The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tyler Helm, Fitness Trainer and Sobriety Advocate on Overcoming Addiction and Finding Ones Purpose

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Tyler Helm, Fitness Trainer and Sobriety Advocate on Overcoming Addiction and Finding Ones Purpose Instagram.com/Helm.fitness717 Biography Tyler Helm currently fulfilling his life as a Fitness Trainer and sobriety advocate. Father of 2 girls ages 11 and 12. Overcoming alcoholism with a previous history in construction. Through the struggles of being overweight found fitness which gave the strength to battle alcohol and a limited mind set. Now believing he can use his story to influence and empower others into being the best version of themselves.

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 rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. As always, bringing you the wonderful, most smartest people,

the greatest guests on the planet, all the latest hot people, the billionaires, the CEOs, the hottest newsmakers, the new authors coming on the show all the time to share with us their thoughts and minds to make you smarter and better as well, because I need all the help I can get, and some of you do too, but most of you are pretty good. Anyway, we have an amazing gentleman on the show with us today. We have Tyler Helm with us today, and he does some amazing things in the field of exercise

and mindset and nutrition, etc., etc. He's even coming to us from the great outdoors. He's out in the wilderness right now on video. So if you're watching, you may hear some of the background of, I don't know, birds, trees, bears eating him, things of that nature. You know, anything can happen out in wild nature. I mean, that's always what I tell the judge whenever I have to report to him. So anyway, he'll be joining us on the show to talk to us about his stuff. Tyler Helm, currently fulfilling his life as a fitness trainer and sobriety advocate.

He's the father of two girls, age 11 and 12. He overcame alcoholism with a previous history in construction. Was that an addiction too? No, I'm just kidding. Though he struggles with being overweight, he found fitness, which gave him the strength to battle alcohol and a limited mindset. Now, believing he can use his story to influence and empower others into being the best version of themselves. Welcome to the show, Tyler. How are you? I'm doing great.

Awesome, Sauce. Give us your dot coms or wherever you want people to find you on the interweb Which is So I do most of my stuff on Instagram Which is helm.fitness 717 And that's the same Same thing on TikTok is helm.fitness At 717

And that's really usually all the You know, social media that I do There you go And it media that I do. There you go. And it looks like you do a lot of working out fitness videos, training videos, advice videos, and a lot of different things on there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, just try to give back, um, information on things that, you know, I had struggles with in my life. Um, I grew up and I lived in a really limited mindset household. The biggest thing in our life was just to grow up and get a good job. My parents didn't teach me about investing. Heck, I didn't really read books until I was like 27 years old.

So just very limited. So just trying to help provide that information and open people's eyes. There you go. And so do you coach people? Do you help train them and stuff like that? Yeah, yeah. I have a program where they come to me and they sign up. And they get an app with their scheduled workouts, nutrition to help them lean out and lose body fat, feel good about themselves. There you go.

Nutrition, fitness, taking care of your body, that's all stuff that is on the approved Chris Foss list. So what does your morning routine look like when you take a workout and stuff? So my morning routine is I get up at, um, three o'clock every morning. I, uh, take a cold shower for five minutes. Um, then I get out. Um, I kind of shoot a little picture of me in the shower, um, with a quote just to kind of show everybody that like, you know, I'm committed to doing something difficult every single day. And, um, after, I do gratitude. I don't really have a timeline on my gratitude.

I just kind of started off with every day and every way I'm getting better and better. And then I'll do like clear my mind. I'll kind of anything that is going through my head. And sometimes I sit there and sometimes uh, and sometimes, um, you know, I write a whole page out and then it's, uh, five things that I want. Um, and then after that, uh, I'll usually do like some pushups or something like that. There you go. And, and so it sounds like, you know,

you went through kind of a journey. You got overweight. I can see that you've got some loose skin from working out. So you're kind of maybe overweight at one time, like I am. And when you lose that weight fast, sometimes you get that hanging skin. Tell us about that and how you overcame alcoholism. So, um, it started out really like in high school, um, you know, just hanging out with friends and stuff like that. And it kind of escalated, um, you know, got into heavier stuff than alcohol. Once I hit about 17, I was working at taco time and I got this paycheck and I had worked that summer for like hours and hours and hours. And I, I just had this huge, like, you know, it's going to be a huge check,

um, got it. And I was like, okay, this is, cannot be the rest of my life. And I think it was like 300 bucks or something like that. And, um, so, and I went to school, wasn't working out for me. So I decided to, decided to get my stuff together. I seen my friends were kind of everyone was kind of going down a harder path than drinking. Went to Job Corps. And I kind of got clean of everything stayed away from it for a long time. Met my girlfriend. We've been together for 13 years. She's my wife. We just aren't, we're not married. Um, and we had two kids like right off the bat. Um, we were 17 and 18 years old back to back and I just took care of them. And that was my life for a long time. And so I just didn't really get out cause they were babies. I just worked, you know, I thought that's just what I was supposed to do is just work and come home. And, um, you know, I went from like 150 pounds to about 220 and I started, um, then I started like getting into four wheeling and stuff like that. And that's when I started losing some weight and I was like, Oh wow, you know, this feels good.

And I wasn't even exercising. I was just working on my vehicle and stuff like that. And, um, you know, four wheel working on my vehicle and stuff like that. And, you know, four wheeling comes drinking beers and stuff like that when you're out on the trail or in the sand dunes. And so, you know, it just kind of escalated from there. And eventually it got to the point where it's like, okay, on the weekends, and then, you know, it's like, okay, I'm stressed about work, or, you know, I felt like I had more potential in life. And then it just, it kind of just escalated, you know, that I used it for stress. I used it for having fun. I used it for social events, for everything. Yeah.

That's what usually happens. You start using, it seems fun at first. And then after a while it takes its toll on your body, huh? Yeah, no, absolutely. My, um, right when i was going through the period where i knew i needed to quit i was i thought i was having like a mental issue i was like going to work every morning and i you know i wouldn't be around all the guys i'm working with and i would like be crying and um just i just didn't know what was going on with me. I felt like my nerves were just crawling and it really was just, my body was saying like,

you're meant for more and you need to quit doing this. Ah, there you go. Yeah. Your body, your body saying, Hey, enough with this. This isn't, this isn't the way you want to live the rest of your life. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Definitely.

So how do you get, you start working out and feeling better. How do you get into a point where you're coaching people, training them and helping them get fitness minded? So I, um, I kind of like a year before all this, before I started all this, I was, um, into fitness and I, I knew I wanted something with more meaning other than just going to construct a construction job. But I didn't necessarily feel like I was capable because of the schooling part of it, the learning part of it. I hadn't been doing it long enough. And after about a year I was drinking and I was working out and I

would literally count, I would, I would, I would have say I had 2,500 calories for working out for that day for my macros. I would subtract seven to 800 calories because I knew I was going to drink beers at the end of the night. Yeah. That's, that's funny. And then, um, after that, you know, it kind of went to that point and it was like, okay, I knew like I was getting to a point in my fitness. I was like, I'm not going to be able to progress anymore unless I quit drinking also I knew I needed to do something more than just drink all the time so I it helped motivate me to give it up um when I was going through my rough patch I found a video of Wes Watson and his video said it was with Brad Lee and his videos is podcasting on it. He said, create the man you desire and give him to the world. And I had been like, I'd already

been trying to kind of like search for success and happiness and not even really happiness, but fulfillment. And when I heard those words, I feel like it laid it all out on the table for me. It gave me a direct path on what I needed to accomplish. And immediately within a month after hearing that video, I quit drinking alcohol. I quit my job because my job was a huge influence on me drinking. I went into AA and just kind of pursued it and fought through it. And it was, it is honestly probably one of the hardest things I've ever been through. Yeah. I mean, addiction is hard and, and, and, and, so do you have to, you know, maintain, make sure that you stay sober every day, uh, still going to AA or did you kind of kick the habit and you're done with it? So I haven't been going to AA just

because like, I've been really meaning to it's one of those things it's like man i need to get in there and do that um but for the most part i i don't really like i don't crave it anymore i don't i just i just don't want it um the more the reason why i feel like i should be going to aa is to help other people get through what i've been through oh there is why i feel like I should be there. Um, I just have lately the last like month I haven't been in there. There you go. Well, you know, I, I drank alcohol hard for about 20 years and, uh, I didn't have an addiction, but I was using it to abuse myself for a long time though. It was, it was kind of a

fuel. I think for most of the time it was a fuel. There was something about alcohol that it can keep me up all night. It gives me an extension. And it is a sugar that your body converts to sugar. So that's what a lot of it was. And then it just got to a point where a few hours of having fun late at night turns into three days of dehydration and your body's grinding down. You're constantly having to take electrolytes and vitamins just to keep up. And your body's just like, hey, man, we're kind of over you and your BS and all the crap that you're up to and stuff.

So, yeah, we're not going to take it anymore. And so, yeah, that's kind of where I get to. So I get where you're going with, where you went with that, uh, stuff. So now you're in the space where you're helping other people. Um, did you ever see that you would, uh, that you would, uh, did you always want to be a fitness coach or did that just kind of end up how that worked out? So, um, I actually didn't, um, for a long time, I kind of wanted to get into like real estate and stuff like that, which I kind of tried, um, about three years ago. And I was

once again, drinking too much. Um, I tried to start wholesaling and because of my drinking, and it was kind of a difficult thing to get into and learn. Um, you know, at the end of the night, instead of putting in the work, I was, I would go drinking. And so I wouldn't, I wouldn't follow through with my tasks that I needed to follow through to get done what I needed to get done and to learn what I needed to learn. Then I found fitness, got sober, and I felt so good that I was just like, I have to help people do this. Like I have to help people feel as good as I feel. And so that's just kind of what drove me.

There you go. I mean, that can make all the difference. So now you do a lot of different things. Who's been your most important professional mentor? Probably Wes Watson. Absolutely. He's changed my life. So tell us who Wes Watson is for people that aren't aware. So he was in prison for 10 years, five years ago, and he got out and he was helping people with their macros and learning fitness and started trying, you know,

everything I've learned, I've learned from him and he, he just helps people get better and feel better about themselves. And, um, you know, that that's pretty much sum it up. There you go.

That's important to feel better as they always say, uh, and do stuff. Uh, so what was, what is one lesson your job has taught you that you think everyone could learn at some point in their life or should learn at some point in their life um don't limit your mind because you can it sounds so cliche but if there's something you want to achieve, you have to think about the obstacles

that are in your way, alcohol, food, addictions, drugs, and, and fix those and fix yourself and pursue what you want to pursue. That's definitely true. And you can achieve it. That's good advice. Uh, you know, go after your goals, set goals and all that good stuff. Uh, so where, uh, what's your biggest failure? What did you learn from that experience? So my biggest failure was I, I read this book, it was called Unfuck Yourself by Gary John Bishop. And that book, he like talks about embracing uncertainty. And within like a month of reading that book, I literally picked up my job. I moved an hour and a half away into my dad's house.

And because I was going to, you know, help him and try to start wholesaling. Then I went through the wholesaling process. And walking away from it when I was as deep into it as I was, because I had put everything into it for about four to five months. And I feel like looking back on it now, people were actually starting to know my business name. Like, you know, I was just, just right at the cusp of where they say you're you know you're gonna hit rock bottom before you go back up yeah i was right i was right there there you go well that'll that'll do it sometimes you find you're right at the edge of

of making things work for you so uh that's always good that's always good. That's always good. And seeing that mate in that work. Um, if, uh, let's see, if you could remember for one thing, what would it be? Say that again. If you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be? Um, I would say to have an impact on people to stop drinking alcohol. There you go. Like if that was something I could achieve, it would be to show people that you can live a happy, fulfilled life without having to drink alcohol.

And I'm not like, you know, some people decide to do that. That's their choice. You know, I just, I go from doing it all the time to not doing all the time. And the connections that I have with my family and how I feel is just unbelievable. There you go. It does make all the difference in the world in how people feel and everything else. What's your favorite productivity hack for entrepreneurs out there listening, or maybe just business executives or anybody?

Maybe the mom who wants to exercise etc etc um i would say to not think about the whole picture and find like the couple basics so like i'll refer to fitness on this one when i first started fitness i didn't think about my macros i didn't think about you know all my food and stuff like that i got the basic exercises and i went into the gym and I performed those exercises and got good at doing those exercises and making it a consistent, like a routine to the point where it's, it's just part of me to go to the gym. But when I first started for the first six months, it wasn't like that. So really just finding something that is you know the basics and making it a routine no matter what to stick to it even if you eat donuts and cupcakes and then you go to the gym and get done and eat

donuts and cupcakes as long as you make it a routine to do that one thing you will eventually everything else will start to fall into place eating the cupcakes or going to the gym going to the gym because you'll see that you'll see that hey you'll see the product you'll see the progress yeah no absolutely i mean i have a routine of donuts but uh pizza and tacos so that's probably not the reason i'm at the weight i am no absolutely hey i totally get that i was um this summer i was on a cut and um this last this last two weeks, I don't know what it is, but I've just been wanting nothing but baked goods. That'll damn do it. You know, those, uh, baked goods are always good.

So, uh, if you could go back and talk to your former self, uh, 18, what one piece of advice would you ask yourself? Don't be afraid to pick up books. There you go. And put them back down. Yeah, absolutely. I honestly grew up, I didn't read in school. When I met my girlfriend at 17, 18 years old, I probably read at a third grade reading level. And the only reason I started reading was I was like, okay, I want to change my life. What do I need to do? And I kind of created this list of insecurities in my head.

And my biggest one, my biggest one was reading. And I was like, okay, I'm going to start reading. And the first book I picked up was Unfuck Yourself by Gary John Bishop. There you go. I love the title of that book. It's such a great book. No, absolutely. Did we have him on?

I think we had somebody on. We've had some people on with some various book titles. I don't know if we had that on the show. It was Gary, right? Did you say his name was Gary? Yeah, yep. Let's see. It seems like we might have had him on the show

uh no we had somebody who wrote a book called wise's f-u-c-k it was gary john bishop yeah right gary bishop right yeah yep yep we had him on the show uh november 9th in 2020. Oh, wow. That's awesome. It was for his book, Wise as Basically Fuck, Simple Truths to Guide You Through the Shitstorms of Life by Gary John Bistri. It was fun to talk to him. I remember that show now. It's coming back to me. It's kind of funny how the shows, you know, they started to come back to me and all that good stuff. So, yeah, good stuff. People should check out that episode. You should check out that episode. It was great to talk to him, and that good stuff. So, um, uh, yeah, good stuff. People should check out that episode.

You should check out that episode. It was great to talk to him and he was wonderful. So as we round out the show, uh, what more do people need to know about who you are, what you do and give us your final pitch so people can, uh, know how to work with you and reach out to you. So, um, you know, you can find me on Instagram at helmfitness717. Realistically, I'm just here to, you know, help people learn that they can live a happier life without alcohol. And, you know, the foundation of that is just through fitness. It's really not a fitness journey. It's a life journey and just becoming a better person.

You won't feel as good as a person until you feel good in yourself. That's very true. That's very true. It makes all the difference in how you feel about yourself and everything else. So give us your.com. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? So Helm, like I said on Instagram, Helm Fitness 717. I do TikTok, which is Helm Fitness 717.

And then YouTube, I'm just kind of getting that started out. And that is THelm underscore 717. There you go. There you go. Well, this has been really insightful. And I love how you're shooting this out in the great outdoors. You're out there. You're living your truth.

You're out there. You're not just sitting on your couch eating donuts, telling everybody how to. You should do more fitness. You're out there in the wilderness getting the oxygen and the fresh air and your vitamin D and actually exercising. So that's really cool. Yeah, definitely. There you go. Well, thank you very much, Tyler, for coming on.

We really appreciate it. Yeah, this was a really awesome experience. Thank you. There you go. And check out that one gentleman on our show, the guy, the wild, I forget his name, John, Gary? Gary. Gary John Bishop.

Hey, his book changed my life it started the um yeah it started the transition into personal development there you go well hopefully we get some more people to watch that episode go back and watch that episode and and uh check it out as well uh thank you sir so much tyler for coming on the show uh thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedinisfast, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfast, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfast, and TikTok at chrisfast1. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe,

and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have a...