Khalil Rafati: From Heroin to Hero, Healing through Nutrition, & Faith | MMP #212
So what is happening?
Speaker 2:Everything's happening. Everything's happening. Glad to be here.
Speaker 3:It's a long time coming. Right? We've been going back and forth for a while. Yeah. And you don't you actually don't know this story.
Speaker 3:So Harry and I first got down to Austin, Was October October of last year?
Speaker 1:October '1 '20 '20 '1.
Speaker 3:So we got out of the Northeast, quit the jobs, did iron we were doing Ironman Waco. So that was kind of our stint to get to Austin. It was, like, just do this big race, and we got an Airbnb. And then Harry ended up staying here full time. I went to San Diego, came back.
Speaker 3:But October was when we first both came out here. It was a huge event for us. So we had found out, oh, you gotta go check out South Congress. The first shop we went into was Sun Life. We walked by.
Speaker 3:We had never heard of Sun Life before. We see this beautiful storefront. We walk in, and we were like, damn. It just we feel good in here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We
Speaker 3:got the Wolverine. Little Wolverine Noble combo would be amazing in the future. Just turn
Speaker 2:that out there. For sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, so that was, like, one of our first forays in Austin. It was, like, kind of a reminder that we're on the right path. Yeah. And then learned about you, your incredible story, and we were like, we just wanna meet this guy and have him on the show. Thanks, man.
Speaker 3:So to go from that to, like, now getting you involved in Noble and being friends, it's like it's a very cool turning point for
Speaker 2:us too.
Speaker 3:So we just wanna let you know that.
Speaker 2:Well, everything everything felt very natural. And, you know, from the moment we met at some Arena Hall.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Arena
Speaker 2:Hall. We met, like, I don't even know what that was. I don't know why I was invited. I don't know, like, everyone there had, like, a fucking master's degree and doctor. Everyone was, like, changing the world, and then, you know, like, introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, I used to smoke crack and shoot heroin, and people started laughing. And I was like, no. I'm serious. And then people were like, oh. Like, I literally didn't know why.
Speaker 2:I know that guy. What's the guy's name? He's a
Speaker 1:Evan.
Speaker 2:Evan. Yeah. He's he's an amazing guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's a super connector, but I just don't know what I was doing there. And I don't even know how or why I showed up. I think I showed up because I didn't show up at his last event, and I felt bad. And I showed up at this one because I felt obligated, and we were sitting next to
Speaker 3:one another. Each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That was intentional. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were
Speaker 3:As you know
Speaker 2:oh, it felt it felt it just felt great. It felt normal. It felt like it felt like we were sort of like
Speaker 1:The outcast.
Speaker 2:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:Outcast United.
Speaker 2:It really did. I was like, wait. These guys have what they call the meat mafia? That's fucking amazing.
Speaker 3:They're like, I'm in. Yeah. Like, I'm an honorary.
Speaker 2:Well, I love it I love it because, you know, for so many years, I was attacked by the vegan community. I was attacked I I would we were the first two spa in the country to have bone broth. And and and by the way, the girl who suggested that we bring bone broth in was to to my knowledge, a hardcore vegan. Mhmm. She was sickly.
Speaker 2:She had all kinds of health problems and she had just came back from New York City. And she was like, I just tried this stuff. It's bone broth. You have to bring it in. You have to bring it in.
Speaker 2:My business partner was adamantly my ex business partner was adamantly opposed to bringing it in. And I tried it, and I was obsessed, and I brought it in. And like people flipped out on me. People were like, this is disgusting. How dare you?
Speaker 2:I'm not coming here anymore. And not just with that, but, like, even in the beginning when when I was putting colostrum and the million dollar smoothie and a couple of other smoothies, I I remember I'm gonna leave his name out of it even though I I wanna fucking say something so bad. But a very famous rock star and, you know, well known vegan. And, I didn't know him from Adam. I mean, I knew him because I was a fan, but I didn't know him.
Speaker 2:And he he, like, came right in and started giving me a lecture about, you know, that's disgusting and those poor baby, you know, goats aren't getting their proper new and I'm just like, dude, I like I've been to the ranch. Relax. Yeah. I know I know what's going on up there. We kill the baby goats, and then we steal the colostrum.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm just kidding. No. But, like, I know I know that these are people that engage in regenerative farming. This is twelve years ago.
Speaker 2:No one talked about regenerative farming back then.
Speaker 3:A %.
Speaker 2:He flipped out on me. And then, like, within a couple of days, I had these, like, hot Malibu moms from the community coming in and, like, hi. Like, I I heard you're putting yak semen in these smoothies. And I'm like Oh, my god. Oh, I wonder where you heard that from.
Speaker 2:Here's the craziest shit. So left Malibu Two And A Half Years ago. Went through some shit. My mother was dying, you know, dark night of the soul, which we all go through usually two or three of those. And, I'm talking to my friend, who I love.
Speaker 2:She's a big Austinite, but she lives in in Malibu. And she brought the guy up and I was like, I'm like, fuck that guy. That guy's like hates me because I put colostrum in smoothies. And she's like, no no no. He's amazing and you gotta come to this event and I'll, you know, I'll get you in.
Speaker 2:You don't have to pay for it. I'm like, I don't wanna go. The guy's like nasty, like, angry vegan. And she's like, Khalil, what are you talking about? He's, like, full carnivore diet.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, no. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about so and so. She goes, yes. He is on, like, almost, like, exclusively meat with a little bit of fruit and a little bit of honey. And I'm like, you've gotta be kidding me. She goes, no.
Speaker 2:He went to the doctor because he was having all kinds of health problems, and the doctor literally said to him, if you don't start eating meat, you're going to die.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I remember his I don't know if it was one of his bodyguards or, like, one of those, like, hanger on cool guys that gets to live in those mansions for free because they're good at working out or surfing or paddle boarding, whatever.
Speaker 1:Just living the life?
Speaker 2:Yes. He was hardcore into, eating meat and and all that stuff, and he had reached out to me. So, you know, secretly, I've always wanted to, like, stomp my feet and say, guys, listen. Yes. I get it.
Speaker 2:I own a juice bar that is, you know, I would say 80% plant based. Right? Which is good, which is fine. But colostrum and bone marrow and and raw liver and and bison and all of those things, like like cow heart from Amish country, like, that is the stuff that took me from a hundred and nine pound corpse into a hundred and seventy one pound athlete. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That's how it happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's part of the reason why Harry and I were so excited to have you on the show because I think just the nature of Sun Life, it being primarily smoothie driven, people just assume, you know, when you were going through your recovery process, oh, it must have just been, like, plant based foods. And you were the one that was telling me, no. Twenty years ago, I was into Ogenus and the raw primal diet. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And those are things that we did to really get our health under control. Like, our story is really our show is people a collection of people's stories that healed themselves through similar measures to what you did. Oh, nice. And we didn't know that you were twenty years ahead of all this stuff.
Speaker 2:Almost twenty. So I was a vegetarian that occasionally ate fish for eleven years. And then when I got clean and sober, I went through a bunch of different crazy fad diets that all revolved around basically being a vegan, but also I would go back and forth between being a raw vegan because that was all the craze twenty years ago. So David Avocado Wolf, it's hard to say that name without giggling. He's a super cool guy, by the way.
Speaker 1:Is that his actual name?
Speaker 2:His name's David Wolf, but they call him Avocado. I don't know. Avocado Wolf. He he's he's actually really he's a cool guy. I met him, and I like him a lot.
Speaker 2:But he wrote a book called The Sun Food Diet, twenty years ago that was insanely popular. And then there was a guy named Giuliano that lived in Santa Monica, and he had a restaurant called Raw. And the vegan raw food diet had just exploded onto the scene. And, you know, me being desperate and try to grab onto anything to give myself energy, I grabbed onto it. And and by the way, anyone who's eating a traditional American diet, meaning shit.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. If you switch to being a raw vegan or being a vegan, you're gonna feel fucking incredible Mhmm. For about three months.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:You are going to you'll be bouncing off the walls with energy. You'll be shitting five times a day. Mucoid plaque is gonna come out of you. There's gonna be tons of incredible benefits. If we stopped and went on a raw food diet right now for the next thirty days, we our skin would be glowing, everything that, you know, the colors like, there's nothing wrong with incorporating, you know, raw vegan foods into your into your diet or occasionally going on that type of a diet.
Speaker 2:But for me personally, long term, my health began to suffer. I was always hungry. I was always irritable and cranky. I mean, that's sort of my personality as well, but, much more so when when I was on a raw vegan diet. So I was like eight months sober.
Speaker 2:I was cooking brisket. I love to cook for people. I love to serve people. I love to feed people. I was cooking a brisket for a bunch of people from a 12 step program that I was a part of.
Speaker 2:And, and it was so fun and everyone was so happy and it was this beautiful brisket and I seasoned the shit out of it and, you know, took it off the barbecue And Robbie, my sponsor, was like, slice it up really nice and and, you know, bring it out, put it on the table on this platter. I'm like, okay. Awesome. And there was no thought process. There was no internal battle.
Speaker 2:Nothing happened other than I reached down. I grabbed a a piece of the the meat, which was, you know, pretty raw ish, you know, medium rare, but more rare. And I just I put it in my mouth and I started to chew on it. My mouth is watering even thinking about it because I remember how fucking good it tasted. And, you know, being on a raw vegan diet and coming off of eleven years of being a vegetarian slash vegan, occasional pescatarian, man, there was something so right about it.
Speaker 2:There was a there was a a primal moment there. There was, like, you know, talk about life force flowing into my body. And that what what's your audience like, dudes? Like you? I'm just trying to Yeah.
Speaker 2:Figure out how I can talk. Yeah. Absolutely. So I swear everything. Okay.
Speaker 2:Nothing's up for you. I I fucked that night like a world champion. Like, I fought brisket. Like, you well, yes. From having that food in me.
Speaker 2:And I remember my girlfriend as I was just tearing at the brisket, she was like, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know. It just feels right. It just feels right. Sex that night, amazing.
Speaker 2:I thought the stars were gonna fall out of the sky, and my sleep was like fucking I slept in godlike repose. I mean, like, babies don't sleep as well as I slept that night. And I woke up the next day and something just felt different. And I was like, you know what? I'm fucking starving myself.
Speaker 2:This is silly. This is a big part of this is my identity telling people that I'm a vegan and I'm raw vegan and, you know, the waiter wouldn't even come up to the table before I'm announcing, like, by the way, I I'm a vegan, so I just need to know what your vegan options are. Like, what was I doing? I was desperately trying to find an identity in a diet. And and that's sad, and I'm man enough to admit that.
Speaker 2:And that doesn't mean that people are vegans are doing what I did. I'm I'm telling people what I did, not not what other people are doing. My personal journey with not just the vegan diet, but with many different diets over the last fifty three years or however long I've been feeding myself, probably forty years, There was a part of me that was searching for an identity. At the end of the day, after that happened, I was hanging out with a kid named Elijah who was a lead singer of this band, Deadsy. They were fucking awesome.
Speaker 2:Hopefully get back together at some point. And he told me about this place called Rossum, which Agenus was involved with. And it was in Venice, and it was like this gray market, you know, thing. You had to have a card. It was, like, membership only.
Speaker 2:And he took me there, and we bought massive jars of raw honey, bison liver, every you know, everything. Duck eggs, fertile duck eggs, tons of raw goat milk from Amish country. And we took it back to his mom's house, which was also pretty incredible, his mom, Cher. So I was, like, in Cher's house for the first time, like, looking out over the ocean. I felt so fucking cool.
Speaker 2:That's wild. That is wild. It was fun. It was neat. And she's an amazing lady.
Speaker 2:But he started taking the stuff and throwing it in a blender and putting, like, fertile raw duck eggs in there and raw fermented, butter and bison liver and then berries and then honey and then raw cream on top. And we drank that shit. Dude, it was like drugs. It was like Is
Speaker 1:that the origins of Sun Life?
Speaker 2:Oh, dude. Well, it wasn't the origins of Sun Life, but it definitely it had something to do with the beginnings of Sun Life. And what breaks my heart is when we first opened Sun Life, I was bringing some of that stuff in and, I was making it for the Hemsworth brothers because they were all living in Malibu at that time. They don't live there anymore. But I was making I was using raw products and making these smoothies for them.
Speaker 2:And my ex partner flipped out of me and she was like, if anyone ever found out, like they would be out front, like with picket signs and you can't do that. And we had also gotten busted for, serving frozen yogurt without having a license. You have to have a license to serve dairy Interesting. Which is just the weirdest shit ever. So we got we got red tagged by the health department.
Speaker 2:So that was the end of my, you know, putting raw stuff in in smoothies. That was twelve years ago, ten years ago, eight years ago. So now to see, you know, places like Air One launching raw smoothies, I'm just like, really? You know? Like Right there.
Speaker 2:I was
Speaker 3:27. Had to eat, buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 2:But it's all good because I want people to get proper nutrition. I want I want people to feel that life force flowing into them. And at the end of the day, for you guys know better than me, but for hundreds of thousands of years, we ate nose to tail. Mhmm. There was nothing other than eating nose to tail.
Speaker 2:And and and we thrived and we evolved as a species by eating nose to tail. And, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Speaker 1:Was I'm I'm surprised by how quickly you were willing to make that change over. And I'm curious if you had any sort of information that you were absorbing at the time, or were you just kinda, like, feeling it out and it was just like, this just feels like the right thing to be doing?
Speaker 2:I dove into the the information afterwards. So I met Agenus not too long after that. Fred Siegel was my mentor, and Agenus lived on Fred Siegel's property, and I also worked on Fred Siegel's property. So I got quite an education afterwards. The reason that the reason that I dove into it so, like, head first is because I'm an addict.
Speaker 2:I have a very compulsive personality. It's probably the same reason why I dove into heroin addiction head head first. Like, I I remember the first time I did heroin, you know, whenever that was twenty six years ago. Wow. I remember like it was yesterday, and it was a similar experience to having that brisket after not having red meat for eleven years, twelve years.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. It felt fucking awesome. And after I peeled myself up off the floor, I said to the guy who had given it to me, can I get this in bulk? Mhmm. That was my first question.
Speaker 2:Can I get this in bulk? Because I didn't wanna pay, you know, the the prices. I wanted to get it at a wholesale price, and I wanted to have enough where I could always have it. I love the way that heroin made me feel. I love mixing heroin with cocaine and shooting it.
Speaker 2:I love the rush. I love not feeling like me back then because I felt like a piece of shit back then, and I didn't like myself at all. And I had a lot of shame and, massive insecurities. So, my my my personality type is very compulsive and very addictive. So when I when I try something and I love it, I become obsessed with it, and I can't help but promote it.
Speaker 2:I can't help but tell all my friends about it. That's why owning a place like Sun Life Organics is so much fun because I get to try the best stuff. Well, I try a lot of shitty stuff too. But I get to try awesome stuff all the time, you know, like the shots, which maybe we'll do a little toast.
Speaker 3:We'll do a little toast. Yeah.
Speaker 2:When I when I first tried one of those, I was just like, you gotta be kidding me. This shit is amazing. Like, I want this in my store. I wanna meet the owners. I wanna get involved with the company.
Speaker 2:Like, I love this stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:10,000 gear. Brian Maza was like, you know, busted my balls for wearing another brand. And he's like, you're not even a dad, but you're dressing like an awkward dad with your whatever gear there. Why don't you try some, you know, men's workout gear ten thousand? And, I think I know a lot and I'm resistant to change, and I just I didn't really pay attention to what he was saying.
Speaker 2:And, maybe a week later, this giant box of 10,000 gear showed up, and I remember putting the shorts on for the first time. And I remember the way the, the liner just like hugged my body and like kept all my shit together. And, putting on their merino wool hoodie and and heading out to collective and training with that stuff on. And, like, right away, people were like, oh, woah. That's cool.
Speaker 2:Where'd you get that? I was hooked, immediately.
Speaker 3:So Yeah. So there's, like, that obsessiveness obsessiveness to your personality where in some ways, it almost yeah. I mean, it fucked you up twenty five plus years ago, but that's also the same obsessiveness that's helping you build this incredible brand at Sun Life, build relationships with HBMN, ten thousand, all these other incredible companies.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, addiction is a superpower, and and people get confused when I say that. But addiction is a superpower because the amount of strength and perseverance and willingness and bravery and sheer fucking stupidity, it it it takes to get drugs at 03:00 in the morning to keep a $500 a day habit going. Like, how the fuck do you do that? Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 2:gotta be pretty resourceful to get that amount of dope into your arm every day. But, you know, panhandling and then and then buying in bulk and then selling, you know, spitting balloons into people's hands that they get off the bus before they go to work and going to the welfare office and getting the food stamps, like, here here's what here here, if I can leave your, listeners with any little, bit of wisdom that I've collected over the last last fifty three years of living and through a lot of heartache and pain. There's two types of people on the planet. People that talk shit and people that do shit. If you're somebody that talks shit you're gonna be miserable and your life is gonna be a wilderness of pain.
Speaker 2:You're gonna always feel like a fucking phony. You're gonna know that you're in the cheap seats booing at people instead of being on the fucking floor being one of those gladiators battling it out engaging in life. You know you're not one of those people. You're you're you're a loser sitting in the fucking cheap seats and you're just talking shit and you're character assassinating people. And the reason I can describe that so well is because that was me.
Speaker 2:That was me my whole life. I was fucking jealous of everybody and everything. And I was terrible at sports and I didn't fit in. And I had a weird name, and I grew up in rural Ohio where people weren't named Khalil. You know, people didn't have like, my mother barely spoke English.
Speaker 2:My father barely spoke English. Like, I just never I never fit in, and I spent my life just talking shit. And then by the grace of God, I bottomed out. And again, I don't wish the pain that I went through on anybody, but this is what I need people to understand. It it not only does it take the same amount of energy to be someone that does shit, to be a doer rather than a shit talker, to live a happy productive life, not only does it take the same amount of energy to be a fucking loser, a shit talker, but it actually takes less energy to be successful.
Speaker 2:It takes less energy to be a man of integrity. It takes less energy to not buy shit you can't afford, not talk shit about people behind their backs, not sit on your little phones and play keyboard critic and, you know, criticize people. And you go into a restaurant, you have a bad experience, you jump on Yelp and, you know, this place sucks and I'm gonna give it one star. Like, who the fuck has time for that? You know who has time for that?
Speaker 2:People that talk shit.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yep.
Speaker 2:And those people that talk shit are just gonna keep talking shit. And then the people that do shit, they don't they don't waste their time doing stuff like that. So what I found is it takes way less energy and way less effort to actually become massively successful and be super happy and have an amazing relationship with somebody that you love and somebody that trusts you and somebody that has your back. Mhmm. My god.
Speaker 2:The lying that I used to engage in and the cheating and the and the conniving and the manipulating and then the covering up of lies and then forgetting the lie and need to cover it up with three more lies and gotta get some drugs or alcohol in my system so I don't feel like such a piece of shit. Like, what a fucking waste of life.
Speaker 1:Yes. I'm curious. There's I think change change happens in two forms, really. It's you can add things to your life or you can get rid of things. And, obviously, the obvious one for you is getting rid of the drug and alcohol or drug addiction.
Speaker 1:But were there things that you were adding in? You're talking about your nutrition, but what was what do you credit with, like, the rewiring of who you were? Because, I mean, you did a complete one eighty with kinda just the way you were living your life.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was piecemeal, and it's been a long time. I certainly wasn't, you know, dead lifting three fifty pounds 10 times when I was 35, 30 eight, 40, you know, whatever. I didn't start getting I didn't I really didn't start lifting heavy until I was 51 years old until Kelly started training me, Kelly Matthews. I was scared of lifting heavy. Because you know, I always had back issues and neck issues and shoulders issues and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize it was because I was fucking weak. Yeah. Right? I didn't know that having like a strong core and strong quads and strong glutes and, you know, a strong lower back would prevent my discs from slipping out and herniating. And, I also, there was another trainer in there that I said, gosh, weird.
Speaker 2:The more I come in here, like, the less I hurt. And she's like, yeah. Because what did she say? I think she said, movement is lubrication for the joints. So like, if you're moving and you're getting blood flow and you're getting, you know, your joints properly lubricated, you're you're gonna be less apt to have injuries and you're gonna have less apt to have, inflammation in there.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So, for me, in the beginning, triage was, yeah, not smoking, crack, and shooting heroin and all that. I kept smoking for about three and a half years into my recovery. I started eating meat. I think it was eight, nine months into my recovery.
Speaker 2:Then I went completely off the deep end with, dude, we would get jars of raw colostrum. It was like $25 glass mason jars full of raw colostrum. And we would down them and you would get to the bottom, and there would literally be pieces of hay and blood and shit and stones at the bottom. Because it was coming directly from Amish country, from the Amish farmers. No electricity, you know, no nothing.
Speaker 2:And they would just put it into the jars, and they would just put it on a truck and ship it off to to, to Rossum, to Raw Garage.
Speaker 1:That's unreal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I I went with that, got really into yoga, got really into juicing, got really into doing cleanses and fasts, some really gnarly cleanses, parasite cleanses, got really into colonics for a while, got super into different supplements and herbs and started discovering things like ashwagandha and CBD. It was all piecemeal. You know, it wasn't it wasn't like the the one major event, which I changed out of desperation, not inspiration. The major event was, you know, was getting sober in 02/2003, June eighteenth, '2 thousand '3.
Speaker 2:That was twenty years ago. Mhmm. After that, like any good addict, I just immediately began to try and reach for things and find things that I could do or put into my body that would make me feel better. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cleo, you talked about this concept of, like, a gladiator mindset and being willing to fight for the person that you wanna become. So was that gladiator moment for you, 06/18/2003? Can we can we talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:God. No. That was that was, like, the lowest that was the lowest moment of my life I was here. Cheers to,
Speaker 3:by the way.
Speaker 2:Cheers to Keytone IQ and Michael
Speaker 1:the good stuff. This is where the conversation's gonna pick up.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm already unbearable to your listeners. They're like, fuck. Is this guy gonna shut up?
Speaker 2:No. That was the lowest point in my life. I, I had stopped paying any bills three, four years earlier. My credit was shot. I was a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt, mostly from ambulance rides and hospitalizations was a large part of the debt, but tons of traffic violations and bench warrants and all kinds of legal shit and then disregarded my credit card bills and I wrote a bunch of bad checks.
Speaker 2:So, no, 06/18/2003, that was the lowest point of my life, But it was the most pivotal moment of my life because a couple of days later I realized, like you were making references early about pills, I was going to get my meds and I had to go get my meds like three times a day because back then I was on Seroquel, Wellbutrin, Lexapro, Trazodone, and then other shit to like help me slow the detox down. I can't I can't remember what they were giving me at PRC at that time, but, probably Subutex or Suboxone or or or some form of that, buprenorphine maybe. I had done it all. You know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I went to doctor Bloom and I said, hey. I I said, hey, man. I can't I can't do this anymore. I can't take this shit anymore. And he was like, son, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:He's an older psychiatrist. And, I said, you know, they're selling crack right out there on Walnut Avenue. And he goes, I'm aware of that. And we called the police and there, you know, there's nothing. I'm like, no.
Speaker 2:No. No. I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm saying, like, if you're gonna keep giving me shit to take and it's gonna make me feel better, sooner or later, I'm gonna go get the real shit. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because what's the difference? It's all chemicals. It's all poison anyway. This shit can't be good for my liver. And, he goes, well, you can't do that.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, I'm gonna do it. And he's like, no, no, no, no. You could have a seizure. You know, you could have this that blah blah. And I said, man, I don't care.
Speaker 2:I'm, this is like life or death. I'm not doing this shit anymore. Like, I'm fucking done. I'm not taking any of this shit anymore. Called his son in, called the, you know, other doctor in, and I got pretty wound up.
Speaker 2:And I was just like, you guys can't make me fucking take this stuff. I'm not taking anything anymore. And they just, like, looked at each other and shook their heads, and then he's like, go get the paperwork. And I'm like, oh my god. Fuck.
Speaker 2:They're gonna throw me out. And then they brought this paperwork back and it said AMA, like, against medical advice, you know, I state that I am going to refuse medical attention. And I did. And, I began the worst withdrawal I had ever experienced in my life. And the pain and the anxiety because remember, it wasn't just shooting heroin and smoking crack.
Speaker 2:It was handfuls of Xanax, handfuls of Klonopin, handfuls of Valium. We were going down to Mexico sometimes twice a week from Malibu and just buying bulk with to Mexico sometimes twice a week from Malibu and just buying bulk. We would fill we would put those socks on that, like, came up to here and then just fill our socks with thousands of packets of pills, and then we would take water bottles, and we would go to the veterinarian supply place in in Tijuana. And we would buy cases of ketamine, liquid ketamine, and we would crack them open, and we would pour them all into the water bottles. And we would just walk right over the border.
Speaker 2:This was pre 09:11, obviously. We would just walk right over the border with water bottles full of tens of thousands of dollars worth of ketamine and go back home and cook it up. And that's how I kept my my habit going. So the withdrawal was something that I had never experienced before and it was raw. There was nothing there was no buffer in between me and that and that pain.
Speaker 2:And it was in that moment, clearly out of desperation, not inspiration, but I just fucking shattered. I I I fell on the ground, and I folded my hands because that's what they made us do when we were kids in in Catholic school. And I just folded my hands, and I was crying, and I was shaking. And with every cell in my being, I just said, God, please, please, if you're there well, it was more like this, you know, white knuckle praying. God, please, if you're there, please, please take this hell away from me.
Speaker 2:Please take this hell away from me. It was the most sincere prayer I'd ever prayed in my life. It was the most sincere I had ever been in my life with myself. And, it it it happened. It wasn't a burning bush, and my withdrawal did not miraculously disappear, and my cravings did not go away.
Speaker 2:But there was a levity to my being. There was a lightness that came in to my being, a knowing. It was beyond faith. It was beyond true faith. There was a knowing that there was a God and it was a love.
Speaker 2:It was a sense of love from this benevolent living, loving creator. And I was like, woah. I remember just getting on my bed like and it's hard to articulate, but, like, it was real. Like, there was a God and God was gonna help me.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I grabbed on to that grace, that grace of God. I grabbed on to that feeling of the Holy Spirit entering my body. Sorry. I sound like a bible thumping lunatic right now. I love it.
Speaker 2:This is my truth. So and I'm not embarrassed to say it. I grabbed onto it and I didn't let go. I didn't let go. I I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed.
Speaker 2:I got super into Emmett Fox, which is a Christian philosopher. I just I grabbed onto his his interpretation of Sermon on the Mount. I grabbed a book called Around the Year with Emmett Fox, which was daily inspiration based on a certain quote or a verse from the Bible. And I would literally all day, every day, just walk around. And in the beginning, I mean, for a couple years, you know, God, please be with me now.
Speaker 2:God, please be with me now. I'm so scared. God, can you please be with me now? God, can you please hold my hand? Can you please walk with me right now?
Speaker 2:I'm scared. Can you please hold my hand? Like, when I think about that, it's so beautiful because it's like, my prayers are fancy now. My prayers are like this now. My life is very big and very full and very meaningful.
Speaker 2:But when I was newly sober, I was laying the bedrock for the foundation that this entire life that I get to live now was laid upon, and that bedrock was God. And and and that is available for anyone. There's certainly nothing special about me. I fucked up every possible thing I could fuck up. I behaved like an absolute moron.
Speaker 2:I took my life for granted over and over again. I caused harm to people's lives in ways that were easily justifiable. I wasn't beating them. I wasn't killing them. I wasn't, you know, throwing them out a window, but I was manipulating them like, let me have your ATM card and please give me your PIN number and I'll come right back with some drugs and disappear for a week.
Speaker 2:Or like, dude, let me just borrow your car. I'll come back. I just need I need to go get well. I'll I'll come back. A week later, I would drop your car off at three in the morning and leave the keys in it.
Speaker 2:And there'd be dents all over it. The fender would be crashed in. Like, I was that guy.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I burned every bridge I ever knew. So there was nothing special about me that I had access to a certain amount of grace from God bullshit. No. In fact, I'm I'm probably way less deserving than most, but it didn't matter because the love and grace of God is is available for anybody that wants it. So, yeah, that was the foundation and just slowly began to build on that.
Speaker 1:When I hear your story, I hear you actually asking for help in, like, a genuine way. And then also maybe believing in yourself in a way that you never had before. Then was that a point in time where your internal narrative started to shift to where you're starting to speak to yourself, like, a little bit differently than you had previously?
Speaker 2:It it I did. It took it took, there well, look. There was there was amazing immediate results. The type of results that the people thought I was on psychiatric medications because I was so happy, but I was so happy because I knew no matter what that there was God and that I was taken care of. You know?
Speaker 2:My mom even said, she was probably misquoting the bible, but my mom said, she said, lamb, she called me little lamb or lamb or Zayonczyk, which means bunny rabbit in Polish. She said, lamb, if God's gonna make sure that there's food for the birds, God's gonna make sure there's food for you. Mhmm. And, you know, when when you're a high school dropout, a convicted felon, you can't spell, you can't type, you have no skills, you have no talent, What do you do? Man, I was 33, 30 four years old.
Speaker 2:Like, what do you do? The only thing I could do is like clean people's cars, clean people's apartments, like, just clean up dog shit. Like, I I I worked at a dog grooming place and eventually got a job at a rehab because that's the only place that we'll hire a fucking loser like me. But the more I worked, the better I felt and more doors opened for me. The more I asked God for help, the better my life got, the better I felt about myself.
Speaker 2:People started being nice to me and accepting of me. People started offering help because they could see that I genuinely wanted to get better. In terms of relapsing, which most people do, there's like a ninety percent, ninety five percent failure rate, unfortunately. My bottom was so horrific in and out of jail and the overdoses and the flat line I had the people call it a near death experience, but it wasn't, it was a death experience. I had a death experience.
Speaker 2:I intentionally took my life with an overdose and, it was dark and scary, and, it scared the shit out of me. And the fact that I've made it through that, the fact that somehow by the grace of God, I tested clean not only for HIV, which was a miracle, because I shared needles with people that were HIV positive. I shared needles with people that had AIDS. But I even found out a year into my recovery that I didn't have hep C, which I thought for sure I had hep C. If you look at pictures of me back then, man, I look like I was dying of AIDS.
Speaker 2:I had constant back pain. I had sores all over my face. My teeth were falling out of my head, and, I just assumed that I was dying of AIDS. So there was so many moments of grace, and there were so many moments of, like, awakening, and there was so much there was so much gratitude because I was being told, like, get up in the morning and make a gratitude list. It's kind of hard to have a shitty day when you get up in the morning and you make a gratitude list because I was being told to practice tithing, which is something I'd I'd never done tithing before.
Speaker 2:I remember my sponsor Robbie sitting next to me and him telling me to put the dollar in the, you know, into the basket at the 12 step thing, and I was like, no. He's like, what do you mean no? Yeah. Did I not give you a hundred dollars to detail my car? I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he goes, well, then put put money in the basket. And it's a tradition. You put a dollar in at 12 step programs. And I'm like, you put money in the basket. You're fucking rich.
Speaker 2:You drive a Porsche. He's like, Khalil, you are telling God that you don't have faith. Oh man, he got me there. That resonated. So I peeled out a dollar.
Speaker 2:I had a bunch of cash in my pocket. I was pretty industrious, you know? Detailing cars, walking dogs, washing cars. So I went to put the dollar in the basket and he goes uh-uh. Put in two.
Speaker 2:Wow. I'm like that. Everyone else was putting in one. He goes you put in two. Show God you have faith.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I'm like, woah. So I was being reparented, but that's what was happening in the 12 step program. Right. People have a lot of negative things to say about 12 step program.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a fucking cult. Okay. I needed to go to a cult then. Yeah. I was brainwashing.
Speaker 2:Yep. My brain was dirty. And it works. Yes. And it works.
Speaker 2:So, I started tithing. I started working. Three and a half, maybe four years in, I quit smoking cigarettes, I was putting the healthy stuff in my body, I started moving, exercising, praying, meditating, and all this shit I didn't discover this on my own, it was just like taught to me. One day somebody took me to the Hare Krishna temple, and, they gave me a bunch of free food, and they were all jumping around, you know, saying, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama. I asked, woah.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? And he's, like, they're basically just saying God God God God God God God. I'm like really? He's like yeah, they're just that's how they worship God. There's you know like praise God praise God praise God.
Speaker 2:I'm like that's fucking cool. I'm like that's what they're saying? He's like yeah. And he's like, do you wanna get in on some of it? I'm like, I don't know, sure.
Speaker 2:They fed me. I wanna be respectful. So I jumped into the procession and I started chanting, Harry Christian. I'm like, and I and you know what? It felt amazing.
Speaker 2:It felt amazing. And and getting I had a girlfriend that took me to the Kabbalah Center, and I started, you know, studying Kabbalah, and it felt amazing. And, and I was engaging in the Emmett Fox twelve step programs, which I don't know if most people understand. It's all based on Christian principles. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's right out of the Bible. Yeah. So, it all it all it all felt amazing. I went off to India for a month and and chanted and danced and did yoga. I went off to Indonesia, and I did yoga, and I did my mantras.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, for me, I started getting this feeling like, are you wearing all these necklaces and all this stuff and these bracelets because you wanna look cool? Or do you really believe in what these religions are teaching? And what they're teaching was all very similar, but it was it was very unpopular to talk about Jesus. It was very unpopular to talk about the teachings of Jesus Christ or being a Christian. The Catholic church at that time was getting crucified, and rightfully so.
Speaker 2:But in my heart, in my darkest moments, in in the moments where my life was threatened or I thought my life was threatened, Mark Twain, I'm an old man now, I've suffered a great many tragedies, most of which never took place. In the times when I felt like my life was threatened really bad, interestingly enough I always went to Jesus. I always said, you know, in Jesus name, in Jesus Christ can you help me, in Jesus, you know, like whatever. And then the fog would lift and the clouds would disappear and life would get better and all of a sudden I'd get amnesia and forget all about Jesus. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Maybe I need to be a Buddhist. Yeah. You know? A lot of cute girls hanging out that Hare Krishna temple. Maybe I should, shave my head or, you know, I went to India, look at my necklaces and look how spiritual I am.
Speaker 2:It was all bullshit and it was all part of my evolution and it's fine. I make no apologies for it. We get to where we get to however we get there. But if you do read my book, I do definitely say in the end, the truth is I could have found everything I needed to know about God and about spirituality in a very condensed saying or sayings that, I need to love God above all else, period. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I need to love my neighbors. I love myself.
Speaker 3:I, I particularly love the piece that you were saying about tithing because it's something Harry and I have been spending a lot of time digging into. You would at some point, you'll meet our pastor, pastor Scott, who's been on the show. He runs Thrive Church, a small little church in South Austin, similar to you, former meth addict, was facing he was facing felony charges, also got sober in 02/2003, which probably which probably is not it's definitely not a coincidence. That's a god thing. That's bizarre.
Speaker 3:And something he always talks to us about is when you put god first, he blesses the rest. So actually making that conscious effort to tithe even if you're in a not in the most financially comfortable place, just giving, you know, maybe it's, like, 10% of your earnings. The first check that comes in, you just cut 10% and throw it to the church. And we've been doing that the last three months. And some of the most incredible things have happened to us personally with our business.
Speaker 3:Not that that was the reason why we were doing it, but we were like, if we really believe in Jesus and everything he's been doing for us, we owe this so the church can actually grow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So you just reminded me of that, of this guy being like, no. Not one. We're throwing $2 into the basket. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So interesting.
Speaker 2:I had two experiences. One when I was in Sober Living, and I had just gotten into tithing. And, and I'll be very quick about this because I know I can get a little long in the tooth, but we were at the gas station and we were buying our we would buy, like, I think it was, like, state issued tobacco, the pouches, and we would roll our own cigarettes. Because back then, you could roll your own cigarette for, like, 3¢ or Mhmm. 5¢ or whatever.
Speaker 2:We couldn't afford regular cigarettes. Musicians assistance program gave us $40 a week to live on, and we made it work, because I didn't want a good job. So, so I was there at the gas station with my buddy Frank, and, he was going inside to get the the tobacco the raw tobacco pouch. We already had the papers. And there was a old man that was digging in the trash and looking I don't know if he was looking for something to eat or he's looking for bottles to return or whatever and something really weird going on with his outfit.
Speaker 2:I remember just being like, what is he wearing? Like where where would one even get an outfit like that? Right? Like, it made no sense. Like, it looked like a costume, basically.
Speaker 2:And it looked like something from, like, five hundred years ago. Mhmm. Shawl, garb, I don't even know. And I think I I don't know what the exact dollar amount. I think it was a 5 because I wanted to show that I had faith, and I also wanted the guy to see it.
Speaker 2:And I wanted him to know that I was in solidarity with him, that I understood what it was like to be homeless because I used to be homeless. And, you know, I normally don't talk about this stuff, but since we're talking about it and since your listeners are hopefully listening, I got out of the car and I tapped him, and I went to show him the five, kind of like, Hey brother, we're in this together. And the dude looked up at me with this smile and with this light coming from his eyes. This was not a person. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This was definitely not a person. This was like an angel or I don't know what, but the rush of energy that I got from that being, that loving, benevolent being, and I handed the five, and I just got this love washing over me and I was freaked out, you know. I was like, am I losing my mind here? I just kind of gave it and I turned around. I went and I, like, nervously sat in the car for Frank to come and then Frank got in the car.
Speaker 2:I never really talked about it much. Maybe with a couple of girlfriends over the last twenty years I might have told that story. And then again, when I was, let's see, I think I was seven years sober and I needed to get away and I really wanted to go up to Big Sur And I've been working like crazy, working four jobs at once, saving every penny, working seven days a week, working sixteen hours a day. I needed a break. I wanted to just go up to this place called Ripplewood Cabins up in Big Sur.
Speaker 2:And I knew I needed to go by myself. And so I had all my cash, like, wrapped up in a rubber band underneath my sink in the room where where these people were letting me stay. I didn't have any rent, so it was easy for me to save up cash. And, I got all the way up to San Simeon where the Hearst Castle is, and I was about to go up into the town of Gorda. And there was a man on the side of the road, and he had a trailer, and he was dangerously sitting in the road trying to get the lug nuts loosened off of one of the wheels.
Speaker 2:And I'm from Ohio. You know, the story that I'm telling you doesn't make me a good person or a spiritual person. It just makes me a person born in Ohio. You see an old man on the side of the road clearly struggling to get some fucking lug nuts off. You pull over and you help.
Speaker 2:Yes. It's just like that's where I'm from. Yeah. Doesn't make me special. So I got out.
Speaker 2:I walk over. I said, here. Let me give it a shot. And, I couldn't I couldn't budge them. And I was just like, I'm not leaving until I get these fucking lug nuts off here.
Speaker 2:There's no way. And luckily, I thought, well, if I put it, like, halfway on and then I stepped down on it, you know, maybe I could loosen it and sure enough boom it like came off. Yeah, right. Just right then loosened up did the next one did the next one did the next one and started to feel really good. I was like this is good.
Speaker 2:This is what you're supposed to do, you know. You see an old dude like it's dangerous it's on a turn like he could have been hit by a car started to feel a little bit of self esteem come in and got the tire change and walked over handed him the tire iron back and and same thing, this was seven years, eight years later, seven and a half years later, when he looked at me and the light started coming from his eyes and the glow from his skin and the love that I felt, I was like, Oh boy, here we go again. And the guy's like, Let me give you some money. And I'm like, No, I don't need money. And he's like, What do you mean young man?
Speaker 2:Of course you need money. Let me give you some money for helping me out. And out of my mouth came the words, I have more money than I know what to do with. Now it's funny because it was only $5 wrapped up in some rubber bands under my sink, but $5,000 to a guy who was homeless a few years earlier is a massive amount of money. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I had no rent. I had no bills. I had no kids. I had no child support. I had nothing.
Speaker 2:I have $5. I had never in my life said those words. I have more money than I know what to do with. And when I said it, my whole body got goose bumps. And the paradigm shift happened.
Speaker 2:I went from a scarcity mentality into an abundance mentality. And then I looked back at the guy and that light was coming from his eyes, and I'm just like, oh, man. I must be tripping. Maybe this is like some residual acid or something, you know. I quickly got back in my car, and I drove for the next couple of hours in silence.
Speaker 2:And I was like, I can never tell anybody this because they're not gonna believe it, but like I just was in the presence of either God himself or an angel or or something. But whatever it was, even if I was having some flashback, I had a paradigm shift in that moment and I shifted into a an abundance mentality and it never left me. And I never went back to that poverty mentality. And that poverty mentality, by the way, I got from my parents. God loved them and God rest my mother's soul but they lived in a scarcity mentality their entire lives.
Speaker 2:And I I inherited that from them. But that curse, that generational curse was broken in that moment when I showed that man kindness and when I spoke the truth. I had more money than I knew what to do with. I didn't need him to give me money for changing his tire. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And, and the amount of self esteem and power that, that entered my being in that moment. Like, I remember those pivotal moments like they were yesterday because now here I am. Speak oh, sorry.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 3:No. I was gonna say, because I just I really wanna get to this piece. There's a there's a section in the book about money that was probably the most impactful one of the most impactful moments of the book. Do Do you guys care if I read the passage really quick?
Speaker 2:No. Please.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Alright. So I was sitting in Marmalade Cafe in Malibu, Nine Bun nine months sober when I got a phone call from my mom. She sounded incredibly distraught. She had just left the doctor's office and had been diagnosed with cancer.
Speaker 3:I was blindsided. It killed me that I didn't have the money to go home and visit her or help her with medical bills. She was 66 years old alone and still working six days a week as a nurse's assistant at Toledo Hospital. She lived paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment in Kenwood Gardens, which was one step up from a housing project. As I as soon as I hung up the phone, I made a decision.
Speaker 3:I was going to make money. I was gonna be able to take care of my mom. That was my only goal. I thrown my life away, taken it for granted, and I probably didn't deserve to make money, but there was nothing that was gonna stop me from being able to take care of my mom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That was one of that was one of those moments. And the good news is, not only did I live up to that promise that I made to myself and that vow that I made with God, but the floodgates of prosperity and abundance flew open, and opportunity after opportunity came to me. And my mom spent the last seventeen years of her life living in the lap of luxury. There was nothing that she wanted.
Speaker 2:No vacation, car, house. I bought my mom a house, which is my greatest accomplishment, will always be. And, and I just was able to spoil the shit out of her. And the great irony is I complained my whole life about my mom didn't love me, my mom didn't take care of me. There's a lot of truth to that.
Speaker 2:But the way that I was able to heal that that wound was by giving her the love that I so desperately needed. Mhmm. Right? Like, going to church or tithing or, like, all the different stuff we talk about or wearing the right necklaces or saying the right chant or, you know, looking cool on Instagram because I have a the right necklace on or or I'm at the right guru event or like, all that stuff is just pomp and circumstance, and it's all bullshit, and it's all ego. But asking God for help so you can work hard and make money to take care of your mom, I think, is is one of the best things that you could ever do.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And, and I did it, and, and thank God I did it because she's no longer here. She died two and a half years ago, but, there was nothing she ever wanted that I didn't give to her. And, yeah, that moment was heavy, man. I I I changed yet again out of desperation, not inspiration.
Speaker 1:It must be such a good feeling having, been able to fulfill that that need and and probably, just be able to live up to the expectation that you were setting for yourself. I imagine the book itself was therapeutic for you to write and just get that story out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it kinda goes along with the theme that you're talking about where it's either of people who are talking shit or doing shit. Yeah. And through the process of doing shit, you heal those wounds over time that maybe you had been holding on to. So I think it's amazing that you actually went through the process of putting that book together, and I'm sure it's changed a lot of people's lives.
Speaker 2:I I appreciate you saying that. You know, I wrote the book for myself first and foremost. I I was told by Neil Strauss to write as if no one's ever gonna read it. Just write as if no one's ever gonna read it. Because if you're if you're writing as if someone's gonna read it, you're full of shit, and it's gonna suck.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. So you just write and you write and you write as if no one's ever gonna read it. And, the catharsis that took place in the process of getting that darkness out of my head and and onto paper, it was so liberating and it was so freeing. And, I felt like a piece of shit most of my life. And, getting clean and sober and doing estimable things and building a little bit of self esteem and going through the reparenting of 12 step programs and getting super into like, Byron Katie wrote a book called Loving What Is and getting getting really into that book and and realizing that the world doesn't need to change for Khalil to be happy.
Speaker 2:Khalil needs to change to be happy in the world. So or or, not Eckhart Tolle. Who was it? He passed away recently. But he said, if you if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Speaker 2:And it's so true. The book was pivotal and really cool. I remember landing from Paris. I was in Europe for six weeks, and I landed back to New York or back to LAX. And, I turned my phone on because I knew I now had reception, and I just was startled awake because I slept most of the flight.
Speaker 2:And my phone was, like, kept glitching, kept, like, freaking out, like, making all these sounds. And I was like, I don't understand. And it it looked like hundreds of text messages. So I turned it off again, and then I turned it back on again. It was doing it a little bit slower this time, and then all of a sudden it stopped.
Speaker 2:And I looked, and it was, like, literally, like, I think a 44 text messages. And I thought, oh my god. What happened? And I clicked on one, and it was a picture of me on the front page of the New York Times on the Sunday edition. And I literally just, like, dropped the phone.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my god. Oh my god. And my business partner was like, what? I'm like, I'm in the fucking New York Times, dude. I'm on the front page.
Speaker 2:And, it was unreal. I didn't I didn't have an agent. I didn't have a publicist, and I didn't have a publisher.
Speaker 1:Really?
Speaker 2:But no. Book in the box is not a publisher. Book in the box, Tucker's things. Yeah. I think it's called Scribe now.
Speaker 2:That's just a company that helps you to write a book. I didn't have a book deal. I put that out on my own. I get $7 every time that book sells on Amazon. That book, I was just showing my assistant, like, that book continues to sell all over the world.
Speaker 2:It became a best seller. I mean, I told myself over and over again over a ten year period, I would like write half a page and then like throw it out or I would like write I would buy a new journal and I would write like a couple pages in the journal and then I would reread it three days later. I'll be like, this fucking sucks and I would like throw the journal in the closet. Sometimes I would tear the pages out and I would throw them into a box just in case maybe there was something good in there. And, for ten years, I just thought, like, who cares?
Speaker 2:So what? You shouldn't have been smoking crack and shooting heroin in the first place, you moron. You know, you you want a medal now that you'd, like, you don't get high anymore, like but then I thought no this might help somebody this might help somebody and that's when I reached out to Tucker's company and they helped me put that book together. But no there's no publisher. Now after the book came out I got approached by like 20 different publishers.
Speaker 2:I got a deal with Audible. I got a deal with Kindle. I got international deals. The book is in a bunch of different languages. But, the book was amazing and for somebody that can't type or spell, it's another testament that there is nothing that is impossible and nothing that we can't do, especially if you have the power and grace of a living, loving God as your foundation.
Speaker 3:Which is why you're dropping your phone phone at the New York Times article because the beauty of self publishing is every time someone buys Khalil's book, it's $7 in your pocket. Yeah. The hard part is there's literally no one doing any PR, no outreach. If the book's gonna grow, it's organically through your own effort. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So to go from a self published book to the cover of the New York Times, it's like
Speaker 2:It was bananas. I can't even imagine what
Speaker 3:that must have felt like.
Speaker 2:It was bananas, and it wasn't that didn't stop there. I was on the NBC Nightline. I was on the on the CBS morning show. I was like I ended up doing a a TED talk which talk about like, you know, I I, like I remember watching all those TED talks and getting so inspired and thinking, like, these people are so awesome. Like, could you imagine, like, doing a TED talk and then all of a sudden one day just getting an email, like, hey.
Speaker 2:We want you to come do a ten and I'm I'm like, on on what? Like, what do you want me to say? Like, this is insanity. And I they made me they they give you months, but they make you they make you, do a I think it's eighteen minutes. You have eighteen minutes with a two minute grace period, but they make you write your entire thing out.
Speaker 2:And, one of the reasons why I ended up dropping out of high school and failing sixth grade and kindergarten was I can't memorize. I'm not a memorizer. I'm just there's just not I can't do math. Like, I'm good at debate. I can run fast.
Speaker 2:Like, I've got, you know, some things I can do, but I'm not a memorizer. So I wrote this thing and and I thought it was good. And they said, you have to stick to your script. And at the last second, I think I I called Ben Greenfield. I'm like, hey, man.
Speaker 2:They you have a teleprompter. Right? And he's like, no. He goes, there's no teleprompter. And if you swear, they won't put it on on their, you know, their website on the on the TED Talk thing.
Speaker 2:And I'm just like, well, this sucks. This is bullshit. And he's like, sorry, dude. And, I went there and I couldn't I couldn't remember anything that I had written on that paper. And they tell you, like, if you don't stick to your script, we're not putting it on our on our website, which is kind of the whole reason you wanna do your TED Talk.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There was like 400 people, 500 people in the audience, and I knew there was somebody out there that was hurting. I knew there was somebody out there that was lying and that was keeping secrets and was probably really struggling with some things. And I just thought, you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna get up there, and I'm gonna give my talk just like I would talk anywhere, homeless shelter, 12 step meeting, whatever.
Speaker 2:And, I got, like, halfway into that talk. And, you know, you want to avoid looking at the audience. You really want to pretend they're not there. But, like, I remember looking out at the audience, and people were just, like, like, just hanging on my every word. And I'm like, is that it?
Speaker 2:Like, I just gotta be myself? I don't have to try to be somebody else? Because I spent my whole life trying to be somebody other than who I was when all along, like, the way that god created me was just fine. Mhmm. And so I finished up.
Speaker 2:I tripped. My earpiece kept falling out. If you watch my TED Talk, you'll see, like, there's probably 17 times I have to try to put my earpiece back in. If you notice in the beginning, I trip over the red rug that you have to stand on, and I I walked in circles the whole time because I was so fucking nervous. And, I had watched four people give TED Talks before I went up, and I watched three people give TED Talks after I went up.
Speaker 2:And the roar of applause was was so incredible because I could feel the people's energies appreciation because everyone else was polished. Everyone else, like, memorized their shit to a tee. And it was good, but you're just memorizing a script. Like just talk to me. Tell me the truth.
Speaker 2:What'd you go through? Are you okay now?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How's your life now? How's your relationship with your parents now? You know, I was very honest about my relationship with my parents. I don't talk to my dad. I did everything in my power to heal that father wound and I healed it.
Speaker 2:And the way that I healed it is by not talking to him anymore. I love him. I spoiled the shit out of him as well. But no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough. No matter what I did, he couldn't get past his own wants and needs and desires.
Speaker 2:And that's okay. That doesn't make him a bad guy. My dad had a really, really tough life. So talked about my relationship with my parents and talked about how I healed the pain of my mother not loving me or taking care of me in the way that I needed her to love me and take care of me. And, and it was good, and it was honest, it was sincere, and, they ended up putting it up on their site.
Speaker 2:If you go if you put in Koli Orfatti TEDxTalk, it actually pops up under Koli Orfatti TEDxTalk.
Speaker 1:Even though you broke broke the script?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what was different? Did was it the fact that you feel like you left those people with some hope and inspiration Yeah. Compared to Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Compared to some polished speech that I could make myself look cool.
Speaker 1:Like, oh,
Speaker 2:well, I have 375 employees, and I started the company and blah blah. Who fucking cares?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's not that you're not that cool if you start a company and make a bunch of money. It's actually not that difficult. Mhmm. It's not that difficult. You guy you guys will see.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of work, but you're gonna look back five years from now, ten years from now and be like, man, it would have been a lot more difficult to not live my dreams and to keep those jobs that I hated and to stay in a town that I needed to get out of. You'll you'll see.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's the vulnerability, I think, that makes you so powerful and the willingness to just go so deep and share shit that literally no one else would be willing to share. And all the comments on that TED Talk video are like, it it just gives people hope that it's it's truly never too late to change. And I hope that the way that you were saying the audience was clinging on to every word
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I hope that the listener of this show clings on to every word that you're saying because I was a little bit nervous coming into this conversation because I've gotten, like, three hours of sleep for the last week. I didn't I was just I felt clog cloudy waking up today, and I literally feel like I have, like, an electric bolt up my spine just hearing you being being willing to share this. I'm like
Speaker 1:Ironically enough. Yeah. With with the shirt Yeah.
Speaker 2:Shirt
Speaker 1:locks, the electric bolt.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But, dude, I mean, you're just a guy that both Harry and I look up to greatly. So the ability to, like, be friends with you, have you in studio, have you share your story, work with you in the future, it's like it's just something we don't take for granted at all, and we're just so appreciative of you coming in today and and speaking with us, man. So just thank you for everything that you do.
Speaker 2:Of course, man. Of course. My my I I don't know how much time I have left on this planet. I really don't. It might it might be a couple months.
Speaker 2:It might be thirty years, forty years. I have no idea, but I need every person out there, especially young men, if you're listening, and by young, anybody, you know, under the age of 60, I need every man out there to know that you can become the hero of your own story. That's that's the reason for the lightning bolt. You know? I don't think I'm a superhero by any stretch of the imagination, but I am definitely the hero of my story.
Speaker 2:My story, it had very sad origins. The beginning was rough. My mother suffered greatly. She was caught up in World War II and she was put into a work camp and she had her thyroid removed. She had to go to a sanitarium.
Speaker 2:My father was living in Palestine when the United Nations decided that Palestine was no longer Palestine, it was going to become Israel, and my dad went from living on his father's olive orchard to living as a refugee, and and people don't like it when I talk about that. I don't care. That's my reality. That's my truth. I'm not saying that Israel doesn't deserve that land.
Speaker 2:I'm saying that land was our land and now it's not. And this land used to be the American Indians land And and actually this land they were sitting on used to be Mexico's land. I'm not getting into the politics of anything, but for God's sakes, can you imagine? First of all, growing up Middle Eastern in that part of the world, that's brutal Mhmm. To begin with.
Speaker 2:But to all of a sudden hear gunshots and mortars going off, and you run up into the hills, and three days later, you come down, there's dude standing there with machine guns like, hey. Sorry. This isn't your land anymore. You know? Go sleep in a tent.
Speaker 2:Maybe maybe Jordan will take you in as a as a citizen or or whatever. Like, that's the origin of my story. I have my own fucking land now that I bought. I didn't come to Austin, Texas and and and put a down payment on a on a big house, with some crushing mortgage that was gonna be hanging over my head. I came to Austin, Texas, and I wrote a check for a house that's mine, and it's my homestead so nobody can take it away from me.
Speaker 2:Not the IRS, not some frivolous lawsuit, nobody. It's one of the beautiful things about Texas and Florida is they're they're homestead states. So, I have my own land. My grandfather had an olive orchard, and he lost that olive orchard when when that happened. And I'm glad that Israel's there.
Speaker 2:I'm glad those people have a place to go. They went through horrible atrocities during World War II, and I'm part Jewish, so I have empathy for them. But that land was my land, and it's no longer my land. And you know how I fixed that? Just the same way that I fixed my mother wound and my father wound.
Speaker 2:I bought my own fucking land.
Speaker 3:I have
Speaker 2:my own olive trees now, And I'm in the process of even getting some ancient olive trees that are older than my grandfather would be if he were so alive, which would be impossible. But Jackie is looking for, ancient olive trees for me right now that I'm gonna import and I'm gonna put on my property here in Texas. So I'm I'm living an amazing life. I did it all with a lot of marks against me, not just alcoholism and addiction, not just, not having a high school diploma, but, you know, growing up without talents, without skills, with some learning disabilities and a lot of insecurity and a lot of fear. And I came up out of that and I did that through the power and grace of a living, loving God.
Speaker 2:And so I want anyone listening to please, please surrender, join the winning team if you're struggling, please, please surrender and join the winning team. I promise you it's way less painful than you think. It's actually pretty fucking amazing, the relief the relief that you have.
Speaker 1:Takes a lot of pressure off.
Speaker 2:Dude, you have no idea. And then and then find a God, build a relationship with God, get your own God. You don't need your parents' God. You don't need my God. To get your own God, build a relationship and build a relationship by talking to that God.
Speaker 2:Watch the watch the doors begin to open. Watch the energy begin to flow and and forgive yourself. Cut yourself some slack, man. Especially if you're an alcoholic or a drug addict. I used to think I was a real piece of shit till I started sponsoring a bunch of dudes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Wow. Oh my god. Not as fucked
Speaker 3:up as I thought.
Speaker 2:Dude, I I really I thought Oh my god. I mean, that's also ego in reverse. Like, oh, man. I'm I'm bad. I'm, you know, I did all this shit and, you know, I had sex sex with people for drug money.
Speaker 2:I let people do things to me sexually for for, you know, for drug like, I really, really thought I was horrible. And then I sponsored a bunch of dudes and I listened to their fourth and their fifth steps and some of the shit that, like, they went through, I'm like, oh, wow. I'm I'm actually pretty normal all things considered. I'm not proud of some of my behaviors, but, like, wow, man. People do really stupid shit when they're fucked up, especially alcohol.
Speaker 2:Alcohol is is is the is the most underrated insidious substance on this planet. Mhmm. Really bad. Yes. Crack, heroin, meth, all that stuff, it's terrible.
Speaker 2:But when you're drunk, you do shit you would never do on other drugs, and you do shit you would never do when you're not drunk. So, I love this. I feel great. Sorry about crying.
Speaker 3:Oh, you love it.
Speaker 2:Did not know you were gonna read that part of the book. I miss my mom every day. You know, it's a it's a sensitive subject. I built her a a pond on my property with there's an angel that signifies her, and and she loved turtles, which these fucking turtles drive me crazy, but she loves turtles, so I can't get rid of them.
Speaker 1:And the hairless cat.
Speaker 2:And I got two hairless cats, and, and I feed the birds every day because that's what she told me to do. And I keep going out to that water nursery, Hill Country Water Nursery, and I keep buying all these lotuses and all these water lilies and putting them in the pond so my mom can be surrounded by these beautiful blossoms and flowers, and those fucking turtles just keep eating them every single day.
Speaker 3:But it's for mom. These are
Speaker 2:these are first world problems, folks.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Get clean and sober, find God, and then you you can have your own pond with turtles that won't stop eating your water lilies. I love it. Love it.
Speaker 1:Cleo, thanks so much. Your story is so inspiring. Like Thanks. I think our audience is gonna love it and just appreciate your time today. This was this was such a great combo.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I feel like we could talk forever on
Speaker 3:I know. Well, we are. We're gonna keep going.
Speaker 1:Let's keep doing it.
Speaker 2:We'll shut this off, and we'll, let's build this company noble into a billion dollar brand and and get a bunch of people healthy. You know, the good news is with what you guys have created and what I'm so blessed to be a part of is they don't have to go to some weird club and join a membership and buy these questionably sourced livers and hearts and all this stuff. You guys are doing the work for them. In fact, you're even chewing it up for them.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because let's be honest, eating liver and heart can be pretty harsh. A %
Speaker 1:for everyone. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not for everyone. I mean, I I do it, but, like, an hour and a half before I got here, I took a giant scoop of of your protein powder, the chocolate flavor. I put it in the Greek yogurt. I put about two tablespoons of olive oil on top of it. I mixed it up really good.
Speaker 2:I put some paleo granola on top of that and some fresh organic blueberries, wild blueberries and some fresh organic strawberries and some raw local honey. And I ate that stuff. And, man, I feel like I could go I could go run a marathon right now.
Speaker 3:Dude, let's go do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's do it. I love it.
Speaker 3:Warsaw pump, man. We appreciate you, dude. We're definitely gonna do a part two soon, and, appreciate you, my man. Of course. Thanks, Khalil.
Speaker 2:Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Yeah.
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