158: How A Simple Morning Routine Can Lead To A Life Of Freedom And Success | Michael Chernow

Now, before we dive into today's episode, I want to tell you about something really cool we got going on here at VPN. Now, as you know, we don't run ads on this show and we don't plan to ever run ads on this show, but this is a big deal. This is the biggest discount on subscription products that we've ever done. And I want you guys to take advantage of this so you can save money and maintain your consistency and commitment to your goals in 2026. So if you sign up for a supplement subscription on our website at bpnsups.com, it is 25% off. You're saving 25% by signing up for a supplement subscription. That's going to help you stay consistent and committed to your goals throughout this year. So go to bpnsups.com to take advantage of this awesome deal. We appreciate all the support. Thank you. Now, into today's podcast. Today on the podcast, we have Michael Chernow, Creatures of Habit. What's going on, brother? What up, man? Thanks for having me. It's been a long time coming. I know, I know. We've been on the DM text chain for a minute now. Yeah. Well, it's good to have you down here in Austin, Texas from upstate New York. I bought a pair of Takova boots, man. Oh, you did? Dude, I had to. Which ones did you get? I didn't go crazy. I got these guys. They look good, man. Yeah, dude. I'm stoked on them. I've wanted a pair. You know, the PBR comes to Albany every year, and so we always take the kids to go see the bull riding. Yeah. And every time I'm there, I'm like, God damn it, I need a pair of cowboy boots. And my wife's an equestrian. So my wife is on a horse every day. And, you know, I'll get there. I'll get on a horse. But, you know, it's fun. In Texas, I was like, all right, this is the time. This is the place. You got to. I was driving to work yesterday, and this new Aaron Watson song popped up. Aaron Watson's a Texas country artist, real Texas country artist. and just like his music it was that perfect song all i wanted to do was throw a pair of cowboy boots in on going to back texas country road put the windows down and just fly just fly especially in that truck dude because that that truck that thing is incredible have you seen the old truck that's what i'm talking about 74 oh my gosh that is so cool yeah i love it uh it's been a project that i've wanted to bring to life for a long time now came across the perfect truck um and it just got delivered last week the kids love it i love it my wife's afraid of it but it's all good things dude i mean when i pulled up and i saw that i saw i saw you post about it last week and i was just man that's a good looking truck it's fun the color too like The whole spec, the whole project. I mean, is it all gutted? Is it fully restored? It's fully restored. But it still drives like an old truck. I mean, speedometer doesn't work really well. Fuel gauge doesn't work really well. Everything's manual. I was dropping my daughter off at school last week in it. And I wanted to get back in the truck after dropping her off. And to unlock it, you got to put the key in the door, turn it. And this woman was passing me saying, I haven't seen one of those in years. Where you got to actually open it with a key. And I said, do you mean the truck? She said, no, you're using a key to open your door. I guess you're right. Yeah, totally. So from my understanding, you, like many of us, myself included, are a creature of habit. I think a lot of high achievers are creatures of habit. And also from my understanding, your morning routine is pretty robust and doled out. I thought it'd be a good way to set the stage for what is to come in this conversation. What is your morning routine? What's it look like? What's it consist of? How long does it take? Share it with me. Sure. So I actually have two morning routines. I have the non-negotiables, which get done no matter what, no matter where I am, no matter how tired, no matter, you know, the non-negotiable morning routine is a little bit more concise. my ideal morning routine, meaning I'm in my flow, I'm at home, I'm not traveling, you know, I've got all my tools. I've built my home life to accommodate my family, of course, first and foremost, but to accommodate the most important hours of the day for me between 5 a.m. at 7 a.m. I believe that the morning hours are where we grow. And my non-negotiable morning routine is where I connect with God. And I know that's not for everybody, but for me, God is massive in my life. And I can't tell you exactly what, why, where, or how, but I can tell you that God has given me an opportunity to do all the things that I do today. Because prior to my relationship with God, about 21 and a half years ago, I was a lost soul, you know. And so my morning routine now, and I know you probably hear this all the time, but it really does start at night. You know, it starts at, I don't do this anymore, but for anybody listening, I feel like if you really want to get ahead of a morning routine or initiate or implement a morning routine, don't worry about your wake-up alarm. Worry about your go-to-bed alarm. The go-to-bed alarm is, in my opinion, the commitment that we need to make. Because if you go to bed at 9.30, waking up at 5 or 5.30 is just going to happen naturally, right? And you'll get a good 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep, which is my sweet spot. So I go to bed every night at 9.30, and that's just the way I do it. And I have all sorts of tools that I use in bed just because I want to optimize this opportunity, eight hours of my day. Like imagine, right? Like you're just given eight hours and you can either make the most of it or really dilly dally, right? Like getting a strong eight hours of sleep could change your life. Most cases will. So I go to bed at 930 every night. I have these really incredible ear headphones that I put in. It's actually a new thing that I've started doing. It's a company that sent these things to me. They're super flat. And so they're like, you don't feel them in your ear. And you can set it to a certain sound, like a sleep sound, like a white noise or whatever. Anyway, so I put those guys in. I have an eye mask. What sound do you play? I'm very interested in this right now because my nighttime routine is very built out and structured as well as my morning routine. I'm feeling you. I'm hearing you right now. Me and my wife, we have all the tools built around how we go to sleep with our sauna and sometimes cold plunging at night and our red light therapy and our sleep mask and our eight sleep on our bed. And we're also in bed by 930 p.m. like we have our rituals and our routines for the evening and i also agree with if you're trying to set yourself up for success if you're trying to set your day or yourself up for success right now for right now you're already behind i'm constantly looking forward and planning backwards good example of that this morning as i'm prepping my breakfast i was also prepping tomorrow's lunch and a third meal of the day so i'm always like one step ahead so i i love where you're going with this let's go back i'm curious about these sleep so this so this so the sleep the sleep pods are called oslo oz lo they uh so they have about 15 20 different sounds you can play i'm currently on cloak that's the sound that i listen to nice and it's just like uh it's a subtle white noise right These things are a game changer. I'm just here to tell you. I'm going to get them. They're amazing. I'm going to get them. They're incredible. And the coolest thing about them is that they're super flat, right? Like I typically always go to bed listening to an audio book or a podcast. That's just something that I've done for a long time. And it's a funny story about that actually. So I bought this property about two and a half hours north of New York City in 2012. And I got an interesting story about why we did that too, but we'll get to that later maybe. this property is incredible right it's it's a 55 acre piece of land oh wow it's a big piece of land it's got a you know a 300 year old farmhouse on it cool outbuildings it's just like a beautiful property that was like peanuts 12 you know whatever 12 13 years ago now because of the pandemic that whole region just got flooded and people were buying property site on scene so the So it's a very different environment there now than it was when we bought it. Anyway, we were using this place on the weekends. And I was going to the farm store, which is like right down the road from me every weekend. And then about three months after we moved there, this woman stops me in the farm store, super eccentric. Like I just knew she was a little bit wackadoody. And she goes, I've been seeing you here. You just move into the area. I was like, oh, you know, we bought a house right down the road. And she was like, oh, where? I was like, we're on the other side of the Taconic. You know, it's about a quarter mile-ish off the Taconic. And she's like, which house? And I was like 1230, Harlemville. And she goes, oof, do you know about that house? And I was like, I mean, I love it, you know. We're excited to be there, you know. She's like, I rented your house like 25 years ago before we moved up here. and it was poltergeist haunted and i was like appreciate that information really nice to meet you yeah thank you so much for your kindness i'm going to continue shopping now you know and um and it just sent you know like scary stuff right like you know house haunted house house is super old anyway so when i would go to bed there you know i would i'd like after she said that i'm thinking like all right like any noise is something and the house is old so there's creaks and cracks and i started going to sleep with an airpod in you know or like a headphone in to be able to like dull out any of the noise right because i just you know i'm not i'm not trying to i'm scared of ghosts man i'm just scared of ghosts you know there's a few things i'm scared of one of them is ghosts anyway so the oslo sleep sleep pods really do help me with that so so i i i i go to bed. And the cool thing about them is that you can set up the sound, but then you can also stream a podcast or an audio book. And then you set the timer on that. And as soon as that timer goes off, you go right into the sound. I'm asleep typically after hitting a podcast or an audio book within 90 seconds. Like I put my head down, I'm out. I've just gotten really, really good at falling asleep. So I wear an iMask. I have an eight sleep mattress and we have blackout shades. so I like hit the bed and I'm asleep you know and and when when entrepreneurs aspiring entrepreneurs or you know just people reach out in general I'm sure you get a bazillion dms from people saying hey can I you know chew your ear for a second yeah I got I'm trying to figure out how to do this next thing people I meet in person friends you know they'll say you know what what can I do to be more committed more disciplined you know and I the first question I ask is like what time do you go to bed you know the truth of the matter is nothing really great you've never heard you never hear great stories outside of potential war stories but you never hear great stories of of achievement of of of goal of uh success after 10 o'clock at night you know it just doesn't happen yeah most success stories happen in the morning or during the day at some point and so if you want to optimize that, go to bed earlier. It's just, it's just a simple thing that you can start doing. And the way I always tell people to do is legitimately put a go to bed alarm in your phone or on your, you know, on your watch, whatever it is, and then commit to it. And so that even if you're not tired, that nine 30 clock dings, you just go, you just go and, and you will get better at it, you know? Um, and then, you know, so my morning routine is, so I wake up typically somewhere between 5 and 5.15. This is my ideal morning routine. I wake up somewhere between 5 and 5.15. My wife does not wake up between 5 and 5.15. She has banned me from our bathroom. I have to sneak out and go downstairs to the guest bathroom. And so I sneak out, I go downstairs to the kitchen first and I fill up a 30 ounce jug of water with a bunch of supplements that I put in there just to kind of kick off my hydration. I get into the bathroom. I brush my teeth. I floss my teeth. I rinse my mouth, scrape my tongue, take a piss. I put cold water on my face. I put on my contact lenses and then I hit my knees. And so this part of my morning routine is something that I've been doing for a little over 21 years. And when I first got sober, I've been in recovery for that long, a little over 21 years. The first guy I met that introduced me to this new world of freedom from addiction specifically, he wrote a whole plan for me, but he told me that I would have to pray if I wanted to work with him. And I didn't grow up in a religious household. I didn't really know much about prayer, but he said, you know, all you got to do is get on your knees and ask for help. that's all I'm asking you to do in a humble humble position on your knees in the morning just connect with God that's it ask for help it could just be help right and so um obviously my prayers have have evolved over over the years um but so I pray for about five minutes and uh most recently I've changed a few things in my prayers where I used to ask God to remove certain things that I didn't like about my life or certain things that could potentially present as hurdles, fear, insecurity, character defects, character assassinations. I mean, basically I would say every morning, you know, God, please help to remove my fears, my insecurities, my character defects, my character assassinations, my wrong thinking, and my rationalizing. And then I would finish with, please allow me to be of service today. And more recently, in the last probably six months, I was having a conversation with a buddy. And, you know, we were talking about God and our prayer. And he said, you know, you're putting that into the universe, that negative stuff, the fear, the insecurity. You're saying it every morning. Why don't you flip it on his head and instead of saying that, just say, hey, God, please help to bring optimism and positivity and confidence and courage and kindness and presence and, you know, joy into my day as opposed to asking him to remove the bad stuff. Because if he introduces that stuff, you know, they say it's pretty, it's really hard to be angry if you're smiling, right? Like if I get that stuff, then I don't have to worry so much about the fear and the insecurity, right? Like if my day is blanketed with this positive stuff. So that's one thing I do. So I say my prayers and I call it prayers, push-ups and poses. I do as many push-ups as I can right after I pray. I'm in that like 76 to 77 seven range right now. And it just, it's gotten, as I've gotten older, they haven't gotten smaller. They've actually grown. Consistency works. And then I do some yoga poses. I do up dog, down dog for five rounds. And then I do cat cow for five rounds. And then right when I'm done with that, in the guest bedroom, that's connected to the guest bathroom. I sit on my little meditation stool, I turn on my red light and, um, and I meditate for about 10 minutes. And, um, I kind of think about prayer as, uh, as talking to God. And then I think about meditation, um, as listening to God. Right. And so I like to try to spend a little bit more time listening than I do talking. And so I meditate for about 10 minutes. Um, and then, uh, I walk back out of the, the guest bedroom, make my way into the garage. And that's where I have my sauna, my cold plunge. And I sit in the sauna for about 20 minutes. And that's where I get my reading done. I like to read in the sauna. And then it's a battle every single morning. It's never like, oh, I'm just going to hop in the cold plunge. It's just always a battle. I'm always trying to convince myself that it's just, I did it yesterday and I just don't need to do it today. hey, I could just go take a cold shower. It'll be easier, faster. But, you know, I always fight that fight and end up in the cold plunge for somewhere between three and four minutes. And that's where I get to, like, really slow down my breathing, really get centered, really get focused. The cold plunge is, you know. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about cold plunging and all the health benefits. And for me, I really do believe, And I've been doing cold plunge for probably about 10 years. And for me, it's understanding this idea that, you know, we are going to have to do things that we don't want to do if we want to get to places that we've never been. Right? And if you could start your day like that, because every day, I mean, every day it's a battle to get in that thing. 39 degree water in a you know 30 degree garage if not colder in the winter time you know it's just it's hard it's hard and so i set myself up for success giving my you know grabbing the confidence to just go in there and do it and then i get out of there and i'm like unstoppable man i feel so good the dopamine dump from a cold plunge i mean that's that's why i cold plunge it's because i know what is to come when I get out. That dopamine dump is unlike anything else. Can't beat it. You're alive. You're awake. You're ready. So alive. Yes. It just fires up every system in your body, right? Like every system in your body, especially if you're able to slow down your breathing. And, you know, for years, I used to cold plunge with my hands under my armpits and my legs crossed. And now I'm just like, you know, and I got, I mean, I'm kind of lucky. I have a really incredible cold plunge. which one do you have? I have the new Plunge G2 I think it's sick it's like I don't know what it is about that and I've had Plunges before from Plunge this one is just it's the granddaddy it's just so cool so I love that I love and hate it but cold plunging has definitely been an asset for me mentally, physically, spiritually you know there's a lot of things you can do but trying to actually slow it down in a really really intense time prepares you for life agreed you know even if it's only for three minutes so I do that every morning and then and then you know I I have a little mirror on the wall you know my gym is in the garage and so once I'm done with that cold plunge I walk past the mirror I give myself a look in the eye. I used to say all sorts of, you know, what do they call positive affirmations? Now all I do is I just look at myself in the eye, good hard look, and I say, today's the day, Mikey. Go get him. I walk out, and at that point, it's about, you know, whatever. An hour and a half after I've woken up, an hour and change, my wife and kids are just starting to get up, and I am the absolute 100% best version of myself, period, done. I am dad, I am husband, and I'm ready to be that person. And, you know, if nothing else good happens, right? Like if nothing else good happens, because, you know, in business, some days you're going to be high-fiving and hugging. But more days than not, you're going to be navigating the weeds and trying to figure out how to get yourself out of them. Walking and tackling. That's it. So, like, you do that for yourself in the morning. And the other thing that I've said that I feel is those hours, those hour and a half and change I get in the morning could be spent sleeping. Some people, a lot of people will. I've been talking about a morning routine for a long time. And morning routines were hot and heavy, right? Like three years ago. Everybody's got their morning routine. Now it's become a lot different. I don't care what people think about my extensive morning routine. It makes me a better person. It just does. I have the confidence to do it. I have the discipline to do it. And I'm not saying if you don't, you don't have those qualities and values. But for me, it doesn't matter to me what you think about my 15-step morning routine. When I'm done with it, I am a better human being than had I not done it. And then, you know, like I typically will hang with the wife and kids, have breakfast every morning at the breakfast table. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take the kids to school. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go straight to train. Tuesday, Thursday, I drop them off at school. I'll train and then I head to the office. I also love my mornings. so I wake up at 4.30 a.m. every morning so you give myself at least two hours before the family's up. I got younger kids so my daughter's three and a half my son is one and a half they pretty consistently wake up between 6.30 and 7.30 a.m. however there's the occasion where someone's up at 4 and stays awake but I'm pretty confident in my morning routine knowing that if I wake up at 4.30, I at least have typically two hours. And my morning routine is just as robust and built out. But I know that if I can commit that time to myself, I'm going to be the best version of myself for that day. 100%. I would much rather wake up at 4.30. I even do on the weekends now. Wake up at 4.30, have my two hours to work on myself, and then be prepared and ready to be with my family. Well, also just think of this, right? Like, so you're sacrificing, you're sacrificing. Like people will say, oh, that, you know, morning indulgence routine, selfish. I'm like, not when you're waking up before everybody else, right? Like I'm not sacrificing their time. I'm not sacrificing my time with them. I'm actually sacrificing my time to be able to do that. But you just earned, not only did you earn the ability to be the best version of yourself between 4.30 and 6.30, but you just earned two hours of life that are insanely productive every single day. So that's 365 times two is whatever that is. My math is probably not going to be right, but 600, you know, whatever that is, 750 hours a year that you just earned by waking up earlier of life, of progressive, intense time that you're spending on yourself so that you can benefit everybody else in your life. Yes. I mean, how could you not want to capitalize on that? Like, I just don't see that there is zero downside. I agree. I also love that you said nothing great really happens after, say, 930 p.m. when I try to read in the evening it is like a 40% effectiveness reading score myself and I'll lay in bed and I'll read a book or I'll read my bible and I'll get through a certain section and I'm so tired from the day I think I don't know I just read I go and I reread it and I'm not actually like digesting and consuming and really holding on, retaining any of that information and that content. But when I do the same thing in the morning, I listen to audio books or podcasts on my runs. I will read my Bible as soon as I wake up in front of the red light. I'm retaining every single, not just word, every letter. My brain is firing. One of the biggest game changers for me and my wife the last couple of months, we only started recently using red light therapy. immediately upon waking up I go to the fridge I have a shaker bottle of 25 ounces of cold water that has electrolytes in there I'll come back I'll sit in front of the red light infrared light therapy for 15 to 20 minutes that's been a game changer for both me and my wife to wake up and feel really good in those first 30 minutes upon waking totally I mean like I know the science there's a lot of science on red light I think the science is changing a little bit. At the end of the day, sitting in front of a light that's going to ultimately penetrate you on a cellular level, no downside. Like there's just no downside. Like if you have access, you know, and so do I, you know, so there's that super structured, robust morning routine. And then there's the non-negotiable morning routine, which is way simpler. and sometimes I'll even do this like on the weekends I'll even do this because I want to get a workout in earlier and not have to you know on the weekend specifically all I care about is like hanging out with my wife and kids that's a fact like that's what I want to do like that is what I want to do all like for my life in general like the more time I'm spending laughing and loving my wife and kids the better my life is going to be and then of course peppering and friends as well. Um, but so my non-negotiable is basically I wake up at the same time. Um, I head downstairs, I drink a bunch of water. If I'm traveling, I go wherever I can to drink a bunch of water. Um, I get into the bathroom. I, I brush, I floss, I rinse, I tongue scrape. Uh, I wash my face and, uh, and I do prayers, pushups and poses. And, um, and if that's all I can do, I'm good. I think that connection, I do have to put an emphasis. All that other stuff is wonderful. And I, like you, am blessed to have worked my butt off to be able to collect all these tools to have at my disposal in the house. But none of this stuff is possible for me, first and foremost, without my recovery and my sobriety. But second, just without a relationship to God. And again, you know, I can't, I can't tell you exactly who, what, where, when, and why it works so well. But talking to God in the morning for me is like, you know, putting on my shoes before I leave the house. Like it has to happen. And it's been very powerful. You know, the one thing I've done, you know, staying sober is a very difficult thing to do. Getting sober is very hard. Staying sober long term is really, really hard because there's, you know, so many influences. Life throws curveballs. Things get really hard. Things get really awesome. You want to celebrate. You want to mourn. You know, like it's a lot of, you know, feelings are hard. Feelings in general are just hard, whether it's coming from family or business or friends or death, whatever it is. and you know human beings I believe are conditioned especially now to not want to feel we are looking for comfort it's just what it is great books written about it recently I don't know if you've read The Comfort Crisis but there's where for whatever reason we want to be warm we want to be fed and we don't want to have to lift up heavy things right or you know run fight yeah fight it's just and you know the one thing I've done every single day since I've made the decision to put a plug in the jug and stop using substances was pray it's the one thing I've done a lot of other things a lot of consistency but the one thing I have been unbelievably consistent with without fail is prayer when did that first action of prayer evolve and turn into a relationship with God it's a great question honestly recently like years recently or months months recently where i really believe i um i never thought of meditation as listening right and i been meditating on and off for years now but i was talking to my therapist um six months ago and she christian and she we don really you know it like kind of church and state right like we don't always you know talk about um god in in therapy session but you know she said to me she asked me a real a question that like i kind of got i kind of got stumped right she was like what is your relationship with god and i was like and i pray every morning and my life is is is great not without its faults and challenges but you know my my prayer and she's like so so let me ask you a question she said if you were in a relationship and um you were just the only one speaking like what do you think the other person in the relationship would feel if you're the only one talking because right now your prayer in the morning like you're the only one talking you know you're not giving god a chance it's talk to you're not receiving you're just talking and so uh i was like wow that's a really interesting perspective you know And so about six months ago, I started meditating and journaling on this idea that it's got to be a two-way street. And I didn't really understand that because I don't – my wife is a self-proclaimed atheist. And so it makes it really difficult because I try my best because how powerful God has been in my life. But she is just adamant about her belief and I'm fine with that. I'm not trying to force or convince or whatever her to want to start looking at God the way I do. But I don't go to church. I've been YouTubing my way through this thing. and so she had proposed that I after my prayer I sit in silence for two to three minutes just to receive and then throughout my day instead of something hard comes up saying God I'm going through this brother just receive and that has begun what I believe to be the chapter two after 20 years of you know talking a lot and now also kind of understanding that that meditation practice is also an opportunity for me to listen I love to hear that what I've learned through my walk in faith is there is religion and there is faith and religion is the study of people and culture and systems and beliefs but faith is a relationship with God. It's truly believing and that relationship is a two way relationship. There's the speaking and there's the listening and I do a lot of my prayer in the sauna in the evening and it is like 15 minutes of intense prayer and I can feel the Holy Spirit talking back to me, answering my questions. Things just come to me. Are you in Scripture? Are you in the Bible at all yet? I've started, I mean, I read, I just started in the beginning of the year reading Jesus Calling, which is a really cool book. And it kind of like gives me an opportunity to focus on certain verses that simplifies the Bible for me. I have not read the Bible. And it's definitely something, you know, so I'll also say that for the first 19 years of recovery, I came up through the 12-step programs. And in the 12 steps, they are strategically they strategically present faith relationship with higher power in such a way that it doesn't turn anybody off because you know lots of people have you know trauma around religion right if you grew up in a really religious very strict household that might have been what propelled you to want to drink later on in life or use later on in life so they basically say this is an opportunity for you to create a higher power of your own understanding. It doesn't matter what it is. For me, for a long time, it was water. I was like, you know, I want to have something to believe in. You know, water keeps me alive. If I don't have water in my day, you know, I'm parched. If I don't drink for a few days, I'm dead. So, you know, let me just use something as this ability to have an understanding of something that's going to help me stay alive. And if this is what they're saying I need to stay sober, also known as alive for me, water seems like a good one, you know? And so, but over the last year and a half, I have, and it's not like I've been on a journey looking for it, but Jesus Christ has been showing up in my life in abundance. I mean, so much so, this might be a little woo woo, but we're on the topic. So I'll just share the story. I was driving in Utah about four months ago with a buddy of mine who's also Christian. And we were just, you know, we were talking about life and, you know, Jesus Christ and things like that. And we were driving and I looked up and Utah is amazing. I mean, it's a beautiful, it's just beautiful country. It's just, there's mountains everywhere. And I looked up and I saw Jesus and I like had to pull the car over and I, and it was just bizarre. Like it was, you know, I'm not the guy that's going to be like, Oh my gosh, you know, I just saw Jesus, but I did. And whether it was a figment of my imagination or it was a sign for me to start walking that direction, I saw Jesus and, you know, and, and I've been, and I've met a number of people that have just been talking to me way more about that. And so if I have subliminal reasoning to want to lean a certain direction that there's no downside towards, I lean. And so it's a new thing for me, but it's become certainly – like my prayer has now gone from God to Lord Jesus. I love that. Yeah, there's nothing blue about it. You know, I would encourage you, like, lean in to those feelings and God calling you. Because in a lot of situations and circumstances, I found myself in the past of resisting that calling. Because, to be honest, I didn't want to be that guy. and when I surrendered everything to him, changed my life completely. Completely. My life in the last year is not the same life it was a year ago. I've only recently in the last couple of months committed my life to fall in Christ. And I went all in and surrendered everything and in the word. If you're interested, I'd love to share some resources with you after this. Yeah. books that I've read, how I've gotten started reading the Bible and being in Scripture, because Scripture is the truth. It's the Word. And it has transformed my life, my joy, my peace, my rest that I've never experienced in my life before, my relationship, my marriage, me as a father, a leader, a husband. There's a good Bible that I read that I highly recommend. And it's John Maxwell's leadership Bible. And throughout scripture, it'll have these little blurbs throughout from John Maxwell, who's one of the best business leadership coaches, mentors in the world. And it translates scripture to leadership principles and how to apply it to your life or your business, your family. Wow. I'll send you a copy of this Bible. And it's absolutely amazing. You know, I kind of like, I look at this topic as if I really just sort of peel back the onion and say, okay, whether you believe it or not, even if there's a slight chance as an ambitious, smart human being, that you have support from this being that is almighty. all you have to do is connect to it believe that that is with you and within you helping you make decisions helping you get through things not going to fix your life not going to pull you out of a burning building necessarily but there's an opportunity to work with live with enjoy grace right Why would you not do that? Yeah. Your life is saved by faith through grace. Christianity is the one religion and belief where you are not judged based off of your actions, but based off of your faith. And that's because of grace. It's pretty amazing. And I found that when you align your priorities in life of God, family, marriage, and everything else, life works out. It's not going to be all rainbows and butterflies. And you still are going to suffer and there's still hardship and you're not resistant to all the other obstacles and hardships of life. but when things are in those priorities it makes life restful peaceful filled with joy and purposeful and you're never alone never so I think that's the big one right like if anything you can you can have faith that you're not you're not doing it alone I would encourage you, I'm still new on my walk, but use me as a resource because I've had people in my life who are very strong believers, people here at BPN, very strong believers that took me under their wing and mentored me and guided me, gave me the resources, the tools, the insight, and it was so helpful. So if you need any help along the way, right? Yeah, the only one semi hurdle I just have to, and I've talked to people about this, is the fact that my wife battles with it. She just doesn't have the, my wife and I are, I mean, I'm blessed. I want to just preface by saying that. Like I've been married in April. Oh, no, excuse me, April, July. We'll be 20 years of marriage. Congrats. Thanks. and I met the woman of my dreams you know 21 and a half years ago right after I got sober and no one ever would have pinned me as the guy that was going to settle down at 25 right but I met this woman and she's never seen me have a drink she's never you know I've never used a mind altering substance and we're very different like super duper different and she knows I mean you know she used to when I used to work super late at night and when we first started dating I told her that I you know I'm recovering in sobriety I pray every morning and I pray every night I train my ass off because at that point I was you know when I got sober I was introduced to Muay Thai kickboxing which ultimately saved my life along with God and you know the 12 steps but I used to get home late at night because I was working in the restaurants and I would get home at 3 o'clock sometimes 4 o'clock in the morning and I'd be so tired and I'd get on the floor of the bathroom in prayer position and I'd say my prayer and I'd fall asleep just like that and she used to wake up in the morning going to the bathroom and I'd be on the floor in prayer position sleeping and she'd be like wow and I'd be like this is who I am this is who I am and so she knows the guy I am She has the whole time. But, you know, things evolve, right? Like my faith has evolved, you know, and I'm feeling really confident about these signs that I'm getting. I just can't not. And so the hard part, though, is, you know, she's not comfortable in that world. And so the advice I was given was just like, keep doing what you're doing. don't push shove convince coerce and then hopefully one day maybe never but maybe one day you know jesus will show up in her life and she'll follow but like don't stop doing what you're doing you know find the find the medium find the balance right like you don't have to talk about god or jesus or scripture at the dinner table yeah you know so that's kind of like where i've just like hung my hat on that and i'm like you know this is this is so it's powerful for me you know because i i can't tell you it's the thing but i can tell you it's the it's the thing that i've done consistently since i've since i've gotten sober and and by the way like before i got sober i flatlined i was dead i died i overdosed on heroin dead and i came back and to think that I lived 10 years in this dark like weak place of hiding and running and lying and cheating to be able to go from death to two weeks later a life that is just so unbelievably different in such an incredible way that there's so many people that are struggling with addiction, man. I mean, it's, you know, everybody's saying, oh man, you know, alcohol sales are down, you know, 50%. America's not drinking anymore. And I'd love to believe that to be true because it is true. There's less alcohol consumption, but it's because this is what's keeping people from drinking because they're at home on their couch, not moving. Now, do I think it's better than getting wasted and probably committing crimes and doing bad things like that? Maybe. But this is almost as bad. I agree. Almost as bad. Mind wasting. Time wasting. I invested in a new phone that I can't wait to get. I get it in February called the Light Phone 3. I've been thinking about buying the Light Phone. Do it, dude. You and me. We'll leave the charge. I'm doing it. I love that. I'm doing it. I'm going to leave this at the office. so this will always be at the office because I have to be on social media and similar to you, you've got VPN and you've got your brand and they work so well together but you have to be active people are expecting you to be active and so I have to do that but I don't have to do that when I'm at home and having this thing it's like this thing lives the best life out of all human lives because this thing gets so much attention this gets so much attention and typically when something really cool is going down the first experience that that that that that the first thing that gets to experience that is like this like like i'm on you know we're on this podcast man i want to capture this moment i gotta get a i mean and i'm gonna i'm gonna get a great picture of this but at the end of the day this thing should not experience my kids play at school before i do i agree yeah i uh i've had that same idea actually is to buy the light phone and keep my my iphone at the office and use the the light phone at home because the truth is we are weak individuals and people. I even have apps downloaded on my phone that block my social media apps from certain times. But you know what I do? I run those apps and I turn them off. I know, man. I'm like, what am I doing? I know. I'm better than this. I know. I know. It is the greatest addiction that we all have. And I actually love that you say that. The world is raving that alcohol sales are down. and they are, but it is because we are glued to our phones day in, day out. First thing that's done upon waking and the last thing that's done before closing our eyes and going to sleep. It is horrible. I mean, I walk around, you know, we were at an event in Pittsburgh this past weekend and we were talking to people, we were getting photos with people and individuals kept walking in between where you're standing and getting photos because they're walking like zombies looking down at their phone not knowing what's in front of them walking into us walking through through the line oh my gosh we're all dead well the commitment that i made last year which i've stuck to which i'm proud of is and it just came to me i was on the train in new york city and I was on the train, a packed train, and I just looked up from my phone. And I looked across and there was someone on their phone. And then I had someone on their phone, someone on their phone, someone on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone. No one in the train, outside of a few people in their 50s and 60s, were looking up. Every 100 people were on their phone. And it dawned on me. We don't experience life anymore. where we question why there's this like male loneliness epidemic. We don't experience life because we expect, we want a constant flow of stimulation and dopamine from our phones. We don't look up. Imagine trying to run a race, not looking up. Well, life is a race. Whether it's a marathon or a sprint, different times, different seasons. If you're looking down, there's no shot you're going to win. zero chance bar none the person who's looking up they got a shot yeah so i just i made a commitment on the train no phone waiting on a line for anything no phone in a social environment that i don't know many people are easiest thing to do boom pull out your phone hide behind that thing no phone i do not pull out the phone experience with my wife and kids no videos not doing it i want to be there i want to be present i want to i just like want to experience it and you know we're so like we want to like like how many pictures do you have in your phone probably 8 000 how many times do you go back and look at all those pictures only when i'm flying okay so like we rarely go relive those experiences, right? There's some thing that's kind of, we believe that capturing the moment is like going to optimize our lives, optimize the experience. We'll be able to look at it. And yeah, there's definitely great times for that, right? But at the end of the day, I've got 21 something thousand videos on my, I mean, photos on my phone and i just the only time i really go back and look for those look at those photos and this is sad but it's a fact is if i'm trying to create a carousel on on for a for a i relate to that you know like yeah that's when i'm like scrolling those photos right to try to create a great carousel for instagram post yeah um anyway we're on a tangent but have you you know coming from a historical background of addiction, which I want to get into, do you see similarities between the addiction of your device, your phone, and substance addiction that was two decades ago? Yes. Absolutely. Unequivocally. Worse. Worse. Because it's widespread. And totally acceptable. Do you feel that the tools that you were provided in substance rehab apply to technology addictions? There are 12-step programs for technology addictions. That's wild. Yeah. Without a doubt. It's the demise of humankind. I just believe it. Like, I would, right here, right now, if somebody was sitting here, some decision maker, and said, sure now, give me your two pinky toes right now. Cut them right off. I will eradicate cell phone use. Everything will go back to communication in person, conference call, writing a letter. I would do it. I swear to you right now I would do it. I would cut them off right this second and I would deal with the pain 100% because I'm trapped. you're trapped i when i'm on a plane i look around and you know i see people watching movies and you know and i and i can't do that like in my mind i'm like no no like you got to work you have emails to catch up to you be a constant like it is a constant for people in business that have been blessed to be able to have some success and leading teams, there's never not a moment in time as an entrepreneur where I am not required to respond. Required. Doesn't turn off. Like I'm sitting here right now and thinking about this. I'm like, oh man, I'm going to, it's my favorite place to get work done on a plane. But why can't I just watch a movie, man? You know, like if I didn't have an email, the biggest deals in history were done prior to email Rockefeller got real rich without email how can we do that? what can we do? how can we kind of slow it down? I don't know if you can at this point we're expected to be so accessible and responsive I know when I get out of a podcast or from a busy day I open up Slack in email and everything's bold because that means there's unread messages and then it's playing catch up. And I don't know how we go back to being human, human, unresponsive, inaccessible. I think it comes down to, and this is really hard, but setting really hard boundaries. Even going back to the earlier conversation of, hey, I'm going to bed at 9.30. And that means that before 9.30, I have to do X, Y, and Z because part of my evening rhythms and routine to be asleep at 9.30, to wake up at, you know, anytime early in the morning to start my morning routine. And that requires setting boundaries with people, with ourselves, clear expectations. When it comes to work and social relationships and technology, it's really hard to set boundaries. I don't know why. Because we do it in other parts of our life. Well, what I did at Creatures of Habit is I, once I saw, I was able to pivot out of the restaurant business and create this new business where like, you know, the busiest time of my day was not between 7 o'clock and 11 p.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m., which was the busiest part of my day as a restaurateur, I said to the team, hey, I'm not going to start emailing expecting you to respond earlier than 830 in the morning. I might start banging out emails early if I have a deadline or if I have something, but I don't expect you to respond earlier than 8.30 in the morning. Similarly, I close my computer every single night at 5.30. I do it. Committed, I do it. And it was hard for me to do that because I was like, dude, are you really a nine to five guy? And then it dawned on me. Nine to five is done for a reason. Nine to five was created to not only have a life of work in a condensed period of time, because eight hours is probably the right amount of time to have your focus in full throttle without diminishing returns on either end. But it also gives you an opportunity to do what life was really presented to us for, which is to love. We are love beings. It's really, really hard to love the people around you when you're stuck in an email. Chase. So 5.30, I shut the computer every night. I walk to my truck, get in my car. I really, really try to decompress on the drive home. Right before I pull up into the house, and this is something that I've done, and I'll tell this story because this is like a really, really, very pertinent to this conversation. Right before I get to the house, I create a buffer for myself because the energy that I have, I have a lot of energy, and I'm a hard-charging guy, very much like you. there's a difference in the energy between being a hard-charging dad and a hard-charging business person. My hard-charging business person is the opposite of the energy that I want to introduce to my kids as a hard-charging dad. As a hard-charging dad, it's all love. As a hard-charging business person, it's discipline, right? And so I get to my house at about 5.55, dinner's on the table every single night at six. My wife is incredibly punctual. It's my favorite part of the day. Sitting down at the dinner table with my wife and kids. Pull the truck halfway up the driveway. I shut the thing down. I close my eyes and I do about three minutes of breath work. And it'll be either box breathing or I'll do the double inhale, long exhale. Or if I'm really fired up and amped up from a crazy day at work, I'll do both. I'll do four or five rounds of box breathing and then I'll do four or five rounds of the double inhale, long, slow exhale. And it really calibrates me. It brings me back to baseline. It just does. And so anybody that's listening, like if you're struggling, separating business and family and you walk in and you sit at the dinner table and you're just completely not there, I'm not here to say that it's going to fix that problem totally because there's definitely times where I sit down at the dinner table and my wife won't be talking to me and I'm just looking at her like totally lost in space on other things, but it definitely helps. It helps. In the beginning of the pandemic, probably 2021, 2022, I was not doing that. And I was just starting creating, you know, I just kicked off Creatures of Habit. And it's a new business for me, completely new business. I'm learning on the fly. I'm like literally YouTube in my way into creating a D2C brand. And so I'm under a lot of pressure. I've raised some cash and I just like want to, I want to succeed. And so I'm just like, I got to get it in. And I pulled a truck into the, into my driveway, shut it down. And I pick up my phone and I'm just like, I got to get these last few emails out. Right. And I'm doing that as I'm kind of like walking into the house. And at that point, my kid, my kids were probably six and four. and my son, I get into the house. I don't acknowledge anybody and I'm kind of like replaying this story, kind of like looking at it from above, right? Because this is, I can only imagine what it felt like. And I'm walking in and I throw my bag down and I know that dinner's ready and I'm like just trying to like bang it out and my older son, Finn, walks right next to me and he goes, daddy, daddy. And I didn respond He goes daddy daddy I want to tell you something and I just didn respond I like on the email And he says dad And I look over and I say dude don you understand that I doing something right now And I watched his face crumble And I just couldn believe that I had part of my language, audacity, to take the one thing that my son wants in life, the one thing. He doesn't want my car. He doesn't want my bank account. He doesn't want my job. He doesn't want the fancy house or the title. Only thing my six-year-old son wants in life from me is attention. That is it. That is all he wants. He wants me to hug him. He wants me to teach him. He wants me to lead him he wants my attention period done nothing else and i took it from him and it makes me emotional to say that because uh it's just it's insane that that that that that that i thought that that was okay and so from that day after i was able to to reflect on that a little bit because it sounds a little dramatic, right? Like, oh my God, I told him to leave me alone. I'm finishing up this thing. But it was such a burst of failure for me as a dad because my relationship with my father was absolutely terrible and there was no attention. It was really sad. And it changed the way I see my leadership as a dad. all my children want is my attention period that is all they want and it's crazy to think that way but it's just a fact they love getting a Lego set they love you know going skiing and you know going to Mexico but I guarantee you if you were able to get in the brain of the child looking up at his father all that stuff can go to the wayside as long as his dad is but paying attention to him you know and so you know that that story is as i think super relevant because i think we do that a lot in our lives and yes it's like it was so powerful for me with my kids um because there's nothing i love more in life than being a father like you know i just if you were to look at my childhood you would say if you had to bet it was a betting man he'd say oh, he's going to be a terrible dad based on the blueprint that he was given. And somehow, someway, I've been able to. Well, I know how. I'm sober and I have faith. And I met the woman of my dreams that supports me. But if you looked at my childhood and you had to make a prediction of what my fathership skill set would be, you would never say that this guy cares about the attention for his kids. And if we're not intentional with the way we show up, especially, I really found that transition from leaving the office and work to coming home. if you don't intentionally create that time and space to kind of download and as you walk into the home, walk in with a new temperature, you will carry all your problems from work and the day into the house. And one of the best things my wife has ever said to me was, as the leader of the household, you are like a thermometer. you control the temperature, whether hot or cold. And if you come in from work, into the house, hot. If before you got there, everything was comfortable, that thermometer is going to go hot right away or cold right away. So whatever you bring into the house, just know the rest of the day, the rest of the night, that is the temperature of the household. Totally. And it's tough. It's tough going from a hard day, an exhausting day, a stressful day, I'll do the same thing I'll drive home I'll try to disconnect chill get in the driveway park and before I go in ask myself how am I going to show up as a father how am I going to show up as a husband and I try to bring all this new energy in because if you're not intentional with the way you show up you will bring all that crap from the day into your family totally and I think it's super relevant to hear from a lot of my audience's younger new dads and it's tough you know you're whether you're a business owner or not trying to manage and build a career and take care of your family and lead your family and be professionally driven but also personally content doing both at the same time while raising a family and being a dad and being a husband and being a leader, it's not an easy time. It ain't just going to happen on its own passively. So I, on my drive over, I was listening to your podcast about discipline, commitment, and consistency. And, um, you know, I think that there's this, when people hear the word discipline, most people kind of cringe a little bit, right? Because we think discipline is militant. Discipline is hard. Discipline is punishment, right? And what I've learned is that discipline is freedom, right? I think Jocko Willink says this. I actually have it tattooed on my hand because of how powerful when I read that book, Discipline Equals Freedom. I was like, okay. But when he says it in his book, discipline, in my opinion, is the greatest gift human beings can have. And the beauty of discipline is that it's free and it's available for all of us. It just is. and running a business, being a great dad and a great husband, taking care of yourself and staying fit and eating well. And like that requires discipline. It's free. It's just free. Like a lot of the time we have a, we, we can't get out of our own way, you know, in my opinion. and I've helped so many guys over the years come out of the darkness and start to see the light when it comes to recovery and sobriety and sometimes I just want to shake them and be like dude all you got to do is do it like stop asking questions stop trying to find an easier way all you got to do is do it that's it like how do you start you got to do it you got to do it like nothing is coming on a platter no one is going to take you walk you across the line and and and and i know it's it's so much harder than you just got to do it but at the end of the day that is a fact it's simple it's simple and what i have like i've kind of created this philosophy called the three c's which i think kind of help paint the picture because you know just because it's simple or just because it's simple does not at all mean it's going to be easy exactly they're very people assume they are synonyms simple and easy but they can be very contrasting totally So I think that the number one most powerful skill to master is commitment. I think everything and anything you want to do that you'll want to tell stories about, as you want to tell your grandkids about, requires commitment. It's the number one. The cool thing about commitment is that it's really, really hard, especially if it's a big change. Commitment is like one of the hardest things. Long-term commitment is very, very tough. But the cool thing about commitment is that commitment breeds faster than any other thing you can do. Commitment breeds confidence. it just it blossoms confidence because once you understand this concept that oh wait a second I can commit to this like I can do this I can stop drinking for five days I can go to six days I can go to six days I can go to seven days wait he did tell me to like go outside for a walk you know after the seventh day I'm going to go outside for a walk well walking makes me feel good I'm going to commit to the walk and I'm not going to commit to the not drinking. And then before you know it, you start to begin to understand how this commitment breeds confidence component. So you got commitment, breeds confidence. And then once you, and I'm not talking about in an egotistical or a conceited, cocky way, confidence. I'm talking about just like starting to feel good in your own skin. starting to feel like you are, whether you win or lose, you have the ability to execute. Stand firm in what you believe and what you accomplish and what you know you are capable of. Yeah, it's confidence in the most humble way possible. Totally. So this commitment, bringing confidence piece is where you can live for a long time, like years. and then ultimately with enough confidence and enough trying and failing and trying and succeeding you begin to develop courage and there's a lot of courage that's required for commitment but there's a difference between courage that you're confident about and courage that you're like alright I'm going to die if I don't do this right confident courage is what people write books about that's really good that's boldness it's knowing that you have done enough of the thing to be able to step through the next door you've been here enough you've done you've been consistent enough you've gotten feedback enough that you're willing to wanting to and have been encouraged to by just organic feedback from others and from your outcomes that you can then go open a business, that you can then go run a triathlon or do a triathlon, that you can then go run 100 miles. You don't know if you're going to finish that 100-mile race, but you've run 10 miles enough to say, you know what? I'm going to go for this. Going from never running to 100 miles rarely ever happens. Maybe David Goggins might be the first guy to ever do that, right? But that succession, commit, reach confidence, and then ultimately they write books about courageous people all the time. I really love that courageous confidence and like as you were saying that I had these images come into my mind so I'm just going to try to like describe what's like going on in my mind right now do that there's like three words or three descriptions one confidence two courage and three selflessness and I think there's three things I think that's what makes a man a man and what separates a boy from a man. Being a selfless servant and leader, being confident and being courageous. Because you can be confident without being courageous, but that lacks boldness. You don't know what you stand for, what you believe in. You are wavering in conforming to the world. If I think of like the men I respect and look up to the most in the world, they're selfless servants and leaders. They are very confident but they're courageous. They're bold. They are unapologetic with what they're doing, what they speak into, what they believe in. and I think if not just men but more people put those three characteristic traits on a board and look at those every day how do I become more selfless how do I breed more confidence how do I be more courageous we would have more success we would have greater contributing members of society in this world that aren't trying to conform to what is worldly or normal or accepted, but what is renewed, reborn, reimagined, transforming this world into something great. That spoke to me a lot. Cool. Courage is powerful. I mean, if you are... when I think of courage really funny enough the vision that I think of is the gladiator the movie it's one of my favorite movies of all time love that movie so much and it takes a certain kind of person that is willing to go out and face whatever is on the other side of the door. This notion or the buzz of soft men, men being softer, it's inevitable. We're given way too many creature comforts, right? We're just, there's too many ways to not be less courageous, right? Like, you don't have to get up. You know, when you think about consistency, only into like the last maybe 100 years or so, right? Maybe 150 years. Human beings were doing the exact same thing every single day. It wasn't like weird to like wake up at the same time, get out into the fields and work, have lunch at the same time, eat the same thing, have dinner at the same time with the family, go to bed at the same time because you didn't get up, you know, your chickens and your cows weren't going to get what they needed to get. you know this last 150 maybe 200 years of introduction of some waiver in the human evolutionary track has taken us out of this ability to feel and do like it was there was never like a question about like oh how do i if there's something I really want to do, how do I do it? You do it. You just do it. If that means how do I get in great shape? Simple, right? Doesn't mean easy. You got to change the way you're eating and you got to move your body in ways that you have not been, you have not moved it before. Typically with some sort of resistance training and getting a certain amount of steps in on a daily basis. Yeah. Like if you just do that, anybody listening, anybody's curious about how to get in the best shape of their life, change the way you're eating, resistance train five days a week, four days a week, and walk 10,000 steps a day if you can. If you do those three things, that's it. That is the solution to that question, that problem. People ask me all the time, how do I get in better shape? Like, what should I do? It has nothing to do with the plan you're on. It has nothing to do with, you know, somebody, some great, you know, trainer coming into your life and, you know, telling you what to do. it's it's change the way you're eating walk 10 000 steps a day and lift weights three to three to five days a week that's that is literally and if you don't even have a plan if you just got into the gym and literally youtubed give me five exercises to do today go on to yeah i know we're talking technology but like go on to chat gbt and say hey give me five things to do today in the gym that's going to help me on this path. It'll give you a bazillion. That's all you got to do. How do you start a business? You start connecting with as many people that are doing what you want to do as humanly possible. And if that means that you got to go on social media and just start cold DMing people, I promise you 20 of them will say no and one of them will say yes. You just got to do it. People are like, well, what do you mean you just got to do it when it comes to business? I'm like, any way that you can get closer to people doing the things you want to do, you got to go. Yeah. Have the courage to do it. Commit to the 20 DMs a day. You'll get a lot of no's. Every no is getting you closer to a yes. Yeah. It is simpler now more than any time ever in the history of the world to succeed. and I said this on a recent podcast and I believe this fully and people are going to hear it and they're going to say, no, no, no, no, no. It is actually, in order to be successful in anything, anything, it is quite simple. It is hard. It is challenging. It is not easy, but it is quite simple. You referenced chat GPT a little bit ago. You can literally go on chat GPT and you can prompt it with a few questions. You can have a meal plan. You can have your macros. You can have your workout plan. You can have a blueprint for building a business. You can have a full business plan. You can have a marketing plan. I mean, you can have your layout for a book that you want to write. It is simpler now more than ever before to succeed. There are no excuses anymore with AI. Blessings and curses. when we started our first businesses, we didn't have the blessings of chat, GPT, and AI. It was just figuring it out. So I do strongly believe that there is no excuse now to not be successful in whatever it is you want to be successful in. The reason you're not successful, the reality is you're not willing to do the work. I do want to talk about your entrepreneurial journey because I do want to contrast between the brick and mortar restaurants and what you're now running as a D2C CPG brand going back to when you first started your first restaurant I want to know how you went from early to late teens, addiction, sobriety, and then having the confidence and the courage to start that first restaurant. Well, I guess I'll preface by saying I think I, I really do believe that some people are born with an inherent need to discover curiosity, gene. And I think that really at the core is what an entrepreneur has. I agree with that. It's an itch. It's an itch, right? One of my favorite things to do with my sons in the summertime and the spring and in the fall too is to walk out into the woods and just lift up rocks and just see what's under there. Snakes and salamanders and frogs. I'm just ferociously curious. I can't tell you why. but I just haven't. I always have been. I'm a very curious dude. I just want to know about you. When it comes to people, you could put me anywhere. My wife absolutely hates this, but I am just making friends everywhere I go because I'm curious. I want to know people. I'm just very curious. And so from an early age, we grew up in a tiny little apartment. My mom, my father, my sister and I, it was really, really tight quarters. My father was, you know, he was physically sick and he was verbally and physically abusive and he was also mentally ill. So I, you know, it was a tough situation. What that did for me though, was it, it, it made me want to look elsewhere for the things that I was trying to get at home. So I was constantly sharpening my EI skills, right? Like I knew that if I wanted to go to my friend's house and sleep over because I'd much rather sleep there than sleep at home. I needed my friend's parents to like me. And I remember so clearly in first grade sitting at Ross Delafield's house in his apartment and they had dinner around the table. And I was invited over to have dinner and I had never had dinner around the table before, but my family never once did that. And I was like, wow, this is cool. Like they're all having dinner together talking about their day. It's like, I want more of this. And I said man I got to figure out how to get Danny which is his dad and I forgot his mom's name I got to figure out how to get Danny to like me so I invite me to sleep over so I can do this more and it just like that sort of started to hone this skill for me of like understanding people understanding where I would be successful when it comes to developing relationships and I know it sounds crazy as like a first group but this is like really the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey of connecting with humans at scale. I mean, I think that's kind of like what my superpower passion is. I think that most entrepreneurs, founders, you can identify those traits and characteristics and superpowers early on. Maybe not in real time, but similar to you, like me growing up, I was displaying these characteristics and abilities that would prove to be strong skill sets for my entrepreneurial journey. So I think you can see these things developing at a young age. Totally. I mean, yes, I had a podcast before the Creatures of Habit podcast called Born or Made. and it's because I'm incredibly curious to know if Nick Bear was born with the ability to do what you've done or if you were made over time through intentional... I mean, I do think it's probably a combination of both. It's a combination of both. It's when you get to the level that you're at. But I do think it's very, very... I do believe that there is an inherent component to it. I agree. And so when I was a little kid, if I had toys that I wasn't using anymore, they didn't collect dust in the corner of my room. I would ask my older sister to come downstairs with me, and I lived in Manhattan. So I lived on a busy street in Manhattan. I would set up a blanket at five, six years old, sheet, a blanket. I'd lay it out on the corner of 87th Street and 2nd Avenue, and I'd put all my toys out on it, and I'd sell them for a buck. and I got like once I got that like the taste of blood you know of like making a transaction at a young age I was just all in like I wanted to I was like collecting cards collecting comics going to the comic book store buying a five dollar grab bag of comics taking a comic out that I wanted to read and then standing in front of the store this young kid I'd be selling comics for a buck you know like I just always had this make do create grow mindset uh anyway I can relate to that But yeah, like I just felt like this, I was like, it was a good feeling when I was able to like have a win like that, you know, at a young age. And so I also gravitated towards sports. So I was an athlete as a kid and I loved winning that way. You know, like I really was like, I became very passionate about hockey. I played a lot of hockey, whether it was street hockey, I ended up getting into ice hockey. but around 12 13 years old it just got really ugly at my parents house where i grew up you know my in our apartment and um it was just bad it was violent my father and i became very violent with each other and uh and he was home sick on permanent disability essentially a hoarder and i just didn't want to be there anymore just didn't want to be there child services were involved because the Cops had been called a number of times. Eventually, at around 13 years old, I started to drink and smoke pot. I was already smoking cigarettes. At that point, I really mastered the skill of convincing my friends' parents to like me. So I was never at home. I barely stayed at home. I was always sleeping out. And so at 15, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Child services basically showed up at the house. My father and I got into a fight. They said to my mother, look, you know, this is unsafe for your child here. Either he's going to have to go, your son, or your father. One of them has to go. We can't. This is too, you know, it's too dangerous. And it put my mother in a very uncomfortable position because my mom was also abused and scared of my dad. So I made it easy on her. And I said to her, hey, tell the child services people that, you know, we're going to figure this out over the next 24 hours. I'm going to leave. How old are you at this point? 15. 15. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to leave. You know, I'm, I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about a 15 year old kid, but I was basically like, you know, I'm going to be okay. I've been doing this a long time now. It's not like I'm like for the first time sleeping out of the house. I was like, but I'm much happier to leave than have to have you deal with the crazy guy. And so I did. I left and stayed in high school, but I moved out. And I was really, at that point at 15, I was fully addicted to drugs and alcohol. Are your parents still alive? My father passed away a long time ago. He passed away 25 years ago. So not long after I moved out five years after. Do you still have a relationship with your mom? Yeah. Yeah. My mom and I have a relationship. I love my mom. She's been through a lot. She hasn't been dealt the easiest hand. And she's got a lot of stuff, but I love her to death. And I do my absolute very best. I have a tattoo on my arm here that says, Bless you, change me. My grandma used to say this to me all the time, and she was my father's mother. and she was the most influential person in my life, my grandmother from little, little kids. She was just the most wonderful grandmother ever and she felt so sad that my dad was the way he was. She obviously didn't know what to do but she was a very spiritual person and I used to call her and be like, grandma, this is so bad and she used to say, honey, I know but there's nothing you're going to be able to do to change your dad the best advice I can give you is every time you know you're going to walk into a situation with him and it's not going to be fun just have a saying in your head and say bless you change me and I was like always say that bless you change me and I think that that is like if you can live your life like that we're like you're not going to allow someone's way of living, someone's thought processes, someone's actions, someone's thoughts to impact you And you also not going to try to you know project the way you live onto onto others and get disappointed because chances of them taking the bait on that are slim If you can say, you know what, bless you. If I want to feel good in this situation, the one that's got to change is me. And so I practice that with my mom. I'm not going to change her. She's setting her way. She is who she is. And I love her. if I want to be able to manage her like where I don't get frustrated when we talk the only person I got to change is me and so that's been powerful for me so I moved out I was crazy I was running the streets of New York using drugs, selling drugs getting into trouble I wouldn't wish me on any parent I just wouldn't at that stage in my life I was a real rebel and I was terrified I was scared so I drank a lot and I did a lot of drugs and I was not a tough guy but I pretended to be you know getting into fights and doing all this stuff that like you know if my son was doing it'd take all the power for me not to just you know grab him throw him in the car and like drive far far far away and hold him in a house with me for like a year and just watch him just not let him do what he's going to do. This is not some like small town in Texas this is the streets of New York City. Yeah. So there's real stuff going on there. Oh, I mean, I was, you know, I got pistol whipped, duct taped, tied up, thrown in the bathtub, you know, robbed, you know. Bad. It was bad. Yeah, I can imagine. It was ugly. So I lived this really, you know, but by the way, I should just say that, like, in the beginning, it did save me. Like, I was suicidal at 12. I was, like, put into a mental institution because I slit my wrist in front of my father thinking that he was going to come and save me and love me and give me a hug and tell me he loved me. And he like kicked my ass. And they put me into a pain with me because they thought I was like, I didn't really want to kill myself, but I was ultimately cry for help, you know. But the alcohol and drugs came, you know, shortly thereafter. And I really do believe like blanketed that period of my life where I was like, I was actually able to feel okay. Got you out of it. Got me out of it. So, you know, all through my teens, I was working in restaurants, working in nightclubs. I graduated high school. I actually did a year of college. And from like, my father died when I was 20. It was a wonderful excuse to just continue to just get crazy and get worse with my addiction and dive deeper. And people around me were kind of like, oh, his father just died. In my mind, I was like, this is a perfect excuse for me to just go double down on it. And so from 20 to 23, it was just dark, just super dark. I hated myself, truly hated myself. People loved me. They did. I mean, I am who I am. I care about humans. um it was one of those classics uh the only outside bright bubbly personable but the inside dying dying and then when the when the drugs shifted from predominantly like alcohol and cocaine to heroin which was like the last six months of my addiction years I was genuinely dying I didn't think so if I really think back on it like I was still working I mean I always had a job legit job always had a job in a restaurant but I was dying late July, summer 2004 New York City I was with this woman in this apartment we were using heroin for probably three days straight sleeping, getting up, using, you know. And I had just used some heroin. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I was naked. I looked. There was a mirror at the head of the bed. And I was sitting on the edge of the bed. And I remember it like it was yesterday. And I looked to my right. And I saw my reflection in the mirror. And from my forehead to my toes, I was white like this, kind of like this. Like I had been pale and looked gray and green, you know. in my face, my hands. I've seen my hands. Like I remember my hands would get super pale. I'd never seen my chest, my stomach, my legs, everything just white like a ghost. And it scared the daylights out of me. And so I jumped up, blacked out. Face plant, dead. I OD'd. And I remember her shaking me, grabbing me. And I kind of remember coming to, call the ambulance. She was terrified, didn't want to call the ambulance. She somehow got me into the bathtub. She dragged me into the bathtub and threw me on my back in the bathtub and then just turned the cold water on. She was terrified to call the ambulance. She didn't call the ambulance. I could have very well just died in that apartment. But the cold water was on my chest and I remember sort of coming in and out of consciousness. And then finally I came out. And I got back into that bed and I lied in that bed for a couple of hours shaking, shivering, terrified. just terrified thinking that I just I just she was like you stop breathing I started to feel a little bit of life come back into me and I remember walking I left out I left the apartment at like four or five in the afternoon walking west on 13th street towards uh Avenue B and I had said to myself, dude, this is the bottom of the rope. You cannot do this anymore. You must stop. You just died. It does not get worse. It doesn't get worse. You will die if you continue doing this you just did and i got to my apartment and i couldn't stop i couldn't stop four hours later i was right right back at it using again yeah i couldn't stop and so i have such empathy for people that are addicted to drugs and have an addictive personality and and you know their family their friends the public are just like how could you not see this is a can't you just it's not easy it's really hard when you walk around with a force field a feeling force field when you've taken enough action to dig a deep enough hole where you're just never not covered in dirt and you have this ability to just numb that out you're dirty as hell you haven't showered in years you're just covered in dirt in this dark dark hole, but there's this way to forget about all that for just a period of time. You just want to continue forgetting because you don't know that there's a way to find a branch or find a vine that you can just start pulling yourself out. Anyway, I went on a two-week death march, had basically said to myself, this is how you're going to die. You don't have the balls to kill yourself. Just get it done with the drugs. Just do as much as you can. Just get it done. And somehow, someway, I didn't. I didn't die. The morning of August 2nd, 2004, I came to in my room. After being up for about three or four days, I'd slept 16 hours. I blacked out. And I remember right before that, there was a real conversation I was having with myself about just jumping out the window. But I just didn't have the courage. I didn't have the courage to do it. I didn't really care about anybody else. I didn't care about myself. I just didn't have the balls to end it that way. I'm so grateful that I didn't have the courage to do that. But I came to, and I remember the sun coming through the window. And I had slept through work for the umpteenth time. called my boss said frank i'm sorry man he's like mike come downstairs i lived upstairs from the bar that i worked in and he said uh mikey i love you and he was he really did you know he was like my surrogate dad at the time you know and i was like yeah he hired me two and a half years before so and everybody like i said like people love mikey the bartender you know people love being around me i mean i i i was like uh i i was a guy i am right here but i was just fun fun but just scared of life and i just used all these substances i knew people like this in college who were alive at the party everyone wanted them around when it was time to party but then when it wasn't time to party no one called these people right and these people were in a dark dark place and i can see how you you find yourself in those situations where you need to keep being the life of the party because that's when people want you and need you and invite you back so it's your identity and it was also the only people that i associated with right because a lot of people around me were doing the things i was doing right because they just were like i wasn't i wasn't hanging out with you know the guys going to the gym um so anyway i remember the sun coming through frank calling me up i went down to the restaurant he told me he loved me but he told me he had to fire me he's like you're dying dude everybody knows it you're you know like you need help you need to get sober and so many people have said that to me over the years i mean i was in outpatient rehab when I was 16, you know, for whatever reason, when Frank said that to me that day, I just heard that word sober, like a, like an echo chamber. It was like, and I begged him for my job because it was the only thing kind of like tethering me to like any semblance of life, right? Everything outside of that place was just debauchery and ugly. and he said look you know if you get sober I won't let you work behind the bar I will not let you work in this restaurant at night but if you get sober you can come here and clean the restaurant with the porters at 8am and you call me when you get here if you're a minute late you're fired if I find out you have a sip of alcohol you're done drugs of any kind I'll know I'll find out you're done and I went back upstairs sun was still coming through the window and it was God right there God just showed up just right then and there right through the window in my bedroom I felt I just don't know what happened but I got the grace of God showed up in my life and told me to make a phone call and I called my friend Karen I told her I was ready to get help she called her friend Marcus her boyfriend Marcus Marcus showed up and saved my life and I haven't had a single sip of alcohol or a drug since that day that's amazing yeah and so So Marcus introduced me to wellness. He was this weird wellness guru covered in tattoos, hardcore Muay Thai kickboxer, showed up, listened to my story, asked me to tell my story and wrote this plan for me that day. And he said, you know, this is going to be a very structured plan. You don't seem like the kind of guy that can manage structure right now. And he's like, you don't have to do this. but if you do success is inevitable success you have no idea you're 23 you haven't even begun you start doing these things now you'll live a life way beyond anything you can imagine and I wanted to believe him and I think the thing that Marcus did for me was he was a really cool guy that I wanted right away his energy the way he looked the way he listened to me I wanted to impress him I wanted to be like him I wanted him to pat me on the back and I think that is really also a very key element for people in sobriety or people that want to get sober trying to find someone who they really want as a mentor an aspirational human that they can sit with and then I decided that I wanted to go back to school about a year after I got sober. So I was going to go to culinary school and really open up a restaurant. And so I went back to culinary school while I was doing the culinary arts program. Cornell had partnered with the French Culinary Institute to create a restaurant management program, which is like Cornell's got the best hospitality program in the country, arguably the world. And so they came together with FCI. They offered one scholarship. the scholarship was to write a fully baked business plan and submit it. And, you know, if they thought it was good enough, you know, whoever, they were going to give a full scholarship to one person. And I wrote the plan. I don't know how many other people wrote the plan, but I got the scholarship. And so I spent a little, I don't know, two and a half years there. When I graduated, I started writing a plan, like a real business plan. and I spent a year working on the plan, and I convinced my old friend Daniel to come back to New York and do this with me, and at this point, I'm like 27, and I've been working at Frank since I was 20, so all the regulars at this restaurant have kind of seen me go from this young, fun, party animal kid to getting sober to meeting a woman. I got married in 2007 that like basically that year that I graduated I got married and and I and then going back to school anyway these guys sell the Ark that's cool to see the evolution I put a plan in front of all these regulars business plan and 14 of them wrote me $25,000 checks and that's how I started the meatball shop all the guys that watched me sort of grow at Frank the restaurant invested in the business. And so we opened up the meatball shop and it was just crazy. It was gangbusters. We projected to do like a million bucks our first year. We did four million. Is that with one shop? One store. Yeah. A thousand square feet, all in 38 seats. It was nuts. I was checking on the Instagram of the meatball shop and it made me instantly crave meatball balls. Is it still... Is the menu, is the operations, is the vision still intact today from what it first started as? It's very different because you're no longer operational in the meatball shop, correct? No, I sold the majority of my equity at Meatball Shop in 2014 and then started Seymour's, which is my second restaurant concept. I kept equity in the business because I love the business. but I Daniel my partner and I just couldn't see eye to eye we had a couple of things happen that was pretty tough for us to navigate together partnerships are really hard you know that's what I've heard yeah they're hard and we had an opportunity to really do a deal that would have changed our lives and still owned a significant piece of the business and I couldn't convince him that that was the right decision and when I knew that the two of us had started we each invested 20,000 bucks of money that we've saved. And we had an opportunity to sell, you know, 60% of the business at a $45 million valuation that would have changed our lives drastically. Yeah. And he thought it was worth more. I told him, I was like, dude, you're nuts. Like, you're crazy. This valuation is way inflated. And he was like, we have a store in construction. We have a store in negotiation. Seven months down the road, we'll open up that store. six, you know, 10 months down the road, we'll have another store. And I'm like, Dan, the business is worth like $25 million. These guys want the business. They want to spread these across the country, man. They want us to say yes to the deal. And it's the same guys that did Shake Shack. David Swinghammer and Ken Fox from Stripes Group. Anyway, couldn't convince them. I knew that that was my cue to like go create again because I that just didn't make sense to me. I was like, dude, in three and a half years, you will have turned 20,000 into 10 million personally. Come on. Great return. Dude, and still owning 15, 20% of the business. Yeah, it's, I think it's the downfall of many entrepreneurs and founders is, you know, in this period of time, your business may be worth X. And at any period of time, you can say, yeah, but one year from now, three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, it'll be worth X plus. That is always the case, potentially. What's your goal with Creations of Habit? Do you want to build for it to be a a legacy family company or is it something that you're building to sell? I'm building it to sell it. I know now at this point in my career that I really, really love community, culture, brand, creativity, connecting. And I think those are at their peak within the first 10 years of building a business. and and i could be wrong but from my experience specifically in the world of restaurants what i saw was i went from one restaurant to six restaurants and sold a bunch of equity i went from six restaurants to 13 restaurants and what i learned was my role as the founder CEO of the company was real estate deals, managing construction crews, and leading management meetings. That was the brunt of my job. Leadership meetings, managing construction crews, and doing real estate deals, dealing with landlords essentially. And I was like, that's not what I signed up for. I signed up because I love being with the people. I love being with the people I was like New York City's youngest restaurant guy like owner if you saw me in the restaurant and you didn't know who I was chances are you thought I was a server or a busboy and I was down with that because I was always serving bus and tables because I loved it I spent many years as a technician there's an unbelievable book that I always love to suggest aspiring entrepreneurs to read it's called The E-Myth Revisited by a guy named Michael Gerber. I've never heard of that one. Great book. Basically, he describes this idea that just because you're a technician does not mean you are going to be a great owner. Just because you're the greatest plumber at the plumbing company doesn't mean that you're going to be the great plumbing company owner. That's true. If you are going, and it also clearly defines what partnership has to be in order for it to be successful. If you're going to go into partnership with someone, you need to have a very, very clear delineation of labor. You need to know very clearly what you are going to do, very clearly what your partner is going to do. And there needs to be a boundary between the two of you that is deeply respected. Deeply, deeply, deeply respected. And if that boundary starts to get crossed and if someone thinks they're doing more than the other person, you start valuing your role to their role, it's over. It's just over. resentment is birthed in destruction and erosion from there is just chaotic but I can imagine the brick and mortar space is just it's different from e-com, CPG but tougher I think the human capital component of it makes it really really hard because at any given time 10-15% of the people are not having a good day you know it's just life right Like you're lucky if 10% of your life is awesome. I mean, if you only have 10% of your life, that sucks, right? Like most of the time, I would say 85% of my days are great where I'm happy. 15%, right? Just like can't shake a shitty feeling, you know? And so at any given time, you got to know that 15% or something like that of your team is having that day. and every time that a guest or a customer comes in contact with someone like that, they tell their friends that they had a shitty experience. And so, you know, and in the restaurant business, dissimilar to e-com, where I don't know, I mean, we have how many different opportunities to market, how many different marketing strategies, how many, you know, you've got so many ways to get in front of people. In the restaurant business, they've got to walk by. You know what I mean? They have to walk by your place. Or you've got to have some kind of local PR thing that hits. They have to live close by to use the product or service. So the only way to efficiently market in the restaurant business is through offering the greatest experience. it is you know when people used to ask me in the world when i was when i was like when i was kind of like had evolved a little bit in my role as a restaurateur people would say what do you do and i know it sounds corny but it's just way more fulfilling to me to say i'm a memory maker than i own restaurants because what do i really do i make memories for people all day long my number one priority number one goal as a business person is to create a memory that you tell your friends about that's all i'm trying to do and the memory comes from great service good food cool environment good music good lighting you know it all is kind of like a medley yeah you know and um you know like i think where the things get hairy and this was for me you know when my role became far less about the hands-on, boots-on-the-ground stuff, leading the business with a P&L just never sat well with me. And when the money guys get involved, because they did in my businesses, all they care about is what that piece of paper matters. And I used to say, like, we used to start our board meetings with the numbers. and I'd look around and I'd say, hey guys, I'm just going to say it again. This never happened. A guest walked into our restaurant, looked around, smelled all the smells and said, gosh, I wonder what the P&L is like in this place. Never not happened one time. And you're prioritizing the one thing that the guests never, ever come into contact with or think about. And the only sign of success for us is if they walk out the door 10% happier than when they walked in. It's only got to be 10%. It's not big. Your number one priority is the paper. That you can really make say anything, right? You can project it to say anything you want. the truth is in the experience and that's what's tough for me it's the battle between the subjective feedback versus the objective feedback and objective feedback and results will tell a story but the solution isn't often objective in itself it's a subjective problem solving approach that said I am like I really believe that I am I am more aligned in creatures of habit than I've ever been in business before because creatures of habit is it's given me an opportunity to really share what share some habits and tools that I've used in my life that's only brought me joy and happiness foundational wellness my habits almost killed me and then they created me and I just know that habit like habit is everything the same decisions over and over again people are like oh that's so boring I'm like no no no not when you're getting better every time there's power in it there's power in habit power in consistency commitment ritual it's been powerful in my life and I mean it's fundamental it's a principle I mean if you do something for the first time you're not going to be great at it but if you continue doing it you're going to get better at it it's just the way life is and that is why ultimately habits work because you know i think in the beginning it's hard and then it becomes a chore and then you continue in the chore phase long enough it becomes a habit and then habits you know could last forever especially if you're intentional about them because you'll just you will see that you will get better and better and better i go to the gym, training for me is, you know, life. It's like, it's life. I wouldn't know what to do without it. It wasn't always like that. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like going to train in some way, shape or form is just not even a thought like, oh, am I going to do it? It's just, I do it you know it's part of your day part of your life non-negotiable yeah you know it's cool to see witness and now hear this story and see where you started and the journey to where you are today and the highs and lows and everything in between I think it's an inspiration to a lot of people of you know you look at someone at where they're at in a point of time and you probably think oh I know exactly how this person got here you have no clue no clue I'm sure now you don't even recognize the person you are and what you've accomplished compared to the person you were at 17, 18, 19, 20 years old almost dying from overdose but the journey is so beautiful and so rewarding and it's a reminder to everyone no matter where you're at today it can change tomorrow never too late man never too late it's amazing brother thank you man but i appreciate you coming on man and sharing the story and just insight into what it's taken to get to where you are today thank you man it's really powerful thank you for having me and dude you've been such an inspiration you know i mean just in in all things you know i i when i when i also you know i see what you've done with this brand and you've done it's just it's it's it's like and i'm sure you probably have a lot of things to say about this but just like for a guy that's just coming into this industry uh you know four years in and and just seeing how you've done it um the community that you've built dude is just incredible i appreciate that it's incredible thank you and also hearing you talk about god right like that's inspiring for me i would encourage you to to lean in and be unapologetic, be courageous and bold in that walk. Because in my opinion and in my walk since completing my life, it has been the best decision I've ever made. And it's put all the pieces that I've been trying for years to just match together. my life was this puzzle where I just cannot finish the puzzle I cannot put it all together putting God above all other things allowed me to sit back and start to move some of those puzzle pieces that's where they belong now things make sense because there's the truth there's the way the only way so I'm pumped to hear that you're on this journey and like I said, if I can be a resource in any way. I'm going to knock on your door, man. Let me know. I appreciate you having me on, dude. Thanks, man. ... ... ... ... ... ... ...