The Bossticks - Khalil Rafati Pt. 3 On How To Make Your Life 7000% Better With Small Daily Improvements

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

#398: On today's episode we are joined for a third time by our friend Khalil Rafati. Khalil is an author, speaker, and health-fitness entrepreneur. He is the owner of SunLife Organics, a rapidly growing chain of popular juice and smoothie bars in California, Texas, and Arizona. Khalil joins us to discuss how we can improve our life and overcome any tough circumstances with a positive mindset and the right daily habits. We also discuss sobriety and effective paths to sobriety. We end by discussing the sober October challenge to try and inspire listeners to get involved.  To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Public Goods Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Everything from coffee to toilet paper & shampoo to pet food. Public Goods is your new everything store, thoughtfully designed for the conscious consumer. Receive $15 doff your first Public Goods order with NO MINIMUM purchase at www.publicgoods.com/skinny or use code SKINNY at checkout.  This episode is brought to you by Coinbase Crypto currency might feel like a secret or exclusive club, but Coinbase believes that everyone, everywhere should be able to get in the door. Whether you've been trading for years or just getting started, Coinbase can help. For a limited time new users can get $10 in free Bitcoin when you sign up today at www.coinbase.com/skinny  This episode is brought to you by Nutrafol Nutrafol's goal is to empower women to embrace the beauty of their hair growth recovery with Nutrafol Postpartum by targeting the root causes of postpartum thinning hair-like the physical stress of childbirth and emotional stress of parenting, as well nutrient depletion. Visit www.nutrafol.com and use promo code SKINNY to save $15 off your first month's subscription and free shipping.  This episode is brought to you by Pique Tea Daily immune the the best Vitamin C that's maximized for absorption. It's our daily go to for radiant glowy skin, healthy aging, and immune support. It tastes delicious, like candy for adults. Visit www.piquetea.com and use code SKINNY for 5% off + Free shipping on your first order.  Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a dear media production. Here's what I do every morning that I wake up. So I wake up, I make the bed, I go downstairs, I light a candle, some Palo Santo, I turn on my diffuser, usually tangerine, and then I make a huge cup of the ginger peak tea. I cannot shut the fuck up about this tea. It is the best tea on the planet for multiple reasons. I start my day with it and usually I'll have a cup at night too. But why I really like peak tea is because a lot of teas give you those tea bags and they melt all

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healthy skin from the inside out. And we are all about healthy skin over here. So pick up the ginger tea. You will not be sorry. Pick up the vitamin C. packets, tastes so good, and make this a part of your morning routine. You're going to go to peak t.com slash skinny and use code skinny at checkout to get 5% off plus free shipping on your first order. That is P-I-Q-U-E-T-EA.com slash skinny. Use code skinny at checkout 5% off plus free shipping. Cheers. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Evertson. Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride.

Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. Develop an attitude of gratitude. Let's create a vision board. Let's take pen to paper and write a one year, a three year, and a five-year plan. And let's create a life that's so incredible that we don't feel compelled to escape from. to constantly feel compelled to escape from. Because that's how I live my whole life.

I always wanted to escape from who I was. I don't want to escape anything. I love my life. I love my friends. I love my business. I love writing. I love helping people. I want other people to know what it's like to feel good.

Welcome back to the skinny confidential him and her show. That clip was from our guest of the show today. Third appearance, one of our greatest friends, one of our best friends, Khalil Rafati, back on the show, and we're getting into it all over the place today. For those of you that are not familiar with Khalil, I highly, highly suggest you go back

and listen to the first two episodes. He has an incredibly compelling story. It is a wild story. It's a miracle. He's alive. In fact, he actually wrote a book called I forgot to die because he almost, like, there's really no...

Once you get to know Khalil, you'll realize it's amazing that he's actually even alive. So check out those episodes. All you've got to do is search Kalil, the Skinny Confidential, I'm sure Google works, We'll populate them, but highly recommend you check those out. I think that the episode, the first episode we did with Khalil was one of our most popular.

It's one of our most downloaded. People loved it. He is so authentic about his struggle with drugs, black tar heroin, meth, crack. In this episode, he talks about things that he did when he was high that most people don't talk about. I've read a lot of biographies on addiction, and this was the most raw, real biography that I've ever read. One of the best things about Khalil is he is raw and honest to the fault. I mean, he just says what's on his mind. He speaks it how it is. It's a true, like what I love about his story, it is a true, you know, rags to riches story of someone who really had all the odds stacked against him, who really has

no reason to be in the position that he's in now, which is a very successful, you know, a multimillionaire, multi-business person. You know, he should, like I said, he should, it's a miracle he's even alive. And so what his story does for me, and I think for others, it proves, that you can really start with nothing and build something incredible by, you know, taking care of yourself, cleaning up your life, staying focused, being positive. And again, like coming from nothing. You should also know that he just released another book called Remembering to Live. And there's a quote that he says that kills me.

It's so Khalil. He says, I can't teach you how to only work a few hours a week and become a millionaire or how to drink butter and oil every morning and become Superman. But I did crawl my way out of hell and went from living under a bridge to living a beyond my wildest dreams, a life full of purpose, meaning happiness and joy. And I think that that's what this episode is. It's really talking about how he crawled his way out of hell, what he did with those lessons, how he incorporates wellness now, and how he lives his best life. And I think this episode will inspire you guys. We talk about a little challenge that we're doing. If you want to do it with us,

you are invited. On that note, let's welcome Khalil, an author, speaker, health and fitness entrepreneur and owner of Sun Life Organics for the third time. Back to the skinny confidential him and her show. This is the skinny confidential him and her. I woke up this morning and I looked at my calendar and I saw we were podcasting with you and I thought to myself, you are a person that I get excited to see. And I figured out what it is. You are not an energy drainer. You are not an energy trainer. You're and energy giver. So you know how you get around people and their fucking dementors like Harry Potter and they just suck all the energy out of you? You do the complete opposite. And I wanted to give you that compliment on air. I appreciate that. I greatly appreciate that. And speaking of Harry Potter,

he asked for his necklace back. And I'm not, I'm not giving it back. He has a medallion around his neck. I'm convinced, though, that the reason that you're so good energetically is because you have crystals in your pocket or you're directing some weird energy towards yourself. Yeah, what's going on? Let's show us what you got. You actually have crystals in the pocket? Does he have crystals? Well, beyond the crystals. Well, it's cash. I always have $3,300. I always have $3,300. I always have $3,100 bills. You're going to get robbed. That's okay. If any, if any of you women out there are looking to rob somebody, I would be the guy. It's very intentional. I always have $3,300. As you know, I used to be homeless and broke. And I used to pay and handle for you.

money and I have like a weird thing with money. When I look at like crumpled up ones and fives, it will like trigger that. Also side note, speaking of trigger, one of the reasons why I'm a little bit tense right now and nauseous is those pink things in the urinals, which I very rarely, if ever, will encounter. Thank you for sending me in there and causing this trauma. Every time I shot up, that smell would be permeating the public. Oh, because you'd be in the bath. He'd go to go homeless. I mean, I was going to bathrooms to shoot up. The pink thing. What's the pink thing?

It's in a urinal. You girls would know about it, but there's, yeah, they're urinal cakes. They're these pink, super stinky, like, deodorizers that when you go into a men's public restroom, it stinks to high heaven like these pink urinal cakes. And so every time I smell one, because I would always smell that right before I was going to shoot up, I have this gag reflex. I literally had to run out of the bathroom. I peed, but I didn't even pretend to wash my hands.

I just fucking ran out of the bathroom. That brings up. memory of shooting up when you see those deodorizers or when you smell them. Yeah, of course. In the exact same way that's smelling purple lilacs from this, her name was Aunt Elsie, when I was a very small child, there was this very kind, sweet old lady that we called Aunt Elsie. And that was like one of the only lighthouses in the storm in my very, very turbulent childhood. And going over to Anne Elsie, she had these massive pink purple lilac trees. And so anytime I smell lilac, I guess it doesn't have to be purple, but anytime I smell a lilac, the fragrance of a

lilac, I will just immediately be at ease. So it's like the opposite of the pink urinals. That makes sense that you're putting a smell with a situation. When you look back at your childhood when you were really young, I know it was so chaotic. We've had you on twice and we've talked about it a little bit. But was there one thing that you can pinpoint in your childhood that was sort of like the first chaotic thing that happened to you? Like the catalyst. I mean, my first memory is my dad beating the Christ out of my mom, just beating her bloody. But, I mean, that was, you know, pretty common experience as a child. I had reoccurring horrific nightmares of being dragged into a closet by some sort of a ghost

and being tickled, but nobody could hear me. That was constantly reoccurring. My guess is that is a suppressed memory that I switched into something that my little baby brain could handle. I think something else was going on. My half-brother started sexually abusing me right around five years old, six years old. To be honest, there wasn't a whole lot of not traumatic stuff that was happening at that time. When you're around all that chaos at such a young age, did you ever think that it was normal? And if you didn't think it was normal, or if you did think it was normal at what point did you say,

oh, fuck, this is not normal. There wasn't any deciphering between what was normal and what wasn't normal. There was a lot of fear, obviously, and terror. My father was a rageaholic and very violent. I didn't know any better. It wasn't until I was at, I can't remember his name. The next door neighbors felt bad for me. And I was always in the front yard late at night.

when my parents would go work at my dad's restaurant and they would invite me in. It's driving me crazy that I can't think of this kid's name. His name was Mike, Mike Madden. So Mike Madden's parents, when I was like six years old, invited me over to dinner. And it was the first time I sat down with a family at a dinner table. I'd never, I'd seen that. You know, I'd seen it on TV, like on the Partridge family. I'm dating myself. I'd seen it on TV, the Brady Bunched Partridge family, but I had never experienced it myself because we didn't have a family really. And there certainly wasn't any sit down and, you know, have dinner at six. I went to the, went to Mike Madden's house, and it was, it was his sister, his sister Kelly. I can't remember his older sister's name and the mom and dad.

And they were like these really good, like earthy, hippie, like nurturing parents. And I sat at the table and I felt that love of a familial unit. I felt the unity and the love of it. Now, this is in hindsight. Obviously, I wasn't thinking this when I was six. But at six, I definitely felt like something I had never felt before. And I was frozen and I remember Mrs. Madden kept asking me, you know, afterwards, like, do you want anything else? And I'm like, no. And I didn't realize it, but I didn't want to move. I didn't want that feeling to end. Everyone had gotten up and some were helping with the dishes and some were putting stuff away in the refrigerator. And when she finally got me to stand up,

I had peed my pants, but I didn't know I'd peed my pants. So I peed my pants and there was like pee on the chair and I was like really, really embarrassed. And she was so like, like nonchalant about it. Like she was so like, you know, my dad would have fucking beat the shit out of me because, you know, you're being girlish or I don't know. You're not being strong like you're not supposed to pee your pants under six years old. And she was so nonchalant about it. And she was like, oh, we can go find some of Michael's old underwear. Like she was so cool about it that it didn't make sense to me. And that's when I started to be suspicious. Like, wait a second. Why isn't everyone like this? Does everyone have this? And I don't. And that's when I began to see dads playing catch in the front yard with their parents, you know, with their, I mean, sons playing catch with their dads or whatever it was. And then, yeah, that's when I started. Like seven years old was when I really truly realized, like, wow, I am living in a different world than all these, all these other people.

I want to try to kind of contextualize you. First, for people that have not gone back and listened to the first two times, Khalil has been on the episode, both incredible episodes, some of our. highest downloaded to date. But we're friends in real life. We hang out all the time, especially now that we're all living in Austin. And so I want to be careful that we also give the audience context of who you are and who your story is and what your story is. So I think everybody should go back and listen. But picking kind of up, I think what's the last time you came on the show? It has to be at least, we were in LA, so it has to be two or three years, right?

I was a couple years ago. Yeah, I always forget that people don't know my story just because I'm such a chatty, Kathy. But I mean, yeah, like, look, I think like here, in a nutshell. shell like that that that will describe it. Yeah, but there, a lot of people are listening. So you're going to have to give us a nutshell. Oh, yeah. I mean, I, I, so what ultimately ended up happening was I became an IV drug user, addicted to heroin and crack and just about anything I could shove into a needle. And I wound up homeless and mentally ill and living on the streets of downtown L.A. Back and forth in between like San Julian, Skid Row, the Cecil Hotel, the Rosalin Hotel, and then also back over by the airport, there was a bridge under Sentry and Sepulveda

where there was an opening in the fence that I knew about and it was safe. It was like one of the only places that I could actually go and sleep. Most of my homelessness just revolved around constantly moving. Did you see that documentary on the Cecil? Yeah. What did you think? Accurate, not accurate? Yeah, it was accurate.

It's hard to, it's hard to portray like the Cecil Hotel is like was. It's not anymore. It's like a fancy place now. But it was like a real live haunted house. I mean, there was demons there. There was ghosts there. There was murders there. People would get thrown out of the 12-story window. Like the elevator was always breaking. Yeah, I went through some really horrific shit there. But, I mean, those were kind of the good times. The good times. Well, I mean, I still had money and I could stay in a hotel, you know, and I hadn't completely lost my mind. There was a point where I completely slipped from lucidity. and just was in this in between hell and reality type of existence. And what woke you up with the epiphany to go to rehab? I know we've talked about it on the other episode, but just if you could give the spark notes to the audience. Yeah, and people really, I can't say this enough, should go back and listen to the first and second episode you've done on the show because obviously you get into a lot more detail.

We're just kind of speeding everybody up so that we can have this third conversation. Being inside of county jail is a hell that I don't think the most. creative directors, actors, producers on the planet could recreate. Like, what is it? Explain it to someone. Let's say someone has no idea. All right. This isn't something that Michael Bostick has to worry about. But this is something that I've had to sort of worry about postpartum. And that is thinning hair. And once I started talking about it on my Instagram, so many of you guys DM'd me and said you had experienced thinning hair postpartum too. It's so frustrating. There's nothing worse.

then when you go into pregnancy and you get this thick hair from being pregnant and then you have the baby and it's like they just suck everything out of you. While Michael Bostick sits there with his full head of hair, his huge eyebrows, so much hair on his face must be nice. Anyways, I have found something that I am very much about and I am so excited to recommend to you. And that is Nutraful. I've talked about this on my Instagram. If you want healthier, thicker hair, you've got to check them out. everyone raves about them. I cannot tell you how many influencers and celebrities have come on the podcast to talk about Nutraful. I also got the opportunity to meet with them in person and ask them all these questions. And basically their supplement helps you get thicker, stronger, faster growing hair in three

to six months. I have been taking this for six months. I do four. I lay them out in the morning so they're good to go. I take them. And I have noticed that my hair not only on my head, but my eyebrows and my eyelashes are also looking like so much more luscious and so much thicker. So I'm very much about this brand. You can grow thicker, healthier hair and support our show by going to Nutraful.com and entering promo code Skinny to save $15 off your first month's subscription. This is their best offer anywhere and it's only available to U.S. customers for a limited time. If you want that thicker, luscious hair, especially after you had a baby, you get free shipping,

on every single order and $15 off at Nutrafol.com. That's spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code as skinny. Well, you're in there with people who have just killed people. You're in there with murderers. You're in there with rapists. You're in there with really gnarly gang members. Because they haven't been processed yet. Right.

So they go there first. So you're in there with a bunch of murderers and rapists and you're in there with a lot of street people like myself and the stench, the smell is something. that you can't imagine. And then you're in there with a lot of mentally ill people who get taken off the street for one reason or another. And now they're shitting in their hand and they're writing on the wall or they're bashing their head into the plexiglass because I was on the fourth floor, which was the pill pod. So that's where they sent the crazies because I was mentally unstable. So it's 24 hours a day.

People are screaming all kinds of things. People are bashing their faces against the plexiglass and then taking the blood and writing with the blood. People are shitting it. into their hands and they're painting with it. And I mean, it's a real mental hospital mixed with murders and rapists and gang members. And so it's fucking terrible. So part of bottoming out or part of raising my hand and surrendering and joining the winning team was that experience of going in and out of county jail, taking a couple of really bad beatings to where I thought like, oh, shit, this might be it.

Some demonic type possession attacks that happened to me while I was. shooting up overdoses. Like attacks mentally for you or attacks by other people to you? Both, both. But there were several, there were several times where I was being attacked by entities that, look, a lot of psychosis went on. There was a lot of imagined high speed chases in the beginning where there was nobody really chasing me.

So I'm well aware that if you stay up long enough and you shoot enough coke or smoke enough coke, sometimes meth, but usually coke, and you do heroin with it, you don't eat. Eventually, you start to lose your shit. You start to think all kinds of things. Maybe you guys are working with the cops, or there's bugs crawling on me, and I'm picking at my face with tweezers and eventually cuticle clippers. I mean, psychosis was prevalent. But then there were situations where there were demonic things attacking me that it was not psychosis. It was very, very, very real. And I would wake up and, you know, I would come to, rather, after being up for days at a time. And there'd, there'd be fucking claw marks all over my body that I couldn't describe. And I would like search the hotel

room that I was in trying to find like, was a spring sticking out of the bed or like, how are these these three-pronged scratches all over my back where I can't even reach those scratches. Weird, scary shit happened to me. Accumulatively, I would love to tell you that there was one thing that, you know, because everyone out there that has someone who's suffering from addiction wants to know, what's the one thing that got you to be better? I wish I could tell you there was one thing. I wish, you know, God appeared in a burning bush and said, Khalil, you must be sober.

But it wasn't like that. I didn't get sober out of virtue. I got sober out of circumstances. So. Remind me how many years you were using again on and off until you? Since I was like a little like nine-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old kid, trying to fit in with the older kids was how it started, sneaking beers and taking puffs of a joint, you know? just like trying to fit in, then eventually getting high and eventually getting drunk,

and then eventually getting blackout drunk, 12 years old, 13 years old. And then ultimately seeking out anything that wasn't going to make me feel like me. That was shoplifting, that was masturbating, that was vandalism, that was sex, that was binging on junk food, cigarettes, anything. I mean, there wasn't pornography at that time. There was only dirty magazines. God damn, I sound old. But there wasn't like you couldn't look at porn at that time, but had there been porn at that time that was available to me, I would have, you know, binged on that. It was anything to not feel like me because there's that trauma, you know, that trauma that was taking place, the violence and the sexual abuse and all that stuff. And my little brain

couldn't process it all. So you just shove it down and shove it down, shove it down, shove it down. And then eventually you get a little bit older and you're kind of somewhat away from the trauma, even though there was still bad shit going on at home, but my dad left when I was eight. So a lot of the violence stopped. The sexual abuse stopped when I was 11. And then that suppressed anxiety, fear, terror begins to come up. And so at 12 was when the panic attacks began to hit. Now, did you know at 11 or when you, 10, 9, 8, whatever, that the sexual abuse was not normal?

Yes. Yes. I absolutely. But it almost maybe made you feel. makes you feel bad, which is so fucked up. Look, that's a loaded question. And I'm hesitant to be completely transparent about it because there's people that have suffered from sexual abuse that still have not processed it and they haven't worked through

it and they haven't faced it. There's many components of sexual abuse. There is the reality that when you're sexually abused, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning eventually you start to seek out that attention, right? there's also the confusion of being a young boy and having older men sexually abuse you, you start to question your sexuality. Then if you really want to peel back the layers of the onion, and this is the part that I'm hesitant to talk about because Mercury is in retrograde and Lord knows we're living

in the time of cancel culture, there's also a component of it feeling good. And that's where the guilt and that's where the shame comes in. Oprah said that. Oh, you did not know. that. Yes. Okay. Well, exactly what you just said. If she said it, then I'm, I guess I'm off the hook temporarily. Somebody will find a way to misconstrued what it's true. I'm saying. But there is- Well, I don't think people can find a way to misconstrued your personal experiences. Like, they may not agree with it. But I always find that interesting when people try to like contradict what somebody's

personal experience and opinion was. Like that, to me, that's not a cancelable offense, right? Like, you're sharing your perspective or something that you went through. Yeah. It just in, in today's day and age, I mean, I get messages about, you know, uglable. and complimenting and your wife. I mean, I constantly say things. If I'm not upset about it, which I'm not clearly, other people should really not be upset about it. If you stop complimenting me, I'll stop being friends with you.

I appreciate that. I appreciate that. If only people could see us three in our personal text chain, then we would really be in trouble. Then we would really be. No, but I appreciate that. And I called you. I remember calling you and saying,

hey, am I crossing the line? Oh, my gosh. I did. I know, but Jesus Christ. I appreciated the call, but what did I say to you? You said, don't ever stop. We've been together since we've been 12. It's good for her.

It's good for her ego. I need help. Say anything you want to say. Yeah, yeah. She likes to call for that. And I'm sure I cross the line regularly, but the truth is I love you guys. I love both you guys. And I worship you.

I think you're a goddess. I think you are what young women today need. And what I mean by that is, because I see the same thing in my girlfriend. see the same thing in Anya. There's this certain type of woman that won. There's a certain type of woman like you got the hot guy and he's got money and he works his ass off. And he's a nice guy. Like most girls get the hot. Nice? I don't know. Come on. For you girls out there listening, Michael is absolutely amazing. And all the girls in all my different shops just absolutely love him. See, Lauren, you better not leave me that like, you know. What are you going to do? You're not

Better not put me back on the market. What are you going to do? I'll put you back on the market. Go on the market. Go ahead. I just started a fight on there. There are certain types of people, like when you say it to Lauren, I look at the intention behind it.

I look at the person you are. I look at the character that I know you are. And I'm like, it's not offensive. Like it's complimentary. I get it. Like, and you have a good sense of humor. If that was coming from every kind of random guy on the street saying something, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

There's a gray area, but I fucking worship her. I think she is a goddess. I love every, every, about her. And nothing about that is me wanting to make a sexual advance. It's just that as a Libra and as a man from my generation that I just really, really appreciate beauty of all sorts. It could be a painting. It could be a, I don't know what this is called, a pendant. It can be a crystal. It can be a beautiful woman. And, you know, I come from a generation where compliments were suppressed and we were encouraged to give people compliments.

And today it's completely the opposite. You're not supposed to compliment people because it's triggering or because it's offensive. And that's fine. I'm adjusting. I'm totally, you know. I don't, why do we have to adjust though? If your personality is to give compliments, can we not give compliments? There's a time and a place.

And this is the time and you're fucking hot. This is the place. I love you. You're amazing. I can't wait to see what. Michael says in the car to me on the way home because if he doesn't, I will pull over on the side of the road and call his ass in Uber. I might have to, you might just send a couple of compliments my way just in case I got to go to. Can you just text him like 10 compliments to go to? Because I'm over like the

one that he goes, oh, you look nice. Like we got to get more creative. I told him use a different adjective. Listen, familiarity breeds contempt, first of all. And second of all, I don't, I, I forget to tell my own girlfriend. Like sometimes people say to me, do you tell her this stuff? Because I'll talk about her behind her back, like, oh, my God, I worship her. My job is to serve her. I'm here to empower her. And they're like, do you tell her that? I'm like, ooh, that gets into the area of my generation, the idea behind love was never show the woman, the man behind the curtain. That's a Wizard of Oz reference, right? You never want to let the woman know that she truly is in control. She truly is the, the, listen,

We've said this before, and I'm going to revisit it again because I think it's worth revisiting. And I also think now the time is more important than ever. Women are far superior to men. You know that's my opinion. Women are the gods walking this earth. Women now need to recognize and own their power and rise up and take over. It's time for women to take over. It is time for divine feminine energy to come in. And that's part of what you are about. What makes you, it's not your boobs that I'm obsessed with, although they're amazing. Thank you.

It's your, it's your power that I'm obsessed with. The fact that you command an audience, the fact that people respect you, that you're building all these different businesses, that you got the hot guy, Andy's got money, Andy's fucking cool, and he's physically fit. Like most girls get the hot guy and he's got abs. And he also has absolutely nothing else. Big, big, big personality. You get my point.

Either girls get the guy that's like, you know, bald and fat and gross and lascivious, but they're out like spending money on his Black American Express card. There's that type of girl. Then there's the girl that gets the hot guy who's out cheating on her with all of her friends and all he does is go to the gym every day and do nothing. Michael's a fucking man. He goes to work. He's building an empire.

He stays physically fit and he's got money. my guess is you probably came from a good background. Yeah. So you fucking won and you deserve that. But so do all your listeners. All your listeners deserve a guy that is there to serve them. Our job is to serve them. Obviously, a lot of you guys know we recently moved to Austin and you better bet I'm trying to be efficient as possible by having stuff delivered to my door.

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your first order. Enjoy. Well, it's funny when you talk about women because I fully agree with you. And I think like what I'm, what I've always been attracted to is strong, is a strong woman. Like my business partner when I started your meet is a very strong woman. My wife, obviously, very strong woman and my mother. And I think like if you can, from a masculine perspective, if you can be comfortable enough with yourself as a man to say, I don't need to be this like macho version of what was portrayed back in the day. Like I don't need to be. And you can recognize like having a strong woman in your life only makes everybody else

stronger and like builds this familiar unit. And you can be comfortable not having to be like the first fiddle every time. Right. Like I know it's like during this podcast or doing like Lauren is the lead singer. Right. I can take a back seat. We can switch. Are you playing bass or violin or are you in the back with the triangle?

Maybe I'm like lead guitar now. But before I was the triangle, now maybe they'd lead guitar. Or are you an audience member? But the point is that I think a lot of men and they struggle with being okay with the woman coming first sometimes or like taking that front seat or like being the strong. You see this when women and men get in a relationship and the woman starts to earn more. Like what does that do? A lot of guys that like nails their masculinity, right? Of course.

It kills them. Why? That's a strange concept to me. Men are children trapped inside older bodies. men are wildly insecure. Women just are naturally more secure, naturally, naturally better at running things. Like my whole company is run by women. 90% of my corporate staff are women. 80% of my management are women. 90% of my employees are women. And you know what? Wow. The company runs flawlessly. It really does. Are there hiccups? Of course there's hiccups, right? You do a good job whenever I go in there

because I go in all the time or I postmates, but you do do a good job of coming in as the visionary, but letting 90% of the women do the work. Like, I've watched you come in there and you don't micromanage. You have a vision, and they help support that in a very feminine way. Because they're just superior. I mean, I don't, the woman who runs the company, her name is Audrey. She's brilliant.

She used to be a lawyer. She's French, Moroccan Muslim. And I'm not allowed to say beautiful, but if I were, I would say she's beautiful. She's just incredible. And I'm going to give you a small example that happened day before yesterday. There's a guy in New York. He's a big, famous model. He hit me up and he said, hey, do you think I can get some more matcha?

Now, you know me. I'll fucking give anything to anyone. I love giving away shit. I would treat everyone if I could. And I'm like, yeah, of course. So I send a message to one of our employees. And I said, hey, here's this guy's address. can you please mail him a thing of matcha?

Next morning I wake up 6 a.m. Here's an email with a screenshot of my text from Audrey saying we are not running a fucking charity. He can pay for his own matcha. And I'm like, oh shit, I got caught. She screenshotsed my text. So then I responded back, okay, but can you please just send one more? and she responded back, already sent, this is the last time. Period. No explanation. Now, I'm the owner. I'm a man. I'm 51 years old. You know, I'm the alpha male apex predator. Bullshit. She's my superior. Whether she owns a company or not, she's my superior. And that's why the company runs so incredibly well. Listen, if a woman ran this country right now, there wouldn't be people left in Afghanistan.

And if a woman ran this country right now, Afghanistan would not be in turmoil. If women ran the world, there wouldn't be homelessness. There wouldn't be hunger. There wouldn't be war. It's just fucking reality. What I found working in the business that I'm currently working in is the majority of women that I've encountered and work with, they don't have their egos so involved like men do. And I've worked with men and women throughout my career. And I always think men get in trouble in business because they get their egos and work with,

involved, right? Like, they get, they get angry and upset. They got to prove a point and they got to win something and they got to prove somebody wrong. Like, most of the women I work with are just, they're extremely hard workers. They're not emotional about it. I mean, they're emotional about their jobs, but they're not like, they're not doing this thing where they're like, they get an ego involved and they got to make, they got to take a, they got to win over somebody else. It's like, it's this mentality where it's just like, what's the best way to do something and let's do it that way and I'll work hard towards that direction where sometimes men, like they'll burn a a fucking ship down just to prove a point. I totally agree with you, but it's biological.

we have testosterone pumping through our system and some guys a lot more than others. You, with a ton of testosterone in your system, you are wired and built and set up to be a murdering, hunting, vicious warrior. You know, that's our job as men. We should be hunting and killing and bringing home the food and building the shelters and protecting from the people that are potentially going to harm our tribe, right? So we're just wired that way. Like men are fucking scumbags and men are liars and men steal and men do all these things because that's how they're wired. I'm not bashing on men. I'm a man. I think men have their place in society. But if you're going to put men with all those hormones in their system in charge of countries

and in charge of companies, you're in fucking trouble. What I think is much more manly, right, like knowing that you have the capability to go in, like, you could go fuck around on your wife, or you could go and beat somebody up, or you could go whatever you do. And what I think is more manly is restraint and not doing those things and having the discipline to be like, yeah, I could if I wanted to, but I don't. And that's to me what makes somebody a man, right? Like you can look at a guy that on paper, he looks like, you know, big, strong, tough, wealthy dude. But he's not a man if he doesn't, if he's not able to take care of his family, treat his wife,

right, treat his friends, be honest, like be responsible. Well, you know they could do any of the things, like scumbag activities that we're talking about, but they don't, right? There's a discipline to it. And it's like, you look to the people we admire most are these guys where it's like, yeah, whatever they want, they could do, but they don't. They like, they're good people. But that is self-actualized men.

The reason why you know that, you can perceive that is because you're self-actualized. You can't become self-actualized until you have financial independence until you've built something and you have some security, right? I want to talk about my ex for a moment because I was a cheater. I mean, I don't know, you know, who out there has experienced men cheating on them. But I was a cheater. Like, I was a serial cheater. Okay. And I was a cheater because I felt like I could get away with it. And then at 37 years old. Really quick for context before you were using after you were using both. Not, not so much after I was using. But after I was using, I was just like dating around a lot and just, you know, having affairs and whatever. But when I was. When I got a girlfriend, like a real girlfriend at 37 years old, my ex, who you guys knew, when we first started dating, she was pretty quiet, but she said to me quite early in the relationship, and unexpectedly, she said, if you ever even think about cheating on me, because

I was explaining to her, I had cheated on all these girlfriends. She goes, if you ever even think about cheating on me, I will turn around, I will walk away, and I will never come back. And she fucking meant it. Well, guess what? Nine years. No cheating. Nine years.

Because she owned her power. She held her boundary. And she demanded and commanded that I give her the best that I could give her. That's the ex. The current girlfriend, who you guys also know very well.

We love her. And I love her. Before we were dating when we were just friends and she was helping me out as my assistant, she had come over to drop some stuff off and she plopped down on my brand new cloud sofa. I don't know if you guys know what a cloud sofa is. He's so fucking traumatized by the story. So I've always wanted a cloud sofa.

I would never spend money on it. I know you're traumatized by this because I've heard it eight times, but go on. I have to tell your listeners. So I finally got enough money. I sold a piece of the business and I bought this cloud sofa. We're not going to talk about how much it was. If you know, you know and if you don't, then it's probably better. So I got the cloud sofa. She came over. She dropped some stuff off. We were buddies. We were good friends. We talked about life and she had just done four years of modeling all over the world and hated

it. Her digestive system was all messed up and they made her take laxatives and she was smoking cigarettes and drinking Diet Coke. And so she couldn't go to the bathroom for like days at a time. And I'm just, I want to fix and I want to nurture. I learn that from my mom. And so here I am like trying to give her probiotics and give her aloe and give her to heal to heal her gut. I got her to start drinking bone broth. Anyway, she comes over, she goes to drop some stuff off and she plops down on the cloud sofa. And she was also working at the shop at the time. And, you know, people who don't know for context when you're making smoothies all day with berries and assay and all that stuff, you're covered in, you know, stuff that stains very easily. And I looked over and her feet were dangling just

off the edge of the cloud sofa, and it looked like her feet were touching. They weren't, to her credit, but in my eyes, when I came around the corner and I saw her laying on the sofa, and I saw her feet, her filthy shoes on my cloud sofa, I said, and I didn't, you know, we knew each other, but not super well. I had never raised my voice before, and I raised my voice, and I go, what the fuck are you doing? And she didn't answer. And so I said it again, even louder. What the fuck are you doing? And she looked over to see if I was talking to her. and I said it a third time, what the fuck are you doing? You can't have your filthy feet on my sofa. And without missing a beat, without any hesitation, she looked at me and she said, I can do

anything I want and turn back to her phone. That is my poodle theory. That is the me theory. That was it. In that moment, that's, that's, well, I, I, I, internally, I wanted to walk over, hand her my wallet, hand her the keys to my house and car, my pin codes, my bank codes, and just go here. Just tell me what to do. Much like the previous one, she owned her power, and I was attracted to that power. And that set the context for the rest of the relationship. There wasn't any neediness there. There wasn't any insecurity there.

There wasn't any intimidation there. So that's all I'm saying. And what I wanted to come on here in the first place to talk to you guys about, like, initially we talked about Sober October, right? I want to take a quick break and address something that I get a ton of questions about a ton of DMs, probably because we've been doing more and more episodes on finance, how to manage money, how to invest, how to save, all of these topics. It's been a hot topic on this show for the last few months, and we're going to do more of it for people that are continuing to be interested. But that is the subject of cryptocurrency.

Michael, do you invest? What do you invest? How do you invest? All of these things. It can be completely overwhelming, daunting, confusing. I get it. I was confused in the beginning as well. And here's what I'd say. If you're somebody that wants to start dabbling in crypto, you don't want to miss the boat, you want to get involved. You want to set a little side just to get in the game of crypto, but you don't know where to start. We have a solution for you. And that is Coinbase. Coinbase offers a trusted and easy to use platform to buy, sell, and spend cryptocurrency. They support the most popular digital currencies on the market.

If you're overwhelmed, you don't know which ones to buy, you don't know how to buy, you want some information. Coinbase makes it extremely simple to get in, get the information, and do some transactions in the crypto space. Again, I'm not somebody here telling you to go and invest your life savings in crypto. I'm saying if you have a little bit set aside and you want to start dabbling and you want to take an educated risk and set part of your portfolio to get involved in crypto, then I would suggest jumping in with Coinbase. There's obviously a ton of different options out there. But Coinbase is a leading provider of end-to-end financial infrastructure and technology for individuals, institutions, businesses, and developers. They offer portfolio management and protection, learning resources and a mobile app so you can trade securely and monitor your crypto all in one. in place. Millions of people in over 100 countries trust Coinbase with their digital assets,

and you can too. For a limited time, new users can get $10 in free Bitcoin when you sign up today at Coinbase.com slash skinny. Again, sign up at Coinbase.com slash skinny for $10 in free Bitcoin. This offer is for a limited time only, so be sure to sign up today. That's coinbase.com slash skinny. Yeah, because basically we all just, I mean, you've been sober for forever, but Lauren and I, we just did all of September, completely sober. No, we're doing. 70 days. Yeah. Well, maybe even longer, but no alcohol, no processed food, no, you know, no junk. I told you the other day, the only takeout I do is sunlife because it's good shit. Daily movement. Daily movement. Daily meditation for me.

Michael just called my product shit. No, I said it's good shit. Ouch. Oh, out. She doesn't like that. I know he doesn't like that. You only get Sunlife takeout because it's an amazing. It's the best product. And you know what's so funny. When we first moved here, I'm sorry, yes. When we first moved here, I'm sorry. When we first moved we had no idea that you were thinking about moving here. We also had no idea that our friend Tara, who people know from the show and from Four Seigmatic was moving here. There's so many people that all of a sudden, like I looked around like, oh my God, there's a sun life,

and there's Khalil, and there's Terro. And like, I feel like the best parts of our lives in L.A. came here. And there's more coming. Yeah. There's more coming. And, you know, I'm in a place right now because Cal said to me, and Cal is the example of the man, of the father, of the husband. that I want to be, you know, detoxing from my experience in L.A.

And people get mad at me sometimes for bashing L.A. I'm not bashing L.A. I'm bashing my involvement in L.A. I moved to L.A. to become rich and famous, right? Like a lot of people. And when you get a lot of people that are that narcissistic and insecure and shallow, living together in one area, you get a lot of weirdness going on. Wow. I've never heard anyone explain it like that. That's why when I got pregnant, I was like, get me out of here. I just couldn't. I would. be talking to someone like this, having an in-depth conversation, and they would be looking

over my shoulder to see who's better behind me. I can't with that with that. But you're right, it isn't L.A's fault. It's my involvement in L.A. I love how you're how you take responsibility. I take full responsibility. L.A. is an amazing place. And there's so many people in L.A. that are amazing. Unfortunately, there's far, far more people in L.A. like me. Sure. I would take it. I would disagree with you guys a little bit and say, yes, that's part of it. But the other part is, like, they are slowly the policies in that city are just destroying it. Well, that's political. Sure. And you're right. But I don't disagree. I've lived in California, born, raised California, so I've seen it my whole life. You cannot say it's the same place,

whether it's a political same or not. The policies there are ruining that place. It's just a fact. If you let people sleep on the streets and camp on the streets, if you make it legal for people to shoot up in front of your children, if you make it legal for people like me, who used to be homeless to defecate in the street. When I was homeless, if I peed outside, they would arrest my ass and throw me in jail. If I shot up, they would arrest my ass and throw me in jail. It was after so many times of being held accountable for my actions

that I finally got to surrender and join the winning team. Today, I'm a millionaire. I employ hundreds of people. I don't even know how many anymore. Over 300, probably close to 400. I got to write a book. I get to be on your podcast. Books.

Books. I get to travel around the world. I get to do all these amazing things. But more importantly, forget about all the pretentious self-serving shit. I get to serve. Your kids, your kid eats the products that I make, the shit. Yeah. She eats an assa evil every day.

I get to, it's amazing. I get to provide jobs for people. I get to encourage people to be healthy. And that was what drove me because I went, you know, I haven't been on podcast really for about a year and a half now because I lost my mom. We went through COVID. I had to shut down four stores. It was very traumatic.

Just shut down Pacific Palisades. which broke my heart. We spent over a million dollars there. You know, it's been tough. It's been tough for everybody. And not, woe is me, because there's a lot of people way, way worse off. But I'm in Austin now, and I'm away from all of the Khalil types of L.A. people, right? Those people were always there.

And obviously, like, that takes some self-awareness and some recognition to kind of, like, move in a different direction. But I think what's made everything, like, when you take that and then you put bad policies and you up poverty and you up crime and you restrict people and you do all of these things. All of that is going to manifest itself into this powder of this powder keg that's just an explode. And that's essentially what happened there. And if you defund the police, whether you like the police or you hate the police, if you defund the police, then criminals are going to shoot people in broad daylight in Beverly Hills to take your watch, right, which you're seeing every other day now.

At the surf contest last week, a guy, you know, pulled out a gun and was trying to shoot at cops. I mean, this stuff is happening all the time. Yeah, there's the joke of people. moving to other places, but it's like, you know, unless all of these people that are moving are insane and they're just these right-wing lunatics, which I don't believe all of them are. I know a lot of people that have moved that have been on the left for a very long time. The reason they're leaving is because it's getting out of hand of there. Nobody wants to acknowledge and say, hey, like these policies are not working, right?

Like, look at San Francisco and what's happened up there. I used to love San Francisco to go up there all the time. We'd look forward to go up there. I won't go up there anymore. Sorry, San Francisco. Sorry, it just went, it's bad. Yeah. It's not safe.

It smells like shit. I want to know, though, from you, you were homeless. So you can speak on this eloquently. What do you think the right answer is because you were homeless? You can see it from both sides. Stop enabling people. Stop, stop turning people into slaves. Stop, stop it. Stop teaching people learned helplessness. Stop taking someone like myself who, regardless of the school systems failing me, was born with a decent amount of talent. But I was taught over a period of. time that I was helpless because I was on welfare, because I was on food stamps, because I was given bus tokens and hotel vouchers, I had that, you know, that constant reminder that I was a piece of shit and that I was helpless. And I came this close to getting on Medicaid, Medicare, or whatever it was, because I was engaging in self-harm and I was mentally ill. Can you imagine?

Can you imagine if I actually followed through with my appointment and started receiving a check for $4,000 a month and a free hotel? I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. I'd be dead or I'd be, you know, in downtown LA on nine different types of psych meds, completely fucked up, committing petty crimes, shooting up in people's backyards, throwing dirty needles on the ground, sharing dirty needles. You have to stop enabling people and you have to hold them accountable. People, you know, like I always say like the road, it's not my quote, but I love this

quote. It's like the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And I think people, you know, who knows what the actual answer is, but we actually have concrete examples and data and can see certain policies now. Like San Francisco and L.A. now being a good example of when you enable people and you make them dependent on the government for their well-being, what happens, right? And I think that there's a lot of people that, like, they have good intentions. They think they want to be good people. They think the answer is helping people by giving them and leaning more into government. That's not a bad thing. I don't condemn those people.

I'm like, I understand why you would have that perspective and you want to be a good person. But we actually have real cities, real examples, real data of these policies not working, hurting people, making the problem rise. And you have other places where that starts a decline with different policies. So what I look at this from a perspective of we have data and to see what works and what doesn't. Why are we doubling down on things that are clearly not working? Because politicians run things and politicians don't actually care about people. Politicians care about power and politicians care about votes because the reality is all of this could be fixed. Stop enabling people. Stop allowing people. to commit crime and not holding them accountable and getting rid of bail and all those different things, which if that was around 18 years ago, when I first got sober out of desperation, again, not out of virtue, I'd still be down there. I'd still be a criminal. I'm a convicted felon, right? I know all about crime and petty crimes and drug dealing and all that stuff. If the laws back then were like they are now, I'd still be there. It's as simple as that. If not dead. If not dead. So stop enabling people and start to actually do rattle.

things that will transform shit. That's why I say put women in power. Let women rise up and take over. And when you women rise up and take over, legalize all fucking drugs immediately. Legalize them. Cut off the gang activity, right? Cut it off. Now all drugs are legal, taxed the shit out of it.

And they said, oh, God, but people then would walk into a store and they would buy drugs and then they might die. alcohol is causing deaths every single day, drunk driving accidents and people dying of cirrhosis of the liver. Cigarettes are legal. All these things are legalize all drugs, tax the shit out of it, take that money, and start to build vocational training centers in inner cities, start to build massive gardens where kids can come after school and learn how to garden, set up centers where people can learn

about health and wellness and and learn how to make smoothies and and learn how to eat properly and learn how to grow their own food. I mean, it's not, it's not fucking impossible, right? Do you know, Vista in San Diego? You know, the area of Vista and St. Like, I don't. So they, you know, they now have legal dispensaries there and they tax it. And for the first, and it's kind of, you know, they've had some areas that have been run down there down in San Diego, a small area that people make. What do you mean legal dispensaries? You know, you can go get cannabis and they tax it and all that stuff. But anyways, for the first time in a very long time, they have a budget surplus. And they're like, what the hell do we do with it?

And this is a perfect example. You could take that surplus. You can fix the infrastructure. You can fix the roads. You can build these centers that you're talking about all because of what you're saying. And there was a book I think I've talked about on this podcast that I was reading about the cartels a while back. And they were saying, thank God for the U.S. government and for the borders, because without the borders and the restrictions on all of these substances, it'd be worthless.

Right. Yeah. That border, those restrictions, that scarcity of being able to get it drives the price up. Right. And that's what creates the market. If you were to take that away, similar to alcohol and all these, other, you could tax it in a healthy way, let people make their own choice because they're going to use it anyway, right? Yeah, if you think that making drugs illegal is going to stop people from getting drugs, you're wrong. In fact, it's going to encourage, well, there's a lot of kids that get into drugs like myself as a means of acting out. But if drugs are just available and we take away the stigma from it, and we also take a lot of the tax dollars on those drugs, and we build real rehabs,

Not these fucking bullshit places in Malibu where they're charging people $80,000 a month to go, you know, feed a carrot to a horse and call it equine therapy and get three massages a day and get sushi delivered and all that stuff. Is this true? Are you kidding me? This is actually your rehab. I might need to go. Wait, there's actual rehab where you get three massages a day and you feed a horse a carrot. The equine therapy, private chefs, sushi, rakey, cranial sacrile. They just keep adding all these different things.

Does it ever work? Does it ever work? Of course. Someone who's a real addict. Sometimes there's going to be an exception to the rule. But normally. Normally, I believe places like the Salvation Army, which is a place for homeless people, has a much higher success rate.

What is rehab like if you were to describe it to someone that had no context of this planet? What's it like? Name the rehab. Describe the rehab that you first went to. What's the same? What's the, what's the schedule? What's the food? So I was homeless. So I went to a very traditional state funded rehab called Spencer Recovery Center, sorry, called Pasadena Recovery Center. I don't think it's in existence anymore. And there was an organization called Musicians Assistance Program,

who, or in my case, failed musicians assistant program, who put me into treatment for 30 days, and then they put me into a halfway house for 90 days. And it was very regimented. The food was shit. It was a lot of 12-step meetings. And if you wanted help, you got it. Simple as that. If you would have added in acupuncture and equine therapy

and cranial sacral healing. And I'm hesitant to make fun of that stuff because I do some of that stuff now, but it's sort of self-indulgent. And I don't think it's going to really cure addiction or alcoholism. You need abstinence. You need structure. and you need to replace bad habits with good habits. Is there a lot of sex happening in rehabs

because people are transferring their addiction? Yeah, of course. My God, sex between the workers and the clients. Tons. Oh. Tons. The workers and the client. Tons.

People are constantly getting fired from rehab because the techs, counselors, whatever you want to call them, are having sex with the clients. That's very, very common in so-called transitional living, is sober livings, rehabs, and like the higher up you go, the more likelihood and possibility there is of it happening. When we watch a show like Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, did you watch that?

And our friend Bob. And our friend Bob, who's a mutual friend. Yeah. Go listen to that episode too with Bob Forrest. Yeah. How accurate of a depiction is Celebrity Rehab? Is it not even near? I don't want to bash on that show because I love Dr. Drew and I love Bob.

Bob Forrest is, Bob Forrest saved my life, but how Bob was on that show versus how he was with me. I mean, Bob Forrest sat me down. He goes, look, you are a shoot-to-die-dope theme. You can never get high again. You got to go to two meetings every single day. And this is it. Accept it. Fucking grieve, cry.

Go punch your fucking pillow. Do whatever you want to do. You're a fucking drug addict. It's time to grow the fuck up. Wow. That's counseling. But it was true and it was what I needed to hear. So Bob wasn't, you know, having me talk to a horse and pet it and, you know,

feed it a carrot. If one leg went up, that meant I was, you know, not facing. He gave you the real, the real time. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, look, I'm being, I'm being a little bit sarcastic right now and I'm bashing on the high end rehabs just because I watch so many people die. I watch so many people go in and then die because that's not what those people needed. Those people needed to be held accountable.

Those people needed to grow up. and those people needed to be someone to tell them the fucking truth. Well, we, you know, we take long walks now together, and I think people really need to get familiar with your story and go back and listen to them and read your book and all things. Because the way you, I think if you just heard you for the first time, you're like, how could this guy talk about this? But you have lived this life.

You've seen so many people, you know so much. You yourself have helped so many people get clean. And I think you're just at a point where you can look at someone. Would you say the other day you're like, someone called you and said they wanted to help their son, but you said the son, the son didn't want help. And at that point, you couldn't really do anything until they actually sought out. I can help your son when your son is calling me and asking for help. I can't help your son if you're calling me to help your son who doesn't want help. And you're scared of hurting

his feelings or whatever. Like, I'm sorry. You know, at that point, you got to engage in tough love. Now, are there people who engaged in tough love and then their kid died anyway? Yeah. I mean, you can't, you know, it's addiction. It's a motherfucker. And I'm trying not to be. heartless and I'm trying to have empathy, but I just, I lived in Malibu for a long time and I watched hundreds of people die, hundreds of people because they were enabled, because they would come in and they would do the tour. They would start at promises and then they would go to passages, and then they would go to Cliffside and then they would go to whatever. And they would literally do the tour. They would go to like eight, nine, ten, twelve. Talk to some celebrity friends that you guys

know. They go to like 22 rehabs. Scott Weiland, God rest his soul. God, he was a legend. Scott Weiland went to over a hundred rehabs. Why? Because he was placated, because he was treated special, because he got acupuncture and had his leather pants sent out for dry cleaning, and he only wanted sushi for dinner, or whatever it was. I feel free to talk about him because he's dead.

I wouldn't talk about a celebrity who was still alive and still struggling with addiction. So I hope I'm not being too heartless, but like Scott Weiland should be alive. people should have sat him down and been like, you know, like when I went to 12-step programs in the beginning, they said like, shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. Michael and I talk about this a lot. There's a, like, with having a child now. Like, I think it's so important what Yolanda did. The weirdest thing to me, and this is, there's young people that listen to this show. When I say young people, you know, college and around that age, we're getting older now.

But I think like if you're living at your parents' house or if you're taking funds from your parents and then you're resentful of them and saying they're holding you back or you can't get far because they're supporting your lifestyle. Like that's on you. Right. Like that like that, like you can't, you can't be a self-sufficient person and to make all these demands and want to live this independent life and then be resentful that your parents are supporting your lifestyle. I have a 34 year old friend who does nothing but complain about his parent that's supporting him. Who just bought a convertible Ferrari. Yeah, the reason I mentioned this is I talked to a lot of young people DM me and they're like, well, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And they,

and they talk about how their parents are supporting them and holding them back. And I'm like, well, then leave. Stop taking the support. Go do something on your own. Yeah. It's, it's an unhealthy relationship that I think, you know, parents want to feel like they're supporting their kids and they want to provide and they work hard so that they can do so. But at the same time, there's a healthy balance of like, how much are you enabling and holding your kid back? Because there's a lot of people that come up the hard way that are going to work their fucking face off to overtake your kid, even if they have a fancy degree in a wealthy background. Right. Because they got, because they're hungry.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, look, these big picture things that we're talking about, politics, California, addiction, whatever, I'm a fucking moron. I don't know what I'm talking about, okay? These are my opinions, you know, I'm sure there's somebody out there who's deeply offended now who's going, this asshole got rich and now he, like, doesn't have a heart anymore, and he doesn't care about addicts.

I'm just giving you my perspective of addiction, homelessness, rising up out of poverty. But my purpose of wanting to come. here was whether you came from money or you didn't, whether you worked as a kid or you were entitled or whatever your situation was, if you're listening right now and you are engaging in any type of behavior that is no longer serving you, I want to encourage you for the entire month of October to stop. We're going to call it sober October. We can call it Wellness October. We can call it. Wake the fuck up October. But what I would love is, is for you guys to join Lauren and Michael and I and others because we're going to get other people

involved as well. Yeah, people have been messaged. I think a lot of people are interested in it. Yeah. So like the guys at the collective, they want to jump in. I have some talent on the network that's DM and said, hey, want to quit drinking for the month. Perfect. Yeah.

So we can get alive and well involved. We can get the collective involved. We can get whoever involved. And I really want to encourage everybody, whether you love what I'm saying or whether you hate what I'm saying, here's what I want for you. because I left L.A. I sold my shitty little townhome at the right time, and by the grace of God,

somebody for whatever reason came along and offered me an obscene amount of money for it. The foundation was cracked, the windows were leaking. It was all kinds of issues with this little tiny townhome that I owned. I sold it. I paid off my mortgage, and I was able to come to Austin, Texas, and write a check for a home.

I didn't even know that was possible. I was so busy making sure my fucking rangerover was washed twice a week. And my body hair was removed. And I was wearing the latest cologne from Laylabo. Do you bleed your butthole? No. But if you wanted me to, I would. What does the body hair have to do with anything?

Yeah, I'll do anything you say, Lauren. I was so locked up in this world of... Did I miss that part of L.A.? Was I supposed to take my body hair off? Yeah, it's a big thing. Huh. Yeah. No, I don't love that.

Miss that part. It's a big thing. No, I don't, just like a side note tangent, I don't, I don't love body hair all removed on a man. I need to see that you're a man. I can't grow it out down below because I need it to look bigger. But everything else I can grow out. You can make it look bigger by contouring the hair. Okay.

I'll give you some tips. Why don't you show it to me? Okay. I wonder if we have a manscape out in this. Do we have a manscape down in this one? Who knows? If we don't, Manscape free plug, there you go. We need, yeah, we need Manscape to sponsor.

What are we going to call this October? Because I want people out there. My point of saying all that, so not that, you know, people are like. Well, here's the thing. I think you touched on this earlier. I think there's a lot of people that are like, you know, okay, I'll stay sober for a month or a week. I'm going to quit drinking. I'm going to get healthy.

I think it goes beyond that because it shouldn't be a chore. And I think the only way to make it not a chore is what you said. So since I. It's doing as a group. Yeah, yeah. So since I personally, and I don't know, Lauren might want to chime in. I haven't drank an entire month. I haven't thought about it.

Haven't had any takeout food, processed food, any of that. You look amazing, by the way. Thank you. I was talking to Lauren. But the reason, thank you, thank you. For the compliment. But the, I think the only reason it's possible, it's not because it's some crazy discipline. It's that we've replaced all of those activities with healthy, like with alternatives, right?

So instead of going out late, we're going to the gym early. Instead of going to brunch and getting mimosa's, we're going on those long walks. Instead of going out socializing in a, you know, a dinner, we're going to these workout classes. We went to sound bowl healing. Yeah, we did a sound bath. We go on seven mile. I call them hikes. I think it's almost impossible if you just quit cold turkey and don't replace it with

these things because then you're just sitting around being like, I'm bored. There's a couple different components. Number one, your listeners can look at a moron like me, go from against all odds in possible situations, crawled my way out of hell, became a bestselling author when I can't fucking type or spell, built an incredible brand. because I was smart enough to hire a bunch of women and let them take over. Like there's all these different things that you could become inspired by my story. So if you're inspired by my story and you're doing things that don't serve you,

let's together collectively for the next 30 days, right? Can we get this released soon? Yeah, we'll release it. It will be released on Monday the 4th. Okay. So there's going to be a little bit of a lag time, but we'll get people. So let's just say, though, starting the 4th today. Oh, the 4th until the 4th.

to November 4th. Okay, I like that. So my birthday is October 7th and I have everything I want. I don't mean that in an arrogant way. There's literally nothing I want. I was able to, like I said, come here, get the house. And then what ended up happening was like the scene in the Matrix where Keanu Reeves like pulls out the things out of the back of his head and he realizes this whole thing is a rigged fucking game. Well, the Matrix wasn't a movie. It was a documentary. This whole thing is a rigged fucking game. They have us hook, and sinker. They have us buying a bunch of shit that we don't need, eating a bunch of shit that we should not be eating, drinking a bunch of shit that we shouldn't be drinking, puffing on shit that we shouldn't be puffing on. And we are poisoning ourselves and we have become domesticated

animals bred for taxation. Let's stop that for 30 days. Let's stop buying shit. Let's stop eating stuff that doesn't serve us, drinking stuff that doesn't serve us. Let's sober up if that's an issue. I think we should all engage in that. Let's start taking walks every day. Let's start meditating every day. Let's do a little bit of breathwork. And if you need help with that, you can come on my Instagram. I'll do my silly little stories every morning and I will do a walking gratitude list with you. I'll do some breathwork with you. Not fancy shit. We're not going to do Wim Hof and fucking holotropic breathing. I'm just talking about some deep inhalations in through our nose, out through our mouth, focus on our breath, develop an attitude of gratitude.

Let's create a vision board. Let's take pen to paper and write a one year, a three year, and a five-year plan. And let's create a life that's so incredible that we don't feel compelled to escape from, to constantly feel compelled to escape from. Because that's how I live my whole life. I always wanted to escape from who I was. I don't want to escape anything. I love my life. I love my friends. I love my business. I love writing. I love helping people. I want other people to know what it's like to feel good. And most people don't know what it's like to feel good because they're eating a bunch of shit they shouldn't eat. They're drinking things. They shouldn't drink. They're smoking. They're jeweling, they're coking, they're pilling, they're fucking porn, they're, you know, whatever they're

doing that's not serving them and serving their soul. But for me, my, the second half of my life is going to be becoming the man that God intended me to become. And I got a long way to go. I got a lot of work to do and I'm full of fucking flaws and I'm going to drive you nuts and I'm going to say shit that I shouldn't say. I don't have a filter. It's okay. It's okay to have those character defects. It's okay. I want to do some good for the world. You're doing so much good for the world. The Wake the Fuck Up Challenge, 30 days, starting October 4th to November 4th, daily meditation, daily breathwork, daily gratitude, working out, movement, walking. No drugs, no alcohol, no jewel.

And we haven't even talked about how much of a benefit this is to the financial side, like to your pocketbook, right? Like when you're out, when you're not spending all that money on shitty takeout. But when you're not spent, like people don't realize how much they spend when going to go. out. Alcohol, all these things. Like, what I've noticed in our life is like, I was looking at our credit card bill and like, where the hell? Like, why don't we spend anything? Because when you're living like this and you're replacing and you're not buying a bunch of shit and going out and spending a bunch of money on frivolous things, like it starts to stack up. So, you know, I know there's a lot of people that listen to the show. Don't tell me that I'm going to spend right now. They've been more

interested on the, you know, like, how do you get ahead financially? How do you save? Like, this is part of it, right? You cut, you cut things that are frivolous. You cut things that are costing you way more than they need to. Okay. And you take all that extra, like, so you can get sober and you can also probably stack up the chips a little bit this month by just not spending what you would on all the, the bullshit. Yeah.

And sobriety is not about abstinence from drugs and alcohol. I mean, that's a part of it. But 90% of it is about growing up and taking responsibility for your life and everything that's going on in your life, good and bad. So, you know, I was the king of buying a bunch of shit that I couldn't afford because I wanted to impress a bunch of people who couldn't fucking stand me in the first place. To round this out, You wrote a book called I Forgot to Die, which I devoured.

It is the best addiction memoir I have ever read. Thank you. Everyone should go by it who is listening. It is so good. It doesn't matter who you are, what you do. You will love this book. I promise you. Thank you.

You just came out with a new book called Remembering to Live, Lessons I Learned, crawling out of Hell. Yes. My question I wanted to start this out with. You really have a way with your book titles. I appreciate that. And the impetus to write that book because everyone was like, oh, you were a fucking homeless junkie and now you're a millionaire. So obviously your parents had money.

No. Well, then how did you go from being homeless and indigent to, you know, having all of this wealth and abundance? I had to go back and line by line, item by item, explain to people how at 30, take an excerpt from the book, at 32 years old. My girlfriend at the time who had some dough was in Europe with her parents. And I was in our bathroom. The water had been shut off because I didn't pay the bills. The electricity had been shut off. I hadn't gone to the bathroom in about eight days.

I was using a pencil to try and pry out from my colon what was stuck inside of me. And the pencil slipped. And I punctured my colon. And I bled out like a stuck pig. and there were flies everywhere and it smelled and pieces of my face were missing and I was writing on the walls in my own blood, God please help me, right? A little fucking dramatic little junkie because I knew she was going to come home and see it. And at that time, her dad intervened and was begging us to go to rehab. And my response was, I'm fine. I'm fine. I just need to pump

breaks. I need to stop shooting up. I just need to take pills. I just need to stop with the Coke. I just, I'm explaining to a dad, like a super sweet, awesome dad, how I was okay after what I had just done to myself. So there's so many people out there suffering and they know deep down inside they need to change. And that's obviously a very fucking extreme example. But I don't think it's any less painful than the girl who knows her boyfriend's cheating or the guy who knows he shouldn't be binge eating at night and his belly in his face keeps getting bigger and bigger, or the guy who's looking at porn three hours a day, or the gal who keeps maxing out her credit cards buying a bunch of shit that she can't afford

while she goes further and further into debt. Pain is fucking pain. And I want to inspire people to change. So I wrote remembering to live to explain to people that, no, I'm sorry to disappoint you. My parents didn't have dough. In fact, my mother was living below the level of poverty. And I had to go back and rescue her and correct the sins of my father and take care of her and buy her a home and gave her the last 17 years of my mom's life was the best 17 years of her life. And I was able to provide that for her because I got sober because I grew the fuck up and because I learned to put one foot in front of the other.

So I just want to inspire anybody out there suffering through anything to let's take the next 30 days and let's change. let's do one small thing each day to change our lives for the better because I'm going to tell you from personal experience. When I was walking those dogs and washing those cars and being a manny for Pietra and taking care of Billy and Harry and working at those rehabs and running to California numismatic metals every two weeks and buying my little Krugurans in a million fucking years, I didn't think that I would be living this life that I am today. But it's all accumulative, right? If you make your life one percent better every day, just one percent. I'm not talking about going and joining a gym and working out for five hours and hiring a personal trainer and signing up for boxing classes. I'm talking about one percent better.

Go for a fucking walk tomorrow morning. That's it. Go for a walk. Next day, make a gratitude list. Next day, create a vision board. Next day, write down a one year, three year, and a five plan. I'll help you with this. You can ask me for help.

I will help you. This is what I want to inspire people. Because if you improve your life by one little tiny percent each day, what happens at the end of the year? How much better is your life? The answer is 365 percent better. But what happens over 18 years? My life is 7,000 percent, not including compounding, which obviously took place, the Bitcoin, the Lulu Lemon stock, the Apple stock. But my life, just on a very practical. level without compounding added in, my life is 7,000% better. 7,000% what would your life look like? 7,000% better. That's the name of the podcast, how to improve your life by getting 1% better. I'm inspired.

Great. I am so grateful to be friends with you. I think that you are funny, compelling, charismatic, good energy. And you're just very inspirational. So this whole podcast was another one of my favorites. Can we do a giveaway for both of your books signed copy? Yeah, of course. And I think beyond that, I think I want to offer, I want to offer three,

$500 Sunlife Organics gift cards. Audrey's going to message you. No, no, no, no, no. Let's do one. No, I'm paying for it on my own pocket. Audrey can't get mad about that. Okay. I made a bunch of money in crypto.

I made a bunch of money in stocks. I got really lucky with real estate. My house is up 40% for last year. Okay. You're going to do three gift cards to sunlight. Three $500 gift cards for the best before and after. It doesn't have to be a picture. It can be a story.

I want your listeners to write in to you, to you, to whoever, and say, because of the 1% better each day challenge. This is what happened in my life. I went from feeling like this and behaving like this to feeling like this and living like this. It's a 30 day challenge. The top three best explanations could be before and after pictures, you know, physical transformation could could be whatever they want to do. But the top three get a $500 gift card to Sunlife Organics. And that is the shit, you guys. Sun Life is one of my favorite places. It is so good. We'll also do a... Lauren called it the shit.

No, I mean like the shit. We'll also do a giveaway for his book. All you have to do is tell us what inspired you about this podcast to win his book. And then the Wake the Fuck Up challenge 1% better every day. Send us, send it to me at Lauren Bostic, at Michael Bostic, at Khalil Raffei. Raffati. My God. Lauren, how are we having an affair behind your husband's back?

I actually do know your last name, but I do have problems pronouncing things. Ask Michael. I know it's Rafati, but I, like, if you read the reviews sometimes, it's always, you're just so mad about how she pronounces things. I'm not the best of pronouncing things. I know what your last name is. Kalil Rafati. It's at Kalil-R-O-R-F-A-R-A-F-A-F-E-R-A-F-E-E-T-I-E-E-O-F-E-E-T-I. I'm so fucking mad. No, I know your last name, Cleo Raphati. I know that. I just like, I'm not the best. I want to give some runners up cases of feel free. I think. Oh my God. You're giving away so much. Well, I'm not going to pay for that. I'm going to call the owner of feel free. And I'm going to say, feel free is a product that we all love and use. We drink a half a bottle before we go on a hike. It's incredible. I want to give away some strong coffee from strong coffee company. These are just little brands that I'm involved with that I love, that I believe in, that make me feel amazing. Some. I want to give away. Some. I want to give away.

thing that I use on a daily basis. Let's give away some feel free. Cases of it. I'm going to, I'm going to call J.W. And I'm going to ask for 10 cases for you guys to pick who gets, who gets each case based on how inspired they were by this podcast. And then I'll call Adam from Strong Coffee Company. That stuff is amazing. I'm obsessed with both these things. The feel free shots are this plant-based tonic. You take half of it. And I can't even describe it. You just feel super open and energized and just energetically good. And then the strong coffee company, you guys have to check out, too. Supposedly, I haven't tried it. You just gave me some to try, but you said it's absolutely amazing. It's incredible. It's got amazing integrity in terms of ingredients. It's got collagen. It's got

theanine. It's got all kinds of. He has a bunch of different products, but those are my two favorite products. That's why I brought them for you. He has a macha product too, which I didn't bring for you because I don't ever want you cheating on me as far as matcha goes. I'm not cheating on you with your your match is the best match ever. Okay. Follow at Sun Life, Sun Life, Sun Life, Sun Life, Sun Life, at Sun Life at Khalil Rafadi.

And let's really, let's really do this. And let's, let's the three of us, I want to start doing some group workouts that we can share. Because here's the thing, this isn't easy. Getting sober isn't easy. Stop eating, stop eating gluten and processed sugar or whatever fucking bad sugars call. What is it?

Just like sugar. Like evil. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. High fructose corn syrup. You know, sodas, sugar, gluten. These are little tiny parts of the one step, one percent steps that have made my life 7,000 percent better. But like, it's not easy.

But like when we do the group workout and we're suffering side by side and it's funny, it becomes like a tribe. So if we can be a tribe and we can suffer through this together, because there is a component of difficulty to it. But if we're all doing it together, we know we're all putting it. Yeah, it's harder to go in other stuff alone. Right. Yeah. The idea of like not drinking for-

Especially when you have other entities saying, hey, come to dinner, come to drinks, come to this. So the idea of like me not eating pizza for 30 days or me not having Jenny's ice cream for 30 days, like kind of scares me. But if you guys aren't eating pizza and you guys aren't having Jenny's ice cream, and if we're doing our little walks and our gratitude list and our group workouts and our, let's go to a live and well. Let's get some IVs. Let's go to Kuya. Let's do a float tank so you can freak the fuck out. And then I can like rub your feet afterwards so you feel better.

I'm into it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's really, really go for it. Let's get some really cool brands involved. And let's really inspire people to create a life beyond their wildest dreams. So they don't feel like they got to go buy shit that they can't afford or drink or smoke or engage in, you know, or be locked in a shitty codependent relationship when they know they deserve better.

The wake the fuck up challenge 1% better. Kahl Raffee? Oh my God. I'm getting back on drugs. I fucking see you every day. I text you every day and you don't know my last name. I don't know how to pronounce things. Raffati.

No, that would blow your mind. Ask my call. I don't know how to pronounce anything. I love you. You can come back anytime. Remembering to live lessons I learned crawling out of hell and I forgot to die on Amazon. Check out at Sun Life Organics. Come back on any time you want.

Will you put a link to feel free? Of course. Link to everything. in the show notes. We love you. Love you, Kahl. You heard it here first. You heard the giveaway. Khalil said he would do that incredible giveaway for you guys. All you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostic and follow Khalil on Instagram. And we will see you next time. We got some good episodes coming up.