Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - He Got Sober and EVERYTHING Changed

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanley What if breaking free from addiction could unlock untapped potential in both your personal and professional life? ✅ Go deeper: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyConnect with Justin McClureDaily Sober book: https://amzn.to/47PUBTCInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/jkmcclure/Join us for an inspiring conversation with branding expert and entrepreneur Justin McClure, who shares his profound journey from addiction to a life of purpose and value.Through heartfelt anecdotes, Justin discusses how he navigated the societal normalization of substances like alcohol and how sobriety transformed his approach to life, health, and relationships. With insights drawn from his book "Daily Sober," Justin provides practical advice for those looking to redefine their identities and break free from negative influences.Discover the intricate connections between optimizing health and achieving peak performance. Justin recounts a pivotal moment when poor lifestyle choices led to a health scare, driving him to prioritize self-care and health awareness.We explore the risks of substances like sugar and alcohol, stressing the importance of removing these dangers to enhance overall well-being. This episode advocates for personal empowerment, urging listeners to educate themselves and rely on self-discipline to maintain a long and fulfilling life.Relationships rooted in shared values are also a key focus as Justin shares stories of couples thriving by openly embracing their beliefs and imperfections.We highlight the role of authenticity in forging lasting connections and touch on Justin's entrepreneurial ventures, including the thrilling launch of the Ultralight, a versatile tool for content creators.From resilience in the face of personal challenges to the determination required to succeed in business, this episode is packed with valuable insights that encourage self-awareness as a path to both personal and professional fulfillment. Tune in for a conversation that promises to inspire transformation and growth.--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're going to hear that. That's me in Tokyo learning to make sushi from a master. How did I get here? I invested wisely. Now the only thing I worry about is using too much wasabi. Get where you're going with Spy, the world's most traded ETF. Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management. Before investing, consider the funds investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses.

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Yeah, let me, let me share with that. My wife and I got married within a year as well. Same thing. Same thing. When I first met her and I knew I liked her after one date, I said, you know what? I got to be honest. I don't drink. I don't ever want to drink again.

I've got two years sobriety. And also, I've become emotionally available to love somebody, but I am stubborn. I can be selfish. I hold grudges and I get defensive. Those are the things about me that I don't think I will ever change because I think important to tell somebody you can't be perfect. If I've worked on myself to become emotionally available to love you and I've developed empathy and I've taken care of the big picture, some of the small things I'm going to be. I'm going to be defensive. Sometimes I'm going to hold grudges.

And I said, that's who I am. And she's like, you know what? I like that person. Let's go. Yeah, make it look. Make a look. Make a look. The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business. This is the way. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Justin McClure. Justin is an entrepreneur. He's a branding expert. He's built an entire business around social media. And he has also written a book called Daily Sober. This is 365 days walking you through the process of being sober. It's your guide. And

this episode dives deep into what sobriety can do for your life. Now, I know a lot of you listening. You may have a couple drinks. You may have a lot of drinks. It may be part of your lifestyle. But my friends, it is important to at least know what alcohol is doing to our body, doing to our minds and how it impacts our life. You may not want to hear it, but I promise you are going to learn.

And whether it helps you just keep in check your drinking or maybe you're struggling with being sober in general, I promise you. Justin, his work, his book. this conversation are going to help move you forward. We also touch on a new product that he's launching, that entrepreneurial journey, the genesis of the idea, how he built,

manufactured the product. This is a full scope episode. It is fast and furious. I am a huge fan of Justin in his work, and you're going to love this episode. I love you for being here. Thank you for being part of this community. Doing this podcast is a pleasure,

and I just appreciate the hell out of you for being here. All right, guys. Let's get on to Justin McClure. Justin, great to having me on the show, man. Appreciate your time. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Awesome. So I want to start with your TED Talk from 2019. The biggest distraction to my success was myself. Watched most of it. Loved it. Can you break this down because I love this concept and I love the way that you attack it and I want to share it with the audience?

Well, you know, I think a lot of a dig, is getting in the way of yourself for me. So basically, if I had a goal in mind and the goal was here, I had all these other things that I dealt with that wouldn't allow me to get to the goals. Because when you have alcohol and you have addiction, you know, with that brought in women, it brought in seeking for verification,

it sought in. And then with that, you have manipulation, you're deceptives. You have all these character defects that get in the way of pursuing a goal that I found that when I'm sober, I have nothing in the way of achieving the goal because I sleep well at night. I have no stress. I don't look over my shoulder. And I think this is really important because in my sober life, it can be quite boring. And I tell people, a boring life is great. Why does it need to be chaotic? Why does it need to be filled with ups and downs? Why did it have to have all these things? There's nothing wrong with being in the middle of the road

because when I'm in the middle of the road, I can meditate on what I'm trying to achieve and then go achieve it. Do you think some of that has to do with not having a value structure that you hold yourself to standards or maybe something like a North Star? I know in the times when I felt the most, we'll say, wayward, are also the times when bad habits, not just necessarily alcohol but other bad habits, binge watching Netflix till 2 in the morning, even if you have an ed drink. You know, you have all these bad habits start to creep in when you don't have something that you either a baseline that you, that catches you or a North Star that's driving you.

Yeah, I mean, I think if you don't define your value system, then other people will define it for you. And that's kind of like, you know, I'll talk about it later, but my book is about breaking bad habits, which I was speaking to myself. So my bad habit was alcohol, chasing women, a lot of these things. So I didn't have a value system. So other people defined it for me. The women that I wanted, I shaped who I was so that I could earn their affection. When I went out with other friends, I was kind of a chameleon. What did they want me to be?

My value system was it changed from week to week to week. I did not know who I was. It wasn't until I got sober and I said, these are the things I'm doing. not compromise anymore on these values. For instance, I wouldn't go to bars. I change my people, places, things. This is the person I'm going to be. I can't be it overnight, but these values are what I strive to be. I'm going to work towards that. Any person or thing or place that doesn't compliment that is going to be removed. And it took about a year, but after that year, I had a value system, and I did not have one in addiction. And so I think it's really important to say

that again, that if you don't define your value system and those around you will for you, and that's why you'll go back to addiction, you'll relapse, you'll go back to the girlfriend you don't want, you'll go back to the pornography, you'll go back to the binge watching. But if you have a value system, it might be hard sometimes because you have to be disciplined, but at least you know what you stand for. Yeah, I do drink occasionally today, but I did 75 hard last year, so for 75 days. Oh, yeah. No alcohol.

That's something I wanted to do. I read about it and I was like, you know what? That seems the next hard thing that I want to do. So I heard that was hard. Dude, it's awesome. Here's the funny part. So for those of you who are listening at home that don't know 75 hard, it's a mental toughness program.

It's not meant to be a fitness program. Sometimes it gets misclassified. It's two workouts a day, 45 minutes apiece. One has to be outside. not defined on what fitness is. All I did was I like to do ruck walks, a 40-pound ruck vests that I wear, 20 in front, 20 and back, and I would just go for a 45-minute walk.

Sometimes with no earpods in, sometimes I listen to a podcast or a book, whatever. It's a gallon of water. You have to read 10 pages of a book. You have to stick to a diet. Again, the diet is not defined in any way. All I picked was to limit my sugar as much as possible. So zero sugar in America today is very, very difficult,

but I got as close to it as I could. And then the other one is you take a progress picture, and that's mostly just to hold yourself accountable. And what I actually found out of all of it, I thought the alcohol would be the hardest just because friends, social settings, et cetera. But the hardest part was actually the gallon of water. That was the hardest part was the gallon of water.

A gallon of water, really? Yes, because, you know, you think about how much you drink a day, maybe you have a couple of yeties or whatever your water containers, a couple of glass of water. A gallon of water is a decent amount of water. And you have to realign your life a little bit. And this is where everything you're saying to me makes so much sense.

I had to reallown my life to the fact that, like, the simple truth was, I was going to pee like 15 times day. You know what I mean? It was just, you know, like simple things like that. And when you think about that, you don't want to drink it late at night because then you, you know, you wake up in the middle of night and you disrupt your sleep, which isn't good. Yeah. I made that mistake one day. It was like 11 p.m. And I had only had like a tenth of the water I was supposed to drink.

And, you know, so I chugged, you know, basically almost a gallon of water in an hour, and then that night was wrecked. But my point getting back to what you're saying is what I found really interesting during, you know, being sober for 75 days was the people that I actually would want in my life, if I were to do a true audit, could give two shits that I wasn't having a drink at the party or whatever we were doing. You know, I do some speaking, you go to events and you think, like, oh, what am I going to do if I don't have a beer in my hand or whatever?

and I would, you know, you get a seltzer or a glass. No, the people who actually care about you could give two shits whether you're having a drink. You're right, yeah. And it creates almost like this selecting, like this automatic filter for who are the people that matter and who don't. Like if someone is actually going to care if I'm having a drink or not, they don't really care about my health.

They don't really care about what I'm trying to do. And that was a really, thankfully most of the people my life did not care. So, but, but that was a really, really interesting side effect because the few people that did are probably people in the back of my mind. I was like, this isn't a great person to have in my life anyways. And this just gave me an easy reason to step away from that relationship. Well, you know, once again, you defined a value system there.

That was my value system as well. I just, I helped somebody with this last week. She's like, Justin, every time I go out with these people, it's work related. and like it seems like I always have to have wine to be out with them. And I said, well, how is it work related if you have to have wine? There's nothing about working that's wine related. These are people that if you're trying to be sober and they're trying to encourage you to drink wine, how are they really your friend?

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Get more with Geico. And it goes back to the story that I told her. When I got sober, if I had to go to a bar, I didn't have a mixed drink or anything. I walked around with water proudly because I wasn't trying to drink. I wasn't trying to have something in my hand that looked like. So if you wanted to engage me in conversation, I was very comfortable saying, I don't drink. I'm having a good time here. I don't need a drink, but I don't want to talk about it. And I think by doing that and standing my ground, it let people know right away like,

whoa, this guy is here for a purpose and he doesn't drink. And that's the other thing. When you're at places like that and you have a purpose, you tend to stay there for an hour, then you leave and you go do something else. I've been way more productive. So what I was telling my friend, I was just like, if you're having to be somewhere and drink wine and you're staying three or four hours. One, you need to evaluate who these people are in your life. And two, you need to figure out how this really contributes to work at all. So it's kind of the same thing. It's really knowing what you're here for and your purpose and defining that value system and then letting people around you know that you don't compromise. I had a conversation with a woman from the insurance

industry on the show. And she mentioned that she said she basically didn't like the fact that in that industry, there were still a lot of deals that happened in the back of a dark bar with a glass of whiskey. Okay. And I said, well, take out the glass of whiskey and what's wrong with having a one-on-one conversation in a private place, right? Just reframing this. She kind of thought about it. And I said, to get that deal done, it doesn't have to happen in that spot, right? If that person that you're trying to do business with, if they're the kind of person who needs to have a private kind of exclusive spot,

that they can feel comfortable speaking to you in, which is really all that setting is for them, for the most part, right? Then just set that up in a place that you don't, either one, be comfortable not having a glass of whiskey or whatever while they are, or two, just find another venue that's gonna allow you to share that experience in a way that works for you. Just define the terms of that meeting

so that that person gets the privacy that they need, or whatever, and you get to be in a setting that you feel very comfortable in. And I think status, and I don't necessarily just mean it in a hierarchical standpoint, but like status and how people perceive us plays into the pressures that your client or your friend was feeling about having a glass of wine. I wrote about something similar in my book that when I first got sober, my first year and I wasn't that strong in my sobriety, I would not go to bars because I didn't belong there. Once again, value system.

My value system was I don't go to bars because I don't belong there because I might be tempted to drink because I'm less than a year sober. So what happened? Anytime there was a birthday, I, instead of going to the back of the bar, drinking whiskey or whatever, I would say, I don't go to bars. How about we take a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge? I lived in New York at the time. Why don't we go walk through Lower East Side, whatever it is? So I, instead of adhering to what they wanted to do, I made a suggestion that was better than that for me. So instead of going to the back of the bar, I said, why don't we talk about our deal walking across the Brooklyn Bridge?

Why do we need to be in the back of the bar? So by eliminating a bad place, I also protected myself from doing something I didn't want to do, which was go back to drinking, which would have gone back probably to three or four other things that they kind of are downstream from the drinking. Yeah, and you know, you said it a couple times, and it's 100% true,

So these are, they're, it's like a floodgate, right? If we let one of these, these things that we are addicted to and that are a negative impact on our lives, if we open one floodgate, the next one opens easier and the next one opens even easier, and then all of a sudden you find yourself all the way back in some place that you never wanted to be. And holding true to that is so incredibly important,

regardless of what the thing is. It might be alcohol for some. It might be one that I think, is a major problem for people today. Not a judgment, but I feel like because it's now legal in so many places, is marijuana, right? I have no problem with it being legal. That's not a political statement.

But just like alcohol, I think people feel like people are starting to let it creep into their day in their lives so much, and then they make excuses for it. Oh, you know, I can still do this. Or I can, whatever that thing is for you, you know, it could be sex. It could be porn. It could be binge watching whatever.

It could be eating potato chips all night or whatever they're bad. habits are, right? The good habits stack on top of each other, right? You do one good habit, wake up every morning and read a book or go for a walk or whatever. Then then it's so much easier to do the next good habit. And it's so much easier to do the next good habit. Unfortunately, the same exact thing is true with our bad habits. At least that's what I've found. And I'm, you know, you wrote the book, so I'm interested in your take. Like, you know, it feels the same way with bad habits. You make one, you know, you let, you cross that standard line one time. And then it's so much easier to do it again and again, and then all of a sudden you find yourself

in that place that you didn't want to be. Yeah, I met a guy at the airport a couple weeks ago in L.A. and we just got to talking, and I'm very open about my sobriety. I shared that with him, and he was like, huh, and he started to talk about how he thinks he drinks more than he should, but he also, so I said, well, what happens when you drink? And he said, well, I'm a bit unproductive, and I'm like, you will always be unproductive, and then I shared this. And then he asked me, he said, well, Justin, why don't you drink? Like, what, what's like, like, how do you really define that you don't drink and why? And I said this. I said, because if I do drink, I could lose everything. I will never gain one thing. And I said, here's the analogy. If I start

drinking again this Friday, maybe I get so drunk that I cheat on my wife. She finds out about it. She files for divorce. On Monday, my life is over. I've lost everything in one day. In one weekend, I lost everything. Now, drinking, I could lose a wife, a house, a car, my kids. You will never gain any of those things by drinking. You will never, so you will never gain. So as a smart person using logic, I said, I told him, why would I ever drink again knowing that, that I could lose everything. I will not gain anything. I'm not a 22-year-old man anymore. There's no time for that in my life. I want to be productive. I want to achieve. I want to accomplish. So I have to remove the things in my life that are taking from me and I have to keep doing the things where I'm able to be

productive. I think also, and this is why I'm so glad that there are books like yours out in the marketplace is there is a lack of understanding of the impact that alcohol has on our body, particularly as we age. And certainly it has an impact when we're younger. But as we age in particular, if you're even drinking a beer every night, your sleep is that much less, right? Just to say it's 10% less. It's probably more.

But say you have, and I actually did a, I wore a whoop strap for six months this year, just to track sleep and other things. And what I found is I could have one drink and it would have a mild impact. But if I had any, and that's one standard drink, not the quadruple pour that most of us put in a cup and say it's one drink, right? Like one standard drink and it would have a mild impact on my sleep. The next one would basically destroy my sleep for the night. I would barely drop into it.

It's very fragmented, yeah. It's very fragmented. And so here we are. We're thinking, oh, I had a stressful day or a long day, and it's a Tuesday, and I'll have a couple beers just to wind into the evening and the kids will play. No big deal. I'm at home. I'm not going to get any trouble. It's all good.

Except the next day we wake up and we're a little frosty for those first two meetings. And then that starts to snowball. And now every day we're waking up and having to deal with these effects that are compounding on each other because we're not sleeping well. We're not be productive of those first few hours. you know, we're not going for that walk, et cetera. And then we wonder why we don't hit our goals. Now, I think you can insert that for a lot of things, not just alcohol, but we lack an understanding of the impact on our lives these small decisions have.

You know what? This is probably my most passionate subject. I'm probably, most people consider me a biohacker. Like I know so much about the body, how it works, the chemistry of the body. And a lot of that is because I don't want cancer. I don't want to die of heart attack. So I educate myself, how does the body work? And how does sugar affect it from insulin to diabetes to all these different things?

How does alcohol affect it? Well, alcohol is fermented, and in the liver, it's converted into asahaldehyde, which is a poison for your body. So basically, alcohol is a straight up poison. Now, what I did in my book is my book is 365 daily lessons. twice a month I talk about what alcohol does to certain parts of the body so here for August 8th alcohol's impact on the heart so I get into the technical side of if you drink alcohol and it's a chronic problem well this is what it's going to do to your heart over time and so in my book I go through the liver I go through sleep I go through the pancreas I go through the brain if you choose to drink

and you indulge too much, this is what it's going to do to your body. And by doing that, I want to let people know that it's not out of sight, out of mind, out of body. What you do affects your body, if it's sugar, if it's fasting, if it's doing good things for your body, alcohol is a straight up poison because food, nutrition is something that enhances the body and provides nourishment. Alcohol does not do that. therefore it is a poison just like other things so if you choose to do that two three four eight

drinks a week you are going to your life is going to be cut shorter by doing that so once again why would i want to do that if i want to live long and i want to be healthy i got to cut it out yeah hmm i think you know and and you know for me when i look back on you know today uh kind of 2017, I had a health scare to a certain extent, and I really went, I dropped 25 pounds. I, you know, kind of really got in shape and probably not biohacker quite to yourself, but I'm fairly dialed in on fitness and discipline

and, you know, all the things I need to do to keep myself in the right spot. What was your thing in 2017? What happened? I had been eating poorly, not prioritizing sleep, not working out, and drinking way too much. So I was 30.

At that point, I was, mid-30s, 36, 35-ish. And what happened was I was emceeing a conference that I was throwing, two-day conference. The closing session was a fireside chat with myself and one of the primary keynotes. And I went to go on stage and I basically collapsed behind the curtain. And I barely pulled myself together.

I'm seeing stars. I wobble out. I sit down in the chair and before we go live, before we were introduced, I lean over to the guy who was doing the fireside chat with me and I said, I might not be able to do this. It sounds like pre-diabetes. No, it was just purely, it was too much drinking. I was about 30 pounds overweight. I was eating sugar and really terrible stuff.

I wasn't sleeping at all. I was sleeping four or five hours a day. I was not working out really at all. So you were 30 pounds heavier then? Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, easily. So now I come in like around 190 to 195. I kind of fluctuate depending on water weight, et cetera. At that time I was pushing almost 220.

And, you know, I'm six foot four so I could hide it a little bit so I could like look at myself and close and like, you know, being a former college athlete, I could kind of excuse away. Oh, I'm still in shape. You know, I got kids. Yeah, yeah. All the excuses, right? All the freaking excuses, except I had a moment where, I literally went to perform.

My body was like, nope, sorry, you've, you've already played all your cards. Like, there's no more cards to play here. And, you know, I, like, had, so I dragged my, so he, I'm sitting there basically comatose. I drag myself off stage behind the curtain. Conference is over. I'm supposed to be out.

Shaking hands, thanking people for coming. You know, I mean, this is like the ending moment. And I can't pull myself out from behind the stage. I'm toasted. And I said, I said, this will never happen again. Like, I am at, I need and should be able to get through two days of emceeing a conference and not pass out on the floor like that's completely ridiculous yeah and change that's when i changed everything um in terms of all these things and well you know you

you had a health scare but you know what do you know the biggest sign of a heart attack no death yeah yeah so i mean you know if you wait to your 53 the first sign of a heart attack might be you die so what what i what i tell people is that for me one i go get all my test done i see my numbers and even the scary stuff. I want to know the scary stuff. And fortunately for me, I've been very, very healthy. I was also an athlete. And I cut out alcohol long enough to like, you know, my liver got to rebuild, all these kind of things. But, you know, the most important thing is that I want longevity in my life. I don't want to die at 76 and start taking pills at 66, where I have gout and diabetes. And in my last 10 years are not being mobile. I really

think we can die at 94 and just fall over. Like we just fall over dead, right? So I'm trying to set up my life and the education that I'm trying to give people through, you know, the biochemistry of things is that you had a scare and you were able to recover from that, probably because you had a life of being an athlete and you're in good shape and you had good metabolism so your body's able to recover. But there's a lot of people who have done so much damage to their liver from alcohol. They got fatty liver disease now. They got cirrhosis. All these, all these things are really really, really difficult to come back from. So it's not only the education of, hey, you'll have a better life by being more productive and your relationships will be better, your coping mechanisms, your character defects, but really just your health in general will be better if you get rid of the poisons. And I also put sugar in the same place. I don't do sugar. I think it's one of the worst things for us. And what I tell my wife and what I tell people is this world, doesn't care if we survive. I mean, if you look at big farmer, you look at hospitals,

you look at the FDA, nobody cares. They want to push capitalism and the things that sell so that you can go take another pill, you can go to the hospital, nobody wants to see you thrive. You have to educate yourself, and you have to do this on your own. And that's why there's so many people that are sick. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, and I think it's worse than capitalism. I think it's elitism. I think it's because what's happening in most of the organization, that you just mentioned, at least from my perspective, has very little to do with capitalism and has everything to do with a few people making an incredible amount of money and being willing to tell us whatever they believe we need to hear in order to listen to them. I mean, I say that tongue

and cheek and possibly a bit of hyperbole, but if it wasn't for what happened in the tobacco lobby and the sugar lobby, tick coming in and telling us that salt was the problem and not sugar, right sugar could be a schedule one drug i mean what it does to your body the effect that it has i mean we look at people having sugar highs and we're like oh that's no big deal they're there they're you give a kid a candy bar and watch what happens to them they literally become a different human being look at a well yeah that that's why i've been i've been preaching for the longest time in schools it's not ADHD and all these other things it's kids have too much sugar they don't know how to deal with the impact and the effects of this sugar malfunction up and down i mean i have

kids, my twins are 11 and my boy's six, they're totally, like they have no, they're so mild-mannered and calm and they're great because they don't have their sugars up and down, because they don't do sugar. When I'm around these other kids, they're sugar all the time, they go up and down, up and down. And how does the parent solve the problem? More sugar. Here's more sugar for my kid. And meanwhile, there's kids now that are 11, 12, they're pre-diabetic, they got fatty liver disease. I mean, they're really unhealthy. My son is in Cub Scouts, and I couldn't, 90% of the kids are just overweight.

And you can't believe it until you see it, but you're just like, wow, it is such an unhealthy world that we live in. Yeah. I, you know, so taking this to like an entrepreneurial standpoint, just from, you know, if you're building a company, if you're running a company, if you're a high performer or want to be a high performer, having a foggy brain from ingesting four, you know, doing four and four at Dunkin' Donuts in the morning and being hung over and then stuffing your face with chips for at your brain. Like you, you are literally not at your best. Here you are saying, you know, I'm building something or I'm running something or I'm trying to be a high achiever and you are setting yourself up and, you know, not to mention

not maybe not exercising, et cetera. You are putting yourself in a position to be non-optimal. And like if for no other reason, you know, again, maybe everything in moderation to a certain extent, I'm not going to tell anyone to go cold turkey. That's their particular opinion. But the closer you can get to zero, right, or go all the way to zero, the higher you perform, it is, it is go sober for a week. Give yourself seven days.

Tell me how you feel on Monday. Then drink for seven days and tell me how you feel on Monday. And which one of those two positions are you going to be a better performer for your team, your company, whatever you're trying to do. So like, even if you like, oh, I love my booze, that's great. But then you're not setting yourself up to be the best version for even an entrepreneurial standpoint. Like if that's what you're trying to do. And that's the part that I've never understood with, you know, hey, people have addictions.

If you have an addiction, zero is the only way to get out of it. I've dealt with my own family. I have alcoholism in my family. My father went to jail twice for alcohol-related. things like I'm well aware of the impact that it has on people's lives and how it can destroy them, even if it doesn't kill them, right? Even, you know, non-death scenarios can have major, major impacts on family. But even if it is going to be part of what you do, doing it in a mild, moderate and controlled way is if you go in excess, you are literally setting your business up

for failure, your life up for failure, you're not going to have a good relationship with your spouse. I mean, that's the thing. I've had people tell me, you know, especially, so when I, and you probably get this more than I do, right? I had 75-day period, so you get it more than I do. But during that 75 days, everyone would tell you their, you know, well, you know, my wife and I, you know, we get along better when we have a glass of wine together. Okay, that sounds like a deeper problem to me. Right. You know, if you can't have a good time with your spouse at home without having a glass of wine, that sounds like maybe you have a bigger problem, right? If you can't have a good time with your buddies without pounding seven beers on a Sunday watching a football

game, that sounds like a bigger problem with how you communicate and the buddies you have than you know, then you need a drink, right? There's a bigger problem. Let me share on that. I mean, my wife doesn't drink. She doesn't, she never had a problem, but she just chooses not to drink. I don't drink because I have, you know, addiction. But let me tell you like my wife is my best friend. We get along so well. We never fight. When we do, it's very rarely. Like if we fight two days out of the month, you know, this is funny. When I tell people this, I say, you know, my wife and I might fight two days out of the month. And when we do fight, I'm like, let's roll the sleeves up and let's go. Because if there's 30 days in a month

and you fight, those are pretty good stats. So sometimes when we're about to fight, I'm like, okay, is today one of these days? Is today today, today the day. All right, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. because, you know, like, my wife can take my phone at any point. Sobriety makes you make good decisions in your life. I don't hide anything from her. I don't manipulate it all. I'm very mindful, and she is as well. So if you have to have alcohol in any relationship or business, friendship, or whatever,

I would question, going back to my friend who had all the wine, I would question, is this really productive in your life? and is it really, really useful because alcohol as a utility is not something you need at all. Have you talked to like a 22 or 23-year-old about what constitutes being in a relationship today? I have a couple interns at the company,

Chief Marketing Officer at a company, and we have a couple of interns. You're just chatting with them before we got into the business of a call. And one of them said, was talking about his girlfriend, and he said, we're official now, we shared our location on our phones. And I said, you did what?

And he said, oh, yeah, like, a relationship isn't official until you share locations on your phone. I'm like, I'm 43. I've been in a lot of relationships. I've never shared the location of my phone with anyone. I've never heard of that, actually. Yeah. And I guess this is like a thing now where because trust, I think because of abuse of drugs and how commonplace it is, I think for all these reasons.

people are so untrusting of each other that the only way you can feel that it's official is if you literally know where the other human is all the time. And I was like, I would not want to be in a relationship with a human that not necessarily needed my location, but that I felt I also needed to have her location. I would not want to be in that relationship. And I think so many of these, you know, this, what we're talking about here is a catalyst to this general just sense of distrust of each other, of lack of vulnerability. of true vulnerability. Like we use it as a social media tactic, but we're not actually being vulnerable. You know what I mean?

It just, and a lot of that comes back to how we kind of started, which is standards and value. And a lot of people just can't say no to all the engagement on social media because they think, okay, who else might desire me and let me kind of reach out to that

and let me kind of engage in that? Next thing you know, you've got to hide that from your, you got to hide that because people get on social, they get on Instagram and they start engaging and then that opens a door to like, well, now I've got to lie about this and like, does my wife know about this? And it all goes to like the location. And like, you know, my wife shares the location all the time. I don't care. I don't, I completely trust her. So she gets dressed up and she goes out in Atlanta, you know, and she goes out and does her thing.

I completely trust her and she completely trusts me. And I think having that is one of the one of the main things that we really, really trust each other because, you know, kind of with that is no alcohol. My wife is not. My wife is not. going to make a bad decision. Like she's going to make a good decision all the time because our family is number one. Our kids and our family is at the forefront of everything that we do. And I think that's what kind of makes us really successful is we know what's most important from day one to the last day is our family. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. I mean, really getting into and sharing values. And actually, I was listening to a podcast the other day and Ben Shapiro was the guest and he was talking about,

He married his wife three months into knowing her. And the host, it was Chris Williamson's show, and he asked, you know, how do you do that? How do you marry someone after three months and be married for 17 years or 16 years, whatever it is? And he said, on the first date, I just told her what my standards and values were. And I, if she, for the most part, aligned. If she didn't and she walked away, I would have known that wasn't the person I was supposed to be married to,

And instead, I think what we try to do is, I like you, so I'm going to try to become or morph myself or massage myself to be this thing I think you want versus this is who I am. You know, I'm sober or I'm not, whatever. You know, here's, I believe in this. I'm believe in God. I don't believe in God. Whatever my standards and values are, right, this is exactly what they are. And then you can choose whether those are things you want in your life or don't want in your life. And when you do that, you get relationships like what you're talking about.

And instead, we try to, like, become something that we're not or a different version of ourselves. And then we wonder why two, three years down the road, all these cracks start to form. And it's like, because you never, that wasn't built on the place of who you actually are. Yeah, let me, let me share with that. My wife and I got married within a year as well. Same thing. Same thing. When I first met her and I knew I liked her after one date, I said, you know what?

I got to be honest. I don't drink. At that time, I think I was almost two years sober. I said, I don't drink. I don't ever want to drink again. I've got two years sobriety. And also, this is what I said. I said, I've gone to therapy.

I've become emotionally available to love somebody. But I am stubborn. I can be selfish. I hold grudges and I get defensive. Those are the things about me that I don't think I will ever change because I think it's important to tell somebody you can't be perfect. If I've worked on myself to become emotionally available to love you and I've developed empathy and I've taken care of the big picture, some of the small things I'm going to be. I'm going to be defensive.

Sometimes I'm going to hold grudges. And I said, that's who I am. And she's like, you know what? I like that person. I said, so we got married within a year the same thing because we put it all out there. She put it all out there. I said, you know what? I like who you are.

You like who I am. We're not perfect. let's do this ride together. Yeah. All right, I want to transition a little bit because you're not just a guru on sobriety and biohacking. You're also an incredible entrepreneur. And it's funny, you just came out with a new product, the ultralight. And so I want to talk about this, not necessarily the ultralight.

It's not out. Yeah, it would be out later in the year. Out later in year. Okay, sorry. Sorry. I apologize. That's okay. We can talk about it, though.

Yeah. But I guess tell us as much as you want about the product itself, but I'm interested in, you know, here you are. You're not 24, right? You've built a career. How do you, so many people, this is where I'm coming from with this question, right? So many of my peers in my early 40s feel like the idea of generating a product idea, starting a new company, like, they're like, it's over for me.

It's too late. I'm too late to the game. I build something, right? Like, how do you genesis an idea, build it up? Like, where does that come from for you? And to build this into all the other things that you do in your life? Well, you know, one, I'm 49. So around 44, we had like 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Like, I'm an expert with social content, filmmaking. I came up with the idea. I'm like, there needs to be a light that works for the microphone. in any device. I'm tired of setting up these lights. So I came up with it in my mind. I'm like,

well, what if it attaches from the bottom and you had an adapter for the phone? It could work with anything. It could be a ring light. I'm like, wow. So here's the important part. Here's the important part. In sobriety, I got time. I'm not wasting time at bars, hungover, whatever it is. So in sobriety, I put my energy in good places versus in my addiction. So I said, you know what? I'm going to figure this problem out. So what did I do? I learned a little bit of mechanical engineering. I learned a little bit of electrical engineering. And then I found somebody to make what I wanted.

And then I hired an industrial designer to make this product in a CAD the way that I wanted. And then I went down the rabbit hole of like, well, how do I find a manufacturer? And I just kept going at it. It probably took a year and a half. And I just kept going at it because I believed in it. Now, here's the most important thing is that later down the road, I met Damon John from Shark Tank. and people always say, Justin, are you surprised to meet Damon?

No, I'm not. Maybe you are, but I'm not. And that's not arrogant. It's humble because of all the years of me putting my head down and not giving up and saying, I'm going to keep at it, I'm going to keep doing it,

I'm going to fight through these battles. You're going to meet the people you need to meet when you should meet them. So sobriety allowed me to put the time into something that I believed in. and I just cared enough that I said, I'm going to figure out everything that I need to figure out, and I'm going to make this happen.

And so the light, one, it's a solution to a problem. So there's a problem. Here's my solution. Boom. It's going to be a winner. I know that it is. So I always believed in it, and I had the support of my family. But the main thing is I knew that if I gave up, it would never happen.

So I just had to work through the tough days, just like I worked through the tough days of early sobriety when I wanted to go back to drinking or I wanted to go bang a girl. I said, listen, your way got you here. So stop doing it. If today is tough, then sit in it and be sad. Sit in it. Be angry. But don't go do the thing. And so once I do that, I can apply that to everything I do in my life.

Just like I tell my kids, I try to teach my kids how to work hard. Because if they can learn the ability to work hard, they can apply that to everything in life and be successful. So the light is we've been successful as entrepreneurs in social media for a long time. We got 15 million subscribers. We get a million views a day on YouTube. And I said, you know, I want to invent a light that's going to make this process easier. And so that was the culmination of me learning a lot of things on my own. Yeah.

You know, I love the advice of sitting in it. One of the best piece of advice that I ever got in my life was a little after the moment that I described before. I had a mentor of mine say, go get a counselor. Someone can't be your family. You know, this is, go get someone. Set up an appointment for every other week for the rest of your life and just go see them. Whether you're happy, whether you're sad, whether you're excited, whether you're depressed, whatever it is, just go see them and talk. and what I learned to that process is exactly what you just said.

Every negative moment that I've had, and now I've kind of learned to do it myself, but early on she helped me a lot. You know, one of the instances was my divorce. Three years ago I got divorced. It was a completely blindside of me. And within two months, I was operational again. Not because I was happy about the situation.

I wasn't. But the first thing she said to me when I sat down and I told her was, just let it flow through you. She's like all the pain, all the frustration, all the hurt, the guilt, or whatever the feelings are that you're having, like feel them all. Be sad, be guilty, be shameful,

be whatever those things are that come to you. Be those things, like experience it, live it. Sit on the couch face down with drool coming out of your mouth for a day. You know, take a day off from it. Because if that's what you need, go through it. Don't bottle it up. And yeah, it was shitty for,

six, seven weeks. And then I woke up one day and I was like, okay. I mean, I'm not happy. You know, I don't like what's happening, but I'll survive. I'm going to be okay. I can move forward now, right? I'm good. You know, I told somebody that recently.

And I also, I mentioned, I told a story in here. I was helping somebody one time in sobriety. And her dad died and she drank. And then she got sad. And she told me she drank because her dad died. And I said, no, you didn't. You drank because you wanted. to. And now you're sitting on the bed and you're trying to escape by going shopping. I said,

don't go shopping. Sit on your bed and cry until you don't cry anymore. That's what I believe, and I believe as a stoic, that when I feel a certain way, if I'm sad, I need to sit here and say, you know what? I'm sad right now and it sucks. But as soon as you can really feel it, you go up from there. That's as far as, so that, that's what I tell people like, I had a friend who had, you know, stage four cancer. I'm not the type of person to say, you're going to beat it, you're going to beat it, you're going to beat it. What I told this person was, I said, man, this is really scary. How does it really make you feel?

And what if you don't beat it? Like, how does it make you feel? And that person, it brought them to hear, but then they were able to talk about it, and they were able, they were able to work themselves up higher than that because they really understood the reality of something. Sometimes the reality isn't good. We're sad. We're sick.

We're angry. We can't assess. that and we also we cannot appreciate the view from the mountain top until we've been in the valley and sometimes when you're in the valley it sucks and you've got to be there until you get until you find your way out just like you know three years ago when you found yourself at the conference and you've and you almost fainted or whatever that was your low point and then you said you know what I got to figure out a way to get out of this and be better and be healthier yeah you you can't escape it you can kick the can but it's still there waiting for you you know you can you can

hide in drugs, alcohol, whatever, porn, sex, whatever thing you want to hide in, you can hide in it for a while, but it's just waiting. It's just sitting there waiting for you. And that's what she said. She goes, you've two options. Go through it. Love it. Or kick the can and go through it, because you're going to go through it eventually. And that deflection, that repression, that causes so much internal pressure, so much internal stress that then can come out in yelling at your kids when they don't deserve it, or making a bad business decision, or doing something that you would never do, you know, that making a, you know, gambling or whatever it is,

to try to hide from that thing. And the only way, you know, it's cliche, but the only way out is through. And I'm glad you brought up Stoicism. I love Stoicism. You know, for me, it's like the Bible, meditations, and then Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. You know, if you stack those three books on top of each other,

you got pretty good way to, pretty good lessons to live your life by. Yeah, let me also mention the same as you. When I got sober, my first six months of sobriety, I was dry sober, meaning I was sober, but I didn't, my mind started to, after six months of sobriety, I said, I need to fix the problems in here. So I went to therapy,

and I did therapy every Wednesday for a year. And that was the best thing for me, because it helped me figure out, how did I let myself get to this point in life? Because when I got sober, I was kind of like what you said earlier, I thought I was just a crazy guy. I'm like, I'm that crazy guy. I get an excuse because I'm that crazy guy.

But then when I got sober, I said, no, no, no, you're not that crazy guy. You are crazy, but you did not see the problems that have been here for so long. You've got to fix this. So I went to therapy for every day for a year on Wednesday. And after a year, I said, you know what? I'm so glad I did this because now I understand more of how I let myself get here. Yeah, the things you learn about yourself when you actually just talk, like when you, the words, like when you're actually in a place that you can just speak what you're feeling, what you're thinking, what's going on inside you, and you hear things, you hear it come out of your mouth. You almost don't even need the therapist to respond sometimes.

I mean, sometimes you do, but sometimes you don't even even respond. You hear it come on your mouth and you're like, wait a minute. That's not who I want to be. Well, that's why meditation can be so good because a lot of times you're just saying things to yourself and like you're figuring out your own problems. Yeah, Justin, this has been incredible. The book is Daily Sober. We can get it on Amazon. Where else can people, I mean, I know you're on all the socials and guys, social media is incredible.

You bring your family into it. It's funny. It's fun. Educational, tons of amazing things. I'm a fan of all social that you have going on. Where's the best place to connect, like the first place you want them to kind of get into your world and learn more about you? I mean, you know, if people like YouTube, you can find us on YouTube, Mighty McClure. But if you want to contact me personally, you guys, you guys,

to Instagram and type in Justin McClure, J.K. McCleur. You can get to my daily sober there, the ultralight, whatever it is. And I'm here to always help people. If it's sobriety or how I can help people maybe find a manufacturer for their product, I'm here to, I want to see people win. And that's how I became partners with Damon John. He's like, Justin, what I like about you is you, you don't mind other people winning around you. I'm like, no, because there's no threat to me. Nobody can take away from me what's mine. So I want to let other people win as well, because when you win, it makes me happy. So I want to see other people win as well.

So feel free to reach out to me, and hopefully this helps somebody or touch somebody, and that's kind of the main point. Oh, I love it, man. Well, you got a fan, you got at least one fan coming out of this conversation. So appreciate you, brother. Be good.

I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Let's go. Yeah, make it look. Make it look. Make a look. Thank you for listening to the Ryan Hanley show. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review

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