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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s going to be powerful, so let s go ahead and dive in.
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What do you see is the thing that holds people back the most from being their most creative and best self?
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I think it s being concerned with what other people think and a feeling of
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that the people who make great things are somehow special, and that they re not special, and that s just not true.
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We re all, everyone has the capability to make great things, and none of us are special.
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It seems like a lot of people, they re focused on what other people think, like you said, and it almost, it blocks them into this kind of rut feeling, I guess, and they feel like they re stuck in a rut.
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I don t know if you ve heard this before with a lot of your artists, but with,
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With me as a writer and an author, I ve heard so many people come to me and say, I want to write a book.
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And I ask them, how long have you had this idea that you wanted to write this book about this thing?
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And some people will say five, seven, 10 years.
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But they ve been worried about what people think, or they feel creatively stuck in a rut.
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Do you ever feel stuck in a rut?
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And if so, how do you personally get out of that?
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I think taking action is a really great thing, and not setting up barriers of entry.
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I can imagine a musician saying, I can t play this song because I don t have the right guitar, or I don t have the right equipment to do it.
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And there are no barriers to entry.
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There s always a way.
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I come from a punk rock background.
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So in punk rock, it was a do-it-yourself mentality.
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And I started my first record company not knowing
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Not knowing that was something you can do.
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It just really happened automatically.
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I wanted to start making records.
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I wanted people to hear them.
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I never knew that you could get signed to a label.
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I just thought, well, if you want to make a record, you make a record.
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So I made records and, you know, print up 500 copies of a seven inch single, for example.
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So I think there s always a way you don t have to wait for permission from someone else.
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I think that s a big part.
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People are waiting for permission.
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To actually make their art.
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To make their art.
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Someone has to say, you know, I ll hire you to do this, or I ll publish your book if you write a book, or set the stage to allow you to do it.
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But I don t think that s the way great things are made.
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When you did those, when you printed those first 500 singles,
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What was your dream or your vision?
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Was it, okay, now I m going to, how do I sell these?
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How am I going to give them away for free?
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What was the process for you?
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Combination of giving them away for free and selling enough to be able to make another one.
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That was always, any of the things I ve made, it s always been about sustainability.
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As long as I can make another one, it s a success.
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But at this point, you re sustainable probably for life, I m assuming, with the success you ve had.
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So you don t have to make something to try to make your money back or get your time back or whatever.
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So what is the vision now?
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I still think in those terms.
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I feel like I want to make it where it s sustainable by itself.
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There s something that feels good about that, that you make something that can live on
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not because of an endowment.
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Yeah.
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That s interesting.
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I know you re, I don t know why.
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I don t know why that is, but that s just my, and maybe it s just the way I was brought up may just be, what does an artist need to be thinking and feeling at the same time to create great art?
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I would say thinking is the least part of it.
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It s much more about feeling and being true to themselves, whatever that is.
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Feeling their truth.
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And how do you know when an artist is being truthful in front of you?
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It s just a feeling.
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It s a feeling.
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I feel it.
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Yeah.
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I think something that you said was,
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I have no skillset.
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It s all intuitive.
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It s not what s in my head.
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It comes through me.
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Yes.
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So you re not analyzing or thinking about it, you re saying, huh, something doesn t feel right.
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It starts with a feeling always.
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It starts with a feeling, the analysis comes in later to try to understand either the feeling, if there s a reason.
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Like if I m just feeling something, I can experience it and be fine.
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If we have to act on the feeling, then it s like, okay, this feels like this.
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Is there a way to figure out why?
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Sometimes you can, sometimes you can t.
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And if you can figure out why, or if you think you know why, then you can say, hmm, could it be this, this, or this?
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Let s try those things, see what happens.
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Do you have a process when you re starting the first session with an artist after you ve been introduced and you say, okay, let s do this, we re gonna work together.
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Do you have a process where you set a personal intention that you don t tell them, but then also you tell them what the intention is for your time working together?
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Um, I ll say when we re starting a new project, I always have anxiety.
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Always.
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Always.
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Because I don t know what s going to happen.
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You know, there s a real question mark when we walk in and start.
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And I know that it could go a lot of different ways.
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And I don t have, I m not interested in having a playbook in advance.
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I m interested in seeing where it s going to go.
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And it s scary because
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It could not go good.
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And sometimes there s an ex, you know, some artists have an expectation that I m going to do something.
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I can t do anything, you know, right.
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It s like it s either going to happen or it s not going to happen.
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So.
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But then usually within, sometimes it s the first day, sometimes it s the third day, sometimes it s the second week, where something happens like, whoa, what was that?
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How did that happen?
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And then that might give us a clue.
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It s like, oh, this is what it wants to be.
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And that may change also.
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That may be the first inclination.
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It could start that way, and then it makes a left turn, turns into something completely different.
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The work itself tells us where it wants to go.
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So because we have, the reason it s so scary is because we have so little control over it.
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That s what s scary.
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There s no control.
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None.
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And if an artist has a big expectation, I need to put out a record that s gonna do well, I need to make money, I need to make the label happy, whatever it is, my fans need to love this, then that could feel like a lot of pressure.
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But do you allow that pressure to affect you?
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No, because I know it s not in the interest of the work.
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It s like, we re all on the same page.
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Even the people we re ignoring, the record companies, the managers, the agents, the people who are yelling, I need this, I need this now,
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Ultimately, for everyone involved, if the artist makes the best possible work that they can, everybody wins.
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It s just that no one involved in the process understands what it takes for that thing to happen.
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I had a conversation with a basketball player, a member of the Golden State Warriors, who told me there s all this pressure now to do a lot of stuff on social media.
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He said, and it s getting in the way of our playing.
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Interesting.
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And I said, well, if you tell the people who are asking you to do the social media stuff, don t you want us to win?
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So if you want us to win, let us focus on winning.
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And he said, they don t seem to care.
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They want us to do the social media stuff.
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They want us to distract ourselves
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from the work of the game.
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From the flow, from the practice, putting in the reps, showing up.
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And then I say, well, if then it s up to you, what s more important to please them or to win?
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Man, this is fascinating.
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What was the experience for you where the artist or the band came in?
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And it was the fastest, best flowing process you ve ever experienced where just everything was lining up.
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Authenticity, truth, you know, raw realness was happening every day.
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And it was also, it was a great success for them personally to have the art be real and honest, but it also landed
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commercially and took off.
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The first thing that comes to mind would be Johnny Cash because he had gone, you know, 25 years of not having success.
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And he had been dropped from two labels.
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And when I signed him, he didn t even know why I was interested.
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That really was a conversation.
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He s like, why do you think working with you is gonna be any different than working with anyone else?
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Like he had given up.
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And for him to get into it, we recorded in my living room and he would just play me songs on an acoustic guitar.
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There was an honesty in what was happening there.
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We didn t know that we were making a record at that time.
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We were just looking for songs.
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So he was playing me songs.
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It was almost like a way for us to musically meet each other.
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He would play me the songs he loved, either from childhood
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or songs that he thinks he d like to sing, or a song he wrote.
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And it was just a very honest experience.
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And then we went into the studio, we picked some of those songs, we went through hundreds of songs.
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and then picked a handful to try to record.
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And when we went into the studio with the band, it didn t sound, it didn t have what the living room recordings had.
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There was some intimate honesty, and we d never heard Johnny Cash that way before.
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So that led to the first album, which was a solo acoustic album.
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Again, we didn t set out to make a solo acoustic album, but it revealed itself as that s the most interesting thing to do.
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And that ended up being very successful and very successful with young people, which he had not experienced since the 1950s.
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Wow.
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And after that, after the success of that album, we made five more albums together and he had confidence based on the experience of the first one, which he expected nobody to care about really.
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took hold with people.
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And then on, I think it was on our fourth or fifth album, he did a cover of Hurt, the Nine Inch Nails song.
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And that ended up being probably the biggest, you know, maybe the biggest hit of his life, certainly of his later life.
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And that was a real revelation.
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How important is confidence for an artist in your mind to have?
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Because I ve been around some of the greatest athletes
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that are freaks of nature athletically, that are gifted beyond anything physically, who can do anything in practice, but then they lacked the confidence in a game and they looked like an average player.
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Is that the same thing with artists, singers, guitar players, musicians, where they can be so gifted, but if there s a time when the pressure is on to record, then on the confidence, does that hold people back?
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Have you seen that?
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I ll say it s not as simple as that, because there s a vulnerability required for the artist.
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that if you re confident to the point that it disguises your vulnerability, that doesn t work.
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So it s like a dance between being wildly open and vulnerable and commitment to do whatever it takes to get your work through.
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That combination, which is a difficult combination.
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It s almost like what I m hearing, you said, this is really interesting point.
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It s almost like you just have to have courage to be vulnerable, which is not really confidence.
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It s more of like, you just got to, if you re unwilling to be courageous with your vulnerability, you just won t be able to share your art.
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That s true.
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There s, I ll say though, to get up in front of people and saying,
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takes a certain amount of confidence.
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It s a hard thing to do.
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I couldn t imagine doing it.
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That s true.
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A friend of mine, Rachel Platten, she wrote a song called Fight Song that was really popular over the last six or seven years.
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But she started a family over the last five years.
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So she s got two young kids.
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And she just played at the Troubadour a couple nights ago.
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And I d seen her play in the past where she was uber confident, but she hadn t played in a while.
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And so she came out and she was like, guys, I m actually really nervous.
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And this is my first time playing, you know, kind of with a man with these new songs in a while.
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And I m revealing myself of these new songs.
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You know, you could sense this, you know, vulnerability, which was actually beautiful.
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It was like, we re rooting for her.
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She messed up a few times, but she kept going and she s like, Hey, I m going to restart this and thank you guys.
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But it was like, wow.
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And it made moments of awe and magic happen.
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It was so cool.
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Yes.
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And it s not about perfection.
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That s the thing.
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Humanity breathes in the mistakes.
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It s what s not ordinary.
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If it was machine-like perfect, it s not so interesting.
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It s cookie cutter.
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It s all the same.
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So it s the edges.
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It s the frayed edges that make it interesting.
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Talk about transcendence, you talk about manifestation, and the universe.
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I know you re a big meditator.
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How long have you been meditating for?
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I learned when I was 14, and it s been a big part of my life the whole time.
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I can t say I ve done it continually, but I go through phases of five years on, two years off, or something might replace it that s another kind of a meditation.
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I may go from a TM sitting meditation to learning Tai Chi and that Tai Chi will fill the slot of my TM time.
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Transcendental meditation.
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Yeah.
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Do you think it s more impactful to make your art from a place of pain, anger or sadness or from a place of love, peace and harmony?
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I don t think it matters.
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I think I think it s true to your experience.
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So if you re feeling anger and sadness,
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a sad, angry song would probably be good.
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And if you re feeling love and peace, then you re in the right frequency to create that kind of song.
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You can also, sometimes if you re in a real pain, you can write a yearning song for love that can be very deep.
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But one of the things about when you re in pain, you tap into,
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you tap into things to, you re looking for, you re not satisfied in your condition, so you re yearning for change.
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And sometimes the energy of yearning for change can lead to really beautiful music.
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Right, wow.
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Is there someone that you re able to talk about or share that spoke and created from a place of yearning when they worked with you?
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that later said it was an extremely healing process for them, working with you for a few weeks on an album and expressing their diary in that way and allowed them to heal and have lightness on the other side.
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The most recent one was
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I made an album, the last album of Kesha and her, she had gone through very difficult experience and she told me that it was a very healing experience working on the album and different than any experience she d had previously where it was much more about commerce before.
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What s the most painful thing you ve been through that
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you ve had to heal and overcome?
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Probably the biggest one was, you know, I was overweight most of my life and I was not comfortable in my body and I always felt like an outsider and felt like it limited what I could do.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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So I think probably weight was my biggest issue.
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What was the root behind that, you think?
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I think it was mostly bad information.
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Although my mom was obese, so I thought it s just genetic and I tried everything.
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I tried every type of diet, nothing worked.
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And then eventually I found the correct balance and I was a vegan for 23 years and I weighed 318 pounds as a vegan.
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Yeah, you can be a sick vegan or you can be- I was very sick as a vegan and I wasn t getting what I needed.
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Right.
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And it s basically a carbohydrate diet.
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Yeah.
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And you can have all the sugar you want being a vegan, but that doesn t mean it s healthy for you as well.
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So it s like, what do you think was
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You know, it sounded like you tried a lot of different things for 20 years, but it didn t work.
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But you found the right combination.
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But was there something you needed to mend or heal emotionally that allowed you to shift internally?
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It was just information.
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I was always willing to do it.
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I would say probably the biggest, maybe there is an aspect, which is
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I thought I knew what was best, so there was a sense of turning over control to someone else.
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That was a surrender.
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Wow.
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I saw a doctor at UCLA who a friend of mine recommended I go to.
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I knew it wasn t going to work because I had done everything and nothing worked.
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And he put me on a particular diet, and I remember thinking, it sounds terrible, but
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And it s not going to work, but I ll, you know, I ll do what you say that no belief.
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And, uh, but I put my faith in him or I, I gave up, say I gave up, but listened and, uh, and committed to the process and committed to the process and the weight fell off.
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Really?
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How long did it take?
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It was like a six month year process, 14 months.
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And I lost 135 pounds.
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Man, that s awesome.
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Congrats on that.
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Thank you very much.
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Wow.
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And when was this?
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12 years ago, something like that.
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12 years ago.
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You look really healthy right now.
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That suntan, you know, wherever you re at in the sun.
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I spend a lot of time in the sun.
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I m a sun worshiper.
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Now, do you feel like when you were able to, I guess, get that support, see the changes physically, did something transform inside of you?
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spiritually to be a better artist once that transformation started to happen?
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Or did you think you were still making great art, you know, when you were a hundred pounds overweight, would you say?
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I think we were making great art the whole time.
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The differences between losing weight and then meeting Laird and starting to train and get into my body because I was sedentary my whole life.
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Just sitting all day.
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Sitting all day or laying down all day.
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I liked laying down more than sitting.
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This is the longest I ve been in a chair since I ve been on an airplane.
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With Laird, when I showed up to Laird s the first time, I couldn t do one pushup.
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Come on.
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Swear to you, could not do one pushup.
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And with his support, I worked up to being able to do 100 consecutive pushups, which was mind-blowing.
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Um, so what changed between the weight loss and meeting Laird was I now see anything as possible and that you could train for anything.
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There s nothing you can t do.
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You can t be the best in the world at something.
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but you can be a lot better than you are at anything you want to put the time into learning, whatever it is, you could do anything.
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And that s a great, inspiring feeling.
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And I feel like I bring that into the art where I already had great confidence, but even more so, I now know anything is possible at any time.
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Wow.
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Just if you have to do the work.
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So this was 12 years ago when this started to happen, right?
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And so if I ve got my wrath right, are you 60 right now?
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Yeah, I just turned 60.
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Just turned 60 in March.
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I just turned 40.
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If you could go back to your 40-year-old self, what would the number one piece of advice be for you at 40?
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If you can think about where you were then, who you were working with, the projects you were working on, the people in your life.
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Knowing what you went through the last 20 years,
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What would you tell yourself then?
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I would always say just have as much fun as possible because we, um, I, I m a workaholic by nature and I love making things and I love making good things and a great deal of time and effort goes into that.
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And, um, and I m hard on myself in that way and that I have high expectations.
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Um,
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And I think we can have fun too.
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Yeah, of course, yeah.
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What brings you the most joy?
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I think probably quality time in nature with my family.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s probably the best.
2
SPEAKER_01
Being in a beautiful place, being close to my family, breathing fresh air, walking on the beach, laughing together, reading together, watching movies together, you know, watching wrestling.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like pro wrestling.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course.
2
SPEAKER_01
Pro wrestling with my son.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s fun.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s great.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are you more of a wrestling fan or UFC now?
2
SPEAKER_01
always been pro wrestling.
2
SPEAKER_01
UFC feels like they might hurt each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
They do hurt each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s why I like wrestling.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s more, everybody s on the same side for it to be the best show it can be.
2
SPEAKER_00
They want it to be a win-win.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a win-win.
2
SPEAKER_00
You talked about that in this documentary series about, I love the video of you being the ultimate promoter with the BC boys in a commercial, just being this hype man promoter.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um, how much has, I guess, pro wrestling influenced you as an artist?
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot, a lot, because it s, uh, it s a world where you never really know what s true.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a world of mystery and great skill is involved in what they re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there s a story and it s a story sometimes of people who seem to hate each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do they hate each other?
2
SPEAKER_01
They might be best friends.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s like, we don t know, but sometimes they really do hate each other.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the matches are different when they really ate each other, but you never know when it is.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s a sense of, and I think it s more honest than any other form of any other sport or any other form of entertainment.
2
SPEAKER_01
See, it s funny, I say it s the only legitimate sport is pro wrestling, because it s the most like the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
In the world, we don t really know what s true.
2
SPEAKER_01
Everybody has a facade.
2
SPEAKER_01
People put on airs or a performance.
2
SPEAKER_01
A mask.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or the politician talks, and we don t really know who they are.
2
SPEAKER_01
They say these things that are often written for them.
2
SPEAKER_01
We don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
So there s this performative aspect of the world.
2
SPEAKER_01
that wrestling, that s what the world s really like.
2
SPEAKER_01
We say that the, you know, wrestling is fake.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like the world is fake and wrestling is real.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s what it is.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wanted to go back into what you talked about with, you know, you mentioned transcendence and I think you mentioned, you know, the universe having your back when you asked for an answer, uh, with this, you know, particular song with System of a Down.
2
SPEAKER_00
What s your thoughts on manifesting and manifesting something you want and alchemizing it into the world?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you believe in manifesting?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you believe in a, you know, artists should be thinking in that way or what s your thoughts on it?
2
SPEAKER_01
I believe in it a million percent.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s something that I ve experienced before I knew what it was.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when I say it s like, uh,
2
SPEAKER_01
I feel like it has to do with the purity of the intention behind what you re doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
If your intention is pure and you re doing it for the right reasons, it seems like things tend to work out.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that ends up being a manifestation mindset, but it didn t start for me that way.
2
SPEAKER_01
It just was like, I really believe in what I m doing.
2
SPEAKER_01
I really care about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I want it to be the best it could be for me, and I m excited to share it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the results have shown me that you can manifest things.
2
SPEAKER_01
It happens.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I ll say when I do it, it s never based on the outcome.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m never asking for a result.
2
SPEAKER_01
What are you asking for?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m asking to rise to the occasion to make the best thing that I can, for the thing that I make to be great.
2
SPEAKER_01
Great is a vague word.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what great means.
2
SPEAKER_01
I came to realize recently what great means, but I didn t know most of my life I was aiming for great, but I didn t know what that was.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I ve come to realize that great means it s a devotional kind of greatness.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a gift to the universe.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a gift to God.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re making a gift to God, there s no greater
2
SPEAKER_01
You can t put more into it than that.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, you can t.
2
SPEAKER_01
What about the single?
2
SPEAKER_01
What about what about what someone s going to say?
2
SPEAKER_01
Who has anything to say if we re making a gift for God?
2
SPEAKER_01
You re putting all of your purest intention into this thing for the universe.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s where it s at.
2
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I came to realize that recently.
2
SPEAKER_01
Again, my word was greatness.
2
SPEAKER_01
Greatness.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was the word of what I was shooting for.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I ve come to realize what it is.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow, you have a whole, you know, kind of section about greatness and success in the creative act way of being, which is, which I love your explanation there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Um, that is fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_00
So greatness for you, what I m hearing you say is, is a, is a pure gift of yours to God.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s a, it s a gift of yourself to God.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like, this is the best I can do.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is my offering.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is what I have to offer.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mm.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you
3
SPEAKER_02
If you think of a formula for manifesting as an artist, what would that formula be?
3
SPEAKER_02
I don t think there s a formula.
3
SPEAKER_00
Is there an art to manifesting?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t, I think, um, it sounds like a shortcut and I don t think there are shortcuts.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think it s always, uh,
3
SPEAKER_00
a version of doing the work, of finding your way into what it is that the universe wants you to do, and then really dedicating yourself.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t want to have to wait for somebody else to give me permission to have my success.
3
SPEAKER_01
I want to be able to manifest my own success using my own creativity and do it sort of on my terms, you know, and in a way that aligns with my heart and makes sense for me and showcases what I do in the best possible way.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think one of the challenges that
3
SPEAKER_01
freestyle improvisers, because there s a long lineage of incredible freestylers way before Harry Mack.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of my biggest influences is MC Supernatural, who s one of the greatest freestyle rappers to ever live.
3
SPEAKER_01
And there s many others as well, that s just one.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of the biggest challenges they faced is that like a freestyle rapper doesn t fit in easily to sort of the machine of the music industry, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because people working at record labels, they might hear an amazing improvised freestyle all about their outfit and the label name and maybe the whole catalog of the last year.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it might blow their mind, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s happened time and time again.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they say, oh, this this person is amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
This is great.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you have a single for radio?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you have something we can promote?
3
SPEAKER_01
Where s the album?
3
SPEAKER_01
We want to put you on tour, but we can t do that unless we have streams, radio plays, structure.
3
SPEAKER_01
People need to know that they re going to be able to come out and sing along.
3
SPEAKER_01
What do they sing along with?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, what are you going to do basically to
3
SPEAKER_01
help us make money.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the monetization was all kind of outsourced in many ways because like pre-social media that was kind of like the best avenue was to hope that you got discovered and signed by a record label because they re the ones who actually have the budget to promote.
3
SPEAKER_01
You really didn t have the power for the most part as an independent artist back then.
3
SPEAKER_01
There just weren t the tools available to you in the same way they are now to kind of take control of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I have a huge privilege, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
coming into my career now in this era where there s all these free social media platforms that you have access to and everybody has this phone in their pocket that s also a 4k video camera you know and we can capture anything and we can share it with the world and if it has creative merit or if it s marketed creatively if you re able to connect with an audience then you re able to build an audience organically and you re able to succeed and you can do that
3
SPEAKER_01
on your own terms without waiting for anybody else s permission.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you can make mistakes and learn from them, and you can experiment and try things.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can do things when you want to.
3
SPEAKER_01
You never have to wait for someone to say, oh, it s not the right time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe we ll try it then.
3
SPEAKER_01
Or, I don t know if this is the right direction, we don t want to waste time or money doing this.
3
SPEAKER_01
You get to make those decisions and it really gives a lot of power to the independent artist.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think one of my missions and goals in what I m doing is to change the landscape for freestylers in particular.
3
SPEAKER_01
absolute travesty that all of these great freestylers who inspired me are not as well known as their peers who maybe had big radio hits, you know, and went more the traditional path.
3
SPEAKER_01
These improvisers are some of the highest level, you know, creative musicians on earth, you know, similar to a Miles Davis or a John Coltrane.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they deserve to have that light shine on them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think for young freestylers coming up today, hopefully I can play a part in them looking and seeing, oh, there is a path for this, or there is a way to pursue this on my own terms.
3
SPEAKER_01
And even if...
3
SPEAKER_01
I prefer to freestyle and create kind of in the moment.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I prefer to have it be different every moment and not, you know, write it down and recite it the same way every time.
3
SPEAKER_01
That doesn t have to mean that there s no future for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because for so long, that s how it was posed to freestylers.
3
SPEAKER_01
It says, oh, this is great.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when are you going to pivot?
3
SPEAKER_01
When are you going to do what actually matters?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, OK, you can freestyle.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when are you going to make a song?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because until you do, it s not really a thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, a little gimmick or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a fun it s a fun way to sharpen your sword, so to speak.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a good practice routine.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re obviously very talented and anyone who sees it knows that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
But I can t monetize.
3
SPEAKER_01
We don t know how to sell it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so that s the whole thing is that piece about you re obviously very talented and anybody who sees it knows that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, now it s like, OK, let me film it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And anybody who sees it will, you know, acknowledge the talent.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if it moves them or speaks to them personally, then they may be moved to follow along with what you re doing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And maybe if you get to a point where you re having a show, they ll be the ones to buy the tickets.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, I would love to sort of make that kind of wave where, you know, for so long, I was talking to somebody and
3
SPEAKER_01
they talked about how, you know, you ll say, oh, they re a great freestyler, but they don t know how to make a hit song.
3
SPEAKER_01
He said, well, do you ever ask the freestyler, do you wanna make a hit song?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s like, and it s the same thing for comedians.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, oh, he s so good at standup, but like, he s never written a TV show.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you ever ask?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, do they wanna do that?
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, and it s almost as though, you know, somehow only the latter is relevant or important and what, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
What about just being a good freestyler?
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe that is in and of itself, I of course personally believe it is valuable.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m very passionate about it and I m not the only one.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I would love to create a world where up-and-comers can say, oh dope, this is my thing and I get to show it myself and I don t have to wait.
3
SPEAKER_02
Have you created a freestyle membership yet?
3
SPEAKER_01
Not yet, well, I m on Patreon.
3
SPEAKER_02
Okay, cool.
3
SPEAKER_02
Of other freestylers?
3
SPEAKER_02
No.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m saying like a club.
3
SPEAKER_02
That would be dope.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like a membership where you are the, you know, kind of the leader, the host.
3
SPEAKER_02
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
Of the community.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_02
That pays to be a part of it where you provide resources and tools to help them expand their reach or something like that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that would be really dope.
3
SPEAKER_02
That could be the next thing for you.
3
SPEAKER_02
I love that.
3
SPEAKER_02
When did you realize that,
3
SPEAKER_02
because you kind of grew up in the social media world when you started doing freestyling and doing it more full-time.
3
SPEAKER_02
What, 2016, I think you said, or 20?
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, 2017, basically, end of 2016.
3
SPEAKER_02
So the tools of, I guess you really, TikTok started to come along in 2018, I guess.
3
SPEAKER_02
YouTube started to make it more for live streams, and Instagram started to have video, I think, around then.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you kind of transitioned right when,
3
SPEAKER_02
live video, vertical video started to come around in the last four years.
3
SPEAKER_02
When did you realize like, oh, this is a way to make a great living and not just make 50 bucks a night and some chicken nuggets at the local bar drumming?
3
SPEAKER_02
I know you got a commercial, but I mean, with the social media wave, when did you realize, oh, I can make a real living here?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s a great question.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know what s funny?
3
SPEAKER_01
My first sort of taste of having a viral video was the end of 2016.
3
SPEAKER_01
I made a video with my friend and it was for his channel.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it got 100,000 views overnight.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was me freestyling while driving down Sunset Boulevard and rapping about the changing scenery around me.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was my first taste.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was kind of the catalyst for me saying, okay, I gotta dive in on this and see what I can build.
3
SPEAKER_01
It gave me the excitement.
3
SPEAKER_02
Had you made any content before then?
3
SPEAKER_02
No.
3
SPEAKER_02
As a freestyler?
3
SPEAKER_02
No.
3
SPEAKER_02
You were just kind of doing it for friends, for fun?
3
SPEAKER_01
I had my band in my group in middle school and high school.
3
SPEAKER_01
We became pretty popular, but it was written songs.
3
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t really freestyling.
3
SPEAKER_01
In college, I put in just an absurd number of hours freestyling in the dorm with my friends.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, insane.
3
SPEAKER_01
Every night, just like whatever s happening, I m rapping.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
at least like two or three hours almost every night.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and became known around like, you know, party circuits as this crazy freestyler guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was like the trick that you could pull out and bring out to a party.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was always fun, you know, make little circles at the party and freestyle, which is how most people get started freestyling.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s fun.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a band for a while with my jazz studies cohorts at USC.
3
SPEAKER_01
We looked up to the roots and groups like that that had live instrumentation.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we had drums, bass, guitar, keys, horn section, and then I was the front person freestyling.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s cool.
4
SPEAKER_01
channel, didn t have like a professional Facebook page or even like, you know, my IG was just a personal IG, you know, which I barely ever posted on.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t a social media guy.
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know anything about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You were an introvert.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I was an introvert, you know.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I just wasn t that into it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But all of a sudden I was like, oh, wait a minute.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a way that I can create energy around my freestyling.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, that s interesting, you know.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I set up my YouTube channel, but what s so funny is my first, you know, uh, I, I made a couple of videos that didn t really get too many views, you know, I started from scratch.
4
SPEAKER_01
Eventually we went out to Venice beach and I had sort of my first like, you know, hit, so to speak.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had a viral viral.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Um, it was called Venice beach freestyle part one.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we posted that on YouTube and it went pretty crazy on YouTube, but on Facebook, it went bananas.
4
SPEAKER_01
It got reposted by this viral conglomerate site and ended up getting like, you know, 20 million views or something on that one repost.
4
SPEAKER_01
And across all the reposts, it was upwards of 40 million views or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
and that had never happened to me before.
4
2016, 2017?
4
SPEAKER_01
2017, February 2017.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you remember the exact day.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I remember, yeah, yeah, I remember, because it was mind-blowing for me.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was just insane.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had never experienced that before.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just all the comments and just seeing it reposted and shared here and on blogs that I knew about and seeing my video up there was just wild.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what s so funny, I did a few videos after that, but I didn t turn on the ads for any of those videos.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know, I did this for years, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Cause I thought it would annoy people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Dude, I did for six years on YouTube.
4
SPEAKER_01
Did you do it by choice or did you not know that it was there?
4
SPEAKER_00
I did it by choice cause I didn t want, I wanted to serve and add value and I didn t want like some sleazy marketing campaign in front of my videos, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So I was like,
4
SPEAKER_00
Alright, I m just gonna add so much value to my community and build this up for free and we did this for five or six years Yeah, I went back.
4
SPEAKER_00
I started turning on the ads a couple years ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah in the first month ago Oh, this is not bad.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it just kept growing it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I went back and just looked at the views from the previous five years Yeah
4
SPEAKER_00
And I about threw up when I realized that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I lost about a million dollars.
4
SPEAKER_00
Minimum.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it probably would have been three or four because had I known I was making the money, I d have been like, let me pay attention to really go all in on YouTube and make better content.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t do any updates or thumbnails.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like, just threw it up.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so, just based on the views, it would have been a million dollars over five years, which is a lot of money in five years for a business.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s why I said, okay, let s really go all in on this and see how we can optimize this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then at that point, it was also kind of the tipping point where I think they were just putting ads on every video anyways, whether you had it turned on or not.
4
SPEAKER_00
They were like, we re monetizing your video, so we re like, might as well make money from it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everyone sees ads anyways, so it s like, okay, it is what it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you didn t start doing that originally, but then you turned it on after these
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I never turned them on because I mean, similar to you, I just thought that it would turn people off from the videos.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would rather have more people see it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at that time, I felt like the ad would deter people from watching it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I don t know if that s actually true.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think, you know, it s hard to say.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like you say, now that the ads are so ubiquitous, I mean, they re everywhere.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think people just expect it and it s not accepted to.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s totally normal.
4
SPEAKER_01
But that was my philosophy back then.
4
SPEAKER_01
I really didn t know anything about YouTube.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have kind of a funny situation, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
We talked about it a little bit earlier, but around that same time, after I d been making these sort of non-monetized YouTube videos for a while.
4
SPEAKER_00
Viral videos.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got called to do this Mitsubishi commercial.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it was the craziest thing at the time because, you know, even though I was having these viral videos, I really wasn t making very much money.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I was very much living month to month, which I was used to because I had been a gigging jazz musician for all those years.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I had no overhead, no savings, you know, and I basically just covered my expenses, my rent, my groceries and gas.
4
SPEAKER_01
and sort of started over again at the top of each month.
4
SPEAKER_01
I got called to do the Mitsubishi commercial and it ended up being a national TV ad for nine months in the US and Canada.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a trip.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s me dressed up like a Mitsubishi salesperson and they come in to, you know, test drive the car and then we go in the car and I start freestyling the features of the car.
4
SPEAKER_00
Did you freestyle the whole thing every time or did you kind of have pre-planned?
4
SPEAKER_00
You knew some of the terminology of the whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
So for the, like, you know, for the ad agency and for like the Mitsubishi corporation, they want to like approve the copy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right.
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SPEAKER_01
So hard, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So I, uh, I, I wrote a verse about the, uh, the full disclosure.
4
SPEAKER_00
All right.
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SPEAKER_01
For your audience.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
No.
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SPEAKER_01
And I ve talked about this before.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wrote the verse out word for word about the car features and share that with them.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then we came up with this concept where I would do one take like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then when I was out, yeah, completely freestyle, just rapping about their outfits or whatever came to mind, mix it in somehow, mix it in with the stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the final product included some of my preconceived lyrics and then some freestyle.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s cool.
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SPEAKER_01
But for me at the time, that commercial, I made more money than I had ever made in my life to do that commercial.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t any insane jaw-dropping amount.
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SPEAKER_01
But for me, living month to month, it was like, oh, wow, I can breathe now for the first time.
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SPEAKER_01
And that felt really, really great.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I also learned a really, really important lesson at that time.
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SPEAKER_01
I had always had the goal of making an album, writing songs, and making more of a traditional hip-hop album.
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SPEAKER_01
Even though I didn t really have experience doing that since my high school days, it was something that I really wanted to do.
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SPEAKER_01
And I also felt, at that time, a lot of pressure to do that because I felt like that was the obvious pivot, like we were talking about earlier.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like, okay, this freestyle thing is cool, but... If I wanna go make real money, I gotta do this album thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_01
I have to, you know, go to radio and I have to become, you know, whatever image you have of a famous, successful rapper.
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SPEAKER_01
I felt this incredible amount of pressure to somehow embody that, you know, rather than, you know, remembering that I should just be myself and do what comes naturally to me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t quite there yet mentally.
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SPEAKER_01
So I was struggling with that.
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SPEAKER_01
And then here comes this Mitsubishi commercial.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I said, oh, great.
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SPEAKER_01
This will be my record label advance.
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SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_01
This will be the money that I can sort of live off and use to fund my album and get producers to work with and make some music videos and things of that nature.
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SPEAKER_01
And you stopped making content during that time?
4
SPEAKER_01
I stopped making content.
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SPEAKER_01
I took a break.
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SPEAKER_01
I took a break from YouTube for almost a full year.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
It could be irrelevant if you go a year away from your content.
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SPEAKER_00
Easily, easily.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, now we post daily on multiple platforms.
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SPEAKER_01
We go hard.
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SPEAKER_01
But at this time, I was like, well, I m not making money on these YouTube videos anyway because I didn t turn the ads on intentionally because I didn t want to turn people off from the video.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I thought, well, I got to figure out how to pivot and actually make this career happen.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I lived off the Mitsubishi money for almost a full year and I used it to sort of fund my album.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then it got to the end of the year and I was basically out of money.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I looked up and all of a sudden there s this panic and I m saying to my girlfriend, I don t know what I m gonna do.
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SPEAKER_01
I think I m gonna have to go apply to Trader Joe s down the street or Starbucks.
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SPEAKER_01
I gotta get a job.
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SPEAKER_01
I m gonna have to get a job soon.
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SPEAKER_01
And shout out to my girlfriend and she basically said,
4
SPEAKER_01
That s that s nonsense.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, you have an audience and you have this talent, you know, you just have to activate your audience.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, let s actually figure out what that looks like for you.
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SPEAKER_01
Wow.
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SPEAKER_01
And so at that point, I said, you know what, you re right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I said, I m going to change my approach and I m going to actually do YouTube
4
SPEAKER_01
like a YouTuber.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to learn how to monetize a YouTube channel.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to learn how to do social media in a way where I m able to build it out as a business.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I started really doing the knowledge and doing the research to understand how that works.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so from that moment on,
4
SPEAKER_01
That s when I sort of rebranded and started calling those man on the street freestyle videos, guerrilla bars.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I sort of came back at that phase after doing the album.
4
SPEAKER_01
The album was not very successful, by the way.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a big thing for me and I m proud of it and I m glad that I did it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it didn t make too much of a splash.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it was like, OK, let s get back into this YouTube thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Rebranded the series as guerrilla bars and started doing the videos monetized.
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SPEAKER_01
with the ads on from the onset.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, we made, I think, six or seven episodes.
4
SPEAKER_01
We made six episodes, and then the seventh one came out and went super viral on YouTube.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it was like, yes, I m back in the game.
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SPEAKER_01
Just enough, just enough.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you started making money from the ads there a little bit, and then you start going hard on all the platforms, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I found you on TikTok, I think earlier this year or something.
4
SPEAKER_00
You started doing TikTok, Instagram, and just kind of creating content for all platforms.
4
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
And now you re trying to,
4
SPEAKER_00
Maximize and monetize wherever you can
5
SPEAKER_00
on there, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
100%, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
It started then, it was me trying to learn how each of these platforms work and what specifically works well for Instagram as opposed to YouTube, Facebook as opposed to TikTok.
5
SPEAKER_00
What are the sort of idiosyncrasies of all of these platforms and how are people using them to build businesses?
5
SPEAKER_00
And then seeing how I can apply that to what I do.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in the beginning, at that time, I m doing every part of it myself, essentially.
5
SPEAKER_00
which is a really important phase of the whole journey that I m really grateful for.
5
SPEAKER_02
You re not just outsourcing it right away, you re learning it first so you can understand the language of how these things work and then work with other people eventually.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and learning the language of it, but also just out of necessity.
5
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t afford to pay somebody else to do it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it s good, I mean, even if I could have, I think it s better this way, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And this is, I m sure you can relate to this, you know, I think pretty much every content creator out there goes through that phase.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I spent years broke learning this stuff back in 2009, 10, 11.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
And I had no money, so I d obsess about it all day until I could start hiring people, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
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SPEAKER_02
What do you think happens if we never process and acknowledge our emotions?
5
SPEAKER_01
I think repetition.
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SPEAKER_01
You keep repeating, you keep sort of living through, going through the motion, and you end up slowly just accumulating more and more density, because you re just repeating the same reactive habit patterns over and over again, and we don t realize that every reaction, it creates an imprint on the mind, and it predisposes the mind to react in the same way, to perceive in the same way, so you can just get denser and denser and denser.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think those moments are where the real sort of like, this is a test, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
This is like, I don t need to join you in this anger.
5
SPEAKER_01
Actually, I m okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t want that heaviness.
5
SPEAKER_01
I could even practice, like, especially if it s a dear loved one, I could even practice listening to you and seeing you, but also just maintaining my peace while I m trying to see you.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s really difficult, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not like a,
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, get a 100% type test.
5
SPEAKER_01
But you can do your best to just keep your energy as it is, especially as you re moving through different environments, you know, moving out of the work environment, you know, different situations that you re in.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I think being able to manage your own energy, I think it s just a sign of mastery.
5
SPEAKER_02
It is a huge sign of mastery.
5
SPEAKER_02
And when you are in reaction mode, something else has power over you.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Something else is
5
SPEAKER_02
more powerful than you are.
5
SPEAKER_02
And when I learned that, it pissed me off because I felt like I was always in control.
5
SPEAKER_02
But when I was reacting or defensive or guarded or frustrated, I realized later, I was like, man, I allowed that person, that moment, that thing to have power over me to get into a negative state.
5
SPEAKER_02
That s not fulfilling, that s not fun.
5
SPEAKER_02
And so I had to learn how to deconstruct that and have more mastery over my emotions.
5
SPEAKER_02
And it doesn t mean I m perfect and I still get frustrated and I still have moments of anger.
5
SPEAKER_02
But I m aware of it quicker, and I m like, let s shift out of this.
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SPEAKER_01
This isn t serving my vision.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not serving me.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you know, when you re in a group, in a situation like that, where maybe the whole group is getting upset by a particular situation, if one person is able to put their head above the water, and they re like, oh, actually, we re OK.
5
SPEAKER_01
This sucks, but we re going to be fine.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then everyone kind of gets another opportunity to kind of wake up a little bit, and they re like, oh, yeah, we re good.
5
SPEAKER_01
We don t have to just roll in anger right now together.
5
SPEAKER_01
people don t quite get.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can be skillful without creating all this immense tension in your mind.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can still assess a situation and be like, oh, this situation needs my attention.
5
SPEAKER_01
I need to solve it without producing so much stress in the process.
5
SPEAKER_02
You talk about focusing on four fundamentals that can massively change your life.
5
SPEAKER_02
I want to see if you can read.
5
SPEAKER_02
I ve been reading your book, but I want to see if you can read these four.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, so I wrote this one after finishing a 45-day meditation course.
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SPEAKER_01
It was like the first thing I wrote.
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SPEAKER_01
Focusing on a few fundamentals can create a massive change in your life.
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SPEAKER_01
Number one, make your healing, personal transformation, and well-being top priorities.
5
SPEAKER_01
Number two, refrain from harming yourself or others.
5
SPEAKER_01
Three, create mental space for gratitude.
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SPEAKER_01
Four, be kind and generous to others.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, if everyone on the planet made these four things their top priority, the world would be a more harmonious, peaceful place.
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SPEAKER_02
And it starts with making healing, personal transformation, and well-being your focus.
5
SPEAKER_02
Because when we don t make it our focus,
5
SPEAKER_02
It s not present.
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SPEAKER_02
It s not in us.
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SPEAKER_02
And we become sick.
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SPEAKER_02
We become sad.
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SPEAKER_02
We become cynical, all these different things.
5
SPEAKER_02
And that doesn t create positivity in the world.
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SPEAKER_02
It doesn t move things forward in a powerful way.
5
SPEAKER_02
So making your healing, personal transformation, and well-being a top priority
5
SPEAKER_02
That alone, most people aren t spending the time like you talked about to create mental space for that to happen.
5
SPEAKER_02
They re not living in gratitude even for a moment throughout the day.
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SPEAKER_02
They re not creating 10 minutes to just think in peace without being on a distraction or a phone or a TV.
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SPEAKER_02
and really think about where can I invest my time in well-being.
5
SPEAKER_02
And if people could spend one hour a day on just well-being, whether it s calm mind, whether it s meditation, whether it s walking, whether it s working out, going to therapy, one hour a day on their well-being, it will drastically improve the quality of their life.
5
SPEAKER_01
It totally does.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve gotten so many messages from especially like mothers, you know, mothers who like have so many responsibilities and so many things they re doing and, you know, hearing stories about how they were inspired to just take like 10, 15, 20 minutes to themselves to just like
5
SPEAKER_01
do whatever it was that they needed to recalibrate, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
To whatever practice, whatever tool they had to just like get back into a certain degree of balance.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s fine, it s, you know, you know it s good for you, but it s until you practice it, until you do it, until you see the results, you know, you see the payoff of the investment.
5
SPEAKER_01
And until you see the payoff of the investment, you re not like, then that s when you double down.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s what happened to me personally when,
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, I would go to these 10 day meditation courses, like I told you, like I was doing that for two years.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I, I think I did four, uh, about five of those courses before I started meditating two hours a day.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I had seen, I m like, this is completely changing my mind.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I m not fully healed, not fully wise or anything like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
Um, I got the inspiration to start writing, but then I knew I was like, if I bring this into my everyday life,
5
SPEAKER_01
the results would be even bigger.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not just a weekend at a time.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not just like going away for a little bit, but it s like bringing it into my daily life.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I think what inspires me and still inspires me to this day is like, I know how when I put this time to be silent,
5
SPEAKER_01
on my own every day that it affects my marriage positively, my relationship with my parents and my siblings, my relationship with my wife s family, my, you know, the relationship with all of my friends, all of my work is affected positively.
5
SPEAKER_01
So if I don t do this, everything, every part of my life is going to just not be as great.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
Here, here s a question for you because I m sure someone watching or listening is thinking of this.
5
SPEAKER_02
You know, Diego, this all sounds great, but your parents immigrated here, and there s millions of immigrants that don t have time because they re working whatever jobs they can get, probably two or three jobs a day to provide for their kids.
5
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of single moms that the husbands or their partners left, and they ve got kids, and they don t have time because they ve got to work full time.
5
SPEAKER_02
and take care of their kids.
5
SPEAKER_02
They don t have that 30 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day to focus on their well-being.
5
SPEAKER_02
What would your current self say to your parents before they moved, the day before they re about to move to America?
5
SPEAKER_02
What would you say to them, knowing everything you know about the 20 years that they went through of not having time to focus on well-being, how would you coach them or set them up for success?
5
SPEAKER_01
Wow, that s such a wonderful question.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ve never thought about it, especially in regards to my parents, because I know there s
5
SPEAKER_01
We live in a world of tremendous difficulty and a lot of people are like literally trying to just keep their head above the water in the economic situation.
5
SPEAKER_01
But in regards to my parents, I think I would tell them that they, like I would try to give them the advice that my wife and I now follow because it s not in regards to meditation or not, but it s what we practice daily.
6
SPEAKER_01
where we are constantly checking in about where we are in our emotions.
6
SPEAKER_01
So when we wake up, we tell each other, like, this is, you know, I m feeling tough, or like, I feel I feel heavy.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it doesn t necessarily need a reason.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s just sometimes you wake up, you didn t get enough hours of sleep, and you just you feel like crap.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right.
6
SPEAKER_01
And
6
SPEAKER_01
being able to know, like, when I know what my emotion is and I am accepting of it, and then my partner also knows what my emotion is, and we know where each other is at, then we can actually, that creates a situation where there s information that wasn t there before, and we can move forward in the day, you know, being cognizant of how that emotion is affecting what we re saying.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think we found that a lot in our relationship, my wife and I, where when we know how we feel, it just creates less possibilities for unnecessary arguments.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think if my parents were, you know, put that into practice, especially back then, that could have become a long-term habit where it s like, oh, now I know my wife just doesn t feel good today, so let s be cool.
6
SPEAKER_01
Let me try my best to support her.
6
SPEAKER_01
And similarly, I think when conflict arises,
6
SPEAKER_01
Don t try to win.
6
SPEAKER_01
Winning, when you both try to win, you both lose automatically.
6
SPEAKER_01
Try to focus on understanding.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I m glad that this is becoming a much more popular thing that more people are talking about because it s needed.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, if an argument arises, I need to do my best to understand things from your perspective.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then you take the time to understand things from my perspective.
6
SPEAKER_01
How did this series of events move for me?
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, what emotions was I going through as this was transgressing?
6
SPEAKER_01
Same thing for you.
6
SPEAKER_01
When there s more understanding, then there s a possibility for love.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s something that, you know, hopefully as a society we can start shifting towards.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because when, and granted, sometimes there may be times where one of us needs to apologize or whatnot.
6
SPEAKER_01
But overall, trying to understand each other creates more opportunity for love.
6
SPEAKER_01
And those are things that, whether you have time to meditate or not, if you try to put them into practice in the way, you know, when you re interacting with another human being, I think they could be really helpful.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you know the experience you grew up with your parents in terms of how much stress they were facing or just kind of, I m assuming, I don t want to put words in your mouth, but kind of like a tension, a constant kind of low-level tension of like anxiety, of fear, of lack, of scarcity, of like nervousness, of kind of like a rushedness, not enough time, not enough to catch up, like always behind feeling.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know if anyone else can resonate to that,
6
SPEAKER_00
But what practical things could you say or what could someone in that situation do who feels like, I don t have time to take care of my wellness because I ve got three or four kids, three jobs.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t even think about the feelings of my husband or my wife.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t even think about that because I m in such survival mode myself.
6
SPEAKER_00
what would be the difficult thing to say to your mom and dad that they would really need, like if they could have done that differently, or anyone in that situation now, if they could just do these three things, even if they don t have the time to do it, what would they do?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think the reality is like, right, we wanna, especially if it s someone that you re close to, like I would remind them, I m like, dude, you re thinking the whole day.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right?
6
SPEAKER_01
You re thinking constantly.
6
SPEAKER_01
Right.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you re like, you re thinking, but what are you thinking about?
6
SPEAKER_01
You re thinking about things that are sort of rotating that wheel of misery, like rotating that reaction.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think trying to interject moments of positivity, even in the mindset, can be incredibly powerful.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, finding time to, not finding time, but like, even as you re going through the moves of whatever it is that you re doing, whatever you re, you know, whatever it is that you re working on, whomever you re helping,
6
SPEAKER_01
thinking about moments of gratitude, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, putting into mind, like, what am I grateful for?
6
SPEAKER_01
What s there that I m, you know, I m so, even though I m in this hardship, I m so glad that this is there, or this person is there.
6
SPEAKER_01
Also, moments where you can reflect, even intellectually, about impermanence, because I think this is incredibly helpful.
6
SPEAKER_01
Understanding that a moment of difficulty, like, right, life may be hard throughout,
6
SPEAKER_01
but it s not always going to be at the same intensity.
6
SPEAKER_01
So understanding that everything is always changing and letting that inspire you to be more present in the times that you do have, you know, cause even interspersed with all of the like difficulty that I had with my parents, um, that we all had growing up as a family, there were definitely still beautiful moments like on a Sunday or, you know, when they would both have a day off and,
6
SPEAKER_01
and we d be together as a family, you know, and we d be enjoying each other s company.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think being like really, you know, letting the fact that things change inspire you to be there, to be with the person that you love.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it s incredibly valuable and can bring a lot of joy into life.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I wanna, you know, I love that you re hitting at the reality of how, you know, where so many, you know, hundreds of millions of Americans may be and people around the world, like the world is rough.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think when we talk about this,
6
SPEAKER_01
it should inspire us to try to make a better world.
6
SPEAKER_01
I really, like, fundamentally believe that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I know, like, people have very different ideas of how the world can be better, but whatever the idea may be, whatever the structure we may implement in the future, it needs to be something that s centered around compassion.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think it s just so critical that we can try to, you know, let love design the world.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I feel like we, you know, we think so often in terms of right and left,
6
SPEAKER_01
but we never go up.
6
SPEAKER_01
We never, we re like, how can we elevate this situation?
6
SPEAKER_01
And I think it s, my hope is that, like, we live in a historic time.
6
SPEAKER_01
We live in a time where there are not only these tremendous challenges that are in front of humanity, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
We have this, like, incredible income inequality, poverty around the world, so many diseases that should be eradicated.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s so many different challenges that we re facing, especially over this hundred year period,
6
SPEAKER_01
that are pushing us to mature as a collective humanity.
6
SPEAKER_01
So to me, what can we do is try our best to heal ourselves while we re dealing with these global societal issues.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because our healing will actually create more creativity in our minds and help us see different solutions that weren t once there.
6
SPEAKER_01
So instead of just repeating the same solutions over and over again and them not working, it s like you clear heal your mind
6
SPEAKER_01
and you ll be able to look at a situation and be like, oh, I see something that I didn t see before.
6
SPEAKER_01
Let s try things a different way.
6
SPEAKER_01
And this is, we re talking a long game, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Long arm of history.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I think it s so, to me, it s so inspiring and kind of, it creates a lot of awe in me that,
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SPEAKER_01
the same time that there are so many challenges, there are all these healing modalities that are becoming more and more accessible than ever before.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like right at this time, can you get access to so many different forms of meditation, so many different forms of therapy, psychiatry, so many, you know, and there s tons of other healing modalities that I m not even mentioning, but people can
6
SPEAKER_01
actively try to find something that can heal them.
6
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, for those who have time, definitely try to heal yourself.
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For those who don t, like we need to support each other and we need to create a better world.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Speaking of healing modalities,
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Have you ever done like ayahuasca or like plant medicines or anything like that?
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No, never done ayahuasca.
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Um, I ve tried like mushrooms, LSD and all that, and I found it to be helpful to an extent.
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But once I started meditating, it just kind of blew everything out of the water.
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It was like, you know, when you re meditating and you re sitting there, you re literally, it s almost like you re getting a degree in universal law.
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Like, you re just like, you re understanding how the universe works, but within the framework of your body.
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And you get this sample size and you just start observing it.
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You can make your awareness so sharp that it literally can feel like your body is this like flowing river of atoms.
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And you can so crisply feel and, you know, attend and observe to this,
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ever-changing impermanence that layers every fabric of existence.
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It happens at the atomic level, the cellular level, the mental level, the
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you know, cosmological level, everything is always changing.
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And we struggle when we have a combative relationship with change, right?
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But we feel peace when we embrace change.
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So to me, it s like meditating is just like, it s opened the world to this.
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I mean, it s opened these doors to this incredible learning that, you know, every time I go, every time I sit, I m like, wow, got a lot more to learn.
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Right.
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Do you think if you, I mean, I ve never done plant medicine.
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I ve never been high or drunk in my life.
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Cool.
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And your brain must look great.
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I just saw doc.
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Yeah, you did.
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Do the brain scan with him as well.
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But I have like some trauma from football stuff.
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You fixed a dense.
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It s getting better.
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Yeah.
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But I had some definitely like some
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Deeper dimples from football trauma.
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I fell down the stairs once when I was 20, intoxicated.
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He was like, that s where you hit your head.
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Also, you hit the back of your head.
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That s from 15 years ago.
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They re still there.
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There s still the trauma there, right?
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It s crazy, man.
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I m curious your personal thoughts on using healing modalities that include external medicines, drugs, or stimulants, hallucinogens, to put you into different states of being versus internal medicine through meditation, silence,
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and using the chemistry within your own body as opposed to the chemistry outside of your body.
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What do you think is more effective?
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I know lots of friends that swear by like how powerful ayahuasca and things have been for them.
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But I also see like a lot of challenges and struggle within them after they swear by this.
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So they get like this awakening or awareness or like insights which are like awesome.
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but I still feel like it doesn t solve everything.
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So I don t know, because I haven t done it, so I can t speak into it.
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But you ve done both, it sounds like, or some of it.
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And it sounds like you re not doing the external medicines anymore.
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None at all, yeah.
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Why?
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And what do you think has been more effective?
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I can speak to it in two different ways.
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So one is, from my personal experience,
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I found that when I would do psychedelics, they were incredibly helpful because they were eye-opening.
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They were showing me the interconnectedness of the world in a way that I couldn t quite see before.
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But after they were done, it felt more like an intellectual understanding as opposed to a knowledge that was fully mine and I could permanently live in.
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Yeah, fully just part of my being.
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Interesting.
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When I would do psychedelics, it felt like I was opening a window to a door.
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I mean, you know, I was opening a window and looking outside and looking at how the world really is, and it was beautiful.
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But when I started meditating, it was like I would open the window, and then I just walked outside the window and just started, like, living in this world.
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That s interesting.
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Yeah, it became, and to me, and now I want to say this, right?
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I think it s really important to understand that like, right, meditating works wonderfully for me.
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I have this, you know, very specific, I practice Vipassana in the Goenka tradition, the same style that you all know Harari practices in and a bunch of other great people.
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And it s difficult, but it s for the people that it works for, you know, that connect with it.
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It s like, it s like you struck gold.
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It s like, you just, you found this thing and you re like, whoa, now you can just accelerate your growth and really develop and move on this path that leads out of suffering.
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But with that said, I really believe that individuals have to find modalities that meet them where they re at.
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So there are some people who have experienced so much trauma, so much heartache, they carry so much pain that
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that they might need something that s either a little more external or, you know, might need to speak to another person as opposed to just closing their eyes.
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Because when they close their eyes and they feel, it s like too much.
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They re just like, they can t.
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Right?
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So, each individual has to find something that meets them where they re at.
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Like, where is their conditioning?
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And something that clicks with their intuition.
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Although, it should be something that s challenging.
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Right?
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Because in the challenge, you re going to build new strength.
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But you also don t want it to be overwhelming.
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And I think that s a lot of things.
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And that s why some people will either stay away from ayahuasca or just the different things that they themselves might find overwhelming.
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Because then if it s overwhelming, it s not productive.
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You might want to stop the healing process altogether.
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You won t stick with it.
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You won t stick with it, yeah.
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I think that s really interesting to talk about, too.
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It s finding the thing that meets you where you re at.
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And maybe you ve got to try a bunch of stuff.
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Exactly.
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Until you figure out what that thing is.
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A lot of people have to try the sort of like spiritual buffet, and then they find like what actually... This works for me, yeah.
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I remember when I first started meditating, it was really hard for me to sit still for like five minutes.
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Yeah, nice.
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I was like, okay, like, I need something else.
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Yeah.
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And so I went into different modalities.
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I was like, I m going to go extreme heat therapy.
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I m going to go extreme cold therapy, like more physical, feels like a workout, and see how I can let my mind process and heal and work through these things in a different way.
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Then it was, OK, let me go back to meditation and doing a two-week meditation retreat.
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I actually became a meditation instructor about seven years ago or something.
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And then going back to different things.
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And so it s, I think it s a process of discovering and figuring out.
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I love that you tried it again, too, because a lot of people are like, they sit down, they meditate, and they re like, I can t do this at all.
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And it s like, of course, we all suck at it.
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Right, yeah.
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When you first start, you re going to suck.
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Yeah, so it s something that you won t get, like I said before, it s a mental gym.
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You re not going to be able to bench press like 300 pounds on your first go.
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I know.
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Right?
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So you need to train the mind and to help it develop focus.
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And that takes determination and the ability to just be like, I m going to try again.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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Going to try again.
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Exactly.
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You keep trying and then the quality develops.
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Yeah, that s it.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts.
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Share this with a friend on social media, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.
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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
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I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
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And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now, it s time to go out there and do something great.