Michael Chernow Is A Creature Of Habit: A Story of Sobriety, Resilience & Redemption

28:36But yeah, my dad was abusive. I do believe some people were meant to be parents and some people weren't. And my father was certainly not meant to be a parent. He, I know, loved me. I believe it for sure. However, I don't think he had the capacity to get past his own mental illness and struggles to share that love. and that's why I think today I'm unashamed to say that I put my well-being before everything else in my life because I watched someone who didn't ever and that person my father could not get past his own shit to be able to tell me my sister my mother that he loved up he loved us because I don't even know if he knew because he was so caught up in his own shit because he never took care of himself.

29:31So I today make myself the priority in my life. And I really do. I make sure that I take care of myself so that I could show up as a father, husband, and a great one, and then also a business person. But, you know, I would sleep out as many friends houses as I could. And I remember, you know, this is like a clear memory of mine at this kid, Ross Delafield's house when I was, I think it was probably first grade. And he lived on 79th Street between First and York. And I was at his house. I don't think it was the first time I was there, but he was like a good friend of mine. And his father, Danny Delafield, was like my ideal dad.

30:07I was like, man, I want this guy to be my dad. And I remember saying to myself, sitting down at dinner with his family, which my family never ever did. I mean, maybe two times in my life did we ever sit down at a table and have dinner in our apartment. Wow. And I said, man, and I've gotta get these parents to love me. I gotta get them to like me. Like, it's like, that's what I gotta do so that they can, they'll invite me to sleep over here. You know, like this was like - Out of survival. This is what I was thinking at that age, you know? And that's how I kind of, literally all through elementary school, I gotta get their parents to like me.

30:45I gotta figure out a way to get them to like me. And I got really good at that, super good at getting people to like me. Being the chameleon. being a people pleasing chameleon. Who do you need me to be right now so I can make sure that my needs are going to get met? Totally. Yeah. And so, you know, sleeping over at friends' houses led to, you know, getting into a lot of trouble early on. And, you know, at 12 years old, I got put into pain-winting mental institution because I attempted suicide, but really it was a cry for help, you know. They evaluated me. I remember my mother was hysterical. but that's when the child services got involved in our family and you know it was it was illegal for two kids of opposite sex to share such close quarters in a bedroom so I had to say that I slept on the couch in our living room and anytime my father and I would get into an altercation it was no longer like just arguing at that age you know it was now you know like full-blown battles I got to a point where I was now fighting back.

31:52I wasn't just like taking it on the chin, literally. I was fighting back and cops would show up. And so finally I was, you know, at 13 years old, I had

32:05totally succumbed to addiction. I, at that point, by the end of my freshman year in high school, I was proud too, like very proud. Like I had found it, you know, I was like, this is me. I'm excited. Like, this is it. I'm going to be the drug guy. Was it alcohol first or what was the introduction? It was actually cigarettes first and sixth grade, cigarettes, and then marijuana the summer between sixth and seventh grade. And then a friend of mine went to this like super, like small private school while I was still in public school. She went to this super small private school for like troubled kids.

32:42And that's when party drugs kind of came into my life. And you grew up on the Upper East Side, like on like 1st and 87th or something like that. So for people that don't know, despite the fact that you're in a one-bedroom apartment, it's a prosperous neighborhood. You go a couple blocks over and it's penthouses and, you know, like a lot of wealth. So I imagine, and everybody in New York City is kind of living together, right? Like you're bumping into those type of kids. 100%. And they have all the best drugs. Yeah. And they're ready to buy whatever you're going to sell probably. But it's not surprising.

33:16Like you're this kid who's in a very challenging situation without any tools, without any guidance, has all of these emotions coming up as puberty, you know, starts to progress, right? What are you supposed to do with that? And when drugs and alcohol enter the picture, like they're the solution, like they're the cure to alcoholism and to addiction. And it's important to understand that they serve a purpose and they work. they ultimately you know stop working and then they destroy your life but there is a period of time where this is the medication that you've been looking for your whole life that allows you to finally like you know exhale a little bit saved my feel okay in your own body yeah they saved my life at that time at that point in my life I really do believe that they saved my life and I don't say that so that people can go out and say oh gosh that's what's gonna do it for me because ultimately they almost killed me as well, made me miserable and took everything, every ounce of self-confidence and self-worth from me, from every cell in my body at the end.

34:23But at that time in my life, it was, I had found what I was looking for. I needed an escape, an ultimate escape that I had complete control over. You know, I can control everything. I can control the good feelings, the bad feelings, the insecurities, the fear, all of it. I had complete control. And that felt like I had figured it out, you know, at that early age. And honestly, it was a lot of fun. I mean, you know, eventually the child services got deep involved. I was 15. They had, you know, threatened to put me in foster care or told my mother that, you know, she'd have to take me out of the house because my father and I were fighting too much, you know, physically.

35:08I just kind of packed a bag and I said, mom, I'm out. You know. At 15? At 15. Wow. And I was out. I just left and I didn't go back. I moved into NYU dorm with this girl that I had met. Uh-huh. And - College? Yeah. And - This is the other thing, like you're a hustler and you're a super handsome and wild and free on the streets of New York city, you're gonna find a way. I always landed on my feet. Yeah. And in like, I landed on my feet in some really amazing places, like lofts, and Soho. Sure. Those first few years, when I got out of my parents' house for real, and I was working in restaurants and then ultimately in nightclubs, I felt free, I did.

36:04And that's not sugarcoating it. That's being the truth. It was so scary for me as a kid. So scary for me. I didn't even realize, even though I've done so much work on myself, the 12 steps and therapies on and off for years and years, you know, I didn't know how scary it was for me as a kid until I had this experience with breath work that just opened a lot up for me recently. So do you want to footnote that for now? I want to footnote it. I want to footnote it. Yeah, yeah. I'm out in the street. I'm working in restaurants and selling a lot of drugs, you know, running the streets, going to nightclubs, traveling up and down the East Coast, going to parties and selling, you know, all sorts of drugs and making money and stayed in high school somehow.

36:50You know, I stayed in high school. You still showed up for school. I still showed up for school. I just assumed like school was done with. So it's funny. I mean, I did go to school, but I didn't go to school. Like I would show up and then I did like barely went to class. And I don't know, again, like those moments as a young kid having to look at my friend's parents and make them like me, I did the same thing with all of my teachers. Yeah. You know, like all of them. And I made sure that I just established a relationship with all of my teachers in school so that when I didn't show up, I could come back in and be like, you know, I've got a pretty fucked up situation at home.

37:29You know, I was just like a master manipulator, master. Even though I'm a good person, I just figured out how to do that in a lot of areas in my life. That also serves you well as a business person, as an entrepreneur. And I would imagine in the work that you've done, and maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, like having to undo that must have felt like a threat to another superpower, which is your people skills and how to kind of gather people together around a particular goal that you're self-interested in, right? Well, you know, it's a thin line. What's authentic and what is a manipulation?

38:12Totally. And I think because of me understanding pretty early on that I had this superpower of connecting with people. And even though it was a forced thing as a young person, it was a way for me to escape my home. I do believe that is inherently what I'm here to do, is connect with people. If someone were to ask me, so what is your superpower? I would say it's the ability to connect with people at scale in an authentic way. And I think at that age, I was just learning about that about myself. And then once I kind of figured it out that I could do this, when the drugs and alcohol became part of my life, now I knew I could use it as a weapon, you know.

39:09And then once I gave up the drugs and alcohol, I realized that it didn't have to be a weapon anymore. It is who I am.

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42:48So where do the restaurants enter the picture? Like you get your first job as a dishwasher or something like that? Like how do you enter that world? I get a job as a delivery boy in a vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side called the Candle Cafe, just still there. I know that place. I know. Binet. Do you know Binet? Who was the hostess there for a while? She's not there anymore. Anyway, I've eaten there many times. Bart and his wife. The owners. Yeah. Joy and Bart. Is it still there? Did it close? I think they're still there. Are they still there? I think they're still there. I was illegally 12 years old when I got a job there.

43:24Wow. And I was on rollerblades, and this is when rollerblades were cool. Uh-huh. Just have to throw that out there. I was delivering videos, VHS videos for couch potato video. And my buddy, Daniel, who is my partner in the meatball shop, who I'm staying with now, he's a year older than me. He was answering phones in the delivery department of this restaurant and said, hey man, you should come deliver food for us as well. So I was delivering videos, ended up getting the job at Candle Cafe delivering food for them. About six months after that, I also picked up a weed delivery opportunity. So I was delivering videos, food, and weed, and it kind of all worked out together.

44:05You know, like anybody who was ordering videos, I'd like sort of suss them out and be like, can I interest you in anything else? It's sort of the weed version of gaydar. Like, you know, is this a potential customer here? Yeah. In the restaurant business, it's called reading your customer. Read the table. Right. So I did that, ultimately got a job in the kitchen as a dishwasher and then a prep cook. And then they put me on the floor. And that began my journey in the world of restaurants. And I stayed working in restaurants my whole life until very recently when I launched Creatures of Habit. But I learned that the restaurant made me feel like I could be myself for the first time.

44:47I was like in this place where for whatever reason, my insecurities kind of like dissipated in the restaurants. Interesting. I wonder if that has something to do with just the chaos of that world and it has a very unique energy, right? That can make you feel alive if you're somebody who's well-suited to that. All the people and there's moving pieces and everything's happening really quickly and you do have to be able to interact with people and communicate with them to get anything done. It's exciting. Well, it's also like, you don't spend too much time with any one person. So, you know, it was like a bunch of mini conversations that I was having, you know, it was like, you're in and out.

45:29There's no risk to it. Yeah. You know, like I was like, let me help you here. Let me help you over here. And then I'd find some, you know, but I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. And I felt like that was, you know, this is where I was going to hang my hat for a while. And so I worked in restaurants all through high school, got a job in a nightclub, worked at one of, you know, New York City's sort of coolest nightclubs in the 90s. Life. Oh yeah. It was an amazing, it was an amazing place. I had, I mean, I was the youngest. I'm sure you saw a lot go down there. I was the youngest. I got a job there when I was 16.

46:03I was the youngest person by a long shot that worked at the club. And everybody loved that. everybody loved the cute 16 year old boy you know that like all of them everyone loved it and i took you know absolute advantage of that um and it was a lot of fun it's so crazy that would never happen now oh no way yeah no way if somebody saw a 16 year old kid running around the nightclub with a big you know it was a bar back so i'm like running through the club with a huge bucket of ice on my shoulder, you know, they'd call the cops, man. They'd be like, what's happening here? Was that Madonna era? Yeah.

46:40It was like 96. D-Light, like all of that was happening around that time, right? No, D-Light was a little earlier. D-Light was probably like 93, 94. This was like 96. But I was going to like the Roxy and Limelight and the tunnel in 1993 and 94 when I was 13 and 14 years old. You hear about like the New York City crazy club kids, you know, the movie kids. Like, I lived that life. And that was, you know, a big part of, I believe today, my success. Going through that. And I say this all the time because I believe it to be true. You have to go through what you go through to get to where you're at.

47:23Right? I've been asked also a bunch, like, do you regret any of this stuff? Because it got really ugly. There's no doubt. I mean, I was selling a lot of drugs, doing a lot of drugs. You know, I got, you know, held up at gunpoint, pistol whipped, duct tape, thrown into my bathtub, robbed, you know. I remember there was a, towards the end, I got violent because I was angry and I didn't care anymore. And I'm not a violent person, but the anger and the lack of self-confidence and self-respect that I had just made my fuse so short that I thought everybody was thinking about me, hated me, you know, that self-centered fear.

48:07And so if somebody did something that I didn't like, I could be laughing with you one minute and you said something to me that I didn't like, I would punch you right in the face and I didn't think twice about it. Like a Goodfellas moment, like a Joe Pesci sort of flip the switch. Not even like that. Like I'd be laughing with you and then you'd say something to me and I'd just be like, bop, you know, and people kind of were like, who is this crazy dude? I don't even want to be near this guy anymore towards the end. I got 86 from every single bar, you know, east of Allen, west of Essex, south of Houston and north of Canal.

48:40Like I literally did that whole square. I managed to get 86 from everywhere. And so the last two years were really bad, but I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't know if I'd want to go through it again, but I wouldn't change any of it because I really do believe that every moment of it has made me the guy I am today. And I can honestly say, looking at you today, that I love my life. I fucking love my life. I'm so blessed and grateful for my life. And if you took a snapshot of my household, 13 years old, to just a typical Saturday in my household today with my family, you would never, ever, ever say this person has any chance living this life.

49:35No way. Zero chance. And I'm not talking about material shit. I'm talking about like this human being going through what he went through here. The picture that's painted does not end here. It ends like this kid in jail or dead. what was going through my mind and the experiences that I was having in those days. What do you make of that? What do you want people to understand about that and how it applies to their own lives? Very simple. You can allow your past to predict your present or future. You certainly can. All day long, you can be a fucking victim. And you can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow.

50:21Or not. or not. And I've chose to not allow what happened in my past to dictate what I do think, say, or how I conduct in my life today. I just don't. But also to own your past and to not deny it, to accept it for what it was and to, you know, honor yourself having had to endure it, right? We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. And your life is a miracle. And that miracle is built upon sobriety and discipline, but also, you know, staying in it until the miracle happens. It's a spiritual program, right? So the letting go, the, you know, release of that self-will or holding onto that sense of who you were at that time and allowing other people in and making yourself available for something new and something beyond your ability to control as somebody who needed to control their life, that's like the fucking gears upon which that change is constructed.

51:27Yeah, I also think that, and it's no news, lots and lots of successful people that have done extraordinary things have deep traumas and adversity. You know, it's just, it's not news. Yeah, it's the engine of resilience if you survive it and you're able to, you know, learn from those experiences. And it's the dilemma of every successful person who's emerged out of their version of your experience to then have kids, you know, and you wouldn't wish, you know, any of those experiences on your children, you're creating this better life for them, but it's a life that lacks, you know, the type of challenges that you had to face to become who you are.

52:14I guess the other piece of what the message is and what I believe I'm here to do today. Anyone can change at any time. It's never too late. You're never too far gone. You might think you are. You might not believe that with every ounce of life in you that it's too late. It's too far gone. I'm too old. I'm on skid row. There's no way. It's just, I got to throw in the towel. And it's just not true. It's just not true. You know, something that I did in October with Creatures of Habits. So October is Alcohol and Substance Abuse Awareness Month. And in October, I partnered with GORUCK and a foundation called Release Recovery.

53:02Sure. And I worked on this for a long time. I worked on it for about a year and a half, but I had a custom Creatures of Habit GORUCK weight vest made. and when I got sober, running was a huge part of my life. Running became, you know, just a big part of my life. And I used to do this run in the city that I kind of coined the triple bypass, but I lived in Williamsburg and I would run over the Williamsburg Bridge, down to the Brooklyn Bridge, over the Brooklyn Bridge, back over the Manhattan Bridge, back up to the Williamsburg and back home. I said, you know, that run was so monumental for me. I remember like probably like the first, within the first year of sobriety, fitness was a huge part of my, I don't know if I'd be sitting here today if I wasn't introduced to fitness right away.

53:57But I remember like it was yesterday, the Williamsburg Bridge, when you're going down towards Manhattan from Brooklyn, far on the Manhattan side, there's these orange metal like sort of rafters. Yeah. That's exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. And I was running over that bridge and the sky was just the perfect blue. It was just the perfect blue. And I'm running over that bridge and I'm looking up and these like red rafters are sort of contrasting against the perfect blue. And I just said to myself, I can't fucking believe that this is what I'm doing right now. Like I am so lucky. How did I get here?

54:43How was I able to go from where I was to where I am now? And I remember kind of just like putting my arms out and being like, oh my God, thank you. Thank you. I'm alive. Not only am I alive, but I'm living. And so when I was thinking about what to do, I wanted to do something that was going to make an impact. not like donate money to some charity. I wanted to be able to say, okay, man, I'm gonna get in there. I'm gonna try to help save lives in the world of this thing that I know, you know, so well. So I designed this Go Ruck Weight Vest and I said, all right, Go Ruck, we're gonna invite as many people as we can to raise money and we're gonna do the walk.

55:26We're gonna ruck the run that I did, you know, for the first many years in sobriety, you know, four or five days a week. And so sure enough, we got the weight vest made. You know, we raised$75 ,000. A hundred people showed up, flew in from all, you know, all over the country to do this thing. And we all rucked October 14th. Last year. Yeah. Yeah, wow. And we all rucked. And it was so like powerful for me to like know that all these people were rucking this run that I did that when I was really in the early days of doing this. and because of these people coming together to do this, there's a good chance that we can like literally save lives because that money is going towards getting people who are ready and willing to change that don't have the cash to get into treatment.

56:20We're paying the whole way. We're just going to pay for their whole entire. Basically underwriting their treatment, right? I mean, Release does incredible work. Zach Clark is the name of the guy who founded that. that he's really made a huge impact in the sober universe and the work that he's doing and that way in which he's helping people. Really good friend of mine. Yeah, yeah, he's cool. And a runner, big runner, right? Yep. Yeah, yeah. Do you know Dan Churchill then too as well? Oh yeah, of course. He's coming in here next week. Oh yeah, Dan's a good friend. He's gonna be in town and I know that those guys are buddies.

56:49Was he part of that ruck? Did he do the ruck for you? He didn't do the ruck. I know that he wanted to do the ruck, but he wasn't able to make the ruck. I think he was, I don't remember, he was traveling somewhere. I love that story, but I want to drill down a little bit more on this notion of empowering people to understand that it's never too late and that you can always change. And I think something to underscore, highlight here is within that reality, we can all change. All we have is today. Everybody's got one day. You can't do anything about tomorrow. You can't do anything about yesterday.

57:24Just what what are we doing right now? What gets lost is the patience and the time window. When you Google you, or if you Google me, it makes it look like these transformations took place relatively quickly. And it wasn't the case for me. It wasn't the case for you. So I wanna go, and this kind of plays into the fitness aspect of your story. Like those early days when you met Marcus, you're in the program, You get introduced to fitness and martial arts. But there's that period of time, at least for me, I'm curious if this was your experience. All you're doing is what you can control that day, which is basically I'm going to wake up.

58:11I'm going to go to a meeting. I don't know what my life is right now. I'm in this weird purgatory state where I can't see my way forward. I know I can't go back to what I was doing before. but I barely know what I'm gonna be doing today other than I'm gonna feed myself. I'm gonna try to hit the pillow without taking a drink or a drug. I'm gonna talk to people in the program and maybe take care of myself in the gym or something like that. And it's a great time. It's sort of like your version of that is very much a montage in this movie, in this screenplay of like doing kickboxing and going to meetings and stuff.

58:48But when you're in it, you don't know if that's ever gonna end. You might think, well, this is my life now. It's never gonna change, right? If you told me when I got sober, if you told me that my life would be what it is today, then I would have zero. Like I wouldn't trust you. Yeah, I mean, I look around, I'm like, what is happening? What is happening right now, Michael? How is this even real? Right, totally. Like if you knew, like, do you understand? And it's not because I planned it. I mean, you're very directed, all of that sort of, you know, I can be a lot of discipline too, but I can promise you that what's happening right here, right now was not the result of some plan that I hatched for myself.

59:39Totally, yeah. I'll tell the story because I think it's a good story and I think it'll help sort of, you know, paint a picture of a few things that happened later on. But anyway, I reached out to Karen and that's the woman who would, you know, sort of introduced me to Marcus. She's the woman that took me in when I was younger. I was working at Life. She was bartending. I was bartender. She kind of was like an older sister type. And when I knew I, when Frank said, you got to get sober, you got to show up at the restaurant in the morning. She was the next person I called, called her. She called Marcus.

1:00:12Marcus showed up and listened to me for the first time.

1:00:18he basically said, you're going to go to this meeting. And then after this meeting, you're going to come down to this Muay Thai kickboxing gym and meet me there. I had never heard of Muay Thai before, right? Like the only thing that I know about kickboxing is like the terrible fights I'd had in the street had nothing to do with kickboxing, but I knew that there was some sort of physical component to it. Did you play sports as a kid? I did. I did. So when I was young, I fell in love with roller hockey and then ultimately heist hockey. But it was short-lived, you know, because things got ugly pretty quickly for me at 12, 13 years old, and that's when I stopped.

1:01:05But I just listened to what Marcus had to say. So I went to a meeting that morning. I went to the Muay Thai gym right after that meeting, and I met him down there, and there was another guy there, Gavin, who's also a very good friend of mine. And these guys are both sober, Muay Thai guys. And they basically said, look, dude, here's the deal. You're young, you're 23. You've got unbelievable life ahead of you. You don't think so. We know, because they'd already been sober for like 10 years. They were like, you don't think so, but we know so. So you can either listen to what we have to say and do what we have to say to the T or not.

1:01:45And if you listen to what we have to say, they weren't playing, you know, they weren't bullshitting with these or suggestions. They weren't doing that. They were like, this is what you got to fucking do. This is it. If you listen to this and you do these things, you will have a life beyond your wildest dreams. Period. We guarantee. And I'm like, I mean, these guys look cool. They look tough. I'm like, okay, fuck it. And you needed guidance and some strong male role models in your life. I hated authority. I hated authority and I still struggle with male authority. Still. At that time, I don't know what, outside of the fact that I thought they were cool, I don't know what propelled me to want to literally listen to every word that they said and hold on to those words like it was the last thing I did.

1:02:33But basically they wrote a plan for me. And the plan was this. Wake up as early as you can. get out of bed, brush your teeth, wash your face, put on your contact lenses. That for me in those days was like a massive ask. That was like a big ask, right? Like brush my teeth. I mean, I don't even know. Like, did I ever brush? I don't know. You know, wash my face never happens. Never, never happened. I never washed my face outside of being in the shower. You know, You know, take a piss, you know, we do that. So brush my teeth, wash my face, take a piss, and then drop down on my knees and pray. And I was like, huh?

1:03:15They were like, don't ask questions. Just drop down on your knees and ask God for help because you need help and you have no idea how to ask for it. So if you ask for help in the morning on your knees, the chances of you asking for help later on in the day will just be greater. We don't give a shit if you believe in God. We don't care what you talk to or who you pray to. Just do it. And I was like, okay. So they said, get on your knees and pray, put on a pair of sneakers and go out for a walk or a run. That could be a walk around the block. That could be a run around the block. That could be nine miles.

1:03:52That could be whatever you want it to be. Just get out and move your body right away, right away. And I said, okay. And then they said, as soon as you get back, make a bowl of oatmeal. a big, huge bowl of oatmeal. Add whatever you want to it. But we're telling you to eat oatmeal because it's cheap, it's relatively healthy, it's inexpensive, and we need you to start putting healthy shit into your body. Right as soon as you're done with that oatmeal, go to this meeting at 10 a.m. Get your hand up and say who you are and what you are. And who you are is Michael Chernow, and what you are is an alcoholic.

1:04:27And I was like, okay. And then they said right after that meeting, come down to the Muay Thai gym and we're going to kick your fucking ass. And we're going to teach you how to be, at that time, you know, could be controversial to say today, but we're going to teach you how to be a man. And we're going to teach you about integrity. We're going to teach you about honesty. We're going to teach you how to get back up, which honestly, in my opinion, is probably the greatest lesson I've learned to date. the only thing I think we have to do perfectly in life is get back up. and I learned that there with those guys because they really did knock me down physically all the time, constantly.

1:05:01I got my ass handed to me every single day in the rings of Muay Thai and the one thing I prided myself on was always getting back up. And then they said, right after we're done training, we're gonna train here for two, two and a half hours. You're gonna eat chicken and broccoli. You're gonna take a nap and you're gonna go to work. You're gonna eat chicken and broccoli as early as you can for dinner and you're gonna go to bed as early as you can and that's just going to be a rinse and replete. And before you go to bed, you're going to drop down on your knees and you're just going to say thanks.

1:05:30And that's it. That's all you got to do. And I was like, I mean, you know, I just did it. I did it. What a gift though, to have these guys invested in you and giving you direction when you needed it. And to almost be this safety net, like just do these things and you can always come by the gym. we're here. We're going to tell you what's what and to have a sense of what you needed to do every hour of the day. You went back into the bars and the restaurants? You were working there? Were you behind the bar like sober serving up the drinks? Frank gave me my job back relatively quickly. Right. Frank's the name of the, it's a pretty fancy restaurant, right?

1:06:15It's not. I mean, it's a very, very popular restaurant. It's this New York City, like iconic restaurant, super small Italian restaurant called Frank on 2nd Avenue between 5th and 6th Street. Been there now probably close to 30 years. And Frank is like a surrogate dad to me. He was part of the cohort of humans that helped save my life. I owe him, you know, I don't know what I owe him, but he was an angel in my life for sure. And so that program that I was given, that daily structure, is very close to how I live my life today. You know? Nothing's changed, but everything has changed, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's very close.

1:07:02Consistency, this is the thing. Yeah. Right? You got sober young. So you're 43, now it's 20 years ago. Yeah, so this August will be 20 years sober. Yeah. The same principles still apply. 100%. Yeah. It's that thing though, where you're like, am I ever gonna get behind the velvet rope and get the next level of tools here? It's like, no, it's the same shit, man. Get up, wash your face, brush your teeth, right? I mean, my morning routine has certainly grown, but it starts that way every day. It starts that way every day. Discipline and structure are essential. I think there's the three things and you'll probably agree.

1:07:52I think discipline, structure, and patience are just essential for accomplishing anything great. It's just, if you don't have those three things, very difficult, very difficult to like put numbers up on the board in any area of your life. I'm not talking about just business and stature. I'm talking about in any area of your life with the absence of structure, discipline, and patience, there's no staying power. I think those all need to be broadly defined and construed as well, because I think there's a sort of culture around discipline that understands it only in the context of like doing hard things physically, you know, who's going to carry the boats or like, you know, the idea of like getting out of your comfort zone.

1:08:41Of course, we all have to do that, we have to apply discipline and welcome hard things into our life. But at some point, especially with consistency and over time, like for you to go to the gym and do a hard workout, that requires discipline. But also you've been doing this for a long time. It's actually not that hard, right? Like it's what you prefer to do. I love to do it. And so the discipline has to come in in those other areas of your life that you are still turning a blind eye to that need redress, And I think that gets missed in the kind of emotional and mental growth aspect of what it means to be disciplined and committed to your constant evolution.

1:09:20Anybody who subscribes to something that would require discipline understands that there's a period of time. Traditionally, it's not a short period of time. Typically, it's a long period of time. But that discipline is ultimately going to equate to freedom. at a certain point, right? And I do think that anything that requires discipline is also deeply engulfed in fear. You know, deeply engulfed in fear. There's just like a cloud of fear when you're like, okay, I need discipline to do this. It's typically like, I'm scared and I don't know if I can do it, but I'm gonna take the risk. And so it's like, you know, discipline propels courage and growth for me.

1:10:10And I get a lot of shit from people today. Three, four years ago, you know, walking through my morning routine, which is ultimately how I pour the foundation every single day, which is my structure. I don't care what you think. I don't care how silly you think it is. I don't care if you roll your eyes and say, get to fucking work, dude. Like for me, I need it. It makes me feel really good to do it. So I have a pretty intense morning structure, right? And it really truly does set me up for success. And it allows me to like face the day with wins. So I really do believe in structure, hardcore, hardcore structure.

1:10:53And structure for me is basically understanding that I have a list of things to do in order to take the next step. And, you know, I kind of like correlate it to if you were building a home, you got the dirt, you bought the dirt, you bought the property, you bought the land, you're building a home. No one's going to say, all right, man, let's go get some wood. Let's go get some nails and let's go build on that dirt. No one's going to tell you to do that, if they want to build something successful, they're going to say, all right, well, we're going to bring in the dozer and the backhoe. We're going to excavate and we're going to put underpinnings and we're going to pour a ton of concrete in there so that when the wind comes and the storms come, that house is not going to fall because it's going to be sitting on top of solid rock concrete, you know, and that is literally how I think about my day.

1:11:52If you start your day on dirt, When the rain comes, that dirt's gonna turn to mud and that mud is gonna sink your goddamn house. The other piece to that is that if you watch a house under construction, for the longest time, it doesn't look like anything's happening. There's bulldozers like pushing dirt around, right? And then at some point they pour the concrete for the foundation. That like takes the longest amount of time. And if you're just driving by and noticing it, you're like, are they ever gonna build that house? Nothing's happening. The framing then goes up quickly, but only because all the time and energy went into building the foundation correctly.

1:12:30And I think that applies obviously to life. Like nothing's happening until suddenly it is because the whole time, every day you've been chipping away, building that foundation so that it's rock solid. And that's the result of discipline and patience and welcoming challenge into your life and learning from losses and failures and everything that gets packed into that. I also think that you said it earlier, yesterday is long gone, tomorrow not guaranteed. Every day, like the way I think about life, today is my life. Like what happens in life happens now. Doesn't happen yesterday. It's already happened.

1:13:18It doesn't happen tomorrow. like what happens in our lives truly happens right now. And I learned that from, you know, the power of now really, where I kind of like heard him say like, whatever happens happens right now. It happens right now. You could be present for it or not. And so that building of the structure, that point of the foundation for me every morning is really like, if I want to live my life this way, I know I'm not a unique person, but I do know that I require a certain amount of structure and discipline in order to live the life I want to live. And the cool thing about the decisions that I've made over the last 20 years is that I know that I have the ability to do this shit all the time.

1:14:14It makes me a better person. It makes me a better father. And at the end of the day, really all I care about

1:14:26is being happy with my wife and kids. That is like, I really, I love my friends. I love, you know, business. I love the fitness, you know, endeavors. but really, I want to have the best fucking life with my wife and kids. I really do. How old are your kids? Nine and six. Yeah. You had a scare, right? Well, I've got two sons. So my first son, his name is Dakota. Yeah, Dakota is an amazing child, but when he was born, his eyes weren't tracking. So, like, you know, they always say, like, hey, you know, the eyes should be tracking, make sure everything is healthy. and when he was born like I noticed that that was like something weird so we went to the pediatrician after the first month he would like turn his head and his eyes would kind of stay there and then they would like kind of slowly come over and so I said to the pediatrician hey this is happening like what should we do and she was like oh you know some kids just take a little bit more time to develop and you know it didn't change after eight weeks nine weeks ten weeks I was like hey, this isn't changing.

1:15:38Like, what should we do? We should see a specialist. And they referred us to this optometrist or ophthalmologist, whichever it was. That woman said, you know, I don't really know. Let me, I think you should go see a pediatric neurologist. And that of course is like, oh gosh, a neurologist, you know, that's a little scary. So we went to the pediatric neurologist and he just did not have great bedside manner and was like very kind of, didn't make it like super comfortable for us, which is what it is, but ultimately did an MRI and found that his cerebellum was shaped differently by a couple of millimeters.

1:16:24And so they said, okay, well, we want to run a massive gene study on him and the two of you. And now Donna and I are scared because they didn't really allude to any, you know, potential of what this could be. But they were like, we want to run a gene study. And so that gene study took three or four months. They took our blood at the same time altogether. And then they called us into the office. He was about six or seven months old. And they were like, we've got some stuff to talk to you about. and Donna and I were like, okay. And they said, there's two genes, mutated genes that we identified in his gene study.

1:17:09One of them is from you, Michael. One of them is from you, Donna. The good news is the two genes are not identical, meaning, you know, you have two sets of genes. If there's a mutation on a specific gene and another mutation on the specific gene is very, very easy to identify exactly what it is. But the two different mutated genes have only been recorded less than a dozen times in history, the two different mutated genes that he has. And so they said, there's two things. One, there's a good chance he'll never walk. And Donna and I were like, what? Wow. And they were like, You know, he has a very low muscle tone potential disorder and there's a good chance that he won't walk.

1:18:06And I'm at that point like devastated. And then they follow that up by saying, and out of the 12 or so recorded situations like this that we have, 30 % of the children developed terminal brain cancer. So he's going to need to get an MRI every six months until he's eight years old. And I mean, you know, talk about like... That's as heavy as it gets, man. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know what to make of that. Donna and I were just completely gutted. The gene doctor and the neurologist. I can't imagine what it would have to be like to tell a set of parents that, right? You know, they're very poker-faced.

1:19:03There was like very little like emotion from them because I can only imagine that that's something that they have to do relatively often. And it's just not, you know, they're talking about somebody's like - I never do that. Yeah. So. Wow. I'm grateful that I have tools, you know, that was like a very, very, very difficult time. And I just kind of went into this mode where I was like, no, like I'm not, that's not going to be the case with my son. No way. It's just not going to happen. Can't let it, I'm not going to let it happen. I'm going to, I'm going to fight this one. Just like I fought my addiction.

1:19:49Just like I fought in the ring of Muay Thai. Just like I fought for that first marathon I ran. Just like, you know, I was like, I know how to fight. I know how to fight. I'm going to fucking fight. And we did. We got immediate early intervention. We had a guy show up at our apartment three days a week. and I prayed my ass off and

1:20:22Dakota is

1:20:27he's fucking amazing he's doing good he does karate he plays soccer he jumps off I was on the phone on the way over here today and he was telling me how he fell off his four-wheeler. He's totally awesome. So when he took his first steps, that must have been a big thing. Didn't happen until he was two years and two months old. I had an unwavering belief that this kid was going to be okay. Where does that come from?

1:21:09I don't want to sound too woo-woo, but I have to because I can't tell you what it comes from outside of the fact that I pray every day and I've developed a relationship with a power greater than myself that I fucking believe takes care of me. Legit, I do. And I don't know what it is at all. I don't care. I don't question it. I don't analyze it. But I do know that I have a relationship that when shit goes down and when shit's not going down, I believe I can connect to and get through whatever I've got to get through. I mean, I'm sorry for getting emotional, but it's It's just like when I think about the kid, you know, he's, I mean, I love that human.

1:21:56And watching my son, you know, watching him get like his, watching him getting his like karate belt promotion last week in there with all the rest of the kids. And he's got a balance issue, you know. He'll probably have it until he gets old enough to realize that it's happening and then he's going to want to take action.

1:22:26But I can't tell you why I had that unwavering belief that he was going to be okay. And it doesn't mean that I wasn't scared and I didn't have fear. But it does mean that I was able to fucking charge through it with courage. And that is what I think this, like, sobriety thing is.

1:23:08I own a bunch of spectacles and I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-roca pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors. And I got to tell you, It was a disaster. Every three to five seconds, I had to take my hands off the handlebars and push my glasses back up my nose until I got so frustrated I just tossed them aside. This is the dilemma of every active but optically impaired person I know. And as someone who has relied upon eyewear every single day since I was five years old, it is also the source of endless aggravation. rovation, thankfully now eradicated thanks to Broca, the stylish performance eyewear company founded by two former Stanford swimming teammates of mine who have gifted everyone like me and, quite frankly, the world with their fashionable line of super lightweight prescription glasses and sunglasses with patented no-slip nose and temple pads that are just impervious to sweat and no matter what you do, remain locked on your mug no matter how intense your workout.

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1:24:44When you got emotional a moment ago, what was coming up for you? I think it is, you asked me, what is it? And I think in combination with me thinking about my son and how he's okay. And knowing that I have a relationship with God.

1:25:12I'm the luckiest guy sitting on the planet. Is that like truly what it felt like for me? Like I believe that I am one of the luckiest guys. And I know that I've put a lot of work into my life over the last 20 years. But man.

1:25:32I think that there are people who have great lives, people that have overcome things to live really beautiful lives, people who are innately grateful, like have the self-awareness to recognize that, and other people who have a very determined, dedicated practice of cultivating gratitude so that they can be in contact with that, which allows you to feel grounded and understand what's really important. My sense is that you're somebody who, I don't know if you're innately grateful, but you certainly cultivate gratitude, like making sure that you're connecting with gratitude and in touch with how good your life is, is a very conscious practice on your part.

1:26:19I mean, the first part of my day every single day, the first thing I do, call it corny, is upon waking, I flip back my eye mask, I open up my eyes. If I'm in my bedroom, which is, you know, where I like to be. I look up at the ceiling fan. I smile from ear to ear, like shit eating grin. And I go right into gratitude immediately. First thing, immediate, first 30 seconds of my day, all the shit that I'm grateful for. And I do that because, well, I really do it because I met somebody who told me that that's something that they do and it's been very helpful. I appreciate the honesty. Look, you know, making a gratitude list.

1:27:08These are program things also. We're taught this early and often. This like first way to wake up with this sort of smile and gratitude. That very specific practice. Yeah, this woman, Dana Cowan, who was the chief editor at Food and Wine magazine for 25 years. She told me that that's what she does. And that was probably in 2018, 19. And I was like, really? She smiles like a big old smile first thing in the morning. I'm like, let me just try that. And I started doing that and I do it every single day and it's uncomfortable. But I also was told from early on that, you know, as an alcoholic, I wake up with untreated alcoholism and anxiety every day.

1:27:52So like, what can I do first thing in the morning to say like, F you anxiety. Let me give the, let me tell you how I want to live my life. and that's what I do. And so, yes, gratitude is, I am beyond grateful for my life. How do you deal with the conflict or the tension between self-will and surrender and letting go? Because you're somebody who's like, we're gonna fight this. This is what we're gonna do. This is not happening. I'm gonna make sure, you know, that control instinct of, you know, being at the helm, being, you know, in charge of the command center versus the letting go and the surrender and the allowing and the acceptance and all the kind of fucking, you know, recovery parlance.

1:28:39That's part of, you know, what it means to be this spiritual being in connection with something that, you know, we can't fully understand that is in control in ways that we are not. I think it's a great question. And I think the hard part is understanding when to turn one on and off. And for me, and I've had to learn the hard way, of course, many, many, many, many, many, many times, specifically with my wife, because I am a fixer. I like to want to fix things, you know. I've had to learn like, hey, with Donna, she does not want you to come fix her shit. Don't like try to fix everything. Just tell her you love her.

1:29:29Tell her you love her. And that's been an amazing practice for me. I think when it came to CODA, I felt that I just needed to take immediate action. and

1:29:48I've learned and this is sort of where the patience comes in I've learned that just because I take action doesn't mean I'm going to get what I want and typically anything that's noteworthy takes time and so with that I had to like push it into sixth gear because I was immediately in fear. And I'm like, you know, what do I know about fear today? Like if I run from fear, if I brush it under the rug, if I don't deal with it, it's not going anywhere. It's just not going anywhere. I got to get into it. You know? And so now like I've kind of committed to this, like the fear is there. I look for it and I've run at it as fast as I can.

1:30:34And I know that that's not the greatest way to be with everything in my life. It's just not. But I am sort of like inclined to want to do that. Where does the fear show up for you these days? I think in a number of different ways. Business. I get fear around business. You know, I'm a startup entrepreneur. I've built three companies over the last 15 years and so you know three different companies in 15 years it's a five year eclipse right basically and so in the startup you know it takes a kind of person to be able to navigate and power through how stressful it is to build a business and raise money and you know, weather the storms and, you know.

1:31:26Yeah. And lots of high highs and low lows. Yeah. You know, like I think about it, like you're an endurance athlete, one of the best in the world, right? You spend so much time, so much time training for an endurance race. So much time, way more time training than you do on the race. and way more time racing than you do finishing the race. In the world of building businesses, you're training for the race, you're running the race. And like when you get to like crossing the finish line is like so short-lived, so short-lived, you know? Like I'm like looking up at the mountain all the time. So I'm always looking up.

1:32:14I'm like, man, there's that summit up there. You know, we'll get there. and then you summit every once in a while and you look to your left and you look to your right and you're like, high five, man. All right, man, let's go get that next mountain. I think the difference though is that in the entrepreneurship startup world or just business in general, you're racing every day. Like you don't get to like train and then show up and do the race and be evaluated then. You're being evaluated every single day. Like every day has its own training, racing and finish line, right? That the world is judging you by And that's basically becomes, you know, instrumental in whether you're going to get to live to see another day to train, race and finish.

1:32:56Well, I think the cool thing about being an entrepreneur is every day really is training day. It's training day because there's so many things that come up that are a first. Like all the time, you're like, oh, my God, like how do I that? That hasn't happened before. What do I do now? And you're literally training for, you know, I mean, I hear what you're saying about running the race every single day. And yes, like you're on the track and you're hitting it hard. But there's so many things. Like when you're on race day, you've kind of prepared for the course. You kind of know what you're up against.

1:33:37You know where the hills are. You know where it can get, you know, the terrain can get rocky. But you're saying it's more like the Barkley marathons where they don't tell you what the course is or what time you're going to start and you have to figure it out every day. So you're training on the course. Right. And then you learn all this stuff and then the next day the course is completely different and there is no map for it. I mean there's definitely some, you know, similarity obviously and there's definitely a lot of things that you're able to get better and better and better at. but I mean, every single day I look across my business partner and I'm like, my gosh, man, like, does this ever end?

1:34:17I'm like - Well, the interesting thing is that, I mean, we're like over an hour and a half into this and we haven't even talked about like your whole, all the restaurants that, you know, so you had this incredible success with Meatball Shop. You repair your life. You did a lot of kickboxing. You did all that shit, right? Like life comes together. you're in a position to now step into the restaurant world in a new way as an owner. And you open up this place, Meatball Shop. I mean, it's a long story, but like it becomes this massive sensation, super successful. How many of them? Ultimately, there were five of them, six of them?

1:34:54Six of them. Six of them? Yeah. So right out of the gate, like your first true entrepreneurial venture is this massive win. And does that lead you to believe that like you just have the touch and that this is how it's going to go every single time? I mean, there's a lot of peril packed into that story too. And, you know. You know, you asked me about like where does fear show up in my life? And I had to stop and think about it for a minute because there's fear like all throughout. But the one bizarre thing for me is that like people would ask me before going into business in a meatball shop, they'd be like, oh my gosh, like, aren't you scared?

1:35:34And I look at them and be like, I'm not. Like, I'm not. Like, for whatever reason, there was something that did not allow that fear to impact and or penetrate my desire to want to do it. Because you were keeping the fear in abeyance or because you just felt like, no, I actually know this is going to work. The latter. Yeah. To a fault. I have a level of optimism in my life that has carried all the things that I've done, actually. I believe every Sunday morning that the New York Giants will win the fucking football game. I do, man. Good luck with that. Yeah, I know. You know, like I just have a level of optimism that I think is, I just, there was not a doubt in my mind.

1:36:24Similar with Dakota. There just was not a doubt in my mind, even though I was scared. There was a level of optimism that I had that I was just like, no, this is going to work. Do you work on that or do you just think that's bred into you? I think it's bred in me, honestly. I do. And, you know, the story of Meatball Shop, Daniel and I, we were standing in the back of the restaurant, little restaurant on Stanton Street between Orchard and Allen, 2010. Lower East Side. Lower East Side, coming out of a depression, kind of a depression, coming out of a recession. And we had paper up on the windows.

1:37:03Our publicist at the time was very adamant about you cannot show anybody the inside of this restaurant. New York Magazine had the exclusive, you know, there's like a whole thing, you know, in restaurant press. And I said, I remember standing next to Dan and I was like, dude, we are going to kill it. This is going to be awesome. Like I was so ready. You know, both of us had spent our lives working in restaurants. So like I was ready for the war. I just was like fired up for it. Daniel was like, no shot. No one's out there. This is going to end terribly. And it was like, that's, you know, the two of us are that way.

1:37:44Sure enough, pulled the paper off the windows, looked outside, over 200 people online to eat, pulled them all in front of the restaurant. I was like, guys, this is insane. You got to come out in front of the restaurant. Took a picture, Daily News, you know, wrote a piece on using the picture. And, you know, just absolute mayhem in the best way. From there on, yeah. Yeah. It's wild. I mean, we were cooking meatballs. Just no clue that this was going to happen. No dream, you know, but just who would have thought that a restaurant, a little restaurant. But within six months, we were on Good Morning America.

1:38:26Within eight months, we were on the Today Show. Within the first year, we were on Jay Leno, Chelsea Handler, Jimmy Fallon. You know, crazy, craziness, craziness. People are like, who are these guys? Right. You become this media figure and you being kind of the face of the whole thing ends up causing some issues with Daniel and your partnership, right? Yeah, yeah. I felt very comfortable on camera. I enjoyed it. I felt like, I just felt very comfortable there. and the media also enjoyed me, you know? And I think that became a problem for Dan and I because, I mean, I could see why that would be a problem.

1:39:10You know, he didn't love it as much as I did and he wasn't as comfortable as I was, although he's good. But the public impression that this was all you and it wasn't an even-handed partnership between the two of you, even if he's not comfortable and doesn't want to do all the press that you seem to enjoy probably graded on him. I actually don't know if it was perceived that way. I mean, I really don't. I don't know if it was perceived that it was all me. And I think that it was the meatball guys. But I think like when they would call for the media, you know, it would start with me. And I think it became tension there around that.

1:39:51And in a partnership, whoever's listening, you know, the millions of people that are listening. I'm sure there's lots of people that are in partnerships here, whether it's a marriage or a business partnership, whatever. Once one person feels like the other person is not doing enough and that trust breaks right there, I'm bringing more to the table. It's the beginning of the end. And that's kind of what happened. And we built this amazing thing in New York and we opened up a bunch of restaurants And it was just people were, you know, and it's still open, still there 14 years later and still considered one of the greatest restaurants in New York.

1:40:35You know, people are like, you say meatball shop and people are like, oh, I love that restaurant. You know, it used to be, oh, that's my favorite restaurant in New York. Anywhere I'd be, anywhere I'd go, you know, if I say meatball shop, you know, people's heads turn. And then it sort of like evolved from, oh, that's my favorite restaurant in New York to every time my family comes in, I take them to the meatball shop. anytime my friends come into New York, that's where we take them. And that for me actually meant far more than that's my favorite restaurant because your favorite restaurant changes over time.

1:41:07Yeah, things go in and out of vogue pretty quickly, right? It's sort of the difference between a book that hits the New York Times bestseller list and then is kind of gone a little bit shortly thereafter and the perennial bestseller. Like, do you wanna be a New York institution or do you want the flash and the glam of like being the super hip place that is unsustainable for almost every nightclub or restaurant or bar. Yeah. So we became NR. Like Meatball Shop is a New York institution, you know. However, it was tough. It was tough to sustain the partnership. And we had a huge opportunity, huge opportunity, financial opportunity.

1:41:52And I couldn't convince my partner, Dan, that it was the right opportunity. He thought it was worth more money than... Basically, a private equity firm came in, wanted to buy it at a massive valuation. Massive. Unheard of. 20-something X valuation of earnings. And I was like, dude. And we were We're already fighting at that point, but I was like, dude, this is it. You put in 20 grand, I put in 20 grand. Each of us put in 40, we raised 350. We paid those investors back a bunch over already. And then we have this financial partner who's given us money to scale the thing. I was like, dude, you and I are gonna put millions of dollars in our bank account.

1:42:37We're 30, I'm 31, you're 33, 32, 33. Like, this is it, let's go now. couldn't convince him, worth more money. I'm like, oh my gosh, like this can't be, you know, and we were already at each other's throat. We were thinking about where to take the business out of market. I knew that the media was what really helped propel this business and put us on the map. So I was like, man, like we got to go to LA. Like if we go to LA and we open up in LA, we're just going to get smashed up onto the billboards again because the media is going to love it. We'll do all the LA local stuff. We'll have all the celebs come into the restaurant.

1:43:15Like it'll be like this, it'll be the resurgence of the New York City thing in 2010, just in 2015. And, you know, he wanted to open up in, which operationally makes more sense, Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, you know. We had a meeting with Ron Shaikh, who's the founder of Albon Pan and now Panera Bread. And he met with us at one of our restaurants and we were talking to him. And there's two things that he said in that meeting that I'll never forget. One was, you know, once we opened up the restaurant, there were so many knockoffs of the meatball shop globally. I mean, there was like tons and tons of people opening up meatball restaurants.

1:43:56In the way kind of everybody did that to Dave Chang too with Momfuku. Exactly. Yeah, all the ramen shops and all that kind of stuff. So I remember saying to Ron, like, what do we do with all the competition? Like all the people that are knocking us off. And he looked at me, deep eye contact, and he said, are you fucking kidding me? And I was like, I'm asking you. He said, the second you spend thinking about what other people are doing is the second you're not spending thinking about what you're doing. Who gives a shit what they do? All you should care about is what's going on in front of you. And I was like, great piece of advice.

1:44:33That helped. And then he said, and this is why I think kind of stuck in Daniel's mind. And, you know, he basically took out like the back of our menu. He had a marker. We had these markers where you check things off on the restaurant. And he went boom and slammed the marker down on the thing. And he was like, if this pen were to bleed right now, you need to grow concentrically like the ink would come out of this pen. So you don't grow here. You don't grow there. You grow here, here, here, here, here, here, here. So you can scale it responsibly, operationally. and I think that's kind of stuck in Daniel's mind and for me I was like yeah fuck that idea like I wanted to go where the media was and so we couldn't agree on that couldn't agree on the PE deal and I ended up selling a bunch of my equity in 2014 to the partners and I thought that I had what it took to do it again so that's when I went out and put a lot of my own money and then raised a little bit of money to open up my second restaurant concept Seymour's sustainable seafood.

1:45:37And I did it on Broom and Mulberry Street. And then I replayed the tape and did the exact same thing. Six of them total, and then ultimately exited, right? Yeah. That's how it worked. I mean, two successes like that in a row is crazy when you think about how volatile the restaurant world is. I mean, everybody will tell you don't go into the restaurant business. It's terrible investment. Almost every restaurant fails, setting aside, you know, kind of pandemic issues that afflicted the industry at large. How do you account for your success in the light of, you know, the statistics that would say, like, almost all of these things fail?

1:46:16Like, what did you do differently? Or what was the secret that allowed you to transcend those odds? Culture. That's it. Culture. I believe that I'm like a real culture cowboy in the world of restaurants. I put culture first. What does that mean? That means that I don't care. I'm going to get assassinated for this, but I could give a shit about a P &L. Like I don't care what a profit and loss statement looks like. My number one priority in a world, in a restaurant, that the success of a restaurant is how somebody feels when they walk out the door. that is the success of a restaurant. It's not about what the P &L says.

1:47:06If that person, like you've got to think about it, right? Like you're in the world of creating environment that you're feeding someone, you're creating an environment that somebody is ultimately going to walk into. And if you do your job right, he's going to love every second they're in that space. That is the success of a restaurant. And if you have that success, the P &L ultimately hopefully works itself out, right? But if you don't have that, it doesn't matter what the B &L is. It doesn't matter. How did you learn that? Is that just all the years working in these places? I think. I think really what it boiled down to for me was I understood a few things about people working in restaurants.

1:47:48I remember clearly I was bartending and there was this guy, Dominic, who was just a true character. older than me also alcoholic i mean i remember when i first started working at this restaurant he was we would bartend together and he taught me this lesson that was so powerful he goes he goes watch this and we played crazy music in this restaurant i played whatever the hell i want i would play fucking megadeth biggie smalls billy holliday yeah i played whatever i wanted didn't matter and frank was like go for it we were bartending and i don't know there was probably some, you know, loud, crazy music on.

1:48:28And this older couple walked into the restaurant and this place is packed, you know. Older couple walked into the restaurant and they're just like, and he goes, look at those two. And he was like, watch this. And he grabbed the iPod because that's back in the day when iPods were there. And he put on, he put on Frank Sinatra. And he goes, look at them. And as soon as the music came on, both of them went, totally changed the environment, totally changed their whole entire experience in that moment. It went from crazy chaotic music to the music that they understood, the music that made them feel good.

1:49:07And I was like, wow, you can really change someone's experience like that, just like that. And that is going to be the difference between that couple. You don't know who they are. You have no idea who they are. That person, those two, could be neighbors with, you know, Barack Obama and leave the restaurant and say, you know, we went into this restaurant and they were playing crazy music and then all of a sudden, they just turned on Frank Sinatra and the whole entire environment changed and we sat down and we had the best food ever and the service was awesome. I can't wait to go back there. I'm gonna tell everyone I know.

1:49:45And that is the success. It is a service industry, but really appreciating the fact that it's all about service, being the distinguishing, determining factor of success, I think is really powerful. And I can't help but think about The Bear. Did you watch The Bear? Of course you watched The Bear, right? So in season two, when the lights go on for Richie, who's struggling and trying to figure out how he fits into the world and how he can find meaning and purpose in his life, which eludes him until he's stodging at that fancy restaurant. I think the episode, is it called Forks? Where the guy that he's reporting to starts to tell him about his sobriety story.

1:50:35And Richie starts to realize that it's all about service. And Richie has always been the hospitality guy. Even when he's all fucked up and yelling at people, He's the guy who's making the people feel comfortable when they come in. And he's the one who really appreciates and honors the customers. And when he's able to like do the math and put that equation together and he returns to the bear for that like culminating scene and he can marry like his understanding of how to serve people with an appreciation for the art of cuisine and what the restaurant was trying to achieve. It's like the lights go on.

1:51:16It's like this magical moment in that show. The other thing that I'd like to add to it, yes. Yes. I mean, was that your experience when you saw that? Or as an insider, is it impossible for you to watch a show like that without? You know, the funny thing about that show is it evokes real emotion for sure for someone like me that has experienced that. The number one thing that people say when they watch that show is, oh, my God, it made me so stressed out. It just made me feel so much stress. And that's true. You know, it is a very stressful environment. There are certain people that were born to do it, you know, like thrive in it.

1:51:57I thrive there. I thrive. I'm the guy when there's the disgruntled guest, the same disgruntled guest that comes in. I'm the guy that they send to the table, you know, because I love it. I'm just like, man, let me get this guy right, you know? I mean, that's Richie energy, right? So the thing that I will say, though, is when I say culture, internal culture of the company, for me, it's not about I am so against the customer's always right. And I, quite frankly, put very little thought into the guests of the restaurants. I put all of my thought and energy into the team because I know, you know, think about it this way.

1:52:51Professional baseball team, football team, basketball team, the coach of that team is not sitting around the locker room saying, all right, guys, we got to make sure those fans are happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. You know, how do I create these human beings? How do I make them feel supported? How do I make them feel confident? How do I make them feel excited and motivated and fired up to attack in the best possible way? Because it is, you know, like if you turn the lights on on a Friday night and you're not in attack mode, you're on your heels and you're playing defense, absolute disaster happens, you know?

1:53:34It's just, I could walk into a restaurant and I know immediately they're on defense and they're fucked. They're in the weeds deep, you know? Like I was down in Florida at my sister's in February and they were like, my sister was like, well, we're going to take you to this great Mexican restaurant, big, beautiful, great restaurant. And it was a holiday weekend. It was like President's Day or whatever it was. And we walked into the restaurant and they were packed, slammed. and I looked at my sister and I was like, this isn't gonna be a great experience. And she was like, why? I was like, because they staffed for a Monday night, but it happens to be a holiday.

1:54:12And I just knew it from the second I walked in, it was just like, you see people, when anybody's walking like a walk run, that looks like they're important. Something's way off, right? So, you know, the culture, and I'm reading this amazing book from this guy, Marcus Collins right now called For the Culture. and he's so good. It pertains a little bit more to the business that I'm in now because it's a little bit more of a marketing book, but culture is everything. People want to be part of culture. People travel. When people travel, you know, you go to Italy, whether you think so or not, like you're like, oh, I want the food.

1:54:53I want to go experience the people. I want to go experience, you know, I want to see, you know, I want to hear the music. I want to see the art and I want to like see the architecture and like the culture is what defines a group of people. And so if your culture is rich and awesome, when people walk into your restaurant, they're gonna feel that. They're gonna feel it and they're gonna wanna be a part of it and they're gonna tell their friends. They're gonna tell their friends. And there is no better form of marketing, period. Than word of mouth. Period. How do you translate that into what is a very different business that you're running today that isn't about creating a public space for people to come in as much as it is a product that, you know, you're shipping.

1:55:36You know, it's a D to C sort of thing for the most part, right? It is 100 % D to C. So walk me through Creatures of Habit and how this came about and what you're trying to achieve here. Well, I got to rewind back to that plan that was given to me almost 20 years ago. And Marcus and Gavin sort of agreed on this plan to deliver to me and said, hey, you know, you're going to wake up, you're going to take a piss, brush your teeth, wash your face, hit your knees, put on your running shoes, go for a walk, and you're going to have a bowl of oatmeal. And I sold equity at Seymour's in 2019. the pandemic hit in 2020.

1:56:19my career as I knew it was kind of over in terms of brick and mortar business restaurant still living in the city I was still living in the city and I said oh my gosh like I felt obviously you know I was grateful that I had sold equity before the pandemic also a little guilty but I was like, what the hell am I going to do? I am a restaurant guy. I know restaurant. Well, I know in real life, you know, before the pandemic, IRL wasn't even a thing, right? Like now I'm like, oh, in real life, like I know this hand-to-hand combat, man, me and you, I can sit here and talk to you forever, right? That's how I am in the restaurants.

1:57:05I like touch every single table. well, that's my sweet spot. And I was like, what the hell am I going to do? Donna and I decided, that's my wife. We had decided that we were going to pack up a bag. We had bought a house about two hours, a little over two hours out of the city in 2012. And we said, hey, this is pretty bad down here. You know, the kids aren't in school. Let's go upstate and we'll see what happens. so we moved into our house upstate so grateful that that was the decision that we made and that bag just got bigger and bigger and then finally a year in we were like okay sell the place in brooklyn we're upstate but those first three months were really stressful for me because i had i was like man i'm gonna have to figure out my new path forward you know i hired an executive coach who is a wonderful human being.

1:58:03She basically helped me to see that a restaurant was a medium for me. And I'm a creative entrepreneur, a creative human being. I can build culture and business and environments, product, service, whatever. Like it doesn't matter the medium. I can do what I do. Was that a breakthrough to realize that it wasn't about restaurants. It was about being this creative person who was always iterating on that creativity or sharing these ideas that you were coming up with. 100%. You didn't have the awareness of that prior to her. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I did not. Yeah. She was slowly just sort of giving me the confidence that I was looking for.

1:58:49And my creative process for the last many years has been silent running. So I like to go out and take a pen and pad, you know, a little piece of small pad and a pencil, and I'll go out intentionally on five to seven mile long runs with the intention of, let's figure this shit out, man. Let's figure it out. And, you know, I don't have my phone with me. I'm not listening to music or podcasts. I'm just like, I'm literally trying to dig. and originally I was going to open up a restaurant called Creatures of Habit. That was sort of like my next plan. So Creatures of Habit was already in the mix, but when the pandemic hit and there was no like way forward there, I was like, I have to, I want to use this Creatures of Habit thing because it felt like it was a wellness restaurant and the idea of Creatures of Habit was going to be, I'm going to open up this wellness restaurant and the restaurant is going to, the trajectory of scaling this business was going to be through consumer packaged goods.

1:59:56I was going to make products inside the restaurant that we use on the, we would use as sauces, we would use as breakfast items, whatever. And we would have a little retail area in the restaurant and then whatever people were grabbing or buying or taking home with them, we would then invest money in and grow in consumer goods. and so I had that idea already that that was gonna kind of be like what the future was but nowhere near it I had no idea what we what I was gonna package up but I knew creatures of habit was the the name because I am just an absolute creature of habit I just am I mean I find something I like I stick to it you know for real I was out on a run and I was thinking about what the hell I was going to do.

2:00:38And I was like, it came to me. Just get rid of the restaurant part. Go right to the product part. Well, I knew that was the case, but I just didn't know. I knew that I was going to draw a line to the restaurant. I had a feeling that I was going to still be in food and most likely it was going to be consumer goods, which is what I'm in. When anybody hears CPG, that means consumer packaged goods. When anybody hears DTC or D2C, it's direct to consumer. I said, what the hell am I going to sell? You know, like I know how to sell an environment. I know how to sell a service-oriented experience. I just don't know how I'm going to be able to sell my magic in a fucking product.

2:01:28Yeah, but you're a storyteller. You're a born marketer too. Well, what happened was I was on this run and it came to me all like on one run. And I said, my oatmeal, it's been eating this stuff every single day. For at that point, it was 2019. So whatever it is, 15 years. I mean, I've been and I've added stuff to it over time. And but I've really I got it down to a science and it takes me 20 to 30 minutes to make every morning. And I love it. And I crave it. And it's like. I love it. and in that concoction is, well, at that point, glyphosate wasn't even a conversation, but it was now, you know, it's gluten and glyphosate free oats.

2:02:08I always added 30 grams of plant-based protein to it, chia seeds, flax seeds, pumpkin seeds and pink Himalayan salt. So the way I would do it would be, I'd take the oats, half a cup of oats, two cups of water, like eight twists of pink Himalayan salt shaker, tablespoon of chia seeds, teaspoon of flax seeds, and like a handful of pumpkin seeds. And I would cook the oats with the chia and the flax, low and slow, like make it, you know, let them really, really cook and soak. Then I'd steam it. Once it was like steamed and was the right consistency, I'd add my protein powder to it and I'd stir it.

2:02:48And then once I felt like that was right, I put my pumpkin seeds in and the pumpkin seeds would stay crunchy and crispy. and that was my morning. And then on the side, I always had my omega-3 fatty acids, probiotic digestive enzymes and vitamin D3 and that was sort of like my supplement stack for years. And I was on that run and I said, holy shit, man, if I can figure out a way to get all that into a pouch, I not only am gonna be able to sell a habit that I've stuck to for so long that has literally kickstarted my day with nutrition that I feel really strong about that I stand behind 100%, it's a full meal, It's not a snack.

2:03:25If I could sell that, not only will I be able to give somebody something to potentially change their life because it was a catalyst in changing mine, but I could tell my story. And honestly, the only reason why I'm sitting here today is because I launched Creatures of Habit. And that's the truth. Creatures of Habit has given me an opportunity to tell my story. And the restaurants didn't give me that opportunity. They allowed me to tell the restaurant story. The stars have aligned for me in this idea and this mission of being of service and being able to tell my story. And so I came home. I said, Donna, I'm starting an oatmeal business.

2:04:02She's like, oh, my God, what are you doing now? And I said, no, I'm doing it. And I put a quarter million bucks into a bank account that night. And I began the process and spent a year working on the formula, pitched it to Gary Vee eventually once I felt like I had it. and I created this cool line of apparel to go with it. Gary was like, this is Kith meets Quaker. Let's go. Kith meets Quaker. Did he put money in? First check in. Yeah, first check in. I used to mention that guy. Well, what I think it is, yes, it gives you this opportunity and this reason to tell your story, right? Because it's so ingrained and integrated authentically into who you are.

2:04:42It's basically, you know, the wax and wax on, wax off, right? Like this is the thing, you know, This was this tool, this piece that goes all the way back to those early days and is still a part of your life, which speaks to what persistence and consistency can render with even the simplest habit over time. I needed something to sink my teeth into, pun intended, at that time in my life. I needed a win every day in the morning. I needed it. and now what I've learned about these habits and fitness and nutrition and ultimately now mindset's a big part of my life but what I've learned for someone like me and I would imagine also someone like you the ability to control wins is powerful and I don't mean winning the race I mean these small little wins that I can stack up that make me feel accomplished and eating healthy for me, major, massive win.

2:05:51It's an esteemable act. Major, massive win. There's no surprise that when your life, even though you were sober for almost a decade, when your life really changed, it was on the back of making a food-based decision, right? Like you started, we are what we eat. Literally. And those guys gave me that gift early on where they were like, what you put into your body is ultimately going to dictate what you do. It will. And I believe that. I know what I put into my body generally dictates how I feel and the actions I take. One of the most intimate relationships human beings have is with food. It goes into our body, literally, and metabolizes and then either gives us energy or kills us.

2:06:59There's no more intimate relationship human beings have. And so we take that for granted, right? I know that the food that I put into my body is either going to give me energy, make me feel good, or take energy away from me and ultimately kill me. And I choose the better. You know, I choose the better. And so that's where it started. And, you know. It's beautiful, man. When did you start it? When did this, 2020, 2019? IDA 2020 launched the business in August of 2021. And, you know, we've been in business about two and a half years. And it's going really well. You know, we launched with meal one, which is the product I just said.

2:07:44It's an overnight oats, 30 grams of protein, plant-based. And then you got the nightcap, which is the evening. Nightcap is the way to wind down. Bring me down. Yeah. It's like a cup of hot chocolate about an hour and a half before bed. Tastes really good and really great ingredients, you know. So. But it's a lifestyle brand. I mean, you have a podcast by the same name. you got the merch and the apparel line and all that kind of stuff. I can tell, you can see the seeds of a bigger idea that's still in gestation right now that is probably swirling in your brain. Yeah. He looks at me with a shit-eating grin, right?

2:08:25I mean, it boils down to commitment and consistency, breeding confidence, breeding courage daily. Anybody can do whatever the fuck they want. Anybody can do anything they want to do. I really do believe that. I should be sitting here because I have done the stuff. You know, I kind of hate when people are like, I should be dead or I shouldn't be here. I should be here. When somebody tells me like, I did a great job today. I'm like, thank you. I believe you. Not 100 % of the time. But I never believed people before when they told me I did a good job. Now I do. So I do believe that we all have the ability to do, and I'm not going to say what we say we are going to do because a lot of people say shit, but to do what we want to do.

2:09:14Every human being on the planet wants. All of us want. We all want. Everybody wants. There's not a single human being on the planet that doesn't want. But there's only a way to get from want to have. One way. You know? And I've said this before. I really believe... The only way to get from want to have is to do. Only one way. No one is coming for you. No one's going to give it to you. So what's the difference between those who take action on the to do and those that don't? Because, yes, everybody aspires to a better life. Everybody has dreams and ambitions or ideas around things they would like to accomplish or achieve.

2:09:58and there's also things we have to overcome or confront or transcend in order to evolve and grow. And some people sign up for that journey and they walk the path and they make the changes and they build a better life for themselves. Other people say they're gonna do it and for whatever reason they can't or they struggle or they meet enough obstacles where they retreat. and then other people are like, no, thank you. So what are the key differentiators between those archetypes? And you coach people, so I'm sure you're, it's self-selecting because anybody who shows up for you probably has some willingness to put in the work, but you find out quickly who's really committed and who isn't.

2:10:48I wanna sort of answer that question in two ways. is one with a story that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in The Tipping Point. And it resonates a lot with me. So I bring it up from time to time because it's about New York City. When I was a kid, I was born in 1980 in New York City. I was on the trains a lot as a young kid. And I grew up in Manhattan, so I was in the thick of it. And the trains in New York City were just scariest place on earth. Very scary. They were covered in graffiti, not a lot of order, and just scary. And a police commissioner came in to New York City, and crime and murder was through the roof at the end of the 80s and into the early 90s.

2:11:39Like, number one in the country. and by 1992 or 1993 that crime and murder had diminished by 50 to 75 percent and you would think like what the hell happened like how did that happen and when you peel back the onion and understand the story that malcolm gladwell tells it's very similar to answer the question that you asked me that guy came in and said we're going to clean the trains we're just going to clean the trains. And people were like, what? There's fucking, people are getting murdered by the hundreds. You're going to clean the trains? And the guy says, yeah, we're going to clean the trains.

2:12:23And we're going to make sure that there's no graffiti on the train. And then once we get the trains sorted out, we're going to start arresting people for jumping the turnstiles. And like people were like flabbergasted, like it's a crack epidemic. People are dying. You're going to clean the trains and you're going to arrest fair hoppers. This is what the guy did. And within two years, murder rate was down 50%. And so ultimately it's the small wins. From my experience and from what I've seen and from what I know about myself, the small wins and the commitment to the small wins are the distinguishing element to taking the risk and having the courage to go.

2:13:05And we can all find a way to build small wins into our day, no matter who we are. I mean, it's defined who you are as a human being right now, right? Yeah, 100%. I also think it speaks to that idea of how you do anything is how you do everything. And if you care enough to strip the graffiti off the trains, that sets in motion like a domino effect. And now what do we care about? Now, what do we care about? If you brush your teeth in the morning, if you wash your face, if you eat your oatmeal, all of those things seemingly in and of themselves feel meaningless, but they're actually the most important things.

2:13:43They begin to paint the picture. You know, like the Mona Lisa didn't just show up, right? Like how many times it was that thing? How long did, you know, like it takes time. It takes consistency. Ultimately, that consistency is going to evolve into more and more confidence. And confidence is what breeds courage. And so I think the do part of the want plus do equals have comes with starting your day winning. And it doesn't mean that every day is going to be awesome. You know that. I mean, it's not. There's many days where I'm like, oh my God. You do it anyway. I mean, also, you have to have some level of willingness to entertain change and weather some discomfort.

2:14:35I mean, for me, it all goes back to what I learned day one in the program. Like, just don't, just get through the next hour. Like, that's all you have to do. Like, if your head hits the pillow and you didn't take a drink, which sounds to a normal person insane and ridiculous, like, there's your huge win. Like, that's a major victory for the day. And you just start stringing those together. And then it slowly, to the same analogy of the restaurateur who said you have to expand outward organically from the middle, like what's the next little habit that you can chip away at? And it builds day by day upon that.

2:15:15And I think particularly in this internet era of like biohacking and how to expedite a quick result with everything, everyone's looking at these finish lines and thinking about how they can get there quickly. And it's really not about that at all. It's about how are you becoming a better master of yourself in the tiny little things that all of us have to like contend with every single day. it's so hard building a business like it's so hard getting people to believe in something in an idea that you have having the audacity to like come up with an idea and think that you're gonna make millions of people want to fucking move for it you know like i'm selling oatmeal and i'm telling you if you eat this every day you're gonna change your life yeah right like That's pretty fucking audacious.

2:16:07Audacious, big time. And not only like saying that, but having people believe in you to give you like hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to do it, right? Like it's very hard. And I think a mix of my belief in the power greater than myself, looking at my past and understanding that I have been consistent having an unwavering sense of optimism and staying humble throughout that process and not giving a fuck about the money. I don't, I've never been motivated by it. And I'm not saying that to wear it like on my sleeve. I'm saying that that's just the truth. Like I have not been motivated by the money, you know?

2:17:03And I can tell you the last year has been so hard, so, so hard raising money for this business, for raising money for any business. But, you know, so hard. In my podcast, my business partner and I, every month we drop an episode called Creatures of Habit, what's really happening. Because I said to Jonathan, hey, dude, I want to completely rip the doors open on this thing. I want to bring the community along on this journey, fully transparent the whole way through. I want them to know when we're struggling. I want them to know when we're crushing it. So every month we have an episode that sort of recaps the month prior.

2:17:45That's sort of a way of recreating the restaurant and creating an experience that is, yeah, to your point of bringing people in. But the transparency and the honesty with that is what breeds trust also and loyalty to whatever is in the building. You know, you would ask like how, you know, the difference between, you know, being in the restaurant and now having this business in the digital landscape. And I have figured out ways to break that wall down. You know, I write an email every single Thursday from my email address to 38 ,000 people and share with them my life. And really what I'm doing is I'm writing my book.

2:18:29Right. And I'm sharing this weekly passage with the community and so many people write back. And I am so happy to respond to them. And it takes a lot of time. I believe it's one of the most important things I can do as the founder of the company. Because I've never gotten a fucking email from a founder before and then written back and then they reply back to me like, hey, it's Chernow. You know, like that's me doing, being the guy in the restaurant, touching you on the shoulder and asking you how your meal is. If you've ordered from us over 24 times, Caroline on my team, who's like a godsend. She's been with us from the beginning.

2:19:13She does so much. She'll go in and she'll take down because we have access to people's phone numbers. and so if you have over 24 orders from us, she'll send me a bunch of numbers and I ruck every day from 4 to 5.30, which is like what I do. And I have a list of phone numbers and I'll just randomly call someone from the list. And I'm like, hey, it's turnout. Thank you. I just wanted to say what's up. Thank you. What are we doing good? Like, what are we doing bad? how can I be better? You know, thank you. And like that little touch, you know. So I'm figuring out ways to really sort of just like blur the line of digital and being able to like touch people, you know.

2:20:06You got to tell me about the breath work and the healing with your dad. So I was at an event that you were at called Running Man. Yeah. I went down there. I got invited to it. I don't know Jesse. I know Devin. I had no idea what to expect. Running has not been a big part of my life like it was in years past. But I was like, man, I'm getting invited to this thing. I'm going. Fuck it. In the middle of nowhere, Georgia. I was like, all right, this will be cool. I'm not a big event go guy. I don't love going. It was kind of explained to me. it's it's it was like it's the burning man for fitness and i was like oh great in the middle of nowhere georgia like you mean it like it is not close to the atlanta airport no yeah this is like anyway i get there this is pretty cool it's cold as hell when i got there and we we went down we we set up our stuff and then this guy sean who i went down there with was like, hey, do you want to do some breath work?

2:21:17My friend, Mike Gazzo is, is doing breath work at the, at this tent over here. And this is like an hour and a half after we got in. And I was like, oh yeah, I love breath work. I'm doing Wim Hof and box breathing and, you know, listening to Huberman about the double inhale, long exhale. Like I do, I do it all, you know, like I'm like, totally. So we walk over to this thing and we're a little bit late. They'd already kind of started the breathwork session and Mike walks over to the side of the tent and says, hey, you know, have you done breathwork before? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've done breathwork.

2:21:51He goes, okay, well then, you know, just come on in and lie down and just take my, you know, take my lead. So I go in, I lie down and he explains to me that it's going to be about a 25, 30 minute long journey. I had never done breathwork like that. I had never done like a long extended thing outside of Wim Hof where you do, you know, whatever, three to five rounds. And anyway, he goes, it's a double inhale and, you know, all mouth breathing. You breathe into your stomach, into your chest, out your mouth. It's just an easy flow, just nonstop, just flow like that. So I'm on the ground, I'm doing it.

2:22:30I got an eye mask on, I'm breathing. About 10 minutes in, I start this physical sensation was overwhelming, scary. My hands started to curl in. my arms started to feel pressure and kind of numb and my chest started to feel a little like uncomfortable and I'm like oh my gosh I'm having a heart attack like this is not good you know I'm having a heart attack like this is fucking scary and I just kind of like jump up and I'm looking around to see if anybody else is experiencing this and no one is he sees me he beelines over to me He grabs me and he like rubs my chest and he's like, dude, relax, relax.

2:23:11This is normal. You're having a physical, this is a somatic thing. You're having a physical experience. Just do me a favor. Don't look too deep into it. This happens. Just breathe. He goes, do you have family, people that you love, you know? And I was like, yeah, of course. I'm married. I have two kids. I love them more than anything on the planet. and he goes, just think about them and I want you to breathe deeper into it. I'm like, okay. Scared as hell, but I'm like, I'm just gonna listen to this guy. I mean, he would tell me if I was dying, you know? Yeah. And so I start breathing deeper into it and I'm thinking about my wife and kids and Rich, within two minutes, I felt this, again, this is going to sound woo-woo to the person listening that has no experience with this kind of thing, but I felt a sense of love.

2:24:14Like I had never felt love before. Like I felt so much love from my wife and my kids to me and from me back to them in this breath work. totally unexpected I just lost it the emotional release that I got but in a in a happy joyous way was beyond anything I can remember to date feeling it was so potent wow and literally I'm in this thing and I'm lying down and I'm feeling like almost like I'm floating and I'm like, oh my God, this is insane. I'm thinking about my wife and children. And I'm like, I, the love was so real. And I, the way I can just kind of describe it is like, I kind of felt like somebody had like walked over, like had a big fluffy blanket that they waved over me and just let drop on me.

2:25:10And it just felt so good, this blanket of like love. And even when I say it, It sounds, you know, far out, but it's what I experienced. And it was unbelievable. And I had an outer body experience in that moment. I was just like, oh, my God. My body was buzzing, buzzing, like, like I felt that. And the music stopped and everybody started getting up and I was frozen. I was stuck. My hands were stuck like this. My arms felt super heavy. My mouth was like kind of stuck. You get the tetany where your fingers, yeah. 100%. No one had told me, no one had warned me about that. So it's like, it was an aggressive kind of holotropic.

2:25:57It was a holotropic experience that he calls the rebirth breath. So finally I was like, you know, I'd been on the floor for probably about 35 minutes at that point. I felt, I was crying. I was, you know, I felt so light. and I like kind of rolled over to my side and was able to like get myself up and I walked over to him. He knew that I had just like a very intense experience and he was like, congratulations. And I was like, dude, I'm embarrassed like of how intense that was. I don't know. Like, I don't know what to say. uh-huh i'm so grateful for that experience and he was like you don't have to say much dude you just like gave me a big hug and he was like go enjoy your day and the rest of that day man i you know the sun was shining i was i was in the sauna in the cold plunge you know like meeting people i've i felt like i was on drugs like i did yeah and also i will say that that event for me, I didn't see the sign that said, check your asshole at the door, but like there was not a single asshole at that event.

2:27:15Everybody that I met was just cool and down to connect. And I was like, wow, like that. And it could be that I just had that experience and something shifted for me there. Probably a little of both. I mean, talk about culture, like Jesse, I don't know Devin as well, but like Jesse certainly understands how to create a certain kind of culture. And it's not a surprise that everybody there was super high vibe and positive. I mean, it was just such a great event. Anyway, I went back to breath work the next day and Mike said, I don't know if you're going to have the same experience, man. You know, like that was intense and wonderful.

2:27:54But he was like, now you know that the physical component could potentially happen. I'm just going to ask you to not allow it to derail whatever experience you have. Just go with it and understand that it's possible, that you were fine yesterday, you didn't die, you're all good. If you have the experience, just blow through it. And within five minutes of the breath, I dropped right into that same experience and I felt really emotional. And a mantra showed up in my head and it just said, you got everything you need. You got everything you need. You got everything you need. And for 20 minutes, that was the mantra.

2:28:38I was crying and emotional and I felt this release again. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is like some, this is some deep therapy that I've needed. This is finding cracks in my psyche that I've needed to see, I've wanted to see. And so I had that experience again. And like, I would never imagine myself talking like this about something like that before going through it. I said to Mike after the experience, I was like, dude, we got to, he lives here in LA. I'm actually funny enough, right after this, I'm going to do breath work with him and do sauna and cold plunge because he lives 20 minutes away at his house.

2:29:29So we've been meeting every two weeks virtually. And the first two breathwork sessions that I had were wonderful. The remainder of them were painful, deeply painful. And I don't know why that shift happened, but I think, you know, we set an intention before everyone. and honestly, I didn't think that it was going to work virtually, you know, like the first time we did it, I like set up a yoga mat on the floor of my office, you know, I dimmed the lights and tried to make it as comfortable as possible, like in terms of just like feeling safe and comfortable, but it wasn't like being in person with the music and everything.

2:30:17However,

2:30:21as effective. And the first one that we did virtually was so sad. I felt so sad. He said, let's set an intention. And I said, man, I just want to continue to dig. I want to continue to dig. I want to continue to learn more. Like this is a powerful practice for me. I think, Like, let me just, you know, be open to whatever shows up. And as soon as we started going, I kind of went right back into that physical kind of experience. And then I just got really sad, like super duper sad, not feeling happy emotions, like really sad emotions. And the thought that went through my mind was everything I've done to date isn't an effort to get my father's approval and love.

2:31:16there it is everything i've done from the drugs to the fitness to the business to the family i want my dad to tell me he loves me and i want a pat on the back from him no one else and it sucks because he's fucking dead and i can't have it and that just crushed me in that moment really really like I felt my chest sink and the tears and the emotion that came out of that was just really really like guttural that's how I can describe it you know I was like I felt like oh Mike saw I guess in the he was like set your computer up on the side I want to be able to see you from the side. He obviously saw that I was going through it hard in there.

2:32:13He holds the space. I didn't know what that meant until I started doing breath work. But I think he was able to see that like he has control over, obviously there's music that I listen to when we do it. He has control over the music and he explained to me that he has heartstring music and he has deep penetrating music. And I think he saw that I was kind of going through it and he put on some music that kind of changed the course of this thing for me. But the vision that I had here was I saw myself breathing, not in my office, but like in somewhere, the vision that I had was of me on the floor breathing.

2:32:56And I was kind of like down next to myself, looking up this way. and my father walked into the room within like five minutes left in the breath work. My father walked, he opened up the door, he walked into the room. He was young, he had facial hair, he looked healthy and he walked into the room and walked right over to me and kneeled down next to me and put his hand through my hair and said right up into my ear, I love you. And that was crazy for me. Had he said that to you in real life? Not that I remember. And obviously, I lost it, right? Like in that moment, I felt the emotions went from pain to like insane relief.

2:33:52Like, whoa. But it was real. Like the experience of that felt, it wasn't like you were imagining it. It happened. It felt visceral. yeah it happened it happened for me full on i felt him i smelled him he was next to my head i felt his hand in my hair like make of it what yeah yeah you know i don't know what to say right that's some fucking crazy shit uh beautiful in so many ways i mean thank you for sharing that story I don't have quite as dramatic a story about holotropic breathing, but similar. You know, the first time that I did it must have been 2000. I was new in my relationship with my wife and we did it together and it was absolutely euphoric.

2:34:50Like all the feelings of love and I think it brought us closer together. and it was just, it was an unreal experience. I'd never had any kind of experience like that. And at this point, I was only like a year and a half sober. Like I was still very much in early sobriety. And then maybe a year later, I did it again and just went into a spiral of darkness. It was the complete opposite experience. Like after it happened, I had to get away from people and I locked myself in a bedroom for like 18 hours straight. Like I couldn't be around people and it was scary. And I thought, well, maybe that's an aberration.

2:35:33So two or three months later, I tried again, same thing. But I was too early in my emotional, mental health, sobriety journey to be in a place where I was, I could like contend with whatever was bringing that up, right? And I've done a lot of work since. And for that reason, I didn't do holotropic breathing for a very long time. Have you reconnected with it at all? And I did it like a year and a half ago, maybe. My wife, when we do our retreats, we do these retreats in Italy, and she takes people through this experience. And she made this brilliant decision on our last retreat to do it on the first day.

2:36:20Like all these people arrive from all over the place. Nobody knows each other. And normally she would host that experience on day three or four or something like that. She's like, no, let's do it right away. You know, and then, so you do it and there's lots of people that are monitoring and helping. Like, you know, it's not like, it's well-organized, but everybody has their version of that experience. And then everybody gets an opportunity to share whatever they feel like they want to share about what happened. And it's every flavor under the sun of experiences from the absolutely psychedelic to the traumatic to the beautiful and joyous and lovely.

2:37:05But then everybody doing that, like without even really knowing any of these people, like suddenly the group is like together. Yeah, connected. So I did it the last time we had our retreat and I had a much better experience. I haven't had anything that tactile or specific, but powerful in a more general way. I mean, certainly the idea that like breath is so powerful is true. There's another, the next virtual experience I had after that crazy experience, when I sort of sat up after that, my father telling me he loved me, I told Michael about the vision and he was like, you know, you can believe that it was a manifestation or a vision or you can believe that that happened.

2:37:56It's up to you how to interpret that, but do with it what you will. Right. That's wild, man. And he's here like he's in the area. He's 20 minutes away. Yeah. I think I need to meet this guy. I'm going to hook you up. The next one was equally as important for me going forward in understanding. And I say it's like, you know, a therapy because I've done so much therapy over the years, so much in and out. And nothing has highlighted these things for me in the way that this has with the breath. So we're in the breath and Michael said, you know, what would you like your intention to be today? and we were kind of in this, like we had stepped into the trauma zone already.

2:38:44So I was like, all right, well, let me just continue to, you know, uncover what's going on here. I said, you know, there's a number of areas that I still really struggle in my life. One happens to be in being in presence and focus. You know, I meditate for so long and I still can't fucking, you know, like I could be sitting at the dinner table with my wife and kids and it's not all the time, but more than I'd like it to be, I'm just physically there, but mentally checked out. It's hard for me to transition my business. And, you know, I said, I really want to just like understand why I have a hard time focusing when I want to on being present in the moment.

2:39:29And he's like, great intention. Let's figure out what it is. Or try to anyway. and so we're in the work and uh things start to sort of happen for me you know like almost psychedelically and i have this like vision of like a like a japanimation chaotic scene you know like lights and in a dark it's dark and there's like a city in the background and and there's like this little character at the bottom of this crazy chaotic scene. And I'm getting like kind of closer and closer to this character. And I see it's a kid and the kid has got his shoulders sort of like, he's like leaned back like this. His shoulders are like in his ears and he's trembling and scared like that, you know, like really out of like a Japanimation film.

2:40:20And I'm like, what the fuck is this? You know, in my head and I'm getting closer and closer to it. And I find, I see that that kid is me, the kid that I'm looking at that's scared, stuck in this crazy scene is me as like a six year old kid and I was like what like what is this and I realized that that is me as a child scared to death of his life not of his life today but of his life then And I didn't realize that how scared I was then. Like I was scared, really, really scared. And, you know, you hear about, oh, yeah, like trauma as a kid, you know, there's everybody has stuff. But and you can talk about it and even come to terms with it, of course.

2:41:16Like I've come to terms with it, but I had never seen or had been exposed to how scared I was then. And what does that do for you? Does it just allow you to have a lot more compassion for that kid? Honestly, I didn't know what to do. I was sad because I'm like, can I help this kid? Like in that breath work, I'm like, what can I do to fix this problem? You know, actually. And when I came out of it, I was like, this is what happened, Michael. And he was like, that's your inner child, Michael. and I was like okay like what do I do you know like how do I he's like look you know inner child stuff comes up a lot in breath work there's a few things a few ways that we can approach this together or you can approach it yourself but realistically what what ultimately has to happen is is you need to figure out a way to heal that kid and make that kid feel safe because that kid is what's standing in your way.

2:42:24That kid wants your attention all the time. He is stuck in fear and he wants you to comfort him. He wants your attention all the time and he wants the attention of other people. And he doesn't know what that attention is supposed to be like because the attention that he got from those days was out of anger. And I'm like listening to this guy tell me this shit And I'm like, like between my father, the approval that I want from my father and the love that I have for my father. And now seeing me as this young, scared, terrified kid, he's telling me you need to start doing things that are going to make that kid happy and make that kid feel safe and comfortable.

2:43:05So I said, well, I've got two kids. What if I, you know, like what would I have wanted as a young kid? Ultimately, my father's love. I would have loved my father to take me out I don't know anywhere and hung out with me and like connected with me and I asked myself an honest question do you spend time with your kids alone you know and the truth is no we are a family and we love we spend a lot of time together and we go out on you know we do every weekend we're all together all the time but I don't spend time with my kids alone one on one bonding with my sons And so I said in that moment to Mike, my commitment to this process now of understanding that this is something I need to do to fix some, you know, potentially rehabilitate some shit.

2:43:58I'm gonna commit to spending alone time with my sons, whether it's one-on-one or whether it's just me and both of them, that's what I'm gonna do. And that was in the beginning of the year. And then organically, my wife got her real estate license and she started doing real estate upstate where we live and that requires her to work on the weekends and so i've been given my sons so you're just full dad full dad on the weekends the one-on-one thing is qualitatively different than all the other experiences though for sure and it's hard it's hard when you have multiple kids and it's hard when you want to do stuff as a family to carve out and to do it delicately if you have multiple kids, because that has to be sort of spread out evenly, of course.

2:44:49But it's the most special when you can just get that completely focused one-on-one time. That is the latest and greatest work on Michael Turner. You're paying it forward in your kids. It's not about looking inward and trying to like heal the inner child as much as it is how you're showing up in the world now to be the dad that you wish that you had, who is meeting the needs that weren't met. My inner child is showing me how to be a better dad. Yeah. Period. And it came through the breath. That's the truth. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. That's wild, man. That's cool. Yeah. That's really cool.

2:45:35So like, that's where I'm at. We gotta end this. We gotta wrap it up. But I wanna end it with give the person who's out there struggling, who can't see their way forward, who might be in that place that you were in when you came into the program, broken, alone, feeling incapable of being able to put your life on a better trajectory, that sense of powerlessness and the lack of self-esteem. What do you tell that person? whether it's alcohol and drugs or hardship in life, you know, let's say it's alcohol and drugs. The greatest piece of advice I can give is ask for as much help as humanly possible in life.

2:46:29Don't be ashamed of it. Don't be afraid of it. you absolutely need it we all do when I learned that asking for help was like one of the greatest things life has to offer it became a requirement for me in everything I do and so if you're struggling and you don't think there's a way out I'm here to tell you and I'm sitting across from a guy that can also tell you the same exact thing there's absolutely a way out and it begins with asking for help and there's nothing to be ashamed of. And nine out of 10 people are not gonna do it. Not gonna just throw their pride to the side and ask for help because no matter what you think or say, no matter how bad the drug and the alcohol has their grips around you, it is not the way to live.

2:47:30I don't care what you say or think. It's just not. My best friend of all time is on Skid Row, has been there for four years. And every time I get to talk to him, which is not often, he tells me that he's living a better life. And when he's down and out and in jail or knocking on death's door, he calls me crying. There's nothing I can do for him. So if you're listening to this, I'm here to tell you, I promise you that where you and I sit on the other side of, we're the same people, the same, you and I are the same person. We've just given up the shackles of addiction and through alcohol and drugs.

2:48:11And all you got to do is ask for help. That's it. If you're not dealing with alcohol and drugs and you're dealing with life and you feel like you're stuck and you feel lost and you feel directionless, the only piece of advice I can give you is two things. One, ask for help. And two, find a form of fitness to connect to and make your priority. There's a documentary that Jonah Hill did about his therapist. He was in here last week. Phil Stutz. So in that documentary, he, this Dr. Stutz essentially says, when you're lost, anyone, go back to yourself. And that starts with fitness and movement. It starts with movement.

2:49:05Attached to movement. That's my story. It's a powerful one, man. I think that's a great way to end it. That was incredible, man. Thank you. Thank you. It was really special to spend a couple hours with you. It's very moved by your story. And I think your ability to tell it and to offer hope and a lifeline and a sense of possibility for people is a great public service, man. You are a change agent. Thank you, man. Yeah. We didn't even talk about fitness at all. Can you believe that? Yeah, well, it's, we talked a lot about it, but we didn't talk about it. Right, so you're gonna have to come back.

2:49:52We'll do a little bit more. Awesome. All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it very much. Stoked. Cheers, peace.

2:50:10That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

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2:52:07No!