The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Brodie Kern, Founder of Wake Up Wealthy

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Brodie Kern, Founder of Wake Up Wealthy Wakeupwealthy.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with an airgate podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in to see the video version of the exciting guests we have on today go to youtube.com for just chris voss it's free for an unlimited time you want to get that coupon

you go there you hit the bell notification button and it helps you join a group of people that will support and love you no matter how awful you are unlike your family so it's kind of like a family but we don't judge you isn't that wonderful so go to youtube.com and do all that. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can see both my new books. There's like a giveaway we're doing of like a hundred of them. So you can go over there and enter the giveaway. It's pretty cool. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places, those crazy kids are playing on the interwebs and you can see all the stuff that Chris Voss show is doing. There's just a multitude and we can't even keep track. Anyway, today we have an amazing guest on the show. He is the founder of Wake Up Wealthy. You can go to his website at wakeupwealthy.com. The Wake Up

Wealthy Brotherhood. Brody Kern, CEO and founder is on the show with us. Welcome to the show, Brody. How are you? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on. Nice to meet you. I'm excited to dive in everything today. Awesome. It's wonderful to have you on as well. I'm going to let you do your bio. So tell us about who you are and what you do. Sure. And so give me before I dive into give me a quick rundown of your audience, right? Like what's it made up of the most? Mostly males, mostly males. We built a tech audience early on. And then it's functioned into more like a book and knowledge and CEOs and all that sort of good stuff. Cool. A lot of entrepreneurs, I think, too.

Sure. So yeah, the best place to really start my story, right now I'm 28 years old. I'm a family man, a father, a husband, entrepreneur, but best place to start my story is around 21 years old. So whenever I was 21, I had ended up in a place in my life where I was massively addicted to drugs and alcohol. And I was ending up in the hospital all the time, overdosing. And I had really reached a crossroads in my life where if I kept going the way that I was, I was certainly going to die. And had a brief moment of clarity and desperation and ended up dropping out of college, checking myself into rehab. And I went into a 30-day inpatient rehab facility where that became kind of the catalyst for me looking at personal development and growth.

And I went on to struggle with sobriety. I was sober for about a year, had a three-month relapse, then finally got sober again. And I've been sober five years now. But when I was first getting sober, I got out and I had this chip on my shoulder. I was really tired of being this fuck up dude. And pretty much I had let everyone that I had ever known in my life down. And I was totally unemployable. I was this college dropout junkie and I didn't really have any direction ahead. And so I decided that I was going to get into business. There was a super low barrier to entry and I started out as a real estate agent. It was take a class, pass a test, and you're off to the races, right? And so that's what I did. I pounded through that stuff. And when I started in the real estate space, I really crushed it. And I then decided that I hated that space, went on to start another business,

did the same thing. I was smashing, doing really well, but I hated it again. And around this time I was getting, I was getting engaged. You know, my fiance was pregnant with our son and I was really ready to like, try to find something that I enjoyed a little more because like what I was living at that time, wasn't my definition of success. Like, sure. I hadn't, I had some money, but it was, it was not a way that I wanted to live. I was overweight. I like, wasn't happy at all. And I was constantly just exchanging time for money and moving into really becoming a family man in this new period in my life. I knew that I couldn't carry on that way. And so I took a step away

from everything that I was doing and decided like, hey, I need to find something that's a little more aligned with what I might want. And so I was actually, it was a couple of weeks before I got married. I had downloaded Instagram because I had never had it before. And so this was 2018. And I saw that people were like coaching, speaking, talking about shit. And it was really like, I was like, oh, that's sick. I'll do that. Right. And so I kind of just started getting my feet wet and it built and built and built and built. You know, since that time, three years ago, starting to coach, we've coached almost 500 CEOs inside of Wake Up Wealthy. And it's been it's been a wild ride, man. Wow. That's awesome. So you run a male coaching program. Is that correct? That is correct. Awesome. And I like

how you call it the brotherhood of men. You know, one thing I think I heard Rolla Tomasi talk about this. We don't, we used to have like different things that we did as men together. We would go fishing and we would do activities that were outdoors and we would, you know, go to the bar and hang out and have beers together and stuff. And all those things have disappeared for us and, or become zones where it's like, oh, that's bad to go to the bar and drink. And so a lot of men, especially with social media and how it's kind of disconnected us in our lives,

we don't go hang out with other men and do like the tribal stuff we used to do as cavemen where we got together as a tribe and we went and did stuff, accomplished stuff, killed the T-Rex or, you know, whatever. And so I think it's great that you have this platform where men can get together and really engage in their masculinity. Yeah. I mean, it's like, it's something that whenever I set out to do something, like my initial inspiration for it and how I came up with really wanting to look at coaching men and building out community, at that time that I told you, I was just taking a step back and assessing everything.

I identified that I did enjoy business. I enjoyed solving complex problems, pushing myself, obviously being a CEO, being a business owner, you're forced to continue to level up, continue to grow. And I said, Hey, that's awesome. And I knew that I also really loved working on personal transformation with guys inside of AA, helping them get sober and getting into the nuance and the trauma of everything that had happened to them up until that point was something that not only did I have a knack for, but it gave me that feeling that I was looking for. And so that combined with business was where I wanted to head. I wanted to find guys who were business owners because I wanted to build them up. I wanted to wipe the software clean, give them a new operating system and build them up to

be badasses because I wanted to be around badasses in business. I wanted to build a community of guys that I wanted to be around. And it forced me to continue to level up, to continue to stay ahead of the game, to continue to push myself so that I can then take that knowledge and pour into these guys. That is awesome. I mean, it's, you know, men have done extraordinary things in this world. In fact, we build the foundation of this world when it comes down to it. I mean, we keep all the power lines running and do the sewer work and do the construction work and everything else. And we band together and we fight wars, we destroy stuff. I mean, we're great at brotherhood and binding together as men. We do really well. And so I think this is really important. So what are some of the coaching programs or some of the advice you give to some of the people that you work with in your coaching program?

Yeah, that's a great question. So really, when I started coaching, I was more of like a symptomatic coach, right? I would get some clients. They would show up, say, hey, this is my problem. And I would say, okay, this is what I think about that problem. And it was valuable and it worked, but it wasn't applicable to all men. And when I had really decided that I wanted to help as many fucking men as possible, it just wasn't scalable, plain and simple. And so I identified that and I had created a plan. right? I was going to continue to do this symptomatic coaching for a while. But at the point when we had reached about 75 clients,

I looked at all the data that we had. I had recorded all the conversations with my clients. I had taken notes. I had looked at everything that they were going through. And I had identified key patterns of behavior and thinking that serve them. And that also were self-destructive and, you know, made them blow shit up in their lives because men have that pattern, right? We're great. We're great at momentary success when we're fucking hyped. And then for some reason we get in our own way and this happens a ton, right? Whether it's unworthiness, we think we don't deserve it. Like whatever it is, it's usually stuff going on at the subconscious level. And so one thing that I

had to do to really create the changes that I wanted to create based on the data that we had found was I had to figure out how to get into guys' subconscious minds and start to unwind some of the chaos that was going on in there. Because when we grow up, we call it imperfect lessons from imperfect teachers at Wake Up Wealthy, right? It doesn't matter how much our parents loved us, how good of teachers we had, what our friends were like, we're always consuming broken belief patterns that do not contribute to success or growth. And so the first thing that we have to do, we run on a three-step process, right? First thing you do is you unfuck the mind. You build demand into a guy who is capable of actually setting targets and knowing with certainty that

he can go out and execute on those targets, right? For the most part, it's like guys in business know what they need to do. They have an execution problem up to about a million dollars a year, right? They have an execution problem. So first thing we do is we build the man, right? We eliminate the word problem from the topic of execution, right? We make that repeatable, predictable, and allow the guy to know that, hey, he can actually go out there and create the results and take the desired actions that he needs to. The next thing that we do is we build the machine. And building a machine is building the business. And not just bringing in revenue, but actually building leverage inside of your business. That is key. How do we start to separate time from money? Because that's what we're doing when we start a business. That's what we're doing when we have a job. We exchange time for money and there's no leverage there. And so what we need to do is create leverage inside of the business, teach them how to develop team, how to develop systems, and how to focus on scale. And so that's step two. Step three, build the master. This is what you do once you figure it

out, how to build the man, how to build the machine, you build the master. And what you do there is you have total leverage. You've unfucked your mind. And what you get to do is go out there and actually create impact. You get to go out there, create impact, focus on new projects that are more aligned with you, that are more fun with you. Because nobody ever steps into their first business and that's their passion project and life's work. You know what I mean? We couldn't even cover the list of businesses that I've started in order to try to make shit happen. You know what I mean? And so that's when you really... When you build the man, you build the machine, you have enough space, bandwidth, freedom, and clarity to go out there and do what you want to do and learn how to let money grow for you and

start to build real wealth. And so when we look at the journey of a man inside of Wake Up Wealthy, that is what it is. Awesome. So you guys have three key components that you do in what you call your full stack system. Tell us about those three things. So really, I went through Man Machine Master, and let's zoom in to man, right? Because like I said, guys know what they need to do. And sure, they could use some tactical help, but we'll get to that. Number one problem that you have to solve is the man. And what I had identified through my period of doing symptomatic coaching and really developing myself at a really fast rate was that there were three key components that contributed to building the man, right? Building rock solid mindset, building good habits and fitness, good body, and building spiritual connection, right? Building spiritual connection to be able to tap in. And so mind, body, and spirit are what allow you to build that state of personal power, right? Personal power is what leads to execution. Execution is what

leads to building a business, right? And so we break like our kind of four pillars inside of Wake Up Wealthier, mind, body, spirit, and business. That's really important. I suffered from depression all my life and I finally started in the gym about three months ago. I was losing some weight and I just realized I needed to take better care of myself at 53. And it's really changed my whole outlook on life. It took me a while to... I've always fought the gym, but it's made a huge difference in my life. It's really helped with my depression. And I think it's really, you know, men, especially nowadays, there's a lot of different stuff about, you know, our testosterone being lower because some of the foods that we eat and some of the chemicals around us and stuff. But really, you know, men need to work out.

We were built for this. We were given upper body strength for a reason. Uh, it's one of the things you guys offer in your system or three key components in your full stack system, or is a course coaching where you do one-on-one, you've got to guess a course where people can watch the stuff or interact with it. And then you've got a community to talk to us about those three elements, if you would. Yeah. So really So really how course coaching community is broken down. So course is what we call the mastery method. And that is what we built around all the patterns of behavior that we saw in those first 70 clients. And so we wanted to be able to create a doctrine and a place for guys to

go to that was holistic in nature, right? Comprehensive in nature. It was going to cover everything that these guys need to go out and make something of their lives, right? And so, I mean, we've got over 100 videos in there for guys to go through. And we're actually rebuilding 2.0 version right now based on what we've learned from sending 250 guys through that course. So it's like, we take product very, very seriously here. And the reason we go really, really hard on the course is because we can only coach so

many guys, even at the group coaching level. And so let's move that into coaching. When we go into coaching, every guy who comes on, I have four coaches here who have been through tons of training in psychology, neuroscience, NLP, our custom system. We built an accreditation course for coaches to get certified in. And so all of our coaches have been through that. When someone signs on with us, they get assigned a personal performance coach. That's a one-on-one coach. They have access to anyone on the team for what they need. We've got experts, obviously, in sales, marketing, leadership, business, whether they need to come to me. I'm the business coaching department. And we have another guy named Julian Rosen who is ahead of his time on the mindset and

spirituality side. And he handles a lot of the coaching there at the group level. And so there's three group coaching calls that happen a week. Any one-on-one access that guys need, they get it. But the most important component of what we have inside of here is the brotherhood, right? It's like, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaching and community online to get around smarter people, to get around people who made more money than me, had what I wanted, right? And the thing that always lacked in most of those programs was

community. And I was working with men exclusively who probably historically had not talked about a lot of the shit that they were carrying around. And I knew that I had to create a space that encouraged and allowed guys to open up and where other people would show up and support them. Because the reality is, dude, like I mentioned earlier, biggest thing we see guys struggle with is unworthiness, not thinking they deserve it. Every fucking man struggles with that shit. And coming into Wake Up Wealthy, it's one of the first times that guys hear like, hey, that's okay. And you don't have to feel that way anymore. And we're going to show you why and how to get out of that place. And it's not just us doing it. It's everyone in the brotherhood also reaching out to

do it because they're either going through it or they've been through it and they know how to get out as a result of being inside of the brotherhood. And so we really preach the idea inside of our community that like you will receive, like you will receive back what you give in, in multiples, you know? And so we've created a culture where guys really fucking pour into each other. And that's super rare in this online space. I think it's really important. You know, we've had two generations of boys who were raised. I mean, if you watch Fight Club, you get a lot of the movie, you get a lot of the nuances of some of the problems of our society.

I mean, I think one of the lines that I love from it, our war is a spiritual war. And as men, we've been raised through two or three generations now where we've been told that we're horrible human beings. Masculinity is bad. You know, there's this nuance that we've been done. Most males are thrown into the most dirtiest, filthiest part of their house and relegated to go live in the garage or man cave as we try and spin it. And a lot of men feel lost. I see this in my gaming communities. I have a huge gaming community and I see this in the young boys.

I see this in the incels, the black pill, the blue pill communities where these boys are lost and they don't have good alpha male or good masculine men that I had growing up where my grandfather taught us everything, fishing. And he taught us the life lessons that men teach children. Hey, life isn't fair. You fall down, suck it up, do that thing. And men really can't talk about their emotions uh with with females very well they they've because once once they start doing that females start looking they've been going i think you're cracking um and so having a community for men is really important like i've had so many of my men friends especially

in gaming that i've known for years you know we'll be gaming and they'll be like hey dude can i talk to you i'm having a problem man and i'm like'm like, sure, man, let's talk, you know, whatever. And maybe it's an alcohol problem or maybe it's a marital issue or maybe it's just they're just struggling with who they are. And so I think these communities are really good. So I think if a lot of men are listening to this, you need communities like this to support you, to talk to other men, to do men's shit, as I call it.

If you look at my workout things where I post every day for accountability, one of my hashtags is do men's shit. So I really identify with what you're doing, Brody. This is really important. And men need to realize that we don't have this space and we need to embrace it. Yeah, man. I mean, it's like, look, being a guy is fucking isolating. And on top of that, being a business owner is isolating. Those are both things If you're the CEO, you've got nobody behind you. Back when I started my companies and I wrote about my book, I didn't have social media turned to.

I mean, the only thing was to do was to build a board or if you can afford one when you're starting out or you hire an attorney and give you a business advice, you know how much that costs. And so nowadays there's so many resources that men can have. And I just think it's so important that men realize and reach out and that they have a man's community like yours, where, where they can talk to other men because men really, I mean, we, we go through, we have

a different experience. I mean, there's, there's, you know, I've tried talking or forming some, I have lots of different communities around the internet and sometimes talking about with women sometimes when i what we're going through they they don't really get it they don't have a concept because we're very different animals we're and we're designed that way on purpose uh and it's a feature not a not a uh it's a it's a feature not a thing if i quote rolo tomasi again i'll credit him for that um. So what are some other aspects we haven't touched on, on some of the things that you bring with your company? Well, and I'm like, there's something that you mentioned there that I want to talk about, like, take my company out of the picture for a moment, right? It's like, there is so much access to

community and to information out there right now. And not just information, but true mentorship. And all that it is, is you have to pay money. And people are really, really, really attached to money and holding onto it, which is not a logical way to think. And so I want to do a reframe here for a moment. It's like, obviously we sell coaching, we get a number of objections, but the point is if someone has something that I want and I'm not actively trying to pay them to receive that information and create that in my life, the lifetime value of information is high. You go out there and you buy something, a product, some shit like that. The lifetime value is not very high. You know what, right? You go out there and you buy something, a product, some shit like that.

The lifetime value is not very high. You know what I mean? You go out there and you get access to information and you're going to be able to create results with that indefinitely. And so it doesn't matter what area you're struggling with. If it's your body, right? If it's your business, if it's your spirituality, if it's with women, if it's with whatever it is, there's a very good chance that there's

an expert out there teaching it and doing anything other than paying them to get access to that information as quickly as possible is an illogical move. And I say that and understand that I have done this. I've spent probably $12,000 a year on fitness coaching for the last four years. And now I know quite a lot about fitness and how to build my own shit that I will never, ever, ever not know. I have spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on business coaching and the speed at which I have been able to grow in relation to if I would have been solving it by myself is stupid.

I just joined your Facebook group too. I'm here sitting here going through your website as we're talking and just joined your free Facebook group. So you've got that as an added community. Yeah, it's really important guys get that we're really missing something. I have so many lost friends, so many lost guys. I see this in the youth in my community. I see, you know, I mean, whether it's issues with women or dating or just really appreciating the masculine benefit of what we have and going, hey, I'm a man. This is what we do. We go accomplish stuff. We go do stuff. It's okay. There's no, you know, we've, we've been raised a lot of shame in our, in the last two generations that, oh, men are bad and you just need to serve other people. And that's not what men do. I mean, you can't change the biggest problem people have is you

can't change the eons of time of what the DNA of our species is. It is what it is. You can't fight what's coming. That's vanity, I guess, if I quote from No Country Fold. So I think this is great what you're doing. Anything more you want to touch on, Brody, that we haven't discussed on what you guys do and how you do it? No, but I think I would like to follow up on that topic a little bit. It's like, look, there's fucked up people out there, right? But just because you share a characteristic with someone doesn't mean that you're fucked up, right? And also understand that if you feel a little fucked up, it's okay, right? It's okay to be a little fucked up, right? I am a recovering

alcoholic, hardcore drug addict. I'm fucked up. Like you, Chris, I've battled with depression hard and anxiety a ton. And on top of that, I've, I've been charging life, throwing on more stress and shit. But it's like, when you do the right shit, when you have the right habits, you have the right frameworks for thinking you put yourself around other people who have similar frameworks for thinking and who want to hold you accountable. You can quite literally do whatever you want. And you're right. That is what men do. Men are designed to achieve. We are not here to do fucking nothing. You serve people. We are here to serve people. But you can't serve people if you're not pouring into yourself. It's quite literally impossible to give something away

that you do not possess. And so you have to pour into yourself. You have to go out there and achieve so that you then have the capacity to serve others. That is what it's about. That's what I have done in my life. I went to war with all of my demons, with addiction, with depression, with anxiety, and I fucking still go through shit. You know what I mean? But I have gone out there and I have put in the reps on making myself better, making myself a good dude who can serve people. And that's what I do. And guess what? Money fucking comes. Yeah. I think some men just feel like they want to give up because they're like, this isn't working, stuff's really broken. It's, oh, I shouldn't want to be a man. I shouldn't want to go do things and stuff. So I think this is great. I think it's really awesome what you're doing. Brody, give us your plugs as we go out. So people can find you on the interwebs and how can they interact with you or sign up with you or get to know you guys better? Sure. If you're listening to this right now and you have, I mean, questions about anything,

I'm here to support. You heard my whole story today. I've had a ton of different things that I could do to make money. This is about me feeling whole in my life. And when I go out there and create change with guys, it makes my life feel like a worthy endeavor because there's a huge ripple effect. Men are fucking powerful. And so if you're struggling with anything, dude, feel free to DM me on Instagram. That's the platform where I'm most active. I'm always open for a conversation. Also, if you go to wakeupwealthy.com, you can get a ton of free trainings and resources around how to level up your mindset, how to grow your business, and really how to get involved with us and start

connecting and building a relationship with myself and my team at Wake Up Wealthy. So we're always here to support anything guys need. I don't really make super hard asks on podcasts. Just check it out if you want to grow. There you go, guys. Join the community, man. If not, at least reach out to other men. And, you know, this is the biggest problem. We're isolated. Like I see so many men that are isolated and they don't have people to support them and everything else.

So I highly recommend it. Thanks for coming by the show, Brody. We certainly appreciate it, man. Of course. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button. Goodreads.com for chest chris voss hit that bell notification button goodreads.com for chest chris voss see everything we're reading

and reviewing over there go to all of our groups facebook linkedin twitter instagram all those different places thanks for tuning in be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time