you know, and that's something I surrounded myself with them for that specific purpose because they're better at it than me. Yeah. And it's made me better. So yeah, it's been like, you know, I've gotten better at it, but it's not something that I would say I'm fully comfortable with. Yeah. Even still to this day. Well, you did the, you did the most important thing, which is repetition. People ask me all the time how to be comfortable on camera, on social media and how I do it. And I just say, I've got 4,000 short form videos on the internet. If I told you to go in and bench press 4,000 times the next year, your chest would get huge. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. Not everybody. That's my hate for the record. Unfortunately. Did I ever tell you? I don't know if you know this, but are we talking about comments? Yes. One of the first like hateful comments ever. And thank God I'm already a man and I'm already secure. So it's like, whatever. Cause if it was like younger, this would have crushed me, but I did a YouTube video and there was a comment that said weak chest. I love that you remember that. That was also when we stopped, like we all, we all quickly learned like after a while, like, Oh, we just don't read comments. It'll like, I don't care how good a piece of content we put out there. Like somebody will say something that's just hurtful. And it's like, I don't, I don't care how secure. Cause I think everybody in this room is very, very secure and who they are and stuff like that. It just that nobody wants to hear insults about themselves, especially when you're providing free, valuable content to people, especially in a place you're insecure. I'm like, that's a, that's an old one, dude. I'm going to attack my pecs. I'm like, I'm 11 again. Tell us about you doing hard things. Cause you recently, you told us yesterday, we're off air and you're talking about how you went to Dagestan. So cool to wrestle and go into the mountains. No wrestling experience. I'm like, why? What's like, what's the deal? Why'd you do that? Yeah. There's a great quote from, from Andrew Huberman. And he says something to the effect of we should do self-elected hard things so that when life's non-elected challenges arise and they will, I can tell myself, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I know that I can do hard things. And it's one of those, I'm a huge aphorisms guy. I love punchy quotes that can have a broader meaning for life. Yeah. You've said like 15. Exactly. For whatever reason, my, my Rain Man skill is that when I hear them, they're just in my head forever. You tell me about taxes or algebra, it's few. You give me a meaningful. You, Sal and Will seem to have that all right. Yeah, we do. We do. Yeah. Justin and I like that. It just goes in one ear, out the other. Yeah. But it's a, it's a way that I've been able to sort of build pillars of, of my life. And the, I heard about the Misogi from, we talked about yesterday from Jesse Itzler, the year defining challenge, picking one thing every year that's so big and it's a date and it drives you. It's got to scare you. It's got to feel unattainable. And I heard that and it stuck. And the first time I ever did that was running my first marathon. I was never a runner. Most I'd ever run was maybe a couple of miles playing football and baseball. And I went, how am I going to seven X that distance? And then I picked a goal time. So I made it even scarier. And then I started telling people I was going to do it. So now you got to do it. And now it's like, I can't look like an idiot. All my friends know I want to run a sub four hour marathon. And then. I did it first marathon ever. I ran 26 miles and I think I ran a three 48 and change. And I remember in that moment for the first time in my life as a 20, it was 2022. So I would have been like 24, call it. I remember that was the first time I ever felt like I could do anything. I really actually believed in myself. And it's such a basic thing because everybody says, believe in yourself, but nobody actually tells you how to do it. And for me, no evidence, good luck, no evidence. And that's another great aphorism. You don't, you don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are. It's a hormosy quote. And for me, the physically hard things became evidence. It was a marathon. Then it was an ultra. Then it was a world major marathon. Then it was another world major marathon. And now if I can get this knee healed up, I want to run all of the world majors before I turned 35 or seven, uh, world major marathons. And so the Russia trip was no different. I worked with a performance coach named key and loggy. And every year he takes some of his clients and former clients on a, on a trip. And this guy is, he's like me. He's a nomad. He travels a lot, which is another reason I wanted to make myself uncomfortable as getting out of my hometown and traveling. Cause I wasn't ever comfortable with it, but he called me in February and he's just a bit of an eccentric, spiritual, heady dude. And he calls me and I'm like, what's up, man? And he just goes, Oh yeah. I was like, Oh, he was like, the trips picked out this year. You didn't come on the last one. It was Mongolia. The year before. And I was like, I bailed, couldn't do it. And he said, you want to know where it is? And I went, yeah. And he said, we're going to Russia. And I went, Oh shit. Of course you hear things about Russia and the media, you hear all kinds of things. And he said, I'll take it a layer deeper than that. We're going to Dagestan. I went where Khabib is from. He's like, Oh yeah. Didn't know anything. He didn't tell us a single piece of itinerary. We knew the whole time, by the way, like we're in Dagestan and we don't know what we're going to do after the thing we're doing. Oh wow. All he told us was to send us the links to apply was it's really inconvenient to try to get into that country. By the way, you have to fill out a bunch of pieces of paperwork, put your passport in a Manila envelope with two copies of your photo, go get your photo made, get the documents notarized at a notary. Wow. And then ship your passport with the documents to the Russian embassy in the United States and DC. And then I had to hope it got back in time with which it did one day, two days before I left. Oh my God. Was part of you like, hope it doesn't come back. I was totally stoked about it. No, I was scared, man. Um, now I have a bad-ass like Russian visa with my name and Russian and my passport forever. It's super sick, but dude, I was scared. Cause like you just hear stuff about Russia. I mean, one of the guys that was supposed to come on the trip with us is his parents ended up doing everything they could to prevent him from coming on the trip. Cause they were so scared that he was going to be arrested or worse. You know, we were also Christians going into a, a Muslim part of a Christian country. Yeah. Russia's Dagestan is strictly Muslim. Yeah. And when I got there, Kians brings nine creators who are basically strangers. I know two of them really well. And one kind of, well, the rest, not at all. And we fly to Turkey and then I barely make the flight. I run literally a mile with a 40 pound backpack through the Istanbul airport to the terminal, to take us to Mahachkala Dagestan. And you can tell this flight is going to Mahachkala, we stick out like sore thumbs. Everybody's got chin beers and cauliflower here on the plane. Yeah. The daggies have a very specific look and we get on the flight. No, like we look hilarious. Everybody's staring at us. Cause these people, they'd never seen Americans. Like nobody goes to Dagestan much less my Aussie buddies and British friends were like, who had met me on the trip. They were like, dude, when I think of America, I think of you textbook America. Dude. I was like, what? I'm just like loud and disagreeable. And he was like, yeah, basically. But overall the whole point of the experience, Kian says the teacher is the experience. And we did a lot of uncomfortable stuff, wrestled with the Dagestanis. We. Did you do like a wrestling, like workout with them and the whole deal? Yeah. What was that like? So let's talk about that for a second. Cause they're wrestling. There's levels of wrestling. I know this cause I was a grappler and you can wrestle someone who's wrestled and then you can wrestle people who are at a world class. Yeah. And it's like, it's like a completely different game. So what was that like? Yeah. So they, the first hour was teaching us takedown. So we did some classic like Greco Roman wrestling and then we did BJJ. Okay. And so we would go up, he would show us the coach who's coached Khabib. He's the number one wrestling coach in Dagestan and he would teach us, couldn't speak English. So he'd teach us the movements and then we'd go up and do it on him. Each of us take turns. And then the second hour we were doing three minute rounds with each other and the coaches and some of the daddies got in and it was like, they were like playing with a child. You know, they were just like, whatever. And I'll admit it was like, you know, when you played sports in high school and you would run wind sprints and you just get pushed to the point of vomiting. I haven't experienced that in a long time. I am balls to the wall wrestling with this creator, Alfie. Alfie gets hard as his username, great creator. And I'm about to die. Like I'm going to throw up on the floor. I'm going to throw up on the floor. I'm going to it's like almost this part of like i think being a guy you need some sort of combat and resistance yeah dude the camaraderie that you gotta fight sometimes yeah we were all like like it's funny the daggies all they do is fight train pray but like after they fight they're all hugging each other and kissing each other on the head like they're very loving with each other did you get so you get to grapple some of the daggers yeah yeah what was that like like wrestling a small bear the coach's biceps were like we were asking him in russian trying to translate what he did for biceps that he's just like this lift people yeah yeah just put people in headlocks constantly but just like they're so big and dense and his hands were like this one hand was like a freaking paw and he could just kind of he just did whatever he wanted just like playing with a little kid it was hilarious it was very i also realized the power of how humble that can keep you oh yeah like there's always they're the kindest people every guy needs to get his butt kicked by somebody who can kick his butt while eating a sandwich nice ego check yes yes that trip was powerful man we wrestled we hiked the tallest peak in daghestan that was hard i got altitude sickness um we ate lamb and potatoes and stayed with villagers in places that are completely detached from civilization and society they built their own homes they don't have plumbing they milk their own cows they make their own bread and yet they were the warmest kindest people i've ever encountered they fed 10 men that they didn't know and let us sleep in their home for three days wow and it totally detached us from civilization for nine days and it was an incredible experience that opened my eyes to what i'm capable of and the importance to your to your point justin about doing things that scared you and the reality and the revelation not only of what that culture is like which is one of love and hospitality and they were so excited to meet us and be with us but just like putting yourself in a situation that is so foreign whether it's a physical exertion a big trip it's inconvenient maybe even a bit expensive and all of the things that come up for you the fears that come up for you while you're in that experience and then key in taking the itinerary and keeping it secret because we just literally had to be surrendered to the moment goes back to the biggest lesson of my life is the more i can stay surrendered stay surrendered to god's will and just trust that we're going to be okay the better things seem to go that's the biggest takeaways i got what are you guys doing like uh is was there any downtime between in the itinerary were you guys like all hanging out talking to know each other like what was that what was that like i mean what are you guys talking about in between yeah stuff like this i mean we had no phones like exactly like there's no no distraction going on here i had a three-day vpn trial that only worked on wi-fi when we went to the mountains the trial went up and i had no wi-fi so it's five days and nothing no texting no nothing and so yeah there was a lot of time in tents camping we were on horseback riding through the mountains and we were just camping in a tent and so like a lot of it was time spent around the fire while our dinner cooked and just getting to know each other and when there's no stimulus i realized all the things that i had probably been numbing like a little bit of pain a little bit of stress just the speed of our lives like even the good stuff is still a stressor to the body just you're just distracted constantly distracted yeah and i noticed my baseline of irritation was like really high the first couple days and it felt like my nervous system was yeah i was withdrawing from all the the numbing and i was catching up to all of the stimulus that i had endured in the last six months yeah yeah i you know i uh i've never been on a trip like that but i always notice when i go on a trip where we we disconnect like it takes about 24 to 48 hours before like i feel like i'm settled adam stayed in a four-star hotel once really hard for him dude that was stupid he's like this was rough he upgraded those yeah it's funny it's funny you say that because after sleeping you know for six days we bathed in a freezing cold river ate literally lamb that we cooked over fire with rice and had no toilet access we were we kept calling it i can't we because we stayed in a very average hotel in the city uh we kept saying like dude i can't wait to get back to the four seasons very much not the four seasons but i also think an important aspect like every year me and my friends will in this group we've been to norway together to the top of the earth in lafoten in the arctic circle where it's 24 hours of daylight we've been to patagonia at the bottom of the earth and the whole one of the big reasons we do that trip is to disconnect from all of the pleasures that we have in everyday life nothing will reset your baseline for gratitude like seven days without a hot meal and hot shower true fasting so important yeah don't just fast from food fast from technology we fast from comfort that's right such a powerful experience tell me about because you're you're the way you made money for a little while was coaching you did very well doing that um because you're a great coach uh and now you're doing these live events where you're speaking to crowds of hundreds of people what was that transition like why do you why do you want to do that what that what's that all about yeah so starting november 21st uh i'll be doing a speaking tour so i'll be doing 13 cities across the us and canada and they're going to be seminars and the reason this was born is i've always not always but i began to really love public speaking in that sales program i realized i had a knack for it my dad was a remarkable speaker he could really own a room and the way he connected with people is very similar to how i communicate because i'm at least half him and as i began to really grow the love of public speaking and the social media began to grow i began to get asked to come and speak at events for creators or even businesses and be a keynote and it just set me on fire man like nothing fires me up more than getting in front of a my dad would say this when i was a little kid i think he planted the seed in me early he would always say there's nothing better there's no better feeling than get in front of a room full of people and no one there's not a question they could ask you that you don't know the answer to like my dad taught me public speaking is fun from an early age that's people's number one fear yeah it is ahead of death in many surveys like the famous the famous phrases i'd rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy and i started to really like it i realized like if i could love the number one fear of people what can i do what can i do with my life huge advantage and so i got the idea the inspiration to just try to host a seminar and i told my friend nick comodina about it and nick is an action taker and i told him about it because i knew if i told him he would hold me to it and he said great let's do it i'll start calling hotels and i was like what he's like yeah they've got conference rooms we'll hold them in the hotels so we picked three cities atlanta tampa and austin and bootstrapped two co-hosted seminars last year two were half days so like seven hours the austin one was a three-day event and it was incredible man we covered everything from social media growth to building a business to faith in scripture i got up and read the bible in front of a room full of people for the first time ever at the austin seminar and it was like a conviction that overtook me right before i went on i felt called to read a piece of scripture from matthew and i just remember it felt like the most on fire my spirit had ever been was being in front of a room full of people and getting to teach and so i just decided to trust that feeling and the seminars don't really make sense they're not insanely profitable right now this will be the first run i've ever done at it but i realized the thing that i think is the coolest about the in-person stuff is the need in the world today for community everybody's alone everybody's on their phone even like what i do for work man like you guys have each other it's beautiful but i think about myself and my other creator friends we're always alone we're building alone i'm going to coffee shops to be around humans like there's no one wrangling us either and so i realized when i would get people in these rooms sure they'd come to watch me and nick speak and teach but then when we back away they'd all connect with each other and they'd start making friends and a couple people have started dating that met at a seminar last year and they've built these communities inside of the thing that we had an idea for and that's what i feel like my purpose is is to get people in rooms with like-minded individuals because that's exactly how i changed my life with that run club three years ago and so i'm moving my business to the irl game and the tour is the first iteration to see if this works and frankly it scares the absolute hell out of me it is sogi as was russia it feels like a goal that's so big that without god blessing this tour i i don't think i can do it are you are people able to sign up for it now or are you yeah yeah so there's a link it's evergreen it's it's in my instagram it's a lalo.com link and you can click on the landing page and it'll show you all the cities and you can just hit c tickets for one of the 13 cities that's right what's the first city awesome first city is phoenix november 21st then denver the 22nd break for thanksgiving and then we pick it up again on i think december 3rd in austin and that's when the tour really gets we talked to you off air about maybe trying to host one here so yeah like a like a mini event get 100 people in here so anyone in san jose we're not doing anything in norcal for the tour we're doing l.a hope to see if you want to travel but do it here exactly that's awesome dude thank you that's exciting any uh do you so because this will happen sometimes because i know you're doing the nomad thing you're kind of living in airbnbs doing all that yeah you're also 29 man you're doing the nomad thing you're kind of living in airbnbs doing all that yeah you're also 29 man you're doing the nomad thing you're kind of living in airbnbs doing all that yeah you're also 29 man of faith so i'm sure you feel of faith so i'm sure you feel uh somewhat called at some point to uh somewhat called at some point to uh somewhat called at some point to settle down have kids settle down have kids settle down have kids uh do you do you feel there'll be a uh do you do you feel there'll be a uh do you do you feel there'll be a tension between those uh like i like the tension between those uh like i like the tension between those uh like i like the nomad thing i like traveling there's nomad thing i like traveling there's nomad thing i like traveling there's definitely hard stuff hard stuff definitely hard stuff hard stuff definitely hard stuff hard stuff associated with it but there's also a associated with it but there's also a associated with it but there's also a freedom freedom freedom with doing that like i could just do my with doing that like i could just do my with doing that like i could just do my own thing own thing own thing is there any tension between those two is there any tension between those two is there any tension between those two things no tension so i have decided things no tension so i have decided things no tension so i have decided after tour after tour after tour i will be because there's no reason to i will be because there's no reason to i will be because there's no reason to have a place while i'm gone for 30 days have a place while i'm gone for 30 days have a place while i'm gone for 30 days but in january when i'm finished i'm but in january when i'm finished i'm I'm going to set up shop for at least a year in San Diego. Not going to move. even not do the furnished Airbnb thing and have my, my moving company buddies bring my stuff out from my apartment in Atlanta and actually set up a base because I've loved traveling and living on the road for the last eight months, but there are benefits to permanence, you know, having an actual podcast studio I can maybe record at would be sick and the nutrition, the training, and just building what I need to build with a home base. So come January, I'm off the nomad journey for the time being, and I'm going to set up shop. And what I think is the greatest city in America, San Diego. San Diego is great. I mean, yeah, it's awesome. It is an awesome city. It really is. So well, that's awesome, dude. Thank you. Yeah. This is all super exciting. You do a really good job. And I like hearing about kind of what you're doing, your success. And I like that, that you're reaching out to people in really authentic ways. What are the, I guess the main things you're hearing from young men who listen to you? Cause I know a large segment of your audience are young men. What are their challenges? What are they coming to you with? What are they finding value in with what you're communicating? I think a lot of them are looking for significance and identity. They want to feel, I think we all want this at a base level. We all want to feel important. We all want to feel seen. We all want to feel heard and understood. And they're looking for a place in the world. And we know is a relationship with God is going to be first step to that. But I wasn't ready to hear that when I was 23, I thought I had to go do it for myself. When I think about the young guys who are DMing me, it's looking for a source of significance, looking for a way to feel important and belong to the world and build something it's it's in their nature. It's oftentimes why, and that's not that this is the career for everybody, but I encourage everyone to give two things in life a try. I think everyone should run a marathon and train for more importantly, train for a marathon because that process teaches you so much about what you're capable of and the evidence that you gain that turns into confidence bleeds into every facet of your life. Confidence is a universal language. You don't just become a runner and only be confident in running. You become confident in someone who can stick to things they don't like, don't want to do. So I encourage everybody to train for very important, train for and run one marathon in their lives and post on social media. And it's those two things. It's not about the things. It's about what you learn about yourself by doing those things. The constant desire of, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it. It's I'm scared to post on social media. I do it. I'm scared to run a marathon. So I do it. You know, Steven Pressfield wrote the war of art and the whole premise of that book is the inner resistance is the compass with which you should point your life towards. So the thing you feel the most resistance towards is the thing that has the greatest potential to change your life. And so the men that come to me, ask me about significance and purpose. And I say, push the body and push the mind. And a great way to do that is hard endurance, physical efforts, and putting yourself in the court of public opinion. And maybe nothing happens other than you got over your fear of being judged and you understand yourself because you put your thoughts out there and you did something you thought was impossible. I really think that's a baseline of significance for men looking for purpose in the world. Talk about the challenge that you put out that went viral. It's pretty, pretty cool to watch how that's unfolded. You know, I don't know if you intended that when you first did it or no, that's, that's the thing. I never made a CTA, a call to action for people to do this. But so what he's referring to is two years ago, I made a video about public speaking skills will change your life. The only reason I have a platform is because I, I have the gift of gab. As my dad would have said, I taught, I was taught how to communicate limiting filler words, proper tonality, proper cadence and education. And I made a video saying that these skills will change your life and they're not static. You can train them and develop them just like a muscle. Common followup was always, but how that's always the question, but how? And so I said, you know what? If you don't want to join a class or a course, you don't have college. Like I did to learn this stuff. Just do what I'm doing right now. Set up the camera, go in your car where nobody can hear you or see you. Cause you're worried, set up the front camera and hit record and talk for 60 seconds about anything you want. Limit your filler words. Don't say, um, don't say, uh, don't say like you sound silly and just do it every day for a month, not to blow up just to practice. That's all I said, this kid, Brandon and another creator Reagan, but Brandon, his credit was the first one. He stitched that video on Tik TOK and he said, all right, I'm going to do it. I'm terrified of what people think of me. And I'm really nervous in public speaking settings. So I'm going to call this the higher up wellness public speaking challenge. Let's see if this changes anything overnight. That video got 5 million views and he got 40,000 followers, Jim shark, the 49ers, like crazy people commenting and his life changed. And so this hashtag was born. And now I think across Tik TOK and Instagram, there's like over 150,000 people doing this higher up wellness public speaking challenge. And the two things I've noticed is there's a few creators who have changed their life through this. Like jet Franzen started doing the higher up wellness challenge as his first social media posts. And now he's got like a million and a half cumulative followers. And he just got on modern wisdom as a result of posting. And then the second thing is there are people, the majority of them aren't blowing up, but a guy reached out to me a few months ago and he said, Hey man, I did your challenge for a hundred days and I never blew up or anything, but I really feel that me and my wife have a deeper connection because now I understand my thoughts because I was never voicing what I thought. And that gave me the opportunity to do that. So thank you. And I thought that was beautiful. So at the very least, nobody sees it and nothing changes other than your understanding of yourself in the world, or it blows up in your life changes. I think it's a win-win. I think you also tapped into like an incredible need. Public speaking requires you to have a lot of people. It's a very scary thing to do. I think it's an incredibly valuable skill precisely because it's so scary. Like I don't care what field you're in, name it. I don't care what it is. If you can publicly speak well in that field, you're extremely valuable because nobody wants to do it. So I think you tapped into something with that. And I think it's going to, and also, I mean, we could speculate all day long, but I think with AI and how content's going to continue to be produced faster and easier and whatever, I think more and more values can be placed on in person. You're not going to be able to fake that at least not until they make robots that are indistinguishable for humans, in which case totally different. We got all kinds of bridges when we get there. Yeah, exactly. Can't wash dishes yet. So we're good. Cool, man. Well, Mike's great to have you on the show, bro. It's an absolute pleasure. I hope anybody watching this or listening to this right now understands that if I went back and told 23 doing this, as I was walking the sidewalks by myself or talking to Will on the phone, listening to you guys, just help me get fit and help us understand ourselves a little better and build our friendship. If I told that guy that he was going to be here with you, he would have laughed me out of the room. So thank you for y'all's time. You know, my dad, my dad would always say a quote that he loved was, how do you spell love? T-I-M-E. And it's because when someone gives you their time, it's the one thing that they're never making more of time and dirt. It's the only thing that they'll be more of in the world. So I want to thank you guys for giving me the time and the opportunity and allowing us out here. And to anyone out there, your life can change in a way you never thought possible. If you continue to chase things that make you uncomfortable, that make you afraid and dive into them anyway. Carl Young says, where your fear is, there your task is. So go directly into what scares you because you might wind up on mind pump. You never know. Awesome, man. I appreciate that. And thanks for telling me I was your favorite host earlier. Honor and pleasure, man. For sure. You know, I tell you what, my young editing team probably doesn't even know this or remember this because it was before most of them, this was Doug days, but there is a YouTube video on mind pump TV of the three of us walking Doug's in the park. And we're, we're doing our neat, having a talk. And so we'll have to clip that in here for the, the neat talks that you guys have, because I remember that video that we made 10 plus years ago. Oh dude, getting to, getting to do neat with the guys that taught us about neat was pretty cool. Pretty cool. We got it, brother. Thank you all. Bye. 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