The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dave Albin of Firewalk Adventures on Creating the Most Powerful Team/Life Changing Experiences

Episode Date: September 30, 2023

Dave Albin of Firewalk Adventures on Creating the Most Powerful Team/Life Changing Experiences Firewalkadventures.com Firewalking is an ancient ritual that has existed for thousands of years. Practiced by different people around the world, it has roots in many different cultures. The common thread that all firewalking rituals seem to share is that the firewalk itself demonstrates courage, faith and strength — the ability to stand up to one’s fears and take on whatever challenges life sends forth. Firewalking is more than a single act undertaken on a single day of your life. It is the ultimate metaphor for mastering life’s obstacles — and our wn insecurities and fears about them — through sheer force of will. It is a potent symbol of maximized human potential and of everything that is possible. About Dave Albin Dave is the #1 Firewalk Instructor in America. Firewalking is a 1,000 year old rite of passage ritual where you literally walk across hot burning coals. Having worked for Tony Robbins for 19+ years and starting Firewalk Productions in 2014 Dave has firewalked hundreds of thousands of people. He and Tony Robbins set a World Record in London in 2005 walking over 12,300 people. His success has a scary and violent past. On June 8th, 1988 he put a gun to his head to stop the excruciating pain from both drug and alcohol addiction. 2023 will mark 35 years of sobriety. Dave's clients include Googe, NASA, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Heineken, RE Max, Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), Chick-fil-A, CRISP Video, Mystery Hill, Y.M.C.A., Replace Your University, Tony Robbins, T Harv Eker, NATE BAILEY, The 4-Seasons, The Omni Hotel, The Waldorf Astoria, Waikoloa Hotel, and MANY others.

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. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. 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 thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to the big show, our family and friends, the Chris Va Show family. The family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as that one time you took apart your dad's watch and then you couldn't put it back together. And you showed him how great you were at achieving, doing his favorite watch, and he beat you silly and grounded you for a month, which is what my dad did when the two of us tried to do it my me and my brother but that's a different story for another time in

another show today we might be we're doing uh instead of doing brain bleeding we're gonna do some fire we're gonna do some fire on the chris voss show as i like to the kids say it that way i think um so we're gonna be talking about fire and uh if you're not if that doesn't cook you up and light you up and i don't know i need some more metaphors for uh for fire uh you're just gonna have to deal with it you're just gonna be burnt to a crisp at this show that's basically it so i think you're gonna enjoy it and if not uh you know see the front desk for refunds uh today we have an amazing gentleman on the show and and we're going to be talking to him about some of the cool stuff that he does, motivation, et cetera, et cetera. But first, make sure that you go to goodreads.com,

for it says Christmas, linkedin.com, for it says Christmas, youtube.com, for it says Christmas, and Christmas 1 on the Tickety Talking. Subscribe to that LinkedIn podcast newsletter. That thing is killing it over there. It just grows like a weed. Like, every day I go in, I'm like, who'm like well keep subscribing this thing i thought we used everybody on linkedin but definitely there's definitely a few thousand people on linkedin um so there you go uh this gentleman uh comes to us today and uh he is with his uh company if i can find the right tab

here uh dave albin joins us today his company is called fire walk productions llc or as it's known in certain countries fire walk uh i don't know that's that's a horror that's not even funny chris anyway guys uh he went to work it's kind of funny yeah that's what we do on the show we just kind of half kill half half die, half kill on the show. And hopefully it's funny. So he went to work, Dave did, to the personal development industry by attending a seminar with Tony Robbins in 1995, where he did his first fire walk. Tony Robbins. There you go. Dave went to work for him just shy of 20 years as Tony's firework.

I'm not sure if I'm reading that right. Dave went to work for Tony Robbins, and he was just shy of 20 years as Tony's firework captain, and he retired from the Anthony Robbins companies in 2014, shortly after Google hired him to put on an event for him, because we know how Google likes to cook people. Have you seen my search history lately? Don't. That's right.

There you go. I think he hired them to put Google Plus out of business, burn them down. So his company, Firewall Productions LLC, was born in 2014. He's done gigs for NASA, Heineken, the Entrepreneurs Organization, Remax, Chick chick-fil-a that's how they cook the chicken over there uh prove it uh google and i nc corporate chiropractic associates i

believe it's north carolina i'm not sure what ni is though um north illinois i think that's what it is isogen heineken boone blowing rock ash and caldwell county chamber of commerce wayne dryer or dyer we've all heard of him uh ymca tony robbins and many others uh welcome to show how are you dave hey chris thanks for having me man there you go i'm stoked to be here that's it you know if we're gonna talk fire right there you go i think you have heineken twice in your in your uh? Yeah, you got it twice in your bottle. I only have... Officer, I only have two. Yeah, you got to make sure you're not drinking

this stuff while you're writing out the bio. So welcome to the show. You are the number one firewalk instructor in America. There you go. Yeah, well, it sounds right. You know, that's what they wrote. This is a great way to pick up chicks at the bar, I think.

So give us a.com. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Firewalkadventures.com. Firewalkadventures.com. So give us, I've kind of thrown it around a little bit, but give us a 30,000 overview of what you guys do over there. We create some of the most, literally some of the most powerful life changing paradigm shift experiences in America.

Um, I mean, it's simply put, you know, uh, you know, team building is team building, right?

But if you don't get people up off their butt and do something, you know, what doesn't challenge you doesn't change you, Chris, we all know that. Uh, that's true. That's where it really,

you know, when I did my firewalk i i learned very quickly that it was literally one of the most life-changing experiences on my entire life there you go and it shifted me yeah and it made a major shift for you now big time why uh how old is firewalking oh as a thing in america i mean you can if you read we research it we'll hear as far back as what, a thousand years? Yeah. So if you look at the cultures around the world,

you know, firewalking was used as a rite of passage. It's a graduation. It's a point for marriages and, you know, manhood and womanhood. And so if we look at the Phoenicians and and the people of india and the polynesians the hawaiians the native american indians uh the indo-europeans the people of portugal spain all over the world has been used um as a rite of passage i think those people in pompeii used started firewalking eh they did yeah probably, they used a little too much wood. That's something there.

I, uh, that's too soon there for the people of Pompeii. I apologize. I hope nobody's heard this relative related. We forgive you. There you go. Uh, you know, I know in Hawaii, when those big volcanoes, you know, you know, go on, you could probably, you learned to firewalk really well as you're trying to run. We, we, we did.

We did. Not, not just did we we we did we did not we not just did we we tony's uh one of the last life mastery did the 40 foot firewalk we did on the big island on the kona side at the waikolo hotel yeah so we've done several on the island when did you do your first firework were you attending a tony rovin seminar yeah when what what year was your first 95 holy crap yeah way back and so what did you think because a lot of people approach this Yeah. What year was your first? 95. Holy crap. Yeah. Way back. And so what did you think?

Because a lot of people approach this like, this sounds like it's going to burn my feet. I said no. I wanted to go see Tony, but I was like, I'm not going to do that firewalk thing. That's bullshit. That's insane. Why would anybody do that? In fact, when I first heard the term firewalk, I didn't even know what that meant. I had no references for that. You get to Tony event

and he starts, he took the stage at two. The next thing I know, Chris, it's after midnight. I've been in a room for 10 hours with this guy and all of a sudden he goes, take your shoes off. I'm like, oh no. Sorry, you're not tricking me. We're not doing that.

But here's my dilemma. I'm in a room with 3,500 people. Guess what they're doing? They're taking their damn shoes off. Wow. So now I either don't take my shoes off and everybody's going to know I'm a chicken shit, or I take my shoes off and just fake it and go out there and hide in the back. That was my plan, and that's what i went for

however it gets worse because when tony takes you out into this big parking lot with 3 500 people guess what he gets everybody to do before they go out there well they start chanting and clapping so walking out there yes yes yes and it gets worse because when you get out there, he's got African drummers. Really? Oh, yeah. So then it's dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. People are clapping. And, you know, how do you logistically, how do you set this up? Well, they start a big fire early in the day.

And that fire's huge. It's like 35 feet wide, 70 feet long. And they throw tons of wood on it. I mean, just cord after cord, probably 10, 15 cords of wood. And so then at the end of the evening, it renders. And that's what they do. That's what they use. So what they do is they take a bunch of wheelbarrows over to that big pit.

They load those coals in a wheelbarrow. Then they bring a wheelbarrow in between two lanes of sod, of grass. They call it a fire lane. Give it three feet wide, 15 to 18 feet long. And then they just take a flathead shovel and they sprinkle those coals on top of that grass. And that's what you walk on. Wow.

Now, how do you not get burned? I don't know. I don't know. People ask me all the time. I'm like, I don't have a clue, man. Why does everybody ask me? Right. I just know that I went, I walked, I walked on coals that were a thousand degrees.

It didn't, I didn't burn myself and I didn't have a clue how. Wow. I just know that I did it. Wow. Here's what I will tell you though. When, when you get ready to go and you go and you take that first step, oh, you'll take the second, third, fourth, and fifth. I promise.

Yeah, you're going to keep moving. Yeah. Oh, you're going to keep moving. Yeah. And so now you're in the celebration end with, you know, a couple thousand people who are all jumping up and down it's exhilarating chris yeah it's like i can do anything after i do that it's like right it's like where's the bus let's go where's everest come on people we got something to do here yeah and uh but where it got interesting for me yes the celebration was phenomenal but was the next day The firewalk's a four-day event.

He does it on day one, the night of, and then day two, this is where it got pretty interesting for me, is that when we all came in that next morning, we're standing in the foyer getting ready to go into the venue, and there's 3,500 people, and I've never seen or witnessed anything like this in my life. People were so getting along with each other. It was so humanistic. Wow. Uh, people are laughing and they're crying and they're hugging and they're talking about the firewalk and they're talking about their fears. I mean, it's beautiful because, you know, obviously we drank the Kool-Aid the night before.

Yeah. Right. So all of us collectively, you get your self-worth, your self-confidence and your self-belief and it's elevated. That's why Tony uses it on day one yeah because then he's got you for day two day three and day four and it kind of it kind of minimalizes your fears and and phobias and different things you have like you kind of look at it and go geez everything else is kind of peanuts compared to what i just did it's it's magic it's just

there's a magical something about the fire being the element. And, you know, when you look down at those coals and they're bright red, you've got fight or flight going on. It's not a question if they're hot, right? Plus there's the wheelbarrow there, so you can feel the heat from that. I mean, when I did my first firework, I literally thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I was scared to death. But then four seconds later, I'm jumping up and down like I'd won,

you know, the lottery. I mean, it's even more than that. It's such an exhilarating feeling. It was crazy. You know, the next day after, you know, we all went in, later on, I met one of Tony's trainers, a guy by the name of Ted Macy. Sweet dude, great guy. Him and his wife, Mary, both trainers for Tony. And I'm talking to him and I'm like, so you get to come into this environment and be around all this motivation and inspiration on a regular basis. Must be freaking awesome. And he's like, oh God, yeah.

Oh, I get to come here, you know, eight, 10 times a year. And he says, hey, let's say, look, see those people standing over there with the black shirts? I'm like, yeah. With the pink writing on the back? Yeah. He goes, dude, they're volunteers. pink writing on the back. Yeah. He goes, dude,

they're volunteers. They're just like you. They came, they did a firewalk and now they volunteer their time, which Tony uses about 300 of them per event. And, uh, he said,

so, you know, when you get home, call Robbins research, get an application, fill it out. Who knows? And I did.

And nine weeks after I filled that bad boy out, I got a letter in the mail that said, Dave Albin, congratulations. You've been selected to crew with the Anthony Robbins Company. Wow. Holy mackerel. Now my foot's in the door. And so they look at the application.

It's got like five pages. So it looks at who you are and what you do and what you're capable of. And then they kind of decide where they're going to put you in that crew. Well, I had a security background and a military background. So they put me on the security team to help take care of Tony's celebrities. Hell, I can do a whole show on that alone. I mean, that was awesome. I'll bet.

And then because I lived on a farm, they knew I knew how to use tools, a hatchet, log splitter. They put me on the fire team, which is right where I wanted to go. There you go. And there I was. And then you, do you eventually move up and start running your services or just on the crew when Google approached you? Nope. I was, um, I, I crewed like five or six times, which cost me two grand every time I did it. Really?

You got to pay, you got to pay your way when you're a volunteer. Oh, wow. And my wife didn't like that. She's like, well, this is bullshit. Hold on a second. You spend two grand every time you're going. No., wow. And my wife didn't like that. She's like, well, this is bullshit. Hold on a second. You're spending two grand every time you're going. No. Who the hell is this Tony Robbins guy?

Have you ever had her do the firewalk? Well, what happened was, is they entered a position. And so when they did that, they gave me a free ticket. And so I took my wife and she went, she went through the whole event. And then she walked the fire and she was like, oh yeah. Took a walk on the beach at the end of the event. And looked at me and she goes okay i get it i drank the kool-aid there's tony robbins guys rocks you want to run with this guy go go all right so she did that's all i needed what a life-changing event oh my gosh yeah i mean and you know and then in 2003 tony offered me the captain's position to take over all of his firewalks globally.

And because I was homeschooling, he said, Hey, you know, we'll even pay to have your family travel with us. And so my kids and, you know, we got to go on the road. Hell, their first event was Sydney, Australia. Yeah. That's gotta be fun hanging out with Tony. I mean, he's pretty motivational. Yeah. He's a, he's a pretty inspirational guy And there's a lot of people in his world Proximity is everything there

Are just some of the most phenomenal human beings I've ever met in my entire life There you go So tell us about your origin story How did you grow up Here in 2023 you're marking 35 years of sobriety Congratulations I've got some friends that have their coins There's, uh, you're, you're here in 2023, you're marking 35 years of sobriety. Congratulations.

I've got some friends that have their coins and, and I know what a challenge that can be, but tell us about your upbringing, your history, kind of what, how did you get down this road? Well, a couple of months before I was born, um, my biological father had hurt his head. Somehow they put a plate in it to save his life. And apparently it was very, very painful. And he was constantly telling my mother that he didn't know much longer he could take it and unfortunately two months before i was born he told her he was going to the grocery store and we never saw or heard from him again really so so yeah so when i was born i had two half brothers

my mother had two other boys from another marriage she was living with my grandmother and another cousin so there were six of us living in a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood California and mom was working up the street at the Roosevelt Hotel as a server now my mom's you know a product of the greatest generation that ever walked the face of the earth in my humble opinion um you know they went through their depression they went through World War II um and you know when all the men were away during that time fighting the war, guess who was home taking care of everything? The women. So my mother was affectionately known, my biological mother was affectionately known as Rosie the Riveter. She worked for McDonnell Douglas. She was building airplanes. She was up on the wing,

hammering those rivets in, right? So she knew hard work. She knew the depression. You know, she was, but the problem was for her is that even as hard work she knew the depression you know she was but the problem was for her is that even as hard as she worked there wasn't enough you just couldn't feed all six of us wow and so when i was five she went to her older sister there was she was a family of eight and she went to her older sister and she said will you adopt david and bob and pat alvin said yes we'll definitely do it wow so that well they adopted me my aunt and uncle and Pat Albin said, yes, we'll definitely do it. So they adopted me, my aunt and uncle and took me to Long Beach, California. And that's where I was raised. And then that was what I was five. Everything was great. Chris, it was a wonderful life camping, Yosemite, big bear,

arrowhead, you name it. We were, I was like, it was a dream come true. And then on the first day of summer, 1964, uh, they brought me in the kitchen. Pat sat me down with tears in her eyes. She looked at me and she said, David, we need to tell you something. And what we need to tell you is we're not your parents. Okay. Well, what the hell does that mean at 11 years old? Of course you're my parents, right? It's like walking out saying, Hey, this guy's not blue. It looks pretty blue to me. And then, you know, they looked like my parents to me so that's when my life took a hard turn wow shortly after they told me um they both started drinking you know bob albin my uncle who is my dad at that point um he's military highly decorated in world war ii career military officer army national guard so we lived

in a nice house we had nice things uh but when he started drinking and pat started drinking you know it got ugly really really fast wasn't that fun kind of drinking huh yeah pat was okay my mom was okay but dad was not he was vicious he was ugly mean nasty and so you know i never wanted to be in the house i was constantly somewhere other than wanting to put up with all that crap i was a a gatekeeper. I had to go into the bars, get him out. I mean, you know, all the alcohol. Well, they, they took a, they went to the store one day back in those days, you left your kids home. Nobody cared. Right. It was like, it was okay. Right. And so they went to the grocery store and well, I knew where the booze was. They hid it in plain sight. And I wanted to know what

the hell this shit was. I don't know. i just saw these two beautiful people turn into not such nice people by drinking the shit and so i went over grabbed it it was a half gallon of brandy wow i poured it in a coffee cup half full and i downed it and chris i never had a chance i was alcoholic right on the spot i started thinking i started thinking alcoholically acting alcohol alcoholically. It was like pouring rocket fuel into me. And I have alcoholism throughout my entire family. So it just, you know, it didn't spare me. I can tell you that. And so things, you know, when you, at that point, you know, when you start drinking at 11, 12 years old, next thing you know, you get, you get hanging out with the wrong people and then drugs show up on the scene. And hell,

by the time I was a junior in high school, they brought me in the principal's office one day and said alvin out we're done with you so um you know but i had an entrepreneurial spirit so when i got kicked out of high school i didn't care it didn't bother me at all it didn't worry me nothing in fact it was a song back in those days written by paul simon and some of the lyrics were when i think back of all the crap i learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all. Remember that? You and me, yeah.

So, yeah. And, you know, again, my entrepreneurial spirit, I had a paper route, right? That's you're running your own business. I lived across the street from a golf course. I used to ride my bike around the perimeter and find golf balls and then sell them back to the golfers

in the parking lot. My mom grew beautiful flowers in the backyard. She put those together for me, and I sold them out on the street corner. So my belief system at a very young age was there's money out there. Go get it. Hustle. And so that's kind of – and I've been hustling, and my entrepreneurial spirit has been going strong ever since. I'm not employable.

I'm just not. You and me. I think that's the one thing about almost entrepreneurs. Especially ones that have been doing it for, we're not employable. I mean, we've been, you know, entrepreneurs for so long. We don't work at all with others or for other people. No, we don't. And especially when you come across really bad leaders, you're just like, are you fucking serious?

Like, this is how you do things around your office. Um, you know, have you ever read a book on leadership? Do you even know it? Really? You even know how to spell it? Um, so let me ask you this. You're grossly addicted to drugs and alcohol. Uh, when did you sober up and make the realization to, uh,, join AA and make that first step?

That happened on June 8, 1988. So I'm in my third marriage. I'm married to a woman who's got three kids, or my stepkids. I'm living in the basement. They're upstairs. They want nothing to do with me. And when I woke up on June 8, 1988, I said, that's it. We're done.

I'm out. I'm not doing this anymore. I was in so much pain, Chris. The emotional pain, the physical pain, the struggle of having to drink and drugs. It was just bad. I said, okay, well, I'm done. The pain stops today. My only thought in that moment was put a bullet in my head. As I'm loading and ready to do that, putting the pistol in my mouth, I go, wait a minute, hold on a second.

You pull that trigger and maybe your problems are over, but those three kids upstairs that you love and care about, you're going to kill them with that same bullet. You can't do that. You just can't. Don't be an asshole. Don't be a jerk. You know, can you imagine what that's going to do to them?

I didn't even know what PTSD was back then back then but it would have it would have so ruined their life and so i said so come up with another plan pal figure something else out and all of a sudden the next thought i had was we'll call alcoholics anonymous there you go but you know what chris i didn't know who the hell a was i'd never been to a meeting i didn't know anybody was in a where the hell that come from i I had no idea other than divine intervention where that name, Alcoholics Anonymous, popped in my head. I called them, and I got this wonderful human being on the phone. I nicknamed her Madge. And the reason I did is because she talked like this.

He smoked two packs of Palmo non-filters a day. She was a badass, man. But she was a gatekeeper, right? Her job is to interview you and see if you're worthy of her calling somebody to come pick your happy ass up. And so she did. And she called a guy named Lauren. He came and got me. He stayed with me all day.

I went to a 1230, a 430, a 630, and an 830 meeting. And when I was there, they took a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And they all, they wrote in it. It was an all men's group. And so they wrote in there in the book on the front cover, before you take that first drink, call one of us. And then they put their first name and their phone number. And they sent me home with that. And one day turned into two, two turned into a week, a week turned into a month.

And I got one of these that said one month. And then I got one for two months, three months, six months, nine months in one year. Well, where the personal development part of this showed up was I had insomnia. So I'm up late at night all the time. Hell, my sleep patterns were all over the place. Yeah. And sure enough, there he is, 1988.

Mr. Enthusiasm, Mr. Gunthy Ranker, who owned the airways at night time. There he is, a young Tony Robbins selling personal power. A 30-day program for total success, the man called it. And sure enough,

he said a couple things to God. I really didn't like the guy to be candid. What a pompous asshole this guy is, right? He's all motivated and shit, you know, but he got me, Chris, he got me a couple of times. One of the things he said was we'll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. I'm like, well, hell, that's why I drank. That's why he drugs. I was either chasing pleasure or trying to avoid pain.

But what really got me, he said the driving force in our life how we make decisions because we do them out of inspiration or desperation i thought shit i'm pretty desperate maybe i should listen to this guy there you go i did broke out my american express card bought the program they sent to me in a big box and it came on these little white things called cassette tapes yeah i remember that you remember those eight tracks reel to reel i got a lot of the nightingale conan things i think i was on a subscription with nightingale coney remember that were you really yeah oh you were all in oh i was all in yeah in fact i got records of uh of some of the really

old guys um you know uh napoleon hill and stuff my dad had like record norman vincent peel yep there you go oh yeah wow yeah big ziglar of course yeah zig ziglar and i'm forgetting who the radio guy was tommy tommy hopkins uh not tommy there was a big radio guy who's really into motivational it wasn't the acres of diamonds guy but i I forget, but I have like, I think it's the secrets of, um, I don't know. I I'd have to pull it up, but, uh, yeah. So congratulations. 35 years of sobriety, man. That's a, that's a lot of work.

I know for some people it's a day-to-day battle. Now you run your own company. You've been running it for, uh, what, 20 years now? No. Well, you know, I was with Tony almost 20 years, but I started Firewalk Productions in 2014. Okay, there you go. And that came at the advice of when I went to Google and I did that gig for them, they wanted to do a firewalk and they wanted to do it in the middle of the day.

I said, nope, we don't do firewalks in the middle of the day. It's a safety concern. But I tell you what we can do. We could do a glass walk. And they're like, what? A glass walk? Like walking on broken glass?

I'm like, what? They're like, Ooh, tell us about that. It's like, I know there I am. Well,

one of the Google executives, you know, after the glass walk, we're sitting there, we're having lunch. They're having a couple of beers after the event and all that. And he turns to me and he said, Hey man, listen,

he goes, I don't know if you notice or not, but you're at the top of your game. He said, there's a huge marketplace for corporate team building at your level. So I know you work for Tony and it's all great. He said, but you may want to think about starting your own gig because there's a marketplace out. There's a huge marketplace for you out there. So I'm sitting in Mountain View and a Google executive is telling me that I should start my own business with corporate team building. Maybe, maybe I should listen to this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I went back

to Tony and said, Hey man, I need to talk to you after the event. And so we sat in the green room and I said, Hey man, you know, I just did a gig for Google and he goes, yeah, you're leaving, aren't you? Yeah, I am. And you're in good shape, man. You don't need me anymore, Tony. I've been with you for 20 years. You've got a half a dozen people out there in that parking lot that can do my job. So you're good. There you go. So talk to us about what you do now. Looks like you have the glass walk experience. You have the firewalk experience. And you, I guess, put these on for corporate events and stuff like that? Yeah, sure. You know what I did? I took the firewalk to another level. I'm going to go ahead and give myself kudos for this and a pat on the back.

I brought the board break experience into it, right? So board break, right? Think martial arts, think dojos, think moving from a white belt to a yellow belt. What do you do? You break a board with your hand, you break a board with your elbow, your knee, your foot, whatever. And so they've been using it in the martial arts for years. Well, I decided to bring it in, but here's what I do with it. I take the board and I have them write something on front of the board they want to move towards. I have them write something on back of the board they need to move away from. And then I have them write anybody's name on that board that they're in conflict with, right? So if forgiveness or reconciliation is part of that relationship,

that shit ends tonight quit carrying around resentments about another human being it does not serve you and then to create the rite of passage i have them write anybody's name on the board that they've lost oh right so then we go out in the parking lot i set up the board break stations we break the boards we walk them in a circle then we do the firewalk. They come back. They throw their boards into the fire. We get it on video. We get it, you know, we get pictures for them. And then I do a breathing exercise and I calibrate all of their hearts. So right after the firewalk, I put them in a group and I take them through a process so that all of their hearts start beating at the same time.

And then before they leave, I give them one of these. And you can't see it very well as a glare, but it's the coals from the firewalk. So it'll say, I firewalked in 2023 with, you know, XYZ. Oh, and you get the coal so you can say, you know, I did it. People are just like, yeah, Y, Z. Oh, and you get the coal. So you can say, you know, I did it. People are just like, yeah,

yeah, whatever you did the fire. Yeah. I got the call right here, man. Yeah, I did it. Right.

Here's a picture. Here's a video. Kiss my ass. I did it. Right. I love that, man. This cult's awesome,

man. I'm leaving Scientology. What? L Ron Hubbard. Oh, come on, man. Dianetics.

What are you doing here? I'm still trying to get clear. I don't even know what the fuck that means, but I don't know what they, they keep wanting to check. That's on, man. Dianetics? What are you doing here? I'm still trying to get clear. I don't even know what the fuck that means. I don't know. They keep wanting to check. That's funny, man. I dabbled in it a little bit. I had this really hot chick. I was walking in the park one day and she came up to me and started

talking to me. She got me there. I went through the bull baiting. Did you? I didn't do the bull baiting. I got suckered in one time on a personality test when i was in high or i was just i was uh i was about 20 or something they had a little ad they're like hey uh you want a personality test and i'm like ah let's take a personality test and uh so i went in i think they got me for five bucks to buy the book and uh they're like you should come back

and i'm like i'll read your book and i'll be back. But I grew up in Mormonism, so I already got hooked by one. I already got suckered by one book. Oh, God. So you were double whammied. Okay. Yeah, I don't need any more cults. We're done with the cults. But I like your cult.

This sounds like a good cult. This sounds like, you know, it's not something where, you know, it's the Moonies where I'm going to drink and smoke. It's pretty freaking awesome, Chris. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's an amazing experience. What sort of, pretty much any company reach out to you and work with you and do business with you?

We've done them all. I mean, I'm every spectrum. I've done high schools all the way up to Google. I do a lot of work with the EO organization. I think you know who those guys are, right? Entrepreneurs organization. I did five gigs for them last year. They just booked South Florida.

So we love EO. They're all entrepreneurs. They're all very successful. You can't even get in to the entrepreneurs organization without being invited. And then you've got to show three years financials. You've got to have grossed at least a million bucks a year. Or they don't even, you know, per year. They don't even let you in.

There you go. You work with NASA. Here, let me pull this up. NASA, Google, Notre Dame, Entrepreneurs Organization, Tony Robbins, the YMCA, Chick-fil-A, Remax. In fact, they probably cook the, I hear they cook the Chick the chick filet on the, uh, on the firework. Come on, man. You know, Chick-fil-A owns the airways when it comes to chicken. Let's just be honest.

There you go. There you go. Uh, they do make good chicken. Heineken, uh, uh, a few other people on here. I think I see some Huskies. I don't know. I lost count. Yeah.

Yeah. You lose count after a while. Well, this is pretty awesome. Hilton, Four Seasons, Snowbird, uh, Marriott, Waldorf Astoria, Embassy Swedes. So great things. So if I'm a corporate executive out there thinking, well, what are my people really going to get from this? It seems obvious, but tell us what you see when companies hire you. What you think the company's net benefit is really going to be.

Well, typically there's three different times a company's going to call me one if there's a total breakdown it's falling through the everybody's fighting the dissension mask wearing vaccines whatever everybody's fighting over shit and so they bring me in uh you know to to bail it out and so the other time they call me is when things are, you know, they're okay. They're not great. They're not bad. Um, somewhere in between. And then they call me when they're at the top of their game and they want to take it

to the next level. So most CEOs, most CEOs realize what, you know, what doesn't challenge you doesn't change you. You're not going to put a bunch of people in a, in a seminar room and talk to them, you know, for several hours and it changed their life. It's just not going to work like that. Navy SEALs don't become SEALs by sitting in a classroom. They become Navy SEALs by putting their happy ass, you know, in the ocean, the Pacific ocean

off the coast of San Onofre and let them swim with sharks for three or four hours. Doing Hell Week. Doing Hell Week. That's what, exactly. There you go. Right? So that's really the point. There's got to be emotion and there's got to be motion at the same time. there you go right so that's really the point there's got to be emotion and

there's got to be motion at the same time and that's what happens so you get them up together and you know and i saw that at my first event i saw what it was like thousand people standing down there in a celebration and after the firewalk jumping up and down and getting crazy like nothing i'd ever seen and then the next day that's when I really knew that it worked because I saw the camaraderie. I saw 3,500 people coming to that event who didn't know each other, and they were getting along like nothing I'd ever seen or witnessed. And I've never seen it other than my own fireworks

or another Tony Robbins seminar. So it works. It's guaranteed to work. And, you know, by the time they get to me, they've done the research. They're like, okay. You know, the big thing is, is that, you know, they're thinking somebody is going to get hurt. Are we going to get sued? Are we going to get hurt? The liability side, you know, when the attorneys get involved, here's what I can tell you. I've walked close to a half a million people. Wow. Nobody's ever been hospitalized. No,

no one's been sued. Wow. It's, it hospitalized. No, no one's been sued. Wow. It's, it's not that dangerous. You know, it's dangerous. Put your kids in soccer. Hey, that's true. Right. Play football, wrestle.

No, no, it doesn't. I know it sounds really dangerous, but what's the worst thing can happen? Burn your foot off and die. Yeah. I pulled a hamstring getting off the couch the other day. So don't do that. That's serious off and die? Yeah. No. I pulled a hamstring getting off the couch the other day. So. Oh, well that's. Don't do that.

See now, that's serious. I should have just stayed there. Yeah, definitely. Hey, you know, I got an idea for you. I mean, the firewalk thing is awesome. And then the, you got the glass walk there. You know what you need to have for when there's contention in offices, you need to have the

plank walk. Oh no, Legos. Where you, where in offices, you need to have the plank walk. Oh no. Legos. Where you, where you basically, uh, we all decide, Hey, uh, Bob over there has got to walk the plank because his reports suck. Or, you know, I like Legos. Put them on Legos. I'll shut the hell up really fast.

Yeah. There you go. Do the Lego walk. I like that. We've all stepped on a Lego. You got kids. Every mom out there that's listening right now goes, he's right. I stepped on that damn thing.

It hurts. That should be like a birth control device. Yeah. You think you want to have kids and be a parent? Do the Lego walk first. You can do anything as a parent. We're going to make you lose sleep for a week first then you gotta do the label lego i still got a scar on my foot of the damn lego i stepped onto my son

you still got a scar of the lego and you've done like a million walks on the right exactly yeah so companies do a thing when they're trying to motivate people when they do a pizza party so where's pizza party compared to the firewalk on the scale? Well, you know, uh, there, there's a lot to be said for a Papa John's pizza. I don't know. That's true. That's true. But you know, it's kind of become a, it's kind of become a cliche. I think in the business world, they make fun of it a lot.

And on LinkedIn where they're like, Oh, Oh, so we're going to do another pizza party. Huh? Morales down. You get pizza. And we're going to go golfing this year and John's going to win the fucking thing again. He wins it every single year, that bastard. So do you have any events that you're, uh,

have coming up that you do just for your stuff or you only do it when clients have stuff? No. Uh, matter of fact, uh, next Tuesday, uh, I have the Dave Albin Firewalk Academy. So I'm up here in the Appalachian mountains in Northwestern North Carolina. And so I got a whole bunch of people coming up and I'm going to take them through the academy. So I'm going to train them all the stuff that I've learned

over the last three decades. We teach them the firewalking, the board break, the brick break, the arrow break, the rebar bend, the glass walking, you know, all of it of it insurance how to talk to fire marshals you know the whole academy when they graduate they can go put on an event oh wow that's good but i've got several other i've got several other events on the book yeah yeah there you go i do private fire walks if that's what you're asking no i was sometimes i i've had some celebrities and some athletes professional athletes call me and they they're like, hey, you know, would you? And I go, yeah, you want to come up to my cabin in the Appalachian Mountains? I've got an Airbnb room.

You stay for a couple of nights. And let's find out what's going on with you. And let's get to it. There you go. As long as you don't hear banjos on the river, you're okay up there. Whatever. I don't know what that means. Well, this sounds like a lot of fun and a great way to inspire people,

build leadership, build team camaraderie, kind of blow people's minds, get them to that next level thinking and stuff. How can people reach out to you and get to know you, get to try and onboard with you and do business? Yeah, again, just go to firewalkadventures.com. Firewalkadventures is one word,.com. It's all there. The Academy's there, the Glasswalk, firewalking, my calendar's there.

I'm very accessible. Tell me what's going on with your company. Because I personally, I design the event around the company and what's going on. If they're launching a product or there's been a breakdown, there's culture, upliftings, whatever. Let me know what's going on and we'll get to it. There you go. There you go. Well, this sounds awesome.

We really appreciate you coming on the show, Dave. Yeah, thanks, Chris. I appreciate you having me. There you go. Burning energy and you were just on fire for the show. Yeah, we were. Absolutely. There you go.

Flame on. Flame on. There you go. Thanks, Dave, for coming on the show. Thanks, Mon. Thanks for the show. Yeah, we were. Absolutely. There you go. Flame on. Flame on. There you go. Thanks, Dave, for coming on the show. Thanks, Mon. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4ChestCrispFoss,

LinkedIn.com, 4ChestCrispFoss, YouTube.com, 4ChestCrispFoss, and ChrisFoss1 on TikTok. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe,

and we'll see you guys next time.