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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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Everyone s human.
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Humans add layers of things that technology can t, right?
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And ultimately it s like the restaurant example of the perfect restaurant with all the budget.
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If there isn t the soul and the story and the context around it, it s just a product.
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That AI is going to give you a product and it s going to help you get a product, which is great.
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But.
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It s up to you to really figure out how to tell the story and give it context.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, John R. Miles.
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And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passion struck.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 365 of Passion Struck.
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Ranked by Apple is one of the top 10 most popular health podcast and the number one alternative health podcast.
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And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better and impact the world.
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If you re new to the show,
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member.
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We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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And in case you missed it earlier in the week, I had two great interviews.
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The first was with Kara Collier, a registered dietician, nutritionist, and the co-founder, as well as VP of Health at NutriSense.
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Hera s expertise is reshaping the landscape of personalized health using constant glucose monitoring to aid in health outcomes.
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I also interviewed Thomas Curran, a professor of psychology at the London School of Economics and author of The Perfection Trap.
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With a TED Talk that has garnered over 3 million views, Curran has become a leading voice in combating the rising tide of perfectionism.
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I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews.
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If you loved today s episode, or either of the others that I mentioned, we would so appreciate you giving it a 5-star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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These reviews go such a long way into bringing more people into the Passion Struck community, and I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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In today s episode, we re diving into the captivating journey of a true visionary, entrepreneur, and advocate for change.
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I m thrilled to introduce our incredible guest, Jeremy Fall.
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At just 16 years old, towering at 6 7 , Jeremy was already a fixture in Hollywood s elite circles, rubbing shoulders with A-listers and reshaping the nightlife scene.
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His trajectory only skyrocketed from there.
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Entrepreneurial success became his signature, marked by the opening of 14 groundbreaking restaurants across the nation.
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The first restaurateur to be represented by Jay-Z s Roc Nation and a proud member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2020.
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Beneath the glamorous surface lay a battle with anxiety and OCD that he shared with many iconic figures throughout history.
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Jeremy embraced this as a testament to his creativity, a driving force.
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Yet, when a powerful panic attack hit him at Jay-Z s Grammy party, everything changed.
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He realized that his mental health was no longer a source of propulsion, but a chain holding him back.
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Join us as we unravel the pages of Falling Upwards, living the dream, one panic attack at a time.
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This book and episode isn t just about a memoir.
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It s a guide to embracing mental health, challenging societal norms, and triumphing over adversity.
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Jeremy s story resonates with authenticity, reflecting his journey from Skid Row s neighborhood to conquering the culinary scene, collaborating with Quincy Jones, and pioneering innovative dining experiences.
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Jeremy is on a mission to dismantle the stigma around mental health, particularly for men and those with mixed-race backgrounds.
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In this episode, he shares invaluable insights on channeling your wildest ideas into a tangible career, redefining masculinity, and nurturing mental well-being without compromise.
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We learn about some of the paradigms he s coined, like the Studio 54 effect, paper clipping, and the power of BASIC.
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These concepts will reshape how you view creativity and mental health.
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in as Jeremy Fall takes us on a roller coaster of entrepreneurial triumphs, inner battles, and the incredible power of embracing our authentic selves.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am so honored today to have Jeremy Fall on PassionStruck.
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Welcome, Jeremy.
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Thank you for having me.
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Today, we re going to be talking about your great new book called Falling Upwards, Living the Dream, One Panic Attack at a Time.
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What drove you to write this book?
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I started writing this book.
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I had a lot of reflecting time around my mental health.
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And mental health is something that s been very prominent in my life from a young age.
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I ve had anxiety and depression from a very young age.
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It s something that I wasn t able to quantify until probably a few years ago.
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And then I decided to get help.
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right around when the pandemic started.
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During that process, I was like, look, I started being really open on Instagram about mental health and I have a large following.
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The response that I was getting in my direct messages was really interesting because even though my demographic skews primarily with women, a lot of men were responding to me and were sending me messages.
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Some people that didn t follow me that I didn t follow either were just messaging me and being like, hey, like,
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It s really great to see a man open up about these things.
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And it s something I obviously knew that there was a stigma around mental health.
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And I grew up in a way where I didn t want to open up about it as well.
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And being a man does play a big part in that.
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But it was interesting to see this shift of like almost like a sigh of relief where someone was saying something and then it just, a lot of people started responding.
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So I did that more.
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I had a lot of conversations.
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I decided to start a podcast called Dinner Party.
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My background as a chef and restaurateur, it was inspired by this idea of you are having a dinner party and at the end of the dinner party, after you re done eating, you talk to your friends for another couple of hours, just random stuff and just opening up.
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And that was the concept.
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And from there, I was like, I had started writing this book and thinking about it.
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And I was like, I need to take this more seriously.
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So I really started writing at the end of 2020, really focusing on mental health in a way that doesn t feel clinical or scientific in a way that s like very loose.
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That s this is some crazy stuff that happened to me.
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I had this panic attack driving and this was this and I was like, much more personal.
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And one of the main themes of Falling Upwards is this modern day masculinity, right?
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I identify as a straight man and
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I ve painted my nails for years.
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I was raised by a single mom and my friends are women.
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And it s like, there is this notion of what modern masculinity is.
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And growing up, like you don t talk about your feelings, like all this stuff that there s a lot of these stigmas.
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So my whole thing is just breaking those barriers down.
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I m a man who talks about mental health.
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I m completely open.
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I m trying to somewhat redefine what that definition is of what it is today.
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And.
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I am someone who has achieved success, but
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Also, I feel like I m still growing versus like, sometimes you ll read a lot of these celebrity books from like big celebrities.
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And I feel like there s a bit of a disconnect with relatability.
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At some point when people read it, they re like, yes, of course, but now your life is whatever it is.
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And I am able to relate to people a little bit more, right?
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Like I ve achieved success so I can point them in the direction of how I got to this point.
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But at the same time, I m not a Kardashian or whatever it is, or like, I can still have that relatability.
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Well, I think it might be helpful to give the audience some backdrop of you just explained why you read the book, but I think we should talk about how you got to this point.
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So something interesting I discovered is that you and I both started working at about the same age.
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I started at like 10 or 11 with a paper route and you started busing tables around that age.
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Can you take us back to your early childhood years and teenage years where you were already becoming a prominent figure in Hollywood?
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How did that early exposure shape your perspective on success and fame?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So I started out like busing tables.
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As you said, my mother, uh, managed a cafe in downtown.
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We actually lived above the cafe.
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There was like this back loft situation.
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Like our home kitchen was the restaurant s kitchen.
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It was a really interesting way of growing up.
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I was extremely immersed in the industry with my mom being in hospitality.
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So busing tables, which to this day, I will say has probably built more character for me than anything else I ve done, especially starting at a young age.
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And so.
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At the time, my mother especially was like, you re never going into this business.
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It really, it s a very difficult business.
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So I always saw that as cool.
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Like I m going to make extra money.
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I m going to help out my mother.
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And then I had this idea again still in hospitality.
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I had this idea I m from Los Angeles born and raised this cafe was off of Skid Row in downtown and I had this idea I was like, there s nothing to really do if you re a kid in Los Angeles during the summer and now it s it s cringe to think about this at this age, but
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I was like, we should be able to have a nightclub for kids our age, like something that s just like fun, like cooler than a school dance.
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Obviously you can t have alcohol or whatever it is, but like cooler than a school dance, like a little bit more produced, but bringing kids from 11 to 16, 17 who have nothing to do during the summer other than walk around the mall.
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At the time we used to go to malls.
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or go to the movies or whatever it is.
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So I pitched this idea, one of the biggest nightclubs in Hollywood, the Avalon.
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And I was, I came in like super hot with this idea.
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They helped me find someone to fund it.
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And I was like, cool, I m going to do this like super easy.
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It s a great idea.
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Everyone loves it.
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I m going to open it.
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It s thousands of people, whatever.
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The model was to charge at the door and do Red Bull cocktails or whatever it is.
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The first one I worked on for five months promoting it.
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This was the early MySpace days.
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I really tried to use social media to my advantage.
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I was like, this is interesting.
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This is a good marketing tool.
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I saw the advantages of it.
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I didn t know what obviously social media would become, but
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The first one was a failure, complete failure.
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Failure in the sense that like 200 people came, which sounds like a lot, but this was at a time where I had no idea what I was doing.
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And I booked a 2000 person venue.
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I had someone that the Avalon had introduced me to that put up money that lost some money.
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It was like a very tough time.
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Obviously like when you re that age, especially when in your whole life revolves around that and growing up with insecurities, I was just like, this is really hard.
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Tried it again the following week.
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Cause it was a series.
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It was even worse.
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So anyway, we ended up canceling it.
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It was supposed to be eight weeks.
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We canceled it.
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And I get a call from the Avalon probably like six months later.
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I get a call from the Avalon.
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They re like, hey, is this Jeremy Fallon?
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I was like, yeah.
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They re like, you did this event.
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Unfortunately, it didn t go well, but we really liked your work ethic.
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And keep in mind, like, I m a six foot seven man currently, and I stopped growing at 16.
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So I was six foot seven back then.
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I had facial hair.
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So no one in their right minds thought that I was 16 at the time.
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And so they re like, we d love for you to come back and see if there s something to do.
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And I was like, Hey, by the way, like I m in high school and I need to do this, like this internship for college.
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Like I could do like desk work.
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Would you accept it?
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And they re like, yeah, sure.
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This is when they found out I was young.
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And so I ended up being an intern at the Avalon unpaid intern.
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It was a time where.
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The clubs were very much top 40.
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It was a time in nightlife that was very much fueled by the show The Hills and Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan era and all those people.
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And my background, I m French, right?
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So my mom is from Paris.
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My grandparents live in Paris and always been very connected to French culture.
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And there was this musical movement called Electro that
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was really starting to pop in France.
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So I was like, you know what?
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I told the Avalon, I was like, look, this is going to be like the next thing.
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Like I m telling you, this is going to be huge.
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And I ended up convincing them to give me a budget, like the world s smallest budget.
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It was like five grand, which booking international acts is like literally nothing.
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I used the Avalon s name because they were like so prestigious.
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I got like massive artists to come.
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And it started doing really well.
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So the Avalon ended up wanting to keep working with me, hiring me.
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And then I ended up working there, running these nights, still in high school.
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Not everyone knew that.
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I was completely sober.
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I didn t drink or anything.
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Now I realize it was actually like a pretty impressive thing at that age to not get into that.
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So basically I didn t drink or anything and I ended up just like really
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building this huge network in nightlife.
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And then other venues started asking me, trying to poach me, end up doing nights everywhere.
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And then I built this huge network of people, including celebrities.
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And going back to your question about fame, it s really when I realized how much perception matters in this world, I was like, okay, so
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the standard of success and fame, it was like very early days, it was like social media.
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So I was like, people determine your, call it worth, right?
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It s like your personal, how people talk about like credit scores, right?
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It s like this way of determining.
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And when you think about it, it s really absurd that people really, especially back in the day, were focused on followers and all these things.
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Like now we ve become a little bit more intelligent with the whole followers.
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It s still a big thing.
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Like it still comes up all the time.
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But I was like, okay,
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I m on MySpace.
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My number of friends, these were friends at the time, they weren t even followers.
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You become a friend by adding someone they accept.
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I was like, this is very easy to manipulate.
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So I spent hours all night adding people.
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They didn t have limits at the time.
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Like this is really early social media.
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So I added people.
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I got like 15,000 friends, which at the time was like a very big following.
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And I started using that as social currency for doing things.
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And then it rolled over into the Twitters and the Facebooks and Instagrams, whatever it is.
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And so I started my career using social media.
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But when I realized that that was such a determining factor as we were going from
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real life validation to digital validation and social media, I really focused on building this online persona because that was how people were going to start judging me at face value.
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And all these big celebrities that would come in, their cards would decline and they didn t have money.
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And I would see like a very different side to Hollywood.
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I was like, well, this person s on TV, they must be rich.
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And then they come in and their cards decline and they re like, hey, can I pay you next week?
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And I m like, wow, like this is,
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really interesting.
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And from there, I realized the power of perception, like that perception matters more than reality.
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And if I had goals, it was really about focusing on PR, marketing, whatever you want to call it, following.
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And then from there, I could turn that into a career versus going the opposite route of figuring out what a talent is and then gaining it that way.
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I was like, this will allow me to do whatever I want.
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It s interesting.
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I have some friends who are and were some of the top talent agents in the world.
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And I ve asked them, what are these stars you work with?
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And at the end of the day, they say they re just like everyone else.
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They ve got financial issues.
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They ve got mental health issues.
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everything, but what they re able to do is to convey a presence about them that makes people attracted to them.
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So I think what you re saying about this perception allure is definitely something that the agency as well.
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A hundred percent.
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Absolutely.
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And that s, it s such an interesting thing because now we live, obviously we live in this world where that s all that matters now.
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But when you think about before it really didn t matter.
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Like I remember I ve opened a lot of restaurants.
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I helped open clubs and bars and everything.
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And I remember there was a time where.
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You didn t know what the inside of it looked like.
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Now, if I hear about this exclusive bar, and I m not a nightlife, I don t go out, honestly.
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I m having dinner at six now.
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I feel like I m aging by the second.
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People are like, there s this new exclusive club in New York and this stuff.
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No one can get in and it s crazy inside.
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I can go on Instagram.
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and look at tagged photos and see what the inside looks like, see what the people are inside, get this like somewhat inaccurate experience, but still understand I can go online, find photos.
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It s so accessible in a matter of seconds, like that the mystique has been definitely ruined by that.
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Like I remember there was a, there s a place called hide in LA still exists, but there was a smaller version, half a block away.
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And.
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Well, first of all, at the time, people were valeting their cars, which is so crazy to think that a bar had valet, because they still do.
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But now with Uber, things have changed so much.
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But people would valet their cars, and the valet would wait to see if they would get in before parking their car, because it was so hard to get into.
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And people would be like, what does it look like inside?
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We didn t have camera phones.
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We didn t have all these things.
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Some people didn t even have cell phones.
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And the ones you did, they didn t have cameras.
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So we had to really imagine.
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this mystique, right?
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And there s something about that that I really miss as much as like social media has made my career.
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I think without social media, my career would be nowhere where it is.
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It really helped me because it allowed me to really be able to define who I am.
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And ultimately, I m a good marketer and it s really helped me for that.
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But there was this really nice, very natural
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thing about going to a place or hearing about a place, like actually through word of mouth and then going to this place, like there was a different emotion tied to it.
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Now, I think I m all about the information age and everything we have.
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And I love that these platforms have allowed people that are like the age I was back then making millions of dollars because they took up a baking hobby on TikTok and they re whatever they re selling pancakes or whatever it is.
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I love that side.
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But there s something about this completely open
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everything is public.
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That is a bit of a shame in the sense that these experiences, like I saw the progression of building concepts, restaurant concepts, bar concepts, that were really about the emotion you had when you went in, right?
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It didn t matter if it was
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four walls just painted and one disco ball like I ve been to places that were amazing that had no design and as someone who s a designer like I love design everything but there was something about that where people were just present to okay we have to design
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this place so that it looks good on Instagram.
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Where are people going to take pictures?
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The bathrooms have to have something because people spend time in the bathrooms taking selfies.
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We have to like start thinking about this.
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Or then if you have this celebrity culture, then they don t feel safe.
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Some places are like, we take your phone away.
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It s a really weird, it was a really weird transition.
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I feel like we all had to adapt to it fairly quickly.
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And so yeah, that s my point.
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I live in Tampa Bay, the opposite side of the United States from you.
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Here in St.
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Petersburg, we have a new nightclub that opened about eight or nine months ago.
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What they re trying to do is create something like Studio 54, and now they re opening one, I understand, in Nashville, and they re going to open one in Austin, etc.
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SPEAKER_00
But in the book you talk about how you had this fascination for studio fifty four because you felt it s when american nightlife the paradigm.
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Of the studio fifty four fact is pretty intriguing can you share an experience.
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Are you harness this approach to turn a seemingly wild idea into a successful venture.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It s funny.
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I still do it today.
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It s there as human beings.
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And this is what I think social media has done also.
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I think I m seeing a reverse effect where we re going back to people wanting to have these experiences that are really emotional, where they feel like they were somewhere that other people weren t right.
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To a certain extent, people like doing that because they like to brag to their friends.
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So social media does play a part in that.
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It s very basic human nature to want something that you can t have, to desire to be somewhere that other people can t be, right?
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It s something people like feeling special, and there s obviously there s an element to it that can become pretentious or whatever, elitist, whatever you want to call it, but ultimately we like feeling special as human beings.
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I think as human beings we want to feel special, so
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Studio 54 did that, right?
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It s exactly what I was talking about in terms of an example of it was a place with four walls, disco balls.
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They took over an old studio, a CBS studio, and they decided to throw a party, right?
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And people wanted to be in there because it was the place to be and they felt special.
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And once you were through that velvet rope, you were somebody, you were a part of something that was bigger than yourself, right?
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To a certain extent, like I did that with my restaurants.
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I was fortunate that my restaurants
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Had the demand that I could do that and not in an exclusive you can t get in way But when you think of an experience, right you think you go to a restaurant when you go to a restaurant Where the reservation was hard to get there s already this excitement that builds up and I get it I get it all the time.
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There s restaurants that Are very hard to get and my friend zone and like even when they get me A reservation I feel cool right even though they re like my friends and I have direct access.
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There s something about
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This like it s special, it s an event, it s a memory, right?
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And everything that we can do to pile up and I think layer onto memories, I think is very special, right?
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When you go to a restaurant, you have good food, like that s cool.
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But to me, it was always about the context around it.
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It s what you feel aside from your meal, aside from your drinks, because
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There are places out there with chefs that will make way better food than me.
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I m never going to claim that I make the best food.
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I think my food is really good.
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I m not here to compete for the best pork belly.
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To me, it s really about how do I make you feel something different?
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And that is completely, I think, what that 54 formula is, right?
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It s like layering in
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an experience that you can t quantify because you re curating spaces and experiences that are meant to become memories that are not replaceable.
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So I look at it in all sorts of aspects.
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I look at it
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from like how I built my restaurants, right?
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And how I curated people there and how I made them feel special when they re coming.
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I was giving them something different.
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I give them breakfast for dinner, playing hip hop.
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At the time, restaurants didn t play hip hop.
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And in Los Angeles, people weren t eating carbs and dairy.
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And I did one completely in reverse.
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And I made people feel like they were part of this really cool like breakfast club.
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So I did that.
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And then now I do a lot of things where a lot of things I m working on is like limited edition food drops.
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I ll go in the middle somewhere, I ll drop
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limited edition food like actually it s just going to be a hundred of these burgers and this cool packaging and whatever it is and people line up and they get it.
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It s really about this formula that
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One, it s definitely perception-based, right?
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It s perception-based.
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I like to think there is something about, yes, you have to have the reality to a certain extent.
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Perception is important.
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You have to be able to back it with something once people get there, right?
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Because expectations are high, so it s this balance.
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But I want people, when they come and I do a limited edition burger, it s not about the burger.
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It s about
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from the second they ve heard about it to the second they got it to how they re going to think about it.
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Like, how do I increase that perception?
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How do I increase that experience in a very subtle but intentional way to make people feel special?
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And to me, that s what the formula is.
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Studio 54 was like, we re curating all these insane people, Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, like all these really interesting people who at the time, by the way, were big celebrities, but they re not icons like they are today because they ve become icons over time.
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But
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We re also going to mix that with random Joe who owns a hardware store and all these people.
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And we re going to create conversation with all these interesting humans.
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And when people are going to leave, they re not going to say, oh, I like this club because they have the best drinks or they have the best lights.
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They re going to go because it s what they felt.
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It s something that they can t quantify.
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And I think when people launch things, they don t focus enough on the story around it.
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They don t focus on the why.
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They don t focus on like,
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the things you can t explain.
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There s this connotation for people around the things they experience where they want to feel things that they can t necessarily quantify and explain.
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Yeah, it s interesting.
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A lot of what you re saying resonates with me.
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And I happened to interview my friend Will Gudero earlier in the year, who I m sure you re, who Will is, wrote Unreasonable Hospitality.
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And it seems like your approach and his approach have a lot of similarities in that you both discovered that it s really about the experience.
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And he told me, and I love this line, that service is table stakes.
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Hospitality is everything.
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And I think what he means by that is it s going above and beyond where a person doesn t expect it and it exceeds everything that they think is possible when they walk into a restaurant.
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Is that kind of the same approach that you took?
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Yeah, 100 percent, 100 percent.
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And I love Will, by the way.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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The part of the restaurant business or the hospitality business that is unfortunate is that
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It became very trendy, right?
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I grew up with a mother who managed a cafe.
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My ex stepfather who passed away was a chef.
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training, culinary school and never call himself a chef because chef was something you earned.
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It was something, especially in France, being a French family, it s like this title, it s this something you dedicate your life to.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like this, this mission, right?
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Essentially to restaurants becoming trendy, the term celebrity chef being coined where like you were 22 and had a food truck and you were also in a celebrity chef because
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You had people show up on Twitter and you won a game show on Food Network, right?
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I like that it s become democratized.
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I m not about like titles and I want the hospitality industry to be welcoming.
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That is the whole point as to why we re inhospitized.
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We re supposed to welcome people with open arms.
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But the only thing
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That s a bit of a shame is that it s watered down a lot of the true hospitality people, right?
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It became trendy to be a celebrity and invest in a restaurant.
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A lot of people that it s their dream.
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They re like, I have money.
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I want to open a restaurant.
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I don t understand why anyone would, but it s, it s become a cool thing to do.
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It s become a flex.
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And unfortunately.
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When you have that, it comes through very clearly that it s surface level.
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There s no story.
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There s no mission around it.
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Like the experience is very fabricated and you feel that the second you go in somewhere.
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I feel the difference.
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I don t care if you spent $15 million to build your restaurant.
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That doesn t mean anything.
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I ve gone to restaurants that are hole in the walls in the middle of nowhere and I have felt the best experience paying
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20 bucks for a meal.
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It doesn t matter ultimately.
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It s really about how you curate and how you make people feel and how you tell your story.
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Food is the biggest thing in the world that is the most acceptable way to explore other culture.
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People are more likely to eat Mexican food or Chinese food or whatever it is than they are to listen to the music from that culture.
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People are more open to trying food than they are to music, to film, to everything
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else of another culture, right?
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So that s very powerful.
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That s how you open the gates to people discovering other parts of the world.
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Everyone always says, I went to this trip, oh, the food was amazing, or the food was terrible.
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Or we found this little cafe that made these things.
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That s always what you hear first.
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People talk about that before they talk about anything else when they visit anywhere.
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So to me, that s powerful, right?
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So why not use
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your upbringing, your roots, your inspirations, things that your mother or your father made when you were a kid, why not tell a story?
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Why only focus on spending $200,000 on a sound system?
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Those things are fine.
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I m not against
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building these like really upscale experiences.
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But ultimately, once people sit down, they re in their world, right?
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Like I see restaurants as like they re a big building and then there s a ton of mini restaurants inside of it.
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And that mini restaurant is like that table.
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People in their world, their experience.
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How are you going to make it perfect and make it as good as it can be?
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Because it is the only industries where when you sell your product, you get to see people
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appreciate it in real time.
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When you sell a t-shirt, you don t get to have that communication with the person who buys it on the other end.
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Even in retail stores, the person who is designing the shirt is rarely at the retail store seeing the consumer consume the product.
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Here, you have a one and a half hour to two hour long
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time frame where someone is appreciating your product and you can talk to them.
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You can guide where things are going.
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You can suggest things.
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They might not like fish, but because you did it differently, they might like it.
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You might open their eyes to other things.
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You might open their eyes to things they ve never heard of before, right?
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There s so much you can do.
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in that world that I think people don t realize.
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And it s become like a list of things to check off where it s like, cool, food, good, this, good, Yelp, whatever.
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SPEAKER_01
But we ve missed a lot of that true authenticity.
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SPEAKER_00
One thing I
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really love about your approach is how you integrated music art and experiences into your restaurants and i was hoping you could share an instance where a collaboration like robin thicke curating a brunch playlist or quincy jones contributing artwork or brandon boyd from one of my favorite bands incubus also contributing artwork sparked not only meaningful conversations but hidden layers that enhance the overall dining experience
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Yeah, it was really interesting because again, I ve tried to think outside the box, within a box, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Because ultimately, restaurants are very capital intensive, they re businesses, they re people to support, right?
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SPEAKER_01
I got very lucky.
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I got acquired in 2019 for the pandemic.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t have to go through that hardship that a lot of my peers did, right?
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SPEAKER_01
I had 14 restaurants, all got acquired.
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So I got very lucky.
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The biggest hurdle I always had with restaurants is I m an extremely creative person, creative to the point where sometimes it can become esoteric, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And ultimately it s a business, right?
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SPEAKER_01
As much as I want to do all this crazy stuff, like you have to sell food and so you have to have a chicken dish, you have to have some sort of like a Caesar salad or whatever you want to call it, some sort of basic salad.
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boxes to check to be able to keep the lights on.
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Very few people can afford to do something completely out of the box crazy and still be able to sustain a business without having a massive amount of capital behind them, which I didn t have.
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I was like, okay, I m a big, I m a big music guy.
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I m a huge music guy.
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I m passionate about music.
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I, a lot of my friends are musicians and I was like, it would be really cool
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to do my version of a mixtape, like my version of a mixtape in restaurant.
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I m not a musician, so I did dishes that featured other artists, collaborate with an artist on a dish.
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SPEAKER_01
So just like a feature in a song, like featuring X artists, you do this.
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I went to a bunch of artists, you mentioned Brandon Boyd, you mentioned Quincy Jones.
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I was like, I want to get stuff from you guys that isn t what you would expect.
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Like you re sitting at a restaurant, you might not know what mixtape is, you might not know the story, but I made sure
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the way the staff would communicate the way the menus were everything was clear so you could be sitting next to a Quincy Jones sketch right he did a sketch and Quincy is one of the most
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legendary, iconic, most amazing, beautiful human beings in the world.
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And I just was able to have people have these moments and memories that they wouldn t have had anywhere else in the world.
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There s no other place in the world that had a restaurant similar to that.
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It was awesome when people came without knowing what it was because it was layer after layer.
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They would sit down, oh, this food looks, oh, the bar looks fun, whatever.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, what is this art?
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And then at first I didn t want to put any names as the art of who the artist was to have the staff walk them through and everything.
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Then I ended up putting the names because it became a little bit of a nightmare and people kept asking, but people would peel layers there all the way to the bathroom, all the way.
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I didn t know this person drew or painted.
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So I thought they were a musician.
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It s like, yeah, but
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You got to think outside the box.
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You got to do things that are different.
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Yes, I could get a bunch of musicians to just and play their music.
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Sure, that s one thing, but I want to give you something different.
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I wanted to make you think that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don t know.
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And I want to strike that nerve with people where it s I just open their eyes because they re like, okay, I thought this was
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SPEAKER_01
what a burger experience looks like.
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SPEAKER_01
I thought this was what a traditional restaurant is.
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SPEAKER_01
I didn t think that you could have a restaurant that collaborated with musicians.
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SPEAKER_01
Why?
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Because it hasn t been done.
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It hasn t been done.
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And if it hasn t been done, people necessarily think that they don t even think and go there.
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I want to go to those places that make me uncomfortable, that might make people uncomfortable, that might seem weird, but it pushes the boundaries, it inspires people to keep pushing, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Because
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Some of the things that happened today, if you would have told me 10 years ago that
3
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Kids would be able to just grab their phone and do 30 second videos and become multi-millionaires and just dance and people would watch them dance and watch them cook and watch them sing.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like, TikTok created the world s biggest talent show ever.
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SPEAKER_01
They democratize that ability to just show off your talent.
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SPEAKER_01
I would have been like, that s too much mass adoption.
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SPEAKER_01
At that point, we were barely using our phones in that sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, 10 years ago, we were using our phones, but 15 years ago,
3
SPEAKER_01
We were just, I think that s around when the iPhone came out, like probably a little bit more than that, but we weren t even conditioned to use it beyond a couple of things.
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Right now, our phones are our whole lives.
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And so when I think about that, I m like, okay, the internet was much more of a stretch.
3
SPEAKER_01
Social media was much more of a stretch.
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SPEAKER_01
AI was much more of a stretch.
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SPEAKER_01
Like I can create a restaurant that collaborates with musicians.
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SPEAKER_01
Like that s not that much of a stretch.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t have to go that far.
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But I m able to just open people s minds to food being more of a conduit to conversation than anything else.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m going to go back to the book and thank you for sharing all that, Jeremy, because I do think it s fascinating about how you approach this and what led to your success and ultimately becoming recognized as a 30 under 30.
3
SPEAKER_00
And as you said, hitting it just at the right point where you were able to sell all your restaurants just before the pandemic hit, which was incredible timing.
3
SPEAKER_00
In the book falling upwards you delve into your experiences with anxiety and we all have defining moments in our lives can you share a defining moment that made you realize it was time to address your own mental health.
3
SPEAKER_01
Growing up, I didn t know what anxiety was, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, my mother tells me about when I would go play on the playground with kids and go up the stairs for the slide, I would go one foot and then bring the other foot on the same stair and go one foot and then the other foot.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, kids were, like, running up, falling, whatever.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was so anxious about everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was so anxious about everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t understand what anxiety was.
3
SPEAKER_01
I always felt these like panics and this fear of the unknown and what s going to happen.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then growing up, you hear about medication, medications, the devil and big pharma and all this stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s there s something still to this day.
3
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That I learned as a kid that either my mother told me or that I learned that I was like convinced as echo stupid stuff Like I probably learned seven years ago six years ago I was like in my mid-20s that like turning the light switch on and off fast is not gonna cause a fire Like it s always like some of the stupid things I think about I m like, wait, was that bs or was that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Some things like that that like you have these preconceived notions of things that you ve learned from being a kid but
3
SPEAKER_01
For me, it was like, I didn t understand what anxiety was, like actually was, that I had an anxiety disorder until I was probably in like my early 20s.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I think I have this.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then mid-20s, it got worse, and then I realized how anxious I was.
3
SPEAKER_01
I went completely untreated until not that long ago, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I really started writing a book.
3
SPEAKER_01
I really started writing Flying Upwards.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was part of my taking care of my mental health.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like, okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
How am I going to, how am I going to do this?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m driving, I m leaving meetings.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m leaving, like I, the book opens when I talk about leaving the rock nation brunch.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had 40, Forbes 30 and a 30.
3
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I had all these things.
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Everything was like.
4
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Theoretically perfect with my life.
4
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I had sold my restaurants.
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I was just like this is like a peak and
4
SPEAKER_01
I hate it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t, I m like panicking.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what to do.
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I m like binge eating and all that stuff.
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And I left early.
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SPEAKER_01
This is like the most exclusive, hardest to get to event in the world.
4
SPEAKER_01
People dream of this.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this was like my second year.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was just like driving home and I would see a yellow light.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would see a green light and I would be like panicking that it would go yellow.
4
SPEAKER_01
What I would do if it was yellow and it was yellow, I was panicking what I would do if it go red.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I was just, I had to pull over.
4
SPEAKER_01
and be like, this is, this is becoming actually physically dangerous.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this is becoming actually selfish because it could affect other people.
4
SPEAKER_01
You could do something stupid on the road, but you could essentially, this is, you could kill someone with this thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
So with that said, it was just like, I was like, okay, I got to seek treatment.
4
SPEAKER_01
Luckily, I say that luckily, very loosely, this happened around February, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
We went into lockdown in March.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, I didn t really, I was like, I m going to get help, but I didn t have time to really let it run because then I got sit down, stuck at home.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, okay, I said, I was gonna work on this.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t have restaurants anymore.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t have anywhere to go.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re stuck here.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is the time to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is the time to do it.
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SPEAKER_01
I talked to some friends and whatever it is, and I got referred to a therapist.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I actually did therapy for a pretty long time, like probably, I don t know, like a solid probably seven months before considering medication.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I would tell her, I was like, I m worried to lose my creativity on this.
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SPEAKER_01
I can t do medication.
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SPEAKER_01
Therapy will fix this.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to write a book.
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SPEAKER_01
I m going to, it s going to be my therapeutic process.
4
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Even if this book never, like, I m going to write this book regardless if I get a publishing deal or not.
4
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I was lucky to get a publishing deal.
4
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I was, I m just going to write this book.
4
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Like I need to tell the story, even if it s to one person that reads it or whatever it is, I really need to write the story out.
4
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And I then ended up considering medication because I was understanding things better.
4
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And therapy really taught me the whys and the whats.
4
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And I, I was, I really started to know myself better and I would understand why I was doing the things I was doing.
4
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And then when I got that perspective, I was like, okay,
4
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So this is a disease.
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This is a clinical, physical thing.
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The way my brain is wired.
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I m not saying it can t be fixed without medication.
4
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I have friends that meditate and it s changed their lives.
4
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I can t meditate.
4
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I can t sit still.
4
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But I was like, you know what?
4
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Like people are always like, yeah, but then when you start, like, what are you going to do?
4
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You can t stop taking the medication.
4
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And I was like,
4
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How long does it take to put a pill in your mouth and swallow it?
4
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I don t know, a second and a half?
4
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I was like, if I have to take a second and a half out of my day every day for the rest of my life, and for the remaining 23 hours and 58 seconds of my life feel better, why wouldn t I do that?
4
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Even if I have to do it for the rest of my life.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s like, when you ask people why they re scared of medication, I was one of these people.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s really interesting.
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It s just this fear of then not being able to stop the medication.
4
SPEAKER_01
I understand when it s not a treatment, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
I understand when it s, I m scared to take Xanax or Vicodin for pain or whatever, because those are addictive substances that can kill you.
4
SPEAKER_01
And when it s pills that you take one at a time, feeling something, I understand the fear of getting hooked.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have that fear.
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I have an addictive personality.
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I m not going to start popping Xanax, even though I have a prescription, because, like, I m worried to get hooked on that.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I understand it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But when it s a treatment, an everyday treatment that works in the background, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I m on Lexapro and it works in the background.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not like I take my pills in the morning.
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Like I took my medication two hours ago today.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not pop pills and all of a sudden I m like laying down and lax.
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This is a treatment every day.
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It works in the back of your brain.
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It s, it s like taking vitamins.
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I m like, you re willing to drink your coffee every morning that takes longer than a second and a half.
4
SPEAKER_01
Also just as addictive by those caffeine.
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You take your vitamins, you take all these things, you have a headache, you rush to the pill cabinet to take Advil, you have a cold, you take 17,000 different decongestants and all this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like why are we so worried about our mental health and being so sensitive about taking medication, but we re willing to do all these things for a cold?
4
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I would argue that having a mental illness is much, much worse than a cold.
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It s much more dangerous.
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So I started looking at that and I was like, you know what?
4
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I ll take these pills.
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Now I understand the science more.
4
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I was referred to a psychiatrist and I was like, what happens if I lose my creativity and I don t feel like myself?
4
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And she was like, well, if you don t feel like yourself, we ll stop the medication.
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and then go on to another one.
4
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And I was very lucky.
4
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I found an amazing therapist and I found an amazing psychiatrist.
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I had this support system from these two amazing women that really helped me get through it.
4
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But I was just like, Oh, I guess I didn t think about that.
4
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If it doesn t work, I can stop and then try something else.
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These aren t pills that are going to ruin my brain forever.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like that s just not how the science works after trying it for a few weeks.
4
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So I tried it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had an extremely horrific experience with medication.
4
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I took my first medication, made me dizzy to the point where I would walk and stumble and have to grab on a wall because I would be like falling down.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like it was a very weird reaction.
4
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And every medication, you know, if it works after six weeks, so it was awesome because they were like, Oh, it could be side effects, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
After six weeks, it was still flying down.
4
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I was like, this is a disaster.
4
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Then I tried another one.
4
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I actually tried Lexapro, which is what I am on now, at a much smaller dose.
4
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And it knocked me so hard into a depression.
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I was in bed, just, I couldn t get out.
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I was literally to a point where I was like, I don t care if everyone dies.
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I died, like I didn t care about anything.
4
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I was so emotionless.
4
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I had a very weird reaction.
4
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And then the next day made me ramp up where they thought I was bipolar.
4
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And I m telling this because like, I am a product of having had the worst possible, one of the worst possible experiences with medication.
4
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I m still on it.
4
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I m still grateful.
4
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And I would do it again if I had to.
4
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I became very manic.
4
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They thought I was bipolar for a day because I thought I was a superhero and I was calling my therapist and I was like, I think I can fly.
4
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I really thought I could jump off a building and fly.
4
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Very terrifying stuff.
4
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And then it stopped working.
4
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And my psychiatrist was like, look, you re very resilient.
4
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Do you want to just stop?
4
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And I was like, no, it says six weeks to work.
4
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It wasn t working.
4
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I was anxious.
4
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And there was this one thing that was really bothering me with
4
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one of my friends and I was very upset and I had anxiety and like I was mad at me and it s like this the stuff you go and it s like really just ridiculous when you look back and it was really bothering me and then I was in the shower and I thought about it like the day after is bothering me and I was like okay that s it and then I just realized that moment I was like that spiral is gone I get the anxious thought but the spiral that comes after the anxious thought is gone
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s what medication does, right?
4
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It prevents the spiral.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not going to remove your anxiety.
4
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If I had no anxiety at all, I probably would have shown up 45 minutes late to this call because I d be like, Oh, it s fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like you become too loose.
4
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It ruins your life.
4
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Like if you become loose to a certain extent where I don t care about anything, I would have probably missed the alarm, forgotten to put it on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like I would be very whatever, but I m still very anxious.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have anxiety about a lot of things, but
4
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The spiral is in control and the spiral was really the hardest part.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not the thought, it s the dwelling and all that stuff.
4
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So to me, I always tell people that medication mitigates that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I appreciate you being so vulnerable about that.
4
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And I have had my own circumstances where I have tried different medication myself.
4
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Some have failed miserably and put me into some of the same circumstances that you have and others for the time that was on them, serve their purpose and help me to get through bad times.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I do think there s a time and a place where if you need these things, they can be very advantageous in taking you out of dark places or places of anxiety or panic attacks and getting you back to where you can function and be yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
And similar to you, I was worried that they were going to impact my creativity, but I never felt that ended up becoming an issue.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s and I appreciate you opening up and would you think you would have been as open 10 years ago talking about that?
4
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Well, definitely not.
4
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It s interesting, right?
4
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Well, it s interesting for me for a number of reasons.
4
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The first being the way I grew up and we just didn t talk about those types of things in my family setting.
4
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The other thing then is I went into the military and especially doing what I did was working for NSA and then I worked a lot with special forces.
4
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No one talked about mental health.
4
SPEAKER_00
one, because you could lose your securities, two, because of the masculinity factor of trying to show any weakness at all to anyone else.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then for a lot of my life, I spent time at the highest levels of Fortune 50 companies.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so it was definitely something that you didn t want to have out there.
4
SPEAKER_00
But when i look back upon it now a lot of these things i think we just manufacture in our head as repercussions and for one but i also think as time has gone on people are waking up more to the fact that these things do need to be talked about we re all human and we all face adversity whether it s
5
SPEAKER_00
Big T trauma little t trauma something else.
5
SPEAKER_01
We all have these things and we all need help at one point or another in our lives Thank you for your service and I appreciate you sharing that it s true, especially I can t relate to the military side I can imagine in a world where your brain and being understanding of every single action every single thing that s happened being so alert all the time that I
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the idea of any pill that could mess with that, I can imagine is terrifying.
5
SPEAKER_01
And especially being told that being vulnerable is not manly.
5
SPEAKER_01
I didn t have to go through that.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s very interesting to hear other people s stories.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s, I would have definitely, obviously I was in the military, but the idea that 10 years ago, like I was hiding from this so much to a point where it s really weird to think about now being like, what did I think was going to happen?
5
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I don t even remember what I thought would happen if I opened up.
5
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I just,
5
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And what s now 2023, it s better.
5
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It s not there yet.
5
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I m doing a ton of podcasts because people are like, Oh, it s nice for a man to talk about mental health.
5
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And that s a lot of the narrative around this book.
5
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And I m grateful for all these opportunities, obviously, but I m looking forward to a world where
5
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I m not just going on podcasts because I m this crazy exception of a man talking about mental health.
5
SPEAKER_01
I hope that becomes the norm where we go deeper than that, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
We go deeper into some of these issues and inspire more people to open up because it s crazy with all the progress in the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re talking about like AI taking over like jobs and like all these crazy things.
5
SPEAKER_01
But we re not talking about how we feel or when things are hard.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that, to me, is so crazy.
5
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How much progress we have from a tech standpoint in all these different industries.
5
SPEAKER_01
But from the personal industry, from the human industry, if you can call it an industry, it s this dichotomy between Big Pharma is the enemy, and then mental health is a personal thing you don t talk about.
5
SPEAKER_01
And therapy is, there s a weird stigma around therapy.
5
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I still tell people sometimes, because I m very open,
5
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I m like, I m in therapy, they re like, are you okay?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m like, yeah, why?
5
SPEAKER_01
They re like, why are you in therapy?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m like, I m in therapy every week.
5
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It s not, some weeks I talk to my therapist and I m like, oh, I actually had a good week this week.
5
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This is, to me, that s when the work starts.
5
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It s not when you re having issues.
5
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It s when you have them.
5
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under control.
5
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That s when the work starts.
5
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That s how you build and that s how you understand yourself.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s when you start digging and you start thinking like, why do I think the way I think?
5
SPEAKER_01
Why am I doing these things?
5
SPEAKER_01
Why do I have these patterns?
5
SPEAKER_01
Why do I feel insecure about this or feel like I have to lie about this or whatever it is?
5
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it stems from a lot of our growth.
5
SPEAKER_01
And to me, it s like the work starts because once I have gone through the current issues, I want to understand what I ve been doing for the last 33 years and how it got me here.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like how my, like my therapist and I do it in decades, like every 10 years of our lives, like
5
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we talk about current stuff all the time, but we re still in the first decade.
5
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I ve been with her for three years.
5
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We re still talking about zero to 10 and how that formed my next decade.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then from there, like really understand yourself and really understand where you do the things you do.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s been so interesting to me to be able to be open about how flawed I am as a human, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like how, where I can have a conversation and be like, I,
5
SPEAKER_01
grew up having to lie about so many things because I was so insecure about the way people would think about me and anxious about them finding out this fear of who I really was that I felt like I had to create this entire persona.
5
SPEAKER_01
It got me an amazing career, don t get me wrong, because that then turned into what I did with social media and
5
SPEAKER_01
faking paparazzi stunts to get into grammy award shows and that s in my book and like all these things but when you go to the root of it it s an insecure kid trying to be someone they re not
5
SPEAKER_01
And going as far as to staging all these things, instead of working on myself, I worked harder on creating a persona that I wasn t.
5
SPEAKER_01
Again, it was great.
5
SPEAKER_01
It landed me a career.
5
SPEAKER_01
It ended up, as time passed, it ended up getting me more opportunities that were actually authentic until they weren t, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Until I was doing things because it was just because I felt like I had to do them because I had built a name.
5
SPEAKER_01
But now I m like going back to my primal years.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to learn again.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to like drop a lot of these things that I thought I knew before about myself and be like, huh, this is why you did this.
5
SPEAKER_01
That actually is not good.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s very unhealthy.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do you not do this again?
5
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting to get to know yourself again.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like meeting a person that you always knew was there, but it just was like dormant for three decades in my case.
5
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for sharing all that, Jeremy.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I have my own book coming out in February, and two of the things you touched on are core attributes of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
One of those, and it s something I talk to my kids about all the time who are 19 and 25, is that in the next 10 years, 400 to 800 million jobs are going to change.
5
SPEAKER_00
Just sit here and let that sink in for a second.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because having been in these fortune 50 companies and knowing how they have outsourced all these roles and we ve taken out the entire middle class in the United States because we ve outsourced it everywhere else.
5
SPEAKER_00
What do you think they re going to do when they can replace you with AI, robotics, automation of some sort?
5
SPEAKER_00
They re going to do whatever they need to bump up the bottom line.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so a key message that I try to talk about as much as I can is this future is coming at you like a train that s going 250 miles per hour and is suddenly coming off the rails.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you can choose to let that thing smack you in the face, or you can start preparing now because we are the ultimate learning machine.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you can start positioning yourself in a way that you can pivot and adapt when that train comes your way.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the other thing I think that was really critical that you brought up is.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think so many of us today wear this mask of pretense we are trying to be something that we are not and we are living our lives that way.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of it is because we define success based on extrinsic motivations for success, or we want to be like this influencer, or we want to do this, or we want to do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Instead of focusing on the joys that come from intrinsic drivers and really knowing yourself and being happy with who you are and excelling and doing the thing that you were put here on earth to do that no one else can do.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when you re trying to focus so much on these extrinsic motivations, and you re not looking at the intrinsic value system of the purpose that you have in life, you have this huge chasm in your life, which is causing so many people out there to experience loneliness and hopelessness.
5
SPEAKER_00
And this is fundamentally why I started this whole podcast, was to help people see things in a different way.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I m so glad that you brought that up.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, myself, for going on a tangent.
5
SPEAKER_00
But people need to realize that you look at Serena Williams, best tennis player maybe on the history of the earth.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has she had mental health issues?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has Alicia Keys had mental health issues?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has Matthew McConaughey had mental issues?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has Matthew Perry had mental health issues?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Has Jennifer Aniston?
5
SPEAKER_00
The list goes on and on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Everyone has their moments of self-doubt.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the key secret to life, I think,
5
SPEAKER_00
is truly getting inside your head, getting to know who you are, and falling in love with that person.
5
SPEAKER_01
I could not agree more.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s funny because I am definitely aggressive in my approach when it comes to work and business.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don t take no for an answer for things.
5
SPEAKER_01
I will figure it out until I come up with a solution, evolve or die.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m like AI is taking over.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m not going to fight AI.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m one person.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m going to fight with it.
5
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I m going to figure it out.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m going to adapt.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so part of me is like that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then on the other personal side, I m very, obviously I have sensitivity to mental health and everything.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I m all about.
5
SPEAKER_01
trying to understand situations and face them less aggressively.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it s an interesting paradox, but I agree with everything you said.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think that those are definitely lessons to be had and the world is going to evolve.
5
SPEAKER_01
The world is going to grow.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s going to faster and faster.
5
SPEAKER_01
Instead of sitting back and looking at it and being like, cool, I m going to get replaced, figure out how to add value in a different way.
5
SPEAKER_01
Use these challenges as advantages, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
For me, I m thinking like AI is going to replace a lot of things and it s going to replace
5
SPEAKER_01
Meal plans can replace a lot of these.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s not necessarily the business I m in, but it is in a sense, cause it s food.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, well, how do I leverage AI to be able to duplicate myself and scale things?
5
SPEAKER_01
I m only one person.
5
SPEAKER_01
I can t necessarily serve people food in other countries.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like a musician can upload a song on Spotify.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do I use AI to be able to feel like people have access to me in a way that can think like me,
5
SPEAKER_01
and give recipe like can I create an AI personal chef for you can I manage your meal plans that way through my thinking through data input like all these really interesting things with that technology that I can do that you couldn t do before as much as people are afraid of it
6
SPEAKER_01
The thing about AI is it s never gonna replace creativity.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s the thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t see replacing creativity.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it will take your idea and pour gasoline on the fire, sure, in that sense, but there s no way I m ever gonna let AI replace the way I think creatively or the things that I come up with.
6
SPEAKER_01
AI is, you re not gonna say come up with a restaurant and it s gonna be like, yes, you re gonna do a mixtape inspired by your, it s just not gonna work.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not gonna happen.
6
SPEAKER_01
There has to be creativity on the other side.
6
SPEAKER_01
There has to be people that get creative on how to use it as well.
6
SPEAKER_01
In that sense, I m not worried and I don t think anyone should be worried aside from the fact that if they think that their entire worth is knowing how to write and now AI can replace that, they should realize their full potential and realize that they re much more than that, that they add more value than just a task.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s human.
6
SPEAKER_01
Humans add layers of things that technology can t.
6
SPEAKER_01
Ultimately, it s like the restaurant example.
6
SPEAKER_01
of the perfect restaurant with all the budget, if there isn t the soul and the story and the context around it, it s just a product.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s like that AI is going to give you a product and it s going to help you get a product, which is great.
6
SPEAKER_01
But it s up to you to really figure out how to tell the story and give it context.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m glad you brought all that up because I m going to end talking about this.
6
SPEAKER_00
So today we ve talked about your journey from Questvoice server to being a gatekeeper for some of the biggest nightclubs in L.A., to becoming a mega restauranteur, to becoming a media company founder.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now you re into this world of crypto NFTs and the metaverse.
6
SPEAKER_00
And where I wanted to go is
6
SPEAKER_00
This idea of defining oneself in a rapidly evolving landscape like the web 3 space can be quite intricate.
6
SPEAKER_00
How do you encourage listeners to approach this challenge, especially with the diversity of everything that s hitting them now?
6
SPEAKER_00
And maybe you can do that in a way by touching on your new venture, probably nothing, while you re doing it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s interesting.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I think a lot of the misconception around what I do in web three is so the same way I used social media to incorporate to like social media to build my career.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m someone who uses modern day technology.
6
SPEAKER_01
to amplify my career.
6
SPEAKER_01
We talked about AI.
6
SPEAKER_01
We talked about social media, the MySpace days.
6
SPEAKER_01
To me, Web3 is the same thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it s funny because there s such a bad connotation around NFTs and crypto and Web3.
6
SPEAKER_01
And what people I think don t understand, like a lot of people think I shifted.
6
SPEAKER_01
And to me, it s not shifted.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve layered in to the things that I do.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve layered in Web3 technology.
6
SPEAKER_01
A lot of things I m doing
6
SPEAKER_01
in my world.
6
SPEAKER_01
Layer web 3 and NFTs and you wouldn t even know about it.
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All the stuff I do is email based.
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You enter your email, are going to buy, let s say I drop a sauce, you re going to buy my sauce, you re going to go here and you re earning points, badges, whatever you want to call them, right?
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Those are all NFTs that you re collecting things.
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I m dropping food like
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McDonald s did with the Happy Meals and the digital toys.
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Those are NFTs, right?
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I m a fan of the blockchain technology.
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I m not a fan of the money-hungry capitalistic side.
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And look, I m all for making money, don t get me wrong, but that sort of
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quick NFT, get rich quick mentality.
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And people talk about like the scams and everything.
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And it s funny because no one talks about how emails that we use every day used to be like scamming central.
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People used to be like, do not touch email, do not touch the internet, chat rooms are the devil, like all these things.
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So it s just a natural progression, right?
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So for me, it s, I m someone who I started where my craft was, what can I do in these four walls?
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It s very limiting with a restaurant.
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You can only do so much.
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I m limited to the people in the room at that time.
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Then I was like, how do I use my creativity and hit other people?
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That s what we were just talking about.
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AI for me, web three technology, the sense of ownership, right?
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There s something about counterculture and it feels punk.
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It s like Bitcoin was dropped in the middle of the earth.
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No one knows who created it.
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And it s completely freaked out all of our governments, the SCC banks and everything.
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And I think that is very cool.
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I love disruption so much, right?
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And that s why I m a fan.
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of Bitcoin I m a fan like to me it s not cash it s gold it s this thing that s you can t explain and it has value and like wherever it goes I believe in it but even if it didn t go anywhere like being a part of that countercultural movement and modern technology is important to me it s not that so probably nothing was basically and it s a used term in that space was really just like an experimental brand that I have to funnel web through like web3 based projects so I have a
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creative label with Warner Records.
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So it s basically like a record label, except like our mission is also to sign artists that are not musicians.
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And it s with Warner Records.
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So we re using their resources to sign artists that are very untraditional.
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So it s not like a traditional record label.
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We did a bunch of projects with NFTs.
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We found a Hawaiian rapper that was undiscovered and we gave him a platform through NFTs and he sold more tracks than a lot of big artists.
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So
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To me, probably nothing was as an experimental brand where like I would do a lot of these things under it, but everything has a food tie.
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A lot of things I do have a food tie.
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Like I was talking, like I did a collaboration with Adidas in New York called Probably Pizza.
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And it was a pizza truck and all the packaging was collaborated with Adidas and we did all this limited edition packaging.
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So it felt like it was collectible.
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And then you got an NFT, but you had no idea it was an NFT.
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You entered your email through a QR code.
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And you ve got to take over a leftover pizza piece of art that I drew, right?
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Leftover pizza slice.
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That s this collectible.
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Image Starbucks is dropping NFTs almost every day that people they re calling them stamps that people collect and they can sell them or whatever.
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Those are NFTs, right?
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This technology is prevalent.
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Nike is using a Starbucks using ideas is using it.
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I m using it as well under the hood where it helps amplify what I m doing.
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It s not a pivot into a three.
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It s it amplifies what I m doing.
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I m using technology where blockchain allows you.
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to have a sense of digital ownership of something.
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Before I couldn t, like I can make you, John, a recipe.
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That is your recipe that I authenticate on the blockchain.
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That is yours.
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You own it.
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It cannot be duplicated.
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It is yours.
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It is original.
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You have this recipe from Jeremy in this file, image, whatever you want to call it.
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You can have something, unlock it.
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Like I can give you something that you can actually own digitally.
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And when we live in the digital world through social media, it was only a matter of time where we can actually own things online with authentication.
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And to me, that s very powerful.
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A lot of things I m looking at right now is if I cook a bowl of pasta and let s say you buy it for me.
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How do I use blockchain to be able to validate from where the eggs and the flour come from in the pasta to the bowl?
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I want to be able to authenticate step-by-step where you could look and be like, this is actually real and validated because it s on the blockchain.
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And then there s what s USDA organic is on the blockchain and they ve stamped it.
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And you could see, because this is the central system that allows you to verify things.
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Like if I can get you food and use this technology.
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where you can verify what you actually know what you re eating and where it s coming from A to Z, that s extremely powerful.
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People don t realize that the check mark on Instagram is basically an NFT.
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It doesn t live on the blockchain, but it s a form of authentication.
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You can t just put a check mark.
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It has to be authenticated by the system.
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In this case, it s Instagram and blockchain is decentralized.
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Like you re able, it s something that can t be duplicated, can t be falsified.
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And when people see that Instagram check mark, they trust it.
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And that s why Twitter, most people left it because now I can just buy it.
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There s something about.
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this authenticating process that I think is very important in the modern day.
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So to me, I dove very deeply into that because my whole loop around and how it connects dots is like sustainability and transparency in food is one of the biggest problems in the world.
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We don t know where stuff s coming from when we eat it.
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I think it s 33% or 35%.
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of a, to be organic, you need 33 or 35% of your ingredients to be organic, to be able to count, to be organic.
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It s not a hundred.
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So if I put a third organic ingredients and the rest is like all these chemicals, I can still call my product organic.
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That s a big problem.
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And we don t have that sort of education.
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And for me, it s like, I m going to be able to use this technology to actually educate people in a way that they can actually know the truth and validate that truth.
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Jeremy, thank you so much for explaining that.
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And my last question is always this one.
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If there was one thing that you hoped a reader of your book or a listener would take away from your experience, what would it be?
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I don t want to say that you can be anything you want to be, because everyone says that, but you can really carve your own path.
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I m a guy who didn t know how to cook, who became a chef, who became a restaurateur, own a record label with Warner Records.
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I dropped a collaboration with Adidas.
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I ve designed clothes.
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I ve done Web3 and NFTs.
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Yeah, I m a chef, whatever you want to call it, restaurateur, chef.
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I m a food person at heart.
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That is my core.
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If you had to label me in a position, sure, that is what I am.
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but there s no reason why I have to look at
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what my peers have done and be like, okay, so this is what the trajectory of a chef or restaurateur is.
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I m gonna stick to that.
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Why can t I just rewrite the rules?
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I want people to read this book and be like, oh, this guy rewrote the rules for himself and he s successful.
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Carve your own path.
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I would argue that it was harder for me growing up because I didn t have all these opportunities like these kids do now.
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Going back to the TikTok example, you can become a TikTok chef and get more views than any episode on the Food Network.
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Think how powerful that is.
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You can do that yourself.
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I didn t have that growing up, you know what I mean?
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And so I had to get creative, right?
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So I think now s the time to be whatever you want to be and carve out your path and try things, not be afraid to fail, keep trying things, try them again, do them differently.
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That s my whole thing of this book is I, this is how I manage my mental health because it s very hard.
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It s easier said than done.
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So to me, this book is a guide of like how to follow your dreams, but staying sane throughout it.
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Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today on Passion Struck and sharing all your incredible insight and congratulations on such a remarkable career so far.
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I can t wait to see what you re going to accomplish in the decades ahead.
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I appreciate that very much.
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Thank you.
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Jeremy Fallon.
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I wanted to thank Jeremy, Laura Rosenthal, and Hachette Books for the privilege and honor of having them appear on today s show.
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Links to all things Jeremy will be in the show notes.
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Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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All proceeds go to supporting the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both John R. Miles and Passionstruck Clips.
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I have some exciting news that my brand new book, Passionstruck, 12 Powerful Principles
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for unlocking your purpose and igniting your most intentional life is now available for pre-order.
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Links will be in the show notes.
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Advertise your deals and discount codes in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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Please consider supporting those who support the show.
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You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles, where I post daily.
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You can sign up on LinkedIn for my LinkedIn newsletter, Work Intentionally, or you can sign up for my personal newsletter, Live Intentionally, at either johnrmiles.com or passionstruck.com.
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passion Strike podcast interview that I did with Dr. Vanessa Bonds, a social psychologist and professor of organizational behavior at the Cornell University ILRR School.
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Vanessa is the author of the brand new book, You Have More Influence Than You Think, where she draws from her original research to shed light on the power dynamics of consent.
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A lot of the studies I talk about in the book are about these social comparisons we do where we fall short.
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A lot of psychology is about overconfidence and how we take risks we shouldn t because we think that we ll surely be able to beat the lottery and make these things happen and that we re better at doing these calculations than other people.
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But when it comes to these sort of social contexts,
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It turns out that we wind up comparing ourselves to these people who are the absolute most social people you could imagine.
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The fee for the show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something useful or interesting.
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If you know someone who could really use the insights that Jeremy Fall gave on today s episode, then definitely share today s episode with them.
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The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Now, go out there this week and become PassionStruck.