#94: Ian Fonzian: The Real Reason I Left Rawdawg…

0:00I always preach it to anyone when everyone's like, what's the one thing that I could do right now to elevate myself or get a step ahead? I'm like, just solo travel. You go to a random country, you don't know the language, and you figure it out, your confidence will skyrocket in your abilities. I was able to know I could go anywhere in the world with only clothes on my back, and I'll find a place to eat, I'll find a place to sleep, I'll make great friends, I'll make memories, and I was able to reinvent myself in a way. The aura you give off definitely wasn't the case back in the day. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

0:27My face would leak like pus. And so every day, like, I just had my hood on. And if anyone looked at me, I literally looked like a monster. And I'm sure if you have acne, you could probably lay, like, when it's really bad, you just can't look anyone in the eye. If I was looking at you, I'd just be like, yeah, sounds good. At this point, like, I couldn't sleep on my face. I had to sleep staring straight up. And by every time I would wake up, my pillowcase would be covered in pus because it would leak during the night. I had to wash my pillowcase every single day in school. I remember I would carry napkins on me because anytime I would smile or anytime I'd eat food, it would, like, push it.

0:56imagine like popping a bunch of pitbulls disgusting um so imagine i'm skinny i've a shaving head i have much acne i'm depressed but that was like i'm just gonna make the biggest fucking glow up my school's ever seen and leaving the group that you used to be in raw dog talk to me about this pivot and why you did that my main reasoning for leaving raw dog and leaving such a good thing that we built that's something i never really shared but i feel like people can assume long story short what would you say is driving you at the moment at this very moment yeah i feel like uh it's been changing over the past couple years as like my rise and success i feel like my um motivation has changed but right now i think the self-progression and knowing that I'm like so close to reaching bigger and bigger goals that I never thought imaginable and just self-progression knowing that I'm like I'm like that one guy digging digging mining and like he's so close to reaching like the the gold and then the guy above him I mean the diamonds and the guy above him like um is so close and then he gave up because he had he went so much further um that's So I feel right now, like I'm so close to like setting up so many bricks for my future home.

2:14Do you know what's interesting is like we constantly chase the diamond, but then you never really end up getting there because when you get to the diamond, there's another one. It's kind of like these goalposts keep getting extended. Do you find that? Because obviously if you look at your life, there's been so much progression, so much change, and you probably couldn't imagine where you are now a few years ago, right? Yeah. No, that's so real. the diamond like yeah you get a diamond but then you're like you know there's a bigger diamond and or that diamond is like oh yeah it's a cool diamond but like there's more diamonds yeah and then i guess you have this element of like you just said before there's an there's a guy above you getting bigger diamonds and so you just compare do you feel like it's like crazy looking back at your life and the amount it's changed like do you ever like kind of sit back and reflect and go i cannot believe this is life like what the fuck has happened here yeah for such a long time i actually would tell myself and i would like tell other people like i would wait for the day that it all like crumbled or like i all like woke up from a dream and i was like oh like that was never real like i was i'm still in the military i'm still like making you know fighting for change and stuff like that um but i feel like every year every month i'm starting to become more in tune with the new person i am i guess um but yeah i know definitely crazy to look back a year ago a year before that year before that i feel like i keep climbing levels and levels and and at this point i'm like how high can it go like truly because i didn't even think it could go this high a year ago.

3:49So yeah, I guess your normal changes, right? Like you just, you reach another height and then that becomes your normal. And then you kind of, if that's your baseline and then you're striving towards the next things. Obviously a big part about your brand is the fact that you do like you're, you're an athlete as well. Like you're doing certain training, you're, you're, you're doing marathons and different challenges and things like this that you're doing do you feel like that these physical challenges um is there like a main purpose for wanting to push your body physically what's the reason you you decide to do these things like everest base camp and marathons and all the other things that you're doing physically man that's something i really don't even reflect on as much as i probably should i just think that i i always want to do something harder than the previous thing i did so So I feel like, uh, like, okay, I ran 50 miles last year and an ultra and this next year I want to do a hundred.

4:48Like, and people are like, why don't you just do 50, like better time. I'm like, no, like I need to do something way harder. And like, that's double. And I'm like, I know I want to do something that like truly scares me. And then after I do, I'm like, damn, look like you could do it. Um, like with, with doing never a space camp. And I just summoned a mountain Kilimanjaro in Africa to tell us mountain. And, uh, I don't hike, like I live in Austin, Texas. there's no mountains and no elevation. And from that day to the next, we're on a mountain. But I truly just think that I want to not just see my limits, but push them and prove myself wrong.

5:27Yeah. Do you think the mental benefit of doing physical challenge is insane? And it kind of sets you up for so many other areas of your life. Would you say that the like 49 miles in or even probably like that 35 miles into a 50 mile race where you know you've got another 15 to go like the mental battle you're going through then I mean I've not experienced that I'm about to do like a team ultra marathon thing in the Malibu mountains in two weeks but um I've never run a marathon before but yeah but do you feel like the mental benefit you get from the thing is one of the main reasons you're doing it because you know you're kind of being better equipped for everything else you're about to go through in life yeah definitely i mean like after the 50 i was like damn i could run 50 miles in one go in the middle of night in the middle of texas like then i can do this easier like it um lowered the bar for everything else so like i remember doing the 50 and i was like dude marathons are nothing now like i could run two marathons in one go like fucking fucking hell i'll go run a marathon tomorrow like cake um but i think a big thing actually is also purpose doing these things like truly gives me purpose because if i just i'm just whimsically going through life and i have no end goal or i mean not that these are end goals but like if i have no um goals every like trimester then i feel like i'm just floating and i hate that floating feeling i need to feel like i'm always progressing um and if i feel like i go back as a person that's what like makes me spiral if anything yeah well we need something to strive towards hey it's interesting it's like we're not we're not put on this earth to be stagnant and do nothing yeah like it's just not the the reason we're here and it's like humans you you do get stagnant sometimes like we want to be comfortable we want to get lazy and like even even i will too it's not like it's funny i was talking to my uh buddy today and he was like yeah people dm me all the time and asking how i'm so consistent how i get up at 6 a.m every day and run he's like sometimes i don't i lay on my phone on tiktok till 9 a.m and then i'm like fuck i gotta get up but then and then i eat and then then i run at 10 and i'm like dude fucking same but you know on social media you might see me like running at 6 a.m most days yeah for sure why do you never document those times i mean i do still though like i i will document and be like fucking hell like i slept all day yada yada but i still got my run in like i'll post me i have a treadmill in my kitchen i got i sold my couch i'll have a treadmill and uh i'll post me like running at 12 a.m like well you know busy day um didn't get my run in this morning so i'm on the treadmill now or you know if i got to get it in the mid afternoon i'm like you know i slept in so but i'm still getting in but that's the one thing i still get it in even if i miss it i know to get it in later yeah what's been kind of this transition in your life getting into business and you know an interesting thing that you've been obviously you've been you've got the the ice cream company that you're kind of working on at the moment which is cool uh you're wanting to open like a space i've heard you talk about um and it was all kind of this transition from like leaving the group that you used to be in raw dog and kind of going out on your own and wanting to create these other ventures talk to me about this pivot that you had where you decided to step away from this massive known group that obviously you guys built such a great name and people loved you guys being together and it's not like you're separate you're still doing all the things you're still friends but you kind of stepped away from that group and what they stood for in a sense to kind of paint pave your own way in a sense like talk to you about this pivot and why you did that yeah totally um i'm glad we waited for this podcast too because i was gonna go on this podcast like months and months ago but i feel like i wasn't i didn't do enough to talk about but this has always been a dream of mine coming to austin texas essentially long Long story short, I was in the military and my goal was always to build a gym, build a space.

9:25It's evolved over time from just like a basic bodybuilding gym to now a third space. It's going to be more like a members club, but that's always been the goal. And so my main reasoning for leaving Raw Dog and leaving such a good thing that we built, you know, after we did that in one year and I mean, even after three to four months, it was big strong club in the world. we get 100 ,000 followers in three months just not a single ad ran and we just were killing it but um that was always my goal and I know that I was I mean I just turned 24 and that I can't host a run club for the rest of my life but I can franchise a gym for the rest of my life and have multiple locations and for me to do that I have to step away from things not only taking my time.

10:13But Raw Dog was, I mean, it's Raw Dog, you know, and if I want to build a premium members club gym, I can't also be the owner of a Raw Dog Run Club that is traveling world with his three friends and being rambunctious. And as much as I love it, and that is a part of who I am, another part of who I am is a businessman who wants to be respected in that space. So for me to get these premium members, these business owners, I want them to know that the owner of this establishment is premium as well. Yeah. So I guess it's this reckless nature that Raw Dog has and the reputation it has, which is so attractive a lot of people like for a certain character.

11:01But I guess maybe you were trying to go down the more professional route where it's like, well let's be a bit more respected by people in that space in in the professional realm so i can kind of branch out a bit more and not just be this reckless hooligan in a sense in terms of the character that you're giving off online yeah and as much as i i mean i still am rambunctious like i i solo travel i love to party still and i love to do all the things and uh and i still show both but that was just the route that I prioritized and I mean ever since then I've started my ice cream company my gym starts demolition literally tomorrow when I fly home and that'll be open in hopefully March and so I mean I've been doing that for the past eight months as well so it allowed me the time it allowed me the mental clarity and in addition like at the end of the day we were just for kids that just something exploded and we had no clue so it was messy just like any other business but it was more messy because none of us knew what the fuck we were doing and um so and i'd rather leave while while we're still sailing than jumping off a burning ship in a way yeah so you know there was going to be a lot more hardships to come and i knew that um i needed to leave while we were still set up like we still had our sponsors we still had a bunch of contracts that I talked to before I left.

12:27But like I got his Gymshark and for a year sponsor. So they, they were still, you know, financially covered. Everything was all good, but I had to just step away. And in addition, we started it off just as like best friends running. And over time, I feel like when you work in business with your friends and then, all right, now the only times you start to see them is during the business. And then you start to see them less as just like, hey like want to catch up and get a coffee it's like hey come over because we got this business to do or we're traveling together and i'm staying with them every day and then once we get home back to austin then we don't hang out because we just hung out for the past week so it started like tarnish our relationship a little bit and then it got to the point where it's like okay like are we really friends or are we just like business friends at this point but even then the business is messy but that's something i never really shared but i feel like people can assume so even now they've continued and i and i've taken a step away and we're still friends but i don't see them like i don't know haven't seen for a month maybe except for one of them one of them we're still really close but i've seen it for a month because then they're doing their business and they're busy with doing the raw dog and then doing their events and then now i'm in my own lane and i'm traveling for my ice cream and traveling with gym sharks so then we're kind of like just separate now yeah i guess i guess if you left it on too long it could really tarnish relationships because it can build up envy and uh like you were supposed to do this and you didn't do that and we set out these responsibilities to do and you didn't fucking do them yeah and i guess like when that can happen once and you can be a little bit annoyed at each other but when it starts happening time and time again you need to make sure that your your i guess values are aligned and you guys are trying to achieve the same thing and if the reality is is like where you wanted to go on the route you wanted to go is different you need to like respectfully move on was it a hard conversation was it a hard thing to go through initially when you when you wanted to do that or was it kind of something brewing that was happening for a while it was definitely brewing for a while um because i mean it's like four heads that are kind of the same and we're all like trying to we're like all four bumping heads like have different opinions on everything because i mean i've just learned in hindsight that the best business partners are those that are like honestly opposite of you because with my ice cream brand and with my uh uh third space brand they're like very type a like stay inside and just grind work and they don't really like leave and they don't really like care to socialize as much one of them's like a family man has a baby he's like 33 35 um has a wife and so that's all he's focused on he's just focused on on his laptop doing his thing and me like i'm going out making these personal connections i i will handle the events a community and that just works well rather than us we all wanted to be on the on top of the shed being the first one on the mic screaming at people we all wanted to be that but there was no one in the back that was like hey let me handle the logistics of these merchandise shops let me handle customer service so when shit the fan we were like whose fucking job was that and we're like well it's your job well no you said this and i was like well i'm doing this so but the conversation very tough um i literally cried at the run club that when i announced it because i announced at the run club i mean i told the boys before i didn't tell anyone else and i was just like hey i'm gonna step away but i was like choking up because like we built something so special and every single weekend i would see 1500 people that you know would come up to me and tell me i changed your life for getting into running and gave people purpose every single week and it was like just a dopamine rush so then knowing that I was gonna leave it all and like who knows what could happen to them or um it was very tough conversation I remember telling them like we were just sitting in their living room and um they had noticed it for me though just like the distances and they they asked me like do you still want to be in it and just me saying like no I don't was like heartbreaking but like I had told like my parents I told like my closest peers of like, hey, what do you think I should do?

16:40And I mean, I got pretty much the same response from everyone that I talked to. So I knew it was the right decision. And even after when I made a YouTube video about leaving, like I still got great responses and people understood. I feel like you can see through the lens of the type of person I am and the type of person, I mean, type of business Raw Dog is, and it doesn't fully, fully align, maybe some way, but for a business to fully flourish then you have to be you know 100 miles per hour on it yeah so well there there it is i think i think uh i remember you posting the video explaining it and it kind of kind of makes sense there can only be one main person really like when you like there's there's one ceo it's like there's one point of contact right and when there's four a players that are all trying to be in front of the camera.

17:31It's like you can't have an A player that wants to build his own brand and face be the videographer. It's very hard because it's very hard for that person because from a fulfillment standpoint, they want to be the one on the other end. And so if you've got four people that are all doing it, I mean, it was a similar thing when it came to me, Alfie, and Jake when we were doing business and doing everything together back in Bondi. it's that similar lens right where you go like who's who's doing the thing like and and you want to make sure that yeah okay we we all formed and we made this amazing life around our friendship but when business gets in the way and it's exciting by the way because when you start to blow up and you're getting all this traction it's so exciting but then what happens is it can quite frankly just get in the way of your friendship and it makes it hard what you originally built the whole thing that you built it on yeah definitely but i mean overall i look back at it and i mean it was like probably the best year of my life yeah realistically um we traveled the world we got paid to do it um they quit their jobs to do it um and i and they all like blew up on social media doing as well like i already had a following before so i was used to it like i watched the boys go from 2 ,000 followers to now 10 has 110 ,000.

18:55And I saw him working at a coffee shop and he would get me free coffee. And he was like my boy. And I was like, dude, you got to post, we got to do this, yada, yada. And I remember like the first couple of videos, it's because I, one of the videos that popped up, I remember like we wanted to go run and none of them wanted to run and we lived down the street from each other. So then I just woke them up at like six or 7am and I made a video and that one like blew up and that was like a big start of things. And then from there we just took off but like i look back some of the best times of my life um and i know in 20 years i mean i got a damn tattoo on my thigh of it in the end 20 years i'll look back and be like you know that was some damn good times with some damn good friends that's cool let's go back to uh younger phones because like there's it there's a very big transformation you document a lot like the the person you are now uh and the way you look and the aura you give off definitely wasn't the case back in the back in the day I mean correct me if I'm wrong yeah there was there was quite a big transformation how were you growing up and uh just talk to me a bit about like how your high school days were and um I don't know the challenges you may have had back then yeah um so that's kind of what my social media grew on off of my transformation first off mostly because my acting transformation so that was when i was 16 um and i mean i grew up in southern california desert though so whenever i say california people are like oh la or like and like now it's like three hours east of la small desert town where people live to then drive two hours to la to commute but like it's so cheap in the desert that's why you live there and uh so it's kind of like the bottom barrel of like california people i would say um of course they're great people but that's uh where my parents grew up and that's where they um chose for me but i have three older brothers so i don't know if there's any analysts out there that can second analyze that youngest of four youngest of four brothers i'm youngest of five oh really yeah so i'm sure we could probably relate on some stuff but um so youngest of four and i feel like that definitely took into account a lot of my growth um but you know just watching all your brothers leave one by one and then you're the last one there and you're just like well shit like i grew up with my brothers and now they all have kids and i mean even to this day like all three of them have kids and i'm the only one that's just like i'm that i'm literally like that cool uncle just traveling the world um i come back and i give my my nephew like something from japan and give them like something from Africa and they're like all happy and then um yeah but growing up always the smallest always super skinny and I actually went to like a very I didn't it was in a private school it's a charter school where you still wear uniforms but you don't pay but still it was called academy for academic excellence so you know I didn't go to this public school I didn't play football I wasn't team captain of the football team and dating the cheerleader um i did play baseball all my life and so went to a very small charter school and i feel like that also built my values um i'm glad i didn't go to public school i was very in tune and i had friends from kindergarten to 12th grade and i was with the same group of people but on the other side of that like me and my family never traveled i'd never been out of the country other than mexico but so that like i'd never seen the world i thought i was like oh the desert's not bad because I'd never seen anything else.

22:29So that's why I chose to go in the military. And then my older two brothers went in as well. So I saw what they experienced and I was like, okay, cool. My brother just moved out. He's in Seattle, got his own apartment. I want that too. Let me get out. So I enlisted in the military, the United States Coast Guard. And from there, we'll backtrack. All my acne, put down myself a scene a ton. It was probably the worst acne you guys have ever seen it's worse acting I've ever seen honestly and it's crazy because it's me um but I remember that really formed my early days because before that I was like I mean my school was small but I was like one of the cool kids in school because I played sports but I remember that hit me and I just like I always had my hood on I was getting bad grades because I just wouldn't do my homework I would go home and just uh go to sleep and turn off my lights um and it got to the point where like my face you can see now i have a bunch of scars but on this side um i was playing basketball and got hit in the face and it popped and from like then on like my face would leak like pus and so every day like i just had my hood on and if anyone looked at me i literally looked like a monster and i'm sure if you have acne you could probably like if when it's really bad um you just can't look anyone in the eye like if i was looking at you I'd just be like, yeah, sounds good.

23:53And so that went on for like eight months too. It wasn't like two weeks. It was all of my sophomore and a little bit freshman year. So that shaped me. But then after that, I told myself I envisioned exactly who I wanted to be. So then once all this was done, I was going to get buff. I was going to get my hair done, grow out my hair. I was going to get back into sports and enlist in the military and then kind of just prove exactly what I couldn't be to myself later. And that's what I ended up doing. But still had more trials and tribulations since I went in the military. And that's a whole other monster in itself.

24:35We'll get there. I want to talk about this acne piece because someone can look at your face and i can't comprehend how it even gets to that level how quickly does it go from like one little spot on your face to extreme was it did you end up finding out a root cause as to why it was there and were you doing things that was making it worse talk to me about like the progression of it getting to the severity it did and then i don't know like how it kind of went away like what you did yeah um i mean i had regular acting as any other you know 14 year old just little things here and there but for the most part like my face was spotless um and then i don't know if this was a cause but i took proactive which was like topical solution i don't know if you remember proactive it was very popular popping back then and like celebrities were using it and so i remember like me and my brother both just had like a little bit of acne so we both took it and then my face started swelling and then i started to get a little bit more acne and I was like okay weird but like let me just kind of see it through so I kept taking it and it's just a topical it wasn't anything and um and I don't know if I stopped or whatever the case but I just remember my face started swelling and like my face was like a chipmunk and I was like this is weird and I like told my mom and she was like okay like that's a little weird but like let's give it another week and then like within a week it got like swollen swollen as if I took my tonsils out and I was like what and I have all these photos my mom took all these photos of me um so i literally have a progression with the dates of where i went from like you know not a lot of acne but kind of swollen to more swollen a little bit more acne to now like blistered up faces and scabs um so i would literally say within a month it just blew up so it's like every week it just got progressively worse but yeah i remember it started swelling and then started having individualized cysts.

26:36So I had two big ones on each side, one here, one here, and then like just like the most amount of whiteheads you've ever seen. But the crazy thing, I had nothing on my back. I had nothing on the rest of my body. So a lot of people ask me like, oh, what do you do about back acne? I'm like, I've never had back acne. Everything's been on my face. But to get rid of it, went to a dermatologist. And then, but the thing with that, they only gave me like a very low dose of another medicine called doxycycline and that just kind of dries you out and then so then i was on that for another like two to three weeks and it didn't do anything but it so it just postponed me actually getting better and if anything it might have made it worse and then um and then i finally went back and that's when it was really bad and then so they put me on accutane which if you guys know accutane um it's the strongest like basically acne curing drug but it comes with a lot side effects so like for females you can't have kids on it um and it could like it like lessens your chance of fertility um and the biggest thing though a lot of mood swings like depression like it's like proven to literally cause depression so i remember that was a huge thing and but like it was only option at that point at this point like i couldn't sleep on my face i had to sleep staring straight up and by every time i would wake up my pillowcase would be covered in pus because it would leak during the night so like i had to wash my pillowcase every single day and it was like disgusting um so then mind you when i'm doing it in school i i would i remember i'd carry napkins on me and i have to dab my face because it would be pussing out um because anytime i would smile or anytime i'd eat food it would like push it like all these pimples you imagine like popping a bunch of pimples disgusting um so then after that i took the accutane but the thing with Accutane, it gets better before it gets worse.

28:28So it pushes like all the acne out before. So then like, it was already bad. Once I saw the Accutane, then it took another three, four, yeah, three to four months, pushed everything out. And then it started slowly getting better and better. Like the acne started going away. But this time I had accidentally popped that side, didn't get stitches on it. I couldn't shave my face. So it's all like peach fuzzy because I'm like 16 um and then my face was just really red for like about a year and then slowly just went away um yeah dude you you mentioned when you would smile you'd have pimples pop i'm imagining that there wasn't much smiling going on back then in that time talk to me about like you mentioned you would just want to go and hide in your room like are they quite vivid memories all of the time just just like hiding because like you couldn't even look at someone in the eye that would have been quite a full-on nine months yeah i literally remember like i was like a i was in all honors classes like i was a 4.3 gpa student and i started i remember i got my first c and i just like didn't give a fuck because i was like dude like i don't want to even look up for the teacher to like call on me and uh and my teachers knew like I mean if you're a teacher and you see a kid going through that you're not gonna like pick on him and so I remember my grades were dropping and every single day I would just run to my room like not even say hi to my mom or dad um and just go to straight to sleep and at this time my brother was driving me home in two from school so I remember every day like we would just sit in silence and just look out the window and me and my brother had like talked about it since and I remember him telling me like sorry because like he never like asked if I was okay like you know just as an older brother you're just like you're just like hey man you good and I'm like yeah fine but like obviously you should know your little brother is like has a fucked up face he's not fine um but yeah I just remember turn off all my lights I'd have a blanket over my head and just sit there until it was time to go to sleep um and just literally just cry because I'm like I didn't talk to anyone all day and I didn't barely even ate because I remember like I would try to eat a burger and I couldn't open my mouth wide enough because my face was swollen um and like the cyst on my cheek would rise and I just couldn't physically like I couldn't physically do it um so yeah very vivid memories of all that but it just like really drove my passion to become better after and that's why I wear this necklace actually i don't know if anyone ever wondered that but i've been wearing it since then so my grandpa gave me this necklace and then i remember i was like oh this is such a cool necklace but it's only for like cool people like long haired and like buff guys like i can't i can't wear this right now so i told myself like when you get um better you're gonna oh and i shaved my head too because the hair would get like in my pimples and stuff when i would like wash my hair and it would just like hurt because then i have to like dig all my uh i don't know i didn't want hair on my face with pimples so i shaved my head so imagine i'm skinny i've a shaving head i have much acne i'm depressed um but that was like i'm just gonna make the biggest fucking glow up my school's ever seen and you know so um yeah do you think that that has played into anything that you've done kind of do you think it affects you to this day in any way shape or form do you think there's any limiting beliefs traumas things like this that are kind of showing up in your life because of those nine months yeah it's funny because like people will comment nowadays and be like you're still just that little kid with acne like haters right you're still just that kid with acne blah blah blah and like that kind of hits me more so than any other hey comment because i'm like yeah like i mean i kind of am like i still have this timidness time to time like whether it's talking to girls or talking to um just like some high level people of like might be on eye contact or it might be um just like not holding myself to like a higher standard value I guess because at the time like no one would even look at me or if they're or if they're looking at me I know that you're just like oh shit like this kid's like ugly and fucked up um so now I still have like I don't know little things that people will call out and I'm like oh yeah it's probably because like i was literally a monster looking like a monster for nine months um so i don't know little things like that people call out do you think that that inspires people more because i'm looking at this going like it's kind of when someone can see where you've been they are more they can relate to a lot more like when you see someone like yourself who's documenting this perfectly put and amazingly curated instagram feed that's got like all the most amazing things you're traveling you're good looking you're jacked you're what a lot of people admire to be being able to show where you were gives them it kind of can allow them to remove you from this pedestal that they seem to be putting you on it's quite powerful because without that they're just like oh he's just never been through any challenge he's just got to get handed everything in his life he's he's just a lucky lucky guy oh yeah and i think being able to show it is is so powerful hey and then also when someone says something you can be like no mate i was i was actually pretty fucked i couldn't leave my i couldn't smile without leaking yeah literally yeah no for sure i'm so glad i documented i'm so glad my mom took all these photos and that i i shared it as well because people still i'll get a comment here and then where it's like wow like you know daddy bought everything he's a trust fund baby and like yada yada or um you know this guy lives a perfect life he's never suffered a day and i'm like dude actually i mean yeah like i was i was fucked at one point in 16 and not even that like i went in the military and worked for everything i got never took a dime from my parents and if anything i've given more to my parents now than i've gotten um so that's it's honestly quite the opposite but of course like you see a little curated feed where i'm like you know being performative quote unquote with my like new cars that I just got.

34:44And you think like, damn, this guy has a life. But like, it was more like I built a life. So was the military what you expected? Not at all. Yeah, not at all. I mean, each branch is different, I would say, but I feel like there's a lot of still values that all military members can relate to. And I remember like when I went in, like my older two brothers went in as well. I have three, but he had cancer, so he couldn't go in. but um besides the fact i remember them they didn't tell me like how shitty it was they just told me the good parts like yeah like it could be a little tough but it'll make you a man you know and of course me 16 years old i'm like all right cool sounds good but they didn't tell me like how lonely it is and like how you're just gonna leave everything behind at such a young age um and you're gonna do a lot of shitty stuff that you don't want to do and i don't know when you're 18 and you never had a real real job and now you're i'm i was in the coast guard so like i'm stuck at sea for 10 hours at a time like against my will really um and doing a bunch of stuff that requires a lot of sacrifice at such a young age that's something i didn't expect i just expected like yeah i'm gonna move and they're gonna and i i had very um optimistic i was optimistical um and i thought that they would send me to hawaii and i would be just on small boats and i'd just be like chilling through islands and saving people and they would just be all you know unicorns and rainbows but i got sent to northern california in the redwoods very desolate place and just like suffered because i left a month after high school and so now i'm like living the best time of my life in the summer with my friends and now i leave for boot camp two months and boot camp is not fun but it makes you a man and it was nice and then now i do the real job and i get thrown on uh i was at a surf station where we endured like the highest waves that boats can 20 feet and so we're we're saving uh sailors we're saving surfers that um get knocked out we're saving boats on fire um nothing insane insane but um stuff that an 18 year old wouldn't expect to do um but other than that like it was just long long days it was like a firefighter schedule or three days on two days off slept at the station so as an 18 year old it's just a little weird where you're working you go from not working at all to working like you like you barely you have less time off than you have on obviously um and yeah like i mean every other weekend i was sleeping on the station so like even if i did make friends and you know a normal 18 year old 19 year old whatever would go partying every weekend like i was like ah like i got work but then that would lead to me to getting fucked up on a monday and tuesday with my 26 year old co-worker that would buy me alcohol because i'm in the military and that was just the culture like to drink drink drink so kind of just drank the pain away at a young age when you say it was lonely what does that mean was it just isolating, like not being able to, like loneliness isn't the absence of people.

37:54It's the absence of connection. It's like, it's not about having people around because you can be in a room full with people and feel so disconnected and isolated and lonely from them. And so the term loneliness is actually not being able to connect, relate with people. And I think that's a thing that a lot of people go through, right? Especially when they're growing and changing so much. But for you as an 18 year old going into the military it's like you don't know what you're about to embark on you've been sold the highlights which is like most things in life they don't really touch on the lowlights as much so you've been sold the highlights you've then embarked on this journey being presented with something that was humbling to say the least and then you felt isolated but when you say it was lonely like what was your experience with being alone or or being lonely in the military yeah i mean the people are with the best they could and i think everyone was lonely like that's why you see so many military members getting married like snap of the fingers not only because benefits but because like there's no one around that they truly connect with so when they find a girl that fits any comfort then all right yeah you're mine so damn so what the the standards lower they they they drop really low in the military yeah because it's just like whatever i can find yeah well you're so lonely and you get that like just sense of comfort and you just you can't you want to hang on to that um and in addition they pay you like a thousand you know it might it might be even more depending on where you live but like a thousand dollars extra a month to have a partner and we get paid 3k a month um depending on rank but like 3k is kind of baseline so that's like and that's after i mean that's not including rent so like you pay another 1500 on rent you maybe got 1500 left you pay you know 500 groceries you're left with like 1k but then you got a car payment so it's like you're left with like 300 at the end of the month um so it's like fuck like you got no money so it's like find a wife that loves me and i get more money oh sign me up but thank god i didn't fall into that trap but it's like all the friends that you make are kind of forced because like you don't get to pick your friends it's like it's like being in school like you don't get to pick them they're kind of just like your high school friends like they're just there so you kind of got to be friends with them but it's even worse because everyone's at different ages different stages like a lot of them had wives but like we still slept in the same um like quarters together for three days at a time so like a lot of good memories and stuff like they were 26 years old 28 years old 32 years old and i'm this fresh 18 year old that like you know i was two months before that i was playing high school baseball and they have babies and they're going back to their family so like it just was very uh a lot of forced connection like don't get me wrong still great friends at the time but if i you know we're in a room with other people and i could pick my friends i probably would not choose them first but still great people and uh made great times but a lot of bad times too and like the military culture just bad everyone's for the most part just alcoholics and if you try to do anything above or better than the military then they should shut it down and shit on it so like i remember i still was very into fitness and I did have a I tried to be like a fitness influencer when I was 17 and 18 made YouTube videos had an Instagram account and I remember my first station I tried to pick it back up and I would try to go to the gym and my boss would like he was like short fat bald divorced and he's like Fondo why the hell you want to go to the gym huh you always just want to go to the gym huh how about you just go down and go clean the boats and how about you go study your qualifications and and uh yada yada and i'm like dude like i'm just trying to you know get healthy and get more confident you know as a leader you should have seen that and been like yeah like hey go get after it like the boats can wait till the work day tomorrow or you know you could study it after the gym but they would like not let me go to the gym or not let me get my meals in like i would have meal preps and they're like why are you always doing that why don't you just eat with us and i'm like like they want you to stay down with them and uh and even carried over to my next um station when i want to do social media and i was editing my youtube videos during lunch and people are just like what are you doing you need to get back to work like mind you and i'm like dude my work's done like i grinded my workout and now i got extra work so um they're not leaders their managers it's like yeah there's a massive difference between leadership and management it's like people seem to think that they get promoted they get some job title and it all of a sudden makes them a leader but no like the best leaders are the ones that lead by example and the lead like true leadership if you were to think about a proper navy seal that's leading the way he's not telling anyone what to do he's he's leading by example and people are inspired to adopt and change and adapt his movements into their own routine and into their own life like that's what true leadership is it's like i'm gonna lead by example and a byproduct of that is you're gonna do so but the moment it's like do this do this do this do this no one really wants to be told what to do you're not a leader you just have a superiority complex and you can't not superiority complex you're not a leader you just have uh kind of like an authority problem they just they just Yeah, they got handed a title and they think that they got the crown.

43:16It's something that is very prevalent in the military where you rank up based off a test that you take. And it doesn't, little bit of experience, but like at the end of the day, it's honestly just how you rank on this test. So I remember like there's a certain point where I was at E4 and once you make E5, you get a lot more responsibility. And so people get that E5 and they used to be E4 with you. But once they get that E5, then technically they're like, you know, you're boss now. and people would just flip a switch where it's like you know last month we were we were buddies we were drinking like we were on the boats together um and then now he's my boss technically so now he's barking orders and making me go you know pick up the shit outside when we were picking the shit up together last week um so it's a crazy thing in the military with that and uh also military there's enlisted i don't know if you guys have this as well but enlisted and officers so enlisted is like me like 18 year old you just go to boot camp you go in the officer you um go to either you went to college and then you went to the officer candidate training school or you went to like the academy and then after your four years then you're just automatically an officer and you get paid so much more than us i mean i don't know their pay but you get paid so much more than us you're um in the best housing and you're in charge of all enlisted so even someone who's been in for 20 years that officer who just went to four years in college is already in charge of him with no experience at all so like this officer's telling us how to run the boats how to do these um like search and rescue cases when he hasn't been on one his fucking self so that's something that us unless i just hate like these entitled officers that went to college for four years and now they're telling us who've been in for four years what to do that's like a business professor at college trying to tell you how to run a business, but you've never even run a business yourself.

45:05You're just teaching people how to do it. It's this interesting power dynamic. I find it happens with a lot of people that get into these authoritative positions like police and stuff like this. A lot of the times they can be this complex in them where they just want to be able to have power and control. It's like some sort of power play. I'm fascinated by this journey of yours and this transformation, you've been explaining, obviously, the events that happened when you got all the acne, the high school, the pivot from being somewhat of a cool kid to not even wanting to leave the house. Then you kind of have this drive to go into military.

45:40Obviously, you've got your brothers that have been in there as well. And so there's someone that's kind of already walked that walk a bit. So you're like, okay, well, this makes sense. I want to do this. I'm going to be a better man and X, Y, and Z. But then it's kind of led you into to where you are today and you're in this position where you're very in the limelight very showy very like like kind of in a sense inflated it's like like by participating in the work you're doing and that what i'm doing but by just by participating in it you're you're essentially like creating this like status that's like people look up to and it's quite like a showy thing yeah how's your relationship been with external validation has it been an interesting thing kind of uh making decisions based on what people are going to think because something i've chat i've battled with as well is making decisions based on what other people are going to think as opposed to you know what i actually truly deep down want has it been a battle for you definitely like kind of being thrown into this and experiencing high levels of attention have you struggled with external validation um not as much as others i think honestly because like from day one i've always posted what i want for myself and i've never had any crazy um like changing myself for others um and of course i've had like little hiccups where i'm like maybe i should lean into this more because this is what's trending for this person so i should be more like that but um i mean for the most part i started like when i first started social media i was a pure bodybuilder I just was doing a bodybuilding competition and was just posting me you know shredded and be like two weeks out three weeks out and then from there I went into solo traveling and then I wasn't bodybuilding at all anymore and then from there I just kind of changed my whole persona to um this guy who runs but has these cool cars and also travels but um does hard stuff and then now is doing business but like I've never people people like make funny be like oh like the 70s cosplay guy and like i don't know or be like where do you get your style from like where who's your inspiration and i've never like i've never had this one person i'm like oh i'm gonna be just like that person like i didn't look at matthew mcconaughey and i'm like i'm gonna be just like him like i was always i just had this uh like when i had my acting i had this vision for a cooler version of myself that i wanted to accomplish and same as i did when i was in the military i had this i'd make this uh new year's eve goals list every single year since i was 20.

48:15Um, I went to New York and take it next to Times Square and I put apart who I envision and I would physically describe myself and emotionally and mentally. Um, so like I remember at the time I was bulking, I was like 210 pounds and like, for example, right now I'm like 180. Um, so, and I put nose piercing tattoos, long hair, and at the time, military short hair, had a little mustache um shredded and i i even put down to the car that would have i didn't even have this car yet and it was two years out from having this car um and i put 1967 mustang um and then i even put maybe earrings and i have like two earrings out but i don't have any of this side because they're like a last game time decision but like i envisioned exactly who i wanted to be and then i executed it but that was not based on anyone that wasn't based on what people liked it was simply what i liked deep down and who i envisioned for myself um but i i truly think that the content that i make the things that i do it's not based off of a anyone or anything um i would say one trap that i may be falling to is like if i'm not doing anything i don't feel as important so if i'm not traveling and doing this ever space camp track or i'm not doing this marathon then maybe eyes won't be shifted on me as much um but then at the end of day like i love doing these crazy stuff and that's my internal purpose it's not for anyone else's but obviously as a human i know in the back of my mind the cooler should i do the more eyes i'm going to get the more opportunities i'm gonna get and that is my business and that's my life it's your line of work right yeah and it's not it's not uh it's it's not about uh saying it's a bad thing but maybe more so just recognizing that that's just part of the part of the game that you're choosing to play in i guess yeah one thing i always say is like you have to play the game of social media like i'll get into ruts where creative ruts where i just don't want to post or i don't want to because i think like oh no that's cringy or like that's just performative and i want to be very real but at the same time like you have to play the game um you have to you know use these words that kind of generate some clickbaitiness or generate some engagement um so at the end of day like yeah you can be real but you have to play the game but stay true to your roots yeah has there been moments in the time of social media and the kind of line of work that you're in now, has there been moments where just you've been like, I don't want to do this anymore?

50:43Has there ever been times at all where, or has it all just been, never been a doubt, kind of like continue to keep going? I haven't really felt that specifically, but obviously motivation goes in peaks and troughs, but have you ever had any times where you kind of were like, nah, this isn't it? Yeah, I went through a really rough patch. like before I left Raw Dog and during, I was like, no, I remember I like went a month without posting, but I just didn't even realize, um, went like three months without posting on YouTube, just cause I simply just didn't have the ideas. And, um, I just went through like a very depressive rut where I just didn't want to post.

51:20I didn't want to share my life. And I was like, what's the point? Like, I just, I don't care for anyone to even see what I'm eating today. Or I don't, like even if I ran 10 miles like why should I share it like I don't care um but never too serious with like yeah I'm gonna stop it all because I've always just done it for like the love of the game like I generally think social media is my journal so I don't ever post with like this um super monetary motivation I always just post because I want to and then the money kind of comes. But I feel like as I'm growing, I kind of have to have a little monetary motivation now because I'm like starting to get more brand deals and I'm starting to get it more into business.

52:02So I can't just whimsily post. But I feel like for the long run, it helps if I just treat it as my journal and that's it. And then I don't get these like major creative ruts or I don't get where I don't want to post because it starts feeling like a job. And I don't want to feel like posting my life as a job. I want to, you know, be able to pull my camera and talk to it and not uh feel like i'm i'm always doing an ad or i'm doing it for money and that's why i don't have an agent i did have an agent but i don't and i haven't for two years because he made it feel like a job for me like as much as i appreciate him always giving me deals it was like i'm always talking about doing these random ads and doing these sound promos and at the end of the day just wasn't worth it for my mental because i'm like dude like i've done like three deals this week and like all my posts are like ads and making money and like i just sometimes i just want to post me right in my car and i want to post me running and with not a link attached not not no code and and i think that people see that as well and will uh gravitate towards you if you're not always pushing stuff yeah straight off the question there but no no that's it's kind of how it works though you need to find this balance of of posting to make a living i filming the brand deal is not the hard part pressing post is the hard part i think people don't understand this and even brands at times don't seem to grasp this they think we're paying you this money and all you have to do is just post a video i'm like are you kidding me i've spent hours thousands of hours over years building the trust with my audience it's like look at my page thousands of posts like i've spent so long on this thing for you to be for me to be able to post and have influence on your brand and and the audience that i've that i've built it's not the filming of the ad that's fucking easy yeah i could cook that up in five seconds it's the it's the post of it and i think uh i think it it seems to be and i remember before i did all this i remember i had some friends.

54:03They were the largest male models in the world, Jordan and Zach's Denmark. And they were my best friends in Bondi. And I remember they would say that they would pay for their hotels and stuff, even though they're partnered with all these hotel brands. And I remember that he would say to me that he would pay for his travels when he didn't have to. And I couldn't wrap my head around that. I was like, wait, why would you do that? And he's like, I don't want expectation. I don't have to do these things for brands. And then I get in the position where I'm there and I just get it so much now. I'm like, I don't want to post the deal.

54:41I just can't bring myself to make my page an ad for everyone. And so sometimes you want to go somewhere and not like tell anyone you're going here and not being like, you know, hashtag hotel this and, you know, I don't know. Yeah. What do you think is kind of things that people don't see? do you think there's there's part of your work that you wish people saw to understand you more or do you feel like you kind of document everything or do you feel like you're being misunderstood online at times um i mean i document most for sure like i mean i'm on youtube i'm on tiktok i'm on instagram one thing i'm not on the snapchat though because i don't want to post my day-to-day life um but one thing i think misunderstood is like when i post like flexing off my travels or like my car and people get this stigma of like um arrogance i would say um and i think that people confuse arrogance for confidence and confidence that used to be lack thereof so when i do post and it might be like a selfie i'm like it's because that day i was looking at my face and like damn maybe my scars are you know kind of going away like i want to i feel good about myself let me post it um or like i mean i just recently got a car last month and people were like you know so a lot of people have you but a lot of people like oh like you just got this car to show off and i'm like no like i've loved old cars like since i was young and it's one a big goal that i accomplished and of course i'm gonna want to share it because and the day social media is my journal so i think like people confuse arrogance for confidence and And it's hard to even say as the creator that because if it stinks like arrogance, it's arrogance.

56:29And of course, no one wants to believe that they're arrogant. They're always going to say, no, I'm just confident and you're just mad. But it's all perception though at the end of the day. The thing about all of this is you can post something and it gets 100 ,000 views and there's 100 ,000 different perceptions and interpretations of the one thing. like everyone looking at that photo of that car which is sick by the way the car's fucking awesome left hand left hand drive right hand right hand drive but same i mean it's normal for you but it's not normal yeah yeah yeah um it's weird seeing that in america like you see a japanese car it's cool um uh but but like a thousand people see it a thousand different perceptions of the thing sick car oh the color way of that's different oh what a loser like everyone is looking at that photo in a different way i was like oh the steering wheel what the hell yeah like alpha used to post something where like he would put one post and then put like the separate sides of comments and wouldn't be like oh you're a fucking asshole like this and that and then another one's like dude i love how shredded you are like what's your tits or you got me into working out and it's like the contrast of what someone views this one post says um it doesn't necessarily mean like it's all bad or all good like and that's why i always just try to stay true to what i like and what i like to post because all these perceptions like they're literally different like i don't think in any one video in the entire world is everyone on completely one side hating on them or everyone's completely one side loving on them like you're always going to receive both so take each side with a grain of salt like even all the good comments like don't let it blow up your head but even the bad comments don't let it you know drag you down yeah and i think it takes a big moment of something that maybe might be perceived as controversial but you you truly believe it's true for you to happen like say some sort of negativity some bad press or something comes out and then you get like flamed with really good flamed really bad and then you just start to realize that like absolutely everything is just mirroring someone and what they have or don't have and it's quite a freeing feeling to know that every single message you get it's actually got nothing to do with you it's all it's all them it's like it's really projections but i find it always hard to say as a creator like oh you're just projecting because you're mad because you're not in my position like i know it's a i don't say privilege as the creator um but but but the thing is though is i don't care what they all say you were 16 and you couldn't leave the bedroom your bedroom yeah and like just like fuck all now who cares about any of it i just look at it and i just go, mate, I was in a place, well, this is not me, you, I'm in a place where I can't smile without my face bursting.

59:14And like the fact that you, the way you are now is one of those things where you have to go like anyone hating clearly doesn't like, it's clearly there's something going on there because, because like you, you see someone go from a really low place and a dark place to then overcoming that and being something that people admire you can't just like someone for someone to shit talk that it just kind of doesn't make it doesn't make logical sense it's all emotional yeah it has to be something internally you know upsetting in them that they're you know i mean i'm sure a lot of people wish that they're in my position getting paid to you know live their life essentially so you know i'm sure if i was very upset with my own life and i saw my if i was a different person i was very upset with my own life you know maybe stuck in a job i hated and i just felt like there was no way out which i used to be and then you see this guy just living making money and posting his life you're like how the fuck is he even making money how's he traveling how's he getting these new cars you might be like well fuck you you know and that's that's the best you could say but um then once you the other on the other hand once you start to grow grow you're like oh wait you know maybe this guy put in some work to get there and he's you know reaping reaping what he sowed yeah what about like this solo travel element that you you've you've done a bit of solo travel and and doing stuff alone there's a lot of isolation and solitude that comes with solo traveling right how important do you think solo travel has been for your growth and spending all that time alone in foreign places?

1:00:51I feel like that really kick-started everything I have now. When I got out of the military, if I would have just went home and then kind of went to college because that was the plan, I was going to come home and then use my BH and go to college. But I instead took a three-month in Europe just alone, one backpack, just figured it out. And that built my confidence greatly. I was able to know I could go anywhere in the world with only clothes on my back and I'll find a place to eat. I'll find a place to sleep. I'll make great friends. I'll make memories. And I was able to reinvent myself in a way.

1:01:29I wasn't this military guy, that only bodybuilding guy that people knew me as. I wasn't this acne kid where everyone knew my past. I was simply who you met that day, maybe on a beach in Guatemala. Or, you know, I was like, I was like just cool guy riding a moped in Croatia and uh able to just trust myself and it came with a lot of solitude and that's why I got this tattoo solace um means being comfortable being alone um finding peace and being alone and yeah I feel like I always preach it to anyone when everyone's like you know what's the one thing that I could do right now to you know elevate myself or get a step ahead I'm like just solo travel like you go to a random country you don't know the language and you figure it out your confidence will skyrocket in your abilities and you'll learn about culture of other people you meet the best people who are in tune with who you are and want to be as well like the amount of people i've met solo traveling i would say like could be my more best friends and my high school best friends like you know those are the type of people i love anyone that you could call in five minutes and be like hey let's go fly to yada yada and they'll be there like them i only uh i booked my places every three days so i would be in a new country every three days or whatever um i had booked it for the first two months and that was my big mistake because i remember i was in spain booked it for the rest in portugal in spain and then my girlfriend broke up with me and i was like and i started saying this hostel in spain for two weeks and i was so lonely i was it was like a pod hostel too so it was very like isolated and i was like what the fuck am i doing so from then on i went to 15 countries after that and every three days i picked a new place so i'd be in croatia three days later i'm in greece three days later i'm in uh germany i remember i went to oktoberfest and i didn't expect to that whole time like that whole trip just transpired and um and good time alone allows you to think not even about the present but a lot of future and get things uh aligned for who you want to be so and it's hard though like sitting alone with their thoughts for sure yeah but uh i mean i think the military also taught me like in boot camp we couldn't talk unless we were spoken to or we could only say certain things like i would have to be like chris ian can i go to the bathroom sir but i couldn't be like hey excuse me like i've had a long day like can i go pee you know what i mean like you couldn't talk like regularly so that taught me to basically keep my mouth shut and think about things when you started to travel you you just said your girlfriend broke up with you did you start traveling with a girlfriend or did you no i i started i i went the attention of traveling solo but i met up with her because we did long distance for two months and then it's funny we went i visa together and then we just fought all week and i mean i'm so glad it happened i could not even imagine staying with her i mean great broke up with me because i mean i had two i had three more months of solo travel and she was going back to the states so like it just wasn't gonna work but uh i remember i was heartbroken for like the first month i was like i gotta go home if i go home then i could get her back and so that whole trip was like heartbroken just got out of the military so like life just totally did a flip and uh just a crazy elevator evolution yeah i think it it uh it thought that forces you think though because if you're heartbroken and you're in solitude and you're in a foreign place that you don't know it's like what the fuck am i doing like i what i remember specifically sitting at a bus stop in spain just crying because i had left her and then she was like she's like texting me like yeah we're done and i'm like what do you mean like i was gonna fly you out like next month to me and you know spain and blah blah blah and then like i remember i was like fighting against it fighting against it and i just remember like i realized i was like fuck i'm alone for three months now heartbroken like what am i gonna do because i thought like we i would choose she was like my rock like oh yeah when i get lonely out here i'm just gonna be able to facetime her and text her and now i literally have no one crazy bird you you mentioned at the start of the conversation about how all your brothers have a family they've all had kids um i got partners you've spoken about on your Instagram that you are like that's kind of like something that you do get that does excite you right like having a family and finding the one and kind of doing that where do you kind of sit with that and um where you kind of at in your life at the moment and what what's something that you you would like it's so hard to find a partner with who I am now because i feel like i have so many like facets to my life that they need to have synergy so like they need to travel but they also need to be fit but they need to run specifically because like i'm not gonna be not that i want to do marathons but like if i'm i would love to do a 5k with my partner because i run every single day so that that'd be you know an hour or two without her so like i would love to share that sometimes um and that's very rare to have someone a girl who well i mean there's more but like also she has to work like a remote job or social media because i'm going to be traveling all the time so there's someone that's working a nine to five it's hard to be like all right peace out for two weeks babe like no she'd have to come with me um so like it would literally have to be a mere self um in a girl for me and like i feel like i'm a very rare person in a lot of ways so like i would have to find an even rarer person especially because a lot of my ways i feel are more like male dominant like solo traveling probably male dominant and like and running doing marathons probably male dominant so it's kind of hard to find that but i'm like everything i'm doing is for the intention of building a family so like doing this ice cream company it's not like i'm doing it for fun like i'm doing it so in three to five years i could sell and get millions and i set my family up and then doing this gym franchise so i'd have a bunch of you know in five to ten years when my family is actually here then like i'll be set up i'm not starting when i'm 30 i'm starting when i'm you know 22 so by the time that it actually happens the bricks already laid the house is built um but it's basically just tough finding a unicorn i actually remember now that you're explaining that i remember a video you did i think it performed so well i remember seeing a video i think you just sat in your car just like saying like i don't know if this is like a normal thing i wish i could pull it out it's a normal thing but like so hard to find someone like like i want a girl that's not like fit and crazy and insane but like i want someone that like i can still go on a run with and you're kind of like listing out this criteria it's a cheerleader or a fan i think that's what it was you know having someone that's like on the sidelines like yeah go chris like go do that marathon and they're just you know sedentary or you want a partner um yeah it wasn't cheerleader cheerleader or partner or like teammate yeah cheerleader or teammate or you want someone running that marathon with you pushing you or you know you want someone traveling to nepal and climbing mount everest with you um and i think like a little bit of like medium like you know i want her to be a badass in her own way but you want to be calm and you want to like i still want to be a girl you know let me do the masculine shit you know and i'm gonna still take care of you um but yeah but also one i love independent driven passionate woman and i feel like i mean obviously this isn't majority but like a lot of women these days just expect a man to sweep them off their feet and take them away from you know and like oh why don't they work a job now because my man is rich and he's gonna buy me this bag and he's gonna do everything for me and like yes i i do want to do everything for you but i still want you to have your own passion be driven and it doesn't mean like you need to create this multi-million dollar business but like you know if you love pilates like i want you to go full force and being this Pilates teacher and being passionate.

1:09:33Or, uh, if you love, um, you know, I don't know, architecture, then I want you to be the best damn architect out there. So yeah, it's passion. It's passion led, not, uh, financial led. Yeah. Like, like you don't need them to make millions, but you want their eyes to light up. Yeah. You just want them to be excited and passionate about what they're doing. Yeah. I want them to have their own life and we're just, you know, two organisms and we're just meeting here. Yeah. it's like one plus one equals three yeah it's not like you're here yeah combining that's cool dude dude i um i want to commend you i think it's really cool i think uh it's cool that we've been able to do this and and with what we were going to record in austin last year then we were going to record in sydney at some point so much has changed each time it's like different people now we're in london we're in london like we both live in austin but we're recording this in London, but I just, uh, I want to commend you.

1:10:32I think it's really cool. I think the, the, um, obviously what started blowing you up was that transformation, but I think it makes so much sense from the sense of like who you, who you can become. And hopefully, hopefully this story and progression can inspire people to just take the leap a little bit more. I think like what we didn't dive into, but what's really fascinating is how you were saying, like Like you were 16, you had all the acne, but you kind of knew that you were going to get out the other side. Like you were there going, I'm going to, once I get out of this, I'm going to get jacked.

1:11:07I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I think a big thing is people actually don't even know how or when they're ever going to even get out of this dark tunnel. And that can be quite a challenge. It's like that depression feeling of like, this is fucked. And I actually don't know how or when or if there's a way out. And it's interesting to see how a young 16-year-old Fonz, like little Ian running into his room because he can't fucking look at anyone, has belief that he was going to make it out. It's a strange thing, but I think it's fascinating to see. And I think people at all ages and all phases of life can take that as inspiration and go, 16-year-old Ian can, I'm sure I can.

1:11:50And the reality is there is light at the end of the tunnel. sometimes you just can't see it yeah and you just need to have trust in the process yeah um i mean my mom and dad always told me that all problems are temporary like i remember like since i was six years old they've always just driven that into my head driven that into my head so like you know talking about just like suicide or things like that they've always been like hey any problem is temporary like i remember just being young and i didn't understand it but like they were always kind of hinting at that because they knew that you know times will get tough and as an adult that's kind of a prevalent thing in nowadays times but yeah there's always light and tunnel and if you don't think so look at my story from the hackney from the military um to even i i have more problems now like going through my own depressive ruts my creative ruts i always know that i've gotten out i've gotten out of it i can do it again and i know i'm gonna go back into it but guess what i've already done it so i know um how to get out of it again like you're always going to go through waves and waves but if you do it once you can do it twice you do it twice then you fucking do it forever so let's go appreciate you dude cheers thank you see you later guys we're signing out for this episode bye that refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along it's here wayfair's black friday in july sale is happening now so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less get up to 80 off area rugs and up to 60 % off outdoor and bedroom furniture.

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