The Untold Struggles Behind Triumph w/Joe Wanner

In this episode we dive into Joe Wanner's life story, a narrative rich with Hawaiian heritage, familial bonds, and personal growth. Joe, eldest of six siblings, opens up about the complex interplay of cultural expectations, mental health challenges, and the relentless pursuit of success. From the basketball court to the corporate arena, Joe's experiences illuminate the strength and courage required to overcome adversity and the significance of emotional support throughout his journey.

Discover how Joe navigates the waters of cultural identity, the pressures of being the firstborn, and the transformative power of storytelling. His candid conversation with us is not just a reflection on his life's struggles and triumphs but also an invitation for listeners to introspect and find courage in their own paths. This episode is a testament to the resilience we can forge from our roots and the emotional triumphs that await when we embrace our vulnerabilities.

Transcript

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0:00:02 - Speaker 1
So video is recording. Alright, let's do it Alright. Then let me just press a button on this mic. Okay, I'm recording from locally on your mic, recording locally on my mic just to back up audio, because once again I lost it once and I was not happy about that. 

0:00:26 - Speaker 2
Dude, this is great man. Appreciate you having me. 

0:00:29 - Speaker 1
Of course Okay. So let me I'll kind of kick us in. 

0:00:33 - Speaker 2
Yeah, do a little bit Warner right yeah, joe Warner, like I want her Warner. 

0:00:39 - Speaker 1
Yeah, Like just without the T. Like you see her, I want her, so Joe. 

0:00:43 - Speaker 2
Warner yeah, you got it. Okay, yep, yep, perfect, awesome, appreciate it Alright, Cool Cool. 

0:00:51 - Speaker 1
Hi and welcome to another episode of On Turned Stones. On today's podcast I'm going to be interviewing Joe Warner. Joe, somebody I met through the whack when me and my wife joined back in the day. It's always the whack, you know, we had a little broken-action at one point, talked and kind of just kept talking from seeing each other at the gym. But so, kind of just to start the podcast, give a little introduction by yourself. 

0:01:14 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and we'll kind of dig in from there, let's do it, let's do it. So just from where, like you know how I was born and raised, or no, I'm just kidding. 

0:01:23 - Speaker 1
But you know, like, where were you born? Yeah, talk a little bit about how you were raised. Yeah, and you were born kind of from the start here. Yeah, from the start, from the start. 

0:01:29 - Speaker 2
Well, currently, right now, actually I'll start with that. Where I'm right now is like I am one of the sales managers at Reliance Partners Truck Insurance in Phoenix, arizona, where we're currently at. But then I also am the Cole Call Coach for Jeremy Minor, 7th level sales training. I got a health coaching business forward framework fashion fitness kind of my brand. So that's where I am now. But so I grew up in Portland, oregon. I'm the oldest of six kids. My mom's family is from Hawaii, so she met my dad and that's kind of how we started. They started a family in Oregon, so I'm the oldest of six families all over the place, from Boston to Philadelphia to, you know, chicago. My wife's family to you know siblings are in Oregon, so that's where everyone's at, kind of just spread out and, you know, got family from Hawaii and family from you know Idaho and Oregon. West Coast, kind of just you know US is local to me. 

0:02:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm not too familiar with. Like Hawaiian culture in a sense, like Hawaiian culture is very family oriented, right, 100%, 100%. So like your family, obviously, like would have been the oldest of six, like you had a big family, a big family. 

0:02:38 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we're very close, yeah, yeah, and I was the oldest, like there was a couple of dynamics. So, like my, my dad was one of seven and so I just had so many cousins, like in Oregon. And then my mom's family is kind of like a little smaller, but one of four, right, and each of them had like one or two kids like my, my uncle's, an aunt's, and so, like, ours was the biggest cause. They're coming from six kids or whatever. But I was the oldest grandson, right. So I was like, I always felt like I was in a position where, like, I need to set the example, and my example is like what everyone's looking toward, and sometimes I didn't set the best example. You know, I was an example of like, you know, the rebel child, of like I'm going to do this. Mom and dad say this, no, I'm going to do this. But I think it was like my grandpa who, fortunately or unfortunately, passed away a few years ago I'm actually almost exactly 10 years from this month was when he had passed and I spoke at his funeral and stuff, and so there's a lot of like my, my mental health story to my journey, that comes a lot from him and so, but it's kind of like in Hawaii. 

I'm Filipino. I mean, in Hawaii it's the word Ohana. You know, ohana means family, and so I think the biggest thing was seeing the family unit as like that's, that's how you build a life and I'm very grateful and thankful that, you know, both my grandparents have stayed married. My I grew up in a very like blessed household in the sense that, like mom and dad have always been married. Like there's I've seen divorce from, like you know, other angles, like you know, from uncles and aunts and stuff, but never my family internally. So I think, having that example, I'm so grateful to my parents. Like there's some things, like you know, I didn't agree with them on, but like one thing I'm always thankful for is like who they've raised me to be. I think a lot of the values and how I treat people. I learned a lot from them and then really a big part was my grandpa. 

0:04:26 - Speaker 1
So I think you know one thing over the over the years of being friends with you and following social media after we kind of got to know each other is I could tell you were very much family oriented. I love the way you would even just post talk about I think I think we're friends before you were married. So like even just the way you talk about your wife before she was your wife and the way you talk about her my wife, my wife, my wife, my wife, my wife, my wifey baby girl on my phone. 

0:04:54 - Speaker 2
So, yeah, tea is amazing. We've been together like 10 years. That's crazy. Yeah, so we met in college in 2011. I was dating someone else at the time, so we met at Marquette in Milwaukee. And so met at Marquette through mutual friends. She was studying Biomed Science, I was exercise science, so we took some classes together and some of my best friends at the time like introduced me to her and then we didn't start dating until 2013. I actually you know, it's funny I ran track, so I was a, I was a sprinter, not a runner, and in college I would run with her and her friends and then eventually just became me and tea running. And then, like the last time I ran with her I'm not even kidding Like I asked her to be my girlfriend on like the lakefront in Milwaukee and I never ran again. I secured the deal and then I was like all right, I'm going back to my sprints and weightlifting. 

0:05:45 - Speaker 1
So did you join a running group because you were precisely her. Oh, it wasn't even like an official running group. 

0:05:51 - Speaker 2
It was just more like we, just the three or four of us, would just run together and it was me and her two girlfriends and her and we would just all run together and I was just like, uh, I just didn't want to do it Let me change a question. Yeah. 

0:06:04 - Speaker 1
She wasn't running. Would you have been running as well? 

0:06:07 - Speaker 2
Oh, probably not. Not as much. Yeah, probably not as much, so she gave you a little spark of some cardio, running fitness, yeah, and then, oh my goodness it was crazy. 

So when I asked her out because we've been talking and like you know, back and forth our sophomore year and I asked her out, finally junior year, over the summer, I was back home in Oregon, got her these sweet pair of Nikes or whatever, and then I just wasn't thinking, but I had it. I wrote on the bottom of her shoe Will you be my girlfriend? Well, we ran first. So I'm like, hey, look on the bottom of your shoe. And she lifts up her shoe and she's like what? And I'm like why did I not put that together? 

She just ran off the question Completely ran off. So I'm like well, I had written on there, Will you be my girlfriend. But hey, will you be my girlfriend? 

0:06:53 - Speaker 1
And happily ever after happily ever after. 

0:06:55 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean we've had, you know, being together 10 years. Nothing's going to be easy. We've had quite the dynamic and we've grown through a lot together. So big part of my story is her and I'm just super proud of her. So because she's she's overcome a lot more than people I mean that's her story to share at her time. But she's overcome so much mentally that and I don't know anyone that could have that kind of heart through the kind of struggle that she's been through and still come out on top and like be so sweet and so caring and everyone loves her. She goes in a room and she's like this little like like cotton candy, like you know, I maybe not cotton candy, but like kind of like the bubbly, like you know, like a lollipop, just coming in and being like everyone wants to, you know, hang out with tea. So I was probably a terrible candy example, but I was just trying to think of something. 

0:07:41 - Speaker 1
She's got a very friendly to me, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's very friendly, she's very like. Nothing about her is off putting in the sense that she's not going to be. You know, have a conversation with you talk with you after you know. 

0:07:51 - Speaker 2
Yeah. 

0:07:51 - Speaker 1
She's very, very open, very easy presence yeah. 

0:07:54 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. 

0:07:56 - Speaker 1
So being the oldest of a family of six siblings, that's, that's hard. Can you talk kind of talk, about that a little bit. 

0:08:04 - Speaker 2
Man. 

0:08:06 - Speaker 1
What was the separation between you and the second oldest, 16 months? Okay, so, you're pretty young, never really had too much time, you know it's crazy. 

0:08:14 - Speaker 2
It's like growing up Like I didn't you know, like we grew up like well, but we didn't have a lot of money, but you don't know that. When you're like growing up Like all I knew was like we had we had family, like we had. My dad was a teacher so, like you know, we still, we went camping, we went to the beach, like fortunately, my, my grandpa had a lot of like kind of miles on Hawaiian Airlines, so we go to Hawaii pretty frequently. Um, nothing crazy like staying in these crazy bougie places or whatever, but it was like, hey, we're just staying with family, like we're having a good time, like we're going to the beach we're. So I feel very fortunate because like family was a big, big component of that. It's like always like family's most important. We'd have these things called Luau's, so Luau was just a big Hawaiian party and like dude cousins that I don't literally they're like the one they do to pig in the ground. 

0:08:59 - Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

0:09:01 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, they're like massive, like you and my uncle's wedding probably had like 600 people and it was. It was on like the Royal Hawaiian hotel and Waikiki and like he saved up a long time for it, but it's like that's just. They party crazy out there and so we'd always have these Luau's at my grandparents house and there's like all these people coming like second or third cousins. Oh yeah, hey Joe, hey, I'm like cousin of cousin of cousin. I'm like who, nice to meet you. I may never see you again. I will remember your name, it's just. It's just the Filipino culture. 

But like, going back to your question of like six, six siblings or not, six siblings, five siblings and being the oldest of six allowed, I think, me, to just see so many different personalities and I actually kind of grew up feeling a little alone personally just because I was the only one really into sports and I took sports to like a decently high level, right when I was, like I basically got hurt the race before like qualifying for state and running at Hayward Field for the state championship Oregon track. But like I I took it so disciplined and everything else, and my siblings were very, very good, music wise and drama wise and they were always like leaders and choir and band. And yeah, I played in tenor sax for 10 years. That was my, I guess, art, if you want to call it, and I did well at it. I went to, like you know, international conferences and stuff to play tenor sax. 

But I was always into sports and like sports would always be on, like football games to basketball games, like that's. That was like my parents even like one time, or like you can't become like the NFL guy on Sundays and I mean, what do you talk? I literally watch every single game, like it's like on at 10 am Pacific or whatever, and just go through the whole day and I would just watch football to hold it. What? 

guy you started, did your dad watch a lot of football? No, no, that's the craziest part, the none of my family really like anytime. It was like sports or like watching movie or watch some kind of show my parents wanted to watch from their childhood. It was always like everyone got their way and I'm like, all right, how can I go watch sports? I really can't right now, because everyone else wanted to watch whatever. So sometimes I go into my parents bedroom and just watch the game there on their bed or something. But I was like I want to go watch sports. 

0:11:12 - Speaker 1
So your parents, musical or artistic. 

0:11:14 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, musical artistic. 

0:11:16 - Speaker 1
So every other sibling kind of got that trait from your parents and you feel like you're the only one who did it. 

0:11:21 - Speaker 2
I was the only one that wanted to engage. 

0:11:22 - Speaker 1
Got kind of on the athletic side of it, correct. 

0:11:24 - Speaker 2
Yeah, so sports and take it to a level where I was like I want to compete in this. Like I had a dream as a kid and this is from my mom but she gave me a basketball like too you know those like Fisher Price or whatever basketball hoops yeah, I was literally on that thing like crazy all the time. So, and like when we didn't have a lot of money, like I would just play basketball outside. That was my sport of choice, you know, evident by all the jerseys and shoes and everything that I have now. But that's basketball was like. I had a dream to play in the NBA. That was what drove me actually as a kid, and like I was the star player on it. You know, and sometimes like when you're scoring all these points and you just don't know what like league level you're in I wasn't in the top league level I was kind of like you know, a couple of tears down. You know I'd score like 20, 30 points a game in like six or seventh grade and thinking like I'm all that in a bag of chips. I really did so much. So, to the point, I was so cocky when I went to high school that I was like I'm going to make varsity. My freshman year I got cut, no granted. 

I went to a high school that you know that my sophomore, junior and senior year at the highest level in Oregon sports. They won the state championship and one of my classmates went to play in the NBA. So it was like I was around very high caliber athletes and but I had a coach from my middle school years that was like dude, you got to go to this school and play here. It was like you know, kind of set a six A, which is the top level, it was three A. He's like dude, you'd make the team, you get exposure, all this stuff. And I personally I'm so grateful because he got me into fitness. He was training me when I was in like sixth or seventh grade because he was our assistant basketball coach and that's how. That's what started my fitness journey initially. To not be small and learn from. His name is Rory. Shout out to him because he literally started the whole thing of like fitness at a very young age for me. So even since I was like 12, I got into lifting pushups. 

0:13:15 - Speaker 1
Like doing strength training. 

0:13:16 - Speaker 2
Doing strength training, getting stronger, doing a lot of single leg stuff, and that's I think that's why I never got severely injured, like in all my sports. I never got severely injured because he taught me that very young. So I'm very fortunate to have had that, because that's almost 20 years ago. But yeah, he was like, hey, go play here. But then I started to realize too it was like he's teaching me this, but I kind of there was always something in me that I'm like I would rather fail, being around the best than like win, compared to like a couple of tears down, like I would just rather shoot for it all and absolutely fall on my face but then learn from it to get better from it, cause that's what keeps challenge. You Like when you put yourself, like when you believe that you belong in that room or you belong in that group. And I had coaches tell me, like you know, I barely made it sophomore year into JV2, barely, like I was. It was hard. 

I was like all these kids played club basketball and you know I was fortunate enough to go to a school that a lot of the kids, parents, had money and stuff. It was a very nice facility, everything like you know Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. His son went to my high school, so it's like there's a lot of money there. We didn't have any, so I was very fortunate to just experience that. By the same time, I kind of had a chip on my shoulder, cause I was like all these guys are practicing and they're playing club basketball, aau, all that stuff. We didn't have money for that. My practice to do well was playing outside in the rain in Oregon in the fall, when it was like you know, 35, 40 degrees, it's raining and I'm out there for two hours practicing my ball handling skills and just our rusty hoop. That was all I had. 

0:15:00 - Speaker 1
So Now, I'm sure while your parents were more musical and stuff, like they weren't in the sports as much, I'm sure they probably supported your you know your endeavors. But like, while they could support it, if they didn't understand it, did you feel like they? Maybe you didn't get as much support because they didn't like they weren't in? 

0:15:18 - Speaker 2
the sports as much. One of the biggest drivers that I have discovered from myself in the last like two years was everything I felt like I was trying to prove was because I didn't get the support I felt I wanted from my parents, and that's a very real thing where I would be like so practice, and like I tell you, like I show up early, right, and I wake up early. Well, that started in high school because I had to take public transportation, because it was just, it was far away and my parents had, you know, other kids to drop off at school and stuff, so I would literally get up at three in the morning. This is in high school, my sophomore year. I get three, up at three in the morning, get all my stuff ready, and then I would take the city bus 45 minutes, then to the train and then from the train to a different bus, or sorry, yeah, yeah, no, no, it would be two buses or whatever, but I took public transportation, took 45 minutes and then I would get to school by 530 for 6am practice and then we'd have practice. 

But then when we have games in the evenings, none of my family came. Maybe they came to like a couple, I'm not gonna say never came, but it was like of all of like our 25 games or whatever, maybe showed up to like a couple. They then, like I was I was the only kid whose parents weren't there, you know and I was like by myself and it really shot my confidence because, like I was always on the bench, I was warming up the bench, I was playing for a very good high school, so like I felt like I was playing against very, very good competition, but, like you know, I had some flashes of good and I just always felt like man, like why is this so hard? And it really hurt my confidence a lot. 

0:16:54 - Speaker 1
Yeah, what kept you going back? I mean, what kept you getting up at 3am to go to practice? What kept you doing it when you were sitting on the bench and you weren't seeing your family or your sports? You know where would that fire come. You know you were driving for your company. 

0:17:09 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I watched a documentary and this is before like the last dance, like there was. It was probably in like probably early 2000s. There was a film on Michael Jordan and then that was when Kobe Bryant was very good and just destroying my blazers all the time. So it was like I was drawn to Michael Jordan and I was drawn to Kobe, so everything like, if you see a lot of my quotes on social media and everything else, it's like my favorite number is 23, right, and then. But then also the next number is 24. Ironically, both their numbers. And so that's because it's like everything that Jordan did and the excellence that he pursued. And like I like the whole coaching and everything else. Like the moment I got my hands in college on Tim Grover's book Relentless. There's been very few books that I have like just read straight through and didn't put down. One was Relentless by Tim Grover. He has a second book called Winning. The second one was Shoot Dog and the business of Nike how Phil Knight created Nike, and so why I'm such a big Nike Jordan guide, regardless of however people see those brands, it's like that's. 

I'm from Portland, you know, grew up 30 minutes outside of Nike World Headquarters. Like I didn't. I didn't realize how, like, how much of an impact sports and business came together with those iconic names I just mentioned and like that's where, that's, that's what I just saw. And all of a sudden, like just studying, I mean I would watch like basketball films and I would watch my dad. Actually my dad really really tried because I was very thankful like in middle school he coached my basketball team. 

So it's not that he wasn't like into my sports, he really supported me there to the point that he coached, but he didn't play basketball really and he didn't really ever coach before. It was just like kind of volunteer, like you know Catholic youth organization, cyo basketball out there and we did well, but it was like it wasn't. It wasn't to a level like this could get me to high school and college ball and everything else, cause again, still, I had that dream to play in the NBA. Being five, six Filipino, you know I was shooting like long distance before, like people knew about Steph Curry, cause I was too short so I just shot three feet outside three point line. Just get good at that long shot. 

Like I literally this was, this was a game and it was. It's on VHS, I know like that's how we recorded things back then and we were down by four so we weren't going to win the game. But this was at Central Catholic High School and I'm like in seventh grade and this is for the championship we lose. But with like one second left, I throw up a three from half court and just switched it and everyone just went, even though we lost everyone, like you saw on the video, like everyone got out of their seat. Like what the heck just happened? 

0:19:49 - Speaker 1
This kid just like like nailed it from half court so that was, there were, there were some great, there were the other glory days, right yeah, the glory days of seventh grade basketball, you know, not even like high school. 

0:20:01 - Speaker 2
It's like, yeah, seventh grade basketball. 

So, like you know, and then we won like the championship in our division my eighth grade year and I dropped like 30 that game. So I just like I said, I had too much confidence in not knowing that. I was kind of like a big fish in a smaller pond. So that's why I'm thankful Like my parents supported my, my, my goals in that sense because they wanted to help me. But high school was where I kind of felt a lot of things like changed for me mentally. That I know. When you reached out I was like thinking like what do I share on? And where did it really start when I started to have all these crazy mindsets of, like you know, pretty like massive depression too, and I can get into it. But it's like there were some parts where I just didn't feel supported at all. 

Okay well then let's get into that. 

0:20:45 - Speaker 1
Cause so mental health. That's kind of the big, big buzzword of this entire thing here. For you. When do you feel like was the first time in your life you started to kind of be coming aware of mental health and being aware of something that that influences you? And you and I mean the point that you realize mental health is something that influences you and the point that you realize you can influence your mental health are two different points. Did you? 

0:21:10 - Speaker 2
were those two different points for you and there was the, the tension I had between me and my parents and I'm not proud of it and I'm really like a couple of years ago I literally sat my whole family down and apologized how I was as a kid and especially in high school, because I was angry, I was pissed off, I was very upset on a lot of things and I think part of it comes from like my parents meant extremely well, it was when we grew up, catholic right, and so there's a lot of kind of like you know ways that people parent and they're they're very strict, right when it was to, to a point where I felt and regardless of how you know people may see it how I felt like so restricted, like I couldn't, I was suffocated, like I couldn't breathe, kind of like restrictions on my life, like even, even like and I don't need to get in specific scenarios but when it came to like dating girls, there was so much I couldn't do and I just felt like I couldn't even like hang out with a girl without being susceptible, that I was just gonna like kiss her in high school and stuff or like whatever I didn't. I dated women but I never slept around. That just wasn't who I was. I wanted to find someone that I could like, support and take care of and I cared about family and I saw what from other family and friends and people sleeping around and stuff, even in high school, it just it hurt relationships. So I never got into that crowd and really what happened was like my outlet to not like cause I had I mean, you know, growing up with a lot of money, you kind of are around kids and families that a lot of them were into drugs and alcohol, like a lot of. 

I'm thinking even today there were like like even though it was Catholic grade school, there were guys doing drugs and alcohol, then smoking all that stuff, and I'm like that's just not gonna be me. And I think part of that's where I started to kind of just set myself away from what the crowd was doing, cause I was like really involved academically, like I had pretty much actually like the only blemish on my grades through high school was one A minus. That pissed me off, cause instead of a level of valedictorian I was salutatorian. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's just the perfectionist in me. 

0:23:18 - Speaker 1
So so do you feel like like striving to do law and school? What like the grandparents? Not, but the grandparents were doing law and school, or did they punish you for doing better school? 

0:23:28 - Speaker 2
Like, did you? 

0:23:29 - Speaker 1
like. Is that where that came? 

0:23:30 - Speaker 2
from. That's a great question, cause I am Asian, so a lot of people are like, oh, asian parents, you know, but it's like it actually wasn't. 

0:23:37 - Speaker 1
I think it's immigrant parents or like you know, like it's, it's my parents like every parent's like. I have a lot of immigrant parents who are like this yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. 

0:23:45 - Speaker 2
They want better for their kids, so it's crazy because, like they said, always do well, why would you do your worst? And so I just I took it to an extreme because I had siblings that weren't necessarily straight A or like you know, they got B's and C's sometimes and it was like my parents didn't really I didn't see them really care right, but for me I was like, why would I do anything less? Like there were, there were points where I worked so hard in school and that's where, like, I was like I'm going to be great at everything Anything I touch, from music and the tenor sax to my grades, to basketball, to, eventually, where I actually ended up being very good in sports was track. And again, not very good in a sense, I went to college or you know, like I think I was sharing with you, like I was one or two seconds off of running like college track and Marquette, just in terms of my times and stuff. But that's where, like, I saw why why not give your best? 

And I didn't necessarily come from my parents, it came from, literally, michael Jordan and Kobe. Like I would read their quotes. This is when I'm like seventh, eighth grade, like watching oh, that was what I was going to say my dad introduced me to coach K and where I learned fundamentals. We're literally watching coach K on VHS, the movie no, no, coach K. He had like he had like when he was a coach, young coach at Duke. He had like like fundamental, like VHS tapes on how to like fundamental, dribbling drills and all that kind of stuff and like I would just practice that. 

0:25:09 - Speaker 1
Okay. 

0:25:10 - Speaker 2
Yeah and then. But he talked about like the get so good at the simple things and that's what I don't know. I just I always like wanted to strive and achieve and I'm it's even hard to pinpoint today where that. I know where it comes from now and why I keep going, but as a young kid it's like I think part of it too was trying to get my parents' attention. 

0:25:32 - Speaker 1
I was gonna say is there a chance that because you're the oldest, and you're the oldest, which meant every kid after you was a baby and you were no longer the baby and then, as more kids came, you were really not the baby. So, like you, you probably had to fight for attention. You probably had to fight for like love when there's literally babies, multiple babies that are coming. 

0:25:55 - Speaker 2
It's crazy you say that perspective Cause now I think about it, it's like a lot of what drove me is like I just never like my parents were like super proud and everything, like they really were. It's like oh so proud, but it was like for me, it felt like it was missing, something Like it wasn't. And this is where my grandpa and everything he said and he's like, dude, I'm so proud of you and everything. And like when I would get straight A's, he'd be the first one to congratulate me. He would be the one to call me on my birthday. 

So when he passed away in 2013, 14, that was probably one of the darkest times I had because, like I didn't get, he passed away that November and that was the first December. I never got a birthday call Right. So that was very hard for me. Being like this is cause I think the father power my grandpa had was what kept our whole family together, even when he was going through all his chemo and cancer and everything else, and we lost him very young. That was very hard. Like the hardest thing was, you know, saying bye to him, knowing he was in Hawaii. We went on a trip to Hawaii to say bye to my grandpa, so you did get to see him before he passed. 

Yeah, I fortunately, fortunately I did and I'm very grateful and thankful for that. But like, I think of all that and like, but my grandpa always said like respect your parents and your elderly, right? And I didn't. And this is where I'm not proud of my story, in the sense that, like, dude, there were some because of the tension between my parents and the restrictions at home and restrictions with girlfriends and all this stuff, like I literally became so angry, like to the point that and I again, this is what I'm proud of, but I would swear at my parents all the time Like massive anger issues, so massive that, like there was literally one time I stormed out of the house. 

And yeah, I'm not proud of this story, but like, at the same time, it's just part of who I am and there's like we live, we grew up in an area that kind of had like a main road and there were a bunch of cars driving by and I'm literally walking up and down. I'm like, would it really even matter if I just jumped out in front of these right now? Would it matter? Because everything I'm doing, all the achieving I'm doing, no one seems to give a shit, and sorry for my language, but it just felt like no one seemed to care, and especially my parents, even though it wasn't intentional. There's just all the other siblings were involved in what they were passionate about music, drama, all that stuff. I was the athlete, and no one in my family really pursued sports at a very high level like I did. So I kind of felt like on an island. I'm the one getting straight A's, I'm the one getting a job at 12 to pay for stuff, because we just didn't have a lot of money. If I wanted clothes, I bought it myself. You know, I had, you know, like I was doing everything right, that everything you'd want, like a perfect son to do, but because I fought my parents on restrictions, I kind of felt like the black sheep like, in a sense. 

So there's one friend and she knows who she is and I've thanked her a million thousand times but randomly was I was walking out along that street thinking like, do I just jump out in front of a car right now? She texted me and it was really a very simple text. Like, joe, I love you and so many other people do when we care about you, I was like what the heck? Okay, well, clearly I'm. You know this is stupid. I finally go back home, my dad and I hash it out and stuff. But that really impacted my siblings because the amount of swear words that I used, how pissed off I was, stormed out, why my sister was crying like that was tough. I was very hard because that was. That's the example. They saw what age was that I was? 

0:29:28 - Speaker 1
16. Do you feel like a lot of like that tension? Was it there in middle school that it really come in high school or did it build up over time? 

0:29:37 - Speaker 2
I didn't notice it as much in middle school. I mean I knew like okay, so my parents, like you know kind of the restrictions I felt watching movies. I always felt I always made fun of it, constantly Like because like I couldn't watch like this movie or that movie. You know, when you're seventh or eighth grade you just want to fit in. That was that during that time. That was when it was cool to like everyone wore like these, like cool boxers in the locker room with like either the Simpsons or whatever, and you sprayed acts everywhere. Do you remember those days, dude, that was like our locker room but like all those dudes would talk about that. But they're talking about all these movies that I just couldn't watch because my parents like God bless them still like I love them a ton, but I felt like the restrictions they had versus how I watched my uncle raise my cousin, to all this stuff. I was like this is just too much Like. 

And it came to a point like in high school I was always involved in our like Catholic youth group and I'm still tight today actually with who is the youth minister at the time, the youth group leader. I stay in touch with him, but we were gonna go see the dark night and it's like PG 13. I'm like 17 years old and my youth group leaders like, yeah, we're all gonna go watch the dark night. It's gonna be awesome. Like you come in and my parents literally wouldn't let me go because it's PG 13 and there's dark themes in it. 

And I'm like, are you serious? Right now you gotta be kidding. Like this is our Catholic youth group going to this? Like I'm with good people. Like I'm not out smoking, doing drugs, alcohol, nothing, like all the other people that I knew in high school. Like I'm not doing any of that. I can't go watch the dark night. Like my language is like are you fucking kidding me right now? Like, and that's where that tension came from and it was so bad to the point, half of the reason I moved across the country to go to school was to get away from home. 

0:31:27 - Speaker 1
I wanna we're gonna come back and touch on the point over the moving across the country, but before we get that, I wanna talk about them. So do you feel like the mental health problems started because of the tension with your parents or do you feel like the mental health problems were there for other reasons and like it got exacerbated by the tension with the parents? 

0:31:47 - Speaker 2
I think the desire to achieve there's a. When you're achieving at that level I'll say there's like unbridled, it can get out of control, like you're almost like a freak. And I kind of felt that way sometimes because, like even in high school, with what I was doing, I didn't like home so much because I felt so restricted that I would be involved in every school activity just to not go home. And you asked me this actually before we jumped on the podcast, like how are you so positive? It was a facade. I was positive. Joe, everyone knew me as, like, joe was always saying hi to everybody, everyone like so much to the point that there's this award that once you graduate at our high school, it's called the Loyalty Award and it's like the whole class votes on one guy or one girl who's like who would be the person to come to your aid, like you know, and like whenever you needed something, who would be that person. And I was the guy that was voted for that right. 

But I always lived at school Like I from basketball practice and once basketball and my dreams got shattered, kind of after junior year, of not playing varsity and stuff, all of a sudden it became track practice and I was literally showing up at five in the morning to run and sprint on the track and get workouts done before school, and so that's like that's how it started. Then I would do all my academics and then I would be involved in this club, that club band, at this program and doing this, doing that and like I wouldn't, and then I would take the city bus home because I didn't have a car until my senior year. I would take the city bus home at like nine or 10 o'clock at night, just then start that same cycle over again. Literally, home was like a hotel. 

0:33:26 - Speaker 1
So would you say that was your coping for your mental health. What's? 

0:33:30 - Speaker 2
to stay busy, what's to stay busy? What's to stay busy? And like, productive, and I was like, oh, like you know it was, I don't. I don't think like I had a normal childhood. I felt like we'd always, like you know, play sports in the street with our neighbors, like, yeah, my cousin would come over, we'd have the Christmas, new Year's, play video games and stuff. But like even that, like we were not allowed to play video games at home, so I never got to experience, like you know, xbox or PlayStation or you know I would. 

Literally, fortunately, kind of my senior year, I developed a group of friends and then, like that's when I finally played 2K for the first time, but I felt like I had missed out on so much. But at some point it just I became numb to it and I didn't care because I kept trying to stack accolades as a way to like get my parents to see. It was almost like a way to be like hey, like I'm not stupid, like look what I'm doing, like give me some flexibility here, like, but it just didn't happen. I think they tried as best they could and I think part of it is I was the oldest, so I'm first for everything, and so I think some of my, even to today, some of my siblings saw that and I really still feel sometimes like how we grew up in. 

The example I set good or bad still impacts them, you know, and I just pray that they can still forgive me. But I, you know, and I've apologized to my family tons of times because everyone saw the outburst, everyone saw the, you know, it was all great and dandy on the outside and anyone that listens to this story was like I had no idea. Yeah, cause I was very good at fricking, hiding it and that's why I was so positive, cause I had to be, I had no other choice Like I had to suck it up and be like everything sucks at home, but hey, at least I'm, you know, straight A student got a perfect on my junior paper, cause very few get that perfect score on your like massive junior essay or whatever you know, and I was like just trying to stack accolades as a way to be like look how great I am, even though inside felt horrible, and so that was my way of coping. 

0:35:33 - Speaker 1
So you for you. Then you came to, you went to Marquette, which is obviously very, very far from Oregon. You flew across the country. So I want to, like I relate to you on so many things you're saying. It's insane, actually, how much we're probably similar because we grew up in similar situations, have very strict parents. I went very busy in high school. I would, when I wasn't playing, three sports. It was because I was working and not playing a sport. 

0:36:04 - Speaker 2
That's almost. Yeah, that's amazing. 

0:36:06 - Speaker 1
Wow, I had no idea During summer I'd work during the day at one job, go to work at another day at another job, but during night, just to save up money, Like I could all cause I was stacking. I want to stack late, I want to make money, I want to stack accolades, I want to just accomplish things. And all in my mind all I could think about is someday I'm going to be 18 or someday I'm going to be getting to go to college and I'm going to have this freedom and like restriction or roof for me, and that's. I stayed busy and that's all. 

0:36:33 - Speaker 2
I focused on. That's all you focused on. Yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy. You say that because, like you know how I said, I had to pay for stuff, since I was like 12, I felt I am part of one thing too, and this is something I have and I've had I'm not ashamed to say it. I've had tons of counselors and psychologists and that's why I feel like today I've gotten through so much now mentally, but like one big thing my parents probably don't even remember they did this I went out to, of all places, Ross, you know, not like crazy, spend money or whatever and bought this $10 pair of Adidas shorts and they were blue. 

And I still remember like it's yesterday, with my own money. I come home, my parents were like where'd you get that? And I was like I got it from. I took the bus and went to, instead of going home right away. We had like a shopping mall near some Target and Ross and stuff, and I went and bought a pair of shorts and then I, you know, took the bus back home or whatever, and one day they saw me wearing those shorts Where'd you get those shorts? And now, because they said I couldn't spend anything and I was like I got them. I got them from Ross and they're like you weren't allowed to do that and I'm like but I spent it with my own money. They took it away and I'm like 12. It took my shorts away. 

They didn't give you a reason, just took them, just took them, just took them and I was like, are you kidding me? Like I paid for those, and I think it created a cascade of like so much materialism. Like it was kind of crazy. Like that's where, even sometimes today, I'm like I sometimes feel guilty for how much I spend on clothes, but I it was only till recently that I recognized like that was, that was what triggered that, because it was like I earned this with my own money and it was. It wasn't even like I spent like $500 on something. What a $10 pair of shorts from Ross. How stupid is that. 

But then they took it away and so, like that's where all of a sudden, it wasn't just the school and the sports and everything else, like during the summer and this was during 2008, which was very hard to get a job Like I one summer, no, no joke. My parents put so much pressure on me to get a job to just like work and pay for stuff that I wanted, because they were going to make me pay for my own car insurance. I couldn't drive a car because I couldn't pay for my own insurance and gas then. So until I could do that, I couldn't drive one of their cars. So I literally worked every kind of job during the summer and I will I probably one of the most humbling jobs I ever did Was grading blueberries on a kind of a farm Like it was. Like in Oregon. There's a lot of kind of agriculture and farming and so I literally would be next to I don't know if they were legal immigrants or not, but a lot of like Hispanic and people that didn't speak English. I would be sitting there all day just picking blueberries off this conveyor belt and it was the most humbling thing I've ever. And I was doing it because I'm like, why am I here? And I'm like, but I literally couldn't find a job. My parents made me apply to probably like 60, 70 jobs and just no one was hiring for anything. I was doing, like you know, staffing stuff. 

But I'm also at this time it was my sophomore year, going into junior high school. I'm like 16, right, and I couldn't drive there because I didn't have the car yet, so I had to be kind of close too. So I remember that and that's what. And then I had worked catering jobs in the summer. I did landscaping, like mowing all like you know the parks and stuff. You know guys on those mowers like I. What's crazy and actually that's speeding up the story, because I just realized that was in college, not in high school, working those other summer jobs and pay for stuff. But yeah, no, that was. 

I was always working, and I was a basketball ref as well. So you know, I was working on top of everything else I was doing. So I never I never slept, stayed busy, stayed busy. I would literally go to bed at like probably 10 or 11 at night and wake up at three or four in the morning. And I'm like 16 years old. That's just not what, and what I know today is like most 16 year olds doing that kind of work. So there's like I knew I was paying, and there was. 

There was part of me, though, that like kept going back to Michael Jordan and Kobe, like pay that price, like sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, and I just I became so numb to doing it that it was just normal. I didn't want to tell anybody about that, I just kept doing it. I just kept doing it day in and day out. Look at Joe Stacko, these accolades. Look, he's working, he's independent, he's all this stuff, and to the extreme, so much so that when my brother like God bless him. It's like you know, and I'm sure he may hear the story someday but, like when he was a little younger than me, seeing my example, he wanted to, like you know, kind of pursue his passions. 

But I think part of it was when he wasn't held to the same standard of my parents making me apply to all those jobs. I would literally be like, hey, mom, dad, why is David, my brother David, why is he not applying to jobs? And this is like you know. He's like 15, 14, 15 years old. Okay, who, like not everybody needs to work a job with that? Now I understand that, but back then, because I was like 16 and needing to work or whatever, I was like why is he not having to work jobs? Why does he get to do whatever he wants during the summer? Why don't you make him do that, all that? Oh well, he's kind of you know, doing the other stuff and I'm like bullshit, that's absolutely bullshit and that's that's that. I remember that moment. That's where it really ticked off a lot of like my siblings weren't held to the same standard. 

0:42:09 - Speaker 1
So it's like hard because you you can't. Who you are today is because you were the oldest sibling and being the oldest sibling intrinsically makes you over time get less affection. There's you know cause, like it's funny, the older I got, I'm like. You always hear the joke about the oldest and middle, the youngest child syndrome thing. You think it's just, it's like a, it's general, it's just kind of, but like in real life, you start to see and you're like no, no, it's such a real dig because we are such socially dynamic human beings and the way we work in social situations is like we all have the same part of our brain that like how we interpret social situations. So for the youngest, the oldest, the middle child, we all have these characteristics that we develop based on that and it happens. It happens the family dynamic. 

0:42:57 - Speaker 2
It's the family dynamic. 

0:42:58 - Speaker 1
It's like as deep rooted as anything else in us. 

0:43:01 - Speaker 2
Well and part of me wants to extend grace my parents too, cause they had six kids. They're exhausted, you know what I mean. So they're just trying to do their best and I see that now, but that's after like five or six therapists, you know what I mean. Like I have such a different perspective now, but I mean I grew up quick. Like I think I literally was like doing more at like 12 than most people in their 20s, and that's not like I'm better. I was just. That was my coping. My coping was to overwork. 

My coping was and I've had really, really, really recently had to learn how to like turn that off or like channel it in a way, because there were some times where I literally didn't wake up, that my parents thought I died. They thought I was dead, like I was just laying and I wouldn't move. They thought I was in a coma because I literally my parents shared this with me. I was like, literally I could not wake up, to the point my mom got so concerned one time, like because I was just so exhausted from all. Like I mean, dude, you hear the schedule I'm telling you like that's just not even sustainable. No, it's not freaking sustainable at all and I was so dead like, so dead tired by Sunday that I would sleep the entire day and my parents, they'd turn on the lights, they'd play a lot of music, I wouldn't wake up. And so there were multiple times like they thought I was in a coma or I wasn't alive. 

But it's the craziest part is cause like I say that physically, but I was kind of dead inside, Like I was numb to everything Dude, I get an A, or like I got a member, I'd like that junior paper or whatever. I was like proud of it, but I was like that's not good enough. And all of a sudden I started to like hold, I started to kick my own ass and be like dude, you're not, you're not good enough. Like my self talks sucked, but I was beating myself up because it's like I would get straight A's and like, oh, but I could have done better here. Well, I could. It's almost to an absolute extreme. 

And part of that I feel like you know, outside of the context of understanding how Kobe and Michael took things to an extreme, cause they did, and that's why they were very successful. But they also had the adult maturity behind that. And I'm 12 or 13 or 14, you know what I mean. Or like in high school, like it's just, it's different, it's a different kind of like you can't absorb. Now that I look back at it, it's like you're not meant to do that in your teens, right? So when all of a sudden like going to college and kind of we'll get to that in a second, but like when I joined different network marketing businesses, or when I was like doing all this work and I wasn't a millionaire in my early 20s, I was like I've been paying this price since I was like frickin' 14 years old. Why aren't the results here? And that led to a whole nother cascade of just like bitterness, anger, frustration. 

0:45:51 - Speaker 1
When you were in college. 

0:45:52 - Speaker 2
Yeah, when I went to college yeah, so that's a whole, yeah, so that's a part of the story that really triggered a lot of like things, so kind of get that background of like kind of growing up in high school and without the only real counseling I had was because my parents, like you know, and I would threaten them with like suicide and stuff. Again, I'm not proud of it, but because they had all these restrictions of like Jesus, I might as well just go kill myself then. I don't say that all the time as a way to kind of try and get my way and to scare them to give me my way, because I just didn't know anywhere else. So I literally threatened suicide all the time, to the point that I ran out that one night and that was just what it was and I'm like you know it just doesn't sound healthy and there's so much there, but that's. 

0:46:35 - Speaker 1
But you know, it's not about. It's not about not sounding healthy. When I hear that, what I hear it's not unhealthy. What I hear is a kid who felt like he had no control, and this was one thing, one thing his parents could not risk not cooperating with, because that's a one you have control of yourself, and if you were to commit suicide, that's something they could not stop you from in a MSA monitor. 

0:47:00 - Speaker 2
So it's one thing that you probably felt you had control of, that you could use as leverage at all 100%, 100% and so that's, and like they you know, there were multiple times like they would call, like you know, the priest of our like grade school and stuff and the church we went to and I initially never wanted to do it and then I eventually kind of sat down and it, like it helped, but it also was kind of like dude, like you don't know. Like I just kind of sat there and like I'm still actually great friends with him today, like whenever I see him it's like awesome to see him, even though I don't practice that faith anymore necessarily. It's like I have a massive different kind of respect for different phase and where people come from and how they grow up. And that's where, that's where, like, I kind of remember sitting there and I was like but yeah, but you don't eat. I appreciate you praying for me and everything else, but you don't understand. And that's where I kind of got shut off to counseling. Like I didn't want to go see anybody, I just kind of wanted to just like, oh, you know what I can do. I can go work harder, I can go get more accolades. I can say, like you know, you sit at those awards like freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, high school and it's like, yeah, I probably got like three or four a year like of different things, random ones, most fit person in the PE class or whatever, or like all this kind of stuff. 

And then it became the sports accolades. Then it became, hey, I'm like you know playing the tenor sacks, being invited to like you know international, like band conferences, to then all of a sudden like, hey, I'm like class salutatorian, I got like you know, perfects on these scores and it was like, but it never was good enough, like taking AP classes and getting like straight, it was like crazy. You just hear all this and I'm like, I'm almost as I communicated to you, I'm like how could I sit there and not be grateful for everything that I had? Well, I wasn't. And then when I got into Marquette, that program, the athletic training program, accepts 14 of a thousand applicants every single year 14. So that's like what? 1%, yeah, less, yeah, yeah, 1.4%. 

0:48:58 - Speaker 1
Yeah 1.4%. 

0:48:59 - Speaker 2
I got into that and like my parents were so proud and but the thing was money was very tight and so, and I literally just saw this friend I'm not kidding Like two weeks ago at the Oregon fiesta bowl we went to and he and he didn't know this and I thanked him literally again, he didn't even remember it. But when I had the choice between all the schools I was applying to, like Oregon, state Oregon, or like I got an accepted into every college like cause of the grades, the sports, the extracurriculars, like my and what's crazy is like my ACT and SAT scores were average. So it wasn't like I was like a genius, I was just like I worked extremely hard, right, but like I worked so hard that I was like I knew like for everyone else, you know, kind of applying to colleges. I was like I'm stacked with stuff that I can just sell myself to colleges and I got into every college I applied for. 

Marquette drew my attention because it was the athletic training program, because then I could get into sports. And when I was, what ended my kind of track career, I guess, was a pretty significant injury that led me to not be able to like actually race well in our state qualifier and who was there for me? Our athletic trainer, and she helped me through a lot in rehab and stuff like that. So that's what caused me to want to go into Marquette's athletic training program Again, like 14 students accepted I have like a thousand applicants and then I went for that pre-physical therapy and but I was like dude, I get to literally be a student trainer. We're at the school where Dwayne Wade played basketball. Again, the basketball in me. I went to a basketball school, yeah, and like, of those 14 students, only two get selected in each class to work with the men's basketball team. Okay, I was one of them. That's awesome. 

And I didn't do it and there was a whole story behind that of why I actually, like gave that up. So even though, like you know what I mean, like I say this stuff and I hope you know listeners to this like don't think. Like, oh, like Joe's just kind of bragging on whatever it's like, no, like understand, like part of the reason I chased all that stuff was to cope with stuff. You know what I mean. Like that was all I measured myself on because, like everything else was so dysfunctional. I didn't have a normal childhood. I didn't have. Like you know, it was just it didn't feel normal compared to like and you know, when you talk about stories and like retreats and everything else and like you kind of hear the lives of the people we're having and you're just like I feel almost guilty sharing what I'm doing or sharing the success to a point that I'm like this is, this isn't normal what I've gone through, but I wasn't open to help at that point. 

0:51:37 - Speaker 1
Still, she just made me think of a point here. It's almost like a thought here. People, a lot of people, go through some hard times in a childhood and how they cope with it is different. Right, a lot of people will cope possibly by leaning into drugs, alcohol and stuff like that in high school and maybe that like continues through college and like it gets worse or whatnot, like life kind of or and maybe they kind of rail it back in eventually. It's funny because I think some people and it's people might see somebody like myself and somebody like yourself and think like, oh, they're just, they were intrinsically such hard workers that they just wanted to work out hard and be in shape and go getters, but like the truth is, like you just said, I worked out hard and did things hard because I was trying to cope with my mental health, you yourself. 

So there's like this point of I don't know if it's lucky maybe isn't the word, but I could have, we could have just easily ended up on the side of maybe coping the wrong way. It just we got the. We coped in a way that ended up benefiting us and is a good thing long term. But Just like drug use, I mean, you can work out too hard and get your body up and get overly injured and when you are constantly overworking yourself and you're constantly, you know, beating your body up that you're not recovering. You start releasing so much more cortisol that cortisol starts breaking down your body. You start getting, you know, little. Things start breaking down faster and faster. So it's like there's each thing how you cope with it. It just as bad, but I feel lucky that my coping ended up being a healthy coping thing. It just, but I still had an unhealthy obsession with fitness, you know. But I'm just. I'm lucky that societally that is a much more accepted thing. 

0:53:25 - Speaker 2
A much more accepted thing, even though people take it to the extreme and no one addresses that. What's crazy? You mentioned that. So this point in college, so I get into that program right. And then after my freshman year at Marquette, which probably was the most fun I've had, is since, like even I thought of it because I didn't party but I went to like you know, not parties where there was a bunch of alcohol and stuff, but just people that actually didn't really want to drink a ton, but like just want to have a good time. We went to all these things. We'd go downtown as a group, like we had a lot of fun, went to the soccer games, basketball games together. 

So I remember having a lot of fun freshman year of college, just because I was finally had freedom, not in the sense that I was gonna go like drink and have a bunch of sex and all that kind of stuff. I was just free to like. Oh my God, like I can just have my cell phone on me and not worry about it. Like my parents had this rule where it's like once we got home in high school we had to put a cell phone like by the kitchen table. I couldn't take it into my room. I was like this is insane to me, like I just it was just so strict beyond my comprehension that that's just a picture to paint. 

But my, it was freshman year, going into sophomore year, that changed almost everything. Like it was like freshman year was like, kind of like I called my fun break. I still, you know, did well in school, like, even though it was more cad and harder in its college, you know still getting straight A, still doing all that stuff. And like you know going, being like a student trainer, you know being on, you know we'd have to still wake up early because you know you have to be in the training room by four or five in the morning. So it's like I still, it's almost like I was still in that habit you know. 

0:54:57 - Speaker 1
But how did you? Did you feel like there was a mental load that was lifted because the restriction of being in a household where you were so restricted was gone. That was so while you were still kind of working hard, but was that like easier to do, almost because you felt like you were really on your own accord. 

0:55:13 - Speaker 2
You know it did. In a way it did. It finally felt like I had some freedom to just like, hey, if I needed to take a break, like I could just play video games with my roommate and not worry because now I could have an Xbox and we would just play Madden. And we're like you know what I mean Like I started to feel like I could finally have some, some freedom. And there was, like parts of it, my senior year, when I finally was able to drive. 

But then I was just so driven by like what I was doing all the previous years that all my free time, like I hung out with some group of friends and we'd hang out and play 2K and talk about the Blazers and all this kind of stuff. But outside of that it was. It was like I was very dedicated to track. I was very dedicated to track to where I took it. But then once I got to Marquette that I kind of had to table that, just because it was like you could either be a student athletic trainer, which is like your career, and you like there was a rule you couldn't compete for D1. So I kind of gave up on that to like, hey, do D1 track, not that I had the time even to like compete at that time, but had I continued to work hard on it, I knew I could, because of how I went from being average track athlete to like senior year, like starting three events, you know, for varsity. So it was like from nothing and everyone, like they voted me most inspirational athletes on a trophy at our high school or whatever. I'm like oh, that's cool, whatever, but like. But that's where. That's where, like the going into college, having that freedom, having that flexibility, it felt free. But I still felt restricted financially, like and it's not like this poverty story that I had, like we, like you know, it was like my dad made enough that we, like you know, I knew money was tight and I always knew it was tight and I just didn't. I hated the restriction of that and that's why I was so willing to work hard to like pay for my own stuff, cause I just partly felt bad, like I was like I want to just like provide and that's the provider thing that kicked in right there. 

So I remember like I was working in different jobs, freshman year of college, and it got to a point where I was like, dude, I just I need to make money. Like I literally came with two suitcases of my stuff and like cause you know how most, like you know, when people go to college, like their parents like fly out with them and they're like all move-in day and all this stuff, my move-in day was two suitcases that were kind of old and used, from Goodwill landing at the Milwaukee airport. Taking the bus from the airport Again, I was used to it, cause I did that all in high school. So I took the city bus in a city I've never been in. I don't know one other than my roommate who I went to high school with. Like I had a couple, couple classmates who joined me at Marquette. But it was like moving in was like take a city bus and I have never been here before. So I'm like let me try and figure out where I'm going. And I'm like you know I didn't, I underestimated how humid it would be. So I'm like worrying all of my jacket and stuff. I'm like sweating, walking down Wisconsin out with my two suitcases, trying to figure out where my dorm is. 

And that was my move-in day and like part of me and there's always this kind of edge and bitterness I had because I didn't have what everyone else had and I saw like my friends and their classmates and their parents helping them move all their stuff in and I'm just like that sucks. You know, I just did. I'm just transparent Like it sucked. It sucked to sit there and be like, yeah, my parents are kind of like, hey, good luck. 

In college took my own plane ticket. That was my first time flying alone too, so it was like so many new things at once. But that uncomfort that I ate quickly like nothing, that grew me so much. And I think that's where, all of a sudden, when I was presented with a network marketing opportunity in college my sophomore year, the unbridled energy of like I'm gonna be successful, I'm gonna do this like went off the charts to a point that I was like so abrasive and like bitter and like I was like, oh, look at all these rich kids going to all these like private schools with their parents' money. And I had this like underdog, like chip on my shoulder, so big it was like more than a bag of chips on my shoulder. You know what I mean. 

0:59:18 - Speaker 1
Like so did it feel like a negative force driving you them, Not a positive force driving you? 

0:59:22 - Speaker 2
And it was so dynamic Like I remember like. So I started in this one business and the guy who showed this like business plan to me or whatever probably not the most like moral human, like I mean, dude, he talked about like porn and like all this stuff and I'm just sitting there like who had a tongue piercing. He was a senior in my freshman athletic training class actually. So he was in an athletic training class as a senior when I'm like a freshman, because he had to like make up credits or something. But this guy like I was just drawn to his energy and he just didn't give like an F about what people thought about it and he was jacked, he was strong. So I kind of looked up to him in a sense. But, dude, I just remember sitting there and like, dude, what are you talking about right now? It's all this crazy stuff. And then he just drew out this analogy of water and you could either have the bucket where you go to work and leave work and go to work and leave work every single day, kind of like you have a job, or you can build a pipeline and build passive income and that's all I remember. I still have that save somewhere, because it literally like shot my trajectory to be like, all of a sudden, I found my next thing Sports died. Guess what's here? Business, this is 19,. 

I'm 19 years old and from my that was in August of I remember like it's yesterday, it was August of 2012 to that, december was the craziest four months of just like, and I saw this business plan and I like joined it right away and I'm like, oh my God, like I'm gonna do this and I started sharing this business plan with probably 30 to 40 people a month On top of the athletic train internship. I was also an RA at that time of that McCormick Hall. We talked about the beer can with 800 freshmen, or my first weekend was spent in the hospital because, like, freshmen are pumping out their stomachs, but that's. There was a lot of dynamics there, because that was when I actually broke up with my girlfriend from Oregon of a couple years, and so that, mentally, that was one thing. The second thing was we're like you know soft wars and stuff, and I wasn't in my basketball internship yet I was actually in my I forget what sport it was, oh yeah, a woman or a men's soccer men's and women's soccer. 

I was the athletic trainer, student intern on the field, because we all had our sports rotations and this is like the fall of my sophomore year and so, like that was, it was starting to turn into a grind again, like going four AM, you have to go into the training room and then be there for practice and then you go to all your classes. And I was going to my training job I was being an RA, I was also doing this business too and I go to this conference in Richmond, virginia, and all of a sudden it's like all these millionaires are on stage and all this kind of stuff and I'm just like, what is this Like? Did I find my break finally? Because remember how hard I was working since I was 12? So did I find my break to finally, like not have to worry about money? And that's what started driving me. And then, but they had said something so key there when you are presenting your biggest opportunity and you pursue it with a passion, that's when you're going to face your most negative. That fall broke up with a girlfriend. 

We're at the athletic training banquet for all the sports teams, because the men's team did very well, they just sort of the women's team and we're the trainers that are there. I get a call from my cousin, joe. I don't know how to tell you this. Our aunt just committed suicide and my mom is in the hospital because she overdosed. And this is like my second mom, like I spent so much time in my cousin's house growing up and I'm like hold on what, and I had to leave that banquet and talk to him because what happened at that time? So, just to give context on this story, my dad's brother teaches English to Japanese students, so he married a Japanese woman. So I had half my cousins like they're Japanese. 

1:03:36 - Speaker 1
This is on your mom's side, my dad's side, my dad's side. 

1:03:39 - Speaker 2
So my dad's brother, his oldest brother. I'm married a Japanese woman. Well, if you remember what happened during the, there was a massive tsunami and earthquake that wiped out so much of Japan that, like my family got displaced. So they're trying to figure out what to do. He can't. He teaches English to Japanese students. There's not as many opportunities here, so he stayed there and sent his wife and my cousins here. 

And I didn't. I didn't, I haven't been in college, I don't really know what's going on. I would hear stories here and there, but my aunt got into the very dark sides of the internet to the point that she thought aliens were coming and went to climb a roof and thought she was going to meet them and died. And that was like that to me. The hardest part of that wasn't that actual part, because I was far away. I was far away from home, from everything happening, but my cousins and already we had like a. It was a small three bedroom house, you know, with already six kids, and where were my cousins going to go? They're dads in another country and my two my oldest cousin, is older than me, so it was like three cousins. So he was already like in college and stuff. Where were they going to stay with us? Going home became like I can't go home to that. I can't go home to my cousin. That's one, that's one family dynamic. And then here's my cousin. We're like best friends to this day. He's hopefully coming here in the next month or so. Like he, his mom, my aunt, was like really struggling with alcohol and it's still to this day. I pray for her, like you know, cause I know she's really, really trying, but I don't know what it's like to have that kind of you know, the only thing I can relate to is like hey, did your addiction to the gym or something like that. But that's her story. 

But at that time and my cousins a few years younger than me, really impacted him, really impacted me. And I just remember there would be times when I came home and we're just like sitting out by his truck and stuff and we're just chatting about life and we're just like like shit, man, you know, and this is I mean, keep in mind, this is everything else going on, man, I didn't think emotions had come out. Then my grandpa gets diagnosed with cancer and I'm like fuck you, god, I'm doing everything right. It was very hard, it was very hard. He got to get that call and he's like that's his first cancer. Fortunately he made it through that. 

But this is sophomore year and I'm just like so you're 19 at this point, still I'm 19. Okay, I'm 19, and who's there for me? T, we were friends then, we weren't dating, but she was there for me and that's what helped me overcome. Just have it because I wanted. That was the second time that I was like fuck, all this, this is just, is this really worth it? And there was just so much stress and quarters all built up dude, like. What's crazy to me is how I didn't ever see alcohol and drugs as a solution. 

I never did. I never did. I was like that's just gonna make me feel worse. I'm like that's just not. There was something in me that I think it was God protecting me, like that was not the solution, that wasn't it. And that's where part of me just became like so, how do I say it? Like so driven to, like never have that become a crux. But what became a crux was the gym. That was my outlet, but then my outlet also was still like overworking and so, but sorry, I was trying to think like there was one other thought that I had there, but I remember. I can't even remember if I went home. That I literally don't remember, but I just remember. Oh no, no, no, no, I did go home. This was the part that this was the catapult. Like well, I already mentioned all that. My grandpige aside, it was the cancer and I'm just like and this is the grandpa that called me, this is my mom's dad, always proud of me, all that stuff and I'm like God damn, he has cancer. 

I go home that December and one of my business mentors, like he played actually a football at Wisconsin Madison and he had a crazy rough background like grew up in the inner city of Chicago, all this stuff. His name is Darian. His name was Darian cause he passed away at 24 in a motorcycle accident Around that same time Literally that same time and I was like God, are you shitting me right now? Like what else could go bad? That was where I just started to have this bitter outlook on like everything. But part of me just had to like I'm very thankful because I did have in the network marketing business we were in. I did have friends that were there. They didn't understand it, but they were at least like there to hear my feelings. I just remember when I got that call from my buddies like dude, you wouldn't believe this, but Darian died in a motorcycle accident. I was like Jesus Christ, dude, this is like so much at once Like I couldn't even comprehend, like I felt like I was in a dream, like you know, with like two aunts, like basically the attempts to a suicide, one success Well, I don't think she tried to, but it was just so mentally messed up. 

Grandpa gets cancer. You know, one of my new best friends passes away at 24. And I break up with my girlfriend then because she didn't understand the vision that I had in dream to like build a business and become very successful and wealthy and actually quite criticize me for it and be like what changed? You changed all this stuff and I just I got very bitter and I cut a lot of people out, but that's. There was an aggression there. All of a sudden, there was this anger, there was this frustration, there was this like screw everyone that has a decent life Kind of positive for a second Do you feel like you actually processed anything you were experiencing at that time? 

1:10:23 - Speaker 1
No, because obviously it was very overwhelming and you probably didn't know how to process it, so you were just surviving. So would you say like most of that period of your life was literally just survival mode, because for you to have processed those emotions would have taken time for you to really sit down and do nothing and sit with those feelings, and I'm assuming you just stayed busy. 

1:10:49 - Speaker 2
Well, here's where it got pretty bad Was. This is how I processed it. I worked harder in my business and then I would sit down with these kids Like I hate saying it like this, but this was my mindset at that time. Oh, here's all these rich Marquette kids I'm sitting down showing a business plan to on how to like be free and like do all this stuff, and they're sitting there criticizing it and I'm like like I don't know if that's okay to say this, but I'm like dude, fuck you, you have a pretty life. And I was just that was my mindset, like it was unhealthy. 

But that's where, all of a sudden, like it became like hey, joe's, like accolades To now I'm like Joe's, better than everyone. And that was my outlet. My outlet was like to be better than everyone. I pursued being better than everyone. I mean more fit than you, I'm gonna make more money than you, I'm going to. And everyone I sat down with it was kind of like that was my edge and it turned a lot of people off. And almost now I realize and I pray that these friends forgive me now and I hope there is an opportunity to mend that but they didn't know, it wasn't their fault. They, like you know what I mean and this is just the maturity. I have now looking back at it. But these friends, that's why they thought I was a bad influence for tea. So they actually, when the moment I started dating tea, they thought I was too intense, I was too abrasive, I was too, and they actually completely stopped being friends with her and she chose me over them. 

Okay, so that's where it became so unhealthy, because I just and here's the worst part about that was because my coaches at the time were also young, they were like in their 20s. They didn't know how to like help me through and process this stuff, but they didn't never mention like counseling or psychiatry. They didn't understand it and so they kind of had like a more, like a moderate form of kind of like you know, the egotistical, like narcissist, kind of like business mindset where it's like oh, I'm better than people because I'm pursuing this and independence and freedom and financial like success and all this stuff, like they had that. But them teaching that to me in my state was like poison because it fueled the fire of bitterness and anger and like just mad at everybody that had some kind of normal, decent life. That I now realized like I was just mad because that was the life I wanted. I wanted to not have to deal with all that stuff. I wanted to not have to just look at a best friend dying, at aunt dying, another one like pretty much in rehab, my grandpigating cancer who then eventually passed away that next year. Like I wanted my life to actually be somewhat like frickin normal, like on the inside, like why do I have to work so hard to just everything? And I felt like I had paid so much of a price since I was 12. It's like God, why the hell are you doing this? And that's when I there was just. 

But what I got into at that time and I'm very thankful for the business at that time was my outlet then became personal development over consuming books, over consuming positive mindset over, and that's when they would start to talk about it. It doesn't matter what's going on around you. What matters is what you put in your head. And ever, ever since then, like I mean, I've read so many books and that's why I'm very thankful for that business. And, like when people want to criticize what I was doing, the business, or like what I was involved in, like I was bitter at that time just because I didn't know how to absorb everything, but at the same time, like I realized now where I'm at it, really my outlet became positivity. It became building and scaling businesses, it became physical fitness, like just I feel like that's God protecting me in a way, because he has such a big purpose on you know mind of my wife's life. I feel like and that's where I just I'm thankful because I still sit here today I'm like how did I not get into that stuff? And I know so many people that dig it into that stuff. So I know you and I are talking about like a lot of these influencers and like, yeah, I was into drugs and alcohol. I'm like I can't relate. I was literally like my life was basically I took a bunch of like machine gun bullet wounds to me emotionally and I still didn't choose that and I. But I felt very strong and that's where I think part of me is like when I preach like kind of strength through humility and all this kind of stuff, it's like you're so, you're so strong in a way because you've gone through that and it was I mean to even go into like a junior year like I'm carrying, I'd never process it, to answer your question. 

And then I'm like working these jobs during the summers, like I mean, you know landscaping too. But during what got me through all of that? I was like what could be better than making this and literally listening to 10 podcasts a day because I was just mowing lawns. I was like, you know, doing all the stuff and like the parks and maintenance and doing irrigation and all that stuff, having these older guys that never, you know, dealt with their problems, drink, alcohol, drugs. That's just like the environment when you work in those jobs. It's like people that are just kind of doing whatever and just doing the same thing for 20 years. 

And I'm sitting there trying to tune all them out. And I had my little iPod Nano at the time before iPhones. I had my iPod Nano, had all like these CDs. I know it's like some of the answers know what. That is right, but like CDs, listening to these podcasts, and like business and success and marriage and all this stuff that I'm still thankful for this day. I don't listen to those anymore because some of them are a little outdated, but I still have them in a box. It's like that's what got me through it and I think if I didn't have that business at that time, I think I would have possibly pursued alcohol or drugs or something maybe, but maybe not, because I also had fitness. 

So it's like those were all my ways to kind of get through that and it started like I just, you know, there's even the I don't know if you had a question you wanted to ask there, but that's kind of what put me like that's sophomore year and that was kind of like the comeback of that. I wouldn't say even there was a comeback, because then there was a. I don't want to even say there's like politics and like you know, the RA world, but there kind of was and like I knew one guy was, you know, kind of doing something he shouldn't. I don't need to say what it is because he'll know who he is if I'm talking about it. But I kind of felt like, because I knew this about him and what he shouldn't be doing, with the one mistake that I would make, he would take advantage of and he did, which led me to get fired as an RA, which was 10 grand a year in room and board, and I was like, oh, that was paying for all my food and I already don't have money and I'm trying to build this business, which takes money. 

And it turned into like I go in and this is April, so sophomore to junior at Marquette, everyone knows where they're living already, everyone has their living situation, because after the sophomore year you're not in the dorms anymore. So now I have to find a place to live for my junior year and I don't know where to live and so fortunately these guys take me in. It was called like the Men's Catholic House at Marquette and it's kind of a three bedroom house. Sharon was seven guys right, and it's just everyone's on top of each other. And I just remember that going into junior year I was like I was very grateful because they didn't have to take me in. I had, like everyone had already figured out their living situation and I have to go back home to work so that I can come back and like live and make money. So I can actually, because I thought I was gonna be an RA through my junior and senior year to at least help with that financial burden. Yeah, it's a big help too, yeah, and God bless my parents. 

But I didn't really have a college fund, like it was all through scholarships, work, study. I paid my way through Marquette. I still have student loans right, slowly paying those off, but like that's kind of where, like that's that, and I put even paying things off on hold because I was building this business Again, god to a point, because of where financially I was and I had to like there's a couple of financial situations that really started to wear on me and this is going into my junior year. So I'll kind of speak because it's all contributes, like again to this podcast and mental health, and why I'm so grateful to be here to share this Cause. Like there was a point, I wasn't homeless but I was also four months behind on rent. I was choosing between groceries or paying for my zip car. There's a something called zip car on campuses where you pay for a car with this card so you can like drive. Oh, I remember him yeah. 

So I paid for it because I had an internship to work for athlete performance that guy so his name's Steve and he actually trained the trailblazers in the box. He was a trainer and that was what I was trying to pursue. So I actually left oh yeah, this is. I missed that part of the story. I left athletic training, so that whole like I'm going to work with the men's basketball team, the J Crowder, Jimmy Butler, Duane Wade, all these big names, Wanta, Scott, I'm like all these guys. I left the training side, the athletic training side, like on the field, to be a strength coach because I was like, oh, like kick ass, mindset, mentality, all that kind of stuff and like train athletes. And that's where I got into sports performance. 

So I have an internship up at athlete performance in Mequon in Wisconsin, but it was like 30, 40 minute drive and I had a zip car and I had to rent it. You would have to pay per hour. So every extra hour I stayed at that internship which, by the way, wasn't paid. It was free, that free work that's interns are. So I'm doing free work, not making money. I had to choose between groceries and going to my internship. That's how hard it got so for six months. It got so bad to one point because I just didn't have credit card built up and I'm trying to build this business. And then we had meetings every Tuesday night again over in Whitefish Bay and I'm at Marquette's campus so like I'd rent a zip car and it's a couple hours and it's just like literally eating away at like whatever money I had for my jobs. 

1:21:04 - Speaker 1
Yeah. 

1:21:05 - Speaker 2
Right, and I'm sitting there. I just remember this one night I had $7 in my bank account. I hadn't eaten that day and I'm like there's Chipotle, there's this, but I'm like this $7 is what's gonna get me to this event tonight, because that was what paid for my event ticket. And what did I choose to do? I chose to go hungry, to go to a business event and everyone in that environment kind of had, like you know, their jobs, like some of the college students that were there, like their parents, like you know, I just again it reiterated the I'm the underdog, and it developed this edge that I'm just like too tough for you, just right for me, to an unhealthy point where I started to think I was better than everybody, even, but it was like better than everybody. 

But at that time, dude, I was like, so broke, I was behind four months on rent, quite, I mean, I'm thankful that they didn't kick me out of the house. But my roommate came like dude, like you gotta pay your rent, buddy, like, and I'm like I mean Tea came in and this is true story, swear to God, like she I was so not wanting to ask for help, because I never asked for help before, like I can make it. But I got to a point where I was like T, can you help me with groceries and you don't even need to give me a lot. All she got me was like graham crackers, celery and peanut butter and Like bread, like peanut butter sandwiches, like the cheapest thing you think of, because I know that wasn't gonna ask her for money. 

Yeah yeah, you know, but that's only that's. When we started dating and she was like didn't understand the dream envision that I had, but she was always supportive. She wasn't pursuing it with me, but she was always supportive and so she helped me through a lot of that. So that's having her having the positive mindset, but then of like time, the business and the environment. But there was also a very unhealthy portion of that when and I can you know that we can get into that in a second but just like my whole professional career and businesses and mentors that kind of took advantage and all this kind of stuff, people that I trusted because they were the only ones there for me at the time that I was going through everything in college. So there was an instinct, trust of just like you were just there for me, versus like actually Understanding. And here's the crazy part, I'm great friends of them today and none of us are actually part of that business anymore. 

But like there there's there's mistakes and there's been a lot of healing and there's been a lot of again because I saw like I Eventually, finally, and thank God to these mentors, you know, they know who they are, but like this couple that we've met through one of my best friends today. 

Like they, they reintroduced me to faith, they re and I hope they listen to this podcast because I think that sometimes they feel like they did something wrong and they didn't. I just I left their business environment just for my own choice, right. But they gave so much to me and my wife that that's where those are the first people that truly just looked me in the face and like, dude, you need to like, we can't help you, you need counseling to sort through all this stuff. You need to like dive into the Bible and like understand like God and like how much he actually cares and loves you and stuff and like that that helped the healing process. But that wasn't until I was like 27. So so like that, that's that. That's like way, that's eight years past. Like all this happened. 

1:24:23 - Speaker 1
So when was the first time you went to a counselor or therapist for mental health? 

1:24:33 - Speaker 2
26, 27, 26 27. 

1:24:37 - Speaker 1
Up until that point, you feel like you were still that that egotistical as that you're kind of riding hard on that kept me on this underdog mentality. Did that persist through all that time up until this period? 

1:24:50 - Speaker 2
where then you started going to counseling 100%, 100, like, because it was always like, because I was part of that. I was part of that business Since 19 Until. What was? What was 2020 four years ago? Yeah, so yeah, 19 to 27. Okay, yeah, 20 728. 

So, like that whole time, like working all these professional jobs, all the blunders I hadn't said and it I didn't, I didn't want to admit how it was impacting my health, like I just overworked all the time and just I, just I just kind of forgot about it. Like I kind of just I mean, if there's a rug or whatever, it kind of just lifted it up. There's this massive pile of just shit and I just threw it all under there, just to like revisit at a different time Because I didn't have time for it. I was, I needed to pursue success. I needed again the coping, I needed to get back in my environment of like just chasing success and stacking on accolades in sales. You know what I had prided myself on being the top sales person and whatever. For that month I prided myself on all this and it was like that was the next thing oh, I'm gonna make all this money. And then, all of a sudden, because of how the like, the business environment had a little too, too much sauce, if I would say, like kind of Instagram, like, hey, be a millionaire by time You're like in your young 20s and all this stuff, I legitimately believed I was gonna be a millionaire by 23 and retired and all this and that was legitimately but my belief and no one can shake me from that. And so that was my pursuit until 23 and obviously that didn't happen, because it takes actual time to build anything. Yeah, right, and, and it was just that. But that that Cascaded a whole, nother the doubt, bitterness, frustration. 

And then that's at that same time when I pretty much got demoted in my first sales job for not hitting targets, and it was just, you know, kind of, yeah, there was conversations, because that that was when I graduated from college. I had this internship lined up and the company was small and basically offered it to me. I go through two weeks of training at the end of that here, like hey, joe, um, I don't know how to tell you this, but we can't afford you. Now you're on my own. You know what I mean? I'm like Jesus, like what am I supposed to do? Like I just gave up. I gave up my athletic training career to pursue that business. That's why I didn't work with the men's basketball team, yeah, and do all that I didn't. 

I ended up kind of working in like kind of the gym and it's pretty. I mean there were some pretty cool opportunities I had, like, on a positive note, like I get markets, you know basketball facility and they're. They're like weight room and everything. I actually got a help build which is pretty cool to see and like all the equipment, technology and being in that room, being around elite names and like having Jimmy Butler and, like you know, the Chicago Bull strength coaches come in and I didn't. I interviewed for an internship with the Brewers. 

That's a whole nother wild story, not for this podcast, but I'll tell you that it was pretty funny With McCroy anyway. You probably figure where that might go. But it was an interview with the Brewers and it was like all this stuff and I wanted to be around Eliteness because I felt what I was able to overcome was elite, because I didn't know anyone else that had that kind of stroke and granted, there's people that I've had way worse, but that's why I respect the heck. I look at it like Jimmy Butler, for example, right, that, like his story like that motivates me and why I kind of those stories we were talking about even last night, like understanding, like underdog stories, like that I've relate a lot to it because I just had this like chip, like that I had to prove something and it wasn't even like any particular person, I just felt like the universe was trying to just stack everything against me. 

That's how it feels, but that's part of me and this is why I get very frustrated with society today. Everyone's like oh, what was me? Like, stop that victim bullshit. Like you're not a victim, you can overcome it. But you need to have the right mindset to overcome that. So that's why, like when you see all my posts and stuff about mindset and like you know that's it comes from very real scenarios that got me out of some of the darkest situations and that's why I ended up not killing myself. I ended up not pursuing alcohol and drugs because I never saw myself as a victim. I just saw like this absolutely frickin sucks. There was actually you know that's a lie, that's a hundred percent because there were points where I felt like a victim, but I also I Also knew that sitting in that wouldn't help anything. 

1:29:04 - Speaker 1
Don't make it a part of your identity. No, okay to feel like a victim, just don't make a part of your identity. 

1:29:08 - Speaker 2
I wasn't forward from it hundred percent because I also remembered and I this is what I teach people now I think people sometimes need to remember how great they are and have a personal highlight success reel that they go Back to an in my phone. I legitimately have all these, and the reason why I remember all these accolades so well Is because I review it all the time. So when I have doubts about myself or life isn't where I want it to be or anything else, I review it to remind myself of what I've done and what I've overcome, despite everything that was turned against me, that I felt and again, it wasn't anyone like that's just life. People are gonna die, people are gonna like there's gonna be alcohol abuse, all that kind of stuff, and like you just have to figure out how to remind yourself of how great you are as a person. 

And I really believe like if you don't have some belief in a greater power, like that's gonna be very, very hard to do because you don't see how he sees you. You just see yourself for what you are at that moment. And I think that's that's the kind of energy I've tapped into lately, because when you ask me, like how am I so positive? It doesn't. I don't think it comes from me. I think I made it through so much for a reason and I need to exist so more people hear that story it like really makes me think about the fact that there always has to be like a balance to everything, right? 

1:30:20 - Speaker 1
so like, yeah, I, when people see somebody's very positive, they want to attribute that person to be unhappy all the time. That life's maybe easy for them and that's why they're positive all the time, but more often not positive. People have a very dark thing on the oh. You know Underneath that, the layers that that that forces them to be positive. 

So it's even like this idea that if you grow up, like when you're a kid, right, if you grow up with being very secure of yourself, that might you don't, you're not gonna gain the edge of needing to work harder than others because you're so secure in yourself. So then there's like there has to to kind of be somebody who's like kind of a go-getter. You like almost have to have this balance of like you're secure by yourself because you're confident in your abilities, but you're also a little insecure. So you feel like you need to prove yourself at the same time that when you find like a right balance of that, it does kind of it works out. You can. There is a right formula where just enough insecurity and just enough security together, yeah, make you a Person who's gonna always strive forward and not accept just staying in the same place. Correct too much for one or the other probably Puts you one way, you know be more productive or less productive or whatever. Yeah, and productive is such a. 

1:31:33 - Speaker 2
Yeah. Subjective idea yeah 100%. 

1:31:35 - Speaker 1
At the end of the day, I'd truly believe if you have your priority set and you're meeting them, then Do whatever you want with your life, because if that's your priority, nobody has anywhere to tell you what your priorities are, and that's where I've gained such a person, because before, when I was doing all that stuff, I used to think of why isn't anyone else just pursuing success at this level? Yeah like. 

1:31:53 - Speaker 2
I'm like, why is no one else seeing this? Why is no one else? And I would get frustrated, even in like business, because I'd share this business plan and this vision and Everything else. And I just started realized, like, and I would be mad because they didn't want to pursue this life. And I'm like, what's wrong with you, like, but it was unhealthy, like that wasn't healthy, and I totally know that now. But in the moment I'm like, so confused, I'm like, but I've had so like, and then again I know that there are people that have had even a harder story than mine, a hundred thousand percent. So this isn't like some kind of like wow, look at everything I've gone through, like this, just my story. And that's where I kind of what I started to realize and this is this is another humbling thing that when I was a so like jobs and everything else through college, one of them was being a trainer at Ally Fitness up in Bayshore Mall and where I met some of the greatest people I still stay in touch with today. 

Actually it's kind of funny, but like they, that's when I had to take the city bus Right again through downtown Milwaukee and like like ten o'clock at night. That's got you dude, like that's. But that was my job. Like literally left the gym at nine. That take from a 45 minute bus ride from Bayshore Mall to Marquette's campus because again, I didn't have a car and the things that I saw and the things that I thought of and I just there was. So many times I like thought and I'm like I don't have it that bad, like it sucks. There's things in this like you know what ended up happening in my junior year, I think, just going along the timeline, like my grandpa did end up passing away. It was very, very hard that summer had to fly out and this is like the craziest. There's so many stories I have from from building that business that built my character right. 

There was one time we were taking like a bus and there's like a lot of foreign students that don't speak English Our bus caught fire. I'm literally like two seats from the back and we feel this heat and our bus caught fire as we're like in the middle of Nowhere Midwest, absolutely nowhere and we actually like the bus broke down everything. Fortunately, we were all safe, but the bus literally was flaming and it was just just just broke down and and we were on this way to this conference and I just remember being like I would. I always figured out a way to kind of have humor in bad situations, because the the only P this is two in the morning and we're sitting on a bus and I was like just so Adrenaline about like. I almost just like am I gonna, are we gonna die? Right now, like in my buddies and I were. Just like there's a couple of us and we're sitting there and there's like it's freezing because it's in the middle of winter and somehow still I think it was a, no, I don't even remember anymore but like we were escorted by cops to this like local motel in like middle of Indiana, nowhere, and like I was actually taking a video like look where, because I I've never been to jail for, thank God, like I've never none of that stuff. And I'm like sitting there, like taking this video, but I mean I scored it by cops, like trying to make it funny. And then like you, my mentor, he's like dude, this isn't hilarious, man, what are you doing? Like I was just there was so much else emotionally going on that I was trying to like make light of it. 

But there was that story. There was a story where, like one time, like we drew drove from Indianapolis to Milwaukee in straight blizzard conditions the entire way. Like it was like dude. I was like my, my, I literally had a nine-hour cardio session because my heart rate driving down, I missed the turn to like avoid downtown Chicago. Everyone's spinning out, it's a blizzard like it for nine hours, going 30 miles an hour on like highways. I was nuts and like that. All all of that to build my dream, whatever that was gonna be, and I just didn't. I didn't think anything of it at that time, but I'm like I'm paying the price. I'm paying the price, I'm paying the price or I'm sacrificing. I became this like like high honor of sacrifice to a point that it became all about Sacrifice and about like no fun, no anything, and it was just like if you weren't working hard, if you weren't sacrificing, you're less than, and I had an unhealthy view of people. 

1:36:00 - Speaker 1
If they weren't working hard. 

1:36:02 - Speaker 2
They if you weren't working hard, you're dead to me, yeah. 

1:36:07 - Speaker 1
Okay, so now did you feel like that that view of people would actually affect how you would treat people, or would affect how you would talk to people? 

1:36:17 - Speaker 2
I think I just thought, even like, and I had. It was crazy, and I think of this because I just saw him at the Phoenix airport. No, I saw him at the airport in Milwaukee, actually before we were on a trip, before we came here. And this he doesn't know even, probably doesn't remember he said this, but we had this like good class with him in college when he just like everyone went around the room and kind of shared people strengths and weaknesses and he was just straight up to me about my weaknesses. He's like dude, you're too abrasive man and it just I was mad at him then for saying that because I'm like no, I'm building my future, man, what are you talking about? Now I look back and when I saw him, like yeah, I had gone through a ton of you know, counseling, mental health stuff, everything right. So I'm like healed at this point. When I saw him a few months ago and I just like gave him the biggest hug and he has no idea with that, he like that's where I knew something was off. But I didn't want to admit it then because I'm like I'm not abrasive, I'm not this or that, like these friends, these all these friends that just left me and tea because of whoever I am. If they have a problem With me, they can go screw themselves, like, screw that, I don't care. That's how I coped with everything. So if, like People, I just, I, literally just I Wasn't close to anybody, it was just me and tea and the bitterness that came from that. 

I'll share part of this story because a lot of it is hers. There's a very unhealthy dynamic that she grew up with, but it led to a point and that this is where, like, there's a lot of times I've been given a lot of time to think about. This is where, like, there's a lot of times I've been given and I feel like now God was just giving me solitude to experience extreme Uncomfort, to like have empathy for people in tough situations. The, the junior I think it was at a junior senior, I don't even remember anymore, it's been so long ago, but I actually spent Thanksgiving and Christmas by myself on Marquette's campus Because, for whatever reason, her I was not welcome into her family and I wasn't welcome into her family for seven years and so the dynamics that came with that and me pursuing business and me having this like like Chip on my shoulder already and just not feeling welcome into my future. I knew I was gonna marry her, my future wife's family. I Just it was something that Just rocked me again and that was, at the same time that you know, flew out oh, that's what I was gonna say flew out to see my grandpa for the last time. And this is where, like all of a sudden, it became this like I'm paying the price, like that, when we visit my grandpa. 

The two hurricanes were on track for Hawaii and, just to give you perspective, the radius of like a Hawaiian Islands like 50 miles and the radius of a hurricane's like like 200 or something like that. I think it's like it's like if a hurricane actually hit directly you would wipe out the whole island. And so I Remember this is two in the morning. No, that's, I'm trying to remember this. It's. It's hard to hard to remember. 

I think it was like, whatever it was, we're sitting there and the hurricane's going on, the palm trees are just going absolutely berserk, and I was actually plugging into a business conference via zoom or whatever we had the time, skype or whatever Learning about again how to build my team, how to sell things, how to do that, and I'm like sitting there like kind of feeling sorry for myself. 

I'm like man, like this sucks, like my grandpa's here dying, like all this family dynamic that I haven't dealt with at all, like I'm just I don't care, and I'm like sitting here like with my family, but like they're all kind of just doing whatever. And again that's where started there being an unhealthy relationship with my family, where I'm like I'm way better than all Right because I'm pursuing all this and all of them are just kind of doing their thing. I'm the one going into another room when I don't need to. Well, my grandpa's dying, we're in a hurricane and I'm literally on a business conference event and it just all these stories just contribute to like without any any Taking care of like turned into a very unhealthy mindset of like get on my level or get out of my way. And it was like almost like that's that's kind of how Michael Jordan and Kobe were a little bit to an extreme. And so that's where I didn't see anything wrong with it, because I just thought that's what it took to be successful. 

1:40:36 - Speaker 1
Okay. So, like jumping to that 27 year like period, you got into counseling. What is it that like really started to break apart this way of thinking for you From that counseling is it was? It Wasn't what the counselors, like we're telling you? Like you know, giving you homework on things to work on. While I helped you break away from this, it's harder. 

1:40:59 - Speaker 2
I had so many and then I hired like it was like counseling, was like working, but I also I felt like when it did, like it did help. It did help because I got to voice, finally, for the first time, everything I went through. I'd never shared it with anyone, I Never had. I mean, t knew everything, but outside of T I'd no one knew, and it I Shared things and it was more of like a more of just me having an opportunity to finally share and for someone to say I don't know how you made it through that Finally someone to acknowledge all the shit that I went through, like just validation, yeah, validation of like that isn't normal and how the heck did you make it through that? Because, because no one. I didn't even share that with all my business mentors because I just didn't think they'd understand. And why would I? 

There there was, there was an unhealthy kind of relationship starting to form in those businesses because there were actually points and this is just a this is a whole nother story on off topic but we were manipulated to do things and felt very manipulated and actually set us back pretty significantly financially because of how like we were spending on things that we shouldn't have to afford products that we didn't need and all this kind of stuff. It was wild. It was wild and set set me and T back pretty far financially in our professional career and it was very, very hard and so like. But we felt very, I felt very manipulated, I felt used, I felt like my naivety to just the situation, that how I wasn't, I wasn't emotionally stable. I was I'm sorry if that just hit the mic, but yeah. But yeah, emotionally I just wasn't. I wasn't there, able to take all that. So I just like saw these people's like hey, they're the only ones here for me right now, so I'll do whatever they say in a very unhealthy way. So whatever they said, and like they ended up actually getting Involved in like lawsuits and like doing things actually illegally and all this kind of stuff, and like just stepped away from it. But then not kind of taking responsibility, but kind of like it was just a lot of dynamics that I saw After I left that environment. 

So after I left that environment. So there's so I was part of the same business but two different environments, to kind of explain it. So it's like there's an education systems all following this business and just for the sake of your podcast and everything, I'm not naming it specifically, but there was like an organization that taught a certain way and there was another organization that taught differently and there was a lot of like manipulative tactics in this. What this lacked and this had was God. That was the biggest difference that I noticed. There was faith here and like care about people here. It wasn't here, so I was just a cog in someone's wheel building and actually the structure that we were taught to build was actually illegal. So knowing I went through that allowed me the moment I stepped away from that and was advised here by these amazing mentors my wife finally had through a best friend from a job I got. So that's where I was, like it all happens for a reason Like I had gotten recruited into sales staffing and recruiting like didn't know what the heck I was doing for six months cold calling all this stuff and that's what started that. 

And then got recruited to this position where I met one of my best friends today In fact, probably my best friend. We talked about everything business, philosophy, all that stuff and he introduced us to this couple that literally helped set mine and T help Just us working on stuff emotionally, us like actually diet. It was hard work. There was a lot of exercises. There was a lot of like writing things out. I had to write an entire letter of like a bunch of explosives, of like screw you mentors and this and that and all this stuff and like just swear words everywhere to never send that letter to them. Write it all out, get all of it out on paper. 

I started journaling a lot. I started just actually finally dealing with emotions I hadn't dealt with in eight years and like even dealing with like how I grew up with my parents. Like I probably wrote like a novel and I don't even know where it is, unfortunately, but I would just be so curious to look back and see like what all that did. But it healed me to the point that there was one summer we went back and this is before T and I got married went back and I sat my whole family down and literally like we all cried. I apologize to everybody. 

And now I don't know if that has fully healed a lot of things, but it did start something and a lot of healing and a lot of past hurt and like the things that they didn't even understand I was going through or how I felt and why I was so angry, right. So all of that turned into like a blessing in disguise of like okay, not only did that start to heal, I also started to heal on the inside from like I don't validate myself based on doing anymore. My only value was my ability to work, and I still struggle with that today, like, even as I share some of the schedules that I have. I struggled with that so hard because my identity is attached so much to what I do, and trying to separate that has been the hardest thing in my life. Because, again, I'm still like what a few, just a few years out from finally realizing that there was one coach specifically, and his name's DrJ, and like I didn't understand how much his coaching would impact me until actually in the last six months, because it was at a time where I knew I haven't finally left that business, but there was so much guilt behind leaving it because it's like it's kind of taught like, hey, if you feel, like if you leave it, you're a loser, and that's some of the danger of some of those environments. It's like oh well, they say like, oh, you either succeed or you quit. Well, yeah, that's true. But then they categorize quitting like it's like now you're not a good person for quitting on something that you pursued for, so all this stuff. 

Anyway, that's what took a minute to like get over that and I think the biggest change that I had mentally was accepting that I am leaving this environment for my choice, not because I'm like there's always gonna be like friction. I think when people are trying to move their lives forward and then no one's always gonna see eye to eye, there's gonna be a riff, like my best friend today. There was a point that we got so tied and business wise and everything else that we actually started to like butt heads and didn't talk for an entire year Worst year of my life, not having been part of my life, and like it was, like it was all God's timing. I didn't talk to my wife's family for seven years, then initially weren't even invited to our wedding. That's a whole nother story for her to share, but that whole thing it's like COVID as much as a horrible experience and moving our wedding and all that stuff happened. It actually gave time for healing. Now I'm on a. I text her mom and dad now Like I cried at our wedding when he. But he gave her to me because I never saw that happening. 

I was bawling my eyes out at our wedding because, like no one understood, but I was like I didn't have a relationship with them a year ago For seven years. For seven years, from 20 when I started dating her, to 27. No contact at all and name it holidays, like texting, like hey, let's go, like watch this, getting nothing, nothing. It was just me and T. It was just me and T and we would go back to like but we were building business and like didn't have the money to just fly out to Portland all the time, so I didn't see them all the time, but that was, yeah, it was very hard. So it's like, all of a sudden, the relationship with my best friend today healed, the relationship with her family and her dynamic and me forgiving them. 

Healed because of all the different and like there's been coaches that have been in mentors and like counselors, I'd say specifically like trained psychologists that have been more helpful than others, but like the biggest one I think the recent breakthrough I had to just accept my story was Dr J and like he's a gold, gold medal pan American I don't know what do you call it forgive me, dr J, if you listen to this but like Olympian, like be a very high end Viking BMX. Okay, yeah, yeah. So he did extremely well, but he was like, he just made it very simple. It's just like, dude, you're built for certain things. Just because one thing didn't work doesn't mean you suck, you're just built for something else. 

And then now all of a sudden, my identity started to be less about like what I was doing and more about like, okay, god, why am I here? And that has started to just radically change how I just have such an understanding and patience with people. Now, like I'm not like a lot of the bitterness since there's still some there that I work through but a lot of it starts to become like I understand where you're at and I'm not mad anymore, like if someone's living a great life. Why am I mad when you had the life that I actually want my kids to live? I don't want them to go through what I went through Like I'm not, I'm not upset anymore, like I'm actually. Then we're recently, in the last couple of years, and maybe seem like more positive. It's like I have a. It's not a naive positivity anymore, it's like a realistic positivity Nothing's like too bad that I can't handle with everything I've been through, and nothing's like so amazing. That doesn't mean like I'm not going to have a bad day. 

1:50:24 - Speaker 1
It's also, like, so important to realize that I said being positive. I just had a thought there and I just lost it. It's okay, so keep going, keep going. 

1:50:35 - Speaker 2
Yeah, something about being positive when you're asking, like, how are you positive and I don't. I don't think it's necessarily positive, but there's hope. 

1:50:44 - Speaker 1
Okay, realistic, that's what it is. So realistic positivity that was just said right there. There's one thing about being overly optimistic and positive all the time. I think realistic positivity comes from a place of what's the point of being negative? I'm not going to be overly positive, but like, why be negative in this moment? Yeah, maybe, maybe this hard thing happened, but I can be positive that there is a lesson to be learned here now. Next time I know not to be, you know, and that kind of what you're talking about. 

1:51:12 - Speaker 2
Yeah, so it's funny you say that because I've been studying psychology a lot lately and just people and like all these different I follow, so many influencers, just people that I feel like are delivering good content on experience, and one thing I've learned is like all the books from, like I think, 1950s and before, talked about like oh, like positive mindset, like the power of the spoken word and positivity and stuff, and it's actually a form of insecurity is what I'm starting to realize is when you can't, when you because here's the thing what you do is actually harm yourself. When you're so positive because that's what I did, it was a coping mechanism so like actually not if I'm just real because people appreciate truth, but like if you know, deep down, it's like it sucks and you're like saying these positive affirmations, you're actually telling yourself a lie, because your eyes and every emotion experience one thing and then you're trying to like speak it out, know how you actually deal with it is like this is what I've actually been teaching the members on my team, because I'm a sales manager now and I teach them this and I teach different people that I coach. It's like no, acknowledge it. You need to acknowledge the feeling, the emotion. You need to acknowledge how you're actually cause. That's what I learned at counseling and going through all like psychiatry and everything else. 

It's like you need to have an outlet to acknowledge it, embrace it for what it is and then insert a dose of hope into it that it's going to get better. It doesn't need to all of a sudden be like, oh, now everything's amazing. No, can it just be 1% better? Today, people hear me talk about it all the time. Be 1% better. That can be your mindset. That can be your physique. That can be like in sales, that can be in business. Like, if you just focus on 1% better, even a fraction, a fraction in that direction will start to help you get out of it. But if we choose not to stay on that path, we'll revert back to. 

So that's where I think like realistic optimism needs to happen, and I think people experience that in their own way. I don't think it's just something that happens overnight. I think people eventually develop an ability to how do I say it? Like you can embrace a lot more. Like it impacts you a lot less. Like when something crazy drastic happens. 

Like and I preach this a lot I say preach, I'm not a preacher, but like it's just like when I say this to people, I'm like you will either be forced by life to change or you will force change upon yourself to be able to handle more, and that's how you expand your capacity. We were talking like change is hard. We had a great conversation on that Cause. I think there is a level where it's hard, but I think also for certain people it can feel like they have it easier, but that's because they were forced to change by life. They literally were given life situations that they had no choice but to change, and so because they embraced that now a changing like oh, changing their diet, that's like nothing. Like you take someone that was literally like Jimmy Butler and like homeless, you think him going to the gym is hard. No, being homeless is freaking hard. 

1:54:10 - Speaker 1
I think that that's such a good point. Most people that struggle with change have probably never been forced by life to change. At one point, to realize it's possible and you can actually just do it now with your own self-control 100%, but maybe almost to life, makes you feel that because your brain doesn't know it could do something till it's forced to do it Correct, right, you know, like, even like the idea that you don't know it but your brain could last 40 days without food, 100% you will feel like you're going to die after a day yeah, two, you know, but like you don't know you could do it till you do it. 

1:54:46 - Speaker 2
Until you do it. 

1:54:46 - Speaker 1
Yeah. 

1:54:48 - Speaker 2
And that's where all those things like I look back on my story and that's where you know, for listeners, but I know this is not going to be the last time I shared and I'm in the process of writing a book and just on it, and I think it's not even going to be like positive mindset, I feel like that's so watered down, like I think it's just like overall, like an ability to be a shock absorber of life, because I think the better you are at being like I told this to my sales team and even on like I was very fortunate actually recently to be featured on a cold call prospecting training and it had like I mean, I think starting out the call, like 2000 plus people across the world on it and then by the time I was training, probably like 15, 1700. 

And I told them this it's like you are paid based off your emotional stability, your emotional quotient, your ability to take shit and come out stronger from it, not be throttled by it, but you can sit how you handle it. It's like okay, it's like kind of you throw something on this, you know, bed or whatever, that like is really really soft and it just sinks and it stays there, right, kind of like you just absorb it. But if you can be the bed that's a little firmer, then things just bounce off of you or like you're like it's water off a duck's back. Everything that happens in your life is water off a duck's back. I've been through way harder Like, and I'm ready to embrace if the hardest thing I've yet to experience hasn't happened yet. I know I'm built for it because I've been through X, y and Z before you know. So that's what, yeah. 

1:56:21 - Speaker 1
Okay. So you said something big there, which is emotional stability, right, how well you can stay, like you can auto regulate and regulate your own emotions, whether you can get yourself in and out of a pair of sympathetic state and whatnot. You know stuff like that. It's important For me personally. 

A lot of my growth with that, like some of this regulation of my emotions and learning how to do it better, came from living with my wife. 

So living with another human being who's all of a sudden my life wasn't like the number one thing in my life anymore, like I had to. 

Every choice I made really like affected her directly and on an emotional level. That started to happen where, like if I'm crabby at the end of the day and that crabiness gets taken out on her and how that affects the following. You know, everything started like I started seeing all these chain reactions of how things really mattered, like with how I was handling my own mental health for the sake of my relationship and our household. So so much of my change was like forced by living with another human being and having to accept that I had to care about somebody else's emotions and not just you know a girlfriend, right, you can go to her house and you come back to your own house and like you're like separated from them, like that break helps, when you're like living with somebody and you're there every day. That's 100%. You either have to grow up and change in a positive direction with them, or you change in positive directions maybe not positive, but you change in opposite directions from each other and the relationship doesn't work out so correct. 

I want to spend the rest of my life with my wife, so I made sure that that change was in a positive direction 100%. How? 

1:57:55 - Speaker 2
do you feel like you have that at all? Oh, my goodness, like Tia's been incredible. Like she's well because how we see it now and we've had so many conversations on this, but she, like we've had separate counseling, we've had couples counseling, we've had to, really, and some of those times like there are legit times where we got in like fights in front of our counselor because like we just didn't see eye to eye and they just we learned so much through it. But we keep each other accountable and it's like if we're not both growing, this isn't going to work. That doesn't mean you have to grow in the same pace that I am. You grow for you. There's three parts growing right, you need to be growing as an individual wife, husband you need to be growing, and then as a unit you need to be growing. So it's like there's three involved. 

And then there's been so many times Tia and I it's been not going well and that's, I think, just when you're with someone for that long and going through that much life stuff that we didn't deal with. We dealt with everything after our dating for like five years. There's so much she didn't deal with, there's so much I didn't deal with, and the amount of like times that we almost didn't make it, because we just didn't. We were both selfish in our own way because we hadn't dealt with our stuff. And the problem is, I think, sometimes in people like especially, why people struggle so hard, I feel like in relationships today, is because they're so codependent on someone else to help them figure out. Actually they need to be working on themselves. If you don't work on yourself, I don't think you are in a good enough position to actually be selfless for someone else and you need to figure your shit out first, because I would rather have done that versus like. But God put us in the. You know we come from a perspective. We are able to do it when we are in a relationship For our first five years. It's extremely hard. I wish it on nobody and that's a whole different story for a different time. But like that it was so hard on us because we just didn't deal with stuff. And it was crazy because all the expectations I had of my family guess who I projected them on, on her. Guess all the expectations she projected on me, Yep, on to you Because we hadn't dealt with it. So it made it so extremely hard. But I have faith that, even if you're in a relationship and you can make it through it. And I think there's such a bigger reason behind like why we've stayed married, why we continue to be married and why it's even getting stronger, why, like, she's so willing, like this whole thing, kind of moving from the Midwest to here in Phoenix was like such a big thing for her and I'm so grateful and thankful for her. But it's like the whole idea of mentally, like that's. 

I think there's a stigma of like, oh, if, like, if you struggle with mental health, like you're weak or you're less than you're not as good of a person or whatever reason, and I just think that's such a shallow way of looking at people in life and I used to have that so I can speak to that Like. 

I just used to think like, oh, if you're not tough enough to go through this, like you know, I know some influencers use more explicatives than that. I'm just not going to but like that's where they say like, oh, you're weak or whatever. And I think sometimes, like when you admit, like if you throw your weakness out there for people to criticize, it can become your greatest strength, because it's like hey, you know all my skeletons. Now what else can you say If I don't care about my deepest, darkest secrets, why I share my story with people? You criticize me for that. What else you got? Oh wait, no, you're criticizing me because you wish you had the strength to overcome your own, and I think that's how people need to deal with sometimes when they're like, if you're so critical of a person for how they're struggling with mental health, it's because you probably have stuff you need to deal with. 

2:01:20 - Speaker 1
I find that for almost anything, whether it's mental health or not everything If somebody's, if you're hearing something negative, whether you're saying something negative about somebody else or somebody else, you hear somebody say something negative to you, being able to step back and realize, like why they said that or why I might be thinking that I mean it's so powerful because more often than not it really is the negativity is being generated in that person's head for reasons of their own, not having nothing to do with the thing that they're generating negative opinions about. You know like it's so easy to look at somebody else and be like they're being lazy, but they're only saying that because they feel lazy about doing you know it's like. Is that it's? 

2:01:59 - Speaker 2
you see, the things that are bad about yourself and others that are, when they're doing it bad, and you're only critical of them because you know you're bad at it too, and I'm the biggest culprit of that because I used to be so critical of not just my wife and to a point like bad fights and all that stuff, to critical of my family, to critical of friends, critical of mentors and like. That's where I think again, like I can't speak enough to like how it's actually. I think 99% of the world needs some kind of like support system, like through an objective lens, cause the danger of having someone that's either involved in a business that you're in or being a coach, or like in your workplace, or like your family or whatever is they have a subjective point of view from you. You need a point of view that's so objective. You know, obviously, yeah, yeah, I mean God's a version of that, but at the same time, like you don't always know what like that that is, it's not direct, right in that way. But like having an objective point of view of someone that's science-based, why psychologically wise, can just help you sort it out. They kind of just set a frame for you to allow you to step into it and figure out what that picture looks like yourself, so you can actually take a step away from the subjectivity and look at your whole life from an objective point of view. So then you can be like, oh, I've responded this way because of this and when you like, it actually makes life so much. 

Another part of positivity is, I feel like it extends having that ability to be objective on observing someone's life, whether it's someone you're coaching, like, again, I do in sales, or, like you know, a client of mine, or like being able to like separate myself and being like if I was in their shoes, right, how would I handle certain things. And that actually helps me have more positivity about the situation, because it creates a better understanding of where they're at. And now I'm no longer like I'm better than you, it's just like no, you just have it. You maybe haven't had to go through the life struggles I've had to, but it's what's built me now you just have to. You're the one that now, because you're trying to achieve this physique or whatever, you have to choose hard, and that's harder for you than it's for me, because life chose hard for me. I didn't choose hard for me. Life chose hard for me, but I'm not mad at you because you haven't experienced that yet. You grew up with a better life than I did, or whatever, right. 

That's where I think it's allowed me to have more grace with people and that's where I can like all the weight's off. At that point in time, like all the weight, all the bitterness, all the burden of all that negativity I went through, it feels like it has just been like released out there to allow me now to I feel so much lighter today than I did even like a year ago, right, and like just even now. Granted, there's times where I like lost myself in pursuing status and success and making a lot of money and had different learning lessons there. It's contributed to now my whole story, but that's the lesson on mental health and more just from understanding a business mindset. But like that's what's allowed me to feel more free. 

And I think I know people talk about financial freedom, they talk about physical freedom, they talk about spiritual freedom. I don't think there's a greater sigh of relief than having emotional freedom. Yeah, and that like you, literally if someone asks you like what are you bitter about? And you struggle to think of what to say because you've dealt with every single emotional negative piece of your life, and like you've gone deep, it's kind of like you're riding a wave or whatever, but like there's different parts deep in the ocean that you have to deal with in order to stay up on the surface, and you have to take a deep dive into it. Deal with it. Let's just say they're bombs, for example. 

I'm just a terrible example but it's like hey, you got to go down and take care of it, otherwise the whole ocean's going to explode and you're going to die, or it's just some stupid example. But like, you take a deep dive, you deal with it, you detonate it so it doesn't hurt anybody or yourself, and then you go back up and then you're just floating and then you got to take a deep dive into this one. I think too often people don't take the time because we're so busy. Well, that's the design of society right now is to keep you so busy by like watching TV and Netflix, to all the sports, to everything that you actually feel like you don't have the time when actually you do. 

If you just kind of prioritized it and took the time to dive deep into all the different things that impacted you on a very heavy emotional level, deal with those, because then you'll live such a lighter life and you will feel emotional freedom, I think comes before all the other things and then you can be trusted with more, because people know that if they say something to you, you don't just blow up Like I think that you know I watched a podcast or like a video. Jocka willing said it's just like, hey, man, blowing up is actually kind of a sign of like, like just emotional weakness, and not that if you're at that point, it's like it doesn't mean you suck as a person, it's just like, hey, let's. And I still struggle with it. 

2:06:47 - Speaker 1
It means your tolerance is not. It could be expanded further. For you not to get to that point, they have to blow up. You just haven't done the work to expand that tolerance, correct, 100%, that capacity. Me and my coach talk about this a lot like and he's my lifting coach but we talk a lot about stress. We talk a lot about pain because I am working with him specifically as I've been trying to fix years of power, the injuries and stuff like that. But a lot like what we talk a lot about is it's ultimately it's like the stress bucket theory and you know, how are you adding to your stress bucket? Are you trying to? What can you do to grow your stress bucket so you can handle more stress? Because the point isn't that you want to someday have A void stress. 

2:07:22 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you don't want to void stress. 

2:07:23 - Speaker 1
You just need to be able to have your body tolerate it so that you can constantly keep growing that bucket and we can put a little more stress in that bucket and then work to make that bucket bigger. So there's an open room again. 

2:07:32 - Speaker 2
Absolutely. You're a shock absorber. You absorb everything, everything that's having around you. Your ability to handle all these shocks because when you're a leader in a certain environment, whether it's business or at your gym or even in your family your ability to absorb life and be a shock absorber for everyone else, because you're so strong, that's why people trust you and they trust you to lead, because they know that, like hey, no matter what in regards to what happens, I trust that guy that he's not gonna, like go off the whales or all of a sudden have an alcohol problem or a drinking problem, because he knows how to take care of himself emotionally. I think emotional health and mental health are like the same. 

2:08:05 - Speaker 1
It's just like if you have emotional health, you are able to step aside and say what do I want in this moment? Okay, I know exactly what I want is I'm emotionally healthy. To stop and like buffer off the noise and realize what it is that I need at the moment, work to get what I need and like that could be that like if you're emotionally healthy and you decide that you really wanna get physically like, you wanna get physically healthy. Getting physically healthy is much easier when you're emotionally healthy, because you're not doing it to replace or numb the emotion anymore. You're doing it because you're emotionally healthy and you just you know being physically healthy, healthy is good for you. So you can feel a negative emotion, come up about not wanting to go to the gym and realize it's just a negative emotion, but I can still physically make myself go to gym and even if I showed up and did five minutes, you know it's emotionally healthy. People can like talk themselves through this kind of stuff and not just be like. 

2:09:00 - Speaker 2
And that's the biggest thing that I have. Well, cause it's crazy I am a bodybuilding coach, like I mean certified wise or whatever, but I train people for physique right, and not like physique competitions, I mean just health like, getting like physically fit, not like physique training or all that stuff, but like I see a lot of people in that environment that's their outlet to not deal with actually the mental. It's like, oh, I'm just going to go like work on my body and look amazing and everything else, but then it's like that becomes the new coping mechanism, right, and I'm very guilty of it too. Oh yeah, cause I've been training for 20 years, so there were phases of my training where it was all about that and it was a way to hide all the stuff that I didn't want to deal with. 

I actually think sometimes lifting what's called a like a, like an emotional book or journaling I think sometimes for for especially men, it's easier to pick up a dumbbell than a pen and write out your feelings. Oh yeah, for sure, and I think that's just in the like. I actually respect the hell out of the guy that will pick up a pen and write out his emotions before the guy that can just lift some weights, because lifting weights let's be real it's like it's not, yeah, physically you're going to tax yourself and does take a certain mentality to like do that and diet and everything else and look incredible on stage, but at the same time, I think people that can actually separate the bodybuilding and physique is just like that's a benefit, that's a side benefit of you just pursuing a life of health, right. But if you don't take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, like you're actually going to go to the extremes here and not deal with this. And I see that's why you know, I see bodybuilders and I have very good friends who are bodybuilders, right, and they're amazing people and sometimes, like I'm like man, like I know certain people can have like a different outlet for everything. And that's where it's just as long as it's not a coping mechanism for something else you're not dealing with. 

I think and again, you don't have to change Like we were talking about, you don't, people don't have to change, but I think, allowing themselves to deal with that, because we're just both in the fitness space and we work out a lot and everything else. That's just where I think what, my whole, why I built like 90 frames and forward frame and all my coaching stuff was just to allow people to have a healthy view of it. Like it's awesome to like have a great physique and everything else. But if you have that and you're not emotionally and immensely healthy like that, not that that's all for nothing, but you're kind of like defeating the purpose. 

2:11:27 - Speaker 1
Yes, because you know there's like this idea like your body is everything, everything's connected. You know, if you have a pain in your foot, it might cause you pain in your hip, might cause you pain in your shoulder, but like the way our body is all connected is like you're so physically and mentally integrated that like physical health and mental like you have to yeah, you can ignore one for so long. 

You might have the genetics to be able to ignore one for so long and compete at a high level or perform at a high level, but eventually it catches up, and it catches up through injuries. It catches up through wear and tear in your joints and body in a way that your body perceives as a high level of pain, because pain is very subjective. Usually pain is very much correlated with stress levels and cortisol levels, and lack of recovery. 

So, like you know, all that is connected and it has to be connected because your brain and your body are one thing, yeah well, and you talk about that bucket of stress. 

2:12:23 - Speaker 2
Like stress isn't just like what you do in the gym or your diet, it's like emotional, mental, everything you're carrying baggage-wise. And what I started to realize, like when you kind of going back to like what allowed me, at like 27, to start to. One, I started to expand my capacity. But two, that bucket was so full of other stressors I would know what I learned how to do learn how to drill a big hole in the bottom of that bucket so I could drain all the stressors and recover quicker. Right, because I noticed my ability to recover was directly correlated to how much emotional, mental stress or problems I wasn't dealing with. All right, so let's see. 

2:12:58 - Speaker 1
So my coach's analogy to this is going to point out what she just said is wrong. Okay, that's fair. When we talked about the stress bucket, we talked about it from the point of view of you're filling the stress bucket right, and when you start getting towards the top and you're overflowing your stress, when people start doing things like drinking, using drugs, eating, binge eating stuff like that, that stuff is what's drilling holes in the bottom of your bucket so that you can try to drain stress out. Because you try to drain stress out by doing things that make you feel relaxed, but what you're really so what you're getting is a false sense of relaxation, as if your stress has gone away because you use a substance, ate something delicious junk food but all you're doing is just messing up your body's ability to handle stress. 

But because what you need to let your body do is let it overflow and then come back to homeostasis and not keep drilling those holes. 

2:13:59 - Speaker 2
That's actually a fairly good point. I literally am just yeah now that I think at how. Yeah, 100%, because I think people use those as often. And you talked about coping mechanisms. Okay, let's build off that analogy, because now I see exactly what you're saying. I had a visual from a bodybuilding video I saw once. So overtraining and stuff, because I had overtrained way too often and that's how I learned how to not to. 

But let's say this okay, so you don't want to. Actually, let's say, your goal is to actually make the bucket bigger, but also stronger. And so if you're drilling holes in the bucket, is that going to make it stronger? No, if you overflow it, let it happen, but then figure out how to make your bucket bigger, to have a bigger bucket but also the pieces of the bucket are stronger to hold more. That's how you, that's how I think. Like I don't know, layers of good ways to cope with stress add to the thickness of that bucket. Let's say, just in this example right to be able to handle more and heavier water, or like more of heavier water, water, always the same. 

But like you know, like heavier substances, for example, like more weight, more capacity, and that's how you expand the capacity. 

2:15:06 - Speaker 1
Well, because essentially you know if you get good at meditating and you get really good at you, can win five minutes control your breathing and down regulate yourself. That's an increased ability to make your bucket bigger. So in the moment your stress levels didn't change. But by down-regulating yourself through breathing techniques because you've trained that, you've gotten good at it you essentially just made your bucket bigger so that the same amount of stress has less impact on you? 

2:15:33 - Speaker 2
Yeah, no, 100%. And I think going back to just the my whole story and why we're here is like the more everything that happens to me now there's absolutely stressful situations but it feels like nothing because it was my. My ability to handle so much stress was forced upon me at such a young age that my capacity to handle things emotionally was like no, granted, did I not. Dealing with them actually was kind of like plugging holes in my bucket because I wasn't dealing with them. That was my way. And then that turned into the gym. I still think the gym can be a form of negative coping if you don't know how to emotionally handle things the right way. Right, but that's where being able to rebuild my life, what I've kind of felt like the last three to four years, covid being a blessing in that, being able to actually like the more free I became mentally and emotionally. 

That's why, all of a sudden, where some people are like oh my goodness, like how did you do this so quick or whatever, it wasn't so quick One, I started the hard. 

I just I had the hard work before. I just didn't have the emotional, mental stability to handle the results of what that hard work would bring, yeah, right. And then if you want to like, build a life for yourself, if you don't take care of it now, it may show up in a way that when you all of a sudden have the things and the accumulations or the accolades or the wealth or whatever you're pursuing, and then it shows up then and you haven't dealt with it, that could be catastrophic, that could be like a nuclear bomb on your life and I've seen it so many times. Like when more people make that one, there was a weakness they didn't deal with from very early on and that one weakness radically changed. Like there's so many podcasts recently that talk about, like, your ability to not have massive mistakes. You can make a bunch of, like small mistakes, but you make one big mistake and that can blow up five to 10 years of work. 

2:17:21 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's such a potent point. Make mistakes, but that's not an excuse to make catastrophic mistakes. 

2:17:28 - Speaker 2
You can't make a catastrophic mistake, otherwise it will set you back and that's just going to be your story. And if you've done that, like God bless you, like it allows you to now see, but you're going to have to deal with that mistake. And I've seen a lot of people in business, like you hear, like all these people have their. Like Tim Grover talks about their dark side. And it's the guys that don't know how to tame their dark side and use it as motivation and energy that some weakness comes out. And it comes out after they have all the success, fame, accolades, wealth, all that stuff and then all of a sudden, people only know them for the catastrophic mistake. 

2:18:06 - Speaker 1
Yeah. I could that makes a lot of sense, so that's why it's truly support everything you're doing. 

2:18:10 - Speaker 2
man, I didn't like enjoy just knowing you and your wife and getting to meet you guys more and know you more. And I think the biggest thing is like when you the last thing I'll say and I feel like you know, unless you have other questions. For me it's kind of like understanding when you have a support system of people that are like minded and share your values but also like are like they challenge you. They challenge you to deal with your mental. The reason I have the best friends that I do now is they challenge me mentally and emotionally to go seek help. They challenged me mentally and emotionally to figure my shit out before I had any responsibility leading anybody, including my family and my wife, and that having friends that can do that for you, those are friends. 

Friends are not like. There's levels of friends and I think sometimes people don't talk about and understand levels of friends. Your most important friends are the ones who are like. They don't just like, they're not just there for you, they like make you better. And then you have like your groups of friends. You'll go drink or like you know sports and stuff. Those are great people but like that shouldn't. 

That's not your inner circle. Your inner circle are people that you are doing life with and I think you don't need a lot of those. You need a few select few that you choose. That can change. But I think that the biggest part to why I was able to overcome the mental health struggles I did was because I had those key relationships and I think those, those don't come. You don't. You don't find those. I don't think you seek those out. I think they they happen for a reason and by you just staying faithful to whatever vision that you have for your life, those people get planted into your life by some way, shape or form and you just have to pursue those relationships until you figure out, hey, is this worth for its person, worth staying with as a good friend or not? And not every relationship's forever, it's not. 

2:19:54 - Speaker 1
Because the older you get, the more you really do. I mean, you are a culmination of the people you spend the most time with A hundred percent and, at the end of the day, the older you get, the more you were like, wow, that is so potent, that is such a real thing, yeah absolutely, and that's why I'm I'm excited to continue to get to know you and your wife and, like you know, I can tell we just think so so much alike and can build our brands and everything and what you're doing. 

2:20:16 - Speaker 2
So there's any way that you know T and I can help you guys in any way. I'm, we're here for you. 

2:20:20 - Speaker 1
So we appreciate that. I mean, I really appreciate you coming on today and being able to sit down and do that and do this conversation this. I guess it was a phenomenal interview and I think so much value to be gained from it, so many good, you know, ideas and thoughts that people can chew on and see how it affects them and how it gets their mind thinking about the way that they have been handling their own struggles and how sometimes you can think you've been handling it and you have been handling it and just what it really means to like sweep it under the rug and realize that eventually that has it has to get taken care of. 

2:20:51 - Speaker 2
It has to, otherwise it will like the sweeping under the rug and we've seen it in both our families different versions of that Like there's we talk about, like the chains of generations, and maybe this is our last thought, maybe it's not, cause we'll keep talking about, like if it was our last thought, the chains that come from generations pass right. The buck stops at me, yes, of emotional mental baggage. It stops at me, but that's the people treated their life with that kind of responsibility. I think there would be more people not just seeking psychological mental coaches, all that kind of help. 

I think just our society would be so different because less people will be playing, because everyone looks like if you feel that victim mentality, that's not a bad feeling, but how you deal with it is, and if you play to it and seek things that validate your victim mentality, you're just continuing the chains of generations past where it's like I don't care, like they always they talk about from a financial standpoint it's like, hey, it's not your fault if you are born poor, but if you die poor it is. 

I think it's the same thing emotionally If you have so much emotional baggage from, like, your life and family and everything else, but if you don't deal with yours, you're just going to pass it down to your kids, and I think that's the biggest, most important thing of what you're doing is like it's helping people deal with stuff, or understanding a perspective excuse me, a perspective so they can stay dialed into their life and pursue it in a way that will actually help their kids by dealing with their stuff now, or maybe grandkids or whoever's listening right, but that's going to help them get to the next level in their life. 

2:22:25 - Speaker 1
I literally could not agree more with that. I think it's a crucial point that a lot of people could really really need to hear and like let it soak in and understand that you have the ability to control how you handle your emotional baggage, because we are in an age of information and an age where you can get access to help from so many different references and resources, and a lot of help can be out there free. If you just want to put in the effort and like not have somebody guide you through it, you just have to be willing to do it. But the truth is, at the end of the day, yeah, you do have control to get rid of not get rid of. Better handle your emotional baggage so that you don't pass it on to your own kids and then they have to now deal with it and not pass it on to their own. 

2:23:05 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you're not responsible for what happens to you, but you are responsible for how you respond 100%. 

2:23:10 - Speaker 1
Well, thank you again. I really this was awesome. This was a great conversation. Thank you, guys for tuning in to another episode of Uncurned Stones People. I'll tag you on fashion fitness yeah. 

2:23:23 - Speaker 2
I'll see. Yeah, that's my Instagram. 

2:23:25 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and then I'll also tag your Instagram as well. Yeah, where people can find me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, Instagram. 

2:23:30 - Speaker 2
Facebook fashion fitness, I'll see it's kind of my personal brand coaching's forward framework. Again, I'd say I'll coach for Jeremy Minor, kind of all this stuff that I'm doing right now. Part of it is just like their vehicles to allow me to share my story. So again, I appreciate you allowing me on your platform and being able to share and hope. This impacts a lot of people, because I know there's a lot of people out there that need hope right now. So I appreciate you, dude, yeah, of course, awesome. 

2:23:51 - Speaker 1
Thank you, awesome. You guys enjoyed this episode. Please like and subscribe to the podcast on any and all platforms if you'd like. If you leave some reviews as well, that'd be great. Just help the podcast get a little bit more traction with having a little bit more reviews, whether it's on Spotify or Apple. Otherwise, thank you, guys, and I look forward to. We got 2024 years, so first episode of the year, yeah, dude, mamba year. 

2:24:14 - Speaker 2
first episode, first episode of the year. 

2:24:16 - Speaker 1
Let's go, man Colby, season 2, season 2, baby, let's go, let's go. 

2:24:20 - Speaker 2
Take care, guys Take care. Thank you very much. 

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