The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - The Wild & True Life Of A Trauma Victim Turned Versace Model, CEO, & MMA Fighter, Ft. Adam Von Rothfelder

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

#465: On today's episode we are joined by Adam Von Rothfelder is a former professional fighter, 2x Versace model, TV personality, CEO of Strong Coffee Company, & Trainer. Today Adam joins the show to discuss how he was able to overcome extreme trauma and find success purusing his pashions. In one of the wildest life stories we have heard to date on this show, be prepared to be amazed.  To try Strong Coffee Company click HERE and use code SKINNY To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM Produced by Dear Media 

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That is diviofficial.com for more information. Use code skinny for 15% off your first purchase. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential Confidential. Him and her. It was like the motion was trying to get out, which is ultimately what I believe happened. I don't believe it had anything to do with impact. I don't believe it had anything to do with a suplex.

I think I probably could have opened a door that day the wrong way, and my shoulder would have exploded. Like it would have found a way to come out. That's like how powerful it felt. And at that moment, I knew fighting was over. Within a matter of seconds, I knew I was done. Every part of me like had left. And I literally thought to myself,

have I just been watching what I've been doing for the last five years? Like I was just viewing myself. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Adam von Rothfelder, the strong coffee man himself. This episode, it goes all over the place. This is an incredible story. Adam's story is amazing.

What if I told you guys you have somebody here that suffered a ton of abuse, witnessed a sibling die, later became a professional fighter, who then became a professional model for Versace. With Gigi Hadid. With Gigi Hadid, who then started a coffee company, then did a million other amazing things. So this is just a wild episode. This is the first time we actually got to sit down with Adam and meet him and Lauren and I were just blown away. It's fitting too because he was recommended to us by our friend Khalil and one of my favorite podcast episodes was with Khalil. If you have not listened to part one and part two of his episodes, you're missing out. And he recommended Adam come on the podcast and boy, did this episode deliver. have people on that have a really impactful, captivating story with an ending like he has. It's incredible. He spills some tea. He spills some juice. He goes everywhere.

And I do got to say, after meeting Adam, we jumped into his product, Strong Coffee Company, and it is some of the best coffee, especially for people that are of the mind that they want to be healthy, fitness-minded. Lauren and I recently traveled back to LA and I didn't even order coffee the whole time we were there. I just brought strong coffee and use this. It's got a little bit of protein. It's got a little bit of theanine. It's got some adaptogens and it packs quite a punch, but you don't have any jitters or come down and you just feel really good on it. For anybody that wants to try it, it's code skinny 20 at strong coffee company. And like I said, it's an amazing product. That's not sponsored or anything. We just really like

it a lot. And he, after coming on the show, wanted to give everybody a discount. So be sure to check it out and stay tuned for this incredible episode. It is a wild one, guys. Buckle up. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. So you grew up, you said, with a lot of masculine energy. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

How'd you grow up? Yeah. I mean, I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I mean, real blue collar. My dad was a second generation or first generation born American, you know, come from a German family. And my dad definitely, you know, was raised with an iron fist and then brought that upon me. And I don't think it always started like that with him. My brother was such a problem that- Older brother, younger brother. My older brother, 13 years older than me. Found out later on in life, after enough deep conversations

with my mom, trying to just get her to crack at some reality of what I went through for her to tell me some stuff. And he would come to bed one night after something my brother did to my mom and dad before I was conscious of what was going on. And he was like, I will never let another fucking kid do that to me. What do you mean? My brother had a massive drug problem. I'm talking like doing coke and stealing cars, you know, breaking into the high school to. From what age? Oh, man, probably like 13.

Got in trouble with the police for the first time at 14 got his front tooth knocked out by a police officer getting his head hit against the back of a trunk of a car he stole you know just it was always something i mean i was probably eight years old you know he's 13 years older than me and sitting there drinking some milk he's drinking some milk or watching a TV show, eating burgers. He's sitting on a chair, like right to my right of me. And he just starts having a seizure and falls on top of me. And he's just having like a seizure on top of me. And I didn't touch milk for like six months. Cause I thought it was fucking milk or something. You know, like I had no idea what was going on. I was like traumatized at the idea

of, you know, my brother almost dying and falling on top of me, being carted away by an ambulance. And this wasn't, you know, the only time. So your childhood was incredibly chaotic. Super chaotic. I mean, it was, you know, so much avoidance, you know, my mom's part. It took a lot of work for me to understand it so I wouldn't be mad about it. So much avoidance that that was shown you know from

my mom and both and my dad you know where that's all this is going on with my brother at the same time we're having like foreign exchange students brought into the house what was the reasoning you just parents wanted to oh culture yeah i mean things aren't that bad i mean andy's just on drugs and you know like i mean my ma still this day I mean, up until two years ago, it took like screaming matches of me getting her to realize that this pain is not make believe dad beat the shit out of me, like right in front of you. being on the phone talking to one of your patients because you couldn't disconnect from you know these people you help at a hospital enough to put your attention into the family which is just pure avoidance so was it so the way that your dad dealt with you after dealing with your brother was your brother traumatized them so much with his addiction that he said okay we're going to raise this one differently and not let you.

Yeah. I mean, my, my mom didn't have any part of it. You know, it was always my, it was just my dad. That was the hard ass. I mean, my, my mom was like the sweet woman who came home and like rubbed my back for 30 minutes and I'd stay up late and watch, you know, renegade, you know, until 11 o'clock on a school night, just because I could like see her because she worked late nights, you know, as a nurse and she always put more into it. And as the baby of the family, I was just looking for that like attention because everybody was so much older than me too. How many siblings, you have one sibling, two, how many siblings do you have? I mean, I have, I had my brother who passed away, Andy. He died when I was 22. I have my sister, you know, she's 10 years older than me. So she's going to be turning 50.

And then I have my sister, Gretchen, who is two years older than me. And then I have a little brother who's adopted, which is, you know, all part of the story. You know, I just, mom was a nurse, hospital, little boy, paralyzed, no family to love him. You know, and it was like, hey, like this kid's got nobody and, you know, we adopted him and, you know, 25 years later, you know, he still lives with us, but that same thing, like that same energy that went into that could have been put into, you know, doing other things for our direct family at that time. To me, that generation seems like a lot of the way they dealt with things was sweeping it under the rug.

Oh, 100%. I mean, that's how we got here socially and culturally in so many ways that we are today that we could speak of is just the sweeping under the rug. I mean, economics behind America, sweeping under the rug, just keep doing it, push it aside for the next generation where it's like, no, fuck that. I've never touched my kid. I don't yell at my kid. You know, it's just like everything comes from a place of, I'm going to make them stronger with what it is that I had to go through to make sure that they never have to go through that. There's a lot. I feel like we could spend a lot of time here in our childhood. Now, you know, a lot of people come on this show and we start with going, kind of getting to know who the person is. Some people have a quicker, you know, like what's a child? Oh, it's good.

Grew up, but went to school. Normal. I feel like just talking to you here for the first five minutes, there's a lot to unpack. That was only five minutes. Yeah. But I think it's important because I think it plays into obviously who you are now and why you're on the show and the message and what you're building. So talk to me about your older brother a little bit, because it sounds like he had

a pretty significant impact on your life. One, obviously being your older brother, but two, when he's going through addiction and you're that young, how are you engaging with him and what are you thinking? My brother, you know, to me was the coolest. I mean, he lived in the basement. He listened to NWA, Beastie Boys. I used to sit next to the speaker and just let it saturate my eardrums and watch him roll joints or whatever and hop in his El Camino and drive off. What was interesting is that I got older. I didn't realize that I also gained my entrepreneurial spirit from him. He started his own contracting business. He was a remodeler and he was super talented. So talented that I saw something in him even when I was younger that I

wanted to absorb some of this talent and I begged him to let me work for him. I remember I still have the tool belt. He gave me, I showed up, it was my first day of work and we go to this hardware store and he buys me a new tool belt, a heart hammer and tape measure. And I worked for my brother every summer until I was 18. So for six years. So you guys were close. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were really close. I was the one that saw the drug use and alcohol go from recreational to addiction. Like I saw it because I was working with them. I quit school so I could work for him full time. I stopped going to college. I quit the soccer team. I left everything. At the time, he was building my parents' house. He ran his car into the lake, called me, and was like, I need your help, and don't tell mom and

dad. While using. Yeah, and I held onto that for a while, and I realized that I'd done drug runs for him, and I didn't realize that's really what I was doing. I was putting money in mailbox and grabbing shit. I thought it was for his work, but it was like, Hey, on your way to work, grab this mailbox, you know, and it was like, cool. You know? And then all of a sudden he was doing drugs at lunchtime. And I'm like, that's the bag I picked up. You know, I'm 18 at this time, 19, 20 at 22 is when he passed away. He had three kids, you know, I mean, he was married. He had gone through three stints of rehab, came back. And at the time, I was living with my girlfriend. I got a call at five in the

morning from my sister. And Andy was living in my house in the room that I grew up in. And he had died. So I get this call. He had died and they knew he had died? My sister found his body at five in the morning, going down to wake him up. The amount of guilt that hit, because I was supposed to call him like eight hours earlier and I didn't, you know, I was supposed to call him back. He like left a message at the gym that I was working at and to call him back.

And I like left the gym like a little too late, just kind of lost track of time. My cell phone was dead. Anybody who knows me knows my cell phone is always fucking dead, you know? And it was just, I was like, oh, I'll talk to him in the morning. On the way to go see him, I heard an ad on the radio. And this is kind of like where, you know, being ready, like I was always in kind of like my thing, like be ready, stay ready in some mentality of like what I went through as a child with my dad being a certain way.

It got me into working out at a young age, at 12 years old. I spent all my money on a personal trainer and a gym membership. And then what money did you have? I had a paper route. I was making $2,000 a month. I literally trained with a personal trainer four or five days a week for six, seven months to learn what I learned and to like get advanced and understand. It was to protect myself and to feel confident in my body because I was always under some version of attack. And when my brother passed away and I heard this ad on a radio, it was for a kickboxing tournament.

It was a no holds barred fight. And it was show up to Harley Davidson dealership, sign up, fight two weeks from here. And it was called the Tough Man. Remember those tournaments you used to see on ESPN with the double boxing gloves and people just beating the shit out of each other? I was the champion.

I won that fight weeks after my brother died. It was the first time I had ever fought in a ring. Do you think that the reason that you were drawn to fighting and beating the shit out of or getting beaten the shit out of is because of your chaotic childhood it was i knew that i was good at violence right like receiving it i also knew that you were good at receiving violence i've never you'd taken pain i had taken pain i mean that's i've never heard anyone say that that's like that's crazy that you

you in your brain thought you were good at receiving violence. Yeah. I wasn't afraid of violence. Yeah. Perceptively, it didn't scare me. The idea of getting hit or hitting someone, I'm like, I've gone through that since I was a kid. It was familiar. Yeah.

I mean, I had a 260-pound man hit me, break a watch over my fucking face. What is this? What is this 185 pound boy going to do to me? I mean, at first, dude, I fought. He felt the wrath of 22 years of pain. It was the first person I had ever hit. I mean, I like I body slammed my dad one time just to show him at 18 years old, like, stop fucking with me. You know, I put him down.

I knocked the wind out of him. He went unconscious for a split second because he was, he hit me three times. And I just was like, did you ever repair that relationship with your dad? Well, yeah, we can get there. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I did. I mean, as much as I could, he had a hard time letting his guard down, but we did to be clear. I'm not a violent person. Like I fucking hate violence, right? Like I loathe loathe it. I got out of fighting because violence is what I wanted. What I wanted is to feel. If you've been listening to this podcast and you have not gotten Saqqara's Beauty Drops and Chlorophyll Drops, you are missing out. I use

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skinny. You get 20 20 off your first order sakara.com skinny go check out those drops add them to your morning water from an outside perspective to me it seems like your parents put so like a huge emphasis on your brother using drugs so they were distracted with that and then it sounds like they adopted someone who was paralyzed and they put a big a lot of their attention on that and then you were kind of left in the middle floating around and they ended up taking a lot of their stress out on you oh yeah 100 nailed it bam yeah i mean it's what totally i mean i i was like the kind of the

kid forgotten i was just young enough and out of place and i didn't have enough problems like my sister grudgen she was like dyslexic and struggled with these issues so she had just enough attention on her because she was fucking off in school to be like grudgen you need to fucking you know this and this like you got to do your homework you know and like but me i'm like on a roll you know flying through in the middle of the day just crying for no reason not knowing why so what would you like what would you get beat for what like what were some of the offenses that would set you back off because it sounds like you weren't too bad of a kid compared to no man it'd be like not cleaning my room i liked model cars when i was a kid and it'd be like not cleaning up the paint in the middle of the garage floor you know even though i like had newspaper it was like all clean it's

just like i didn't cap the stuff and like put the paintbrushes away right away you know maybe it'd been like 20 minutes or something because i was doing something else or washing my hands you know whatever and he just flipped the fuck out and it was it because like say with your brother did your brother get that kind of wrath or was it he was too no i mean yeah my brother was too old at that point and my dad like i mean so the frustration got taken out on you oh yeah i mean you know bullies right like they're not going to pick on the person of their fair size you know i also think it sounds like you were looking for your mom's attention and your mom didn't give you the attention and then she goes and adopts someone who's paralyzed, and then I'm sure a lot of her attention went there,

and you were probably like, what the hell? Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, I could count how many sports events that they showed up for me on one hand throughout my entire high school career, and I was a standout soccer player and pole vaulter. Like it was, you know, on my own, on my birthday, I turned 18, you know, April 28th, 2000 year, I graduated, I'm running track. I have a track meet on my birthday and nobody shows up to the track meet.

You know, it was just like, what the fuck? Did they feel like Adams just got his shit together and like, he's fine. Or was it just kind of the lost child because so many of the other kids needed the attention? I don't really know. I think they were just so caught up in their own shit. I mean, like, you know, they were always just so troubled with like money, I think financially, you know, and just not talking about it. Like my parents did not have a plan. Like, thank God I figured out what savings was later on. And I've met some successful people that, you know, have helped me because like shit up until a couple of years ago, I didn't have any money in savings. Like, and I was like, okay, like mom, you didn't have any money saved up. Like if it wasn't for X dying or whatever, you know, like

you would have been fucked. Like, oh hell no, that is not going to be me. I mean, my whole family was overweight. I've been 7% body fat and 200 pounds since I was 19 years old. So how did you find fitness? Like what was the, I mean, it sounds like you got it young 12, but what was like, what was the moment where you're like, Oh my God, this is the thing for me. The real moment of fitness is crazy. And this is where it's like these like storybook moments, right? My great uncle Bill died. Basically my dad's uncle, Chicago, go to the funeral, have this great party afterwards. And this disheveled attorney comes up to me and I'm 12 years old. It was an age. It was Donnie came at 12. A lot of things happened at 12 years old My uncle bill left me a rusty barbell and 85 pounds in metal weights sitting in this broken milk crate

and I was 12 years old. I'm like The lawyer said your uncle said you always love wwf And maybe this will help you become a wrestler one day. So I took that rusty ass barbell home I stole my sister's reebok stair stepper And I started working out Started liking the way I looked started liking the way I felt wrestler one day. So I took that rusty ass barbell home. I stole my sister's Reebok stair stepper, and I started working out, started liking the way I looked, started liking the way I felt. And one of the best things that ever came of Donye, who's my little brother, the one that's paralyzed, of him becoming my brother is not only the relationship that we have and the things I've

been able to help him with that I don't think many other people would have helped him with, knowing people just follow medical advice. Me, I'm always like buck the system, you know, and I tried things with him when he was young. He said he would never eat again, you know, and it's like he eats with his mouth since he was four years old now. You know, it's like I put food in his mouth and pull it out of his mouth with my finger if he couldn't chew it, you know, and just doing weird stuff. I was like 16 years old playing with things like that. His nurse came up to me at 12 and was like, I see you working out your room all the time. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm just trying to get big. And this guy

was like a bodybuilder and he was a fireman. He had a carpet cleaning business, an entrepreneur again, my life next day he comes and he drops off the stack of iron man magazines It's big like stack from like 87 to like 96 Of muscle magazines. I read every single one of them Cover to cover like three four times at the age of 12 like in the matter of like weeks I just became obsessed. Oh obsessed is a understatement I literally said at 12 years old that I was gonna be on the cover of a fitness magazine and want to be Be one of the biggest names of fitness ever. It sounds like your whole family was overweight and you went the different direction. So you became the black sheep because you were kind of mirroring them.

Oh, yeah. So maybe that's the reason that they took it out on you because you brought up things for them that they didn't want to see in themselves. Yeah. I mean, very much so. I mean, I can't talk about anything health related. I mean, like some of the most successful people in the world, people who own PayPal have sought my advice, you know? I mean, you can't talk about it with them. I can't talk health with them yet. Some of the most successful people in the world pay me to help them and they just won't take what I give them. It's just like, it doesn't matter.

It's always offensive or whatever it is. Oh, let me help you. I'll show up and I'm fine. It's like, okay. I mean, you're still overweight. I mean, 20 years later, it's not me talking shit. I'm doing it out of love here. Someone told me that the reason that Oprah was so successful is because she never helped anyone. She helped people help other people. And maybe if there's a way for you to help them help other people, you can get it through their brain. Do you know many Midwesterners? I know you. Yeah. Yeah. Midwesterners are an interesting bunch. Careful. There's a lot of Midwesterners listening.

I'm a Midwesterner, so believe me, I get it. I will never stop trying. I will never stop trying. I actually had my sister here and I got her to microdose mushrooms. And the same with my mom. My mom has an interest. She's had a lot of crazy surgeries and has a lot of pain.

She has like no joint or thumb and shit, right? Her doctor of like 30 years retired. And she got this new doctor. And like in the first doctor meeting, they like marked her as like pill seeking. So now my mom can't get pain medication. So I was like, well, let's try some alternative methods, mom. So when she was here, I gave her some psilocybin and a nice little microdose. And she was like, I can move my shoulder.

And it's like, yes, yes, you can. So I mean, the work is never done. I love what I do. My heart is on my sleeve. I mean, I have a tattoo of a heart on my sleeve. The logo of my company is a heart. Everything I do comes from the heart. Because really, that's always been my biggest driver. It hasn't been education or anything. It's just been passion. So after your brother passed away, what changed in your life? Like what kind of clarity did you have with your business and your family? When my brother passed, I mean, I was, I was a young buck. Before you met your wife. Oh yeah. Way before. Yeah. Yeah. So my brother passed, I did that fight and somebody came up to me, Horace Craft, who is like my brother from a, it's like my stepdad in a weird way.

The sheriff out of Milwaukee who kind of was like wrongfully accused black guy, shot a white guy in the city like years back, got like taken off the force, was defending himself in this gunfight and kind of like switched his life to like helping youth disadvantaged youth through it, you know, and came up to me and was like, you have real talent, you know, you should train and brought me to this place called ace boxing, which is this like a dingy hole in the wall, literally blood soaked mats in the middle of a Milwaukee park. That is a historic place that can't be taken down. Cause it was owned by Nate. It's owned by native Americans. And we would show up there in box and he would just beat the shit out of me. And he would have like three other dudes that were all like black belts and crazy martial arts, like Wing Chung and all these like martial arts that were just

kicking my ass for like three, four months. At the same time, I'm training with Tom Mueller, who is, you know, a very high level jujitsu practitioner, just won, you know, a world title. So just trying to get a well-rounded understanding of martial arts. I dove into fighting. I mean, I basically, I went all the way in and I was balancing fighting training. I had gotten a job as an electrician and I was just kind of doing the nine to five grind looking for my thing because I knew Milwaukee wasn't my thing. And is this the time when like, where is UFC at this time?

So, yeah, I mean, people making money yet. Yeah. I mean, people are being paid dog shit, but it's arguably that a lot of them are still being paid.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole nother topic. I mean, I'm talking real bad, like real bad. Like I was privy to a lot of them are still being paid yeah yeah that's a whole other topic i mean i'm talking real bad like real bad like i was privy to a lot of these conversations you know when i was coming up so i i fought that fight i fought it the next year i then did jujitsu for about three months and the my team talked me into doing a naga which is the north american grappling association it's nine states invited and i ended up winning uh naga after like only practicing jujitsu for

about four months so you just came in and were just bottle rage is unleashed on everyone you're just taking people out well it wasn't just rage i mean i think back then unless you were like the highest level collegiate wrestler you would never touch somebody like me, like not because of my skill level, but because I had a 500 pound deadlift and could do 35 unbroken pull-ups run a 40 and a four, four, five. Like I, and also let's not discount that at this point,

if you've taken, I mean, I, it's interesting. You meet people that have taken beatings in their life and it's a whole different thing because a lot of people, you know, they think they're going to act tough in the tough situation and then it

happens and they get, you know, punched once and like, Oh my God, if you're somebody that can take more pain than the lot of people you know they think they're gonna act tough in a tough situation and then it happens they get you know punched once and like oh my god it's like if you're somebody that can take more pain than the majority of people that's a huge advantage one give it i was ruthless like i would stick my chin in somebody's eye socket and just grind away until i could get the position that i wanted you know it's like hey you're not gonna move your arm i'll make you move your arm you seem very gentle though when i when i meet you yeah well i mean there's a difference between me who wants to win and, and like stop somebody from hurting me

and winning. And like me, who's just like right here. I mean, I, Pat, you know, this guy next to me, he refers to me like my puppy, you know, who's like calm and sweet and cute yet barks at everybody. I have a side, but but it's like nobody's ever going to see it like you'd have to put me back in a ring if that's ever going to happen or somebody needs to threaten my family like i do tactical shooting like i do things like that you know i mean i'm ready for it but i think the people who really know it don't have to show it no you know michael always says that well we have a friend of ours and he's been on the show you know joe schilling you know yeah yeah of course like i always tell like that's not a guy you ever want to find yourself in a fight with right it's just like not it's just there's certain

people but he is one of the nicest softest people if you're if you're just with him like he doesn't need he doesn't need to prove it to anyone you put him in a ring it's a whole different thing well there's there's this law that robert green writes about that it says that when someone shows hyper masculinity or hyper femininity there's something that is an insecurity there that they're not showing so like if they're so masculine and they have to show everything that's so masculine all the time like there's something there if there's a guy that coming in aggro all the time there's probably some other issue yeah i mean that's effectively i mean i ended up fighting for seven more years right hiding from pain running i found myself multiple states dating different women you know like all these kinds of things just kind of cruising around being this

free spirit and i had what do you mean dating all kinds of women you mean like hookers are we talking like if you have a different woman why do you always listen i have never been with a hooker okay i mean no i mean like do we have girlfriends in different states like what do you mean no i wasn't a player i mean i my wife's mind will go to like the darkest places how is that dark dark? It sounds like fun. Straight to hookers. It does sound fun. What do you mean? It wasn't that exciting. No, looking for acceptance from women because of like the lack of validation and acceptance from my own mom and my sisters. It's always been like a thing. It's actually a thing that me and my wife, we kind of like

talk about and are working on is that if she has friendships with women, you know, that, and they're like hanging out, I'll feel like sitting at home on the outside. And it's like, it's not because I'm needy or whatever it is. It's because, you know, that's like where I've been for so long and it hurts to not feel included. Like, Hey, I want to go get a fucking facial too. Like it's, you know, like you're my best friend like don't exclude me because you're doing a girl thing like i don't like that thought what if she's getting her vagina steamed do you want to come get your balls i'll steam my asshole any day okay so you're in for anything yeah yeah yeah well i'm just yeah i mean she she's getting a pedicure do

you want to get a pedicure totally yeah okay well it's not that she can't have her alone time it's just me it's basically the idea of like what i'm talking about, like with other women, like, so I would be dating a girl and then I jumped to the next state, but like, I'd have like something already there. It's cause like you, I needed like a woman in my life at the time for that validation and self-acceptance, you know, even though I had like all these other great things going for myself, I had not done this like closure work that I needed, you know, through the relationship that I had through my mom where she's like seeing me get smacked and not saying anything about it, you know, and you're like, when did you have the light bulb moment that you knew that like, maybe you needed to seek therapy or you needed to do

something about, about this? Michael was getting a little frisky this morning. Know why? Because I've been taking that sex dust. He didn't know it though. I spiked his coffee with it. Oh, I knew it. I let you do it. I saw you. Here's the move, okay? In the morning when they're waking up, all you have to do is sprinkle a little smoky cacao flavored sex dust into their coffee. So what I did specifically is I blended one teaspoon of sex dust into Michael's morning latte. I gave him two shots of espresso to wake him up in every way, a little bit of almond milk, and then I added the sex dust. And this was the perfect way to start our day. I got my creative juices flowing literally and figuratively. He's drinking his coffee.

I got my juices flowing too. Things are happening. I just feel like why not add some sex dust to your coffee? Moon Juice has all the things. They have all different kinds of dusts. I'm a fan of the sex dust. That's the one. And basically what it is,

is it has six key adaptogens in it, okay? I can't pronounce them all, but there's some good ones. They have wild crafted chelagete in it, a little bit of organic cacao, which stimulates endorphin release, organic maca, which is known to give you healthy sexual function, and a couple other ones. One even is known to increase blood flow and energy. I love spiking you with sex dust, Michael. Moon Juice is giving you some love. To give your hormones some love and get those juices flowing like us,

head to moonjuice.com slash skinny and use code skinny at checkout. You get 20% off. moonjuice.com slash skinny. Use code skinny at checkout for 20% off. Spike your partner's coffee and tell me how it is. Honestly, it was when my shoulder separated. I had just signed a Strikeforce contract. I had been fighting for five and a half years. I had done like 13 fights and lost two and won the other 11. I won a tournament that was for Strikeforce and And less than 18 hours later, I blew my shoulder out.

Never fought again. How did you blow it out? I suplexed Brett Rogers, who's like 295 pounds, six foot six fighter. And his arm got behind my shoulder blade. And I was doing a suplex and my whole shoulder went up and the rest of my body went down because his weight was on me. It was very weird. It was like accidental. Freak accident. Yeah. I should have rested longer before I trained again. I had just fought 18 hours previously, but because I beat the dude in like 40 seconds, I was like, I'm fucking fine. But I was super dehydrated, most likely,

which is why it happened. My ex-boyfriend did something similar and isn't there no way to put a cast on it? You have to just like put it in a sling and let it heal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah for sure I mean, that's basically what happened and unfortunately when something like that happens you hope it rips Oh, you hope it rips. Yeah. Yeah, because then they can reattach it and keep it short mine stretched So now I have like like what's called like, you know, like a slap and my shoulder a little bit because there's just like slack in it that makes sense so you wish that it i wished it would have ripped because then i could have been like they would reattach it insurance would cover it no fucking problem versus like overstretching and micro tears and just massive trauma you know was that the most painful thing that's ever happened to you or no

it wasn't even painful oh no it wasn't it was oh my god yeah it happened so fast i was just like you know i like look at my shoulder it's like sitting out here oh fuck and i like was kind of like on my like side you know and i like rolled over and i went and it went and i was just like oh what the fuck? And my coach comes over, he goes like, hold on. And he pushes on it just a little harder and it gets one hard pop that he was not supposed to do. So I ended up having like some like tendon issues because he reset it without having like an MRI. You're supposed to have that shit checked before you reset stuff to make sure tendons are in the right spots, yada, yada, yada. So every time I do this, there's like a nice little flapping, you know,

in my shoulder. It's just like a little, you know, you can feel like the tendon flick over my acromion process is what I speculate is happening. But yeah, I mean, it was, that's what, that's what happened. I had this massive conscious awakening, emotional trauma is held in your fascia, right? So your body holds on to all this. And this is something that I was talking about almost 13 years ago now. And I kind of stumbled upon like Mosch Feldenkrais and some other really incredible authors that kind of like peaked at that idea. But now with even more modern science, we even understand that on a deeper level, how fascia is 99 point. They're still just scratching the surface on all that stuff. For sure. For sure. And when that amount of trauma happened, I remembered in my shoulder, it took me a while until I put it together years later, is that shoulder was also the shoulder that I hurt right around the time my brother died. I was working for a landscape company and I was pounding these tree posts in, and I ended up partially tearing my rotator cuff on that left side. And all the emotion just kept building into

that left side, into that shoulder. And when I got hurt, it just went, it was like the motion was trying to get out, which is ultimately what I believe happened. I don't believe it had anything to do with impact. I don't believe it had anything to do with the suplex. I think I probably could have opened a door that day the wrong way and my shoulder would have exploded Like it would have found a way to come out That's like how powerful it felt And at that moment, I knew fighting was over. Everybody's like, oh you can heal you'll be better I'm, like no like I have no

Inclination to fight within a matter of seconds. You were just done. I knew I was done every part of me Like had left I like woke up And I literally thought to myself Have I just been watching what i've been doing for the last five years? Like I was just viewing myself Doing these things like I never felt pain. That's called disassociation. It's from trauma. Yeah, 100 You were you had dissociated from yourself and it sounds like your brother passed and you went right into this world of violence you know that totally you don't seem like you're

actually like you said a violent person yeah you're just in it yeah totally no i had 100 i was i disassociated for so long that i basically consciously woke up with my shoulder exploded i was like where the fuck am I? That is wild. This is a real thing, by the way, that people should look into with trauma, disassociation. It's when you almost delusion yourself and you disassociate from everything.

Oh, yeah. I struggled with imposter syndrome. Because every once in a while, I'd consciously wake up in this world that I created where I was Adam, the professional fighter and nobody could hurt me. Right. From like the person that lost so much in his life. And all of a sudden when my shoulder exploded, I'm like, holy fuck. Like what happened? Like, why did I do this to myself? Like even some of my tattoos, I was like, huh, that's interesting.

Like, why did I get that? You know what I mean? It's just, it was like silly. i was like huh that's interesting like why did i get that you know i mean it's just it was like silly it was like a moment of clarity oh yeah it wasn't like regret either it was kind of like who did this to me that is wild that's actual true dissociation has anyone as a therapist or anything ever told you that that's like what you're describing no books you know books podcasts mushrooms like i've done enough psychedelics to do the work and like understand that what i went through i had a therapist when i was really young because i had adhd and they tried like you know drugging me all the damn time to keep me calm and shit my therapist was so cool shout out to dr crisco if he's still alive i'm not sure he's a big listener yeah Yeah. Hey,

he was awesome, man. He would do martial arts with me for like an hour and talk about stuff, you know, and that was it. We would just move around and he put on like sparring gear and let me hit him, you know, and like, we'd like smack each other with foam noodles and stuff and, you know, just, you know, talk. So I kind of, I understood how to deal with my issues is it required movement and, and vocalization, you know, and I just talk about it people like you podcasts I mean effectively I was lucky enough to Make something of like this tragedy that i've experienced in my life and to have a

an ability to jump on Opportunities podcasts to talk about it that not only helps me but helps other people after your whole shoulder incident happened was there any kind of substance abuse because of everything you'd been through no i mean i've always smoked a lot of weed can you abuse weed sure why not i don't know it's a it's a whole debate i feel like i feel like there's gray area of everything i mean i smoke weed probably like twice a day. So, and I've done so since I was like 18, 19. I mean, listen, I know a lot of people that it works for. I remember reading an article about the guy that started WeWorks and, you know, like with the whole like Ponzi scheme and whatever, you know, they were like talking about it in this magazine.

And they're like, and the investors were seriously upset when they found out he was smoking weed over international waters. And I was like, damn, his investors would be really pissed off at me if they knew what I did on international waters. Yeah. So I mean, no drug use. I have had a couple of close calls. I was like, you dumb fucker. Do you not know? You know. What do you mean a couple of close calls? New Year's. The first New Year's I was celebrating with my wife after we got married. We're like, oh, let's do some hippie flips. So mushrooms and mushrooms and Molly. Okay.

And I was super dehydrated. I was training really hard at the time. I took an Adderall earlier that morning. I was prescribed it. The Adderall is what fucks everyone. You mix that in with the stuff, huh? I never, I never did that. It wasn't for recreational use.

I was never one of those people that's like, oh, I'm going to take an Adderall so I can get a bunch of shit done. It was like, I was given Adderall to study and do stuff. I was prescribed it for years and I hadn't taken it in a long time. And I took it that day because I had a lot of shit to do for work. And I was like, I got to focus. My brain took it at like 9 a. Well, like 11 o'clock we're like hippie flipping. I'm like one minute I'm drinking orange juice. The next minute I'm waking up thinking I'm drowning, laying on the bathroom floor and smacked my head on the toilet so hard. I broke the toilet seat and earrings. I had like plugs. Like I used to have like, you know, uh, plugs in my ears, literally like jumped out of my ears

like i hit my head just from the impact they said i was like foaming at the mouth and just shaking so that was pretty wild so that was an experience enough to realize that drugs like that are not my friend i had like another one similar but it wasn't you know like that you know i wasn't like oh i'm taking multiple drugs it was like i took one drug and i was dehydrated again you know like that you know i wasn't like oh i'm taking multiple drugs it was like i took one drug and i was dehydrated again you know just going too hard always pushing people listen to this show and like they've heard us be hard on adderall use and i think it is disgusting p.s like there's that's a whole part of my story and the reason you know we've had people like dr amin on the show say like for the right people the right prescription it makes it's a medication

obviously it's to be used as such personally lauren and i have a handful of friends some that aren't with us anymore that mixed adderall with other hard substances and they didn't even they didn't think like the two and two were gonna affect each other and it like you said it can go the other way fast yeah we also have friends that have taken adderall with mixed it with a bunch of different shit and they're're alive, and they have severe brain problems. Now, I think it's like if you need it and you're being supervised for a doctor, it's one thing. I think it becomes a problem when people abuse it. Well, to your point, though, you took it in the morning.

You didn't even think that it would have a connection that far away later in the evening, right? Yeah. It definitely does because it stays in your system. We've had even a lot of our friends, I remember I went back to, me and my buddy were going to work in construction one summer, and he had to do drug tests, and he had taken Adderall to study. And he came back, tested positive for meth, and they're like, we're not hiring you.

But he wasn't taking meth, he was taking Adderall, which I guess registers on the test. Yeah, methamphetamine. It's powerful shit. You said that you had an experience with it. What was your experience like mean i was man i was prescribed it i was like the founding class of ritalin you know i mean so first grade i'd get a i'd get an announcement over the loudspeaker oh jesus yeah come to the come to the office to take your pill i forgot about those announcements literally like that's what they would say come to the office to take

your pill so then i became like the black sheep in my school because the teacher told them that I had to take special pills because I'm hyper. And it's funny, that same year, I ended up testing up two grades and they ended up having to put me in third grade from first grade. You're so focused. Well, it was like I was in challenge and then they ended up putting me back down. It was kind of interesting. I went through some weird stuff in school. My experiences with, with Ritalin was at a very young age, I spoke to myself somewhere and was like, prescription drugs are not good. Right? Like I knew something was going on inside when I would take them that I did not like the way I felt it was not making me right. And I was, I knew it was directly prescription medication, just like how I knew that it was

bad food, what foods it was that was making my parents and my sisters overweight or what foods made me feel a certain way. I started having this really strong internal voice around my health right around the 12 year old age. When I got that giant stack of Ironman magazines, there was a study in there about caffeine and neurotransmitters. And they talked about L-tyrosine and L-theanine as incredible neurotransmitters to be combined with caffeine. So I have a paper route and we would always stop and my dad would get me a donut and he would get himself a coffee. And one morning I said, get me a coffee. And I drank coffee that morning instead of my ritalin it was within about a week my mom went to like walgreens and i went and checked and found the nature made brand

from walgreens found l-theanine capsules and i started dumping l-theanine capsules inside my coffee at 12 years old holy shit that is like a story and how you have this brand. Yeah. Wow. That is wow. So you made like nature's Adderall. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's effectively what it is. I mean, we need, you know, an amphetamine and upper right to stimulate, and then you need dopamine and serotonin to regulate the norepinephrine and the ephedrine that your

body is creating. So it will effectively give you a very strong focus feeling. And the other, there's another ingredient in there that supports cognitive function that has actual clinical studies that obviously didn't exist when I was 12 years old, but it was a rudimentary thought process on how I could make myself focus through a natural ingredient and just an amino acid. So did you meet your wife before you launched your company? I did. Yeah.

So after fighting, I moved out to LA. And is this before you're on strong or after? So this is before strong. Okay, go ahead. Yeah. So I moved out to LA. LA was like the place for me quickly. It was like in two days, I had like 12 auditions.

I was like going from here to here. It was wild. I got a job at Pulse Fitness, which was like the studio in Sherman Oaks. It was like the, it was Pulse or Barry's Bootcamp. And this was like 13 years ago. So, I mean, it was like the place, right? All the actresses are hanging out there. And that was my life. I was, you know. Did you hook up with any actresses? Don't lie. I mean, yes. What does it rhyme with? I mean, yes.

What does it rhyme with? I wouldn't say that she's an actress, but she's a fitness celebrity in person. Okay. So you guys have to think hard who is a big fitness celebrity in person. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was a character with pink hair one time on a on a show if that helps you jackie warner no no no uh so did you look up with jackie warner too no so so i'm in la i get a big break i ended up getting this awesome commercial first i had this audition for world biggest loser they were like we love you it's just not right and i so i'm like all right cool and you were pursuing television opportunities at this time the whole reason that when i got done fighting how i justified all the time that

i put into it is i was like this world's gonna take off like this whole like looking for tough guys that are good looking with tattoos is gonna be be a real thing. Like, because it was a bunch of phonies pretending to be tough and that you could tell when people aren't tough. It's like, Oh, that's just a soft ass dude pretending to be a tough guy. Right. Versus like a tough guy who can act and looks like a tough guy. You know, you can't fake cauliflower ears, you know, like different things like that, that you want. What's that meme again? It's like, you can get like the, it's a, what's it called? It's Jack Nicholson smiling and laughing. He's like, when I it's uh what's it called it well it's jack nicholson smiling and laughing he's like when i see the guy across the bar picking getting ready to pick the fight with

the guy with the cauliflower here it's like oh fuck wrong guy dude wrong guy dude i'm on this set shooting a commercial you know i have all these people interested in me and i get a text message from my sister that my dad has cancer she's like call me up she's like dad just got back from some tests and his blood his you know t-cell counts are you know all off and where are you two at this point are you and your dad's a relationship pretending that like he's like not an asshole and that like i'm okay with him but like really i'm only seeing him maybe once every like six months. And I talk to him maybe like once a week when I'd be calling my mom.

And quickly, because I forgot to ask. We've been going like so far, so many places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When your brother passed, what does that do to your parents? Ever since I can remember, I have liked a pop of shimmer in the inner corners of my eyes. First of all, I feel like it pinches my nose in. And second of all, it brightens the whites of my eyes and my teeth. And I feel like I've been talking about this since I started the Skinny Confidential blog. After stocking tons of different products, I found this thing. It's called the Brilliant

Eye Brightener. And it's a cream to powder highlighter stick. And what I do is I take it and like I said, put it right at the tips of my eye, pinching the nose in. It's so major. It's by Thrive Cosmetics. And what it does is it gives you like this look like you've had plenty of sleep. And it also is like the perfect wash of color and glow. The color is right. Thrive Cosmetics is a high-performance beauty and skincare line that's made with clean skin-loving ingredients. I used to use a shimmer that had a bunch of stuff added, but the one I use now, it has no parabens, no sulfates, and it's also 100% vegan and cruelty

free. What's also cool is it doesn't have a bunch of added shit in it and every purchase supports organizations that help women thrive. So what's cool is every product you're donating back and then you're also wearing your champagne pop in the inner lids of the corners of your eyes. It's amazing. Now is a great time to try Thrive Cosmetics for yourself. Right now you can get 15% off your first order when you visit thrivecosmetics.com slash skinny. That's thrivecosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S.com slash skinny for 15% off your first order. Get the eye brightener. Trust me.

I would say that my mom and dad did a pretty good job of like, like they were very good there for each other. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that for any parent, you know, whoever has to go through like losing, you know,

a kid, if you have other kids, you have to acknowledge the fact that they may be in pain too. And you should really think about how to make sure that they're okay as well, while also taking care of yourself. Cause never got a once are you okay? You know and to be only 22 and have your brother die and for nobody to ever ask you. Are you okay with you know, like are you good? It sounds like your family didn't ask that though your whole childhood to know it really wasn't like no one was checking if you were okay. Yeah. I mean, they all had like their own shit. Like my sister was overweight and was dealing with like, you know, she had bulimia or anorexia, you know, cause she kind of like struggled with some eating disorders here and there,

you know, Gretchen struggled with her, you know, education and like, would she graduate high school kind of stuff? And, you know, it was always a thing. And then she got pregnant, like when she was like 20 or, you know, 21, something, you know, very young, you know, for her and like where she was in her life so everybody kind of always had their own thing and when my brother died they all had their own significant others i didn't have that so it was like they all just like turned their head and their shoulders to their significant others and cried to them but like i didn't have that

you know i mean like my own friends missed my brother's funeral you know or it'd be like to this day they still don't know that I'm pissed off at him for it. He's pissed off. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, I'm pissed off. He's pissed off. Yeah, yeah. You don't miss your homie's brother's funeral and their dad's funeral.

I think people are extremely uncomfortable dealing with death. I agree. And I think that it's one of those things that you can't expect someone to understand unless they've been through it. 100%. You know, and that's, I mean, I guess you have to come from it with empathy. You just have to come and be like empathetic to the fact that they maybe haven't lost someone and they don't understand because I don't know if you can describe how it feels to lose

someone who's close to you. Yeah, 100%. I mean, like, it's interesting. Like, am I pissed that somebody didn't show up for me when I needed it? Yes. Do I hold it against them? No, because I know everybody has their own issues and their own experiences. Like, I remember not wanting to watch a movie that my wife really wanted to watch because

I did not want to watch a main character deal with alcoholism. Right? Because, like, I just didn't feel like fucking dealing with that at that moment. I'm sorry. I do not feel like watching Brett, whatever, you know, Lady Gaga movie that whatever the star is born.

Right. I didn't feel like watching that movie because he deals with alcohol issues and shit the whole movie. And I'm like, that's just like a trigger. I don't feel like playing with, you know, at this moment,

I got really like irritated with me in my own life when I, I didn't enjoy that movie. Oh,'re just gonna sign up that i just did a little side note it soundtracks good soundtracks great i didn't like the movie either i just didn't fuck that movie listen now the what are the little monsters are gonna fucking get me now but but you know i just i was you're canceled canceled. Oh, that's happened many times. So when your sister calls you and tells you that your father has cancer, one, were you expecting to hear it from your father or, and two, what did, what did that bring up from you for your childhood? Full on truth.

I finished that photo shoot. I went to my tattoo artist. I said, yo, man, I gotta go. I'm like, can you do the tattoo tonight? He's like, fuck, dude, I'm exhausted. I'm like, I have some coke. I literally had the smallest amount on me from like a client. I can see why you and Khalil are friends.

That's all I'm going to say. Midway through this podcast, I'm going to sit here and acknowledge Khalil. I can see why you and Khalil are friends. It's because you guys are absolutely fucking unfiltered it's a good thing we it's a good thing we mentioned khalil again because he's probably listening there's an almost turned it off he just got hard right now he's back he's back he just turned the volume back up he just turned it he's like oh wait this has got better he just turned the table i love how like in 2020 like everyone or whatever the year is 22 everyone's like realness on like unfiltered like no you and khalil are really unfiltered

i always have been okay i love it i'm obsessed with it okay so you tell the tattoo artist i have some coke yeah i mean he was like i'm exhausted i'm like i have have some Coke. He's like, let's do this. So in the middle of my tattoo, my car is loaded. I literally, I drive this Toyota Yaris back then. Right. And my whole life fit in this bitch. It was hilarious. Like literally like a bike, like sticking out the window. So we finish up and we probably did just like a little too much. Cause there was, you know, and I'm like, I'm good. Well, I get this phone call from my buddy and he's like hey we're in vegas how far is la i was like close enough to drive i got in my car drove to vegas it's probably like 10 o'clock at night drove to vegas got to vegas around like

three in the morning you know 2 30 in the morning something like that partied for 24 hours and then drove the rest of the rest of the way home. No hookers. No hookers. It's up with you and the hookers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel like the reason I can ask him, I feel like he'll tell me the truth. No, no, no, no hookers, no hookers. I, I mean, I don't have to pay for sex. I mean, everyone's Googling you right now. He's married. Yeah, no, no hookers. Um, but it was it was cool, you know moved back surprised my mom and dad at breakfast I went and took like a four-hour nap Woke up and I was like dad. I'm exhausted. Could you drive me downtown? I need to get a job

You know, I went from making like 75 80 000 a year Being a union electrician. I had all these great sponsorships with fighting so I like never had to pay for shit Now i'm like looking at like 12 dollar an hour jobs i chose between two jobs be a manager at the buckle or be a doorman at this high-end place and this whiskey spot and i chose that spot two weeks later i met my wife i met my first business investor i made a name for myself. How'd you meet your wife? She was the hostess with the mostest. Did you, did you like her right away?

I was not looking for anything. So no, none of you guys are looking for stuff. We have to listen. No, no guys are looking for stuff until they find the person that is right. Yeah. I,

because of what I was going through, I really felt that Milwaukee was just a pit stop so i didn't want to get connected to anything that and i know my heart would be open to that and you also were getting laid a lot yeah well i mean i love guys are so funny they come on here talking about their heart you guys come on come on come on actually actually i will say you gotta read the crowd you were getting laid a lot yeah yeah yeah you just came from vegas on a coke bender with your tattoo artist i don't know about your heart i feel like there was other things my heart was closed off at this moment maybe i was just dead inside um yeah no you know i just was not i was not emotionally fully there i think it

was wild like i i of course saw her and thought she was really pretty and she was so sweet like and she had like all these like you know she's got this massive smile like very big smile and i'm a big smile big nose guy like i like noses that are bigger like and she's got this massive smile, like very big smile. And I'm a big smile, big nose guy. Like I like noses that are bigger, like, and she's got like a bigger nose, you know? And like, and I was just like, I'm like, oh shit, like she's really cute. But like nothing about me was like, you should approach that one because I work there and I'm like, I try to follow some form of professionalism. And two, I just wasn't emotionally there. Well, I think within like a couple of weeks she like came up to weeks, she like came up to me. She like went up to the nightclub upstairs

and came down drunk and was like, you're an idiot. And I'm like, oh really do tell. You're like, marry me. And she's like, she's like, I fucking like you. And she's like, you don't even pay attention. And I'm like, well, I'm paying attention right now. You know? And I told her i was cleaning downstairs

you want to come downstairs and hang out with me while i clean for a little bit and uh we ended up kissing that's it but two weeks later we hooked up for the first time and like three months later we were married you were like she had a massive i thought you were gonna say boobs then you're like smile and a big nose i was like thought you were gonna say big and Then you're like smile and a big nose I thought you were going to say big tits And not a big nose She's listening I bet her nose is perfect It is perfect When I saw Lauren she had massive tits

And I thought to myself This is true you thought I was a substitute teacher And I was like alright here we go I did have massive tits at 12 What do you want me to say You know what though you You have a daughter now, so be careful what you wish for, buddy. I know.

That's a great equalizer, the daughters. It is, it is, it is. Yeah, I mean, so I met my wife and she was 20. I was 29. That's a great age difference though. Yeah, no, it was great. It's just not something I was totally expecting. And all within like six months, we got married.

We opened up a gym. My gym was voted like the best gym in Milwaukee. We outgrew three spaces. We went from a 1,200 square foot to a 6,000 square foot space in two and a half years. I starred in a movie and she was the makeup artist. Yeah. What's the movie? It's called The Breakout.

It was called Blunt Force when it originally was being produced. I got stuck in post-production. I could show you guys like a little clip. It wasn't a star is born. Thank God. No, no, it wasn't a star is born, but it was interesting. It was like, that's the movie. I was like, that's the movie. I pulled my heart and turned it off right before you came on. No, we, uh, we spent a month, like it was a month of our life. And this was, this was like a big life changing month. It was a month of our life. It was all, it was December. It was our second year of being married. My dad was getting, you know, sicker, like, like leukemia was just constantly chewing away at him. And me and my dad had really worked on a relationship. Funny enough, I hired him as

my maintenance man and I would break shit just to make him show up and work. So I had a reason to like connect with them i'd be like i literally like grab a shelf and be like i haven't seen my dad in a week and i'd like break the shelf off the wall and he'd have to come in and like patch the drywall up and i'd be like yeah fucking ball hit it that is a way though to keep i think older people's brain stimulated is to keep them working totally yeah he retired and with like cancer he was clearly like feeling helpless in certain ways so i wanted him to feel you know like he had a purpose they gave him like a year he stayed he was around for you know almost three and a half years and did you ever get to the point

with him where he could acknowledge some of the things he did to you when you were a kid not really but he at least could acknowledge the person i that i've become despite his lack of love in certain areas he was proud of you yeah yeah yeah yeah there's certain things i did with them like i took last time before he died i was like maybe like 13 we took me to a baseball game and he got like free tickets from work or something like that and i jumped up to cheer and my like i jumped up and my elbow hit him in the face or the glasses or something like that and he he pulls me in, pulls my arm down, rips me back in the seat and says, if I do it again, he'll fucking kill me.

And it's like, I'm just trying to cheer at a baseball game. I think it was maybe three and a half months before he died, I took him to a Brewers game. And we went to another baseball game. And I made sure that I didn't hit him in the face with my elbow. Sometimes I look at, when you're talking about your dad, like, I wonder what his dad or parents, his dad was a piece of shit, but it was like, that's learned behavior, like massive, a massive provider, you know, money, blah, blah, blah.

Certainly like a control freak. Like he, his dad, check this out. His dad thought my mom and dad should only have two kids. Cause that's a perfect number of children. So when my mom had a third kid, she, he stopped talking to my mom for over 25 years. That's a fucking weird mentality. Very weird. So he died at 96 on my birthday. I say all the time that he died on my birthday to spite me. Like it was literally like that old of a fuck. And he was living with us at the time. He'd just walk around. It was like a little janitor outfit. And he like would just like cause chaos around the house the last like

two years of his life that he was alive. And, uh, remember him chopping down at my, one of my dad's apple trees in the backyard. And my dad's like, what the fuck are you doing? Like that tree was alive. My grandpa was like, I'm going to take a nap. And then he, that was my birthday. He didn't wake up. I mean, it's true. This is so cliche to say, but it is true. Like hurt people hurt people.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, my dad was definitely hurt. And that's why like in the end, I wasn't mad at him anymore. Cause like, I knew that if I held onto that and I didn't like let it go and I didn't try to help him And my wife helped him so much like I will say like I owe so much to my wife For helping him as much as she did

Because I couldn't Because like I was still mad at him. Yeah In certain ways and I wasn't getting the closure I needed at certain ways and I was also super busy like I mean, I took on everything. Like I was, I would be bartending till two in the morning, Friday through Sunday. I would teach classes at 5.00 AM, 6.00 AM, 4.00 PM, 5.00 PM, 6.00 PM, Monday through Friday. And my, I got reached out to, and you know, like probably like a year into our relationship with my wife, maybe six months, my cousin, Jeffrey Brezevoir. Do you know Milo Manheim, the dancer kid,

Disney star, dances with the stars, all that stuff? So his dad is my cousin. And he reaches out to me and I never met him before. He's like, you look just like me. How tall are you? He's like, well, I'm like 6'3". I'm like, oh shit, like oh shit i'm only 5 11 i'm like apparently i didn't get the the tall jeans you know he's like i want to introduce you to some people in new york within like three months i lost 30 pounds of muscle and i was shooting in new york with like some of the biggest names in new york and fashion modeling this is when you walked the runway with gg hadid and at versace yeah so i actually i didn't walk the runway i did a seven-day photo shoot with her how was that? It was incredible. I mean, Gigi was so, so sweet. So professional, right? Huh? Super professional. I have some really funny, we, I have some funny stories about her. So, I mean, we, so yeah, I mean, I, I start modeling and almost seemingly like some,

some shit popped off, like Mark Jacobs, like Amphar, like some cool stuff, made a cover of like a magazine, uh, Harper's bazaar, like shot me like all these like really cool things. And then I died out for like two years, like nothing happened. Then I can just get this call from Versace. They're like X a day X days. I'm always supposed to be there for two. They love me. Bruce Weber loved me so much. Then he ended up keeping me for six days. So they're like, Hey, you're the only one that like looks a certain way. We're going to have you paired with Gigi Hadid. They're like, you know, can you work with her on punching you in the face? You know? And I'm like, yeah, sure. Like we'll get the timing right. You know? And we do this whole photo shoot where like

she, her and I are like tussling and she like grabs me by the face and then she kisses me hold on you and her tussling are you married at this point what's your wife married at this point is your wife loving that you're tussling with gg hadid like what the fuck does tussling mean we're wrestling we're wrestling yeah so so oh my shoulder it hurts it hurts uh off me. No, sit back on me. Just kidding. Canceled again. They're like, Hey, work with Gigi. I'm like, cool. And because I ended up working with Gigi, they ended up extending my days. It was amazing. I mean, Gigi did this whole, we did this whole scene where she like throws one,

two, she like kicks at me and I like block it. And then she grabs my face and she kisses me and then looks at me and just throws a hook. Well, the thing was, is they really wanted to catch that hook connection. Like they actually wanted her to like hit my face. So I had to like time the snap, right? Well, the thing is, is for the last six months she had been taking boxing lessons. So she actually kind of knew how to turn her hip. Oh fuck. Which kind of created a problem. Cause she actually connected like three times.

So they ended up bringing an acupuncturist in her, like acupuncturist. And they ended up doing acupuncture on my face and her hand. Cause she ended up like swelling up her whole hand, hitting my temple. And I had like, just like a little bruise. Well, Bruce Weber being the artist, he is, sees all these needles out of my face.

And it was like, can you put 20 more in his body? So then they're just taking photos with acupuncture needles, just sporadically throughout my whole body in underwear. And none of them were like actually put in meridians or positive points or anything. So my arms started getting all numb. So you come home to your wife that day and you're like, hey, I was going for five days in New York by myself. Gigi Deed tried to hit me three times and then she made out with me.

And then afterwards we got naked and put needles all over our body. Yeah, that's about right. Okay. And we tussled. And I have the photo proof to show it. body. Yeah, that's about right. Okay. And we tussled. And I have the photo proof to show it. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was pretty cool. I got to shoot with some incredible models there. The coolest thing is that me and Donatella Versace became friends. It's so cool. I'm actually wearing

the underwear she gave me. Can you bring her on the podcast with both of you together? I could reach out to her. Please. That's a tall ask, Lauren. Yeah, that is a tall ask, but I could ask her. Both of them on the podcast with both of you together i could reach out to her please that's a tall ask lauren yeah that is a tall ask but i could ask her both of them on the podcast together if you can't get her on the podcast will you just get her to gift me some underwear please yes i could definitely do that i'll settle for underwear i'll uh i'll see if i can find my photos for you guys

of her and i hanging out at lunch please do we'll post it on the instagram feed when this goes live yeah yeah so she's absolutely sweet her and I are sitting next together next to each other eating at lunch during this photo shoot. And she's like asking me these questions and it's borderline hitting on me. Right. She tells me how good I would look in this suit. And she like brings me in the back. She shows me the suit, gives me like a $10,000 suit, has her guy like fully tailor it to me. I probably won't fit it again until I'm like 70. Cause like, it'll take that long to lose the muscle that I've gained since that photo shoot. Cause I was about eight pounds, nine pounds lighter and just much thinner in certain areas. Yeah. We're talking and hanging out and she's like, she's like, you're a dad. She's like, that's wonderful. And she's like, show me a picture of

your kid. And first photo I show her, it's me holding my daughter in my hand like this. And she would like stand in my hand. She was like, your daughter can just do that. And I'm like, yeah, totally. And she's like, would you like to be the face of Versace with your daughter? And I'm like, what? And so I'm pulling up this photo. We're like, while you're pulling the photo up, there's a tattoo on your wedding ring. Yes. Did your wife do that right after the Gigi? No, no, no. This is actually before I got married.

It was kind of like a no-fly list. It was like... What does that mean? I wasn't looking for any commitment. Like it was me committing to myself. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah. And then your wife came along. Yeah.

So this is me and my daughter shooting Versace. That is so cool. You have to frame this. Is this in your daughter came along. Yeah. So this is me and my daughter shooting Versace. That is so cool. You have to frame this. Is this in your daughter's room? Yeah, we have. We actually kept like all the clothes that she has. That's just like one of the photos. Actually, I can show you the Gigi Hadid one too.

You are in this picture thinner, huh? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's like, I do model, like I have workouts that are specifically for when I want to model. You're in trouble with your daughter. I know, she's gorgeous. You're in trouble with your daughter. I know she's gorgeous. You're in big trouble.

You know what's crazy is she's tall too. So my wife is about five, nine. She's very pretty. Yeah. And her mom is six, two. So height, there is a height thing, but here's actually me and Gigi Hadid. I'm actually holding ice on my face after she punched me. They had her like sit next to me while I held ice on my face.

You've lived an interesting life, man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just the... I know we're not even there yet. Yeah. That's just the first couple of years. We're at the foreplay of it all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. During all of this, when does this come into play? Here's the thing. You do enough shows on keeping your gut clean, your microbiome,

all of these natural and organic ways to live your life, and your wife's going to go a little crazy. And what she's going to do is she's going to rip out all the cleaning supplies. She's going to throw everything out. She's going to go and just rid the house of everything. But don't worry. She's going to replace it all. And she's going to replace it with better stuff. Grove Collaborative changed my life. So what happened was when I got pregnant,

I got even more psycho about my products. I wanted to reduce plastics around my home. And I also wanted to get concentrated cleaners and refillable glass bottles. They're friendlier for the planet. I wanted to micromanage all the formulas in my house. I wanted to keep things safe. I have Zaza, who's tiny, running around. I have a new baby. And then I have two chihuahuas that are so close to the floor. And I've learned a lot about little dogs recently. And it's important what you're cleaning your floor with, what you're cleaning your bathroom with, these things that they're breathing in every day. Here's the thing. People are weird. They're weird about brands they grow up with and they got this weird nostalgic feeling for these

brands, these chemical brands that aren't doing us any good. And to me, I started thinking about this. I'm like, why am I attached to these old household names that are doing nothing but causing problems for my microbiome, my gut, my digestion, my kid, my pets. Grove is a no-brainer, right? It's better for the planet. It's plastic-free. And I've learned it could be twice as effective as traditional household brands. If you have kids or dogs that are super close to the floor, breathing it in, this is even more important.

You are going to go to grove.com slash skinny today to get a free gift set worth up to $50 with your first order. This is such a fun way to make over everything you use for household cleaner. You should know that the shipping is fast and free. Get started right now at grove.com slash skinny. That's grove.com slash skinny. So my daughter is born, my first daughter, Azalea. And when I say this for people listening,

it's strong coffee. Strong coffee, yeah. So my daughter is born and it's probably like one of the greatest, like, I mean, it's one of the greatest, I mean, it's the greatest moment of my life up to this point. I have my first daughter. I remember when she came out, I just looked at my wife and I was like, she's beautiful. Like it was this,

this like moment that i couldn't connect with while she was pregnant that it was real until it was real i think that's common for a lot of men i i i share that experience because you wait until you have a second kid there's another interesting thing that comes up you know that i'll explain it please explain it but let me tell you one thing yesterday this motherfucker on the way to the appointment it's not about me it's about you're a motherfucker 6 000 years pregnant and he goes oh i can't figure out i'm just feeling slightly fatigued i was i was trying well i did all this nad yesterday he's still committed to it literally no one fucking cares how you feel no one in the room i've talked to the i think i

my cells are going through fission instead of fusion i'm over here building lips and eyebrows and he's talking about like his cell have you done any d have you done it yes yeah okay so you know okay just shut up what's the what's the let's go off on a tangent for one second before we get into what he just asked you what's the weird thing about the second? You want to talk about that now first? Really quick. Yeah, yeah. So the hardest thing about having a second kid is not only are you disconnected from

the rearing of the child, like the developing it, right? Because you don't have that. Yeah, yeah, of course. That empathetic connection. How are you ever going to love anything as much as much as you love your first kid having this problem i'm not having a problem alone let alone still loving this one right like it starts like you start to you have lauren you have your second kid oh you guys feel overwhelmed no it's not overwhelming oh no it's actually not overwhelming. Oh no, it's actually not overwhelming. It's actually guilt. You actually, I feel guilt that I may somehow not like this kid.

So he should feel guilt. What I said, me through. No, calm down. Take a deep breath. Well, not a deep breath.

Cause she said, you have to take a breath. And then another one. No, I was saying to her the other day, I was like, it's a weird thing to connect with because you exactly what you said. I was like,

I wonder how I'll love something as much. Because it's almost like you can't fathom that there's an ability to love something more than you already love the first child. Yeah. I mean, that carried through for the first six months that my second daughter was born. I really didn't like her in a weird way. No one's ever said anything like that. That's a really honest statement.

Believe me, i love her but like something about me wasn't connecting with her and it wasn't until she actually started showing some signs of like a personality that allowed me to attach to these things that she did that were unique and different from the other one from the other one to discern the two and the love that i have for them was actually the same not more because there is not more and now how old are they they're seven and eight and now it's the same so arrow my seven-year-old she's my fortnight buddy like her and i crush like we play video games together don't give many ideas she like pounds me like she like she thinks i'm the coolest the other day she figured out that i was gonna die one day and started crying because she didn't know she was gonna play video games

with and like it broke my damn heart i was like i will play video games with you till the day i die don't worry about it you know and it's just like these little things So, you know that said everybody has to do their own work in every individual experience As a parent like you'll have like certain work that will come up that you wouldn't almost expect having a second kid you know that you'll be like, oh shit like this is You know, this doesn't feel the same like, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, because it's not new It's not the first time the pregnancy that feels different than the first one He's not in it. This pregnancy that feels different than the first one. He's not in it.

This pregnancy feels super different than the first one. Yeah. Hint, hint, hint. Uh-oh. But I do think this is interesting to talk about because the second go, I mean, the first time, like you said, it's the first time. You've never done it. You don't know what to expect. The second time, a lot of that kind of first time feeling is gone.

And then you're also questioning all the things we just talked about yeah obviously every parent that's got more than one kid has gone through this but you know do you feel like you're not as supported on the second time around i think that this is what i feel and i think a lot of women can relate to this in the first pregnancy you have your partner's full capacity and attention and men have a little bit trouble because they're because they apply their nerves to it in some manner because they're like oh i don't know what's going on so i'm going to try to do as much as i can and they're focused on you they apply their nerves i'm saying yeah and they're like really careful of you but then when you bring a toddler into the mix the energy has to be dispersed yeah

yeah like his energy has to go towards the toddler too so the majority also of my time now as she gets further along is i have to take care of the kid a lot which is great it's fine this is a therapy session no but it's because you know she's fully pregnant right and so she's not you know she can't lift the kid up and down the stairs as much as you know there's a lot going on how old is the other one she's two almost two and a half oh yeah so it's it's an interesting juxtaposition and it's it's just weird to be pregnant the second time when you're used to having full attention the first time yeah i think it's kind of like the idea is like never

like don't wake up with expectations you know it's almost like it's good advice yes i have a list of expectations yeah well it's almost like we almost have to you know as you do more you have to expect less right in some manner of speaking and And Lauren, in your case, maybe we could, you don't even have to have no expectations, but let's maybe have them like cut them in half. Just write a list of them and then rip the list in half. Okay. Back to the coffee. Back to the coffee. Cause I got to, this is. So yeah, let's, let's talk about it. So what ended up happening was my dad died three months

after my daughter was born. But right around that time we were in this gym, I grew this gym and it was crushing it right in the middle of downtown Milwaukee. And we had this smoothie shop that was in the front of our gym that was upgrading locations. I worked it out with them that they kept left everything there. And we opened up a coffee shop and it was called Strong Coffee. In three months, my daughter was born, my dad died, and Strong Coffee ran out of money. And less than a month later, I was casted for the TV show Strong and I was called about Versace. For the next three years, I would just be a tornado of things from doing the show, burying my dad, coming back, moving my family to California, shutting down Strong Coffee

within like three months of opening it the first time, because I was just overwhelmed, undercapitalized, all these things. Something had to give. We go into this TV show. I find myself on TMZ. Once the show premieres, it was kind of wild. I have these people out in LA that want to hire me to be their trainer, the founder of Tom's Blake Mycoskie, you know, YG, the rapper, like Ray Lewis, Joaquin Noah, like working with all these celebrities and professional athletes. So I move out there one day I'm sitting at Sun Life in Malibu. I always had this thing about Sun Life. Every client I got allowed me one smoothie a week. When I first got there, I only could buy one smoothie a week because I only have one client.

Then I got a second client and I got a third, I only could buy one smoothie a week because I only have one client. Then I got a second client and I got a third client, you know, and all of a sudden- And Khalil's shit's not cheap. No, it's not cheap. Yeah. Right? And it's also, for me,

it was like I'm supporting a wife and two kids, right? Like most people stopping at Sun Life are either millionaires or supporting themselves. You know, it's like, I mean, everybody, it's very rare that you meet people at Sun Life that have kids that are hip and vibe, driving around G-wagons and stuff.

So I'm kind of this outsider, but I fit in because of the people I train. But I'm dad as fuck, sitting over here enjoying my one cheapest smoothie I can with each client. And Cleo comes up to me and he buys me a smoothie. He pulls out his phone. He goes, I was looking on Facebook or Instagram. He's like, what is this? And he shows me the coffee post from like 2013 when I was featured in a food magazine for this like premier coffee creamer that like had never been seen in the space before.

And I was the first person to ever take collagen and MCT powders and put it into a non-dairy coffee protein-based creamer in 2013. So it never existed up until that point. I even put L-theanine in it, so it managed anxiety. So it was enzolytic. Now I'm talking to Khalil, it's 2018. He's like, you should do this again. And I was like, man, I'm like, I'm doing X as a trainer. Like I got no fucking time. He's like, yeah, but if you don't do this, you're going to regret it. And I was like, man, I'm like, I'm doing X as a trainer. Like I got no fucking time. He's like, yeah, but if you don't do this, you're going to regret it. And I was like, yeah, but like strong coffee company, I doubt the URL even exists anymore. Like somebody has to have snatched it up. Like I let it go like three years ago or two years ago. And he was like, Oh, check it out. I go on my go daddy account, strong coffee company.com is available. I pay 1199 for it. I find the Instagram.

I started putting prototypes together. At the time, the Fit Expo, which is like the LA Fitness Expo, they're paying me to be their MC. So I MC the whole show. I hop up on stages and I bring people on stage, introduce, interview, do things like that. And in pay, they could either pay me or I can get a free booth. So I was like, I'll take the free booth. And I would sample my prototype coffees with like little written surveys, no brand, no nothing, just grab a free coffee. Tell me what you think about it. In between my emceeing, I'd run to this, you know, run to my booth. And then I'd find like the influencers and Instagram and like walk around and hand them free coffee. Cause they're all exhausted, shaking people's hands and meeting

people. I was always like a godsend people like, Oh my God, godsend, this is coffee. You know? And that's like how I started meeting more of these Instagram influencers and the fitness business. And, you know, I'm one too, but like, I'm not like Mr. Million followers and shit, you know, trainer. You should have just walked around naked with needles in your arm and your Versace boxers. You know, I didn't think about that.

Yeah. Hello. With your heart on your sleeve. With my hookers. So, so I'm, I'm trying this coffee out and I get it to a place where people really are digging it. It's a long drive home from San Jose Sunday night for the Fit Expo in San Jose.

And Monday morning, bright and early, I am training the founder of Upworthy and Good Inc., Ben Goldhirsch, and the CEO, now founder. And he answers the door in his underwear and he's like, I'd offer you some coffee, but I don't have any. It's nice to meet you. I was like, hey, I actually happen to have this coffee in my car. Why don't you put on some pants? I'll go grab this coffee and we can get this training going. And he's like, cool. So I make this coffee for him. He's like, Holy shit. His wife comes down and she's like, what's that smell? It's amazing. She's like, I thought we didn't have any coffee. He's like, our trainer

brought some coffee. She's like, I want to try it. Tries it. Likes it. He's like, my wife never loves anything. Claire Hoffman. She's like this, uh, very well-known writer for Rolling Stones. And, uh, you know, my wife doesn't love anything. So he calls me. He's like, how do we get more? I'm like, we don't. That's it. It doesn't exist anymore. I'm like, those are prototypes. I'm like, the next thing has to be in order. He's like, how much? I'm like, X amount of units. He's like, cool. Let's get this company started. How much was it? How many units? Yeah. I spent $75,000 in product. And then I had $75,000 for payroll and marketing.

And he helped you with that in the beginning. He gave me the $150,000 for percentage of my company. So you were just in the right place at the right time with the right product, with the right talent. I said no to not many things in my life. Meaning like I always showed up, right? So somebody said, I got this guy, go train him at four in the morning.

You figured it out. I figured it out. I love people like you. Yeah. I love, I love. So it's like right place, right time.

Like I think it was inevitable that I was going to be in the right place. I wrote this post one time because I was boxing with YG and it's, you know, the post was like, I never imagined I'd be here is a complete fucking lie. Cause everything I've done was to get here. So it's you know the post was like i never imagined i'd be here is a complete fucking lie because everything i've done was to get here so it's like there's no way i didn't believe i was going to get here it's just a matter of time it was just a matter of time i feel the same way and it's it's funny because i do this meditation every day and it says the frequency that you put out there and

the energy and the visualization that you put out there, if it all meets together, you know in time, which is why you can be so patient. You know why it's like when they ask successful people, what was the epiphany? And most successful people is there is not an epiphany because you've already envisioned so far. You've already seen yourself there for so long, right? Like you don't just like one day be like, I'm going to try something and like luck strikes and then everything works out, right? Like you've thought about this for so long you put in so many hours that probably even where even where it is right now like you haven't actualized the potential of where you see it's going probably didn't surprise you so it's not surprising when you get there i think some entrepreneurs yes i would agree with you on some others there are

people out there that have taken a thousand swings and that's not luck that's called you have just fucking kept on trying failure after failure and you somehow kept on having support after support which more than likely you are a privileged individual and have some sense of it you know but but there's an argument with those people that most of those things like there's not they're not on the map in a in a real substantial way right like when i like when i trained the founder of toms i was like i mean i found out like how many businesses failed that nobody knows about gambling online businesses like all these things that failed and he goes he's like i'm stretching him out he goes it was luck toms was luck right like he got a commercial that ended up airing on the super bowl and the next day every major department store ordered over two million dollars in fucking shoes it's like some people

just have that other people show up every day and just grind and grind and grind, right? Like Blake told me I should bootstrap. It's like, dude, you didn't have to bootstrap. You had a fucking Superbowl commercial in your first two months of business because you were on a TV show and you would, you know, and like these other things, like you had this opportunity. I'm making this opportunity. Sure.

I was told, I was told coffee was saturated that i would never compete in coffee oh i hate when my own fucking investors i hate when people say three years later whole foods picks me up globally and puts me in my own section in the coffee aisle you know it's like nothing is saturated if you have a unique perspective a unique perspective and a good product you know how much shitty products are out there. You know, I literally go broke buying competitive products to mine and I have not found one that has made me worry. I've never found one that I'm like, Oh shit, we got to figure out what these people are doing. I'm usually like, how the fuck are these people selling $50 million in garbage? Right? Like there are a lot of people out there selling absolute trash and posing as

a health company or, you know, that it's an alternative to coffee and it's healthier or whatever it is. And it's like, ultimately this isn't like a product that was made from like me wearing a polo shirt and studying marketing analytics and coming from some tech space that I found a hole on Amazon that if we hit this hole just right, we're going to make $3.2 million in the first six months. No, this was something that I made every morning, started over 12 years ago, making this every morning, coffee, started at 12, putting L-theanine in it. Then one day I started putting protein in it. One day I started putting MCTs in it. It was just kind of like an evolution. And then my client's saying like, I want one, I want one, you know, me making it for them after

their training sessions. I also agree with you that the best product too, is the product that the founder would actually use every single day. I've drinking this every single day for four years and that's no bullshit. And when we don't have have it me and my wife will literally not drink coffee Because like other coffee gives us anxiety other coffee does give us jitters other coffee doesn't satiate me Like i'm going to be hungry in two hours. Do people drink it pregnant? Totally 100 we have like this whole empowered mama group through nikki rika Incredible like mom that like talks about health and wellness and or like well, you know Like uh birth fit mom drawing a blank on her name, or birth fit mom, I'm drawing a

blank on her name, but we did this whole moms thing. They had this moms group, and we went and served coffee at this. It's 120 milligrams of caffeine. It's not about a bunch of caffeine. It's about the nutrients and the nutrient pairings to the caffeine, like the L-theanine, the tryptophan. We focus on not dehydrating you. There's hyaluronic acid in

here, coconut water extract, Himalayan sea salt. So you have electrolytes and minerals. So high level, explain to people the difference between this and regular coffee and the ingredients and how you use it. So I mean, one of the biggest things that regular coffee has is it kind of like falls short on the promise of like focus and energy, right? It really gives you a lot of like anxious energy. So that comes from a couple of different things, norepinephrine, adrenaline going up, your dopamine and serotonin not being regulated, and your neurotransmitters have to stay in some kind of level, even keel, right? If one's super high and one's super low, the disparity between them is what creates the issue, right? So we raise

up serotonin with the adrenaline release that you get from the caffeine but what we really do is we actually focus as well on the fact that it's mold free it's toxin free right a lot of people don't realize that when they pack traditional coffee beans they're roasting them and there's moisture in it and then they're packing them so it's you're packing hot moist things in a space do you remember like second grade biology? What does that do bacteria right and mold right? So you put warm bread in a plastic bag and you put it away what happens that bread turns moldy real quick So that's what starts happening to the coffee beans sitting on your shelf for only a couple of weeks

Right. So our coffee is freeze-dried spray-dried cold-brewed coffee. It's low acidic But then we look at like the overall health impact that coffee can have on us. 70% of us get our antioxidants from coffee, our majority of our antioxidants from coffee. Coffee is a very rich antioxidant food, right? What's even richer in antioxidants, a specific antioxidant, polyphenols, is the coffee berry itself, where the bean comes from. That berry has, when extracted, when you extract the coffee berry essence, you actually get a substrate, like an extract, that increases BDNF, which is an essential neuroprotein in your brain, by almost 200%. That BDNF is brain-derived neurotrophic factors.

So this neuroprotein is actually what's related to cognitive decline. So people who have low amounts of BDNF have cognitive decline. Neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer's. Dementia, right. That's super interesting. Super interesting, right?

So in India, their BDNF is super high, and this is where we get the science. Huh? They have like zero It's like six percent here. It's like 40 fucking percent. That is wild. So we're not just looking at productivity We're looking at longevity We're looking at the idea of like staying strong striving to reach our natural greatness. This isn't a fucking sprint. It's a marathon Right. I thought I was going to die when I was 35. It's because of my brother died when he was 35. I literally had from the age of 22 to 35, I had the shot clock in the corner of my eye. I literally thought my time was going to be up at any moment, right? Like I didn't know, you know, I lost my dad when he was 62. I lost my brother when I was 35. It's like,

what kind of life do I have? So it's like when I look when I look at what I have It's like I want to achieve as much as I can in the shortest period of time. I don't want to waste time I'm a fan of seneca, you know the shortness of time. It's like this coffee takes you 40 seconds to make It's like you have a delicious latte. You have breakfast. How many did you have today? Uh, like one yeah, do you only have one? Yeah, you have one enough to like carry you and do you do it iced or hot i do it hot and you don't add anything to it i add nothing to it water and if our audience was going to start with one because i don't like to overwhelm people like what's the one to start with that you would recommend yeah i mean if they like something sweet they wouldn't

want to go with the red bag the morning fix i don't like sweet what i just normally drink black yeah normally drink black you would actually go with this instant coffee plus adaptogens okay so this has reishi in it ashwagandha no this is just black coffee i put minerals in my coffee every day do i have to put minerals in that or is it good explain to people what l-theanine i just want to know if i have to put my minerals in it yes i mean i would say since you're putting minerals in your water just put it in the coffee there are minerals in our lattes because of the coconut water extract, the hyaluronic acid, the Himalayan sea salt. You are getting electrolytes and minerals, but not as much as like you would find in

like a fulvic mineral like you're probably taking. But you also get hydrated. You have the ashwagandha for the no crash, no jitters. And there's protein in this too, huh? Yeah. So our lattes. So just to kind of give you like our lattes are for the brain and the body, right? It's proteins. it's healthy fats. It's everything you need for your brain to be super

sharp, focus, cognitive, all on tilt. Then the black is just the brain, none of the body, none of the protein, none of the fats. This is just going to make you feel super focused. It's got L-theanine, coconut water. It's got a coffee, berry, ashwagandha and reishi. So ashwagandha and reishi are adaptogens. What adaptogens are, they've been used for thousands of years in, you know, Eastern medicine. But what we look at Western medicine, what we look at is, sorry, Eastern. What we look at is the idea that with stress that you combat every day, whether it's working out or work stress, pregnancy, whatever it is, you want to reduce cortisol hormones in your body, right?

Because cortisol is like the silent killer of men, right? So it's like if we, and this silent killer period, but it really kills, stress kills a lot of men, right? Men consume a lot more coffee than women on average. So when I look at different issues, I'm always looking at as a whole, like, how do I fight stress? How do I give you, you know, things to help you hydrate your skin? How do I give somebody the protein that they need to, you know, give them the nutrition that they have to have to fuel this body and this brain and all the greatness that they, you know, are striving for. So it's really something for everybody, whether you want a sweet latte,

a bold unsweetened latte, we have a honey lavender coming out on Friday. That is absolutely delicious. And then because traditional coffee, this is actually something, this is the first time anybody's hearing about this. This is actually just a prototype, which is, I brought it for you. You traditionally drink black coffee, right? Yeah. But I was thinking when you were talking, if I worked out in the mornings, I could potentially take this before. Totally. Yeah. And there's actually incredible studies that show how collagen actually does work to increase collagen fibro size. If you take these before you work out, it's going to have the greatest benefits to drink one of these lattes 60 minutes before a workout. Not because it's a pre-workout. It's coffee, right? It's a latte. But if I'm having coffee it's a latte but if i'm having coffee anyway usually you're having coffee all i have exactly i drink coffee in the

morning i go to the gym i think pre-workouts are for fucking children like who the fuck's drinking fruit punch at five in the morning is it it's it's it's asinine don't look at me i don't have i haven't had a pre-workout since call you don't even know what i take what are you looking over no no i take some aminos sometimes it's a different thing yeah yeah yeah but yeah no my no explode days are behind me that was uh the last time i tried to put that shit in my system was 2014 and i just threw up everywhere because i did it in college and i like oh yeah what are these prototypes vintage so so these prototypes i i brought for you so like i was talking about because coffee has mold and toxins those build up in your liver builds up in your body right? But there's molds

in other places. We live in Austin. It's actually like the Indians would call it the land of the sick. It's got some of the highest mold counts and allergen counts and everything, right? So there are other issues that coffee can cause from bacteria, like different digestive issues, different things like that. So we're actually rolling out something called a coffee reset kit. So the coffee reset kit will be 15 days of a reset that will include 15 days of our black coffee and then 15 days of this afternoon complex. And then 15 of these nighttime complex. So the afternoon complex is a restore, revive, and release. Does it help you taper off coffee if you're something for a habitual user every day? Exactly.

So it actually gets you off of using habitual use of coffee. So this actually replaces your second cup of coffee while actually removing the mold from your body using glutathione, oregano, P3 oil, cinnamon, cilantro, these different things that help pull mold out of the body, right? While also reintroducing probiotics and prebiotics. So then the nighttime takes what was removed and helps you release it. Activated charcoal, zeolite, things that grab the mold and help you poop it out. But then at the same time, also helping you sleep better. Valerian root, a little melatonin, very small amount of melatonin. You shouldn't use more than like 500 micrograms. Everybody overdoses. You can't find a pill at Target with less than like

2.5, which is just stupid. Nobody needs that much. You're messing with your hormones at that point. So taking just a small amount of melatonin and a bunch of other really great ingredients, reishi, lionishi lions mane chaga Like all these different things to help restore adrenal glands, too So the whole idea is to get you off shitty coffee that has toxins and molds That's frying your adrenal glands because you're drinking three to five glasses of it a day and switch to one cup With the reset and be able to keep drinking our coffee going forward done. This is my new travel companion. This is it This company, I'm going to put it out the frequency out there.

This company is going to sell for a lot of money. Yes. I'm just saying. I can feel it. There's certain founders with certain stories with certain brands that it just all comes together. It's a very unique formula. You have it. It's very

impressive. Do you want to do a code for our audience? Totally. Can we do code skinny? Code skinny it is. Shop coffee company. What do you want to give them off? Like 20%? What do you want to do? 20% would be amazing. Let's do 20%. 20% off strongcoffeecompany.com. And then where can everyone follow you on Instagram? Maybe we can do a giveaway too. Yeah, I would love to do one. Strong Coffee Company is our Instagram handle. What's yours if people want to go look at you?

I feel like people are going to want to go look at you after this episode. It's Von Rothfelder, my last name. V-O-N-R-O-T-H, F as in Frank, E-L, D as in David, E-R. Little, uh... I feel like you've done this before. You know, we saw you on Joe Rogan. Well, they talked about us.

Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't on it, but I would love to be on Joe Rogan. That'd be amazing. Joe, let's put it out into the ether. Another big list. You know, I mean, honestly, like the fact that he's not drinking strong coffee is just silly. Silly.

He needs strong coffee. Yeah. I mean, who drinks regular coffee? It's moldy. It's toxic. No, I'm done. This is it. This is it. So. And these are great. these are travel packs of the latte but you know what i

was thinking we have to like periodically bounce around and i'll and we're always getting this i don't want to put the hotels on blast we get this shitty hotel coffee right and i'm done with that now i'm gonna have this well and if you're ever traveling we're in every whole foods in america so you can always grab a travel pack a travel box and sunlight whole foods and we're at sun life don't don't forget sunlight oh yeah personally another 30 minutes since khalil's So you can always grab a travel pack, a travel box and whole foods. And we're at Sun Life. Don't forget Sun Life. Oh yeah, it's another 30 minutes since Khalil's invention. Personally, Sun Life is a great grab.

It's so easy. It's right there on the shelf, right next to the cash register. Next time you come on, I would love to niche down and pick your brain on health and wellness and fitness because it seems like you know a lot of that stuff too. We't even get to get into that yeah i would love to i mean that's certainly my passion when you come on with donatella yes yeah let's do it you guys can wear your underwear and we'll interview you about your health and fitness it's so funny because i really am wearing the underwear she gave me so it's just funny that we talk about it it's just like because they're kind of like this like good luck charm for me.

I probably only wear them like once every couple of months. Thank you. Thank you for that. I got lucky underwear on. It's like what we like to do is have the person like really get to know the background.

But then I think the next time, like obviously you have an expertise in specific subjects, like niching down on that. That's what. Let's do better. Let's get you guys in a training session with me once or twice.

Where are you trained? So I actually trained, I actually came out of retirement for Jasper Weir. He's the founder of Task Us and he has a lot of lower back issues. And that just kind of piqued my interest as I like people who have issues that I can... What about heartburn? Do you have any stretches for heartburn? I mean, I wouldn't say stretches, i would say definitely uh there is definitely some nutritional things that we could go over that would definitely get rid of heartburn okay i would say stop drinking sparkling water would be a start she's taking down my three yeah yeah yeah

sparkling water is one of the worst things for heartburn you're actually also depleting your body of uh oxygen because the carbon dioxide let me give up margaritas weed mints i give up walking up the stairs i'll give a parking lot um hookers next time you come on we're gonna niche down on health and fitness and diet adam you are so inspiring can we do a giveaway of all your favorites yeah let's do it yeah let's do it all oh and i got you we got you those shirts we could do a shirt giveaway with some product and a bunch of stuff all you guys have to do is follow at strong coffee company on instagram and let me know your favorite part of this episode on my instagram at lauren bostick adam come back on anytime maybe you and khalil can come on and we can just i would just have to listen to him talk for an hour and a

half fight over the mic i don't know though i don't know I feel like you both are so open it would be a pretty good episode it would be a great episode and I always tell people with the strong coffee company the company you're only as strong as the ones you keep right so that's why the company is so important for us you're pretty strong Michael Bostic yes sir yes sir thank you adam thanks adam pleasure thank you guys appreciate you don't forget to use code skinny 20 we left a link for you in the show notes his coffee is amazing it's insane i think you're gonna love it and of course he's doing a giveaway for a bunch of his products all you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest instagram at lauren bostick and make sure you're following at strong coffee company on instagram thanks for listening

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