Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #152 Keith Norris
Episode Date: April 20, 2020Today we have the co-founder of Paleo fx, Keith Norris. We talk about this year's event going down on July 14th to July 16th here in Austin Tx. We also get into Keith’s background, growing up in Tex...as playing football, how he got into strength training, plant medicine, spirituality and more. Get tickets to Paleo fx July 14th - 16th | https://www.paleofx.com/paleo-fx-event/ Connect with Paleo fx Website | https://www.paleofx.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/paleofx/?hl=en Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/PaleoFX/ Connect with Keith Norris | https://www.instagram.com/theory2practice/?hl=en Help support the podcast by visiting our sponsors: Ancestralsupplements - Grass-Fed Colostrum https://ancestralsupplements.com Use codeword VISIT for 10% off / Only Valid through Shopify Option OneFarm Formally (Waayb CBD) www.onefarm.com/kyle (Get 15% off everything using code word KYLE at checkout) Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Instagram | https://bit.ly/3asW9Vm Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY Show Notes Michelle Norris on KKP | https://apple.co/2KhsKSB I AM | http://www.iamthedoc.com/ Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke | https://bit.ly/2XM6I2e Tribe by Sebastian Jungera | https://amzn.to/2xIsF7y Sex at Dawn by Chris Ryan Phd | https://amzn.to/34PMHt7 Untrue by Wednesday Martin | https://amzn.to/2VlCxgB Beyond the Known Realization by Paul Selig | https://amzn.to/3bo5pdD The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible | https://amzn.to/3bqHhav
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                                         Hello friends, thank you guys for tuning in to today's show with my man Keith Norris.
                                         
                                         Keith is the husband and amazing half to Michelle Norris who we had on about a year ago.
                                         
                                         They are co-founders of Paleo FX, one of my absolute favorite and one of the best conferences I've ever been to.
                                         
                                         Bringing in guys like Rob Wolf, Mark Sisson and a number of other great people that I've followed and had on here. And it's just a tremendous experience. And Keith is an incredible
                                         
                                         person. We'll link to the episode I did with Michelle about a year ago. I think it's phenomenal.
                                         
                                         Finally got to sit down with Keith, who really is just a physical specimen. For someone in his 50s,
                                         
                                         absolutely walks the walk and looks the part and does so in all respects from the mental,
                                         
                                         obviously the physical and the emotional and the spiritual. He is a dialed in person that always
                                         
    
                                         puts a smile on my face whenever I'm in his presence. We did have a change of plans. Obviously,
                                         
                                         Paleo FX is supposed to go out in April and it will be now slated for July 14th through the 16th. So pending there's no weird
                                         
                                         stuff going on here and things do move back to the way it once was in some regard, July 14th
                                         
                                         through the 16th is when Paleo FX. So we have an updated timeline for that. I'll re-mention it
                                         
                                         and we'll put that in the show notes as well. Make sure you click subscribe. That way you never miss
                                         
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                                         Thank you, guys.
                                         
    
                                         And without further ado, my man Keith Norris is with us.
                                         
                                         All right, Keith Norris, finally in the house, brother.
                                         
                                         Yes, sir. Kyleyle thanks for having me
                                         
                                         man yeah incredible um so much i want to talk about obviously i want to get to paleo
                                         
                                         effects i want to talk about this book we were just talking about but first i want to get your
                                         
                                         background you uh what was life like growing up because you were a military man correct yeah well
                                         
                                         i grew up in a military area yeah my dad was military although uh by the time
                                         
                                         i came along he was um in the guard okay this period of time um this vietnam era time um i
                                         
    
                                         grew up in a working class neighborhood dad worked mom stayed at home um very blue collar uh you know
                                         
                                         protestant work ethic um tool and hour people um yeah so that was my upbringing man and it was uh
                                         
                                         you know it was it wasn't uh i didn't want for anything because i didn't realize what there was
                                         
                                         out there to want for right um but it was it was tough man it was uh i was an athlete early on uh
                                         
                                         super super competitive um i was not the kid that was going to split the atom, man.
                                         
                                         You know, I wasn't that.
                                         
                                         So I knew if I was going to make it at something, it had to be through athletics.
                                         
                                         I always had the will to succeed and compete and be better.
                                         
    
                                         I think that was just, you know, inbred in me.
                                         
                                         It was just part of my DNA.
                                         
                                         And that's the way I could express that was through athletics.
                                         
                                         And I just happened to be pretty damn good at running full speed and throwing my body in the
                                         
                                         other people. So, you know, and growing up in, in South Texas where it's, you know, it's a cotton
                                         
                                         farming religion and football. Well, that I fed right into that system. Yeah. That's awesome.
                                         
                                         Yeah. You definitely have, I mean, how old are you right now? I'm 55.
                                         
                                         You look like you just came off the field. You still got it, brother.
                                         
    
                                         Yeah, I still love to train. I love, you know, I consider my body as a temple. And I always look at it that way. You know, I didn't, back in my competitive days, it was a tool. You know,
                                         
                                         I considered it a tool, but now I consider it a temple. I'd like to think that I'm a little bit wiser now and take things a little bit easier.
                                         
                                         I take recovery seriously.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Whereas before, you know, I didn't.
                                         
                                         It was 100 miles an hour and I'll sleep when I'm dead.
                                         
                                         That was the mentality.
                                         
                                         And that's part, I mean, that could have been from dad.
                                         
    
                                         That could have been from coaches.
                                         
                                         It probably was from everybody you fucking knew who was in a male body right well in mom too i always said if there was such a thing
                                         
                                         as a german tiger mom that was my mom yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense i mean uh talk a little
                                         
                                         bit more about that you know how has training changed over the years because one of the things
                                         
                                         and i definitely want to get into you know what you've gathered in
                                         
                                         the esoteric and spiritual that may have been different from your upbringing but um one of the
                                         
                                         things that i've noticed that is kind of commonplace unfortunately among people who who start on a
                                         
                                         spiritual path is they forego the body right they don't give a shit about it anymore right like all
                                         
    
                                         this the awareness the deepening of awareness enlightenment all these things become uh the singular focus right and they stop taking
                                         
                                         care of themselves and it's like well we're here in body right now we have one vehicle to use right
                                         
                                         why not make the most of that i like getting up and feeling light on my feet being able to dance
                                         
                                         being able to run on a whim playing with my my kids. I don't want to fucking lose that. Exactly. Exactly. And I think the body is a springboard to spirituality because
                                         
                                         the body for better or worse is how we experience this realm, right? And all of the, all of the
                                         
                                         spiritual work that I've done and I've, I've done a lot and I love that. But at the end of the day,
                                         
                                         I have to bring whatever, whatever I grasp in those other realms, and we can talk about that a little bit later.
                                         
                                         And I have to bring it back here to earth, to this realm.
                                         
    
                                         This is where I'm operating.
                                         
                                         This is where you and I and all of us are here to teach and here to learn.
                                         
                                         And we have to do it through this body.
                                         
                                         This is the instrument by which we navigate this realm. And
                                         
                                         in my opinion, I treat it as a temple so that the more highly tuned my body is,
                                         
                                         the more better I can receive spiritual teachings or downloads when I'm in ceremony and I'm in these
                                         
                                         other realms. And the better I am at transferring that information or putting that information to
                                         
                                         work in this realm.
                                         
    
                                         Yeah, you can bring it back to earth.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         And I'm sure you've come across plenty of people that are one foot on earth and one foot in the astral.
                                         
                                         Right, right.
                                         
                                         But I think about that too.
                                         
                                         Like there are things that, I mean, Paul Cech talks about this from taking Tai Chi and zone exercises, which are chakra exercises in the end of how to eat, move and be healthy and you know a breath work squat is grounding it's going to hit the root chakra
                                         
                                         that's over some people's heads but if you can just think about it very simply a back squat's
                                         
                                         going to fucking put you in your body you're not thinking about anything else sure is i just did
                                         
    
                                         squats yesterday yeah i deadlifted heavy for the first time in like a month and i was like oh yeah
                                         
                                         i'm here i'm nowhere else i'm right here. And so I think of things like that, that are that seem to be irreplaceable. They seem to be things that actually matter. You could fucking air squat all day. It's not the same as doing something under load. And those are practices that I think of, in a way now as spiritual practices, because they're very much something that pulls me into my body in a way that I can't get in yoga. I'm not going to get it elsewhere.
                                         
                                         Right. And I think everybody, you know, my, my mode of training is weightlifting in secondary.
                                         
                                         It's sprinting. And I, and I ride a bike a lot, road bike, fixed speed bike, mountain bikes,
                                         
                                         yada, yada, yada. Those just happen to be my tools. That's what connects me.
                                         
                                         My training now is totally different than it was when I was competing.
                                         
                                         So there's that.
                                         
                                         And my outlook, my goal of training is totally different than it was when I was competing.
                                         
    
                                         When I was competing, I really didn't have any spiritual bent whatsoever.
                                         
                                         I really didn't come from a particularly
                                         
                                         religious family. Um, I was steeped in Christianity cause that was my culture. Um, but I wasn't a
                                         
                                         church going kid, you know, that didn't, so spirituality was kind of far removed from me.
                                         
                                         In fact, I really didn't want anything to do with it. You know, I wasn't particularly drawn to it.
                                         
                                         I wasn't repulsed by it. It was just something that just didn't appear on my radar until much later um but my focus for
                                         
                                         training you know for the first 25 30 years of my life was purely for out performance outcome
                                         
                                         performance outcome were you trying to gain weight what position did you play played defensive back
                                         
    
                                         yeah and in fact i played roughly at about the same weight i'm at now i was gonna say you're a jacked defensive back i was i was
                                         
                                         defensive line so this is a totally different day right we're talking and i'm gonna date myself but
                                         
                                         this is back in the option day right where an aerial circus was somebody putting the ball up
                                         
                                         in the air 20 25 times a game um this was totally uh stop the stop the option defense right and you and essentially
                                         
                                         uh the strong safety which is what i played strong safety was essentially an extra linebacker yeah
                                         
                                         like an adam archuleta type right yeah yep okay i get that speed and power a little bit more speed
                                         
                                         yeah maybe a little less size a lot of bricks in the head man bring the leather yeah okay totally
                                         
                                         different game than it is.
                                         
    
                                         So you didn't have to gain weight.
                                         
                                         How has your diet changed?
                                         
                                         I mean, obviously, I think I'm trying to paint a picture here of what you've gotten to in
                                         
                                         paleo effects, because obviously just to have that idea of bringing all these people together,
                                         
                                         there must've been some formulation of that for you and Michelle to understand.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         What started you on the path of, instead of just wanting to be the best
                                         
                                         and knock someone's fucking head off,
                                         
    
                                         like I did in football too.
                                         
                                         Right, right.
                                         
                                         There's some really important stuff here
                                         
                                         that so many people are missing out on
                                         
                                         from a health and wellness standpoint
                                         
                                         that we can really have a niche play in.
                                         
                                         Well, I think very, very early on,
                                         
                                         I wasn't the most naturally gifted player on the field.
                                         
    
                                         I always had to train to be on the field with people who I knew were better athletes than I was.
                                         
                                         So I had to train to be on the field.
                                         
                                         I had to watch more film than the next guy.
                                         
                                         I had to eat better than the next guy.
                                         
                                         I had to do all of these things.
                                         
                                         I had to be in my head, which is really what got me into psychology, was through the sports route, wasn't anything else.
                                         
                                         I wanted to find out why do I respond to certain coaches
                                         
                                         better than other coaches? What is it they're doing? How are they worming into my brain? How,
                                         
    
                                         why is it that I feel like performing for him and not for him? Yeah. And that's what got me into the
                                         
                                         psychology realms when I was not a good student in college, but that's what got me interested.
                                         
                                         And that's what, that's what made me become a good student, was because I was very interested in that.
                                         
                                         On the diet side of things, I understood very well, even at a very, very early age,
                                         
                                         because I had happened to work out in a gym when I was younger.
                                         
                                         They'd had everybody in it.
                                         
                                         You had track athletes.
                                         
                                         You had bodybuilders.
                                         
    
                                         You had all of these different people all coming together.
                                         
                                         And this was in San Antonio.
                                         
                                         It was a perfect
                                         
                                         breeding ground for me coming up because I saw the bodybuilders going through contest prep,
                                         
                                         right? And I saw how they were eating. Oh, carbohydrates. If you manipulate carbohydrates,
                                         
                                         I can manipulate body weight. Cool. Understood. Um, you know, the ramification is simple things
                                         
                                         like sugar, right? Why put a poison like that into your body? And, um, interesting
                                         
                                         story. I got to meet Arnold when I was 12 years old. He did a, yeah, it was, it was fascinating.
                                         
    
                                         He did a sporting goods store opening in San Antonio and I begged my dad to take me. And my
                                         
                                         dad was like, you know, he could give a shit about bodybuilding, but, uh, I finally nagged
                                         
                                         at him enough. He, he took me. And and uh where was arnold that in his career at this
                                         
                                         point so this was 76 okay so still bodybuilding right he's in the bodybuilding pre-acting yeah
                                         
                                         okay yeah he's still at the heavy heavy accent dude it was fascinating because there was
                                         
                                         a handful of people at the sporting goods store opening and it was him and franco colombo yes
                                         
                                         so both of them together and first the the disparity between the two, right?
                                         
                                         So Franco is this like 5'5 brick house.
                                         
    
                                         And he's still a huge dude.
                                         
                                         But I remember seeing Arnold at that time.
                                         
                                         And that was the biggest human being I had ever seen in my life at that time.
                                         
                                         Just freaking jacked.
                                         
                                         And he was in the off season, right?
                                         
                                         So he's carrying a lot of body weight.
                                         
                                         And I was no stranger to big dudes man i
                                         
                                         mean my family's big i have big uncles and and again the background that i grew up in you know
                                         
    
                                         a lot of tool and hour guys a lot of roughnecks i knew rough and tough dudes but the sheer size
                                         
                                         of this guy was amazing and at that time man you know was 12 years old. I was a kid that had, you know, the, what was the dude's name played for the Raiders, man?
                                         
                                         Lyle Alzado?
                                         
                                         No.
                                         
                                         Howie Long?
                                         
                                         Quarterback.
                                         
                                         Crap.
                                         
                                         I'll think of his name here in a minute.
                                         
    
                                         Long hair, beard, Kenny Stabler, man.
                                         
                                         Oh, yeah.
                                         
                                         I loved Kenny Stabler, even though I was here in Texas and should have loved Roger Staubach.
                                         
                                         I was like, nah, not the clean cut dude. like that guy so anyway Arnold comes in he's got long hair and in at 12 years
                                         
                                         old I put it together man they were he had like groupie chicks all over the place yeah and I was
                                         
                                         like I see how this game is played now right I'm starting to come around at 12 years old and and
                                         
                                         again it's like I can't sing I'm not in school, but I think I can freaking do that, right? And so that kind of
                                         
                                         led me on that path to understand that nutrition really affected the body. Training really affected
                                         
    
                                         the body. And I was really into that. How can I best do what I can with these gifts I'm given? And how can I outperform
                                         
                                         the guy who is a better athlete than I am? And I did that throughout my collegiate career, man.
                                         
                                         I played against guys who were freaking good athletes, right? A hell of a lot better than I
                                         
                                         was. But because I studied film, because I worked out, because I did all of the things,
                                         
                                         I could at least compete against them. Didn't mean I always won against him,
                                         
                                         but I could freaking compete against him. And sometimes I did win. So that's kind of the
                                         
                                         mindset that I carried into from college. I went into the military, spent nine years in the Navy
                                         
                                         and the military, still trained, was still super, super interested in what training and diet would
                                         
    
                                         do to the body. From that, I went into, of all things,
                                         
                                         when I left the military,
                                         
                                         I went into the pharmaceutical industry,
                                         
                                         which is kind of interesting and ironic.
                                         
                                         But at that time,
                                         
                                         I thought that I was doing humanity a favor, right?
                                         
                                         You know, hey, you know,
                                         
                                         I was under the delusion,
                                         
    
                                         like most people are,
                                         
                                         that, you know, big pharma is out to help people.
                                         
                                         And, oh, by the way, I could
                                         
                                         make some bank while doing it. So I thought, hey, win-win. Went into that industry and, you know,
                                         
                                         after a while became very, very disillusioned for obvious reasons. And, you know, Michelle and I at
                                         
                                         a certain point had this realization, this kind of waking up to where, you know, I don't think the American dream is exactly
                                         
                                         what it's cut out to be. You know, we got the big house, the big cars, kids are all in the best
                                         
                                         schools. We are freaking rolling. We're making bank and we are empty inside. What's that all
                                         
    
                                         about? And that was kind of the beginnings of both she and I kind of coming around and
                                         
                                         at least asking the question, why are we dissatisfied when we
                                         
                                         have everything that we're supposed to have? Both of them, you know, Michelle came from a very rough
                                         
                                         background too. Same thing. We had made it in the eyes of where we came from and yet we were empty
                                         
                                         inside. And so then became the soul searching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, have you seen the documentary?
                                         
                                         I am. I have not i know i
                                         
                                         know i talked about it a bunch here it's from um maybe you can look it up chris it's from the duck
                                         
                                         it's from the guy who directed uh liar liar ace ventura pet detective he was the dude who blew up
                                         
    
                                         jim carrey and um obviously he blew up with him but ace ventura you know he makes it it does well
                                         
                                         he buys his first home in beverly hills uh the mask comes out two movies later which you carry crushes it and then liar liar
                                         
                                         is just on a whole different level because now the whole world knows who he is he directs that
                                         
                                         movie and he buys his third home in beverly hills 33 million dollar home and he's sitting on like
                                         
                                         the ups like this double staircase at the top and the last boxes get unloaded from the moving truck
                                         
                                         and he realizes he's not happy right so he sets out on the world and it's i've been listening to a lot of russell
                                         
                                         brand lately and he always tries to i shouldn't say he always tries he does a great job of seeing
                                         
                                         through the lens of the 12-step program for alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous
                                         
    
                                         but that first step to recovery in anything whether it's addiction or not even just a life
                                         
                                         upgrade is admitting something's wrong and that you don't know the way out right that's when you seek help right right
                                         
                                         and so like i think about that and it's like what rock bottom looks like for an addict is
                                         
                                         completely different than what rock bottom looks like for somebody who's very successful through
                                         
                                         the eyes of what america the american dream is right right but you still fucking hit that
                                         
                                         if you're not looking within right eventually you get all the things
                                         
                                         outside of yourself and realize that they're this will not fill me up dude it is very very empty and
                                         
                                         um i have a son who is who went through uh heroin addiction and came out the other side
                                         
    
                                         unscathed thank god two years clean um but yeah his rock bottom looked totally different than
                                         
                                         the rock bottom that michelle and hit, right? I mean,
                                         
                                         we had everything. We had it all. We had, I mean, except for a feeling of connectedness inside,
                                         
                                         we were totally empty and we were totally like, what now? I mean, we've conquered this. We've
                                         
                                         conquered this bitch. I mean, we did everything we were supposed to do and we're miserable. What the
                                         
                                         hell? Um, and that, that was, you know, talk about having no grounding from which to push off from,
                                         
                                         right? It was just totally like, what the hell? Um, and also during that time, I mean,
                                         
                                         it was the perfect storm. So we were going through that. We had enough fuck you money at that time. We decided, okay, we're going to bail. We don't know what we're going to do um all that money happened to be tied up in real estate
                                         
    
                                         and 2008 hit so that wiped us out so we went from rolling to near bankruptcy and then immediately
                                         
                                         following that we lost our daughter in an auto accident who was in college at the time and
                                         
                                         you know and i look back on that we we went from king of the mountain to just freaking empty, hobbled, not having anything to hold on to and nothing to hold on to.
                                         
                                         And the only security we had was to stay in the gigs that we had going on at that time.
                                         
                                         And we were not going to do that um friends and family thought we were absolutely
                                         
                                         crazy that we had lost our minds which we probably did you know looking back um but we were like
                                         
                                         we don't we don't care what happened and i mean what can it get any worse than that right losing
                                         
                                         a losing a daughter like that it can't get any worse. So, you know, who cares?
                                         
    
                                         I laugh at this now, that in our friends' and our family's eyes, bankruptcy was like the big
                                         
                                         no-no. That was like the scarlet letter. And we're like, who fucking cares? I mean, we were at that
                                         
                                         point to where we could just shuck it all and whatever.
                                         
                                         We had each other, and that's what we had.
                                         
                                         And that's really the only thing we did have at that.
                                         
                                         And we had our kids, too, our remaining kids.
                                         
                                         But that's all we had.
                                         
                                         And we packed up, limped into Austin, and figured it out.
                                         
    
                                         We bootstrapped our way back up.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Once you guys had relocated, did you know what you were going to do
                                         
                                         like where where where did this birthplace i know we were just talking about this book that now seems
                                         
                                         more fitting right we're talking about this betting book right right what's the title of that
                                         
                                         uh which one the uh the convention no the betting one oh thinking in bets thinking in bets yeah
                                         
                                         so like this any uh we'll get we'll get the name and we'll link to it in the show notes
                                         
                                         so we don't need to worry about that um but yeah i mean having not even read this but hearing the
                                         
    
                                         synopsis of the book from you it's making me think like this is a time where you guys rolled the
                                         
                                         fucking dice dude we yes and we've rolled the ties a few times since then but but yeah we limped into
                                         
                                         austin um i had a rough idea that i was either going to partner with somebody in a group of gyms here in Austin,
                                         
                                         or I was going to open my own gym.
                                         
                                         So there was that.
                                         
                                         Michelle was a chef.
                                         
                                         So she was either going to get a chefing gig here, or she was going to open her own gig.
                                         
                                         And she wound up opening a catering business here in Austin.
                                         
    
                                         And I did the gyms.
                                         
                                         Efficient exercise. catering business here in Austin so and I did the gyms efficient exercise they've since been
                                         
                                         sold and they're now adapted gyms by the way but anyway so that's what got us going and that was
                                         
                                         our first foray into entrepreneurship interesting story on that when I was in college I didn't even
                                         
                                         know what a fucking entrepreneur was I had no no clue. Went to college on a scholarship,
                                         
                                         was pretty full of myself. Like, you know, yeah, here I am at college. I'm here to play football.
                                         
                                         Four years, I'll turn pro. I'm just here biding my time and whatever classes I have to go to
                                         
                                         in between, you know, whatever. We had to go to a freshman orientation, which a friend of mine who
                                         
    
                                         happened to have his shit a little bit more together than I did at the time, because I was undeclared major, you know, and I believe I am not the same person now as I was in at all.
                                         
                                         So anyway, this friend of mine was like, just come with me.
                                         
                                         And he's a business major.
                                         
                                         So I was like, yeah, whatever.
                                         
                                         So I went with him just to get the requirement out of the way.
                                         
                                         And sitting there in orientation and this girl stands up you're supposed to go around and introduce yourself and what your major is and yada yada yada so the girl stands up she's pretty
                                         
                                         hot which caught my attention one of the only things that could catch my attention at the time
                                         
                                         so i'm like wow all right and she starts speaking and i can't remember exactly what she should what
                                         
    
                                         she said but it had something to do with she wanted to be the first female entrepreneur in texas to yada yada yada and i thought to myself
                                         
                                         what the fuck is an entrepreneur
                                         
                                         and i think about that now because i did not know and of course i didn't ask anybody because you
                                         
                                         know you're young you think everybody else knows and they probably did i was probably the only dumb
                                         
                                         ass i didn't know i don't think i knew what it was in college either. It's not something they're
                                         
                                         teaching you either. I had no clue. And when I look back on that, I had, that was like another
                                         
                                         species of person that could start and run their own business. Like it wasn't even on my radar as a possibility of things that could happen,
                                         
                                         not even remotely. I just, if I was going to, if I was going to work and gain money from work,
                                         
    
                                         if it wasn't through athletics, it was going to be twisting a wrench. That was it. That was the,
                                         
                                         that was my outlook. And in fact, in this time, when I was in high school, there was a lot of
                                         
                                         kids, a lot of guys that were dropping out and going out to West Texas and working the oil fields because they can make bank, man.
                                         
                                         If you were willing to work and bust your ass, you could work 24 hours a day. If you, I mean,
                                         
                                         they would just work you to death. And I thought, well, that looks pretty good. And the only thing
                                         
                                         that kept me in school and not doing that was athletics. I thought, well, you know, I've got
                                         
                                         a chance to do it this way. I can always fall back and twist the wrench. I can't always play football. So, you know, we give this a shot and
                                         
                                         see where it goes, but that's, that's where I was. And, you know, thank goodness I realized what
                                         
    
                                         being a student was and that it wasn't just regurgitate answers, which is what I, you know,
                                         
                                         I came up under the old school system. That was it. There's, you know, study, regurgitate answers, which is what I, you know, I came up under the old school system. That was it.
                                         
                                         There's, you know, study, regurgitate, study, regurgitate, which didn't sit well with me.
                                         
                                         And I finally ran into a professor who she forced me to think on my own. She's like,
                                         
                                         I don't want you to regurgitate the answer. Tell me what you think. What do you think?
                                         
                                         And I was worried about being right or wrong. She's like, I don't care right
                                         
                                         or wrong. What do you think? I was like, wow, I can think of my own and like express myself.
                                         
                                         And then it was on. Then I was like, oh fuck, I like this shit. Um, yeah, but that's what turned
                                         
    
                                         me into a good student was finally running into a professor who forced me to freaking think on my
                                         
                                         own and come up to my, come with my own conclusions on things and you know
                                         
                                         throughout that process i figured out what an entrepreneur was um it didn't resonate with me
                                         
                                         until many years later after my stint in corporate america that oh yeah i see how this works now you
                                         
                                         know i'm not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes it takes me a few years for things to
                                         
                                         sink in but yeah everything at the right stage too you know exactly yeah that timing it's just like reading a book i was just
                                         
                                         talking with the group of fit for service about that you buy a book you hate the first chapter
                                         
                                         so you throw it down and then you throw it on the shelf and six years later or whenever you walk by
                                         
    
                                         it and then that's the perfect time to read that book right just calls to you and it's like oh okay
                                         
                                         i get it now right i wouldn't have got it then that's why i didn't read it that's why i didn't resonate same thing with
                                         
                                         business decisions or the person you end up with in life it shows up at the moment you're ready for
                                         
                                         it we're plant medicine downloads and i would say that too like some downloads i have had you know
                                         
                                         seven years ago in ceremonies that made absolutely zero freaking sense at that time you know five
                                         
                                         years later it's like oh then you connect
                                         
                                         the dots you're like oh oh now i see what's going on now i see how this download and i see how these
                                         
                                         dots connect and everything everything works together but at the time you're just like what
                                         
    
                                         the hell is that okay yeah yeah so you get you get the the the teacher that really plants the
                                         
                                         seed for you to think on your own and And obviously that leads to becoming an entrepreneur.
                                         
                                         At what point do you guys decide that you're going to fully take the deep dive
                                         
                                         into starting this whole new mission on your own?
                                         
                                         Yeah. So just a real, very, very long story made super short.
                                         
                                         We were in LA in 2011 for a, for a conference.
                                         
                                         And it was an academic conference. And at this time,
                                         
                                         Michelle and I were starting to go to different conferences, mostly around the health and
                                         
    
                                         wellness sphere. And so we, you know, conference after conference after conference, and they all
                                         
                                         kind of looked and felt roughly the same, right? And we went to this one academic conference that
                                         
                                         I actually spoke at, it was one of the few non-academics who spoke at this
                                         
                                         conference. And my talk was generally on how strength training can fit into this whole
                                         
                                         ancestral living concept. Essentially, we evolved as opportunistic eaters and obligate movers. I
                                         
                                         mean, that was pretty much it. We had to move and we ate everything we could
                                         
                                         get our hands on and get down our pie hole that wouldn't otherwise kill us, either in the process
                                         
                                         of eating it or afterwards through poisons. But the obligate moving part, I felt, and I still feel,
                                         
    
                                         by the way, that that's something that most people overlook, right? They'd rather take a pill. They
                                         
                                         would rather track their biometric. I mean,
                                         
                                         a whole host of things, anything to keep from actually working out, which is a whole other
                                         
                                         story. But anyway, that's what my talk was about. We left that conference. We were sitting on a
                                         
                                         Southwest Airlines flight, sitting on the, getting ready to take off from LAX, like you're want to do
                                         
                                         at LAX. I mean, they pull you out there and you wait 45 minutes to take off because that's just the way it is.
                                         
                                         And we were debriefing from the conference and we thought,
                                         
                                         you know, we've been to conference after conference, this one included,
                                         
    
                                         to where it's an echo chamber, right? You have an academic conference and there's academics there
                                         
                                         and they're speaking to academics.
                                         
                                         And we've been to conference after conference like this, and how is anything ever going to change?
                                         
                                         There's no even educated lay people at this thing.
                                         
                                         How is this information going to get out?
                                         
                                         Who from this conference is going to go home and actually wake up the next morning and go,
                                         
                                         oh, I can eat this, I can work out in this way, I can change my life having been to that conference.
                                         
                                         And we thought, hmm, well, who do we know who can put on a conference that we can give this feedback to
                                         
    
                                         so they can take it and run with it and create something?
                                         
                                         And we sat there and we figured, hmm, we don't know anybody.
                                         
                                         Everybody we know who does conferences are pretty set in their ways, and they've
                                         
                                         got their thing and good on them. And we thought, well, I
                                         
                                         guess it's us. So by the time we got back to Austin on the back
                                         
                                         of a Southwest Airlines napkin, we had a rough idea of if we
                                         
                                         were to do a conference, what would it look like? And by the
                                         
                                         time we got back, we're like, well, why don't we have when we
                                         
    
                                         do a mastermind? Why don don't we do a mastermind?
                                         
                                         Why don't we roll out a mastermind?
                                         
                                         And this was before masterminds were a big thing.
                                         
                                         But why don't we gather 100, 150 people, get about 10 speakers in,
                                         
                                         and we'll do it at one of our gyms.
                                         
                                         And we'll just make a day of it.
                                         
                                         And it'll be a rubber meets the road kind of theory to practice type of event.
                                         
                                         And it's just a rubber rubber meets the road kind of theory to practice type of event and uh
                                         
    
                                         it's just a weird story man so we called up rob wolf after we got back asked rob hey rob this is what we're thinking about we need a headliner to kick this thing off would you be willing to come
                                         
                                         in and hang out in austin for a while and do it he's like fuck you i'll do it hang out with you
                                         
                                         guys for a week in austin any excuse to come to Austin? Hang out with you guys? Yeah, for sure. So we had our headliner and we went very, very
                                         
                                         quickly blew past the a hundred and 150 people. Next thing we knew we had 300 and we're like,
                                         
                                         oh shit, we have to find a venue to host this at now. Um, by the time we ended up, we had 700 plus people, the first event, about 50 speakers.
                                         
                                         And it was on.
                                         
                                         And Michelle did 95% of the heavy lift during those first years.
                                         
                                         She did it all.
                                         
    
                                         She was it. She was employee one for many years.
                                         
                                         And I would help on the fringes where I could, but I was busy running gyms.
                                         
                                         You know, running gyms is a 24-7 thing in and of itself.
                                         
                                         And very, very quickly she shut down her catering business because she couldn't do both,
                                         
                                         which that hit us financially because the event wasn't making any money.
                                         
                                         Her catering business surely was, but the event wasn't making any money.
                                         
                                         But we just had this innate feeling that even though it was a financial disaster the first year, that people wanted this.
                                         
                                         And we couldn't figure out how to make any money doing it, but we were like, people want this, and surely we can figure out a way to make a profit on this and make it profitable.
                                         
    
                                         Which we did the second year.
                                         
                                         The first year was a, just a,
                                         
                                         a blood bath. And had we not gone through that hard time in 2008, 2009, we would have cashed it
                                         
                                         in. I am totally certain of that because anybody that would have had any sense whatsoever would
                                         
                                         have not gone into year two. And we were, we just were like, Oh, fuck it. We'll roll the dice. And
                                         
                                         you know and
                                         
                                         at that point it was like what's bankruptcy who cares who gives a shit yeah you built up some
                                         
                                         resiliency oh yeah totally that's a son talib thing man anti-fragile we were anti-fragile as
                                         
    
                                         shit at that point and probably still are yeah that's amazing um you've i've i've been a part
                                         
                                         of the event the last couple years something that i think is good
                                         
                                         because what i want to get into plant medicine things like that but i do want to stay on paleo
                                         
                                         effects is you know one of the things that you guys designed is it's an event where you can meet
                                         
                                         people where you can talk to the influencers where you do bridge the gap from academia to the lay
                                         
                                         and you get people on stage to really drive home to the the the end product
                                         
                                         the end user right somebody who just read rob wolf's latest book is going to get to see him
                                         
                                         on stage for an hour and possibly get to chat with him afterwards for q a things like that right
                                         
    
                                         i was in an ayahuasca ceremony um when i was living in vegas and this is right after i retired
                                         
                                         and uh the first two nights were on i, the meat and potatoes of my intentions.
                                         
                                         The third night was around work and like, how do I grow this podcast?
                                         
                                         Which is for some people, they think of that as like a shitty use of time.
                                         
                                         But I don't think there's any, there's no shitty use of time in that space.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         And because I had ironed out things around family, things around myself, and I had a
                                         
                                         clear understanding of where that path was. I started thinking about it. And, um, you know, the company I was working
                                         
    
                                         with had told me they were going to pay my way to go to any of these conferences I wanted. So I
                                         
                                         could get these big, big name people on the podcast. And then because they were hurting
                                         
                                         financially, there was no way to do it. So I had looked at flights to Austin, pretty expensive,
                                         
                                         didn't have a place to stay, none this stuff and i kept telling me you're gonna
                                         
                                         go and i would argue but i've already read the books i'm not gonna learn anything new on fucking
                                         
                                         stage you know or listen to these guys talk and um and it just refused it was like no you're going
                                         
                                         you're gonna meet people it's important that you go and so the next day i looked at flights
                                         
                                         and they had dropped like 50% off on Southwest.
                                         
    
                                         And I got a call from Sal from Mind Pump.
                                         
                                         And he's like, dude, we're going to Paleo FX.
                                         
                                         You're coming with us.
                                         
                                         You're going to be doing on the couch.
                                         
                                         And so my whole stay was covered now.
                                         
                                         And Sal fucking and Mind Pump crew paid for my meals.
                                         
                                         Nice. So like I got totally taken care of.
                                         
                                         And all this thing just happened streamlined.
                                         
    
                                         And of course, I met people.
                                         
                                         I met Aubrey Marcus.
                                         
                                         And then we shared the same flight home back to Vegas
                                         
                                         where they're looking at opening the next Onnit gym.
                                         
                                         And we traded war stories with me, him, and John Wolf
                                         
                                         for three hours.
                                         
                                         And fucking here I am today right now in this office
                                         
                                         because of that.
                                         
    
                                         It's amazing the way things happen.
                                         
                                         No doubt.
                                         
                                         Talk a bit about how Paleo FX has progressed over the years.
                                         
                                         And really, you had mentioned to me
                                         
                                         like the the not really knowing what it was going to be but still knowing it was it was important to
                                         
                                         do right right back that and then we really didn't know we didn't know what we had on our hands right
                                         
                                         and so paleo effects started off the first iteration it was a diet heavy conference right
                                         
                                         i mean it was all things paleo. There was some training
                                         
    
                                         involved because of my influence. I was like, training's got to be a big part of this. I mean,
                                         
                                         it's one of the essentials. It's a non-negotiable. I mean, I don't care exactly how you train.
                                         
                                         I'd prefer you lift heavy stuff quite often. I think that's a huge part of it,
                                         
                                         but training in some form or fashion. So it started off
                                         
                                         largely as a diet and training conference. And as we went
                                         
                                         along, as we went along, as we went along, Michelle and I have
                                         
                                         always looked at paleo effects through the lens of what are we
                                         
                                         interested in? What do we think affects human performance? And
                                         
    
                                         what would we want to see at a conference? That's the questions
                                         
                                         we ask ourselves, when we put on a show every year going out, would we want to be there? Would we want this at a show? That's always a
                                         
                                         litmus test for us. And so as Paleo FX has evolved, it has evolved into all the things. It's a human
                                         
                                         optimization event. And we like to call it seven pillars, right? So if it's mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, financial, tribal, all of these issues are part of an optimized human being.
                                         
                                         And to the extent that any one of those pillars is faltering, you as a human being will falter.
                                         
                                         We can see this in the entrepreneurial realm, where those people have the financial thing knocked out of the park,
                                         
                                         but either their relationships fail, their body fails, or their spirituality is in the dumps.
                                         
                                         They don't have any tribal community around them. They're going to go down, man. It never fails. It
                                         
    
                                         never fails. Or you can look at somebody who has all the physical assets they could have, right?
                                         
                                         And they will fail in some form or fashion they just burn
                                         
                                         out the body can't the the entity not just the body but the entire entity of you is going to
                                         
                                         fail at some point unless you have all of these pillars lined up and so we created paleo effects
                                         
                                         even though most people who are new or the conference just comes into their purview they
                                         
                                         see paleo and they're like oh it's a diet conference it's anything but a diet conference yeah that's all of the things yeah
                                         
                                         i've seen it evolve tremendously i mean i think dr grace lou gave a talk on oxytocin right 40
                                         
                                         minutes you know it was amazing and plant medicine spirituality relationships sexuality all of these
                                         
    
                                         things right there and it's all and it's all super important for the optimization of a
                                         
                                         human yeah because it's all a part of our experience it is and when you think about those
                                         
                                         things i mean there's so many books to read but from sebastian younger's tribe i love that book
                                         
                                         you know to you know you read a book like sex at dawn from chris ryan and whether you decide
                                         
                                         you're going to model a different form of relationship or not that's up to you but to see the history right of how we've systematically taking taken sex and demonized it and also women's
                                         
                                         sexuality and female sexuality you know like looking at untrue by wednesday martin it's like
                                         
                                         wow okay that's been done for hundreds of years right and not thousands of years to really take
                                         
                                         us to a place where it feels strange to want to
                                         
    
                                         bring this out. And then at the same point in the East, you have traditions of using sex
                                         
                                         for spiritual purposes, for enlightenment, for growth. And it's a totally different purview
                                         
                                         to look through. Yeah. It's interesting to look at your life through the lens of what stories you
                                         
                                         were told in your upbringing, right? What culture you were brought
                                         
                                         up in. Because for the first seven years of our lives, for good reason, we are sponges, man. We
                                         
                                         are just a disc that's being written on, right? And for good reason, right? In evolutionary terms,
                                         
                                         we had to be sponges to absorb the culture that we were born into.
                                         
                                         Because we had to be a functioning part of that culture very, very early on.
                                         
    
                                         And so we had to be sponges.
                                         
                                         Now, I mean, we're no different now.
                                         
                                         This still is 300,000-year-old chassis we're running around in.
                                         
                                         300,000-year-old brain.
                                         
                                         We're still programmed
                                         
                                         the same way that first seven or so years, you don't even know it. You don't even know to question
                                         
                                         if it's right or wrong. You just absorb and you write into the subconscious until you get older
                                         
                                         and some of what you taught works for you. A lot of what you're taught does not work for you. And so I think that's,
                                         
    
                                         for me anyway, a lot of my plant medicine work, a lot of my spirituality, all of that is to go back
                                         
                                         and dissect all of those stories. What was that story I was told? What is this imprint? Does it
                                         
                                         serve me? Does it not serve me? And just unravel all of those ties. And there was a shit ton that
                                         
                                         does not serve me
                                         
                                         there's some stuff that served me very very well for the first 30 years of my life that are now
                                         
                                         hamstringing me now and those are the things that i'm working on much like operating in a
                                         
                                         scarcity society and a dog eat dog society in a you have to perform, you have to win society.
                                         
                                         Well, that's not my environment now.
                                         
    
                                         That was my environment.
                                         
                                         And thank God I had that imprinting to survive that and succeed.
                                         
                                         That got me where I am today,
                                         
                                         but that's not going to get me where I want to go.
                                         
                                         I have to have a totally different outlook on life.
                                         
                                         But that imprint's hard to rewrite.
                                         
                                         Yeah, it is.
                                         
                                         And it's in my body.
                                         
    
                                         So I can get it intellectually.
                                         
                                         I understand it intellectually, but to get my body to know it,
                                         
                                         and that's when you really know that you know something,
                                         
                                         your body will resonate and your body will know it.
                                         
                                         And that takes time.
                                         
                                         That takes training.
                                         
                                         That takes integration, as they say, in the plant medicine circle worlds.
                                         
                                         Yeah, so that's kind of my path right
                                         
    
                                         now is to rewrite that. One of the big things I'm working with, the two of the big things I'm
                                         
                                         working with is, am I worthy of love and abundance without having to perform, without having to win?
                                         
                                         Because that was part of my upbringing. I will give you love if you win, if you perform.
                                         
                                         And there's a reason for that.
                                         
                                         Because in my culture, where I grew up,
                                         
                                         weak men got crushed, right?
                                         
                                         That's just, that was a reality.
                                         
                                         That's not my reality now.
                                         
    
                                         My reality is totally different.
                                         
                                         So I have to rewrite that.
                                         
                                         In fact, that programming is hamstringing me.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Right? That is what makes me. Yeah. Right.
                                         
                                         That, that is what makes me work like a maniac, the Gary V type entrepreneur, right? You take
                                         
                                         that football mentality, which, you know, it's great with that mentality and it's good for a
                                         
                                         while for entrepreneurship, but it doesn't last, man. You're on that wheel of never satisfied,
                                         
    
                                         never satisfied, never satisfied, grind, grind, grind 24 seven, bye, bye, bye, bye. Doesn't work forever. And so
                                         
                                         that's where I'm at right now and trying to exit out of that. Tangential to that is being comfortable
                                         
                                         with sensuality, relaxing into sensuality, not distrusting sensuality. So I had a ceremony recently where I was just
                                         
                                         luxuriating in sensuality, man. It was blissful. I'm just like rolling in feminine bliss and
                                         
                                         immediately I snapped out of it. And it was like waking up from a dream to where you're like,
                                         
                                         why the fuck did I wake myself up out of that dream? I had that same thought.
                                         
                                         Take me back.
                                         
                                         Yes, I was just like, why did I do that?
                                         
    
                                         What brought me out of that?
                                         
                                         And so I was sitting there.
                                         
                                         I was like, okay, what brought me out of that?
                                         
                                         Why would I leave that situation and bolt out of that situation?
                                         
                                         And what came to me was, you don't trust it.
                                         
                                         You distrust that.
                                         
                                         It's a trap.
                                         
                                         And I thought, well well that's interesting where did i get that story that luxuriating and sensuality was a trap right and then i and then i was
                                         
    
                                         meditating on that and that and for me that is the one thing that could derail me from just
                                         
                                         hyper-focused performance right we want to trip that guy up. We throw a
                                         
                                         little sensuality at him. That'll trip his ass up. That's the only thing that's going to derail him
                                         
                                         off of that hyper-focus, right? Throw some sensuality in there and that's going to,
                                         
                                         that's going to cause him to skew over. So I thought about that. I was like,
                                         
                                         isn't that interesting, right? And that is a story that I was programmed,
                                         
                                         probably generational story, right. That's been programmed into my genes that I'm trying to
                                         
                                         rewrite now because I don't believe that now I believe I can luxuriate in sensuality. I believe
                                         
    
                                         intellectually that abundance and love will come to me just from my being, just from me being who I am.
                                         
                                         And I don't have to perform to get it.
                                         
                                         These are very, very hardwired, deep grooves in my subconscious that I'm having to work
                                         
                                         through.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Dispenza, Dr. Joe Dispenza and Bruce Lipton get into that deeply.
                                         
                                         And two of my favorite books are the biology of belief by Bruce Lipton and, um, becoming
                                         
                                         supernatural is my favorite by Dr. Joe Dispenza.
                                         
    
                                         Cause he doesn't beat around the bush trying to cater to the scientific mind. He just fucking lays it all out there. belief by bruce lipton and um becoming supernatural is my favorite by dr joe dispenza because he
                                         
                                         doesn't beat around the bush trying to cater to the scientific mind he just fucking lays it all
                                         
                                         out right and they talk quite a bit about that patterning and programming we have from the third
                                         
                                         trimester up until age seven right but this is making me think about paul selig's latest book
                                         
                                         have you heard of paul selig yes so yeah he's he's fantastic he's been on aubrey's show and i first
                                         
                                         heard him on duncan trussell's but his latest book beyond the known realization, I feel like I'm pulling more. I'm in
                                         
                                         a place in my life now where I can pull more from it than I could any of his prior material.
                                         
                                         But what he was saying is, you know, in the ascension into the upper room, as he uses that
                                         
    
                                         language of basically, uh, the embodiment of your highest self or the embodiment of the Christ,
                                         
                                         the embodiment of whatever that, uh, the God in you as you right right as you begin to embody that it comes with ease
                                         
                                         it doesn't come from groveling it doesn't come from fucking hard work it doesn't come from out
                                         
                                         working everyone else it doesn't come from busting your ass it comes with ease because you are you
                                         
                                         are almost like pulling layers away to just drop into that space because the space
                                         
                                         already exists within right dude and that's it's ironic but it is the hardest thing for
                                         
                                         someone of puma energy so so if you look in inkan mythology right you have snake puma condor not
                                         
                                         that one is above the other or any is is than the other, but it's different energies. It's three different energy fields.
                                         
    
                                         Looking through the lens of American culture, the snake energy would be that energy that I had back in the pharmaceutical industry of waking up and going,
                                         
                                         I think this American dream thing is bullshit.
                                         
                                         That's like the waking up.
                                         
                                         That's the looking around you and going, I'm not buying what I'm being told right now. Puma energy. If you want a champion for Puma
                                         
                                         energy, it's Gary Vee, right? That's 24 seven grind, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, never
                                         
                                         stop hustling. Don't sleep until you get the hustle done. And then when you get that hustle
                                         
                                         done, you start another, never be satisfied, yada, yada, yada. That's entrepreneurship on steroids. Puma energy,
                                         
                                         never satisfied, constant hunt, constant looking hunt, kill, bam, boom, into the other one. That's
                                         
    
                                         competitive sports operates in that realm, in that energy. The other energy is condor energy,
                                         
                                         which is what you just spoke to. That is the just relaxing into being. You don't have to
                                         
                                         hustle. You don't have to grind. You will be perfectly fine just by being, which is total
                                         
                                         counterintuitive to Puma energy, right? It's the toughest, I think. I think it's easier to transition
                                         
                                         from snake into Puma energy because that seems like that seems like a natural transition but to go from
                                         
                                         puma to condor is a whole other thing entirely because that flips everything on its head right
                                         
                                         that's where that distrust of sensuality in my case in my case comes from right what's going to
                                         
                                         derail me sensuality the one thing that's going to derail me. The other thing that could derail me is ease,
                                         
    
                                         right? How can I be successful if I'm not busting my fricking ass, right? And that is total scarcity
                                         
                                         mentality. That is not abundance mentality. And I, even as I say this, I get it intellectually
                                         
                                         and I can tell my body doesn't feel it, right. There's, I can feel a disconnect in my body.
                                         
                                         So I know I'm not there and I've got a long way to go to get there,
                                         
                                         but intellectually at least,
                                         
                                         and this is where the ego is a good tool,
                                         
                                         right?
                                         
                                         I get it intellectually.
                                         
    
                                         Now I've got to get my central nervous system to believe that.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         And I think Dispenza talks about that.
                                         
                                         Like in,
                                         
                                         in,
                                         
                                         in manifestation, we must match the
                                         
                                         thought with the feeling. Right. Right. And that's what changes the electromagnetic field. You know,
                                         
                                         thoughts have an electricity and feelings have a magnetism. And the only way we get those to
                                         
    
                                         actually make something manifest in our lives is to shift them both into unison. Right. And an
                                         
                                         unwavering belief in that and unwavering feeling in that and unwavering
                                         
                                         knowing in that and that's when you start to see shit click right and and there's been many
                                         
                                         instances in ceremony when i've been deep into ceremony and i've been able to let me see if i
                                         
                                         can put this into words extend time to the point to where i can discern how my thoughts are generated and it is always
                                         
                                         feeling in the body generates a thought pattern it's not the other way around right so it's not
                                         
                                         thought generates feel it's the other way your body knows everything it senses everything before
                                         
                                         the mind even recognize your body knows so you have the mind even recognizes. Your body knows.
                                         
    
                                         So you have a signal from feeling within your body that generates a story.
                                         
                                         That story may be correct.
                                         
                                         That story may be total bullshit.
                                         
                                         But your mind is going to make up something to support that feeling.
                                         
                                         So your body has to be in tune.
                                         
                                         So I can talk all day long about condor energy.
                                         
                                         And I get it. But if my bodyor energy and I get it, right?
                                         
                                         But if my body doesn't feel it, it ain't happening.
                                         
    
                                         And so, and I know that.
                                         
                                         And so I constantly try to reinforce that feeling within my body.
                                         
                                         Do I feel safe in sensuality?
                                         
                                         Michelle and I are going to a workshop this weekend and we're going to explore that.
                                         
                                         Can I feel safe and secure in sensuality and not keep it at arm's length,
                                         
                                         right? And just, you know, that's the old, I'm not going to fully connect. And when I look back
                                         
                                         at every prior relationship I've always, I've ever had, I've always connected with females who were very um can i say observant feeling uh dialed in uh woke as fuck i don't
                                         
                                         know right so they paint a picture right um and they know if you're not totally connected right
                                         
    
                                         and i could never fully commit right and i and it would finally train because they would feel it
                                         
                                         they're like you're not you're
                                         
                                         not in this you're not in this game you've got one foot in but your mind is over here
                                         
                                         and i look back at that and for the longest period of time i'm like
                                         
                                         man every chick i've ever i've ever been with is just fucked up at a certain point i was like
                                         
                                         i think the common denominator is you bro yeah it's funny how life keeps serving you those lessons till you get it right till you get it
                                         
                                         right yeah show up with fucking every face every cloth every like ramda says the guru shows up in
                                         
                                         all forms right right you know and it's it's till you finally can grasp the thing that yeah that
                                         
    
                                         your soul is calling to learn right that's when you get it it's good that you've had michelle the whole way through oh dude she's uh she's been a godsend man i she
                                         
                                         you know she was one of the ones that wouldn't run and she you know and she would call me out
                                         
                                         on that like hey you're not you're not here bro you're not fully committing to this and i would
                                         
                                         argue up and down yeah i am you know i'm totally i'm here. And she's like, no, you're not.
                                         
                                         And I would wrestle with that and wrestle with that.
                                         
                                         Why does she think that I'm not fully committed?
                                         
                                         Because I'm doing all the things, right?
                                         
                                         I'm doing all the material things.
                                         
    
                                         I've got all this shit covered.
                                         
                                         Well, she could give a shit about that.
                                         
                                         It wasn't the material things.
                                         
                                         It was the connection.
                                         
                                         And I wasn't able to fully connect.
                                         
                                         I didn't even know what fully connecting meant. I didn't even know what fully connecting meant.
                                         
                                         You know, I didn't even, I didn't even know what that was.
                                         
                                         And I'm still a little vague on it.
                                         
    
                                         I got to admit, I'm, you know, it's, it's territory for me that is terrifying because
                                         
                                         of that conditioning that if I get fully into this, that's going to fully freaking totally
                                         
                                         derail me from success quote unquote
                                         
                                         success and that's just something that it's going to take a while for my central nervous system to
                                         
                                         believe yeah i learned to i think there's always fear around stepping into the unknown oh yeah
                                         
                                         you know there's always fear there because there's there's uncertainty there's no uh situational
                                         
                                         awareness right right and it's like what what's going to happen when i try this thing
                                         
                                         on if i fully engage with it you know and not just stick my toes in the fucking shallow end of it but
                                         
    
                                         actually dive deep i don't know yeah you know and there's like a thing about that and you know i was
                                         
                                         telling you about this guy boyd farty we just had on uh his podcast will actually come out after this
                                         
                                         but um you know one of the things he talks about in his book the lion trackers guide
                                         
                                         to life is that part of tracking is you're going to take steps forward and you will have a track
                                         
                                         you're going to find the first track on where you're going but you're going to lose the fucking
                                         
                                         track and you're going to keep going right right and part of that's trust part of that is the scale
                                         
                                         of tracking which he um doubles into not just tracking animals,
                                         
                                         but tracking yourself.
                                         
    
                                         Sure.
                                         
                                         Right?
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         And the parallels there.
                                         
                                         But that's just it.
                                         
                                         Whenever you get to this space of what's going to be required for your next growth and your
                                         
                                         next unveiling at the next stage of your life, there's going to be uncertainty.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
    
                                         And Chogom Trungpa talks about that on the same line of polarity of clarity is confusion
                                         
                                         and that's how you know you're in the right place right if you're fucking confused and there's
                                         
                                         uncertainty you're doing good right when you've got it all figured out or you're stagnant because
                                         
                                         life is good i don't need to change right right then you're fucking stagnant water right that's
                                         
                                         not moving that's not growing right right so i think about those two different lines of uh
                                         
                                         polarity i've got it all figured out or i don't want my life to change everything's fine and that's not growing. Right. Right. So I think about those two different lines of, uh, of
                                         
                                         polarity. I've got it all figured out, or I don't want my life to change. Everything's fine to the
                                         
                                         man. I'm, I'm clear as fuck. I know exactly where I'm at. I see the track to holy shit. I lost the
                                         
    
                                         track. I don't know what's going to happen now. That's, that's all in that same beautiful line
                                         
                                         of awareness, right? It's a, it's one foot in chaos, one instability. It's yin yang. Um, all
                                         
                                         of that. Yeah. it's interesting you brought
                                         
                                         that up and it sounds like i'm in ceremony every weekend which i guess it's just about i guess i
                                         
                                         am at this point but um in a recent ceremony i was i was exploring okay what does it feel like
                                         
                                         to totally release into the feminine into sensuality and i had this this vision of being at a chasm, right?
                                         
                                         And I could see paradise, for lack of a better term, on the other side of that.
                                         
                                         And what was in that chasm was the great feminine.
                                         
    
                                         And I was on the other side, secure, totally.
                                         
                                         I've got this other side.
                                         
                                         I've got the territory over here.
                                         
                                         I know.
                                         
                                         I can freaking make it over here.
                                         
                                         I know all the tools.
                                         
                                         I know I've got all the drive.
                                         
                                         I can make it over here.
                                         
    
                                         But it's hell.
                                         
                                         I look over there and I see paradise,
                                         
                                         but I don't know that I have the tools to operate over there.
                                         
                                         And I feel pulled like a gravitational magnetic pull
                                         
                                         into this great feminine that's just standing in the middle going,
                                         
                                         I got you, bro.
                                         
                                         I got you.
                                         
                                         Just release into me.
                                         
    
                                         And it was almost like being a kid,
                                         
                                         a three-year-old kid at the edge of the pool
                                         
                                         where your mom is standing there in the pool going,
                                         
                                         hey, I got you.
                                         
                                         Just let go.
                                         
                                         Come into the water.
                                         
                                         I got you. That same feeling of i trust you kind of but this in between thing is yeah i don't know
                                         
                                         about that um and intellectually i could come out and go dude just take the plunge just fucking take
                                         
    
                                         the plunge but there again my body just wasn't, you know, your body's going to do what it's going to
                                         
                                         do. And it's going to take a while for my body to go. Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's what I need to
                                         
                                         do is to release the feminine does have my back. The universe does have my back. I just have to
                                         
                                         trust to release and let go into it. And that's the most difficult thing I think that I have ever done, and I've done some difficult shit,
                                         
                                         but that, for some reason, is so very freaking hard.
                                         
                                         And I think because it's just so hardwired
                                         
                                         into my little P reptilian brain,
                                         
                                         it's going to take a while for that groove to smooth out.
                                         
    
                                         It's going to be repetition and over and over and over and over,
                                         
                                         and eventually it'll get there. I'm sure of that. It's just not going to happen overnight, apparently.
                                         
                                         Yeah, I think about I think about things like that, like the the harder pieces for us to uncover.
                                         
                                         And I think about Graham Hancock's work with morphic resonance and Eckhart Tolle and a new
                                         
                                         earth talks about that the collective consciousness, right? Right. So you're not just
                                         
                                         unpacking your generational trauma or your or
                                         
                                         your every you know the epigenetics of what's been handed down to you and the way that you
                                         
                                         were programmed as a child from your family all that's there too right but it's also the collective
                                         
    
                                         and the collective right now is somewhere between snake and puma there's there's somewhere in that
                                         
                                         especially as men especially in this you, it's compare and compete.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         It's not cooperate.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         And it's through separation.
                                         
                                         There's a fucking great book from Charles Eisenstein called
                                         
    
                                         The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible.
                                         
                                         He's got a good podcast as well.
                                         
                                         Oh, I got to check it out.
                                         
                                         But I just loved it.
                                         
                                         And he basically just went through every issue we have on the planet right now
                                         
                                         stems from the feeling of separation and if you grew up in the west in large part that's what you're taught through
                                         
                                         that religion you're taught that god is outside of us yes right and and and god will judge you
                                         
                                         at the end of your life right which makes it a lot easier to judge of the people better perform
                                         
    
                                         so they're worthy to be received yeah yeah and so you see how this shit is seated culturally right for thousands of years you know and it really he unfolds it so
                                         
                                         beautifully but in part of that you know the way is not force that's the old way that's the old
                                         
                                         model the way is love and compassion yep and the way we have love and compassion is cultivating it
                                         
                                         for ourselves right which takes surrender takes trust and it takes
                                         
                                         embodying the feminine right is unconditional love and is compassion yeah right and it's you
                                         
                                         know it's very it's extremely tough man and it's uh because just like what you say it's that
                                         
                                         cultural programming is a large part of it um and again i I can, you know, I can get these concepts intellectually and I
                                         
                                         buy into them 100%. But again, you got to get the central nervous system to feel that way.
                                         
    
                                         And it's interesting that you brought up collaboration versus competition, right? So
                                         
                                         that's, and I'm going to spin this back around to Paleo FX real fast, that we have always considered
                                         
                                         Paleo FX to be a collaborative event and it's
                                         
                                         collaborative with the speakers it's collaborative with the attendees this is not keith and michelle
                                         
                                         preaching on high this is everybody in this tribe coming together because we take feedback
                                         
                                         and we have the the show morphs ever how it's going to morph. Man, we just put up guardrails.
                                         
                                         And the people decide where it's going to go.
                                         
                                         The only thing that Keith and Michelle do, or the Paleo FX team, is the litmus test.
                                         
    
                                         Is this an event that we would want to go to?
                                         
                                         At the end of the day, that's what we ask.
                                         
                                         Would we want to go to that event after it's all said and done?
                                         
                                         Would I, like, if I looked on my calendar and I was in
                                         
                                         10d and I said there is one event I'm going to and if it's only one in the
                                         
                                         year what event do I want to go to and why and that's what we ask ourselves
                                         
                                         when we put it together yeah it totally I don't know why Burning Man just popped
                                         
                                         in my head right now I but I feel compelled to say
                                         
    
                                         something about Burning Man. But when I went to Burning Man last year, the first time I had gone
                                         
                                         to Burning Man and I drug my heels for years, I was not going to go because I had a total
                                         
                                         misconception of what it was about. I thought Coachella on steroids, Bonnaroo on steroids.
                                         
                                         I was like, yeah, one day, fly me in there. Let me party and fly
                                         
                                         me out. But eight days, hell no, I'm not staying for eight days. And I finally,
                                         
                                         finally got talked into it this last year. And let me tell you, it was,
                                         
                                         I was out there two hours and I was like, why did I drag my heels coming out here. I am freaking home. I loved every freaking second of it
                                         
                                         and was near crying when we had to leave at the end of it.
                                         
    
                                         That feeling that I had,
                                         
                                         just that vibe that you feel
                                         
                                         when you're at Burning Man the whole time,
                                         
                                         that's what I want to replicate at Paleo FX.
                                         
                                         So that for us, for Michelle and I,
                                         
                                         that is our North Star. yeah now obviously we can't
                                         
                                         you know it's a totally different scene but that is the vibe that we intend to set at paleo fx
                                         
                                         is that kind of i am with my tribe i am with my people and you feel that at burning man and the
                                         
    
                                         whole time you're there you're just like yes i love this groove i love this tribe i love this how this
                                         
                                         feels out here even in the midst of all the freaking dust storms and the yada yada yada and
                                         
                                         the in the shitty port-a-potties and all of the heat and the cold and whatever yeah i want to
                                         
                                         replicate that vibe at paleo fx i love that yeah and i think you guys are doing that because it's through the
                                         
                                         mindset of what can we build together right and that's totally that's where that's it man came
                                         
                                         in it's the collaborative thing because you're out there it's just it boggles the mind man it's just
                                         
                                         like how did this come to be how can this let's like this 80000 person city just spring up out of nowhere.
                                         
                                         And with all this magnificent art and music and expressions of creative genius everywhere you freaking look.
                                         
    
                                         Everywhere.
                                         
                                         It's just that first night on the playa that I guess it happens to everybody.
                                         
                                         But my first night on the playa, I was dumbfounded.
                                         
                                         Just standing, looking at 360 degrees, and there was not one way that I could turn to go,
                                         
                                         oh yeah, that's normal. You see that every day. I was dumbfounded for 360 degrees. I could not
                                         
                                         believe where I was. In fact, there there was a couple times i was pinching
                                         
                                         myself and i was like am i tripping my balls off right now like literally tripping my balls off
                                         
                                         i mean it was that intense and it was that big of a hit to the to the mind and the body
                                         
    
                                         of just this beautiful expression of human creativity out in the middle of a freaking desert it's amazing
                                         
                                         yeah incredible brother right it really is now i'm the poster boy for for bernie man people can't
                                         
                                         get me to shut up about it which is so funny because i was a year ago i was like yeah whatever
                                         
                                         yeah yeah it's certainly an experience i think people should should get into it's it's uh it
                                         
                                         blew me away too the first year we went
                                         
                                         my wife and i were only there for three days you know and then we went uh two years ago
                                         
                                         and we stayed for six or seven and six i think and you know it is it is one of those places where
                                         
                                         you i mean it's it's no different than plant medicine like you only know when you're fucking
                                         
    
                                         in it right you can describe it all day long it reminds me of uh i forget which podcast i was talking about this on
                                         
                                         but ted decker who wrote the 49th mystic and rise of the mystics which are on the true true
                                         
                                         teachings of christ phenomenal books two of my all-time favorites he says when you when you
                                         
                                         you can describe an avocado perfectly to someone you You can say what the fucking, how the skin feels, how thick it is,
                                         
                                         when you peel it off, what the flesh is like, how big the seed is,
                                         
                                         the coloring.
                                         
                                         You can draw it for somebody.
                                         
                                         You can fucking model it exactly how it is and have a number of people do that,
                                         
    
                                         but you'll never know an avocado until you eat one.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         Right?
                                         
                                         And that's the direct contact you have with source in plant medicines.
                                         
                                         That's the direct experience you have
                                         
                                         at burning man where you're like oh fuck there's a different way to live look what we can do right
                                         
                                         look what we can do that is so different than what we've been handed right yes just and and to your
                                         
                                         point it is so hard to describe that vibe to someone who has not been out there and they're
                                         
    
                                         like what do you mean what do you mean the vibe the vibe? What are you talking about? I mean, I understand being in a group of
                                         
                                         like-minded people and that feeling. I'm like, no, man, it's, I don't know. I can't explain it.
                                         
                                         You just have to be out there. There's something magnified by having that many people in that
                                         
                                         mindset all together. I mean, it just elevates you and it does something in the mind man it just like
                                         
                                         freaking opens it up or something much like plant medicine it just it just allows you to consider
                                         
                                         what you otherwise would not consider on the day-to-day i think it's just it's an amazing
                                         
                                         experience and i can't wait for for next year speaking about it now i can't wait to go back
                                         
                                         yeah yeah well you know one of the parallels i think there that's something i really appreciated I can't wait for next year to speaking about it now. I can't wait to go back.
                                         
    
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Well, you know, one of the parallels I think there that's something I really appreciated in all the times I've attended Paleo FX is that it is experiential.
                                         
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         You know, I'm not just taking notes on X, Y, and Z from diet or a new lifting or protocol
                                         
                                         or any of that shit.
                                         
                                         It's something you can go and experience from the training to the food to the the different vendors you guys have, to getting in vitamin IV, to fucking everything.
                                         
                                         It's all there. Right. And it's such an incredible experience. And I really appreciate what you guys
                                         
    
                                         are doing there. Talk about how people get tickets, when the event is and where people
                                         
                                         can find you online. Right. So the event is here in Austin, Texas, July 14th through the 16th.
                                         
                                         It's at the Palmer event center, which is a beautiful event center here in Austin, Texas, July 14th through the 16th. It's at the Palmer Event Center, which is a beautiful event center here in Austin, Texas. It's super, super unique. Just south of the river, downtown Austin, you know, centrally located in for paleo effects, make a week of it, man, because you want, if you haven't been to Austin before in, in the spring, Austin is a fricking awesome place, man. There is
                                         
                                         a reason why entrepreneurs flock to Austin. There's a reason why people who can live anywhere
                                         
                                         in the world come to Austin. There's a reason why all of my vagabonding digital nomad friends
                                         
                                         come into Austin during the spring, right? They
                                         
                                         could go in, they could be anywhere and they come to Austin and there's a reason for it. Austin's
                                         
                                         just got this, again, I'm going to use a hippie dippy vibe verb, but it's just got this feel
                                         
    
                                         to it, man. So anyway, April 24th through the 26th, Austin, Texas, you can go to the website www.paleofx.com and get tickets. I'm sure you
                                         
                                         guys have a link and I'm sure we have a discount code for your listeners. If you don't, we'll get
                                         
                                         that to you. We'll throw it all in the show notes so people can one click it. Right. And to your
                                         
                                         point, Kyle, yes, we have 120-ish every year, super knocked out of the park speakers. The information is
                                         
                                         invaluable, but at the end of the day, you can get information anywhere. You can read it. You
                                         
                                         can listen to podcasts. That's the great part of the digital age is that information is out there
                                         
                                         if you're a critical thinker and you're able to vet, right? Which is another important segue, but that information is
                                         
                                         out there. What you can't get is human to human contact, tribe, vibe, all of that. And there's
                                         
    
                                         something, I mean, I learned things at Burning Man that I could have read 10,000 times and they
                                         
                                         would not have resonated, but I'd go to talks during the day and it just kaboom. So you're
                                         
                                         there with other people. There's something about being in proximity to other people while you're taking in information or having a discussion with
                                         
                                         somebody that it sets and maybe it comes back to your body knowing again. I don't know what that
                                         
                                         is, but that happens at Paleo FX. Yeah, brother. Right. Fuck yeah. Well, I'm so excited to be a
                                         
                                         part of it again this year. Right on. We're glad to have you. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been incredible having you. Absolutely, Kyle. I loved every minute of it, brother. Right. Fuck yeah. Well, I'm so excited to be a part of it again this year. Right on. We're glad to have you.
                                         
                                         Thank you so much for coming on.
                                         
                                         It's been incredible having you.
                                         
    
                                         Absolutely, Kyle.
                                         
                                         I loved every minute of it, man.
                                         
                                         Thank you, brother.
                                         
                                         Thank you guys for tuning in to today's show with my dude, Keith Norris.
                                         
                                         Keith is a fantastic human.
                                         
                                         He did set me up with Tom Colwitty, who obviously just released a little bit before him.
                                         
                                         Just a fantastic person, he and his family.
                                         
                                         Just incredible people and what they're
                                         
    
                                         doing with Paleo FX. I really hope and pray makes it all the way through past quarantine and we get
                                         
                                         to experience it again because there's a lot of new information coming out and a lot centered
                                         
                                         around health and wellness and living our best lives, which they really do break down and give
                                         
                                         people a platform much like myself who will be speaking there to really break down and give people a platform, much like myself, who will be speaking there, to really break down all aspects of how we live
                                         
                                         and get a little bit better every single day we're on this planet.
                                         
                                         So thank you guys for tuning in.
                                         
                                         Be sure to check out their website,
                                         
                                         but Paleo FX will be going July 14th through the 16th,
                                         
    
                                         and if y'all can make it to Austin,
                                         
                                         you'll get to see me speak and hear me speak
                                         
                                         and get to meet me and all that cool stuff,
                                         
                                         as well as many other awesome people from my dudes,
                                         
                                         Ben Greenfield,
                                         
                                         Rob Wolf,
                                         
                                         Mark Sisson,
                                         
                                         and many other amazing people.
                                         
    
                                         Tom Colwitty,
                                         
                                         who were just on the show will be there.
                                         
                                         Lots of amazing people will be there.
                                         
                                         And we look forward to seeing you at paleo effects this year.
                                         
                                         Thank you guys for tuning in.
                                         
                                         See you in a week.
                                         
