Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 200. Build A Powerful Existence

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Long time friend of Bedros, Aaron Hinde has built a Nootropics Energy Drink company, LIFEAID, growing to 20+ Million Dollars in sales. But his journey goes back to his conflicted past as a Chiropractor to professional athletes.  He attests his growth to him taking control back in his life, dropping the “victim” mentality and doubling down on his inner power. Listen to this episode as Bedros and Aaron go down the rabbit hole of memories, and each other's notable journeys to successful businesses. “What you put in your body reflects how you show up in the world” - Aaron Hinde  00:00 Introduction 02:18 - Aaron Hinde’s throwback to his journey to LIFEAID  06:02 - The competitiveness in the Drink Manufacturing world 08:24 - How a Doctor aligned his vision to build a $20M  Energy Drink Business 16:10 - Why do some take the “victim” role? 26:45 - The Thought to Action Loop that controls our outcomes 31:49 - How does our children’s access to social influences affect our parenting? 35:55 - How can we reframe adversity into opportunity? 38:50 - What true alignment in your life looks like 41:14 - What pushed Aaron Hinde to have this exponential growth in such a short amount of time 49:20 - Realize how much power is truly within us  54:49 - Bedros explains Joseph Campbell’s writing behind “Glowing Radiance”  Connect with Aaron on Instagram :  https://www.instagram.com/aaronhinde/?hl=en   Check out LIFEAID : https://www.lifeaidbevco.com/djamesdeal?gclid=CjwKCAiAvriMBhAuEiwA8Cs5lSEKjrlzZoSFXygccYHoIqQ-yvuLHwL1iA5RUGHwpRHqcBLSh4CJhBoCxVYQAvD_BwE Connect with Bedros Keuilian : Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bedroskeuilian/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/KeuilianInc Twitter - https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian

All these little easy way outs are not easy at all. Shortcuts, playing the short game is always detrimental. It's actually advantageous to play the long game, even in the short term. Hey, welcome to The Empire Show. My name is Bedrose-Culian, and this is another inside look. And today I've got someone who's a really near and dear friend of mine, Aaron Hind, co-founder and president of Fit Aid, this tasty, delicious. beverage that we love and endorse here. In fact, before I kick anything off, take a look at this video we made three years ago for Fit Aid. We take our job seriously here at Fit by the Boot Camp franchise headquarters, but even though we like to party a little. All right, we're back. Hope you like that video. Listen, so Aaron here is one badass dude, and how did we meet Aaron? I think through Ben Altadana. Ben Altadana connected us, that's right. The coach to chiropractors.

That's right. Uh-huh. Yeah, I just was to have. chat with him the other day he's doing great and I go out to his place in Carmel every you know a couple months or so hang out that's awesome and so like pre-fit aid like your whole path in life you were a chiropractor right was yeah for 10 years 10 years I mean it taught me a ton about and really helped lead to a lot of the success we're having today because having a small business or referral based practice made all the difference in really mastering the customer experience and learning how to nurture referrals in your practice.

I mean, very similar to, you know, like gym owners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's your trajectory in life as an entrepreneur as a human has actually been pretty cool, right? You know, DJ, chiropractor, and like one hell of a DJ, not like they're a weekend DJ, like, you'll run gigs. I'm getting better and I'm getting booked. Actually, we just had a big party up at my place that burned last weekend.

and we had 12 DJs, three-day party, about 50 people. It was amazing. That's awesome. But just to walk people through the Aaron Hind life timeline, like how do you go from chiropractor, DJ, an awesome athlete, to like, hey, I'm going to start a beverage company. Yeah. Why don't you walk us through the journey?

Oh, total ignorance and passion is what I like to tell people. I mean, for me, you know, I realized that I have kind of a 10-year attention span with business and life. And after that, you know, I feel like I kind of max out and I'm ready for the next thing. And I had hit that 10-year mark when I was a carpenter. Had a great practice. You know, I mentioned, you know, 30 new patients every month all by referral. You know, I saw all the top-level athletes that lived in Santa Cruz. And, you know, it was just a really, it was a great business, but I wasn't fulfilled inside.

You know, I felt like, okay, I've kind of tapped out. At least where my mindset was then, I was tapped out to where I could go with it. And, you know, I started looking around and saying, you know, I've got these athletes coming in. They're all drinking energy drinks. And I'm telling, dude, you guys got to get off of that shit. You're going to get adrenal fatigue. And they would tell me, you know, Doc, I drink tons of water. What else would you have me drink?

And there was nothing to really point them to. I'm literally like giving them homemade concoctions to make and that type of thing because there was nothing to point them to. If you rewind 11 years ago, you had coconut water just hitting the scene, kombucha just hitting the scene, but they were very hippie-dippy, they're acquired flavor profiles. You know, they weren't cool, sexy, and hip like the energy drinks, and no one's drinking energy drinks for their health benefits, right? They're drinking them to get jacked up. So, you know, the concept was really to marry kind of this lifestyle branding of the energy drinks with kind of the emerging health benefits of some of these newer drinks and bring them together,

and that's where the products came from. But previous to that, you had zero experience in the energy drink world or bottled. Yeah. And I think that was an advantage because if I, well, sometimes ignorance is bliss, you know. If you know how challenging it is and then you buy into all the sacred cows, a lot of times that, you know, that just leads you to doing things how they've always been done. You know, we started, and we were selling drinks online, we started basically an e-com business selling direct-cons. were directed gym when before ecom was cool nobody you know people advisors of ours and people in the beverage industry said well you can't do that nobody's going to buy a 24 pack of drinks online without trying it first you got to get in the grocery stores and have you know cold beverages

single serve and that's how you get trial and we took you know we kind of flipped that on its head and said well let's see if we can make this work just selling online using direct marketing and old school direct response and that's where ben really helped us out in the early days gotcha yeah And with that, like what a blessing because knowing the limited amount of information that I know and I've learned it from you, like it's a pretty competitive space to get, to get like refrigerator space in gas stations, grocery stores, convenience stores, right? It's brutal. Yeah, it's brutal. It's a, you know, there's a 95% failure rate in the first 12 months, 99% within the first five years. You know, even companies at our stage, you still got to really fight for your space. You've got to continue. you to prove yourself. There's a lot of people nipping at your heels. Then the big boys, you know, the big energy drink manufacturers, big soda manufacturers are constantly, you know,

pushing you down, not wanting you to get the shelf space that you get. So yeah, it's a constant battle. But it's not for the faint of heart. You know, you've got to have a lot of direction. You've got to have a team that's executing at a super high level. You've got to have full alignment. you've got to really focus on the overall trajectory and not just wanting things to happen overnight. You know, things take time in this industry. And then once you get the momentum in the business, continue to fuel that momentum,

continue doing all those little things, doing things that aren't scalable in order to scale. I mean, I'm still writing handwritten notes. I'm still shooting video cards. I'm still doing things, you know, for our top customers that people are like, what? You're spending your time doing that? I'm like, yeah, that's what I do spend time doing.

Yeah. But that's neat. how, like one big lesson for everyone watching and listening to this episode, like, look what you guys did. You went into a very niche market. Yeah. Right? You start off a very niche market.

And then you went into many different little niche verticals. But it was, I mean, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, majority of the initial success came via selling directly to gyms that then sold the product to their clients. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that's how we got that initial trial. Yeah. Fit Body Boot Camp was part of those gyms. CrossFit was part of those shows.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, working with FitBody in the early days and even today, but, you know, in those early days and getting those, you know, studio owners on board and becoming big fans of the product and then proselytizing to their clientele and getting their clientele off the soda and off the energy drinks and that type of thing. I was massive part of our early success. Yeah. So let's shift gears for a moment. I'm going to tap into the doctor while I've got you here.

So as a chiropractor, you're working with athletes and some peak performers in terms of every area of life. And you see them coming in there with energy drinks that are just loaded with caffeine and all types of other stimulants. And you see the effect, or you know the effect that's going to have on their adrenals. And so, I mean, everywhere I go, I see people drinking all the, you know, your typical energy drinks. Like, explain from the scientific... view of what those energy drinks do. Like what does it mean when you tap your atrinos? What am I feeling? What am I experiencing as an athlete or as a peak entrepreneur? Well, I'll take it the opposite way and I'll totally make it simple and dumb it down. If you're a high level athlete, you know, let's just

say you're a Ferrari or you're a Lamborghini. Are you going to go and put 87 gasoline in your car? Absolutely not. You would never do that. You're putting the highest octane. In fact, you're maybe even going somewhere special and getting a special gasoline to get extra high octane to make sure that it's running at its peak performance. I mean, that is what these athletes are. They're paying attention to every aspect of their rehab, their sleep, their diet, but yet they've taken their beverages and just putting whatever they want in their body when we know that diabetes in this country is at an all-time high.

It's not going down. It's going up. Why? Sugary beverages. So when we're looking at putting, jacking our bodies up on too much sugar, too much caffeine or other stimulants, you're getting this major yo-yo effect. You know, if you've got to go out and you've got to compete for multiple quarters and you drink one, it's like, all right, I'm all jacked up, I'm ready to go.

But then you crash and you're shit in the bed in the second half of the game. That's not doing anybody any good. So there's a fine balance here. And we've been working with PhDs. We've been working with people in the military on, okay, well, what is? an optimal caffeine hit? What do netropics do to the brain in order to achieve flow state and peak performance? What are the best supplements for post-workout recovery or immunity or whatever it is? You know, we have different product lines that fill different needs states.

But really, you know, relating that what you put in your body has a direct reflection and how you show up in the world. And when we start understanding that, we become very mindful of you know, what we expose ourselves. I mean, I don't eat fast food at all. Let's say maybe once every two years, I'm like, ah, you know, maybe a Big Mac sounds good, and I'll go eat one. I will be ill for like 24 hours, literally sick. It feels so good going down and then just sick as a dog

because I've cleaned my body out from all that toxicity, and then I expose myself to something that's like your body reacts in an inflammatory state. When the body gets inflamed, we know what happens with chronic inflammation over time. It leads to all kinds of things. disease state, you know, from issues in your joints and muscles to bigger chronic inflammatory diseases and even cancers and that type of thing. So, you know, it's, it's an important aspect to understand for high performers, whether you're an athlete or an entrepreneur, or just want to be

the best you can be and feel the best that you can be, be a good father, like what we put in reflects in how we show up. So, you know, a testament to what you just said. And, you know, a testament to what you just and I don't know why I'm admitting this on like this platform here, but here we go. Last week, I think we did, and we did the, that photo shoot, right? The video shoot where me and the other project instructors got super lean jacked, whatever. And we did it where we all kind of peaked on the same day so we could do this video shoot, et cetera, and then we're maintaining it. But, you know, very much like you said, I don't eat fast food probably every year and a half, two years.

My kids still have never been. They're 14 and 16. They've never been inside of a McDonald's. But growing up, when we came to the United States, the first fast food I was exposed to was Arby's. I don't know if you've eaten there or not. But, dude, after, you know, depleting and all that and that day of photo shoot, I was like, God,

I could just kill for an Arby's roast beef sandwich right now. So I drove through Arby's. Yeah. ate the roast beef sandwich within two hours. I've got the gurgles. I'm doubled over, Aaron. I have, like, inflammation at the highest. that my toes are swelling up, my knuckles hurt.

And I'm thinking, like, I just poisoned myself because I've just created such a pristine system. Yeah. And then I just dumped poison, like, Drano down my gullet. Yeah. You know, and it took a good, like, 48 hours for me to start, like, okay, coming down off that Arby's chemical concoction. Totally.

But I imagine there's also people that are eating that on a daily. On a daily. Yet they're not thriving, but they're not experiencing what I'm experiencing. So what's happening to their body that, how come I couldn't handle it and they did they do well they're not handling it they're not handling these are the same people that go in at our age and end up with that being diabetic or end up with cancer or end up with tumor growth and arthritic conditions you know they're not handling it that's the problem they think they're handling it because they're used to how it makes them feel yeah

but their body over time it's getting abused it's it's it's you know it's out of alignment because what you're putting in your body reflects in how you show up in the world and they're not showing up, you know. And a lot of this, because there's certain chemicals in these foods, especially if you look at sugar and how it makes you feel and its effect on hormones and all this stuff, I really think there's just deeper causes to what's going on here. You know, and I think if you really look at it, there's a fundamental question that we're asking ourselves all the time, all day, every day. And anytime we hit a glass ceiling in our life, whether it's from a health perspective or in our relationships or finances, we're answering that question fundamentally wrong. And that question is, am I a victim or not? Am I a victim or not? And whenever we hit a glass ceiling, we're making an excuse and we're a victim.

We put it outside of ourselves. And this happens with food all the time. It's like, oh, I'm depressed, so I'm going to go eat this thing and then have this effect. it becomes outside of ourselves. And so until we can internalize and take full responsibility for everything going on in our lives, you know, it's not the great marketing or the chemicals they put in the Big Mac. It's my decision to go through the fucking drive-through. Yeah. Ultimately, right? Ultimately.

So, you know, looking at my own life and going, you know, where am I hitting a glass ceiling? What kind of decisions am I making that have ended in a result that I'm not happy with and reverse engineering that and making better decisions. Diet and exercise happen to be one of them, but that's just one aspect. I mean, you know, I've hit glass ceilings in my relationship with my wife. I've hit glass ceilings with finances. To get glass ceilings in relationships with my business partner and my kids and all of these things.

And every time I've taken a step back and going, you know what, I'm responsible here. And I accept that responsibility, figure out what decisions got me in this shitty spot that I'm in and start making better decisions. And people don't like to hear that, but it's that simple. Make better decisions. Did you always take responsibility when you hit glass ceilings in areas of your life? No, no, no. It took me hitting rock bottom and being bankrupt in order to realize this.

Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, okay, because I kind of led to my next question is, so why is it that most people will take that victim role? So do they need to hit rock bottom? Like, do they need a bottom out to realize that I control everything and I'm responsible? Well, that's a tough pill to swallow, you know, especially if you're just plugged into the Matrix and you're watching, whether it's CNN or CNBC or Fox or listening to Bloomberg on the radio or whatever, what are they telling you every minute of every day?

You're a victim. It's not your fault. It's a Republican's fault. It's a Democrat's fault. It's a pro-vaxxer. It's an anti-vaxxers. It's, you know, this, it's that. It's everybody's fault except for yours.

And so, you know, when, if you buy into that, then constantly you're being bombarded with affirmations telling you that, oh, yeah, it's not your fault, you know, it's COVID's fault. It's the government's fault. It's your employer's fault. That's an interesting perspective for, or I guess, an interesting pill for someone to swallow, but that is the pill that also, so when Tom Billio was sitting right there in that seat, he goes, he goes, if, My wife Lisa decides to go on a trip to France, to the south of France, and a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her hotel and completely disintegrates her hotel. He goes, guess whose fault it was? And I'm like, let me guess. Yours? Because we were talking about taking personal responsibility.

He goes, absolutely. He goes, because I knew where she was going. I knew where she was going to stay. I could have gone on to the NASA website and see if there was a meteor shower over that part of France. and da-da-da-da-da-da. He goes, that's the level of personal responsibility that I take in every category of my life. And I know I've been doing that since 2013 as I turned the corner when I had that massive anxiety attack at 38, so almost a decade. And the moment you start taking personal responsibility, it's weird because you're like, well, but then I've got no one to blame.

Your whole trajectory changes. Everything changes because, yes, I've got no one to blame, but I know exactly how to fix the problem because I got myself into it in the first place. Exactly. You can actually do something about it. Yeah, you can do something about it instead of waiting for someone or something to save you because odds are that outside source is not,

there's no man on a white horse going to gallop in and save our day. Right. Like, we're it. Yeah. We're it. Yeah. When it's outside of ourselves, by definition, there's nothing we can do.

It becomes like the whole concept of a circle of concern versus circle of influence. You know, I'm constantly reminding my team. Look, there's a lot to be concerned about right now. I get that. I feel that from all of you. But that's bullshit. Let's focus on our circle of influence.

What can we actually do? You know, oh my God, the world's going to end because of global warming. Well, maybe, but I'll tell you what, we can stop using, you know, plastic so much and eliminate single-use plastic out of our lives. and we can be a good stewards individually, personally. That's within my circle of influence, you know. You know, on the whole COVID front, you know, I can take vitamin D. We know that's effective to not die.

I can exercise. I can eat clean. I can take zinc, you know, these things. So there are things within as hopeless as situations may seem. There's still a role that you can play in it to determine the outcome. because you, I mean, you came over pretty young. I mean, I grew up in the school system here. The school system in the United States teaches you this concept,

and I got thinking about the other day, and it's total bullshit. Cause and effect. Effect. Cause and effect, right? Cause and effect. We've learned this our whole life. It's complete and utter bullshit. It's complete and under bullshit.

If your old man was an abusive alcoholic, and my old man was an abusive alcoholic, that means you and I would end up, in the exact same situation, the same place. According to cause and effect, yeah. According to cause and effect. So it's not cause and effect because we know that there's people whose old men were abusive alcoholics that are billionaires

and those that are homeless and abusive alcoholics themselves, right? So it's not cause and effect. It's cause plus reaction equals effect. Cause plus reaction. The reaction, our reaction, determines the outcome. Not what happened. Shit happens. the saying is true, shit happens, shit happens all the time.

You know, a lot of shit has happened to all of us this year, you know. How we react to that shit determines the outcome. And that's what we need to take back. Take that back. I mean, we own that. Don't give that to the media. Don't give that to, you know, your bitchy neighbor or your scarcity mode partner or whoever it is. Like, take that back.

Why do you think that we are conditioned? is as cause and effect and not so much cause, reaction, and effect. It's a modern form of slavery. Modern form of slavery. I'm talking to some of my African-American friends just recently. One of them is doing a film, and we were talking about this concept of being in scarcity mindset and this whole victim mentality. And he said, this is modern slavery in America.

because when you put something outside of yourself and you're now a victim and there's nothing you can do, that's the modern form of putting on chains. It's shackling people. You're shackling. You're enslaved. Enslaved. You're literally enslaved by it. The outside source.

Yes. Yeah. And so when we look at 2020, and here we are in October of 2021, and we look at the last 16, 18 months of how much. We've been conditioned that everything is happening to us, that we are the victims of the coronavirus, of the economic shutdown of the financial relief of all these fires. The fires. Right? Yeah. And if we keep showing up as victims, we really play into their game.

And I don't know who there is. I'm not claiming there's some Illuminati somewhere controlling and pulling the puppet strings. But I am saying that there is an agenda that's being fed to us via the vehicle of media to make us victims versus to empower us as I've got the answer and the solution within. And I'd even be careful with that because I've gone down the mental rabbit hole with that, right? Okay, we're being fed this. I don't care if it's, you know, Facebook's agenda or CNBC's agenda or Bloomberg. agenda, you know, there's this common theme that's going on. But then if we say, well, it's the man and this, then you're almost still going into that victim cycle, right? Like, oh, there's nothing we can

do. The man is trying to take it. Yeah, the man's going to get it. Yeah. So it's like, it's at, this whole victim thing creeps in everywhere. It's so trippy, you know, so just totally being conscious and going, okay, yeah, that exists. Who knows what the motivation is? But I don't give a fuck because it doesn't affect me i've got armor on like that shit does not affect me i see right through it bingo i see right through it what do they call you if you've got a um i don't want mean to go down the vaccine rabbit hole but so just correct me you don't want to talk about this i'm more than open what do they call it call it this is so interesting i'm very big on language pedros what do they call it if you've had a shot and you still get covid oh what a

A breakthrough case. Breakthrough case. Listen to the language. When is the word breakthrough used ever in our society? We've gone to the moon. It's a breakthrough. We've had this breakthrough and take knowledge. Breakthrough.

It's always this positive spin. Breakthrough is a good thing. Like, wow, a breakthrough. Sure. But when it comes to you've got a vaccine and you still get COVID, that's a breakthrough? No, that's a total fucking failure. But somebody in some spin room going, okay, how do we position this and people subconscious are trying to hijack and go, oh, yeah, we're going to position this as a breakthrough.

You keep hearing it. Breakthrough, breakthrough, breakthrough. No, no, no. It's the exact opposite of a breakthrough. All of a sudden, breakthrough begins to have a negative connotation versus a positive. Well, they're using the positive connotation of breakthrough saying, oh, well, it's not a big deal. They had a breakthrough. You know what I'm saying?

They're putting a positive spin on. a negative outcome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is existing all the time. And so what we need to be very conscious of, and my buddy, do you know Mark England? No. Okay, he has a course called Procabulary. Highly, highly, highly recommended.

A couple hundred bucks or whatever. It's highly highly recommended. The whole course is about making you conscious of something called soft talk and negations. Soft talk and negations. what I have noticed or observed is the biggest red flag to someone living in a victim mentality is that they have a high usage of soft talk and negations. Soft talk is, you go, oh, Aaron, you want to come down on the podcast? Yeah, I might come down.

I could, but I got to see maybe sort of, right, non-committal language. Sure. Or, no, Bejros, I can't, or I won't, or I shouldn't, blah, blah, blah, negations. No, what the fuck are you going to do? What are you doing? What are you committing to? Are you going to commit or you're not? Right?

This is a lot of stuff that you guys were talking about in, like, the project and the Squire program, right? Getting rid of the soft talk and negations. That is victim, victim communication. Yeah, yeah, that really is. And it's, you know, when you hear about the average American has 46,000 thoughts throughout the day and over 80% of them are negative. That's the soft talk loop in our head that's constantly telling us you're not good enough, you're not fast enough, you're strong enough, you don't have control, you can't, whatever. So we look at that. Okay, so here's another fascinating loop. We all have, including myself, I'm sure you do as well, and I almost equate it to like those cartoons when we were kids, like little devil on one soul.

or soul or angel on the other. And this devil over here is talking shit. Maybe there is the negative loop, the soft talk, the negations, right? The self-doubt. We know that between zero birth and seven years old, our brains are basically in download mode. We're not really making rational decisions yet. We're just observing and downloading from whoever the influencers are around us, typically our parents and maybe older siblings, right?

that creates a system of belief, good, bad or ugly, you know, and a lot of, you know, therapists into adulthood are trying to correct that belief system. That belief system drives those repetitive thoughts in our mind. And those thoughts, so let's look at like a scarcity abundance mode, money doesn't grow on trees. How many parents have said that to their kids, right? So from my mom, I would hear money doesn't grow on trees. From my dad, I would hear the sky's the limit. Your attitude is your altitude.

So my dad's speaking abundance and God bless my mom. You know, she's speaking scarcity in one ear. My dad's speaking in abundance and the other. I'm just thinking back all the shit that I was processing and downloading. So we have this belief system that drives our thoughts. Our thoughts drive our words, the words coming out of our mouth, soft talk negations or affirmative language, our words dictate our actions, and our actions over time drive a result. And that outcome either reinforces or goes against our belief system. So this isn't a stagnant

thing. It's constantly moving. It's spiraling. I think of it as like, you know, spiraling up into the right or down into the left. So that is how people that are Debbie Downers and are negative and are full of soft talking negations and the sky is falling, what happens to them? They get divorced five times. They're obese. They get cancer. They get all the diseases. Their car gets repode.

Their fucking business goes under. Abra-cadabra, with my thoughts I create, with my words I create, they're literally manifesting in real time their own reality by this negative loop they're creating. So how do we break the loop? Because we all have this like, you know, I'd say most people have a little bit of that negative loop. Hopefully it's not the main operating system. And there's only two ways you can't just start thinking differently. You can't just change your belief system without any different results, right? So there's only two spots you can break it. The way, being conscious of the words

coming out of your mouth. So talk differently and then act differently. Let's go back to fitness. How do I act differently? You know, how many coaches out there? How many, how many gym owners going, this pain in the ass clients coming in? I'm not getting the results. I haven't lost the weight. Blah, blah, blah. You said this, you said that. Victim, victim, victim.

Well, listen, Mr. Client, stop hitting the fucking snooze bar. When the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. every morning, get your ass up. Do the yoga stretches. I told you. Go for the walk. Clean up your diet. Stop cheating on the diet. You do that over time.

You will get results. And when you start to get the results, all of a sudden that the excuse of, oh, I have bad genetics or my parents are fat, or whatever, it starts to challenge that belief system. Because it's like, oh, wow, I did these things. Over time, I acted differently. Therefore, I got different results. The outcome was different, which challenges these beliefs that I held.

Well, maybe those beliefs aren't true after all. So I start thinking a little bit differently about those beliefs, or my beliefs start to change a little bit. And then what's coming out of my mouth is more conviction. It's not a fake until you're making it. It's like, whoa, I actually have a little traction here. And then I start to start to. act with even more conviction because I've seen some results. And then the results intensify and it

changes my beliefs even more and it changes my words even more and around and around. You can spiral it the other way. The confidence competence loop. Exactly. But you have to talk differently and you have to act differently. If you're not happy with the results you've been getting, reverse engineer it and talk differently or act differently. And it all comes down to a decision. It's a decision whether I'm going to go the sky is falling because of COVID and this and I'm going to feed into the fucking scarcity fear loop or I'm going to talk about other things or I'm going to talk about things that are positive things ways that we can kick ass even in this environment yeah there's so much truth to if you can challenge your belief system through your words and your actions and anything that

you can challenge long enough you can change you can change your belief system and I and I love that that's a very great beautiful word picture you just drew there thank you for that And let's shift gears for a moment because as a father, well, I met your son because you guys came out to the squad program. Bronson. Yeah. Bronson. Yeah. Any other kids?

Trinity. Yeah, my daughter. 17. Bronson's younger. Yeah. Trinity's older. Yeah. And so let's talk about that fatherhood for a moment, especially in this new era where in

addition to mom and dad influencing a child, they also have influence by their peers. And it used to be their peers that only influenced them in school. But now they have influence through social media platforms. And, you know, you're a guy who I definitely, I saw how you and Bronson were at the Squire program. I know enough about you to know that you're a man of character

and you lead with your words and your actions. How has social media impacted how you guys parent both of your kids? Has it? Maybe it hasn't. I don't know. My belief system is that I need to be the best human being that I could be. I need to live to my full potential. And that is going to have a greater influence than anything else, than any social media account, what's going on on TikTok, than anything I really even say. It's like, am I, am I, am I, am I, is my dogma a bunch of bullshit? Because we all have dogma.

Is it bullshit or is it actually have meat to it? Like when shit happens, am I going to all of a sudden go, oh, woe is me, you know, my house burned down and all this shit happened to me. And, you know, my sister just got diagnosed with cancer and I'm a fucking victim. Or I go, okay, this shit happened. This sucks. Let me figure out why. this fits in what do I learn from this you know where is the opportunity for growth and I believe that the kids are so much smarter than most parents give them

credit for you know there's so much smarter they're observing they're taking it in they're internalizing it so you know rather than saying hey I'm gonna limit your time on this and you know don't go on this and that platform and that it's like look for me I think of back when a TARC came out and my dad's like you're rotting your brain with that Atari you know get outside type of thing you know I look back on it and go okay well maybe there's balance you know I still got outside plenty and my kids still get outside and we still do a lot of fun activities together but I look at social as kind of their current Atari you know they have enough self-confidence and conviction in the

world that that shit's not you know this whole depression and teen depression and all all this, how much is that is them constantly in the classroom and on social and on, you know, everywhere that, hey, are you depressed? Are you depressed? It's okay if you're depressed. Are you depressed? Like the expectation is around depression. Yeah, yeah. Depression and anxiety overwhelmed. We're taking almost, we're taking extreme use cases. I'm not saying depression's not real. amongst teens, of course it is. But it's not the norm. Teens are teens.

Like, you know, I had a great time as a teenager. I had a lot of shitty times too, but hey, that's part of growing up. That doesn't mean I'm some depressed kid that needs to get put on medications and put a label on me. You know, and that is the direction that they're hearing. So how can I combat all of those forces? I can show them what it's like to actually live through adversity to actually actually to look at challenges and go, you know what, this is a good thing. You know, and put a positive spin on it and say,

the obstacle truly is the way, you know. The ability to reframe a obstacle and adversity into an opportunity for growth. Like Napoleon Hill says, he says every adversity comes with an equal seed of opportunity. Yes. If we reframe, and see it that way.

Otherwise, goes back to what you said at the beginning of this, which is obviously we're developing a theme to this show, which is, are you a victim?

Or are you going to take responsibility and control the outcome? Because the victim is constantly going to see that adversity as something bad happening to me. The person who takes

responsibility is going to go, hey, look at this new opportunity I have to level up in these areas. If everything stayed, just imagine this, because I almost think about this, in like relationships, you know, for a long time, I inaccurately approached the relationship with

my wife of the goal of just staying in the neutral zone, is what I call it. You know, not having her get upset at me, not fucking up, just kind of stay in the neutral zone. The challenge with that approach is if you have everything just staying hunky dory, and it could be in any aspect of your life. Do you ever change your modus operandi? Do you ever change how you're doing anything? No, because you don't want to rock the boat. You keep it all exactly the same. And guess what? That's called stagnation. What happens when things stagnate? They get stale. They get boring. They get stale. They die. Literally put water out and watch it stagnate. You can't drink it. It's toxic. You know, when things stop moving in the body on a macro or micro level in the universe,

or on a micro level in yourselves, it equals death. So we have to continue to move forward. I forget what the kid's movie is, but the whole thing is like, you know, keep moving forward, keep moving forward. That's like the whole theme in the movie. And it's like it's such a good lesson. Like, keep moving forward.

That's what it's all about. Continuing to grow, continuing to learn, continuing to challenge the status quo. You know, it's motion and motion. equals life. I think that's why, you know, you see some 95-year-old kind of on the front porch in a rocking chair with kind of a shit grin, because I believe towards the end of our life, if we've actually taken this philosophy, that at some point towards death, we actually figure it out and go. That's why, you know, that's why I endured all these pain points in my life.

It all makes sense now. It's like we see these little pieces of the mosaic, and, you know, sometimes it's hard to take a step back and go, hey, this is actually something beautiful that's forming here. You know, just give it a little time. That's a really good perspective to look at. That really is. Like, what can you do? Like, if we all, I'm 47 now, if I go to 105, because I'm pretty confident I'm going to 105, if I go to 105 years old and I'm sitting somewhere, like, I want to see myself with that, with that shit grin on my face going, you know, I lived a life. I conquered. I got scars, but I figured it out. Yeah.

Versus sitting in that same rocking chair in despair and regret. Yeah. Right? Totally. And Edmielette always says that, you know, imagine that you died and you're at the pearly gates. And, you know, St. Peter's like, hey, I want you to meet someone. Here's Ed Milet. And you look at him and you don't recognize them.

He goes, this is the man that you were supposed to be, the full purpose, passion-driven man. You didn't meet that expectation, sorry. Like, how sad? Like, I want to die and meet that man and go, like, we're twins. Yeah. Dude, we did it. And what is that? That is being in full and complete alignment with yourself.

We talked about alignment earlier. What is the ultimate cause of stress in people's lives and our own lives is when we are out of personal alignment? what we know to be living the highest version of ourselves and what we're actually doing and that gap is where stress exists. If we remove that gap and I come from a place of complete authenticity, I come from a place of complete abundance of unconditional love, then I know I'm in full alignment and there's no stress.

It doesn't matter what happens. externally, there's no stress internally because I'm in full alignment. And then I take that alignment. I match that alignment with my wife and my kids and my business partner and my team. And then Henry Ford's got an interesting quote. He says, when everyone is working together, success will take care of itself. When everyone, or the exact way is when everyone is moving forward together, success will take care of itself. Forward together. It's all about alignment. together. Yeah.

Success will take care of itself. Powerful message. So it's funny. In the time that I've known you, four or five years, I've seen this massive evolution in you. You've become quite the Oracle

in the way you communicate and the certainty that you have in the way you communicate. And I would say, being around many people, that level of growth usually happens in like a decade. But I've seen you have this like

growth over the last couple of few years that's just like and I could see it from the outside on your social media and then of course my text with you and then here even now what what attributes to this level of growth it's almost like you time-collapsed growth the obstacles the pain you know the pain you know going through bankruptcy and really looking in the mirror and going how the fuck did you get yourself in that situation you know losing close friends at a young age you know having relationship challenges is losing my property of 18 years in the fires last year.

Like these obstacles that have been placed in my life, I realized like, dude, are you completely full of shit? Or do you actually believe what you say you believe? And if you do believe it, then embrace this stuff with open arms, learn, grow, and move on and keep moving forward. And I just switched how I was thinking about things. When I was a very high-income earner as a kairo,

I was in scarcity mode and I ended up bankrupt because I, you know, over leveraged myself in real estate in 2007. Brilliant. If anyone knows that. Yeah. Whoops. Yeah. I'm a millionaire. I had months of $50,000 in income coming in, 70 grand coming out.

You don't last very long. You know, with these challenges that have been present, you know, I said, do I, am I eating my own? food or not like are you full of shit or not and and I just embrace that there is something to this because I've seen the commonality amongst people that I know and respect and that that have various levels of success there's commonalities there and so figuring out in reverse engineering and saying okay well here's the core that's common amongst all these people and it has to do with extreme ownership and personal responsibility morning routines are highly

common amongst successful people, you know? And why is that? Well, my daily trajectory, my morning trajectory dictates my daily trajectory would dictate my weekly and monthly and yearly trajectory. And guess what happens after 10 years? You can move fucking mountains. I went from bankrupt to running a hundred million dollar company in a decade. Literally in a decade. Yeah. You know, it's just like massive change. But it starts on a daily basis and an hourly basis by the minute. What am I exposing my brain to? What thoughts am I allowing in here? Am I letting this, my CNS, my central nervous system get hijacked from external forces that are telling me a victim?

Or am I blocking that out and being very selective on the people I hang out with and what I read and what I expose myself to? Am I making decisions that are moving towards the outcome that I desire? Are they moving me away from that? And then the framework becomes very simple. Very simple because it's all just a decision. Well, I have a porn addiction. Well, stop fucking clicking enter and go into the porn sites. I can't lose weight.

Stop eating like shit. Go to the gym. Whatever it is, we all have passions. We all have sins of the father. There's a genetic issue that is handed down from, you know, especially as men, from father to son and father to son. And, you know, we see that. We see that in our infant son.

that have little mannerisms as they're growing up. Like, how did they do that? I used to do that. That's the weirdest thing, right? It trips you out as a dad, and we've all seen this. So we know there's this genetic component, so which we literally can't change our genetics, at least at this point in time,

but what we can control is the decisions we make. So if I know that my family are addicts, which they are, my grandma on my dad's side is an alcoholic. My uncle died of alcoholism. I have multiple aunts on my mom's side. They're alcoholics. Siblings, addictive gambling, and all these things. I know addiction is in my family.

So am I going to go down those rabbit holes? You know, am I going to bring an open bank account to Vegas? No, I'll bring a thousand bucks and go, if you lose it, you're done. I'm not even going to open up the porn realm or some of these other realms and go down that because that's just going to take away from my relationship with my wife. I want this to flourish. I don't want to be focused over here when I'm trying to make this work. So being conscious of, well, what are your propensities? You know, what are your sins of the Father?

What are your passions? And being conscious to make the decisions not to fuel those, but to actually put yourself in a much better positive place. Well, and going back to what you said, if you have a morning routine, say an afternoon routine, an evening routine, all of a sudden that routine should dictate the desired outcome that you want. And so, for example, you know, Wednesdays are date nights for me and my wife. And yesterday was Wednesday.

We've got this rule where we're going to earn date night. So we go to my gym, BK Strength. We do this thing called Shredburn where we, you know, do two sets in the gym, run out the front door, run around the building, repeat that six times and you've got a mile. Great. Right. You put a mile under your belt. and now you just did, whatever, you know, two exercises times six.

And now we go to the restaurant with like, hey, we earned this. Because I'm a fatty by nature. I love foods. And so by doing that, I'm like, dude, I just probably burnt about 350 calories. Totally. I'm not about to eat dessert. And that took about 35 minutes. I'm not going to eat dessert in five minutes.

It's about 350 calories or more. And so I'm just going to get a great dinner. enjoy that, but I'm not going to get this dessert this time. And when I found that I create success routines to keep me on track, and if someone's got addiction to alcohol, guess what? If a buddy says, hey man, let's go to a bar to watch a game. If I was an alcoholic, I probably wouldn't go to the bar to watch a game. I'd be like, you know what, bro, come to my house and watch a game here.

Totally. Because odds are, if I'm that close to beer, alcohol, and I smell it, I'm just one bad decision away from ordering it. Control the environment. Control the environment. Why create the temptation, you know, when you know the rabbit holes that you can go down if you make one bad decision? I love that. To that point, one of the greatest things my therapist taught me back in the day was this acronym Halt, Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.

And he goes, just so you know, an addict goes back to their drug or alcohol when they're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. He goes, you will go back to your OCD behaviors and just, you know. go all in on your business or other things, whatever you're locked onto in that moment, and completely avoid and ignore your family if you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And so some people go and have panic attacks, if they're hungry, whatever your advice is, whatever your thing, your weakness is, your kryptonite is. And so how easy is it to know, okay, yeah, I'm aware. Am I hungry?

Yeah, okay, that's probably why I'm irritable. Let me just get up and feed myself. Totally. Instead of the old me, was like, no, I'm not going to eat and drink water until I finish and knock out every single email in my inbox thinking there's some kind of, virtue in that. But then my wife would combine like, hey, honey, and I'd snap at her. And gee whiz, man. Like, that's a great way to build a relationship, right? I just added a million dollars in the bank account, but my wife and I hate each other. Yeah. And so anyway,

to just create those success routines, man, are magical. All right, so what, what are we missing? In terms of optimizing humans, what are we missing that we didn't talk about that we got to cover before we wrap this episode up? I think we covered it. I mean, if there's one take away, I think it's take back the control in your life and realize, like, regardless, if you're a religious person, and it really doesn't matter what religion, there's a consistency here that we, as human beings, were made in the image and likeness of God, capital G, made in the image and likeness of God, which makes us powerful human beings, powerful. You know, come back to, I mentioned abracadabra earlier, you know, with my words I create, and I believe if I spoke Aramaic,

which I don't, that it actually means with my thoughts I create, you know, with my thoughts I create. With the faith of a muster seed, you can move a mountain, right? It's like there's all these little hints in scripture and things, like how powerful we are. We are not helpless. We are not victims. We are made in the image and likeness of God. And we have massive power within us. I manifest in real time now. It doesn't take a month or a week or a year or 10 years, literally in real time. In real time. I will think of somebody. They will call me or text me immediately. Like, once we realize this power that we have in our brains, our hearts, our souls, this is we can literally move mountains as human beings.

This is fucking amazing stuff that we have. So take back the control. Be very mindful of how we're communicating. Eliminate the soft talk. Eliminate the negations. Be committed in your actions. Be committed. What are we going to do?

Stop making excuses for ourselves. When we hit that snooze bar in the morning, who are we cheating on? ourselves. If we can't be faithful to ourself, how can we be faithful to our wives or our kids or our business partner if you can't be faithful to yourself? All said. You know, all these little cheats that exist, all these little easy way outs are not easy at all. Shortcuts, playing the short game is always detrimental. It's actually advantageous to play the long game even in the short term. It's trippy. It's advantageous to always play the long game, even in the short term. Explain that.

Meaning, if you're always focused on doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, period, even if it's like, I'll give you an example. Say, there's just a big bag of money right there, a million bucks, and there's nobody around, look around, there's no cameras. You have a choice as an individual as a human being, right? The short gain would be, let me take that cash, and I got it, go on a spending spree, do whatever you want with it. But what's the right thing to do? The right thing is, turn it in, see what belongs to, see if you could return it to the rightful owner. If I was to take that and do this, one, I'm cheating on myself because I've just done something that I know is morally not in alignment with what I know to be. Right. Against character. It's against character. So I've literally just degraded my own character. Okay. And if I'm degrading my own character and making that decision, then the money is probably going to fuel negative passions.

And it's going to fuck me up even worse. I have friends from high school. One of my buddies inherited a bunch of money. His uncle died. And then when we were like 17 or something, and he got like 200 grand, right? Which. when you're in high school and broke it's a lot of money that's a lot of money you're a millionaire yeah you might as well be a millionaire 200 grand and he was into destructive behaviors you know guess what happened to him he crashed and burned even faster a lot of people are sitting at home and they and if they have destructive habits oh god only if i got a break or only if i had x amount of money or whatever no that's bullshit you're just going to crash and burn even faster you've got to play the long game, set up the fundamentals, don't hit the snooze bar, eat clean, exercise, be in abundance mode, tell your wife you love her, spend intentional time with your kids. There is no balance in life.

That's bullshit. If you're an entrepreneur at home, you know, there's no balance. It doesn't exist. Nope. Doesn't exist. The business takes 99% of your time, and I'm here to tell you, that's okay. That's okay, because that 1% if it's intentional with your relationships and your kids and your spouse, that's all they need. They would rather have 1% of intentional locked in present time than hours of BS where everybody's just on their own phone and in the world. It's not a time issue. I used to think it was a time issue. I'd feel guilty. I'd be at work thinking at home. I'd be at home thinking about work and everything would fall apart and everything did fall apart. Yep. You know? It's funny how we operate that way. Totally. So it would be intentional. We take this back. We realize how

powerful we are, we realize that everything comes down to decisions and decisions that we think don't have consequence, little decisions, quote unquote, maybe are actually the biggest decisions of them all. Well said. Have you read the book, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell? I have. It's been a little while. Yeah. Great book, but it just reminds me of what you said. So Joseph Campbell spent his entire life studying all religions and realizing that exactly is You said, the scripture says, that we're made in the likeness of God. We are God-like. Right.

And therefore, we can manifest, we can create through this thing called the radiance. And everyone has the radiance. And the radiance, the way I describe it at the project, I said, imagine this beautiful glowing orb. It knows all, it sees all, it hears all, it senses all. Like, knows right and wrong. Like, definitely. There's certainty in this radiance. Now imagine if I get a black handkerchief and I throw it on top.

And I get another black handkerchief and I throw it on top. And I keep throwing it on top. Keep throwing it on top. And then soon you lose that glow of radiance from this beautiful bright orb. That is us living out of alignment. We take on debt, vices. We live outside of our core values and character. Each one of those things that we do ends up being another dark,

blankets, handkerchief that you throw on that glowing radiance and you go, man, I'm lost, I'm confused, I'm stressed, I'm depressed, I'm on edge. How about we start taking all those things back up? And then you have Godlike powers so long as the radiance is glowing. It's just such a very powerful thing. Would we have war anymore? Would we have energy scarcity? You know, all these things, if you really peel the layers back and let the radiance shine, there is full abundance for everyone in all. aspects of our life. Is energy really scarce? Go out in the sun and just the sun produces

so much energy. Look at the waves and the currents, the wind. Like, there is energy abundance all around us. Yet we're occupying countries over this. Like, it makes no sense whatsoever. And on the project, just to give you a little kudos, you know, my brother went through it, Michael. What? Yeah. Who? Michael. Michael. Michael Hind, ex-Marine. No way. Yeah, yeah. I didn't connect those nuts. Oh yeah, I told him to do it and he kept delaying it. Holy crap. He kept coming up with excuses. I'm like, dude, just get your ass down there and do it. So he finally commits and he does it. And he, I said, well, how was he? I know it was great. You know, a few people didn't make it, blah, blah, blah. He gives me the rundown. And he goes, you know, I guess, you know, at the end,

you guys did something where everyone gathered around and gave feedback to each of the men there. And he goes, I said, well, what feedback did they give? And he goes, you know, they all said, Michael, you know, you're doing really well on multiple aspects of your life. You've got a great family. You're crushing it at work. But dude, why are you kind of a, I don't want to say a fat fuck because he's not fat, but he was holding extra weight.

He had a gut. And like he wasn't, he made it through. And he's a strong guy. He's an ex-marine. And it's funny. He said that. I said, well, what are you going to do about? He's like, well, I'm going to get in shape.

And I just saw him last weekend. and he was chiseled me. So whatever everyone told him, had an impression. And he's committed to staying healthy now. Good for him. He's a savage, man. I love hearing that. How can our audience find you?

Well, for the business, you know, our website, LifeAid, Bebco, A-I-D, LifeAidbebco.com, at FitAids, our most active Instagram. And then for me personally, everything is just my name, Aaron, H-I-N-D-E, Instagram, LinkedIn, primarily, yeah. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for spending time with us on the show. Guys and gals, if you liked the show, and I know you did, take a screenshot, share it on your social media. Tag Aaron, tag myself, tag Fit Aid. And as always, leave us a five-star review and some great comments.

And don't forget to tell your mama. See you guys later.