Alternative Modalities to be Pain-Free - Edan Harari

Why you should listen - 

Having pain can be debilitating making it difficult to focus on anything else. What if the root cause of pain in your body could be coming from an unexpected source. Manual Release Therapist Edan Harari explores some interesting theories on where pain comes from and offers some effective alternative solutions.  

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RF Podcast: Edan Harari

Ross: Welcome to RF podcast. Thank you all for tuning in here on Instagram live. And we have a very special guest today. His name is Edan Harari, and he a manual therapist who specializes in helping you to be pain free. Too many people suffer from pain to be very debilitated. So here on the RF podcast, we like to talk about optimal wellness how to get into an optimal state how to perform your best and if you're suffering from pain you definitely want to pay very close attention. So Edan, welcome. Thanks so much for being here with us. So, can you tell our viewers a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Edan: Sure. So, I help people in pain. I do that with many different tools and techniques. When I say tools, I'm talking about modalities not actual hands on tools and I help people with specifically techniques that work with the body in the nervous system. So my specialty is working with primarily the nervous system, although I'm working with all dimensions mobile dimensional approach to healing. That's based on the OP, you know about osteopathy. 

Ross: Tell me about it. 

Edan: So, the osteopathy is a form of physical medicine that is, you know osteopaths or medical doctors that are DO’s, doctors of osteopathy, who are trained in hands on manual therapy techniques in addition to being doctors they can prescribe medications and things like that. So, some of the work that I do is developed by osteopaths and medical doctors who are actually one of the guys was a martial artist and a judo instructor and a medical doctor who was looking at all dimensions of healing. And that's one of the systems that we'll get into soon talk about because that's pretty powerful work. We can really heal a lot with manual medicine. 

Ross: Your practice is still in New York. Is your office still in the flatiron?

Edan: Yes. Actually, I'm over the assemblage in nomad right now. And then I'll go to John Street once in a while as well as someone else in a co=working space. Really, if you guys haven't check that out, go check it out.

Ross: Good. And tell me so your clients who come in like typically what type of clients do you see as Gormley people who are suffering from different types of pain and they just want to make the pain go away. Or is it people who they are just in great health and just they just want to optimize their health?

Edan: Honestly, most people are in pain. And it's like it's funny because I used to have a lot of people who are trying to optimize their performance when I worked that like a cross fit gym. So, like I had people were like I want to be able to do better you know deadlift or whatever and then I would help them, or I want to perform better as an athlete. But now for some reason the past year or two I'd say it's like a lot of just people with pain coming to see me because somebody told them go see him he can help you out. And he does this ortho bionomy stuff and like people can even pronounce it or remember the name and then yeah. So that's kind of how it goes.

Ross: So describe your typical client. What type of pain are they suffering from? And what type of clients get bassets, like you can give them like instantaneous relief of pain?

Edan: I treat all types of humans, when I say that I mean all shapes and sizes. I just came from a client right now at my home in Brooklyn. She's in her early 80s and she's in a walker. she's in pain and I got her to walk straight and be pain free and we're preventing her from going to surgery. 

Ross: How long did it take?

Edan: So, she had trouble walking. And you basically like smooth it out, like she's able to walk fluid. 

Edan: it's hard to talk about these results when we're still in treatment. Because the thing is, that you know in a week or two you know she may have some more pain. Coming up, we have to continue the treatment, so we're not fully done with the program. However, I'm really happy and excited with the results. Another thing is like someone like her and another comparison is like working with you know a child who has pain in their leg from soccer practice and their mom from the Upper East Side calls me and says, “help me help my son”. And then one session on the table Doug you know so kids heal really quickly. The reason why I'm saying about for this for the woman who is in her 80s and you know the walker it's going to be a process and a program that we have worked together for a certain period of time usually around 10 sessions at least for chronic cases like hers. And then eventually, we're able to get them pain free living and possibly once a month to tune-up maybe.

Ross: Wow that's incredible. And I remember when you treated me for the first time, I was kind of taken back a little bit because I'm used to going in the fitness center for the spa, so I'm used to a large manual massage therapy. When you go in for a session, you take off your clothes and you fall asleep and they work on you. And I remember your session was really different. Keep my clothes on, and it's an active session. Can you describe how you treat your clients?

Edan: Sure. Interestingly enough I work out of a coworking space, sometimes I'll work in the middle of the office.

Ross: Someone's just at their desk and you just you're doing the thing on them?

Edan: Yes. There you can work in all positions in all environments, if you work with the tools. If you understand the principles of this work or the work that I do taps into the nervous system and self-correction of the body the body is going to heal itself within seconds. When we work with shifting the environment. So what you're doing with the juice and everything, is you're shifting the environment, the internal environment of people's body and then how gets activated. So the work that I do with my hands is like cold pressed juice to your body because what's happening is we're actually activating different types of situations, specifically chemical situations in the body neurological you know kind of processes that will actually shift your body into a different state. So it activates health sort of like homeopathy. sometimes I don’t like to bring up homeopathy because there's a lot of skeptics out there but what homeopathy does, is actually cures. So the body will actually heal itself when we introduce the same type of energetic vibe. You can take a snake venom kind of solution which will which cause inflammation, but your body then gets activated to heal itself from the inflammation. So what I do is your shoulders are up to your ears. I don't push them back down. I exaggerate the pattern. Bring your shoulders further up towards their ear towards your ears so your body is like oh shit I need to heel and shoulders drop.

Ross: All right. So let's say let's say. And if this is relevant, you're at your desk right now working, in your work and you're watching this so this could be very relevant to you. So let's say you go into the office treat a client they're at their desk and you could tell the shoulders are leg up to the gears a little bit you could tell like all the tension like it's coming from that you know the traps and their posture is all off. And so you see this, what do you do?

Edan: I will heal the symptoms. So if the symptom is that the shoulders are tied and they have pain I'm actually going to release the tension from their physical body. And then I'll go in and dive deeper to try to figure out what the cause of the symptom is to make sure that never comes back. So again, I've released their first rib blood say a lot of times the first rib is elevated and pressing against the upper traps you mentioned the upper strap muscles and so we always think that like oh the upper straps are tight. But oftentimes actually if you guys press and you can feel that in between your chromium process this bone here and your neck right in the middle you can feel if you feel it underneath upper strap muscles you can feel a little bit of a bony kind of texture right and that's the first read. The first and it gets elevated and it presses against the upper traps love people like what do you mean the ribs ripped down here. No the first rib. Way up here. It's actually supposed to be below the clavicle which is the collarbone. So what I'll do is drop that down doing a certain technique from Ortho on me which is one of the influences of my work of kinetic release therapy and the economy is again working like homeopathic medicine in that we're exaggerating patterns right. So what's happening is we're so we can drop that first trip down by doing a specific isometric hold where we're contracting the shoulder pushing it down against a resistant force which then causes the rib to drop down because the body is like I can go now.

Edan: Right. So we're actually working with neuro muscular facilitation which is like BNF which is a lot of the personal trainers and physical therapist a massage therapist. They understand that technique we can use that technique to drop that first trip down and then all of sudden, upper traps are soft. Then we can release them body that's going around right now a lot of people are talking a lot about it. It's really important that we understand the system of the fossil system not just in my own fashion. The fossil system is everywhere in our body. And what I focus on is the ground substance of the fascia which is the deeper component which actually gets lasting results. So for instance if you go to someone and they're doing like a forceful manual massage technique with your back or you're doing a stretch or you're doing yoga very often that's going to affect the elastic component of the fascia which is very very very temporary. So you can have great results for 20 minutes two hours a couple of days but then everything comes back because the fascists are very adaptable.

Edan: However, it's the ground substances. In other words, if the ground substance was adaptable we'd be like Gumby right. We wouldn't have this this whole balance in our body to hold our bones up and everything in space otherwise we'd just be stretching and like all of us.

Ross: So little let's rewind for one second. The first thing you could tell someone's traps that are up to their ears. 

Edan: Yeah you go in there and you basically push down the shoulder which affects the first rescuers your ascent. So what I'll do is I'll do an isometric hold where I'll have them hold their shoulder up in a certain position you have them push down to the floor.

Ross: Is this something that our viewers can do? Slowly walk us through it.

Edan: We can do this as self-care too. So, this is the thing. Everything that I do, I always at the end of this treatment program, teach the client where the patient is. Some physical therapist calls themselves their patients. What I do is teach them how to maintain or how to prevent it from ever happening again. So we're really looking at treating the cause and also making sure that we're preventing it from ever coming back. 

What I would do is, let's go ahead and do right now if you're watching and you have time traps right now this is what you should do.

Edan: Yeah. Try this out. So, we're going to do is we're actually going to place our hand underneath our armpit and it's a little weird, but you're going to place your hand under armpit then we're going to do is you're going to try to pull that shoulder up to your ear. Then with that hand, you try to let go of your shoulder. It's not easy technique by you like a shoulder you can get another shake it out and let your other hand pull.

Edan: And when it's relaxed then you're going to force the shoulder down to the floor by trying to visualize yourself pushing your shoulder down towards the floor for a total of five seconds.

Edan: So in five four three two one you’re then going to let go of the arm and let it drop down naturally with gravity. Yeah. So, the goal here. I do feel a little bit of a little bit of a release. So the thing is that you feel it's great because you're tuned into people who are not tuned into their body. You want to try it a few times and you want to make sure that your shoulders loose.

Edan: The best thing to do is just tested on one side and then press in with your hands right over here in this space here with upper traps and see if it loosened up and if not, you can try it behind a chair. OK. So instead of placing your hand here you can actually go back use it to share the chair back. Yeah right. And then push down and then slide the arm off the chair. Does that make sense. Yeah. So this is an ortho Bionomy self-treatment exercise.

Edan: There's a great book by one of my colleagues Len Overmeyer. It's called the ortho Bonomy self care you know book. I think it's what's called. So it's it's great. And I also have a video program online with one of my instructors where it shows you how to do this online. In this program called the body ease program and we also have some free YouTube videos as well.

Ross: Great. I love this because I get people who are just at their office they don't take time out of their day to go somewhere they could just do these little stretches and exercises like at their desk that's great. Obviously if they come see you and you do it for them that's like the next level that's like the shotgun.

Edan: So this is the thing. So there's certain things that I can do with people with humans and their bodies with my hands or energetically through Skype because I actually work people through Skype around the world. There's certain things that only I can do when I say only I mean me as a professional as a practitioner. And then there's other things that we can as practitioners teach you guys out there who are not practitioners to do on your own body for self treatment and self care and maintenance and prevention. However a lot of people out there are looking online to try to heal themselves right because the doctors aren't helping them. Right. So not you know not to say anything bad about doctors but you know doctors are never going to really tell you go through the self care exercise right. Right. So you know it's a lot of people out there trying to get fixed and trying to fix themselves. But what I'm here to say is that we're not broken and that we can find healing and healing when the body heals itself and the self-correcting mechanisms of the body. If we actually figure out these principles that I teach I teach principles that when you apply these principles into your life and into your body and into your world you will achieve healing. Right now, it's healing is to heal from an ailment but that could mean that you're just uncomfortable in your body and you want to bring in mobility and comfort into your body right.

Edan: So that's essentially healing as well. Right. So it's sort of like a recovery right. What's recovery is to recover to bring back the health of bring back the ease. Right. And so that's what it's all about. And so it's what I love is that you don't have to have a practitioner but if you are suffering from a chronic condition you're not able to help yourself if you're trying all these videos that I have that YouTube has that all these people are telling you to do that all these physical therapists out there are teaching you to do with your body. You're not getting results that you want to find a practitioner such as myself. And we are all over the world there's just very few people who do the modalities that I practice. One of them being ortho Bionomy which we mentioned which is the self care thing that we just did. Another one is barn's mile Fascher at least. John Barnes is a physical therapist who's been around for many years and he developed a system of healing to work with the Foshay the connective tissue. And then there is another modality which is kinetic release therapy which is my modality which combines all these different modalities including some of the philosophy behind John Saros work and healing back pain which we spoke about earlier.

Ross: Well let's talk about that a little bit. OK. Interesting stuff.

Edan: Yeah. So John Sarno was a really wise man who just really brought about a lot of awareness around psychosomatic dysfunction.

Edan: So what I've heard from Mr. Wright is we start to go this direction that some people like are skeptics like their eyes were blocked. Randi a lot of the surgeons out there like this is Wuhu stuff right. But what's interesting about Dr. John Sarna is some of his patients and like big evangelists are Howard Stern Larry David to talk about critical people like elaborate Larry David complains about every ailment right. So if he's getting in like unbelievable relief from this like this guy to be like something there something's going on. Yeah I mean listen Howard Stern talked about his story about how he was doing like radio shows and had to literally lay down on the floor in between the shows because the pain was so bad. And a lot of people don't know that. So John Sarna helped him you know by making him aware that his painting and maybe your pain whoever is suffering from pain out there may be coming from a emotional suppression of some kind could be anger it could be anxiety it could be just frustration which is essentially anger right. So there are certain kinds of ways that we show up in this body of ours we're not just this physical structure right. We're not just like the biomechanics and we're not just the mechanical aspect of ourselves we're actually much more than that were energy energetic beings right. So whether or not you believe in energy work and like working with energy essentially acupuncture right. He's also working with a form of energy, so you know we're also emotional beings right. So we have different types of dimensions because we're multi-dimensional beings in this body. So I think it's important for the skeptics to realize that OK we can't separate systems you know the more we separate systems with our mind the less results we're going to get. So if you're skeptical but you're not getting results with your doctor or your physical therapists or your chiropractor then maybe see if you can try other modalities maybe not necessarily Reiki if it's a little bit too for you right. But what about going to different things like Bionomy or barn's while Fascia release right or homeopathy.

Edan: And if homeopathy is to rule for you or you don't believe that you're skeptical then try this type of manual therapy which is like the homeopathy. But the thing is is that these principles are the same. It's like cures like the body's self corrects the body can heal itself. Everybody knows that is why some people when they're in pain are like I'm just going to wait it off like the old timers are like I'm going away it'll go away because most of the time it does. However, when it doesn't that's when you need to seek help. Right. So same thing with mental illness which is something that I'm really passionate about. It's like if you're not getting results right with your healing with your practitioner with your therapist with your medication seek help. Now I bring that up only because of the missing of turn of events of late. All these people committing suicide right. There's so many people out there who are suffering on the inside but outside they're actually looking happy and successful. And it's important that we bring this up and that we really talk about that just a drop and just be like hey guys awareness let's put some awareness out there that just because somebody is happy or seems happy there's much more than meets the eye.

Edan: So with the Surnow method someone suffering from back pain it may not necessarily be a structural issue with the vertebrae it could be something else could be emotional. I'll tell you a story when I was 8 years old. I'm 38 right now. You're my same age. Give us an image that their 90-year-old woman. So, when I was eight years old 30 years ago I had a pain in my sock. So, my parents rushed me to the E.R. and one of the surgeons there like just like who's read operate it took out a scalpel it's like he's ready to start slicing and dicing me. And parents like hold on let's get a second opinion. It took another surgeon. They're like same thing. We got to operate like it could be like you know you could actually die right that's like that's like surgeons are like almost like the ultimate salesman right. Because they have so much leverage. Right. If you don't do the surgery like that the leverage is that like oh you could your pendants will blow up you could die. They forced you to do it. Luckily what happened was my parents took me to our family physician to get a third opinion. He was like listen this was 30 years ago like today actors can't say these things because they can get sued like there's so much liability factors and concerns. But he's like you know what give the kid a few days a week and let's just see if it goes away on its own. Sure. A few days later I was fine.

Edan: These other surgeons they just want to operate on the eight-year-old when and they think they know what's going on. So this is the thing. If you're a surgeon you're going to know surgery if you're into Juice's you're going to know juice. Right. If you're into you know manual therapy you're going to know manual therapy. So I think it's you know you know we know what we know. So you know I used to like blame like doctors and surgeons.

Ross: Now I'm realizing more and socializing with them so the more I realized this is what they know. Yes, are good people but that's all they know. They're doing their job but that's a lot of like what they studied it's like antiquated like all the textbooks are so old and when they come out with new procedures like new surgeries things that are antiquated you still saw all these doctors they just didn't get that information yet. And it's maybe like another 10 years where they're still doing these antiquated methods because they just don't know. There's no alert that's sent out to all the doctors.

Edan: This is the thing to do research is a very expensive thing. And also it takes a long time especially in Western medicine. Everything that comes out as like a medical study that you know when they know that they start using these treatment protocols it's usually years later. OK so we as the general public cannot rely on that. We need to actually educate ourselves and we need to educate our doctors. Yeah you know and that's what it's about like Hey guess what doc. You know you're telling me to do this book. I heard about this. What about that. And if they're like I don't know right then. Then you've got to be like doing your research. Right. And because this thing is like I've had doctors who want to just you know surgically wanted to operate with some of my clients and I told my clients whatever you do just give me a chance. Yeah and don't do the surgery. And I was able to get them pull through now and my own shoulders I have half a partially torn labor among both shoulders. I do handstands every day. How do I do that pain free with my rehab exercises and specifically strengthening my shoulders and most general public most people in general public have no idea that we can do that and prevent ourselves from surgery if we want to.

Edan: We have mostly will no idea and this is very different if you are an athlete who's relying on your shoulders. If I was in Cirque du Soleil I'd probably go you know fix those shoulders with the surgery, you know and just make sure that I'm like solid. However, I can live without the pain. I can live pain free. Most of the time so there sometimes when I don't do my exercises the pain starts coming back but then I know I go to my rehab and I'd rather do that than do the surgery. So I think that this thing is like surgically cut into someone's body. It causes trauma it causes other dysfunction in the fossil system everything causes scar tissue causes a host of other issues. So I recommend before you get cut into that you really do your research and you make sure that it's a life or death situation because honestly I've been through so many surgeries in my past from hypo speedier repair which is like this urinary tract dysfunction from when I was born to it like a surgery on my side which is another urinary tract dysfunction of like the Yeard are blocked to Achilles tendon ruptured in my leg. Right. And so all these surgeries have literally traumatized my nervous system. And I do a lot of healing afterwards to make sure that I can shake off all that trauma from my body.

Edan: And so our tissues remember all of those traumas. So now if somebody can punch you in the face right now and somebody else is giving you a deep tissue massage with their elbow and your back. Your nervous system may not know the difference right because you're paying for that massage and you're saying this is therapeutic. Right. So you're thinking OK this is helpful for me. However your nervous system might think otherwise. So for someone like me who's been through a lot of surgeries and traumas that elbow is threatening fact acupuncture is brilliant. But for someone like me who's that sensitive I can't do acupuncture I've done it several times. Every time I do it it kind of gets me like stress and it causes my body to go into this trauma response. And sometimes more than others right depending on my mood that day. And so it's maybe not the best option for someone like. And then you know I work with kids too. And so what I love about let's say some of the modalities I'm doing is that they're really gentle and safe for anyone of any age in any condition. So it just it's poor people know that there are other options than what they know about the general.

Ross: So if people listening are interested in learning more where do they go.

Edan: I would say they could check out kinetic body therapy dot com which is my Web site because on my website it lists all the modalities that I use and then they can maybe find a practitioner in their area. Does some of those modalities they can do the research to look behind all these different modalities and principles that I work with. You know another technique that I work with in terms of trauma and releasing motions from the body is this technique called were gone. I mean which is based in Willhelm life kind of psychotherapy and body therapy and very advanced very well.

Edan: Not many people know about it. It seemed like ortho Bionomy it's very in my opinion. My eyes like very advanced that people are not aware about it. And there's not many practitioners who do it. So that's why it's still off the radar the Internet. So yes, all my Web site has a list of all that and has all the resources there. There's also you know my YouTube channel as well. And then from there they can continue to do their research on all the different modalities that I use which are essentially part of my system of kinetic Willey's therapy which is something that I had had to come up with because I realized that all the other modalities that I practice didn't have a combination of mind body spirit you know medicine that can be used to heal people. Right. I don't bring up like the spirit very much because all people who are like oh that's right that's something totally separate. But the truth is is that I work with the spirit as well. Now what I mean by that is like let's just say mood and happiness when you're in good spirits and you feel good then you're less likely to suffer from pain. Yeah let's keep it really simple. Yeah.

Ross: It's all about just the in a state of optimum performance. And there's one question that I ask you everyone to have on the show which is tell us about like you're pretty much everyday water. What are some of the things that you do just to achieve optimal health whether it supplements exercise stretches daily habits. Walk us through just some of those things because our viewers can pick up on some of the things that really resonate with them.

Edan: Yeah. Well every day I make sure that I incorporate some sort of movement practice. So the movement practice now that's very popular is Yoga, let’s say right. But that's just one movement practice. What about dancing. What about you know just moving your body right. So I think moving your body in non-linear patterns is the best so that even yoga can sometimes get very linear. Right.

Edan: So if you're like a climber was like I move a lot every day I walk like this many steps and he's showing me all the steps that he does on his. You know the Fitbit or whatever and I'm like yes but that's not going to improve your fossil elasticity. Sure. Right. So dynamic movement right. So what that means is something different every day. I mean even like I skateboarded over here. Right. So it's just I'm always moving and I'm always active. But the thing is you want to vary it up so varied movement is key. So I won't do it every day like the same practice so what I'll do is let's say you know trampolining is something I can throw in for five minutes every day. I have a trampoline at home. Rebounding is really good for the lymphatic system. Absolutely certain things like that hanging upside down and decompressing my spine with an aerial hammock is tremendous effort you know and that's a great tool for decompressing the spine which maybe in the next podcast we could talk about the herniated disks and all that. Absolutely. But I really think that that's helpful to decompress the body for mobility sort of benefit from the inversion.

Edan: I had an inversion table for a while. Thing is it's a big contraption it takes up so much space you live in a New York City kind of ruins the aesthetic of your apartment totally. So what are some things you mentioned the alternative. What's this hammock.

Edan: Yes. Believe it or not. So my Web site actually promote these guys who have a hammock for pretty affordable rates like 8 or something and maybe just like a 1 dollar trial for a month. The thing is this big asteroid underneath your bag you can actually like just travel with it would you hang it from you hanging from your doorway or from the ceiling or from a playground or from the gym or from like any sort of bar. You know that is strong enough but ideally you want to have some sort of structure that you can hang it from. And there's a lot of information online about what it's got. So it's called the yoga body trapeze OK. The reason why I like this these guys because it's affordable and it comes with handles so people who are older who can't go into an inversion can use the handle's to actually go in and have the inversion and essentially like what you do is you wrap it around you sit down into it and then you flip over and infer. So even someone who's much older can do that safely with the handles as long as they're not feeling pain or discomfort and they check with their physician of course. But it's so much better than you know inversion table which is this massive. Yeah it was me looking thing and also inversion tables in gravity boots which a lot of people are more familiar with hold you from your ankles. Yeah the issue with that is that it's really far from the point of where we want the decompression because it's a lot of stress on the ankle too little to hear about that.

Ross: In college we had a huge college weight room and it had a pair of the inversion boots and I was like an overachiever in college, so I tasked them to pull a fire out. I was like just hanging upside down to get the benefits of the version that I had also do crunches. So this one time I did like 50 crunches. I was inverted. And then I got so tired I couldn't get back up to take off the boots. My buddies were just like laughing. My goodness. So it wasn't big fat that they would have they could have really. Embarrassed me on Instagram totally. So they had to come and help me and taking on such an embarrassment. So you got to be careful with those. 

Edan: That's why I don't recommend the gravity boots personally. And then there's a lot of like when I was across the gym right in New York here they were using that, and I was like guys what about this. This gentle silk wig tries something different it's like this fabric that you put around your waist and you might look like a circus artist but that's OK. You know it's fun and people are using yoga straps as well for that and there's certain yoga studios can hang you from there as well with certain straps. So you try something against Enron. I get the benefits some version. When you do a handstand, what's happening you're only getting them Virgin benefits of like actual like blood flow and circulation just like a headstand. But you're still compressing the joints want to compress the joints so that's what I care about and that's why I do this acrobatic pardoner work called acro kinetic mobilization which you can see on my YouTube. I literally lift people up off the floor. People of all ages including kids on my feet.

Edan: So it sort of looks like a stroke. So that's an interesting distinction. Sort of really decompressed the spine. You need something really taking that weight off. Exactly. You need to work with grand in that way to take the weight off of the spine and the body and make sure that you're decompressing the spine using gravity.

Edan: The issue is that you compress the spine with handstand there's no difference seeing that and like actually sitting in this chair and compressing the spine with the weight of your head which is the weight of a bowling ball compressing onto your spine all the way down to your sacrum and to your lower back. And so it's important that we do the opposite of that as much as possible and then we decompress our spines daily. And if you don't have an aerial sic silk and find somebody you can do something like acro yoga therapeutics with you. Achree Yoga is very popular right now for a good reason right. So there is a way to decompress just fine with a partner. If you don't have access to aerial hammock which is great for me because I don't at this coworking space we don't have an aerial hammock set up. So what I do is just lift people off their feet you know with with my feet or my hands and actually decompress or spine that way. That's awesome.

Ross: All right so give us a few more of your best.

Edan: So meditation got huge for me. I practice Vedic meditation or mantra meditation. And you know honestly homeopathy I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for it because I got off my medication I was on for 15 years with the use of homeopathy. So there's only so much that meditation can do and yoga can do for us. I think it's really important that we realize that there's other modalities that are much more potent such as homeopathy which is you getting a remedy. You're actually replacing medication which you can do over time responsibly with the practitioner and so. So yeah honestly just movement as medicine is all you can say and then and then homeopathy like those are the two biggest things for me. And then everything else is all like you know aspects of that awesome I love you so much for being on the show this was awesome.

Ross: Your wealth of knowledge. And one more time if someone wants to visit your site to learn more about modalities that you practice where do they go?

Edan: They go to kineticbodytherapy.com. I have a ton of stuff on YouTube and I'm going to put more videos on for people for just free information, content and education resources and exercises

Ross: All right guys thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the podcast.

How to Breathe for Optimal Health - Dr. Belisa

Why you should listen - 

All the stresses of our modern world has caused dysfunctional breathing patterns that affect our health. Dr. Belisa Vranich, a renowned clinical psychologist, public speaker and the author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve your Mental and Physical Health. Dr. Belisa teaches how to breathe in an anatomically correct way that maximizes balanced inhales and exhales. 

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Podcast with Dr. Belisa

Ross: On today's podcast we have a very special guest. She is a clinical psychologist; she's a public speaker the author of five books, the latest book is called breathe the simple revolutionary 14-day program to improve mental and physical health. We have Dr. Belisa on the show.

Dr. Belisa: Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Ross: Thank you so much for being here. It is such an honor to have you.

Dr. Belisa: Thank you.

Ross: So much to talk about with you.

Dr. Belisa: Bring it on, I’m excited.

Ross: This is so amazing! So you are best known as a breathing coach is that correct?
 

Dr. Belisa: Yeah it's funny because it's not really breath work and I'm not a respiratory physiologist. I'm sort of in the middle where I deal with the general public and how they breathe and how to get to breathe better. So it's not going to the hospital, and It's not a sort of like trance meditation it's really how we breathe every day all the time and making that better.
 

Ross: Wow it's so amazing, I have so many questions about that. You know I think just like the general public when they hear like a breathing coach they're like well I know how to breathe I do that naturally. Why is it important like when you're working with your clients when you're doing all this public speaking like why is it important to really learn how to breathe better?

Dr. Belisa: So most people don't say I know how to breathe, I mean their first immediate reaction is well yeah I breathe like it can get better, and then they start thinking about it. If I ask questions, they go well actually I don't breathe as well as I could. Yeah, I do run out of air I wish I could not you know gasp for breath when I'm working out compared to when I was younger yeah it's definitely not as good. So if they start really thinking about it, they say, well yeah actually I don't breathe as well as I'd like to and it does feel sort of stuck here, or I don't feel like I used to have that lung capacity like I did when I was younger. So when they stop and think about it, they think yeah I actually would like to breathe better if there was something for me to do, if in fact, my breathing is bad. So that's where I started with which is, is my breathing bad? So that notion that you have of I'm not sure if this is good I wanted to get a grade and that's where this whole method started.
 

Ross: Wow and I have zillion questions for you about this, but I think first can you tell us a little bit about your journey, like how did you get into this where did you start?

Dr. Belisa: My journey! Okay so I was a clinical psychologist for a long time about 20 years, and I did go, I would change jobs within psychology just because I like learning. Once I sort of maxed out on a job, I'd like to go on to the next one and see what else I can learn so sort of a vocational ADD education junkie. So my background is in child psychology, but it's specifically psychometrics so IQ testing. And I did Co-teach the Rorschach class when I was at NYU, and the Rorschach is of course you know the ink blots that you see… Anyways I co-taught in Wikipedia actually, I think it was Wikipedia don't want to blame them wrongly but once those cards and those images got out in public, we couldn't use them anymore because they were supposed to be something that people had our first impression about and then responded. Anyway, so I taught a row Shacket in NYU and did a lot of testing and really like neuron-psych. I did a rotation when I was on internship through the hospital for joint diseases in neuron-psych, so it was a lot of brain trauma, epilepsy, loved that kind of stuff.

All the way through the last year of the internship I decided like maybe I should stay and keep learning more and get an MD because I'm a psychologist. So my parents nixed that idea, but after that, I had a whole bunch of different jobs. I worked in a magazine called Jane magazine; I did a dream analysis column, I did a column for the New York Post where people would send me questions very Sex in the City type of job. I worked with violin ex-cons with HIV doing parole assessments, like you name it I’ve had pretty much every single job within psychology. Which just means I'm not scared of anything and I don't know a lot else outside of psychology so if we stick to psychology and breathing I'm okay. But I started dealing with my own stress, and I loved my yoga class, and actually, if I get into details, I was grinding my teeth. So I went to the dentist, and I found out that I was not only grinding them a little like I'm a type-A you know overachiever, so I was really grinding my teeth. So thousands of dollars you know bite play the whole nine yards, and so I had to look for something that was going to make me feel better that wasn't just you know a shot of tequila or a nap which is my go-to. So I looked at yoga breathing like the stuff they do in yoga which is a lot like the alternate nostril breathing that Hillary Clinton is in the news about. But I wanted more science behind it, and I wanted more exercises, so I kind of got into it and started looking all over the place all different breathing exercises. Like in the history of man what we have done that's interesting with our breathing, and I started teaching my own clinical patients. So I'd go in had an office on Central Park West, and I have patients with anxiety and depression I'd say well let's do some breathing, and they loved the breathing as they would actually feel better doing the breathing they started asking for it more. So that's where the transition started until it got to the point that I said you know what I'm always going to be a psychologist but I think I want to focus more on the breathing which is a connection between your mind and your body and your conscious and your unconscious. So it kind of I got into that like the flow of that, and it kind of took me away and here I am with you right now.
 

Ross: Wow that’s amazing. I'm curious you mentioned these ink blots and that kind of like that psychological component and how does that relate to breathing?

Dr. Belisa: Well, you know what it relates very specifically, and because the way you breathe can show how you're feeling, it can make you feel a different way if you change your breathing. So it really is the link between mind and body you were always talking about mind and body, and most people get the mind down, but they can't make the connection between them. I understand that I shouldn't be stressed and my body should calm down and that's just an example, or I understand intellectually that I have lack of closure, but somehow my heart still seems to be sad. And the breathe, breathing is actually the connection that brings those two together.

Ross: Wow! And so for people listening, what are some like for someone who's like very basic, maybe someone who's done, I think a lot of our listeners have taken yoga classes. What are some like basic enhancements to enhance performance through breathing? What are some basics that everyone can benefit from?
 

Dr. Belisa:  The very basic like if you take anything away or if you just want the cliff-notes for the book is that most people breathe up and down, okay. So you inhale you get a little taller, and you exhale you come down. When you see some pomp someone puffs up their chest and take a big breath and then exhale and kind of relax that's the kind of breath that we learn, that's the bad habit breath. It's nothing like the breath is anatomically congruous or like we used to take when we were kids not babies but kids. It's also a breath that looks completely different than every other animal on the planet. So we've taken a breath that was normal and turned it into this abnormal breathing which completely affects the rest of our bodies. So if you think about the fact that you inhale and sort of puff up the top of your body well yeah your neck and shoulders are going to hurt and yeah you're going to have acid reflux because you're not using your diaphragm to breathe you're using your shoulders.

Ross: That’s short breathing right? So it's pretty good that chest it's like short breathing.

Dr. Belisa: It's a short breathe it has to be a short breath. So if you breathe up and down with your shoulders or with the top of your body, you have the smallest part of your lungs up there. The densest and oxygen-rich are actually about a foot down on your body you know kind of between your nipples and your belly butt. That's where the biggest part of your lungs are, and it's not like filling up a glass of water where the bottom fills up first and then it goes up. Its air so it fills up at the top and then it goes to the bottom. So if you use your diaphragm to breathe, you're actually going to get a better breath, a more calming breath and you're going to use the right muscle. And that's what I come to is that you have to use the right muscles and people don't talk about muscles and breathing. When you think breathing, you think lungs; lungs don't do anything they kind of sit there. The muscles that pull in the air and then squeeze out there are the really the most important part.
 

Ross: Alright, So that's why like actors and dancers, what they teach us is to breathe through your stomach right? To really blow out your stomach and then breathe in?

Dr. Belisa: Yeah! So it's funny because they say blow out your stomach and breathe through your stomach but what that is that right above your belly is your diaphragm. So if you push your belly out your diaphragm has to expand by association, and then you get a better breath.
 

Ross: That’s the diaphragmatic breathing?

Dr. Belisa: Yes so your belly breath is a diaphragmatic breath. You can't take a diaphragmatic breath without popping out your belly, but that's an advanced move. But all of us who aren't breathing well if you pop your belly out your diaphragm is going to expand by association and no one has explained that to us. They keep saying take a belly breath, and we think A, I'm going look fat why would I do that B, isn't it going make me gassy? There's no C, so it's just A and B. I think those two things because it hasn't been well explained, that when you push your belly out your diaphragm which attaches right at your ribs goes along with it. So it's kind of a cheat to be able to take a good breath.
 

Ross: Yeah! I think you're right; I think a lot of people think oh if I'm doing that all the time I'm going to look fat, what you're saying that's healthy.
 

Dr. Belisa: That's healthy because if you actually and again the belly breath is the introductory breath. Eventually, you want to take a breath that goes all the way around your body, so your sides are going to flare out a little bit even your back will open up. So the kind of the perfect breath is one that goes all the way around your body, and you're not like popping your belly out like Santa Claus. In the beginning and again because I look at why did we unlearn this and how do we relearn it and you can't just go to a diaphragmatic breath from having had a vertical breath. You have to go really low, you have to think of your pelvic floor, and your hips and you have to take this really not so cute belly breath to kind of get your body to remember the way it used to breathe. So that's what's happening when you take the belly breath.
 

Ross: So is it possible to retrain yourself, to retrain your breathing to breathe healthier?

Dr. Belisa: Absolutely and that's what I do, and I always say that I'm not teaching you something new. The way I teach my method my system that's new, and it's because it comes from knowing how children learn. So, for instance, there are words I just did a teacher training there are words I don't let my teachers use. Don't say these words they're going to confuse people use these images because they're going to help people. So I'll give you a for instance when you're in medical school, and you learn about the diaphragm they keep talking about it like a plunger. All wrong because all you see when you see a plunger is up and down and I'm trying to teach people to breathe horizontally. So I use a vegetable steamer because if you take a vegetable steamer and you turn it upside down, it's actually a great example of a diaphragm where the edges spread out the middle does lower and go up and down. But what you really want to understand is it's in a good breath your body expands, and all you have to do is look at your dog, cat or kid to be able to remember that.
 

Ross: So for everyone listening without getting like too advanced or too into it, I guess they can come to one of your workshops or go to your website: What's your website by the way?

Dr. Belisa: My website is the www.breathingclass.com, I'm super simple I would love to have some fancy name, but it just is the breathing class.
 

Ross: breathingclass.com?

Dr. Belisa: Yeah!

Ross: So everyone can go there to get into more details but let’s together cover like some basics that people who are listening in to this can just try while they're listening in to us. What are some basics to retrain your breathing pattern? To breathe just for optimal performance?
 

Dr. Belisa: Great! So what I want you to do is actually if you're sitting because most of us sit way too much. So I want you to hold the bottom of your seat with your hands and actually stretch them, so you're really stretching your hands out so you can't possibly move your shoulders alright. And then what I want you to do is tip your hips so you're putting your belly on your lap like if you don't have a belly then just you know pop your belly and pretend you have one and just get as much belly as you can. If you have a belly you're probably sucking it in and what I want you to do is tip forwards, and it's sort of like if you know yoga because a lot of your listeners are Yogi's is that think about this as being seated cat-cow. So you have cat-cow on the floor you know put your cat in your cow in a chair, and I want you to tip forwards and let your belly go as if you're doing cow. Okay now on the exhale I want you to roll back your back is going to puff up as if you're that scary Halloween cat and you're going to exhale. So inhale come forwards and then holding the bottom of the seat exhale go back is just to keep your shoulders still. So sort of get yourself into a little pattern here where you're tipping forwards, you're letting your belly go, you're bumping your butt back, you have space at your lower back in your chair. And on the exhale I want you to roll back you're now a cap seated cat you're going to squeeze your belly good belly button to spine, inhale, tip forward, relax your body. So you should feel yourself going forwards and back, come on forwards and back Ross there we go. Inhale exhale squeeze back and really narrow, and the movement should be initiated at your hips, which feels totally weird but interesting right .and it'll start feeling more natural because now you're breathing with your hips which is where you should be breathing from. So the movement to breathe is not shouldered going up just puffing up, its tip forward, allow your body to expand, relax your gluteus, exhale, roll back, really squeeze and narrow your body. Inhale relax it, relax your gluteus, come away from the back of the chair, exhale, roll back, press the back of your chair and belly button goes towards your spine. What's really good to do when you're doing this, and you're trying to learn how to do it or relearn how to do it because you used to do it right is that you look down at your belly. so on the inhale I want to see it expand, put your hands on your belly like you have a hoodie on and you have your hands in your hoodie. Inhale let that expand and then on the exhale you just stick your fingers in your belly and try to squeeze your body and exhale, inhale belly on your lap and exhale back. At this point most people say through your nose or through your mouth so here's the rule. If this feels totally strange to you and for some people those who are paradoxical breathers this is going to feel odd okay. You're going to breathe through your mouth just until you learn it. Because I want you to hear, the breath on the inhale and on the exhale, because that way you'll notice when you're doing it wrong, if this already feels natural go to your nose, nose breathing is always better always in and out. You can go out through your mouth but at the very least do in through your nose. So inhale belly on your lap back comes away from the back of the chair and on the exhale to roll back squeeze get all that air out and feel your belly narrow. So that is a horizontal breath you don't go up and down at all. If you're breathing that way you're using your diaphragm and all kinds of amazing things, start falling into place and feeling better when you start breathing with your diaphragm.
 

Ross: And you're saying that this should be constant, this is how it should be all the time?

Dr. Belisa: Yes! Look at your dog, cat or any animal. Look at your five-year-old kid breath; they don't breathe with their shoulders. Your 10-year-old kid does, but any animal on the planet is breathing where the biggest part of their lungs are. So take your hands right now and put them right here yeah that's the biggest part of your lungs. Why would you be moving your shoulders to breathe it makes no sense at all.
 

Ross: That makes a lot of sense (yeah), so how do we condition to get this to be the norm because I think a lot of people think it's the part of the culture where people are short breathing, and they are breathing through their chest. How do we change that habit?
 

Dr. Belisa: Okay so two things are going to help you do this more than any other health habit because most health habits you try to pick up, it's hard. You're like you're running uphill to try to get this new healthy habit, and you're on your agenda. This one is easier it's more important, and it's easier than all the other ones, and the reason is because you used to breathe this way. So for some of us, we stopped breathing with a horizontal breath once life got complicated and we started sucking in our little guts and wearing waste bands or whatever the reason was. So it could have been when we were five or six that we stopped. For some of us, we kept breathing well until we were about 10 and you know all kinds of things happen. We started sitting a lot in school; dad was fighting at home you started bracing for the noise of the fighting. You fell off your skateboard you hurt a rib and then you started sucking in because you were trying to look like Superman or your dad or your mom you know it's sucking in their gut and being strong. So depending on when you stopped breathing right, You still have the memory somewhere there about breathing the right way because you used to right. And the other thing is your diaphragm wants to work, so you have this massive muscle that's totally on your side. And the only thing it wants if it could want something is to be able to expand your body on the inhale and narrow with your body on the exhale like that's the only reason this thing is in the middle of your body and it's huge. Think about it; it's like a skirt steak the size of a Frisbee. Like get that image in your body and now put that skirt steak like a Frisbee right in the middle of your body again between your nipples and your belly button and the reason it's there and most of us it’s completely still. Might move a little bit eek open a little on the inhale and kind of close a little bit on the exhale but the only reason it's there is because it really wants to expand your body on the inhale and narrow with your body on the exhale. So it already wants to do that, so you're just letting it do that.
 

Ross: Let me ask you something about Professional athletes, you would think athletes they know how to breathe right, they're on top of their game performing well. Now I understand you work with a lot of athletes so are most professional athletes breathing right or are you making a lot of corrections?

Dr. Belisa: No! They are not breathing right, so they are doing well because of talent because their cardio is fantastic, because they have so much help with everything else that they're doing. But to me, if you have someone who is a good athlete whether you're a professional athlete or not you're a good athlete but you don't work out your breathing muscle. Like how are you going to be if you start working out your breathing muscles? And that's why for me it's fascinating to get someone who's at the top of their game, and they've plateaued, and they ‘re saying you know what's that edge I can get on someone else or the other team or whatever? And I say do you work out your breathing muscles? And they don't, and I do my tests for breathing muscles, and I say you know what, this is excellent because your breathing muscles are weak. They're decent because they get the job done but your cardio is fantastic, you're super talented. So let's add a breathing muscle workout, let's get your breathing muscles to be strong, and you watch their endurance and their conditioning skyrocket. It's one of my favorite things to do is just to see that change because with athletes what happens is that once you teach them how to breathe this way they get obsessed you know because it feels right. They have such great some you know sensation about what's going on in their bodies is that you teach them as in a way that makes sense and they just get nuts with it practice it, and they see results you know from one day to the next.
 

Ross: Wow! So you're able to take athlete top of their game, not breathing right. You go through these exercises correct their breathing, their performance goes to the next level.

Dr. Belisa: Next level immediately! Really immediately and sometimes it’s that now your breathing actually plateaus at age 29. So if you have a young athlete, they're still kind of sliding on youth and even in their 30s, they're still sliding on youth. What happens if you want to play or compete you know into your and your breathing plateaued at 29 age, so you have to be doing breathing muscle exercises.
 

Ross: As you work the same way as you would, let's say a professional fighter versus someone who's an executive, and they just want to breathe better. Is it the same thing or is there a difference?

Dr. Belisa: There's a little bit of a difference because for instance if I'm working with someone who has the kind of movements they make our gross motor skills. So if it's someone who fights, so let's say it's MMA so they're on the ground they're standup like there's a lot of movement going on in a lot of different positions. And I'm working with someone, who let's say is a tattoo artist, I do the same assessment, and they do similar exercises, but their goals are different. So my fighter is going to want to be able to have better endurance be able to have their nervous system you know to be able to calm down quickly and then rev up quickly, be able to recover from one day to the next as well super important. My tattoo artist wants to be able to very still and be able to stay focused and alert awake and be able to make very tiny movements. It’s the same with an aesthetician, a surgeon, a golfer a pool player, like anybody who's making tiny movements, a photographer, a sniper. So although the exercises are similar what we practice is very different.
 

Ross: Very cool! The other thing I wanted to ask you is, I know aside from the breathing classes and workshops you're also into CBD oil and that's something relevant for me because it's very cutting edge, it's big in LA, and it's making its way to New York. I'm thinking about doing some product development with CBD oil maybe combining it with some juices but can you talk about that?

Dr. Belisa: Sure! So I like what's going on with CBD oil or hemp oil, or you know the medical marijuana community if you want to call it that. It is that if you develop it and gear it and make it specific to helping with pain or helping with anxiety, it could be a terrific add-on to any therapy that you're doing, obviously very controlled. And what they're doing right now scientifically with the dosing is super specific, so it's not just some people that are scared of it or are skeptical think that you're going to get really high and you're going to do crazy things and that it's not controlled. It's just as controlled or more controlled than a lot of other things that we take very haphazardly. So I've seen great results and again this is a new industry where someone has pain, where they are trying to get off opioids, or they are trying not to take them, and that's a huge if we can help in that with that problem that's tremendous. I have people who have anxiety usually a lot of PTSD where it just helps bring the anxiety down a tiny bit so that then you can use other coping mechanisms and learn other things to keep yourself calm. And then there's you know incredible research going on how it helps with the side effects of cancer medication and Parkinson's and all kinds of other diseases. So I see it as a really interesting place, and I'm looking forward to seeing what more science comes out of it.

Ross: And just sort of listeners understand the CBD oil contains no THC; no-one's going to get high from it right?
 

Dr. Belisa: No! You're not going to get high from it, I think there's from what I understand and what I've seen is that there are combinations. There's CBD that has a little bit of THC which doesn't mean you get high and if you want to get high, I mean there are other things you can do. If you're looking at CBD oil for the pain, it's probably because you're suffering because you're in pain and what the medications-that we have for pain right now are not good. They're just like you get addicted very quickly and coming off of them is really hard, and a lot of people are experiencing this. So if you want a combination of a little bit of THC with CBD to help calm you that works as well. But there is no like getting giddy happy, taking your clothes off, running down the street naked, that just doesn't happen. There are plenty of other recreational drugs to do this, this is scientifically tested very specific dosages, and you take it carefully see what dose works for you with your physician, and there are some really great results. I'm really interested in seeing where it goes.
 

Ross: Wow! Yeah, I'm thinking like three to five years, it's going to be a lot more mainstream. I'm looking at the CBD oil that has no THC to see if we can put that in some of the juice and I'm pretty sure because there are some other brands out there that started it. I know it's a tea company that's doing it there doesn't seem to be anything illegal about it. If it does have the THC in there that's a different story right?
 

Dr. Belisa: I think that you know the rules are really up in the air right now from one state to another and we have to get more open-minded because the results that we're seeing scientifically are fantastic. Now, for instance, I'm thinking about someone I work with, I do a lot of pro bono work in Alabama, and he can't get anything at all there because you have to have been diagnosed with grandma seizures by a doctor in the state. They're very against anything hemp, CBD, THC completely blanket completely closed-minded about it. And it’s sad because this guy is on a ton of sleeping medications, a ton of anti-anxiety medications, and a ton of opioids to help him where I'm sure that he could benefit from CBD or CBD THC combo. He could still be completely functional much better much happier and not be addicted to all these other things that are just keeping him at bay; they're not really healing him. So the laws from state to state now are very different from one state to another, but you can just get CBD for sure. Yeah, you can.
 

Ross: Very cool I'm excited to you know start some formulations with that.

Dr. Belisa: Yeah! That would be great.

Ross: One other thing I want to ask you is we're all about bio-hacking, and you're involved in so many different things. What are some tips, some strategies that you can give to our listeners? Like what's your everyday like? If you look at your daily routines, what are some of your daily routines that you do that help give you an edge for performance, for breathing and just overall health in general?
 

Dr. Belisa: If I just say my bio-hack it really has to do with the breathing because you can combine three things with breathing. You can take care of your pelvic floor get a big breath and oxygenate and balance your body. Because it's not about more oxygen that's a complete myth, it's about the balance of oxygen, and CO2 get your parasympathetic system to kick in all with one thing which is taking the right breath. And it doesn't have to be two hours of meditation, you can do 30 seconds of breathing, and it can affect your pelvic floor and your hips which we all want that to be safe and healthy rather putting yourself into a parasympathetic state. I mean you can have awesome candles and mantras and all kinds of visualization, but if you're not breathing with the lower body horizontal breath, you're not going to be fully in a parasympathetic state. And then if you're breathing right again you're going to be able to balance your CO2 and your oxygen, and that's where your body wants to be. The hacks that happen from there it's actually like an awesome bio hack because if you're doing those three things for those three, reasons, there's a secondary thing that happens there's a ripple. So the ripple is that your acidity gets balanced. So if you're taking, if you're doing good breathing your acidity actually neutralizes whether you're too alkaline or you're too acidic. So kind of amazing you can actually help your acidity by breathing right. Now you should stop eating fast foods as well but a lot of the acidity or the being too alkaline is caused by breathing patterns that are that are dysfunctional. So if you change your breathing, you're going to change your acidity. If you're using that lower body breath with your diaphragm, you're also going to be supporting a healthy back, and healthy digestion and I do mean acid reflux as well. So it's an amazing bio-hack 30 seconds a lower-body breath where you're really expanding and really contracting and squeezing good for your core good for your mind good for your body.
 

Ross: So the exercise you walked us through earlier just doing that for how many breaths every morning?

Dr. Belisa: Do ten breaths as often as you can throughout the day, or you might do two breaths every time you're waiting for something. So you don't have to have this huge workout with gadgets and all these things you really just every time you're going to check your text which is going to be you know eight million times a day because we all look at our text eight million times a day. Just pause because it's probably going to be the same thing on there and take two breaths before you check your text or take two breaths before you hit the button on the elevator or cross the street or just find the one thing that you do a lot and make sure you take two breaths before you do it and that's it. And what's funny that if you take those two breaths throughout the day, you will sleep better at night hands down. So put together again bio-hack is that you take two breaths it may take you a couple of seconds you do that. It takes you ten times a day maybe it's a minute or two minutes tops; you will sleep better at night. And it's just because our stress is just so high all the time and if you take those two breaths and de-stress yourself even it's for a couple of seconds at night when you're going to go to sleep, you can actually turn off better.

Ross: Wow that's amazing. I love it. Alright, so we got the breathing hack, anything else any other hacks?

Dr. Belisa: No! You don't even need any hack after that. Drink juice.
 

Ross: I love it. Awesome! Well, thank you so much for being on the show this was amazing.
 

Dr. Belisa: Thank you

Ross: And I'm definitely I have my work cut out for me

Dr. Belisa: Thanks for having me, this is great.

Ross: Awesome, Thank you!

Health and Life Hacks from the Legendary - Dr Perricone

Why you should listen - 

Dr. Perricone is the modern age Nikola Tesla. He has development over 160 patents across a wide array of industries and has written over 5 bestselling books. In this episode of the PG Podcast, Founder and CEO Ross Franklin asks questions that go beyond the surface to undercover the life hacks and biohacks that Dr. Perricone uses to take his performance to the next level.

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Podcast with Dr. Perricone

Ross Franklin: On the podcast today we have a legend. He is the author of five New York Times bestsellers; he's a scientist with over 160 patterns, he is a world-renowned educator and regarded as the father of the inflammation theory of aging. He is Dr. Perricone Perricone.

Ross: Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Perricone: Ross thank you and thank you for that very generous introduction.

Ross: It’s such an honor to have you on the show we have so much to talk about so where do we get started here? I think we should start with can you tell us a little about how did you get started?

Dr. Perricone: You know it's unusual a story because I was actually an English literature major at undergrad and at that time I finished up my degree and I had to go in the army for a while. And when I came out of the army, I actually worked for a nonprofit organization called the Muscular Dystrophy Association and I really enjoyed it because it was patient services but there was also fundraising administration and a lot of television because it was associated with the journalist television. So I learned all about that but working with the patients there, you only live in the hospital. So I came to the conclusion I really wanted to go into medicine, problem was I was an English literature major and had no science background. So I talked with people, and they say if you go ahead and take core requirements at night and so I did that and started meds school at 31 which is kind of unusual, and I got there, and so I was probably one of the few people that hadn't taken premed I was not a science major. But I could read, and I really enjoyed the work, and I was also at Michigan State University where they had two different programs. One was called track one which was traditionally you went to classes, lectures and then you took a test, then you did your clinical work after that. The other one was called track two and was problem-based, so you would have to basically get a problem like say back pain or chest pain you would learn all of the physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, psychology of chest pain or back pain. And this is what you will learn to assign a large amount of reading, and you're on your own, and of course, you had to attend anatomy classes and things like that. So I took that and found that by pure accident that for some reason if I hear something like a lecture it really sticks with me and so I did all my notes into a tape recorder and started listening and realized that I could accelerate my course. So I went to the dean said and can I move forward more quickly? And they said yes. So at the end of the day, I did that loved it and actually graduated in medical school in two and a half years, so it saved me a lot of time. I then went on to do pediatrics at the Yale program a four-year and then went on to do dermatology because a close friend of mine was a pediatric dermatologist. But while I was doing all these things in meds school I came across some really interesting things. One was I was looking under the microscope at squamous cell cancer, and I noticed there was inflammation surrounding it and then looking at them under the microscope with other disease processes this is called histopathology I realize that every disease process had some form inflammation that was visible under the microscope. So I ask my professors that is it possible that inflammation may be mediating for driving some of these diseases and the answer was kind of a flat no. You know, don't bother with this stuff but I was very interested, and I was also a nutritionist. So I found that okay well this isn't an inflammatory process and I know that all antioxidants act as an anti-inflammatory. Because when I was at Yale we found it in two children who had asthma and we gave them a large amount of vitamin c we cut down the amount of asthma attack by 50% because it was lowering the inflammatory cascade. So I took some vitamin c and applied it to my skin one day after a bad sunburn and on half of my face anyway and I found out that it actually resolved it. So I start putting this together that okay inflammation is definitely behind diseases, and I thought wrinkling and disease of aging, very controversial. So I started working and doing my research, and I said okay what was causing the internal inflammation? Well, being a nutritionist I said what we do four times a day? We eat! So I started looking at the relationship between food and systemic inflammation, and sure enough, it was probably pretty simple you know what grandmother told us to eat fresh fruits,  vegetables and fish. When I put patients on that diet, the measured systemic inflammation rapidly came down, so I had this whole concept. So when I started my practice in dermatology after completing that, I found out that I can put patients on an anti-inflammatory guide and all, so antioxidants and also give them traditional Western medicine but adding the nutrition side, they also improve very, very rapidly. Everything then was amazing, you know when I was doing my dermatology residency looking under the microscope young skin has no inflammation but older skin even if there's no pathology there, there's no a lesion had inflammation. I said okay so it's the way that I’ll approach this is beauty from the inside out equality shows the inequality anti-inflammatory diet but then from the outside in is taking antioxidants and other anti-inflammatory and put it in a base that would actually penetrate the skin. So I started getting my first patents while I was still a resident and then moving forward and follow this right through my practice but now doing larger clinical studies and so patents started coming in. I actually had no intention of ever starting a company I just wanted to take my technology and go to the big players out there, the Johnson and Johnson, Loreal and Estee Lauder and show them my clinical studies that if they can just add these antioxidants to their creams with the right penetrator and get really good clinical results.

Ross: I was going to ask you so 160 patents? So you must have got started early, so that makes sense.

Dr. Perricone: That's how I started early and hear this I presented this all over the world and nobody was interested. Finally one company I won’t mention the name called me over and said let me tell you the way this works. We put oil, water, and perfume in a jar and we make a ton of money.

Ross: It’s all filter

Dr. Nicolas: There is no downside because there’s nothing there that could hurt you. So don't call us we'll call you. Sounds a little discouraged because I have no savings everything I had I put into my intellectual property and I said I am going to start my own company. Everybody just shook their head you can't-do that, you can't possibly compete against the big guys. And I said yes I would because it is going to be science-based. And so I started, and a lot of things happen, I wrote my first book which became another one of New York Times bestsellers. Sold couple million copies, was given a public television special to talk about diet and beauty from the inside out and the outside in, and business took off. It just kept on growing so now it's an international skin care business, and I had no idea of that whatever happened. That was not my plan but am very happy with it because I've changed the whole industry now.

Ross: What were some of the first product when you first launched and how much has it transformed?

Dr. Perricone: Because you know real basic vitamin c I know is important but regular vitamin c or ascorbic acid actually it irritates the skin. Because it is acidic, it penetrates the skin and interacts with the free iron in your skin. By the way, the older you are, the more free iron you have, and it causes this chemical reaction called a Fenton reaction which produces a very bad free radical hydroxyl radical. So I said okay that’s not good. So I came across this other vitamin C its called ascorbyl palmitate, so its vitamin c with palmitic acid attached and it completely gets in the skin like 10 to 15 times faster, does not cause a Fenton reaction and rapidly increase collagen plus drops inflammation. So vitamin c ether we call it or ascorbyl palmitate it was number one. Lipoic acid super-duper antioxidant, it’s called universal because it’s both fat and water soluble. Super powerful it turns off a lot of transcription factors which we'll talk about more because they are important. So vitamin C was the number one Alpha Lipoic acid was number two and then the ultimate discovery was DMAE, and this long name is called Dimethyl Amino Ethanol. And the reason I chose it was at one time it was a prescription product for the brain for attention deficit disorder, but then the FDA drop it because there was not enough study but it was harmless. So I went to the help food stores to find a capsule for increase cognitive function, but I knew that it also acts as a solvent, so I was looking for penetration and answers. So I took the DMAE and put it into cream and was applying to a patients face and I got called on the phone, I came back, and the face was lifted. So it was working on something called acidochronic and so here is this wonderful antioxidant, anti-inflammatory. So vitamin c, lipoic acid, and DMAE were the three I started with, and they are absolutely still the core of the program because they are working steadily, they are really effective, they change the way you look, and they are based on science.

Ross: Yeah.

Dr. Perricone: So I moved over from there because the other thing I do at the meds school was when I was doing my psychiatric rotation when we gave people medications that were psychoactive their skin would change. And the at the same time I was taking histopathology and then I found out that first of all, we learn in embryology that the skin and the brain come from the same level of tissue called the epiderm. So if they are derived from the same thing under the microscope skin and brain look fairly much alike. Brain changes with medications, I called it the brain-beauty connection so when I came across DMAE, I said this is perhaps it. So from that brain-beauty connection, there's DMAE then my neuropeptide line which is hugely effective and still is probably the biggest seller in the world and other active ingredients that affect the brain and one of them, of course, is hydrogen water. Because once again it affects the brain profoundly but also affects the skin.

Ross: And you have a hydrogen line of cosmetics as well right? Isn’t that the hydro line?

Dr. Perricone: Yes when I started looking at it, I discovered the world literature constantly, I was looking for the magic bullet. What is the magic anti-inflammatory? And I found out that hydrogen which is the smallest and the first element formed in the uterus and its universe. So, I think 90% of the universe is still made up of just hydrogen it actually has anti-inflammatory activities. So it really caught my eye over seven or eight years ago, I followed the literature very closely and saw amazing things. Mostly you know animal studies, a couple of good studies, human studies you know very good journals. So I start looking at myself I said this is really anti-inflammatory what else can it do? And the more I studied it, the more impressed I was because this little molecule which is the actual basis of the universe can affect this in a very positive ways. So it came from Japan, and I found out Japan was using hydrogen as a therapeutic in hospitals, but also they made hydrogen water. They would dissolve hydrogen in water just like we dissolve sugar and say tea. And that hydrogen water had all of these therapeutic benefits and but once again I was skeptic. And so I went over to Japan and talked with them watched the process of how they made the hydrogen water. Got some literature I had to try one of those studies myself. Because my experience has been unfortunately when I tried to reproduce scientific studies in the past 50% of the time it did not work. So I started to do my own study with hydrogen, and my study was I wanted to do something basic because hydrogen gives you energy when you drink hydrogen water. I said okay, is it real? And is there a way to prove that? So I took on 20 subjects, and I know as dermatologist you must know biochemistry that there's a molecule in the skin an enzyme called NADH. And NADH and this little team call NADH oxidized reduced form actually is one the key energy producers in our bodies that is really responsible for producing ATP. So I knew that for us so that means we can measure it by putting a light on it, it’s the only thing in the skin for us as well. So we measured that we quantified it then we gave these subjects some 500 mL of hydrogen water just had them drink it right down. So we started measuring changes of NADH in real-time it started upregulating in two minutes. So imagine how small hydrogen is you can drink it, it goes into your stomach, and then two minutes it's on your skin. We watched the NADH come up and at 15 minutes maxed up 18 out of 20 to 121/2% increase. Now an enzyme is in the mitochondria and makes energy go up 121/2%, I mean that was like shocking. Okay so that answer the question is a real, it's real. And why is the energy so important? Of course, we need energy to do everything but what’s really interesting is young cells are characterized by high energy and as we get older that energy drops. So that means if the cell cant repair itself as well it can’t take in nutrients as well, it can’t kick out waste as well. And work out of Harvard showed that molecule NAD half of this process when it goes up it can actually make the mitochondria talk to the nucleus of the cell and mitochondrial gets younger. So energy is the is the key to youth, energy is a key to health if you are sick your energy goes down. So here I have this wonderful little molecule, non-toxic on the deep diving bells 1940s at 20 atmospheres that’s 20 times more pressure than we have sitting here giving this interview and they put it 49% in the tanks because then they have replaced oxygen because oxygen is toxic under the 20 atmospheres no toxicity. So we'll look at our hydrogen water on like several orders of magnitude lower than it is. No toxicity to hydrogen, it is odorless, it is tasteless we can put up water it doesn't affect the taste, it is extremely safe and very effective. So what did I find? Powerful anti-inflammatory traps inflammation rapidly in the body. You know you are going to know immediately after drinking it, and within 10 or 15 minutes you'll feel the energy, but this is strange. I have never felt nor if you ever felt energy that wasn't derived some food source before or from a stimulus.

Ross: Right.

Dr. Perricone: So it wasn't a carbohydrate it wasn't a protein, it wasn't fat, and there's no caffeine or other stimulants. So what does that feel like? What happens is the first new users develop credible mental clarity. I mean like saying yeah I felt great when I came in, but I feel even better now.

Ross: Yeah am having 3 and 4 Days things, and its energies are through the roof, and you are saying, so what's going on in the body exactly? So you're saying that the hydrogen in the water is increasing the body's NAD, NADH+ and that’s energizing the cells?

Dr. Perricone: What’s happening is than that. Hydrogen affects some messengers in the cell, and the messengers are called transcription factors by the biochemist, so we're just going with messengers transcription factor may confuse people. So there are two major ones that I want to talk about, and I started talking about this 20 years ago in a book. Number one there's a bad transcription factor I call the bad messenger, and it is called NF-kappaB, and it is part of our immune system, and it helps regulates information. So if we ever have something like parasites or something NF-kappaB up-regulates you know all these information helps with getting rid of the data. The problem is NF-kappaB just keeps on going up as we age so NF-kappaB is the bad guy. So I was looking for how can I turn off NF-kappaB? Paul Carson did a beautiful job, but hydrogen does a better job so hydrogen can stop this. So here is what happens the messenger goes from inside the outer portion of the cell called the cytosol, and it looks at free radicals and says hey there's a problem here. So it then moves to the nucleus and then attaches to the DNA and starts making gene expression of hundred Pro inflammatory proteins called cytokines and they flood the body. Inflammation is the final common pathway to disease nature, and we have to turn it off. And in the brain, brain fog eventually Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or dementia or bad memory it’s a bad actor and offs NF-kappaB. So it actually turns off NF-kappaB.

Ross: So this brings us to the epigenetic component of this right it’s pretty an off and on the genes.

Dr. Perricone: Right so it on work things call relaxins, and it turns off about 650 bad genes and up-regulates about 500 good genes, good old tiny little bad ones hard to believe. And then when you look at it too you say okay so on the other side there’s another transcription guy but it’s a good guy and that's call Nrf2. So the reason I came across Nrf2 is being a nutritionist and working for years with phytochemicals you know things like broccoli and cauliflower and all of the things that are true green by the way. It has an incredible, positive effects but the levels were not high enough in the serum to account for it, so it was this mystery we had. Then we found out that these vital nutrients were even things like some of the spices like cinnamon actually has a molecule that tricks the cell and makes it look like as under oxidative stress, makes it look like its free radical but its very mild. And when that happens it turns on the good transcription factor called Nrf2. Nrf2 then does what NF-kappaB does; it leaves the outer portion of the cell goes into the nucleus and attaches to the DNA and something called ARE spot. It’s an anti antioxidant response element, and now the genes start making over a 100 anti-inflammatory antioxidants, proteins, and enzymes called phase 2 proteins. That explains how these nutrients work fights our defense. So now instead of having to take in antioxidants which are canceled out by free radicals, we turn ourselves into factories that are making antioxidants using Nrf2. And of course it was hydrogen that operates Nrf2, and I don't know why because it does not look like radical.

Ross: So just hydrogen is doing all of this in the body it is amazing.

Dr. Perricone: So if we start looking at just organ system. Okay so I’m most excited about the brain, the fog makes you feel centered, you feel grounded, and that means focus, and when it comes down to it, you know this, and I think every successful person knows this, the better you're focused, the more successful you are. You focus on that goal everyday whatever you want to be, if you want to be healthier, you want to get an education, you want to earn a living, you want to have a great relationship so focus. So I discovered about 40 years ago being coerced by my brother that meditation was an amazing thing and I was busy and I thought should I exercise and also have time for meditation. But I started doing it because it was good. A study out of Harvard one day did these MRIs and brains so they actually had increased density of neurons and I said I could always use a few more neurons as I was getting older. So I started doing that and found out that actually when I drank my hydro water before my meditation ii’s a much more focused, it's a deeper medication. So I’m almost at the point now I know this sounds crazy I’m thinking of hydrogen as a Spirit molecule because it actually enhances spirituality because it enhances your meditation. So this wonderful thing, the first thing they created in the universe was hydrogen, it is the most abundant, its the tiniest and has all of these incredible positive benefits for you. So I did that, and then I came back I started thinking about making a big investment to make hydrogen water. I want to make it available to everybody not just here but throughout the world, and I believe it can happen. It has a profound request on healthcare costs, but also I want to get this water to third world countries because they have a number of problems bad water, parasites and other infections. This can help a lot of people, so that's going to be our big goal, but I also own a skincare company. And I said well what if I invent a way of putting hydrogen into cream. Hydrogen, of course, it is very light, it dissipates, but there's this whole other thing I worked on. I own a pharmaceutical company, and at that time I was very interested in a molecule called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide was like the molecule of the year 1997 there were two double prizes given. Nitric oxide is something called the Castle transmitters, a gas and it does things like relaxing the arteries can help with wound healing can help with memory formation, and so all pharmaceuticals in the world are looking for ways to come up with a drug that gives you nitric oxide. The problem is nitric oxide has a half-life of five seconds in the cell, it reacts with oxygen, reacts with water, reacts with nitrogen. So it's just there like a flash.

Ross: So nitric oxide that's in a lot of the supplement that the bodybuilders take like pre-workout right?

Dr. Perricone: Right because it gives you a pump and can help with muscle, but you know you're getting nitric oxide precursors because you can’t use nitric oxide itself. So things like beat very high nitrates which will convert to nitric oxide. So pharmaceutical companies are looking at nitric oxide donors for nitric oxide precursors, but I had this transdermal matrix I was working on for 20 years, and it carries very large molecules through the skin of biologically active matrix. So I said it is interesting what if I put nitric oxide into this matrix and exclude oxygen water, will it stabilize it from half-life of five seconds to something that would be usable? And since it is in a transdermal matrix will carry it through the skin. So when I actually did experiments, and we actually can get a lot of nitric oxide-like thousands on one part per million in the matrix the next question was, is it physiologically active?

Ross: So this isn’t just the precursors right?

Dr. Perricone: This is a real thing

Ross: Right which no one has done.

Dr. Perricone: No one has done it.

Ross: This is revolutionary?

Dr. Perricone: So I just had to gather a group of people, we worked on nitric oxide cream on the firms using the formula, and we had a huge amount of increase in blood flow. So not only was it was it in there, it was stable, and it was physiologically active.

Ross: So you are saying you put the cream on and you see the veins bulge?

Dr. Perricone: Oh you feel the increase in circulation. And so there a whole bunch of reasons why that is going to be important because pharmaceutical companies can now use the molecule of nitric oxide, not a precursor and not a donor. But the reason I’m telling you this whole story is I said if they can hold nitric oxide can I just make this hold hydrogen, so I make hydrogen creams? Sure enough, it can. So we had these hydrogen creams out there that have real hydrogen in it, it is stable because it’s in the matrix, you put on it and goes right through the skin and rub it in of course and it has really good clinical benefit. So once you get beauty from the inside out with the hydrogen water and on the outside in maintaining the skin. So it has all been exciting, and it is just a rush to get up in the morning and say what am I going to do today? I run around in circles and whatever it ends up pointing although in that direction.

Ross: Amazing so I think a lot of our listeners would really be curious about how does Dr. Perricone starts his day, what does he do, what skincare products do you use, what’s your morning routine? Like can you walk us through it?

Dr. Perricone: Oh sure I'd love to, and of course you would probably throw an arrow at me by the time I'm done, but I'm going to tell you anyway. So I wake up, the first thing I do is I have a little fridge in the bedroom and of course its loaded with hydrogen water.

Ross: Of course.

Dr. Perricone: And I pop it, and I take a half a teaspoon of powdered vitamin C it’s actually a swab of accessories it neutralizes vitamin C, and I drink it down with some hydrogen water. Then I take what I call my empty stomach vitamins that’s what some call amino acids some other things with hydrogen water, and then I go upstairs to my office and do my medication. The office has a nice table outside actually I have a little Japanese garden, and I do my meditation. And then I come in for round two, and I’ll take the rest of the supplements, I take lipoic acid and other things like vitamin E and just a whole mess of things like 120 long list. I do that, and then I will go upstairs to my gym, and I'll do a workout. So if it's a cardio day, I'll go out, and I'll basically walk if it is springs, if it is a weekday I’ll do about 45 minutes to an hour on weight resistance training, do a lot of things like abs and stretching. And then I work out a routine where I do my weight put between each weight; I'll do a Yoga to maintain just flexibility and then I have a little packet of vitamin I take with me. I'll grab a couple of cans of hydrogen water, and I head to the office or head for the airplane or head to New York City to do my interviews or whatever am doing. And so that’s what I do every day, and it’s made a difference, it continues to make a difference. I feel good, and I've been very fortunate.

Ross: I want to tell you this, you look amazing. Are you able to reveal how old you are?

Dr. Perricone: As a matter of fact back in June I had my 69 birthdays, and as I said I’m very fortunate, I feel good. One of the thing about meditation the way you start meditation is you really have to give thanks, and that just opens you up.

Ross: Gratitude

Dr. Perricone: And thank you thank you for the health I have today, and this beautiful place in the world you know and the whole thing and the hydrogen water put you into deep, deep state meditation.

Ross: Now what’s your skin care routine like?

Dr. Perricone: Okay, so skincare. So what I do is after I cleanse my face in the morning.

Ross: You use the Paragon cleanser?

Dr. Perricone: Of course yeah you don't want any rotation in your skin because this causes inflammation. So two days a week I use the White-Pollock acid-based core product they made many years ago called high potency face firming activator. And then in the evening, I'll use vitamin C 15 and two days a week.

Ross: I have been using that by the way. It magnifies, it takes away all the shine, it's amazing.

Dr. Perricone: Isn’t it amazing?

Ross: Also the vitamin C serum that you have is unbelievable.

Dr. Perricone: So you know when you value yourself with the squabble pod if that's what’s in there.

Ross: That’s in the serum or is that's in the Ester 15?

Dr. Perricone: That’s the Ester 15.

Ross: Okay

Dr. Perricone: What happens there it helps push is called the last production. So the matrix of your skin underneath is toxin elastin, and you need to have that firm for a useful and healthy skin. Then two days a week my days I use to do my experimental stuff cause am always working on something. So right now there's experimental that am using it has a lot of different things some of the older things like an egg membrane and it's got DMAE and some other active plus. It has got a little bit of the matrix just a little just to penetrate the skin not to go deep and then some new actives I am trying. So that's all I’m doing. And then on the weekends, I try to do a combination of things I'd like to get so if I get vitamin C along with the potency face firming activator, I use the hydrogen creams. And so it is constantly choosing because what you want to do is have a buffet to choose from.

Ross: You want to rotate it you don't want to use the same thing every day.

Dr. Perricone: Because you don’t want it to start losing effectiveness. Well, the nice thing about what we’re using they are all molecules that are natural for the body right. So if you're taking your medication, there’s something call taco floxs that means your body sees it as a foreign substance, it’s active and then we are going to down regulative till it becomes inactive. That does not happen to the regimen because those are natural molecules you never equate taco floxs to food. Food always works, it gives you energy same thing with the products. So I really take the natural approach, and so the skin routine is like a rotating thing. And listen to this infrared is amazing for giving your body energy, repairing and so I have an infrared sauna.

Ross: Great

Dr. Perricone: I use it about three times a week, and it really energizes. So if we have hydro water and infrared sauna I mean really you'll have to tie me down, I think that I’ll float away with energy and then is a whole other subject that we can spend hours talking about.

Ross: That is quite routine the other thing I wanted to make sure we recovered isa 160 patterns. You know I was looking through there and talking to you about some of the stuff but what blew me away is that some of these patterns have nothing to do with dermatology. You have a pattern there in aerospace things that are potentially being used by the military, can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Perricone: Yeah I always have interested in physics, and I learned to fly an airplane, so I love anything that had to do with aviation. And then I started thinking practically about what's needed, and somehow these ideas came. But when I was in the Army it was interesting that we were losing a lot of our fighter pilots because they would be in the air over Vietnam and you have a lot of warnings in the cockpit, you’ll get flashing lights, and you'll get audio warnings. And they were so overwhelmed with information even though a surface air of missile was coming at them, they sat right through and got blown out of the air. So I thought about that and said hmm how would I do this f I wanted to get their attention. So I invented a flight suit and a flight helmet that actually has little tactile, but it's just like the vibrator of your phone, and they're all over the suit, and they are inside their helmet. And so if there's an incoming missile you have something called a vector radar that you plug into, and there's a little computer chip and will now vibrate exactly on the part of your body where that missile is aimed. It wakes you up right away and if you have to do it once maneuver. So that was one of my first patterns for aerospace.

Ross: Wow that is amazing you are quite the Renaissance man. This is unbelievable, and you were telling me that you develop this Delta spray that helps you sleep better can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Perricone: Yeah I also have a pharmaceutical company that is just experimental, it’s not the cell things, and all I had to do is the transdermal matrix where you put screen on your scanner, and it rapidly penetrates the skin. And that's important because there molecules that are biologically active mostly peptides that are incredible. They are tiny little peptides, but you can't them early or digest them, intravenously they are broken down by enzymes so if you are in the matrix you are protected. I perfected this matrix, and you can take these peptides and put it on your skin and if you do that they actually get in and they are biologically active. So there's a list of those, what those are what we call Delta sleep. And delta sleep is chemical because they have a little spray bottle and it has got the peptides and matrix, and you sprayed it on your tongue. And for the military when you're on active duty, and you're on a mission especially in combat you get to sleep in four-hour blocks of time, so it's difficult to get to sleep your adrenaline is pumping, and you have got to get up. So I thought what can we do to get these people to sleep like if they had to be alert anytime they would be alert. And so I found a series of peptides I call Delta sleep spray and you spray it on your tongue, and you just relax, and you go to sleep, but I can wake you up 15 minutes later or an hour later and you are wide awake and also these peptides to also help the body repair.

Ross: And so with these peptides like if you're in deep REM sleep like for 15 minutes, you could just wake someone up and...

Dr. Perricone: Right so it's not a narcotic, it's not hypnotic, so you're not going to be drowsy. You are just going to wake up you know, so you shake it off and you get back, and then a lot of other peptides I’m using are transdermal, and one is called TRH it's [inaudible] peptide there's nothing by the way. It can actually repair tissue, a lot of work on by Dr. Peter Begley out of Italy but he is trying to administer it with lozenges on the tongue, it doesn't work that way. So the transdermal carries large amounts of TRH to the body. What can it do? It does things like repair the skin; it can regenerate your pancreas, regenerate your kidneys, can help you with bone density and also have some possible effects as an anti-inflammatory.

Ross: That's amazing is the TRH currently used even in small micro doses in any other product you've done? Not yet?

Dr. Perricone: No not yet and so TRH in the transdermal, of course, they are reactive, and there is another one I use it is called GnRH release some hormone peptide. And that actually regenerates brain, cardiac muscle, bone density, and a tremendous effect on other organ systems. So between the two...

Ross: And that's transdermal as well?

Dr. Perricone: Yes,  transdermal

Ross: Can you mix the two?

Dr. Perricone: You sure can. So over a period of years just looking at this changes in people you may now even get bone density up from you know below normal you know really back to like age 30.

Ross: Really? So just by putting it on the skin?

Dr. Perricone: It absorbs and then it goes to work

Ross: And it increases bone density?

Dr. Perricone: Yeah it does. So it’s fascinating that why I had the pharmaceuticals experimental company and then other inventions right now having to do with aerospace. There's electronic countermeasures so if you're in an airplane let's say you're Air Force One and then it’s said that it always resistible by the way you send fliers out to try detour other ways or you could send a little countermeasures, the incoming will see you, and that’s a real plane or as little ball, or it could send out radio signals [inaudible] others to turn off the infrared signature on a plane which we really can't talk about details here because it is under secrecy for national security. And so all these things are still and then my nicest mode I think my most proclamation right now is these laser protective glasses. They look just like aviators glasses, but they screen out the red, blue and green laser. Now you probably found on the news that commercial pilots are constantly getting hit by people shooting lasers at them and I have no idea why they do this. It's the strangest thing 10,000 salsa a year. And I want to get something on the pilots that would block off the laser, but they need to color vision for their instruments and for navigation. We did a lot of work, worked with some of the best optical physicists in the world, and we got it through aviators. It looks like aviators, they feel like aviators.

Ross: Every pilot in the world should be using this?

Dr. Perricone: They should be using it, with laser your protected. So it's some of those stuff in the aerospace

Ross: And have the plane companies started to come to buy these glasses?

Dr. Perricone: Well interesting enough no and we talked to the pilots and the pilot's unions, and there are informing each other you are going to pay we're not going to pay. So that's where they are now I think they should really get moving before this...

Ross: Absolutely this is unbelievable you are like the Tesla of our age.

Dr. Perricone: Tesla has been my idol I've been studying Tesla since when I was just a little kid, I always loved science and got into it; my dad love science too, so he sent me in that direction. But if you can recall Tesla was right here at the turn of century with science that we still can't understand and still probably 100 years ahead of us.

Ross: I heard something was Tesla involving in anything with water anything similar parallels to the hydro water? I recall hearing something like.

Dr. Perricone: Yeah I’m trying to think about it because I was mostly interested in his electromagnetics which is phenomenal and which are probably being used now but probably in prime projects that’s not available to us yet but appear genius. So he could do calculus in his head without pieces of pens and paper, and he would build his inventions in his head because you can visualize things so incredibly crisp. Sometimes he could distinguish what reality was, what he was imagining. So he built the thing and it like electric motor he built in his head and then he'd write it and be running it in the background in his brain for a couple of weeks. Then he would go back to see where it is wearing out then make adjustments then build the thing that was perfect.

Ross: Wow that's another level

Dr. Perricone: Yeah that's another level that's so far above mankind, but he was a was really a good guy, a philanthropist and what he wanted to do was just improve the human condition. But he was blocked by all the big interest things he was coming up with; free energy was blocked by a big oil company with interest. He was blocked by the big investors; they isolated him. He had ways of transmitting energy wirelessly around the world, all he needed was the right antenna to download energy. We could have saved places in Africa and India, all blocked. He died alone in the NewYorker hotel know, and the governments swooped him within six hours.

Ross: They confiscated all his works, all his papers, everything.

Dr. Perricone: It’s all gone.

Ross: Imagine those inventions that could be in those papers right?

Dr. Perricone: Yeah I keep on dreaming if there was a way to time travel if I could just go back New York around 1895 and 1896 and go to his office and apply for a job.

Ross: Wow unbelievable and so your main focus right now it seems like you are shifting a lot of your focus to the hydrogen water. So obviously you really feel that this is going to be huge?

Dr. Perricone: In the 30 years of my work in the area of anti-aging, nutrition, and health I found nothing more effective, affordable, available, and non-toxic. And I think the effects are so important that if we have the population drink this maybe it will lower the health care costs by 25% or 40% which will mean close to trillion dollars a year here in the US alone and then you think about the third world countries. And this is easy to make, and now I am investing millions of dollars in this project. I am working hard, and the important thing is that it has to be stable and hundreds of tiny molecules go right through plastic right through glass, it even attacks aluminum. So the special powers we developed, so that will hold it and it entered in the cans we have a two-year shelf life, and it has to have therapeutic levels. So as long as you are above 1.0 parts per million, you are in the therapeutic range, we have had that of course. With your other products on the market when we tested with them that we're one-fourth of what they should be. So my fear is that people buy the wrong hydrogen water saying I don’t feel anything and they drop it, and so I think there should be some standards set.

Ross: Sure and this is so new right they don't have any regulation?

Dr. Perricone: No regulations but you know I am a bit of a fanatic about perfection, and if I am going to do this I am going to do this right. So we have done it, we have the technology, we are going to start selling it now, and fortunately, we're working with a brilliant guy like you in pure green. And the beauty of pure green is that you're doing the same thing remember your up-regulating NRF 2 with those fighter nutrients and now that you're selling hydro water alongside it, so it's like a double money. So we need visionaries like you to help us get the hydrogen water out to the world, but I do think that it's going to happen very rapidly and so important. And very body I give it to who have a certain need or a deficit finds a benefit I've never heard of.

Ross: So the next question. So sometimes the consumer see the hydrogen water on the shelves you know they don't really know the science behind it and they are like wait is hydrogen added to the water? They are like wait H2O doesn't that change the molecular structure? Can you just kind of dorm it down for the consumers. How do you explain like what’s going on here?

Dr. Perricone: So water is made of two hydrogens and oxygen but they are bound by a covalent bond, and that means they are no longer what they were. I mean they are now water, they are not hydrogen and oxygen. We're taking pure hydrogen which is H2 and dissolved it in the water just like you dissolve sugar in a cup of tea and it is just that extra hydrogen that's free and still has all the attributes of hydrogen, not water. But they're dissolved in water at a therapeutic level the and when you drink it that hydrogen is rapidly released from the water into your cells. And I say rapidly remember it started up-regulating NADH in two minutes in the skin, so it goes from the stomach to the skin. It still baffles my mind how quickly it does that, crosses the blood-brain barrier. So it benefits you see so many benefits and then of course at the end of the day when I talk to people about it, and they are like I drink hydrogen water, and it makes my skin radiant. I say well that’s great; I anticipated that. But that's nice; I love the people who have radiant skin. I am in the skincare business, but when I really think about the internal benefits, the study shows that it can be protective of the heart and perhaps they will heart disease it can reverse metabolic center which leads to type II diabetes and other problems with the cardiovascular system. It seems really protective of the brain, it turns off inflammation, and in some of the earlier experiments, it looks like it prevents against micro-trauma to the brain. So my big interest right now is to get these to the sports people, we know that people in NFL and we also know that even children playing football in junior high school are getting microtrauma. So we want them drinking hydrogen water as a way to hydrate because it can be protective of the brain. We don't have a long history here, but I'm pretty confident in the studies I've seen that it really protect the brain from that pathology. Because there is kind of a medical, epidemiological look at brain trauma and they've taken autopsies on 200 athletes that had issues, and they found particular lesions that are very identifiable. And these people have all different problems from Parkinson's disease to behavior disorders where they were like getting violent, and it is from constant microtrauma. So I'm betting that hydrogen water is going to help that, right now we are trying to work...

Ross: Was that doctor Daniel Haman? I know he did a study where you took old professional NFL players, and he did brain scans of the brain, and they showed that these guys literally had like chunks missing from their brain.

Dr. Perricone: Oh yeah! There’s a lot about that nowadays, and there are tower proteins that build up. But I am also going to be working on this. There is a really big company that is interested in a device where they could read in real time by imparting some energies into the brain, how is functioning. And so I want to see what happens, I want to contact them and see what happens. An abnormal brain drinks hydrogen water and then look at the changes in energy and that going to be critical study, we're going to do that soon.

Ross: Wow! I mean in Dr. Helmond research he found that he was actually able to restore different parts of the brain through supplementation and I'm sure I don't think he tested hydrogen. So I'm sure there could definitely be something there that with a hydrogen water and having higher concentrations of the hydrogen I wonder if that does have an effect on the brain.

Dr. Perricone: Yeah I’m certainly optimistic about that because it is just the cognitive changes you have. When you drink hydrogen water it means that certainly, something is taking place and then the animal study showing it does protect from inflammatory conditions. and so yes I think as time rolls out and we have more people on, and we have a longer history, we look at epidemiology and the changes. I think we can have so many applications for this it’s going to be phenomenal and it’s going to be so good for us.

Ross: This has been amazing thank you so much for your time here this was unbelievable, and we look forward to having you back on the show.

Dr. Perricone: Oh listen, thank you so much for the invitation and then thank you for your interest in hydrogen water and do I think we can change the world together.

Ross: Absolutely

How an Internationally Renowned DJ/ Entrepreneur Spends His Day - Brendan Fallis

Why you should listen - 

Brendan Fallis has become one of the most sought after DJs in the world. He has been a DJ for some of the most high-profile companies and events around the globe. In addition to being a renowned DJ, he is a self-made entrepreneur owning a talent management firm called Pre.veyor and also a company called NMRKT, NYC's premier rating system for buildings. Brendan has beed featured "Best Dressed" in Vanity Fair and has been named as one of the "15 Hottest Men to Follow On Instagram" by MSN Lifestyle. 

Watch

Podcast with brendan fallis

Ross: On the podcast today we have voted as one of the hottest guys to follow on Instagram. One of the coolest guys around, he is a world renowned international DJ he is an entrepreneur and a bio-hacker. We have Mr. Brendan Fallis on the show today.

Ross: How are you, Brendan?

Brendan: I am good Ross, nice to meet you.

Ross: Great to see you, man. So super talented Brendan on the show, we've met several times, and he's introduced me some really cool people. And first up Brendan can you tell me a little bit about like being a world-renowned DJ? How did you get into that you man, that is amazing?

Brendan: Well you know it was a way to eat. And so I started and moved to New York for a very little salary at age 27 for $21,000 a year which was believe it or not you have to get by on. So I was working as this office manager, and I needed a way to find alternative means to food and drink. My friend manages a restaurant so I started just to go in there and eat with him on whenever night I could whenever there's a free meal. So it was a reason to hang out as well, but then they open another there was a restaurant called Papa do you remember that?

Ross: Yeah.

Brendan: There is one meat back before they opened another one across from Fao Schwartz's.

Ross: Very sad story about like what happened to the owner. I heard the story where the owner was like a very like generous guy. He hired someone who like used to be a felon.

Brendan: Oh really?

Ross: Yeah, I believe he was actually shot.

Brendan: Really?

Ross: Yeah, the owner of the papa grill and meatback.

Brendan: Really?

Ross: Yeah

Brendan: Well, I don't know. TBD I have to go and do some research. Anyway, they opened another one across from Fao Schwartz's. On Monday nights was very dead, Prussian wouldn't even be opened. So I'll just go out there and hang, and my friend was like bring your computer we should teach ourselves how to DJ. So we just start to do that and then one day Renninger Rinz and Crawford were eating because they were friends with the owner. I guess Randy come here in the restaurant, so he complimented, he's like the music's great. Renninger is like yeah I guess I'll love him to play at my restaurant or whatever which would have been cool because I had never played there. He is like no it's cool, he's for us, and then he moved me to Friday nights and then I just kind of start sprawling from there

Ross: Wow oh, my God! That's how you got discovered?

Brendan: I guess so. That was my little road to the beginnings, and after that, it has just been networking. I guess what I think a lot of people don't do in that industry is you know people start young, and I wasn't so young. So I had better lines on it versus being 19 wearing a backward fitted hat thinking you're cool. It was different in the fact that as soon as I understood that I could make some money on this, I printed some cards and gave them out. Even though I wasn't working, I‘m like yeah I am doing this you know. I work here you want to hire me? Even when I DJed for someone, I would wake up at 9 am the next day and send an email to them right away. So there is just a follow-up which I don't think people really do you know there's like oh I'll do that again next week. I'll get wasted with my friends or whatever. I just treated it like a business and got the manager's number butted him up, play what people wanted and then didn't have any ego about it. It wasn't about me obviously there is a part of the business that is playing what you know and your skill but if someone told you to play something just play it. You know if someone told you to stop playing or turn it up or down, you turn it up or down you know it's not like you are the hero there.

Ross: I love that the little gold nugget you said about your follow-up. How like you followed up with them immediately and I've heard that from a lot of successful entrepreneurs that it's that diligence with following up that has really helped them.

Brendan: Yeah, you have to because it just makes you serious or just on the ball would you rather consistently meet up with someone who is five minutes late or five minutes early. So you know it's the same thing like it is punctuality through email which I think people don't think about a lot but just in business, I have learned that there are some people who are huge music managers and they hit me back immediately all the time consistently every time. I'm like how am I even in the food chain for you let alone you're just writing back. You know it is an impressive this skill, and I probably did way better because of it.

Ross: Yeah you know I've noticed that a lot especially one guy Gary Vaynerchuk, I met him early on in his career. The guy was getting thousands and thousands of emails, and he was responding to them like immediately right away. He was going through all of them, so it is like it's that ability to follow up that I think that's how these people have gotten to where they've got.

Brendan: Totally.

Ross: That's amazing

Brendan: I'm going to follow up this..

Ross: It's alright. So talk to me a little bit about after you got your DJ career going. How did you get involved in these other businesses that you are involved in?

Brendan: So I think you know it's interesting because I worked in fashion when I moved here and I started kind of as an office manager, and I was consulting a few little brains on the side. I went over to work for a men's T-shirt Broncos Newmars; I don't know if you know it. They are kind of sports reference things and say like lovers in the Lakers Favre and Chamberlain 20,000 on the back because he slept with 20,000 women whatever you know stuff like that. Just cheeky kind of smart sports references. So I would be doing that stuff during the day and DJing at night, and by way of that, I always look at DJing as a supplementary income to just allow me to work during the day and not be really happy because I had no money. So at one point the tide shifted, and I started making way more DJing during the daytime hours, but I still like that extra income obviously I can't give it up. It was then like $36,000 extra, and I wasn't going to forfeit 36 grand. But then at one point, I was like I'm so tired during the day that I've got to give this up. So I finally gave it up, and your business starts to get better because you have more time to focus on everything. But still to this day to get back to your question I use my DJ work because it's all evening work mostly. I'm now in the corporate space, so I start maybe DJing at six sometimes for 2 to 3 hours and like the latest I go is to 2 am, but that's almost rare because it all more events based. So it is still supplementary income for me to do entrepreneurial things during the day. So the way I look at it is freedom from a desk, so I don't have to work in the confines of an office job per se although I have to sit in my own office every day. But I don't have to work for someone else by having a supplementary income. So that's how I stuck with it, so that's what allowed me to power more entrepreneurial ideas and focusing on helping other people in creating businesses.

Ross: I'm glad you mentioned that distinction because when I think of like a DJ, I think oh my God like this guy must be up to like the wee hours of the morning like 4 am and 5 am. And I am like how does he run his businesses, and this guy is a bio-hacker super and health. I'm like when does this guy sleep?

Brendan: I mean some people do that, they don't sleep. They would just run different hours like you can change your daily sleep pattern to whatever you know. I think there's something that was said about the sun rises and sets and you should kind of on with our vibes and positivity and all the energy we have. I think it helps but people who go to bed at 5, they don't wake up 9 am which is what I was doing before. Because I will work 6 to 7 nights a week and then work like 10 am to 8 pm office job. Actually, you would appreciate this story as I was taking naps at work when I was doing the 6-7 nights a week. There's a little sofa outside our office in the hall so I'll take naps for just 20 minutes or whatever. But you know how naps is, you come back fully refreshed, and you feel great. And my boss is like dude you can't just be napping everyday like no one else gets to nap like that. I know you think it refreshes you but you can't nap. I'm like this is bullshit man like you are paying me shit, and I'm working so hard like c'mon. So for the next two and a half almost three months, I made an Excel doc, and I start to monitor those four other people in our office of eight that smoked. So I went to monitor their cigarette breaks, and I'm like okay this guy took 15 minutes. And I do that weekly, and after two to three weeks I have their averages, and then I just amortized it over the year. Then I asked for a meeting with my boss, and he is like hey whats up man. I'm like the meeting is about my interest, let's just meet real quick. So I showed him my spreadsheet, and I'm like you didn't allow me nap, and I'm super tired of work. I'm trying to do something healthy these people doing something completely unproductive, and they are killing themselves, and they are taking hear this they took two months a year off this year with 515-minute breaks every day. They are basically taking two months off, and you are penalizing me for my 20-minute break where I am napping being healthy. I should at least get more vacation, or I can take my naps.

Ross: You showed him the data

Brendan: He was like dude just take your naps man; it's cool. But I still think like now I think this is kind of crazy if you smoke you should have less vacation you know if you don't smoke you should get an extra week. Because what's productive, you know I was coming up with ideas and why is it allowed in the workplace? Oh, you are a smoker yeah do your thing. Yeah like it's really nuts.

Ross: Yeah, you are right if you add up all that time doing something unhealthy.

Brendan: That would be like my first like bio hacking success story. How could I hacked the system to my health and benefit from it?

Ross: Love it! So tell me about this company purveyor that you're involved with. How did that start and what is it exactly?

Brendan: It is not purveyor it is preveyor, I mean it just sounds the same. So just to tell you the meaning of the word to me was like a purveyor is always cool but this is like ahead of the cool. You know like a purveyor is always deciding what's next, but we are trying to beat all that. So that's kind of the basis of the company so either aethos more or less. So we try and find all these people who were like before the even next people which has been working out well but it started by just being a shell company for what I had to run my money through. Just analysis you do before you become your first entrepreneurial business. You set up your LLC in Delaware so I just set it up and then I was kind of pushing on my DJ money through so I can get my right off or whatever. And then someone introduced me to somebody who said can you help them out? So I met this guy Gabe who is now my partner, he wanted to get in the hospitality PR. So just like you, he will take meetings trying to help people out and whatever. So I introduced him to some hospitality people, and he was like men I really wanted to help a DJ. I could do some PR for a DJ, and I'm like cool, I don't know any who would need that, and I don't even know what that really means and why you would benefit. He is like well, I really think what you are doing is cool. Can I just help you out for a couple of months and let's see how it goes. So he starts to line us some press articles for me and put mixed tapes places in kind of cool stuff. I was like this is cool and you know I paid thinking through, and I'm like what do you think I should get for this and it just kind of morphed into this organic DJ relationship which is really cool. And I realized you couldn't negotiate for yourself a lot of times because you end up doing things for free all the time and it just ends up nuts. You can't tell your friends you're worth way more than they will be like man what why would I pay you that much? You know, but when you put someone in between, it happened. So that started to work and then from there I made him my partner too generous and we've just kind of build the business to 14 or 12 DJs who are all in this day and age their own brands through Instagram. So we do a lot of social deals, commercial brand endorsements, DJ gigs, and kind of work in the fashion luxury tech space in the corporate and then I just signed two fitness people. So that's kind of my new, I've kind of bridged the gap with fitness so as my wife. So we opened a lot of doors in that respect so, and I am working with some people to do more health and wellness based stuff, but it's harder to grind.

Ross: Very cool, so preveyor started out for DJs, 12 DJs. Now you're getting into other entries; you are getting into fitness.

Brendan: Yeah, fitness and a bunch of real persons who are just kind of straight influencers but I think what we are trying to work with is someone who has at least two verticals in their business. Like the influencer, thing is good right now, but it's more interesting if you have something to back it off because you can play off it to build up interesting opportunities. Whereas who knows how long this influencer, just straight influencers bubble will last and then you would just like working with people who suddenly no one cares about and weren't able to build an interesting business for themselves. I think you know if you have a fashion line but you also have a brand presence for your self that's cool. If you have a fitness you know, you are a trainer or professional net and then that or a DJ. You know at least you have two things and social place into it. Like you have a juice bar, and then you have an Instagram presence like that's cool. You know you have something to back it up on versus like I just take these cool pictures and close today.

Ross: Right like there needs to be some sort of angle. So if you have like a top trainer who trains like all these celebrities...

Brendan: Yeah, that's what I have. Two of those.

Ross: So how do they find you?

Brendan: There are people I trained with. So one I DJ a gig for and she reached out to me on twitter after and was like I would love to train you and let's work it into a gig for the same company which is called BFX. I don't think they run anymore anyway

Ross: It is owned by a NewYork sports club

Brendan: Yeah, NewYork sports club now. I think it is just changing to NYC lab. Anyway, so I worked some training sessions into that and start training with her. I trained with her for a year and a half and about six months ago I was like listen you need so much help. And she's an incredible human being the nicest person. Same thing you train next to her like she essentially asks you how are you feeling today? And you are like you train so many people how do you follow up with everyone, it's important.

Ross: It's the follow-up factor. It's the trait that is common with very successful people.

Brendan: And then another guy whose name is Joe holder who has a kind of aethos called the photosystem's but he's going to slow his face but let's just get back to his name. But he is a Nike trainer and a very talented guy.

Ross: So these types of guys right so with your company like what would do you do is it building their personal brand?

Brendan: Yes so, for instance, those two people versus DJs. I mean it is all the same, and so it is just getting in there deciding you know what they need to focus on more. How they can build that up, what things they could benefit from, where they could be finding out their likes and interests. So you know I'm not going to pair Joe with Eve since he's got a Nike deal or even if I wasn't going to go get him a beats deal if he was into Sennheiser headphones you know for running or I won't get him spire if you know he wanted to do fit bit you know. So just like filtering out what they like and the same with DJ. And he's like you know what other musicians you want to be associated with what kind of clothing brains do you like, what car brains do you like, what watch brains do you like. You know and then just like the building appeared on from there but then also looking at how they run their brand awareness you know. They obviously have an idea of it but how do we put that in something that's formattable that you can actually grow from.

Ross: That's really cool. So basically you take someone who's got an angle, and these are people who typically already have a following to start right?

Brendan: For sure. Well yeah kind of, like one girl we found who we just thought was cool and she has like 8000 followers and we taught her how to DJ. These two other girls we found had maybe 40 to 50,000 followers; we thought them how to DJ. Now they are up to 500,000 followers.

Ross: Really?

Brendan: Yeah, and they are like crushing it. You know they are twins, they are really good you know. They love music, but they had no idea what to do with it, and they didn't have an angle, or their socials were kind of growing, and they have an angle. So now it is like first of all you have a business to back on, and then we can build you into campaigns. We have them like the face of Cartier, the faces of seven mankind and then they are DJing for crazy fashion week slam Dj and all that.

Ross: So you took them from $40,000 followers on Instagram to half a million.

Brendan: Well, it's not us like they did as well. But you give them advice along the way to help them do it. You can't take credit for anyone else's work that they put in day to day.

Ross: That's really cool and then tells about the other business that you are involved in.

Brendan: The other business is called grand logic which is definitely a different angle than telling but still entrepreneurial mindset and my role there is more on the biz Dev introductions which is how we met. And what you have seen firsthand that I just do really quickly as people in touch are good people, but I like real estate a lot. I think real estate is going to be a proper endgame for me or a bigger game. I'm an owner of two properties now and I'm trying to look at the third but one of them being a home, first one. The second one being an income property and then hopefully the third one will be the same. But that being said my friend who was a DJ who came to New York and he didn't have any success in DJing and got screwed over by his landlord. He's a tard fellow, brilliant guy. He actually uses Djing as a really cool thing he set up to do his thesis in school. He started DJing and used the nightclub as his lab for rats essentially, and he monitored how beats per minute and genre could change bar sales retention and sells drinks to girls versus guys. He like did all the stats behind just music and how it worked. Through that, he could predict anything through the night and if a DJ was worth having, how much they should be paid, how much parcels they could do but all through technical data superintendence. So he is just like a really bright guy, and then he got screwed over by his landlord twice or maybe three times here in New York. He was like I'm over this there's gotta be some transparency in this industry as these are terrible things. So he spent the last three years developing this system called grand logic which you can go to and just type in your address and they have taken the last 10 or 15 years of 311 data made an out room of it, and they will just erect your building from ABC or D just like the health sector.

Ross: Awesome! So just like the department of health, you go to a restaurant, and it has like an A or B or C.

Brendan: Exactly that should exist on the front of your building at some point or in the front lobby, and then there will also be a QR code you get to scan, and they will tell you what's available to rent in the building and how much it is. And he is even going further doing crazy stuff like just trying to flatten the landscape of if you know incredulous to determine the apartment you see like an ad from place and you go oh it looks great. And you go in, and it is like another address but the same photos, and you are like what's happening here? And it's like the bait and switches classic method where he's trying to work with the real estate part of New york to find an algorithm to subset all these people, and if they get the defense once and if they do it the second one they get to lose their broker's license. So it's just like trying to make it a fair playing ground which it should be. You know it's like an old school, and no one's really disrupted it correctly. So this is a big opportunity.

Ross: Yeah, cool man. You have in your hands a lot of really cool things.

Brendan: Could be.

Ross: So here's what I have been trying to ask you. So you are also in the field of bio-hacking, and here on the show, our listeners are super into like bio-hacking gadgets, just health tips, strategies. And so what I would love to ask you is can you walk us through like you are doing so much, how do you start your day? What supplements are you taking? What do your daily routines look like?

Brendan: Yeah, my days usually start with, and I'm trying to do 100 pushups in the morning right now which really is the blood flowing and is just like a good number. Not all in a row, it can come to like 4 stops to 25 or whatever but you can kind of do them two before you get into the shower two out and it doesn't take a lot of energy. So it's kind of how I kick start my day, and then I've just been trying to go a little more curious. I'm trying to start my day with a bulk of each morning which I don't really drink caffeine because it gets me really not properly but positively wired. It gets my neck like tighten them and shaking around, not really productive. So I've been using these it is called the Dandy blend which is great.

Ross: It has got dandelion root in there.

Brendan: Yeah it is awesome, and it is kind of a caffeine supplement right, I think.

Ross: Yeah, it has chicory root, it has dandelion root, it's a blend.

Brendan: Yeah, it definitely gives you like...

Ross: It you up, coffee alternative.

Brendan: Yeah, coffee alternative exactly but it doesn't make me wired crazy. So like that was some MCT and then some hot water and I'm off to my day. I start with that usually then drink a hygiene water which you now know. So I'm trying to do three of those a day which I'm really enjoying, so that's kind of my alright that got me and relieves a little brain fog. And then I've been trying to do a fish oil around most meals, three magnesium a day and some vitamin D, like a D3 once a day that's kind of my regular. I've been you know I'm pushing to 40s, and I've been taking this neural forte called.

Ross: Yes taking that too.

Brendan: Alright, I see you as long as the boat slips are getting big, not parking any yacht in there just a small boat.

Ross: Some good herbs in there.

Brendan: It is actually a decent one. I showed it to one of my trainers, and he is like man this is a pretty good just daily blend of stuff. So I feel better so I won't take like some Brogan or I don't know what they are called.

Ross: Propecia and all that stuff.

Brendan: Yeah, the side effects are crazy. I feel like as soon as I look at the bottle, I just hear some commercial going…

Ross: Exactly.

Brendan: So the days neural forte, I don't know someone recommended it to me, and then I put it on blast on Instagram, they just sent me three of them instantly.

Ross: Wow, it is very expensive.

Brendan: I was like it's great; I'll take it. So I have been doing that which I feel pretty good about. There is this company called like a red which I don't know if you know it but I'm going to introduce you to, but they have been around for 50 years or something. But I just started taking this thing that's a tomato-based pill that helps prolong your skin from an inside out way from sun exposure. So it is not like a sunscreen for you and jazz it is kind of like if aloe vera were to be rubbed kind of like an internal version to that.

Ross: Really? What is it called?

Brendan: Yeah like a red. So I would like to hear your perspective on it and they are a pretty cool company. I heard about it because one girl I mean she did a deal with them. So she has been pushing it a lot and yeah I think it is pretty cool you, so they just sent me some. So it's kind of among that too.

Ross: Cool

Brendan: Yeah, that's probably, I tried and kept a pretty clean and just eat the right things you know that's the best source of nutrients at the end of the day.

Ross: Okay now. I think what our listeners would appreciate is you were like voted as like one of the hottest guys to follow on Instagram like all the stuff in GQ and you are known for your fashion. As far as like your skin care regimen can you talk a little bit about that, any good tips there?

Brendan: I mean the age of wash your face.

Ross: Do you do it for our age?

Brendan: I think it is hereditary as well. You now I think some people at this age, people are like oh my skin, it's like I think you are kind of born with a lot of it, but yes maintenance is good. Like I always do in the summer, and the summer months I always use a moisturizer with 30 at least 30 or 25 SPF in it daily. Because I think you know, we are getting hit with UV rays everywhere and I think it helps you. The Angel of washing your face before bed and when you get up in the morning is pretty good. I try to use, and people send me all sorts of things. So I don't try and switch up too much because I think your skin also wants to be pretty consistent with everything but I think technology helps a bit. But then you know last as a dinner before people are talking about salofeno which is just pharmacy recommended. But I feel like it doesn't get me clean for some reason. You know I try to scrub like something was some grid net once a week but yet nothing crazy. You know I was really like frowning at night for a while, so I was using this frowning thing which is like stick on your head before you go to bed, but when I wake up, I won't have it. So I was like this is nice but then that actually just made relax which is cool. But yeah I don't know nothing crazy just like moisturizer some under-eyes. I'm a big believer in under-eyes stuff I think if there's anything it just pretty personal like whatever feels like it tightens for you like it just feels really cool and tightens, I'll take it. And then aloe after the sun, I love covering myself in aloe if I had been at the beach all day or something. That's about it.

Ross: Cool, great! Alright, so we covered skin care routine and kind of your daily routine supplements. Any other kind of best practices do you integrate throughout the day?

Brendan: For me all I think about is workflow. That's my big thing which I'm sure you're big in too, but there's nothing like I mean exercise. I'm big on exercise; I was going to the gym a lot kind of like four to five days a week sometimes twice a day. That's because I wasn't eating right and I just kind of figured that out recently. So I'm really trying this quito thing which I think will help me. It's good to train that much, but it is almost overtraining as you need to recover as much as you need to train or maybe twice as much as you train. So I'm just going for a light run once a week or twice a week and then three days of training I think is as good for me, and that's kind of where I'm netting it out I would say. And then just workflow beside like I think that really helps the clarity of mind. I'm trying to meditate which is I don't know if it is New York that makes meditating hard but it seems to be probably the hardest thing I tried to do. It is just finding like where these 10 minutes are? Why is it so hard to find this 10 minutes? But I really struggled to find this 10 minutes a lot, but when I do find it, I really feel it's helping me get some perspective on things. I remember the first time I meditated I was just was like let your mind go and focus, let your mind go and focus, and I was using headspace. I was at dinner after the first day I meditated, and I didn't really talk, and my wife said to me after like what are you doing at dinner we haven't caught up with you for so long, why aren't you talking? And I was like, to be honest, I was just practicing this art of meditating like listening to them. But then I could like just focus on my breathing, and you know like zone the space in the gray area, and then I come back into it which is like pseudo-meditated dinner. I'm like I guess so. I can't really tell you what that was just about, that is what happened. So I'm interested in it, and I'll like to get deeper into it.

Ross: Great! I'm in the same boat, me as well.

Brendan: And there are so many different types you know of like things to focus on to help you do certain things and then other styles of meditation. It is just a deep world, and I feel pretty knowledge in the world I've set myself in so far to the point that I really just feel like a rookie in that one.

Ross: Yeah, I'm with you, the fact that you mentioned like the breathing just like focus on breathing. I'm seeing my breathing coach later today, and she's tough men. Yeah, every time she's like focus on the inhale and the exhale, it is due for sauna time. You know I showed you earlier the spire which has been tracking my breathing. So now when I meet with her I know she is going to ask are you doing it well, now I can show her the data like on my phone, I'm a big data guy.

Brendan: And she'll be like no you are not.

Ross: So perhaps you have talked a lot about efficiency, I think the big take away I got from this is just the follow-up it just reinforces following-up which is definitely the key to success. Have you found any other strategies as far as efficiency or tools that helped you to be more productive?

Brendan: I mean I'm a big list guy, so I just have like a daily book that I'm writing everything down. I think everyone seems to think that their email account is enough of that list. But email gets juggled in with replies, and so many things are working the way in and things that are at the bottom like how often do you get there. And I'm a big folder guy, my emails everything's really organized, but I mean my just your handwritten lesson I think there's something still be said about handwriting and how it ingrains in your brain. Like when you write something down you remember more. So I'm big into that and then just working through those things huge in the calendar. I love making sure my calendar is very tight very clean and organized. But I have a meeting this week about Hubspot do you know HubSpot?

Ross: Sure!

Brendan: Yeah on Sunday with the guy who owns grand logic. He swears by it, and he swears it has changed his whole life.

Ross: It was originally designed for like it is a prospect for sales strength sales force

Brendan: And now it is just like full-blown kind of platform to just crush your business

Ross: Right helping you automated emails, there is a lot of different integrations.

Brendan: You follow up with this person for this long and its kind of things that he says I'm very interested. I did the whole tutorial and having dived in so I want to hear his whole. Sometimes you know when you read a manual I guess kind of drone and I was about to read the manual, and I'm like you know I should just go on youtube and find the most viewed drone first-time tutorial. It took 3 to 4 minutes versus like trying to read every detail, and I was off to the races. Like I feel like HubSpot going to your friend who's had great success with it and figuring out how he does use it off the start and then you go deeper into it would be cool.

Ross: I'm up the mentality; it is like the Apple mentality right. It doesn't really come with instruction manuals; the user interface should be so easy. You just go on, and you start doing it.

Brendan: That's the problem with education I think. In general, my big boy is in school, and the school system is just an integrated like all the archive system of like A's B's C's and D's based on this stuff. Where really is the real-life experience part in here? Where are all these tips we are talking about for kids coming out of college? Like you know unless they have a guest speaker and they don't hear this, and you're working through these theories which are so difficult. Unlike something related to people, real experience will always win I get it, but there's got to be a way to kind of mold that and change the system a bit.

Ross: Yeah man, 100%. I was a biology major in college, and we were talking about genes. I was asking like how do you look so good; you are about to be 40?

Brendan: Yeah. I'm 38.

Ross: Okay, I get it, you are still a few the years away.

Brendan: I just put myself there so when it comes like I'm 40. I'm almost thinking I'm 43 years.

Ross: So with genes, it's like I've heard the old excuse for years. Oh like how does the person look so good? They must have good genes right. And they over used it for everything and then and this didn't even exist when I went to college but the whole field of epigenetics, gene expression. Then you have like that nutrition, your supplements, your environment all impacts. It turns off and on different genes so it is controlling your genes and this didn't even exist. And so a lot of times like when I'm reading a biology textbook, it's like there's arrogance in the scientific community and now a lot of it is a lot of what I learned back in college. It's like it is damn wrong.

Brendan: Yeah like, what is that? You know how upsetting is that? But I think that's just the world we live in now. I always relate it to the fact that your dad was always the voice of reason and the source of knowledge and like that dad has lost all their power now. Because you are like dad whats up with this and as soon as the kids figure out how to google they are like dad you're wrong. I mean what are you about google? You know like before you can go to an encyclopedia and look it up and you didn't really want to do that as a kid, so you are not going to do it. Pretty soon you will just be like Siri what's up, and your dad will be like erm you know I thought you know. As a dad, you just Google it first is that your thing because you know what's up and when you check and then you tell him you know.

Ross: That must be your strategy.

Brendan: Yeah to see what's going on there.

Ross: Yes, the dads of have lost their...

Brendan: The dads were always the voice of the household who knew everything you know. Well ask your grandfather because he might know he's older you know. Now that chain of knowledge command is gone.

Ross: Yeah man, and it's a new generation. You know it is funny too I was in the car going to an event with a bunch of guys at Princeton where it is all brainstorming and talking about social media, and we would talk about Instagram. And I threw up the question, and I was like I'm wondering like whenever I take an element, I'm trying to master it. I'm trying to like masters the social media game right now which I know you're like an expert in. And I'm like who has the most followers on Instagram? I threw out the card, and they are all like going on their phones to Google it. And I have to tell you, I was shocked, I was really surprised.

Brendan: Selena Gomez.

Ross: I was like what? How did she have more followers than the rock than the president? Yeah, a 125 million.

Brendan: Yeah, she took Taylor Swift off number one to number two.

Ross: Yeah I was thinking about it and was like why is that and then it kind of occurred to me that it's like you look at like the millennials especially the teenyboppers like they are the ones who apparently are like doing their text messages now just direct messages on Instagram and they are the ones really kind of controlling that field. I was just blown away.

Brendan: Well, it's always been I think about the Beatles you know. Think about how old everyone was when they love the Beatles. The Beatles were like 20-year-old guys, and their girls were like 15, 16, and they changed fan mail you know. That was like the first fan mail at the sort of like these guys were buried in letters. So it's no difference since evolution happens right. We were talking about this last night where you know my furniture said I think like you know there will be no real compassion and stuff in the future because this will all be digital. So there will be no age of like courting women you know like it was so great when you are such a cordial guy and all stuff now. He is like it works just a bit different. He's like what do you mean? I'm like you don't think your grandfather right now thinks the way you are courting women is completely different? You know, and he is like what do you mean? He said we still go on dates and I'm like yeah you text. If you told someone in 1905 that I'm going to send a message through space to someone else's pocket and they are going to reply right back to me and then we are going to meet? I mean like that didn't happen you get to write a letter. You have to hope to see them you know like you maybe made a call if you have a phone. You know it is like it's just different we are just all normalized by what's currently happening. But in the future everyone's only dating through tender you'll just be the guy who wrote a better profile. You know it just always change like to your point disarming through Instagram. Yes, there's text at a snap like it is just you snap to talk that's the text. I can text my wife's 17-year-old sister hey what's up you want to do dinner with us? And she'll be like she will write back to the text and then I can snap her and show her right back immediately.

Ross: Really?

Brendan: You know so they are just on there. Change like these platforms evolves so much quicker than a pen and paper did. So like what we think you know by the time they are 35 their big memories are snap memories. But like look at us it is no different Lebron used MSN messenger like that was crazy and that was the best thing ever. You know in Canada with a single ICQ which was even older it's just like that doesn't even exist anymore. When you are in college, you thought MSN would be your lifeblood you know, and it's just gone. But it's like how do you get to the top of those people uses weibo and we chat, and they have like huge followings on these things. Like what is that even and that's just Asia. They do even use Instagram like we do you know. It's crazy.

Ross: Right times are changing

Brendan: Fast! Evolution hockey-stick is on the rise.

Ross: Awesome! Well, it is such a pleasure to share in your wealth of knowledge.

Brendan: Yeah, thanks for having me. I don't know if that can be a wealth of opinion.

Ross: Now, this was really great. Thank you so much for being on the show, this was awesome.

Brendan: I would like to circle back in the later years of the podcast growth.

Ross: Absolutely.

Brendan: And see if we have all changed.

Ross: Yes, we would love to have you back.

Brendan: And where evolution has taken us.

Ross: Hundred percent.

Brendan: When you are selling like vapor, you get like vapor green, and it's just like vapor juice, nutrients of vapor.

Ross: Awesome!

Brendan: Alright man. It has been a pleasure.

Ross: Thanks so much

Brendan: Thank you.

Ross: Right.

The Story Behind #KitchenHustle and How to Fuel Your Hustle - Chef Charles Chen

Why you should listen - 

Chef, entrepreneur and the host of #KitchenHustle, creator of Dinner Club & Party In Your Mouth, Charles Chen talks about how to Fuel Your Hustle. Charles talks about his personal story and how he got into the world of health and he reveals his favorite go-to superfood snacks, supplements and daily routines that fuels his hustle. 

Watch

Podcast with Charles Chen

Ross: On the podcast today we have Charles Chen. Charles is a chef entrepreneur and a host of kitchen hustle. He is the creator of dinner club and party in your mouth wellness festival. Charles it’s a pleasure having you on the show, thanks so much for being here.

Charles: Of course I love this studio by the way

Ross: Thank you green hair pas of green because of pure greens.

Charles: Yeah that’s great, people can’t see it but there’s a bunch of juice in front of us.

Ross: Yes yes and so Charles can youtell us a little bit about your personal story and what inspired you to get into wellness?

Charles: Yeah I actually struggled my way. For a while I was growing up, I was a hundred pounds heavier, I was prediabetic. I just had no motivation whatsoever, I eat junk food almost every single day. So completely different diet from what I eat today. I kind of found myself in the kitchen to heal my body, I found ingredients and functional ingredients to help cure my diabetis you know symptoms and things like that got to reverse everything to diet and exercise and lifestyle changes you know changing my thoughts I've been able to transform my life and I’m just paying it forward in helping as much as I can to help others you know get n the right path.

Ross: That is amazing and for those of you listening if you go to Charles Chen.tv you can actually see a before and after picture and you lost a hundred pounds

Charles: Yeah a hundred pounds, I feel like I lost the person birth of a guy

Ross: Oh my God that's like such an amazing shift. So what was it that really helped you to loose a 100 pounds like that’s extraordinary.

Charles: I mean I think the food is obvious right, a lot of people talk about the food and smoothies. I think it not all great things, the main thing that really helped me trigger change was changing my mindset all the subconscious things that we don't really talk about. The inner child boonze that we have, trauma from when you’re growing up and the self talk. We have so much negative self talk everyone have all thesethoughts every single day about how much that is actually good for you and you know serving your highest thought good

Ross: Yeah so it is really the psychology component right there

Yeah

Charles: You also mentioned nutrition, for me I used to be in the fitness industry and then I made a shift over jeez because as part it I look at garbage is really how do we get people to shift into more of a healthy lifestyle and I looked at him I’m like 80% of it is really nutrition but it is also a component but it's really the nutrition.

Ross: You talked like that because you're also known as a chef. How did you get into cooking, tell us about that.

Charles: Oh I started cooking to really heal my body you so just like you said I wanted to put things like wow if I'm eating processed food I’m going to feel like crap but if I start putting a good stuffs high nutrient sustenance I’m going to actually have more energy you know have mental clarity no fogginess any of that. So I started looking at okay how can I propel my performance by eating the right things and I started studying how foods are not equal you know processed foods things that are fried or high in sugar thing that actually whey you down. So I just swapped out some of these things and instantly I got more energy and I was like okay there is something here so how can I have peak performance all the time eat what I love you but still have that nutritious flavour and you know never depriving myself

Ross: So I know you and you are into superfoods. Where did you learn about?

Charles: You know what, it was just learning out. After I lost all the weight I was like okat it’s great I lost weight but like I need to have things that give me that extra goof, and I was like oh wow David Wolfe came in and I was doing all this research I was going into longievity conferences learning about superfoods, cacowa, mocka all these adapted there are so many like secrets around the world that they have been using for years and I was like oh wow I‘m going to learn more about this. Goji berries for example, I've been eating it ever since I was little, in chinese culture we put in some bone brox and savory dishes but I never knew they had all these healing benefits. I always remember my parents say Can I ask you for your eyes but diving deep I am just like wow how can I incorporate more of these foods into my diet so I’d feel great

Ross: You know what that is so funny, that's actually the same way that I discovered superfoods. I went to those longievity now seminars, I’ve hung out with david before and that's how I discovered a lot of these adaptogenic herbs and you know the Goji berries with brontë guardens and that's how I got into it too. That's really funny.

Charles: Yeah I love adaptogenic herbs and I think they are making more of a splash to mainstream right now because everyone wants things that make them feel great. We want longevity, we want you know things that are going to sustain us and these are things that are in nature already so it is very obvious, why not just go back to our roots.

Ross: Yeah you know with this thing is and I know you spent a lot of time in LA. And in LA like adaptogenic herbs is really big that everyone knows about it. It is always like things start in LA and then like 3 to 5 years later they come to NewYork. So is I want to include adaptogenic herbs in behrain and I don't know if everyone's really ready for it yet but I feel like they're starting to. We are doing formulas using a lot of these medicinal herbs and ethnic flavors coming out but can you talk a little bit about your time in LA and you know what you discovered from being out there and all the health trends.

Charles: Yeah I mean especially being in LA because the entertainment capital is there, you know a lot of people are very health conscious. They live by the beach you know, farmers markets are easily available, so it's just like a natural lifestyle. So it definitely starts there but I love that you bring it out here and adaptogenic herbs are so powerful things like Ashwagandha, Mocha, Reishi. I am really into mushrooms right now so medicinal mushroom there's so many benefits like healing your immune system, leaky gut. All these things fascinate me because they honestly make you feel like so good.

Ross: Changes your state.

Charles: Yeah I think it's all about how you package it especially for the New Yorkers like they are used to their quick fixes and they don't want you know. I think they are open to it, I think it is the way that we tell our story. I think that's where the marketing all that stuff like how do you package it in a way that people can actually digest it easily. One of the a new brand that I'm really into is called schismatic is that the way that their branding is like coffee like a healthy coffee with like medicinal mushrooms in there

Ross: So fortunately I have the one has the coffee and shaga. That one is like my favorite and it is amazing. In the morning I usually have a butter coffee but I also have one of the four semantics the shage one and it just an instant state change. Like if you have that you can just think more clearly.

Charles: So good I mean it is already things that people are going to do so that's why that's such a great thing that they are implementing is that people already drink coffee we know we can't like tell them not to do it. It is not like water, add something that is good for you and have some benefits and functionality in there.

Ross: I love it. Now next question do you think that in new york right now, do you think new yorkers are ready for this? I’m coming out with this smoothie and it starts using these adaptogenic herbs if we did one with Shaga, Reishi. Do you think that new yorkers would appreciate it or is there a lot of educational component we still have to do?

Charles: It is educational component but I think if you can sell it to them to the point where they seem valuable. So say like for fashion enthusiast they are pretty ahead of trends so they are like if they are in fashion week whatever they want peak performance. I think you can sell to that, that’s like a beauty tonic or there is a lot of hustlers here in NewYork. Everyone is on the go if you can say like a brain tonic. I think four semantics just came out with another brand or another product that all about brain function like hacking your brain and like making sure like you have peak performance. So I think it is the wayyou package it. If you can do it right and then tell a story of why this is good for you, make it simplified that even a little kid can digest it then yeah you have something

Ross: Yeah I was just speaking with this company called Mungys they came out with dos, sex dosa all these and it's just clever marketing but the quality of the medicinal herbs in there is great and you are getting the medicinal benefits.

Charles: Yeah that fascinates me though, because I come from a background of marketing. After I finished school, I was working for a superfood company and that's how I actually got into all the superfoods. I worked for one of the companies that David Wolfe started promoting that easily brought Goji berries and to the market. So that's like I started studying all these medicinal benefits like my new boss will go to Peru and bring all these great ancient things like Mocka and like teach us all these things. But marketing and tell them the story, I love that.

Ross: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I really have a lot of questions for you there. I mean I'm so impressed with when I go to your website charleschen.tv and I look at these kitchen hustle videos. I mean it is really funny, it is awesome and I encourage all our listeners to check it out and you've got some amazing gas on the show and it is like they're having fun with that. Can you talk a little about that like what drove you to kind of create this?

Charles: Yeah well you know Ross like I am naturally a curious kid. I’m like always the one that was asking questions and I get into trouble for raising my hands all the time. But I was like these high-performing people whether they are in business or they are celebrities or whatever field they are in, they are killing it. And I’m just naturally curious like what drives their performance like what's their why and how are they fueling themselves in the kitchen. So I kind of bridged both worlds just like kitchen hustle, how do I bring on a guest just like Marie Forlier or Gary Vee? How can they share with me what is their morning routine like what's that on their performance and how are they able to maintain longevity? All these things and that's where it came from. And I wanted to create something that we actually want to watch because we are all fighting for people attention spans nowadays. It's like why is someone going to watch my stuff is like well you get the recipes you get the business stuff all on one. So it is like if you are going to choose podcasts, why don’t you just chose something that you can get a bunch or you can learn recipes. I want to provide the most value and that's what I try to do.

Ross: I love it and it is so cool and it is funny. Like you get all these guys to dance around the kitchen and hold on a minute is there like making like this movie are they are making the product?

Charles: Yeah, you so do you share a recipe with us because I was like okay everyone interviewing your view like hey what’syour business or strategy but it is like why don’t we asked something that nobody else asked like what do you eat in the morning. Like hey can you show me can you share a recipe and that’s something and everyone can connect with because everyone eat food.

Ross: I love it. It is so entertaining, so great. The content is great and it is so cool, great job!

Charles: Thank you.

Ross: So I want to bring it back to you. What I really want to know is you and these other guys and find now kind of their morning routines. I'm really interested in hearing yours because your energy is through the roof like you have an amazing energy, you light up the room. Where does energy come from, how do you start your day? Can you walk us through it?

Charles: Yeah I start my morning very quietly. Meditation is key I think that. That just bring me something int the air. I think it's really important for people to know why they are doing what they are doing. Lots of people transact businesses or they're going to school and doing all these things and I heard someone who I just had a conversation with recently and he said you know what I just took two months off to just stop working because everyone is in this rat race and they don’t even know why they are doing it. And I was like wow that's just like a medieval like you are so right. Most people don't know why they are doing what they are doing and door for me meditations it sets intention of like what are you doing today and like what's your intention what are you hoping to bring to the world? There are so many things going on that are outside of our control but what is it that I can contribute and how can I use my life as a platform? For me it is always a bigger picture, it’s not about just like this sure like this quickfix like get this money or whatever. For me I always think what how can I provide the most value for my audience how can I make the most you know for the planet? Things like that, I think bigger picture. I think meditation is definitely something I bring with me everywhere even if I’m traveling because yes you know the juices and smoothies I love too. Those are like I don’t know the cherry on top. If I can have those I feel amazing but for me like meditation is like my tonight like I need to do that every day.

Ross: That’s what keeps you grounded

Charles: It keeps me grounded, it keeps me centered and kind of clear my intentions so that I can say no to the things that don't mean anything to me.

Ross: How long do you meditate for? Estimate for like how many minutes would you say?

Charles: 10 minutes is great, 30 minutes is amazing but I tried to do it as everyday is different. As long as I do it it makes me feel like I have checked in with myself before I go out into the world, I’d just check my email answer on social media like allright let’s check in with myself. Like how are you doing today was going on, what are we working on today and I think it's a slop

Ross: So meditation you start out with that, 10 to 30 minutes.

Charles: Yeah

Ross: And just for those of us who aren’t really into meditation like do you do any type of crazy stuff or anything? How do you do it?

Charles: No, you can literally lay down like in your same way that you sleep. I always put my palms up so that it is facing open or closed since like your open. It’s almost like you are surrendering to the universe that you know that there's something higher power than you and you're not in control everything and you just surrender. I think that's when things happen and things are flowing, it is always when I’m in this moment of like Okay I surrender I don't know what to do and I just want to be of service and that like creates something magical in the air like I feel like things start to flow because we always have goals and we have things like we want things happen this time you know and this to happen but it's like sometimes you just have to like, okay I did everything in my power now and I just like release it.

Ross: Yes, I love that and have you ever heard of the expression like you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Like I always have this philosophy where you can bring him there and you can make him drink. But so you are saying you just stay grounded, meditate, you just get super super focused. I definitely need to do a lot more of that.

Charles: No, I think it’s great. I mean NewYorkers especially when I know I’m coming to NewYork I do it all the time like when I wake up and this is the reason why I live in LA because I feel very grounded there and I know that when I come to new york it's a lot of work, I’m like go go go So I force myself to meditate more here because it is easier to do. I don’t know why but here it is like I need it even more. You are constantly on the go nonstop, things are you know basically hashing fires. As an entrepreneur you are hashing fires every single day. Ask me like what do you do and you’re like basically maneuvering and hashing fires and telling people like this is where you need to go. You got to lead and then like people looking up to you. But if you're stressed out like you don't know what to do how can they follow because they are not inspired. So I feel like any leaders, any entrepreneurs if you're leading a team it is your duty to like set a higher standard or like set the tone

Ross: Allright. So after meditation

Charles: I go straight to the gym and I listen to music. Music is my therapy and my jam is like my thinking time.

Ross: What kind of music do you listen to?

Charles: Hip-hop. What I’m listening to right now is Kendrick Lemar’s Awesome and also lots of 90s hipop and I love house music. House music is like no lyrics, I just go in a zone, I can process things. I kind of map out my day like alright, I already have a schedule and I look at it before I go to the gym and I’m like okay I need to call this person, I need to send this email so I start taking notes, its like my processing time.

Ross: I love it. I think we have similar interest in music that’s why I love to move when I listen to music.

Charles: Yeah, I have a playlist I send on wifi, you guys can follow for all art of hustle is

Ross: I will check it out and we will put that in the show notes

Charles: Yeah yeah for sure but work out, intermittent fasting I don't eat anything. I like to work out on empty stomach. I love how I feel when I’m doing weights and running, cardio whatever, it just makes me feel great and I have my first my first meal after my workouts. Usually a smoothie or something light and that sustains me till like I don’t know three to four o'clock. I feel like this is the real deal because I don't tell a lot of people and everyone is like I'm a chef and I work in foods. So people are like what are you eating and I’m like honestly I drink a smoothie and I drink juice and eat one meal a day. That’s an ideal or how I feel when I function optimally. I do great when I do that.

Ross: That's awesome and just for listeners who don't know about intermittent fasting so he's basically going 15 hours without eating any solid foods right. And there are certain things that can interrupt it right. If you have your coffee if you are happier and for somatic tes that is not going to interrupt fast and then when you break the fast so you do your meditation, you work out, you are going without food 15 hours and sleep is included in that and then what's your first meal? How do you break the fast?

Charles: First meal is just like a smoothie or something that's easy to digest or like proteins. I love like wild caught salmon, like sweet potatoes and greens. I think about the four things like healthy fats, leafy greens, fiber and proteins. So those are kind of like my things I stick to.

Ross: What’s your go to smoothie?

Charles: Smoothie I love the coconut milk based macha and fat based protein, I like that mocka in there. Yeah it all depends on what I have available but those are like I love macho. Macho likes helps me have mental clarity and mike I just don't have any crushes. I do low sugar in my smoothie so then I don’t have any sugar crushes.

Ross: Fascinating! What supplements are you taking?

Charles: I love probiotics, I swear by them especially when I’m traveling. It keeps my immune system in check.  Another thing I take, I’m taking mushroom, it has a bunch of medicinal mushrooms in there like reishi shaga things I take that every day and then at home in LA I definitely have much staff in LA. I take tumeric and I take milk thistle daily. Those are the main things yeah

Ross: Great! That is awesome and what else?

Charles: What else Colden and I take two. I put them into smoothies, they are a great source of protein for the ligaments post work out. I always think about what's going to actually fuel my next workout. So big on the tumeric that’s why I add that into my smoothie. Colden what else?

Ross: Do you have an evening routine?

Charles: Oh yeah I do. I take natural corn, magnesium is huge that’s what I almost forgot. At nighttime I just drink you know a little tablespoon of the magnesium corm, natural by thales is my go to. It has calcium in there and it absorbs the magnesium especially in NewYork I feel like that’s a big one that I recommend. A lot of people are on the go and they kind of like a lovers you know are especially if you do caffeine every single day. So take your magnesium, it helps you unwind and it gives you like really great sleep.

Ross: I think most new yorkers or most people in general are magnesium deficient so having magnesium before you go to bed would definitely help you sleep and help you recover.

Charles: So that’s a great one yeah.

Ross: That’s awesome.

Charles: And in the nighttime just water. We have something in common, we love these csh

Ross: Yes, oh my God! We were talking about that before

Charles: So if I’m going to want like an healthy snack like quack and the csh chips they're basically made out of cassava flour and then what else? This flowers chips its healthy and it's pretty clean

Ross: And the natural flavor is unbelievable.

Charles: I look at the sodium content and I’m like really because it tastes so much more saltier

Ross: It does but if I start I’ll finish the whole bag

Charles: Oh for sure! And one portion control tip is that you actually bring a bowl and just pour your set amount so that you don’t eat anymore because if you have the whole bag, you just eat the whole thing.

Ross: Yes but that’s my go to snack too. Its do funny the chips with quack

Charles: And it doesn’t like whey you down that’s the main thing. Any food that I put into my body I'm hoping that it fuels me enough so I don't you much in the day because I’m working and I need to be constantly on the go. So I just kind of fill myself with what and things that can sustain my healthy fats. Mct oil I put into my morning smoothie as well.

Ross: That's awesome! So that is great for all the listeners if you feel like taking a healthy snack, the csh chips with some quack that's awesome. Now with your culinary background like and you as a chef is there any other like healthy snacks that people are on the go there at the office they want to like have a quick meal but that's healthy. Any other go to like type of snacks?

Charles: I think it is all about when you are trying to stay healthy like meal purpose or go to or find a place like pure green that already has like food that is already made that’s superclean like that’s my big one. I love you kitchen.

Ross: Yeah yeah

Charles: I live in the upperhill side like oh my gosh huge kitchen I can go there for clean sources of meats. It just feels great so if you things that are prepped already that's great quinoa that is a great source of protein that’s light. I find that when I eat too much rice like things liken that wheys me down so I try to find foods that are easy to digest and digestion starts with your your mouth. People don’t realize like really taking the time when you are eating. Are you like on your cell phone, are you actually eating like being present with your food? Most people are talking more are like taking meetings and multitasking like sit down with your food, digest your food and then like you know.

Ross: I love it. You bet it is great. I use to live around the corner from there so I was literally there like everyday.

Charles: I know I discovered it, everyone has been telling me to go there and I finally went and I feel like wow he’s the right guy it a long time ago I went and I feel like going argue recycle unilateral skids could have like one minute

Ross: Awesome! It is good to have like no matter where you live just like go to places

Charles: In New York I can find myself cook less too because you're always on the go. So finding those good places is really important.

Ross: I love it so bringing it back to the kitchen hustle. Can you talk a little bit about like what your direction there, what your plan for it?

Charles: Yeah I mean we are talking to a few production companies actually who are interested in bringing it onto air so that’s really exciting. And I always find that like being in the entertainment side of things like you know what being on tv for an hour until they see all these things. It opens a lot of doors but it is also like I don't want to be a puppet to someone else's storytelling. So I love the idea of co-creating and creating what you want. So like starting that show was out of frustration of like Oh, I don't fit in the mold of what this network wants or whatever. It’s like well what this show that I actually want to host that excites me that you know brings the passion back. And I was like oh I wanted to do kitchen hustle so bring that to my agency and to the network. So I thought this is great, already doing it and you know like people are watching. So it is so great we might turn into book not sure.

Ross: Really?

Charles: Yes so there is a lot of great exciting things and I always think long-term like I said. I am starting a project and I’m like okay how can I ripple this into everything else.

Ross: I have to tell you so I’m going to call this now you have such like a dynamic, amazing personality. I am just going to make a prediction, I think that your career line is just going to continue to take off and you are going to be huge.

Charles: Thank you I so appreciate it and I think I always bring it back to like integrity and like why I am doing this in the first place because I've been offered to do like shows for a network when I’m traveling like I’m hosting a show but it's about like non-healthy foods and I’m like that's not why I got into tv likedidn’t choose this path to kind of like have this transformation but I am using my life as a platform for good and promoting wellness. I only want us to do things that are of my integrity. I think that's really important for any entrepreneur, any creator, anybody who's like looking for job find a place to work or create something that you have integrity like what aligns with your mission don't like sell yourself out. With all the resources we have available, like you can create your own oryou can find a team of people who believe in that like on your tribe, you dont have to sell. I mean that’s the main thing, I have said those many things and people like are you crazy and I’m like no that's not why I signed up for this. And you have to make sure that and I think the meditation keeps me clear of like no. I'll say no like another thing is going to come along.

Ross: Wow, I love this. Just keep staying in alignment with your vision and with your mission.

Charles: Yeah because everyone has their own agenda and that's why the meditation varies. It is like does this align with what I’m doing or does it not? If it takes me away then you know you'll have so much time so you want to make sure that you focus in on things that actually matter.

Ross: That’s amazing. So one last question for you which is you’ve had so many amazing guests on your tv platform on kitchen hustle. Can you tell me from having all these unbelievable guests on the show what are some things you've learned from them?

Charles: From all the guests I think one thing I have learned is that everyone has their own way of living and you don't have to compare yourself to how someone else like an entrepreneur lives their life. I doesn’t have to be the way I do like I love jerky and like I have so much respect for him but it is like I understand I know my limits and I know what is priority which is my health right. So it is like I'm not going to be like up until 4 am in the morning hustling when I know that my longevity like hey I have to talk to people about how and I can’t be like oh my gosh I'm exhausted all the time. That is not me so it is like doing what's right for you and like staying true to you. You know your limits you know your strengths and running with those.

Ross: That’s amazing. Can I tell you a quick Gary Vee story?

Charles: Yeah tell me his story.

Ross: He's probably I don’t know if he is going to like this very much now he’s may not want to be on the show. So I ran into him few weeks ago but Gary Vander Jackson Gary V is his name on twitter as I am stuck with it. So I knew him from back in the day. You know I used to be in the gym business and so when I was working with equinox, Gary V started, he was blown up with his videos for one library and he took the company of $ 4 million company you see not company and he did all these through his videos. So I was in talks with him about filming an episode of one library tv at the time right there at equinox and he said let’s just go out to dinner. So I organized like a dinner with Gary V and at the time I was still in the wellness lifestyle but I was very into wine at the time. So what I did was one of our members at equinox, big restaurant owner with 30 restaurants in the city. So I set up the dinner at one of his restaurants, very high-end restaurant and the deal was that he was going to do like a seven course tasting and deal was that Gary V was going to bring wine. So this restaurant owner and I we were like talking that yeah I’ve got Gary V mr. wellness tv let's see what type of wine she's going to bring. And we were like she’s going to bring being juice and so Gary V shows up and he was carrying like two tank cases of wine. So we are ready and like oh my God, let’s see what he’s got. And Gary V comes in with super high energy comes up to us and he starts taking out the wine. He’s like so excited with the wine he brought and I’m like oh yeah let’s see what he’s got. He takes out the wine and he's like guys, I have to tell you first my philosophy on wine is how do you provide the cheapest bottle but tastes like it is more expensive. I’m like oh oh like and we were like where is this going? He’s like this bottle here is five dollars and tastes like a 30 dollar bottle. Everyone was like oh my God and we were like oh..we were looking at it as if it was a thousand dolar bottle. But you have got to know him, he’s such a great guy. His career has exploded since then. Yho know he was doing the air media and he's doing this big like networking events like he will gather like 30 to 40 guys put them in another restaurant different industries and he's bounce around the table. He’ll spent five minutes at each table and easy to start networking and getting business operator media. He is just like ultimate hustler

Charles: I love that but wait you didn’t give us the verdict. How was the wine? Was it actually good?

Ross: The restaurant owner he brings out these wines of this auction from this john f. Kennedy collection and he brought out some huge wines and like Gary was like oh my God. He was like floored, he was like its unbelievable. But they were good like very good table wines but you know we were..

Charles: Expecting a little bit more higher, I love it you. Now that story is great I think it brings it back to efficiency is everything. Making sure you only have so much time during the day so how do you make the most?

Ross: So without a set, I think the way to end this is can you just give us advice on getting the best bang for your book. So in terms of health, so give us some like tools that you think like everyone should be doing that will just deliver amazing value for not quite so much effort.

Charles: So I'm big on juices and smoothies, that’s totally my thing. I think that is like something that we can both agree on like drinking juice straight into your bloodstrean with vitamins and mineral and you are not taking your multi suppliment which is fantastic. And smoothies you blend it you are gettimg all these fiber. I believe if you can include juices and smoothies into your diet for seven days you'll see a huge difference and then if you can start five minutes of meditation I'm sure it is going to change your outlook on life. Counting your gratitude so like I need to talk about this. I do this gratitude thing every single morning count my blessings like what are five things that you can be grateful for instantly shifts your focus for the day.

Ross: I love it. Very powerful great stuff. Thank you so much for being on the show. This was awesome.

Charles: Too much fun, thank you guys.

How to Upgrade Your Performance in Business and in Life - Jairek Robbins

Why you should listen -

Bestselling author and Business Performance Coach Jairek Robbins is a master of enhancing performance for Fortune 500 companies. Jairek's best-selling book "LIVE IT" breaks down the science of show to fill in the gaps to get where we want to be in business and in life. In this eye-opening discussion, Jairek walks us through the steps and focus points that are critical to optimizing performance and overall wellbeing. Jairek talks about two biohacking gadgets that are game changers for any biohacker and he goes deep into the the optimal psychology to take your performance to the next level.

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Show Notes

Muse Device — mbsy.co/muse/24203501

Spire Device — www.Spire.io

Podcast with Jairek Robbins

Ross Franklin: On the podcast today we have best selling author and business performance coach Jairek Robbins. Jairek was a 2016 keynote speaker at the Harvard leadership conference. He is the author of the best selling book "live it" achieved success by living with purpose. Jairek has worked with organizations like BMW, United States Marine Corps, and the United States Olympic team.

Ross Franklin: Jairek How are you doing today?

Jairek Robbins: Very good sir. Thank you for having me and thank you, everyone, for taking a moment of life to listen in with us.

Ross Franklin: We are so excited to have you on the podcast today and just to get us started Jairek can you tell us your just your personal story and how you build your career as a performance coach.

Jairek Robbins: Sure! So depending on how far you want to go back. Me getting in the performance coaching I started out working in the non-profit space, and I just have a huge heart, love helping people it's my passion it's my fun. I like physical hands on volunteering, we've done lots of work all over the world we partnered with the merriment Ecuadorian and brought 200 families Christmas with a group that was leading to South American. We built schools in Guatemala and houses in Guatemala as well for families in villages. I love that tactical hands-on giving back and making a difference in what really matters for somebody's that is going to change their life or change their family's life. So I started out there, and I remember at one point as much as I love the nonprofit world I also want to have a badass lifestyle and so I had all these visions and dreams of how I want to end up living, and then I looked at the paycheck that comes from nonprofit work and I was like wow I love making a difference but I don't like getting paid this. We need to work this one out, and then the only thing that became close is becoming the CEO of a major non-profit or something like that and to be honest you know I have some conflicting beliefs of those people taking such large paychecks don't make sense like this, they're supposed to be helping just to help and I had his inner conflicts, so I remember one point walking across the courtyard to the prophet's side of the company that I was working for and I sat down with their coaching department and I was like wow and I sat down I knew the lady who was in charge of all the coaches and I asked hey can I do this? I was 18 years old, and I think she was humoring me which she said "sure you can kid." And I was like really? And she was like Woah I mean we would need to make sure that you can actually do it and then we'd have to test you and make sure they did on my. Okay, how do we do it?  She said let me give you a quiz, she started asking all these questions and I knew all the materials. You know I have been studying these stuff since 14 years, and so I had about four years under my belt of just studying the tar out of personal development and these very specific tools and techniques that I was learning from, and I got to the point where I knew everything Shashi. And she was like wow you really do know it but to be honest we have to give you another 250 hours of training in our material to make sure you really know how to coach it not just how to understand the content itself. So I went through an additional 250 hours of training then they test you. You know they give you three clients, and they test you, and if you do well they will give you more, and if you don't, they'll fire you. So I did well with those I got more, and I rent up, and I spent six years coaching on behalf of that company, and it's a global leader in present performance coaching. But then from there, I had 7 1/2 almost eight years ago now I decided to take the leap and go out on my own, and I said hey I'm going to start my own coaching business or a coaching practice to be more honest, there wasn't a business just yet. You know I was the operator and the sole proprietor of it so if I didn't show up for work, it didn't work. So I mean it is not a business, it is just a job that I own. So I showed up to my practice of coaching, and you saw my original ugly website that I put together by myself, it was all black, and it's a jerk coaching sign up, and it had a picture of a random tree I took when I was in Africa.

Ross Franklin: That was way back when iCloud was me.com right? I remember that.

Jairek Robbins: That's right. I had my little website, and I put it up, and I figured out how to use all my coaching skills and all my sales skills I knew when I ramped up from 0 to 52 one-on-one performance coaching clients in the next eight months. And so eight months later I made my first hundred thousand dollars in my own business. I was 24 years old, and I pretty much felt like I was crushing life when it came to finances and when it came to freedom. But speaking of freedom, I had 52 one-on-one coaching clients. I was getting up you know six in the morning, working out and handling all the majors that I had to focus on, health exercise spirituality all these stuff. And then working from seven in the morning till nine at night doing paperwork, getting ready, optimizing my sleep, going to bed, waking up and doing it again six days a week just to keep up with my clients.

Ross Franklin: And with this clients were you or was it mostly like on the phone, was its Skype or was like in person meetings?

Jairek Robbins: No, 99% all on the phone and Skype. My very first client and I'll tell you a funny story. He actually just signed back up seven years later. When I first worked with him he was a gentleman in London, he was working to become a part, or his goal was to become part of the law firm to make $1 million a year to live in a certain part of town, to be married and have kids and do all these things. And we wrote out all this ten-year vision for his life and mapped it out, organize systems and habits and things he was going to do every day to get there. And then we work together for like I think about a year, and then we stopped working together, and he just emailed me about three, four weeks ago, and he said hey you know just first want to say hello, how are you? Do you still coach? I was like yes I do, a lot more expensive now than then but I do. And he said okay fair enough, and he said so I just wanted to tell you I'm a little bored. And I said why? And he said every single goal we wrote down seven and half years ago is now a reality, I have done it. I am a partner in a global law firm and on the front page in NewYork times every other week with our cases. I make over a million bucks a year, I live in this part of town, I travel this way, I have my kids and family, and he thinks everything we worked on is my reality. And he says you know I hit a point where I'm kind of bored because I am crushing it in every category and I need to figure out what's next. And he said so I looked back at what was the catalyst that helped me get here, and he said you were. The time we spent together mapping out my vision and figuring out the habits and routines necessary to get there and organizing my plan is very valuable to me back in the day and hopefully would be valuable again but I like to resign up and you know we could do the same thing.

Ross Franklin: That is amazing. You know, I'll love to really get into it a little bit like when you originally met with him right? You established some firm goals, how does it look when you first take on like an entrepreneur like what's like the agenda what you cover with them first?

Jairek Robbins: Sure what's interesting, the very first is figuring out what the ideal day look like which is the first chapter of my book "live it" that I wrote about. And it's figuring out for most of us we have goals things we want to achieve and what our goals can look like is? Well, I want to make this much money I want to achieve this much net profit, I want to hit this margin I want to hit these goals, I want to have this less much turnover, I want these things in my business and then health. Well, I want to be healthy and relationships, have great relationships. And what is that going to look like 20 years from now? Well, my business 20 from now is going to be this and this and this. How's your relationship going to be 20 years from now? Great! Next! And you look at these people lives, and you are like wow. When it comes to what matters most to them, their business, everything mapped out in front detail of exactly where they want to be, exactly how they want to get there, exactly every little detail of exactly what is going to happen 20 years, ten years, five years, One year, six months, quarterly they know exactly what they are going to do. And when it comes to these other things that are important to them like their relationship, their health, their family, those things that they tell you are most important to them how's that supposed to be 20 years from now? Great, Better! No details, no fine print, they know exactly what they want. And so what's wild is I always stopped them in their tracks and said hey you know I had a rare experience at 20 years old, and I know a lot of people have these, but for me, it was the first time it happened. Hopefully doesn't circle back around but I got malaria told them I had 20 60 days left to live. I was 20 years old sitting there thinking wow.

Ross Franklin: This was based in Uganda?

Jairek Robbins: In Uganda. Well, I'm like that didn't work out, that was not the plan.

Ross Franklin: You were in Uganda; you got malaria the doctor found you and said you only have six days to live?

Jairek Robbins: No here's why. I was being stubborn, and I wasn't taking medicine because I grew up in Southern California you meditate, drink greens and it heals you. Much as I love greens, there's certain time you're supposed to take the medicine I learned

Ross Franklin: One of them, that's one of those times. Everything else goes out the window

Jairek Robbins: There's a reason, and I'm being stubborn as hell like no I will meditate my way out of this. And the doctor was like dude I don't know how to explain this to you. There are millions of people a day that die from fucking malaria like you have to take the pill. I am like oh oh I will be fine, I grew up in California. I totally understand how to heal myself from all disease; it is meditation and vegetables. And the doctor was like Buddy I hate to tell you it won't work this round. I'm like don't mess my beliefs, I believe. So we argued, and he said let me show you. Here, maybe a visual, let me show you. He took some live blood, put it on the screen, and he says you have 55,000 parasites per one red blood cell. I said oh shit, that didn't sound good now. And he is like yeah they hatch they kill the cell, and they lay eggs on all the other cells, and then they duplicate they double. So 55,000 110,000 220,000 and he goes let me do some math. This is just maths, its number they don't lie, and then he says you've about six days left. I was like so what? And I was a little slow, but he was like six days until your body will not be able to sustain itself. I was then like Oh shit that is not good and all of a sudden this concept of wow I'm not invincible. I thought I was going to live forever, but apparently, not bullshit and all the same your value starts to reorganize in the cells. Because when I said what am I actually upset about? It wasn't optimizing this quarter's KPIs in my business, I didn't have one at that time, but that's not the first thing that flashed through my head. The first thing that flashed through my head was Oh shit I never got to get married and have a family. Wow, I never got to have a house of my own. Holy macro I never got to start a business, I never got to start one that I dreamed about you know. Men if this is true and this works out in not a good way in six days, I won't even get to hug my family again and all of a sudden the things that matter most come to the top of the list. And what's interesting for those of you listening if you want to figure out what matters to you most right now and get real, what I want you to do is write down what's most important to you in your life, most important to you top 3 to 5 things whatever comes to mind first. What is most important in your life, if you have a pen and paper write it down, just jot them out. Now it's interesting that people always tell me the good shit; family, making a difference, God you now spirituality, being a good person, doing good in the world, all these good stuff. It's great things they say, and I say okay next step, and we talk about this in the book as well. Next step take out your calendar and look at you've invested the majority of your time for the last 30 days. Look at your calendar, look at your meetings, locate where you spend your time and tell me if it matches what you said is most important. Because how you invest your time the most valuable asset you have is a reflection of what's actually most important to you. So I get to sit down with the CEOs and executives we have this conversation and telling me family is the most important and showing me watching your feet not your words, your feet are showing me that nothing is more important than work seven days a week for you right now.

Ross Franklin: Now, Jairek, I think I got a confession to make which is it sounds like a typical CEO. You map out like okay what are your goals right? And like you said it is like okay I want X number of locations, I want X number 10 million in the bank. And then you ask about okay what's going on with personal relationship, what is going on with spirituality right? And then it's blank like nothing hadn't even been thought about that. I got to admit I'm one of those guys because for me like if you go back and look at my calendar, it's like it's all business. I just focus on the growth of business and the way I look at it my mentality is I may have to reorganize which is I look at once to get the business going because I want to shift massive amounts of people get them into a healthier lifestyle. So once I get that rolling, once I achieve a certain threshold there then I could focus on relationships, spirituality, everything else. Health that's what I do so that's that's definitely like you know I have specifics regarding health but certainly relationships, spirituality are elements that have to be more clearly defined. So what would you do with a guy like me? You're working with a guy like me as your coaching client. Okay, we identified like Ross like you have got to outline some goals, you got your goals for your business, but now we have to talk about relationships, spirituality, family. What would you do with a guy like me?

Jairek Robbins: Here is why because if something magical happens in the wrong way, not the good stuff. None of us ever see this coming, I didn't see that coming. I always say you never know if you are going to walk outside and get hit by bus number 142 this afternoon and I have always used that example. I have a friend named Teresa who literally a month and a half ago got off the trolley in Toronto and got smacked by a bus, and she looked like the wicked West witch of the whatever were little feeder taken out from under the bus. There are pictures of it on the news, and she survived she has a heart surgery coming up, and I keep her in my prayers to make sure she heals. She survived, but she didn't see that coming, you know no one does. No one is like Oh yeah tomorrow here it comes, I mean that's not what we are thinking. We think we are invincible, we think we will last forever, and so the conversation becomes if you look at something like the five regrets of the dying. The five regrets that people on their deathbed have in hospice later in life, it is never I wish I would have worked harder. No, it is I wish I would have lived truer to myself but not I wish I were to spend ten more hours at the office every week. It's I wish I would've stood in contact with my friends and one of the longest research studies that Harvard figured out longevity, fulfillment, and overall what they termed success, the biggest determining factor was how well a person was able to keep and cultivate a peer group over time. And so when we look at these things for entrepreneurs, and we look at longevity. How long you want to live in these high networks, my friend consults with them, and they want to live as long as humanly possible. Because they believe their brilliance is a gift to humanity that humanity needs forever or they want to optimize their kids you know and have perfect little mini beings they come out of them somehow. But this concept of if you look at this stuff you gotta start by saying how do you design your absolute ideal day? Now the reason I would start there is it because you're living at David so rich so fulfilling so abundant makes you feel so alive and so deeply purposeful every day? If you did get hit by bus 142 you hi-five yourself and go out with a smile; you are like fuck I did it, I'm good, like peace world things. When growing up my friend Brennan had as a good little thing he was pouting over a grown South American and flipped the Jeep and almost died when he was younger. And you know he said when he almost died, there were three questions he had to answer. Did I live fully with life given the opportunity to like did I grab life by the horns and I just fucking do it. Did I love deeply when life gives the opportunity, did I open my heart and soul and pour every ounce of who I am in there and then did I matter, did I really make a difference that if I were to die today, my ripple would continue? And he got answers to those questions every day and so the first place I'll start with you is figuring out what your ideal day. Now for right now at this moment of life 30s?

Ross Franklin: I'll be 37

Jairek Robbins: Is that's okay! So usually the mindset of someone in that stage and age of life is hey it sounds like I'm going to a build the kingdom first and then once it's built, I'll find a queen to share it with.

Ross Franklin: Yes

Jairek Robbins: Got it! The other mindset that exists at this stage for ladies dating advice on performance just a heads up. For anyone out there looking for that the other mindset men have at the stage of life are I will find a princess, and we will build our kingdom together. The reason you want to know about this because if you're dating someone who believes that they have to build their kingdom first and then find a queen if he dates you as a princess, he will kick your ass out when he's ready to find the queen. So, ladies, that's a little tip outside that works for guys too. Just understand the concepts and apply it vice versa, but there's something there.

Ross Franklin: Jairek before you say that one thing, I have the Queen, but I don't treat her like a queen because I focus on growing the kingdom and you know when the kingdom is grown then I can treat her better than the Queen or at least that's the kind of mentality that I have. And one of my core values is continuous improvement right, I could always do things better, and so it sounds like I have to make some adjustments to the plan. So for guys like me who are in the same position where Bertolli focus on business, I think this is and correct me if I'm wrong I think for most entrepreneurs they do intend to have this mindset. So for guys like us and in Geiser's position okay what we do from here? What are the steps?

Jairek Robbins: Got it! So start off with your ideal day. And an ideal day will do your life in a freaking minute but start with the day because it is easy to wrap your head around it and really understand. When do you wake up, how do you feel, where do you go, what you do, what are all the things that make your day the perfect day you can imagine. Who's involved, what difference do you make, which business do you work on, what deals do you close like everything that can make it the most ideal day that you can imagine. Come up with two or three versions of it just to have some variety but start there. And the first step becomes how do you turn that one day in your day-to-day reality. For a lot of people, it's a few very minor adjustments to the way they are living right now, and it's fucking there, for other people it is a whole different universe. If you are just getting started it is like wow. for me I lived in the front end of a house with three roommates, and I'm like this is not how I want to live my life fucking. So I had a journey over in a few years to figure out how to transition. For other people who are already doing most of it, it's a few minor tweaks and boom you are there. Now once you have that now you have a daily vision, you can live every day. Now in this day, you want to intertwine some habits that will literally lead to optimum performance, and I think that's really where we want it to go in this conversation. It is interweaving these habits that optimize you as a person. The first three I'm going to start with, most people might go yeah I get this especially in this podcast, or they are listening to it for this reason because they don't get this. But if we were in a wartime and you got captured by the enemy, what are the first three things they take away from you? They want to torture you; they really want to like put the rack on you and mess you up mentally mostly physically. The first thing they do is they won't let you sleep you know. They put you in a room burning hot lights on you, throw buckets of water on you, they keep loud music, they keep you away 24 hours a day for the next so many days to the point that it psychologically takes you out. It breaks you, it breaks your will, breaks your spirit, breaks your ability to focus function and focus. So it breaks you as a human, it is supposed to that is what it was meant to do and that way you give up the secrets or give up whatever you're hiding with them trying to torture you. The second thing they do notice they don't have a highly dense Goji berry, buffets, and superfoods smoothie shake, and they don't offer you pure greens and bulletproof. They don't give you all that stuff. Why? They don't want you at your best; they take all these shits away. You know in the war, I don't have any experience, but in the movies, they give you a bowl of slop and a piece of bread and say good luck. Why would they do that? Why would they take away the dense really powerful nutrition because again it breaks you down? If your body doesn't have the right fuel, you can't function. The example I used for this is you know would you ever go buy a $65 million Gulfstream jet and put diesel fuel in it? No, and people will be like that will be dumb. Well here is something else that would be dumb, imagine getting to the airport jumping on the plane with your pilot and being like hey are we good and he's like yeah we are out of fuel, but I think we will just hit the gas hard and will go from New York to LA, no big deal. Will fill up when we get there, will put extra in when we get there. Any intelligent human being would be like that won't work, if the tank is empty and you slam on the gas, it won't go. You will get into the air and fall and die but when our bodies are out of fuel we just jam on the gas and go it is okay I'll eat later. Somehow we think that that is a fucking brilliant idea don't know how that came to play but it's what we do. And you watch busy entrepreneur say I'll eat later; I'll get that later. Just give me a bar, give me a shake, just give me something. I've done this myself, but basically, our jet is out of fuel, and we are jamming on the gas trying to get more lift to get across the country as fast as possible and with no fuel in our body. And this is also called torture, if they take your food away, they deprive you of nutrition, and you can't function at your best. The third thing to take away notice there are no cell three cells down in the movies where you have like the perfect optimized weight training treadmill cardio fitness machines. They don't have anything in there that can help you be your best physically and there's a reason. So they take away your nutrition, they take away your sleep, they take away your ability to move and taking away those three things we called torture in a wartime condition. But what is the first three things an entrepreneur screw up when they get too busy.

Ross Franklin: Those are the three. So can you tell us with those three things in mind sleep, nutrition and fitness what you do personally? What are the like the tricks of the trade, strategies, tools that are used for those three?

Jairek Robbins: Great question! There are resources here, I am not the expert on any of these three topics, but I turn to experts, and I say okay who the hell do I know that really does this at an amazing level. For sleep, there is a book called sleep smarter by Sean Stephenson, a wicked smart guy. It's all research-based, it is not opinion based. It is not he woke up at his desk, and he's like oh shit I need more sleep in my life. It is literally research-based and here is what the research shows. Now I grew up in a family with mentors in mind who are like sleep when you are dead, work harder, sleep an hour less and get more done. And all the research shows is that it is backward, it just is. Now it can work, and there are lots of people who live by it but if you look at all the research it jacks up your body over time, and the crazy part is it doesn't do it all once. It does it over time, and there's a thing, I forgot what they are called telomeres. A little plastic thing that goes in at the end of your shoelace. When that shit unravels, the whole shoelace unravels. Same thing with aging, the problem is you don't realize you are unraveling these stuff when you're partying, drinking, staying up too late not, getting proper sleep is the big one. And when you do this you are unraveling those telomeres

Ross Franklin: Are you talking about with those are for anti-aging and it's a...

Jairek Robbins: Yeah! So what happened is the moment they unravel you age very rapidly.

Ross Franklin: Yes, the longer they are, essentially the longer you live is what the research is showing.

Jairek Robbins: Yeah and so sleep is one critical factor to keep these things like a plastic on a shoelace keep it nice tight and right on there. If it unravels, your whole shoelace unravels and if it unravels your aging process immediately accelerates. And so this concept of being able to perform at your best, sleep is a big determining factor. There is also something about weight loss that is very interesting. (inaudible) University's done that, but they did a study where they had three different groups. One group got optimal sleep, one group got average sleep, and one group just did something else. And what was interesting is that the group who got optimal sleep all doing the same diet and workout drop by 30% more weight just because they optimize their sleep. It was crazy, so sleep stuff. And Sean, big expert there he is a friend of mine. We have a new program together where we shared a handful of these tips. Both simple tips optimizing our light pollution, optimizing air quality you know there are certain plants you can buy that can literally bring in the highest air quality. They release oxygen at night when you are sleeping, and you get more air to breathe.

Ross Franklin: Yeah like the snake plant. Snake plant is like the second best plant for filtering out the air. I have a ton of that planted at my place.

Jairek Robbins: And then optimizing the air filters the high-quality airfare using stuff like the magnesium spray to spray your body. Your body needs more of that at night, your heart especially. So using all these little tips, great book sleep smarter, you can grab that if you want to manage your sleep. Great tips to optimize your sleep and these other stuff. We have it all, we had someone we are going to rent a house furnished for the next few months, and we had this guy from Atlanta break is coming to see it because he likes it. So he was walking through it, and he was like hey what's that? This is cool, what is this for?  So then he says this is great, I'm going to love this place. Optimized for his performance as an athlete, but that kind of stuff. Nutrition this is different for different people, and I have lots of young people call me, and young guys specifically will be like what is the best thing to eat? I said are you shitting me there is no one best thing. I mean what are your goals? And he is like well I want to look like Dwayne Johnson, the rock but I want one Ironman competition consistently. I mean dude those are not the same direction those are different directions in life. If you want to look like Arnold, it is going to be a very different diet, very different exercise routine, very different movements to get that result and you are going to feel differently. But if you want a look like Ben Grinfield and be a triathlete champion it's different plans. So in this category, there are some things that stay the same across the board you know. Research shows having your solid alkalinity levels and lots of greens, that is good for bodybuilders just as much of it is for triathletes. And triathletes are endurance athletes; mom is another word for that because mom's if you look at them their sprint starts right when they wake up or when the kids go like this and wake you up in the morning, and it doesn't end until the kids freaking goes to bed at night. So if you're a parent, you are also an endurance athlete whether you like it or not, you're welcome and so you know if you look at what fuel sources you should be using as a parent it is probably what endurance athletes use. Why? You need energy from the moment you wake up, the moment you go to bed and at 2:30 in the morning when the kid pups in his pants and you need to fix it somehow. Like you need 24 hours a day energy as a parent, and that goes for most business owners too because most of us don't get the privilege of shutting off at five because there's a fire that starts in your business at two in the morning like you got to wake up and fix it. You can't just be like whatever, that's part of the game as an entrepreneur. So this concept if you want to look at meal plans for endurance athletes depending on religious and food choices and preferences, there is all different stuff you can eat there. I tend to do lots of vegetables and fish that's it. So for breakfast, I usually do steam broccoli and salmon, for lunch I usually do steam broccoli and salmon, for dinner don't want to make you guess but usually steam broccoli and salmon. Might mix it up with sweet potato and some cod and then from time to time if I'm traveling a bunch, will use oatmeal mixed with stuff, usually plain oatmeal with water. On the road works really well but there are certain things we will settle in on that. For supplements again depending on what I'm training for, I will switch out my supplementation based on the result I'm trying to get. So I think I will show you a picture, I did a whole fun kind of bodybuilding sprint that I wanted to do before our wedding. I just never had a six-pack, and I thought it would be cool to have. I said okay, let's see what it's like, let's see if I can put it up real quick for those of you watching. I had a friend of mine who is a bodybuilder, he has done bodybuilding competition or so like that. So I had him optimize my meal plan, and this is the beast. If you're watching this you know here's a picture of him. So he is a fine-tuned specimen of life, and I was like wow this is cool. So I looked at him, and I'm like you've done this before, how do I do this? And so I found an example and again if you are watching this we put the pictures, but this was the first 90 days. So this little picture of 90 days right there.

Ross Franklin: Wow man, your ripped!

Jairek Robbins: It's legit. I went from 185 pounds in about 20% body fat, and I popped up to 210 pounds that was that right there, and I was at about eight or 9% body fat. So we did the amazing magic of gaining muscle and losing fat at the exact same time over three months.

Ross Franklin: That's great man! Amazing results and I have to tell you; I love what you did in the sense where you know if you are going to work with a personal trainer you don't want a personal trainer that's like obese; clearly, they're not taking their own advice. So I like what you did in that you went out and sought after someone who looks kind of how you want to look. And bringing it back to you, I love your energy, you use to have a great energy, you've achieved an amazing level of success, and you've got in substantial results with your clients. And so as it relates to nutrition with you, you walked us through some of your nutrition but what else have you found? How do you get that energy? How do you have that energy constantly every day? What else do you do to bring it every day really?

Jairek Robbins: Sure! It's a consistent pattern; it's all these things together. There's not one thing that does it. For someone to say like hey eating these foods just magically makes you feel the energy all day. Nah because if you don't get quality sleep, it will screw up your energy. Or if your relationship goes to shit, you can take the smartest, most passionate, determined, focused, excited you know live fulfilled human on earth. And if you break the hard earned relationship, I guarantee their performances is fucked for the next 30 days. Guaranteed! You meet them when they come out, how are you doing? Good. How's life? It's okay. You know how is business? It is fine; it will work I guess. That's what happens when you break some guys or some woman's heart like you did defeat them. So all these stuff matters and that's why you in life coaching, I laugh at the concept because I believe in performance. We need to optimize all these things otherwise anyone can take you out in the game. And so sleep, nutrition, and exercise. As far as exercise, Ben Greenville had some great insights when we recorded a program with him, and he was saying for most people we believe exercise is this 45 minutes we do, and we are done. And he says honestly most people are jacking up their bodies for no reason and not really helping. He said as an endurance athlete with which he has lots of medals and awards and stuff he has won in all those competitions; he says perpetual motion is the key to what you're looking for. So the concept of you know I have a treadmill that's sitting behind me, I do something that is called war walking throughout the day. You know I have a Yoga ball that I use to sit on it for that perpetual motion. He was giving me tips around the house, and he says hey in your office it is going to seem weird, but obviously, you have to get used to it you know hurt yourself. Put a big heavy weight on the floor between you and the door and every time you walk by it lift it up. Put a bar on the door jam and every time you go under it do two pull ups. You know stairs, purposely go up and down the stairs bunch each day. You know every hour get a solid you know set of jumping jacks, push-ups and running in place for a good 3 to 5 minutes. But it is like perpetual motion will keep your body functioning at a really rock solid level and he says that's where you'll see a lot of magic happen when it comes to staying at your best energetically and staying at your best physically. You want to keep constantly moving, stretching you know pain-free movement is the other part, I'm a huge fan of the goskew. They are a great group, and they are about pain-free living. So how do you address the functional alignment of your physical structure of your body and how you keep that alignment because if you do it keeps you at your best because you don't have to waste energy trying to overcompensate for stuff at a place. The example I always use for entrepreneurs is that you know the left shoulders forward your right shoulders forward and you try to walk straight you're using up energy to pull your shoulders back each day as you are even walking. If your right hip is tilted forward to walk straight and when your body has to pull it back, you are wasting energy you could be using in other places just to walk straight. And so this concept of getting back your energy by keeping your body and functional alignments is really important. But to move from these things, these are like basic tips. The next thing we hop onto is mindfulness and state management.

Ross Franklin: Before we jump into that, I have a couple of questions for you there, but I just want to make a comment which is you know Ben Greenville is great, and back 20 years ago, I use to have the mindset where yes all about bodybuilding is getting big. And then over the years my thought process my approach has really shifted to how to increase cognitive power. How do I focus on anti aging? How do I focus on this high energy constantly throughout the day? So I've had to modify my approach and a lot of things that you just mentioned, that's what I do. You know as a busy executive, after I get up in the morning I got trampling right. I jump on the trampoline for five minutes; I've got pull up bar, I'll do a whole pull up bar routines and push-ups. I got some adjustable dumbbells, and I'll do that for just 20 minutes. Boom that's, I get it done in the safety of my own home I don't have to leave to go to the gym and is just super efficient. So I definitely agree and totally agree with that, it is just about making time for it.

Jairek Robbins: Absolutely! Ben did us a favor in our new program put together

Ross Franklin: Oh yes, could you tell everyone about that as I think our listeners will find that really interesting

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, it's cool! It is focused on all the stuff we are talking about, and Ben did us a favor. He wrote out I think it was an eight week nutrition plan with a shopping list based on different dietary styles, and then he wrote out I think it is an eight week or 10 week fitness plan as well of exactly what to do all throughout the day, week and month in order to optimize yourself and get the absolute best out of yourself. It is really cool and it is all the stuffs you were talking about everything between using hot and cold showers in the morning to activate fat burning to all the cognitive supplements you can be using to get yourself the absolute best psychologically and then physically to all the tips on how to keep your body in perpetual motion and what types of exercise to do. One of my favorite things, he said you should never have a workout more than 20 minutes. I was like dude; this guy is smart. You know I was in a slight hypnosis as he was talking to the camera for us. Those that were filming us were like yes.

Ross Franklin: So after 20 minutes, your levels of testosterone start to deplete, so 20 minutes is definitely the ideal time. And who else is on this udemmy?

Jairek Robbins: So it is really simple. The first three modules well are not in the right order. We reorganized it to make it more you user-friendly but basically, it follows the path that we are talking about right now which is nutrition and exercise. You know experts Sean and Ben they had covered those three topics for us to make sure you have an optimized plan of action, exactly what to do. The next two topics we are going to swing into here is mindfulness and state management. For mindfulness we have a partnership with MUSE it's a medical grade EEG headband that works on meditation. Now, whenever you say the word meditation to a type A badass entrepreneur they go okay next I have tried it, and it doesn't work, go on. And all the research shows like there are so many freaking benefits. Let me pull up a couple, and it is really wild how much

Ross Franklin: Even if it is just five minutes a day right? Meditating for just five minutes a day has a massive impact

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, so listen to some of these. As an entrepreneur, you can find some of these things useful. Harvard found that meditation gives you the ability to screen out distractions and increase productivity faster so you can increase your response time faster than the pass of hand. Another study found that it draws focus away from the past or future and focuses on the present which is where you need to be as an entrepreneur to get shit done. The Mayo Clinic found an increase in self-awareness and reduces negative emotions which you can't have negative thoughts or emotions if you run a business. You need to stay positive and focused at all times. Psychological science journals say improves working memory, who doesn't want that an entrepreneur to remember more of what has to happen each day and stay focused. Also, Jerry performance for students, University of Michigan says it improves the executive functioning performance of your actual brain. Here is what is wild, here is all the benefits of meditation:

It helps prevents depression lifestyle and improve sleep, well-being, create mental resilience and stress reduction, cognitive skills help in attention, focus, and memory. Self-regulation of emotions helps with interpersonal skills, communication, and assertiveness very important in business. Leadership helps in decision-making and in keeping perspective and team development helps with the awareness of others needs. So these are some of the side effects of learning how to meditate and keeping a practice. The problem is that there's no way to know if it's working or not for most entrepreneurs till you sit down, you close your eyes, you talk to yourself for 20 minutes you open your eyes, and you go Oh shit I had no fucking clue that helped. Next! And that's usually what it had been in the past; there are great products like headspace. Ben did a great job with that which teaches you how to meditate, but still, you don't know what the results are, but with this one, it is a medical grade EEG. A little headband you throw on, and when you meditate it literally tracks your brain waves, and it gives you a physical report at the end and shows you. For those watching, I'll show you again what it looks like. It shows you the difference between you know when you're able to stay calm, active, or focused and in this is what is wild. So I will show you a day that I did okay on; actually, I will show you a day where I got my ass kicked.

Ross Franklin: You're doing it every day?

Jairek Robbins: Everyday! Here was a day that I couldn't focus my damn mind for the life of me. I was busy I had a million things going on, and this is what my brain waves look like in the morning when I just couldn't focus. So you can see the jagged gigantic spikes and valleys all over the place

Ross Franklin: Yeah, it is a mess,  it's all over the place.

Jairek Robbins: All over the place and here this morning, here's the difference.

Ross Franklin: Wow, much more level.

Jairek Robbins: So here is what's wild. As a coach, we track this with a professional dashboard that I can log in and look at all my client's meditation every morning. As an entrepreneur, if I'm watching you meditate and I know that you go calm, calm and today it is like all over the place, I'm going to text you that what's on your mind pal. And if you go nothing, I'm fine; I'll be like no bullshit! This is a screenshot of what it looks like in your head right now, seriously something is clouding your ability to focus. Let's handle it real quick and get that out of the way so that you can go back and get shit done.

Ross Franklin: That is amazing. So you can visibly see and measure the results?

Jairek Robbins: I can sell your results every day; I can watch you improve, I can see what your stats look like day over day. And it shows you when I go back to the main screen if you look at the top bar here the blue is the good stuff, but it shows you every day you're using it, and it shows you stats on what every day looks like compared to the rest. So I have a dashboard where I can watch all my clients on that, and that's a key piece. How do you track and measure your actual ability? Here is why this is important. I have a client of mine; he uses to train the Navy snail snipers. His name is Brandon, he's up in New York, a great guy, he just wrote a book on total focus and part of the things he talks about is the ability to stay aware of all the chaos going on at the same time around your world yet being laser focused on the one task at hand. Now, this is crucial for entrepreneurship and especially performance because if you get lost in all the fires you have to put out and all the craziness, you will never get anything done.

Ross Franklin: That's like multitasking and multitasking doesn't work.

Jairek Robbins: But if you only focus on one thing and not paying attention to all the other shit, it will burn your house down. So I was like fuck what do you do? This is what you do. You have to be completely aware of all the craziness at once yet only focus on the task at hand and making sure you get it done and then moving to the next fire as fast as possible. And how do you train that muscle? Who the hell has to sign up for the results training camp? Good luck, hope you make it. For most of us, there's no place you can go each day to train that actual muscle except for this little device that used to cost you $7000, $10000 $15,000 to gain access to medical grade EEG scan. Now you can get it for 200 box or something like that, you (inaudible) to stand for it and you do it every day, and you're training yourself to stay present and aware of all the distractions and craziness in the world, yet laser focus on just being present on the one task at hand which is your breath at that point.

Ross Franklin: Where can our listeners get a hold of them? Is it on Amazon or they can get it on muse.com?

Jairek Robbins: Yeah, it is on Amazon. Choose Muse.com if you want because we do this with our clients. I give you a discount code they'll take 15% percent off if they want.

Ross Franklin: I'm going to get one today.

Jairek Robbins: Take 30 bucks or whatever. They give it to us because we buy them for our clients but that concept is a way you can train your brain to stay aware yet focused. It's the only way; I know that you can actually train the muscle every day. There is this other stuff you can use with heart math or something like that, but again the stuff gets stupid expensive when you try to buy all the professional high-grade equipment you know when looking for the things you can use. The second one is a little breaths stone this thing for those watching; I'll hold up for you. It is a little stone you wear on your belt, and it tracks your breathing patterns all day, and it tells you if you are calm, focused or tensed.

Ross Franklin: Wow, that is cool. So explain what this is and how to use it.

Jairek Robbins: It is called spire, and it tracks your breaths or what I call your state. My dad came up with that concept of tracking your state, and he teaches people how to you know if you want to change your state you jump up, screams yes and what he does you know call make your power move in and change your state. And for most executives, they love the concept from the seminar but from I've never seen an executive in an executive meeting or in a big negotiation in New York City stand on the table and go yes and then get back to business. It won't fucking work, and it works great in the bathroom, works great outside, works great with friends, works great at the gym. And in the boardroom, I was looking for a way that you could take an executive and help them change the state in a moment without having to do anything crazy. And I figured out the breath is the only part of your peripheral nervous system, the only part of the autonomic nervous system you can control. You can't enjoy your heartbeat, you can't control your sweat, you can't control your pores, any of this stuff but you can control your breath. In your breath, you can actually help control the other stuff. So when you look at this you know let me scroll back, and I'll show you this is what a day looked like and it was showing me the pattern between being calm, focused, and tensed. It is telling me how much time, what's interesting I can click moments and it links up to your calendar, and it tells you what you were doing when you were calm when you were focused and when you are tensed. If you have your locations turned on, it will tell you where you were and what you were doing at that moment. If you take a picture, it'll look up the picture and put it right in the slide for you. So literally showing you what are you doing each day that's causing you to go into different emotional states and you would become aware, and most of us are not aware that's the biggest part. My wife and I were downstairs talking a few months ago we were talking about a family member who is struggling financially and how or if we should help them and in which ways. We were coming up with options, I felt totally fine with the whole conversation but about seven minutes in I heard buzz buzz, I looked down, and my phone lit up a little, and my phone said you had been tensed for seven minutes. I mean shit, I feel fucking fine right now. I don't think there is anything wrong with me, I feel totally fucking fine, and I look at it, and you realize the moment you go tensed your brain gets hijacked by fighter flight. Meaning you're now emotionally reacting to life instead of logically responding and choosing your path. So imagine you're sitting down in the biggest business negotiation you have ever done in your entire career, and you go to sit down at the table, and your phone goes buzz buzz, you have been tensed for 12 minutes. You're about to make a really dumb emotional decision at the table.

Ross Franklin: Yes, so what do you do? How do you fix it?

Jairek Robbins: Breathing! And so this is the other problem. I went and found a lady, she's wonderful, and she's up in New York City. She trains professional athletes, golfers, NFL coaches, the best in the world come to her to learn how to use their breaths to train their body to go between calm, focused, and intense. Purposely they can change their breathing pattern and alternate. The challenge is she only works with the best, she only takes a handful of clients, and it is like $4000 to do this work. And I was like there is another way. So I found this little thing, it's only 90 bucks, and you can put it on, and you have got to Jimmy rate it yourself because you have to do what she does for you but all by your own. And the biggest factor is number one you have to learn how to reset yourself. So I'll show you a breath pattern that a friend of mine who studied the breath for 30 years showed me that you could reset yourself in three breaths. And it's really simple, here's what it is. All you have to do is you are going to do a really slow long inhale through your nose and when you feel completely full of air and be like there's no room left you take one more big gulp, and that's credit like to force the rest of the air in. Then you are going to hold it for five seconds, and when you hold it you are going to kind of like bear down like you are going to tense your shoulders, you are going to tense your hands, you are going to tense your bodies, you just kind of bear it down and then after five seconds you are going to release it. When you release it, you are going to open your mouth and let out all the hair once, and you are going to drop your head, drop your shoulders and drop your physiology. So it looks more like this if you're watching, it is going to be and what happens is that we are going to do it three times together. So let's do it together, ready slow breath in, one more at the top, hold it, bare it down and count 1-5 and then all the way out. That's one, let's do it two more times, all the way in load in more, hold it, 1 2 3 4 5 and let it out, make noise too like really drop it out. So ready it last time and into your nose, little more, hold it, 1 2 3 4 5, all the way out. Now that was wild, how do you feel?

Ross Franklin: Awesome man that was great.

Jairek Robbins: Do you have a little tingly feeling?

Ross Franklin: Yeah, a little tingly feeling but definitely feel a surge of energy.

Jairek Robbins: Your mind is clear you feel some energy, and then you are just back present in at the moment.

Ross Franklin: Yeah and I guess it was really funny. It was just two weeks ago; I was working with a breathing coach, her name is Beliza. I think Ben Greenfield had her on his show but she did the same types of exercises and it is such amazing to make such a huge difference, and I got to thank you so much for showing me these two new tools. I love gadgets so the spire and muse. Then the muse you know as a bio hacker, I'm like how do I not have them, I have to get them immediately. Then you know as you demonstrated they could make a significant increase in results in performance. So that is so amazing man and so the stone, the spire it essentially digitizes and class all the information on your breathing and to get that you just have to breathe on, is that correct?

Jairek Robbins: No, it stays on your belt and attracts your breath movement. It is based on your stomach going in and out.

Ross Franklin: Yeah, gotcha!

Jairek Robbins: And for men, you know it is deep breathing because if your stomach is not going in and out, it is not capturing breath patterns.

Ross Franklin: Wow! How do you handle it though like right you go into a meeting with the CEO, and you got this little stone on your belt, and they ask what’s that rock on your belt, what's going on?

Jairek Robbins: No, they don’t see it. I mean it is literally on the inside of your belt.

Ross Franklin: So it has got spacing like it is touching your skin.

Jairek Robbins: It is facing you because it's got a push and against your stomach. No one even knows it is there, my phone just buzzes later, and I look and see that I’m calm right now great or I’m focused right now. And the trick is one becoming aware and just recognizing what things cause you to go into certain states. If you know every time you to the office, you get tensed, that is not good. You are not going to perform at your best; you are going to jack up your mental, emotional performance. That means learn how to breathe through it, learn how to stay calm to practicing a call breath pattern while you're going through the craziness. You know Mark Divine, I'm sure you know who he is, he is the guy from seal fit he taught me he was number one in his class for the seals when he graduated and how he got through the pain to ugliness through all that stuff, the sock they call it. You have to embrace it, or else it's going to sock, and you just learn how to breathe through it and get through it. And how he would get through is using box breathing which is just four seconds around the edge of the box. 04 seconds into the nose hold it in for four, out for four, hold out for four repeat. And that’s how he would keep his nervous system calm when he's going to immense painful, crazy situations in hell week and allow him to get through and stay laser completely focused on the task at hand. so these things when it comes to the breath is using that kind of stuff to stay at your best. And the first piece is tracking and becoming aware; the next piece is then optimizing by using certain breath patterns to go from focused to calm to whatever you want. Now the ability to know the difference there now comes to practice and in part inspired they tell you there are certain ratios of breathing that when your breath pattern is between this many breaths per minute, you are calm when your focus is between this many breaths per minute you are tensed. So they have actually done the research over at Stanford and let me see if I could pull up the exact numbers for everyone listening, so you know what it is.

Ross Franklin: Great! As you’re pulling that up just for our listeners out there, we are going to have links in our show notes to all of these amazing gadgets that Jariek is talking about.

Jairek Robbins: So here you go. A calm breath pattern is 6 to 12 breaths per minute, slow regular breathing. A-10s hijacked by fighter flight breath pattern is 18 to 24 breaths per minute, fast erratic breathing. And focus is 16 to 20 breaths per minute so right in between those two but a very consistent breathing. And so this is the goal if you want to stay focused and want to be a high performer, you have to train your body to breathe at 16 to 20 breaths per minute consistent rhythmic breathing. And when you can purposely train yourself to do that by training your body to breathe in that rhythm, it'll train your brain to stay focused. And so will reverse engineering focus now it's not some magical flow state you access through somehow being in alignment with your manifestation of awesomeness it's fucking a breath pattern you can control and if you can control it and you can train your body to do it through discipline, you can fucking keep your focus all day long.

Ross Franklin: I love it, man.

Jairek Robbins: I love the workflow, but it doesn't give you a strategy of how to actually fucking do it. It tells you about how magical it is to access it and then hope to God you get there yourself, good luck see you later.

Ross Franklin: I feel like running the role now, we have got some really cool bio hacking devices. I’m going to be getting them today, what else you got man this is great.

Jairek Robbins: So from here, we go a little bit to the soft skills but like I said you break someone's heart their shit goes down fast. So this is kind of the basic technical stuff like you need sleep, nutrition, exercise, you need mindfulness, and you need the ability to stay laser focused and stay calm and focused at the same time and be able to control it with your breath and then practice it with your mind. Once you have all that stuff now, we will move over to some of the soft skill that makes or break a difference. Number one you need ideal day vision, and you also need an ideal life vision. You know what your Northstar, what’s your 20-year vision for where you're headed mentally mostly physically, business wise, spiritually all that stuff. All the research shows that if people who don't have a vision of where they are going, they will end up getting depressed, suicidal, they feel lost in life, they feel like they don't have a purpose, they are wondering, and they're certainly not performing at their best. When someone knows exactly where the hell they're going, and they're locked on like a laser, they're energized, they are passionate. They wake up early in the morning before the fucking alarm clock because they have shit to do. They are ready like they can't wait to get on with life because they know what the hell they're doing and how they are going to get there. And so they need every single moment to squeeze the most out of it. So you have to figure out how you reverse engineer that, how you say okay if this is what my perfect day looks like, what will my perfect 20 years look like out in the future. You know in all the major categories rely on their working backward ten years, from there work it backward five years, from there work it backward one year, from there work it backward you know six months, quarterly, weekly. And then figure out the next piece which is one of the habits you need actually to get the results you want. This is where people screwed up. For those watching I will draw you a little picture, it's kind of fun to see it this way. I have my mini whiteboard I use for Facebook lives but this concept of if you take a little chart here and you're in the bottom corner, X just getting started for those of you watching and you want to go out, and you want to have a 1% lifestyle. This pisses a lot of people off like fuck the 1%, but really truly I don't know anyone who's like oh no I have average normal dreams, I want to be on unhealthy, attaché, fucking broke, and hate my life. Yeah, sign me up for that shit. No, people want the best, they want this amazing experience of life. So let's call that you know the outstanding you know this amazing experience. So we will put a little like A for amazing out there where they are aiming for up on the corner, and then this is the note down here AVE for average. Now the average person in today's society at least in America's is unhealthy. They are overweight, they are unhappy in their relationship, over half get a divorce, they are financially living paycheck to paycheck trying to figure out how to fucking pay the bills next month, and they are not optimizer performing at their best in any way shape or form. And so here is what is wild, we have these amazing goals we want in life, but then you have got to ask yourself a deep question. Where are your daily habits currently leading you? So if I would add up the next 15 years that shit you do every day where is it actually taking you? Now for most people, their daily habits lead to a completely average life. Very fucking average because most people live that way but that's where their habits are taking them. Their vision, they are dreaming of this extraordinary life, and their habits are taking them to an average life.

My dad and I had a real big talk at one point in my life when I was young. He was like pal, you have got some real big dreams, but you have some really shitty habits. He is like this ain’t going to add up, and my heart is going to break as a father to watch you fuck this up. And he is like it is your life though, you do what you want, I’m not being hard on you. I’m just telling you're aiming for here and actually headed here; it doesn't add up. And so the big question we have for people is what habits do you actually need that will take you to the awesome life you really want? What daily habits do you need in each category of your life? What are they? What do you do every day? How much sleep do you need? How much food do you need? you know how do you need to treat people in your life? How do you need to build relationships, have a powerful peer group? What do you need to do in your business? What do you need to do you know in all the different categories of life to make sure it is actually adding up? So when you say you know like I catch an entrepreneur like hey it is all business, and every thing else is just off right now. I’d say hey let's come up with two things you can do every day in the other category, just two. If they did those two every day, it's going to lead you towards that amazing life you want. Instead of one categorical business is going to be amazing, everything else is going to be shit. That sucks because, in the end, you ain't going to be fucking happy. And I have met a lot of people and trust me I've done tons work for lots of people who make shit tons of money you know. Like my clients I work with personally between two of them, they raised over $500 million for their startups in the last couple years. And so I get to work with people doing big fucking things, and they all have the same story. Once I finish the broad and sell the company, then I'll focus on the ship. I’m like you are going to be dead before that fucking happens because of how hard you are pushing yourself, and you're not paying attention to the shit that really matters. And so I get to have a real heart-to-heart with them and get them the wake the fuck up and pay attention. Sorry, my mouth runs itself so that I don't filter that thing. But I get to have some heart-to-heart with this people and get them the wake the fuck up and realize that there are other shits they need to focus on otherwise they are going to hit the end of the trail and not knowingly some of them too soon and go oh shoot I messed up.

Ross Franklin: And then what happens when that light punches you in the face right like during Uganda when you get malaria right than it gets real really fast.

Jairek Robbins: Yes, I mean and I would ask them. You know how important would your fucking business be tomorrow if you went to the doctor and had testicular cancer. Fuck! I guess it is important to like pay for the bill. Well, what if I would have told you if you would have paid attention to your fucking hell for six months you wouldn’t have cancer. He’ll be like oh shit it is important, and I’m like yes fucking focus on it. But people like to play you know the opposite card here which is well some people are super healthy and do all the right things and still get it. That's just I don’t know how to explain that, shit happens. But taking as much responsibility as you can and optimizing it in the best of your ability is your choice and to choose not to do that I think is very silly as an entrepreneur. Because you have the space and you can optimize the time, you just have to commit to and actually stay accountable to it which is the hardest part.

Ross Franklin: So let me ask a question. When you found that you know there wasn't a congruency, your daily habits like weren't aligning to get you to where you need it to be. What shift did you make, how did you come up with your daily routine? What shift did you make in order to make that shift?

Jairek Robbins: Well, luckily that conversation was 14 years old with my dad. I had an early coach who told me to say hey pal you have to update this shit. That was what a 54-year-old figured out. But it is worth talking about here; it is me sitting down doing all crap. You know I can’t just work all day and hope that the rest of my life is going to figure itself out. I’m going to have to figure how to do this in and when I was busy. You know I had 52 one-on-one coaching clients which mean I was working from six in the morning till night, six days a week to try to keep up with everybody and doing paperwork in between calls and all that jazz. And so what’s wild about all that is I had to figure out how you sneak in the major categories of your life other than just business and finance. So the other five categories in two hours a time, that was it. So I wake up at six in the morning and between 6 AM and 7 AM I had one hour to try to knock out five major categories of my life as far as simple daily habits. So here is what I do, I would wake up and immediately get on the rebounder and bounce a little to wake my body up to get some lymph node moving. I super hydrate on the water first thing in the morning, do some breath patterns and breath work and some fresh breathing oxygen, and I put on my workout cloth and go straight out the front door. And while I was on my walk, I would say okay now I'm working on my physical body in motion. Now that I'm in motion, I’m going to start filling my mind. So I use some of the stuff I learned from my dad as a kid which was hey start with gratitude. Everything you have heard before to fill yourself emotionally, so you feel powerful. So I’m so grateful for my health, my emotions, my family my friends, all this stuff. So I start with gratitude, and from gratitude, I would work into what am I excited about? What is my vision? Well, I’m so grateful that 20 years from now, I’ll be 50 years old and healthier than the majority of 20 years old in the world. I’m so grateful that mostly I’m passionate about my life, living on mission enjoying every moment of my life. I am grateful I’m passionately in love and our love and passion for each other go by the day and when we are together anything is possible. I’m so grateful we have 10+ companies, and we make $100 million a year. I’m helping people becoming the happiest, healthiest version of themselves. So I literally memorize this vision for where I was going, and I repeated it to myself again and again and again to know exactly what 20 years looks like. And I say okay what do ten years look like? Ten years from now, here is exactly where I’ll be. I am so grateful that at 40 years old here is where my health is, here is where my emotions are. What do five years look like? I’m 35, here is where I’m at. What does this year look like? I am so grateful that this year, here is what is happening we are accomplishing this making this happen. What does this week look like? What does today look like? This week, here is my number one outcome to become 210 pounds, 10% body fat or less, be the strongest, flexible, most endurance filled human being I can possibly be. Why? You know, and I have all these reasons and these outcomes like what am I doing each day, and that is what I do with my mind. So I am like wow, emotions locking onto my vision filling a a purpose in life knowing that filling myself up physically using gratitude to fill that out. And I’ll be what about family, how do I sneak that into this time while I’m on my run? So I’ll envision my family and I would send love them and think about what I appreciate about them and what I love about them. And what I do when I get back, I send them a text. Hey, I just want to reach to you, I love you so much I'm so grateful that you have always supported me and I can't wait to see you you know big ups. And the practices there is well I have got emotions, physical health, and I’ve got family in there. What about spiritual? Well, I’d stop in my first favorite part of the park, and I'd sit there and just take a moment and say you know where is the miracle at this moment. And I look for it, and I see it in a butterfly, I see a leaf blowing in the wind. So I’m just like wow that's spectacular, and at that moment I get to experience a little bit of God and a little bit of the universe. At that moment like wow is amazing and get to feel that deep sense of spirituality and say a prayer. Lord, please guide me. You know thank you for this opportunity, thank you for this gift thank you for another day alive, and then please guide me. I would say you know God’s love flows to me from the room full of the hearts and souls of every person around me daily. So I use that as my mantra to imagine that energy of life flowing through me reaching people and they need it most. So all these things if you noticed I've crossed off health, emotions, family, spiritual and what am I missing? There's one more, intimate relationship. Now at that point in business you know 18 years old, I didn’t have an intimate relationship. But eventually you know relationships became an area where once I decided to be in one I made it the number one priority in my life. More important than business, it is the first thing I write in my schedule each week when I schedule out my time. Why? Because it's the greatest gift life has to offer, the ability to share with another human being and there’s no fucking way anything else should come before that. So what happens is that as an entrepreneur figuring out how do you rewrite your values if you are going to choose to be with someone to really truly put them first. And other people say hey God first then relationship, great do it that way. But so often it's the ability to do that and make that choice and say hey I'm choosing to put them first. You know there is a research study done by the Gottman Institute which studied 3000 couples for over 30 years and they found out one of the key there are seven factors that causes relationship to either work or not work overtime. And one of the key factors is called turning towards and what that means is when your partner says hey babe or hey look at this, or wow look at this. Anything that is a bid for your attention the masters of relationship, the ones that work would stop what they're doing turn towards their partner and go wow look at that, that's pretty neat huh and acknowledge whatever it is they're talking about. The disasters that always fucking fall apart would go just a minute babe, just a minute and turn away from the bid for their attention. These are the things that make or break a relationship long-term 107, there is a very small consistent pattern but that saying hey I'm choosing to put my partner first. What does that mean? I am in the middle of a big fucking negotiation, and my partner goes hey babe and instead of just a minute just a minute just a minute, I go stop the fucking negotiation I can handle the shit later. Yeah whats up honey and go straight to her first. You know what’s wild is if you train yourself to do this, they stop bidding for your attention as much because they know they always have it.

Ross Franklin: Wow really interesting.

Jairek Robbins: So these are things that you got to optimize because you have to train yourself. How the hell do I optimize this and how do I do this and how do I build it like a fucking muscle so that my body and the system is trained? And it's wild because if you can do this properly, these are 30-year study on 3000 couples, different nationalities, different sexes, all the orientation and all the other stuff and it found the same patterns exist. So you want to optimize it, you have to attention to it. You have to learn it, study it like a Ph.D. program and you have to figure out how to fucking put in your life. So these concepts at that point in my life, I got four out of seven areas covered, and that left me the rest of the day to focus on the other two areas that were most important at that stage of my life. And it's fair I would say business and finance were the most important thing when I was 18 to 24 years old. Like that is the Big Apple of life, nothing else really mattered to me at that moment of life. And it didn’t (inaudible) but I figured out hey I'm a real shit patterns leading to a totally average fucking life and if I don't update these patterns and get this type of stuff every single day like clockwork, I’m going to land up having average relationship, average health, average emotional fortitude in life, average spiritual life, and I will have a ton of money and be fucking miserable in the process. And by it, I say hey two simple things I do every day to optimize these little patterns and these other categories of life. Now not only do I make a ton of money in the process and help people make a difference and grow business, but I also did have this phenomenal life in the process of it.

Ross Franklin: I love it man and what a paradigm shift you were talking about with the relationships and just so you are in the middle of an important negotiation and she's like honey look at this, and you stop the negotiation and just focus on her. Wow man, what a paradigm shift. I got some adjustments to make for sure!

Jairek Robbins: Most do that is why we are here.

Ross Franklin: That is awesome man, you have given us so much great information. I mean this was really phenomenal, we got some amazing new tools, amazing new gadgets and I think maybe a good way to end this would be you spoke a lot about just building your ideal day and you kind of walked us through your morning and what you've done for a long time to get to where you have been. But how does your your ideal day look? So that way our listeners kind of has something to do model from.

Jairek Robbins: Sure! It evolved over time, and there are certain things that are still the same. My wife and I are huge fans of traveling, huge fans of helping people, huge fans of physically volunteering making a different hands-on like we were talking about earlier. And so my ideal day is waking up and doing new things. Before it was waking up, working out, being my best self, crushing it at life, making a difference, adding value to people lives and businesses, you know having this amazing serene moment in the afternoon where I get to stop and watch the sunset, going and hitting yoga, decompressing from the day. You know we have talked about a lot of routines here of winding up to get ready to conquer the day. I went to training for the special forces command for the U.S. Air Force and these guys are badass human beings, fucking hard-working, just badass humans and they are very also self-aware. So anytime you know they’ll be like Woah do you see anything I can improve on? What about this? I’m very well aware of that I’ve been working on it. What the fuck, I mean they are good. So awesome, I mean these guys are great. But I was looking for gaps and the only gap I found was they knew how to turn on, they knew how to stay on mission and lock on and not never come off. They didn’t know how to turn it off, and so this is also important as an entrepreneur. The ability to ramp up to your day and kick ass and conquer throughout the day but the ability to have a moment in time when you say listen it can be 5 o'clock 9 o'clock 2 PM doesn’t matter. You choose, and you say at this moment I'm going to have a routine that will mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually bring me back out of my battle for the day. And bring me back to the place where I can decompress and then refuel with love, compassion, and connection for my wife, for my kids, for my husband, for my family, for the people that matter to me most and I can go all in 100% presence with the people who matter to me most for the rest of this night. That ability to transition.

Ross Franklin: How do you wind down? How do you do that?

Jairek Robbins: It’s just like you need a morning routine and an evening routine. For me depending on the personality type, there are four ways the people decompress. Number one is exercise, physical activity. Number two is community time being around a group of people. Number three is alone time, just leave me alone all by myself. And number four is nothing time, like I want to sit here and do nothing, I don’t care if people run or not, I’m just going to do nothing for a period of time. There is a research study that showed that 80% of men who stop by the barn in the UK London after work then drink. They just sat there and did not disturb the fucking wall for 20 minutes and then went home. It is really remarkable, nothing time, fire gazing they call it for men. But this ability that is knowing your personality type and how you decompress you want to purposely schedule that in the gap that exists between office and home. Now if you work at home like we do on the road and work from our home wherever we are, you have got to create a transition. My transition is usually yoga, I schedule yoga at the end of every day, and I pack shit up, and go yoga, I decompress, I sweat, I let my thoughts out, I let my feelings out, decompress my body, get loose, and at the end of the yoga I flood my mind with all the things I love and appreciate about my wife. What's special about her, what’s unique about her, how I fell in love with her, what are my favorite things about her. And at the end, I come home, and I’m full with love to pour into my wife for the rest of that night. And when we first met I was phenomenal at that fucking routine. We've moved a bunch, traveled a bunch, all that stuff. I've fallen off recently but I purposely just signed a lease in San Diego, and we are going to move ourselves back for nine months so I can get back into the routine. And it is important; I have reason to move out our crew across the country to get back into that routine because I know what difference it makes for our relationship.

Ross Franklin: That’s phenomenal. Welcome then, that's huge.

Jairek Robbins: It matters. I mean what matters more where you live in a tax break city, or you get the ability to have a fulfilling relationship long-term. Now once I get into it, the goal is to be able to move again but keep the rhythm going. I just lost it because we were doing too many trips in too many cities too fast. Yeah, it's okay, go back to what works. Restart, reset it and then do it again.

Ross Franklin: Amazing and thank you for sharing that as well. You know I think it's important to know that even someone like you is still having to make changes and adjustments to the rhythm to get back to it.

Jairek Robbins: So the peace with this is the underlying philosophy that it's constant fine tuning. No one is perfect; no one ever has it crush, no one's ever like oh I’m there now. No, it's good because things change, life change, you change, your body changes, your emotions change, the experience is constantly unfolding. And so having the ability of the growth mindset, it is the way it's turned technically as far as a research goes is the ability to know that for you be at your best you constantly have to be updating the process to keep yourself at your best. And it's a problem that’s part of the process so get excited about them as they show up. I was talking to young entrepreneur who had a business of 10 million bucks prodded down on 6 million, and now it’s 3 million, and he is kind of freaking out. And I said hey, what do you think the problem is? He goes I hate problems just fucking things. I said I know, I’m just warning you if you are going to scale your business back from the 10 and hopefully 100 million then you are going to have problems every fucking day. You have to fall in love with problems. You have to be like yeah, and I said let me give you a heads up. In the beginning, we hate these things because they are things preventing us from having what we want. Later in business when you meet seventy-year-old business guys who have been running their business for 50 years like that, they fucking love problems. Why? It gives them something to fucking do. They are bored out of their fucking minds all day, and the problems come up, and they are like Alright, come on, let's get in on is this, this will be fine. And the young people scratch their head, and they are like I want no fucking problems. But what's interesting is that's what makes it fun the longer you do it because you get so good at hanging on. It just gives you something to do every day and hopefully. I was talking to Dan Martel yesterday he's building so many different companies tech companies, and I was talking to him about it, and we were laughing. He said hopefully mostly entrepreneurs listening even on here have figured out a way to elevate themselves from the person running the company with all the people reporting to them to eventually if you know me on the bone you elevate yourself up to you know the owner of the company and hire someone else to be your operator, and now you have one meeting a week. And tour one meeting a week is with your CEO who is running the business for you and you just help fix problems. And besides that go live your freaking life or start five other companies, do whatever you want. But the ability to do that really comes from optimizing you so you can lead the pack when you need to be there and then eventually being intelligent enough for you to optimize your business and get yourself the ability to elevate out and have someone else run it for you or just exit and install somebody else.

Ross Franklin: Sure! I love it. I mean my day mostly I consider myself a firefighter, I’m just putting out fires all day. So it's funny that those those old-timers you mentioned get so excited when they have problems.

Jairek Robbins: Look at it this way. Imagine if you had this business still totally optimized four years from now into the future and you have one meeting a week, and your CEO goes yeah things are great, we are kicking ass daily, everything is awesome. You have got nothing to do.  You know there's only so many years you can travel, sit on the beach and do all these other shits. And eventually, you are like okay I need something to do you and you know I have the privilege of getting clients to call me because they've sold their business, they have invested their money, they have tons of passive fucking income, they have a beautiful wife, beautiful's kids and they are bored out of their fucking minds. They call me, and they are like I thought this would be it, it's not fucking it. Look, what do I do now? Then I’m like let's find some thing you have passion about. Let’s work on that; there is a PS it's going to be nerve racking in the beginning because it is going to be a lot of fucking problems. All those stuff you had to deal with when you had to start up. Then they go argh. But then they get into it like this is awesome and they remember the thrill and the only problem is when they did the first time they were single, so they could dedicate 24 hours a day to just working. Now they're trying to do it when they have a wife and family or a husband and family. And at that moment, the only reason I keep saying, wife and family, is I worked with 90% male entrepreneurs, it is just the people I work best with. I do work with a couple of female with women, but 90% of my clients tend to be men. Also, it is just who I adapt to and who I work best with. We have a lot of people on that team, my wife works phenomenal with ladies and optimizing them but I generally work with guys and mostly 35 to 45-year-old male entrepreneurs who own one to five companies in that range and so that why I really keep using that same analogy or phrase for anyone listening, just to clarify. But now they have to figure out a new way to go about the same challenge because they now have other members of their team with them, their kids and family. And so that is very important to update the strategy otherwise you know there's a book written that says what got you here won't get you there. It's very true because if you try to go back to your old tactics of how you succeeded as a single entrepreneur in the past, it will destroy your relationship and family. Until you have to learn how do you update the habits, put your family first and still go conquer business. Put your wife first, your husband first and still go conquer business. That is a new set of patterns, a new set of habits.

Ross Franklin: Awesome! I mean amazing advice. The podcast was full of a lot of actionable strategies and really cool gadgets. You know thank you so much Jairek for all your time, this was amazing. We are going to have a lot of the items that you mentioned, links to that in the show notes and I just want to thank you so much for coming on. It was a pleasure having you.

Jairek Robbins: So very welcome and thank you for everyone taking time to listen. I appreciate your ears for the last however many minutes this was and thank you very much for having me and sharing what we have with everyone.

Ross Franklin: Amazing.