Building Resilience: Rising Up From The Worst With Sam Bakhtiar

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell. And feeling really blessed this morning, feeling as I sit here just lucky, lucky to be clear headed and feel at peace. It's a lot going on in the world right now. A ton of shit happening in so many ways. You know, didn't think that it could get any more sort of heady or dizzying with our politics and, and that's in the US and everywhere really. I think there's just tons of change, there's lots of disruption and then more recently with this coronavirus thing that I think I've never really seen a time I shouldn't even say that. I think the last time that I have felt that the world was off kilter in the way that it feels like it is in the moment is a very, very different time that some of you may be old enough to remember this really well, some of you may be not. I know with our kids last night we had a family meeting. Our kids were really young at the time that 911 occurred, but man, those few weeks, those few months after 9 11, the world was just, yeah, it was off balance and people, people were in fear and in so many different ways. Just you know, it didn't feel, it didn't feel stable. And that's what the world feels like at this moment. And you know, to me when, when the shit hits the fan, that's the one. When I get the calmest, it's like my heart rate goes, it cuts in half, I think. And I think it's really important that at times like this that we are able to harness our energy and be clear headed and be calm. That's the time, that's more the time for breathing and meditation and, and looking out at the landscape of things in anticipation of opportunity and anticipation of growth. That's the time for that more than anything else. And I got a great guest today on the show who I think we share philosophy there. It's my suspicion that's the case, who's also an entrepreneur just like myself. I'M going to give you a little bit more background on him in a second and then ask him some questions, questions about that and then we'll dive in and see where things lead us today. There's a lot going on, a lot to talk about. So Dr. Sam Bakhtiar is a refugee turned divorcee on the verge of bankruptcy. Had a lot going on at a certain point in his life, like we all do, and turned that around to become a multimillionaire, a champion bodybuilder, author, doctor, CEO of multiple worldwide brands. As the founder of the Camp transformation centers with 110 locations and the 1% ER movement, SAM inspires adults and young people to discover their 1% potential and excel in the five Fs. Absolutely love this. The five Fs. Faith, Family, Fitness, finance, and of course, fun. Man, if you can't have fun, it's not worth doing anything. So, Sam, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that.

Yeah, what's. What's not written and a part of that bio that you would love for people to know about you.

The king of failure.

Oh, that's bs, man. You're not the king of failure.

But you, I mean, you know, I think failure is, you know, the prerequisite to success. So the more you fail, you know, the more resilient you become, the more you'll learn if you, if you actually do learn from them, you know. So the reason I'm here and I'm experiencing somewhat of a success is because I failed over and over because I wasn't afraid to try. You know, I'm never afraid to try. I'll try. I try. If I, you know, eat dirt, I get back up and try again, eat dirt and say, I have a seven month old. Actually, he's eight now. Pretty soon he's gonna start walking, you know, as you know, he's gonna fall like a thousand times before he starts walking. He's gonna take a little step and fall, a little step and fall. And no kid ever said, you know what? Eff it, I don't want to walk no more. This is it. I'm just going to lay down. You know. But somehow as adults, every time we fail or if we fail, we just want to give up. We just want to be like, okay, this sucks, and blame all the circumstances and everybody else and coronavirus and the economy and whatever else you want to call it, you know, we never want to take personal responsibilities. You know, we are here because all of some of the decisions we made here in life so far.

Yeah. I mean, you said so much there, Sam. It's interesting using the analogy of the kids when they're little. I love that one personally, because just having four kids of our own and having seen them go through that stage of crawling to standing to knocking shit over all over the house and having a childproof the house. And like you said, they eat dirt again and again and again. And yet you said it, that the kid doesn't think, geez, I'll never walk. But there's another piece of that which is the parents. The parents. The worst, the worst of the parents. We all know some pretty, some parents that maybe shouldn't have. Should have gotten a license before they had a kid. But even those folks never look at their kid and say, oh, you know, that kid will never walk. I mean, you know, they crawl, they stand, they fall down, you know they're going to walk. You just, you have that faith. Like you said, that's one of your apps is faith. Faith that they will walk. And if it takes eating dirt to use your words a hundred times, 500 times at some point, that kids gonna walk, right? I mean, why, why is it any different when that little kid turns 30 years old or turns 40 or 50?

Because people just kept telling you you can't do it. You start, you know, thinking that, you know, you start paying attention what other people think and people's opinion. A kid is not paying attention to anybody else's opinion. A kid has one thing on his mind. I want to get up and I want to walk because I want to get that toy over there. I want to walk to that thing over there. As an adult, you know, we're not, you know, we forget, we lose focus on what we really want and we start paying attention to what everybody else is saying, what everybody else is doing and what everybody else is telling us. And that's why, you know, it's our biggest downpour as adults versus women with kids.

So we could talk about one of those dark failure times for you. And maybe it's helpful to do that just to give a little context for it. But I want to, if you can remember what your mindset was like, like. So, for example, I'll tell you, I pivoted out of being a lawyer. I was a lawyer for 18 years. Very, very successful, couple of offices, more money than I'd ever dreamed I'd make certainly many times more than my parents made. I would typically make more in a day or in a week. Easily than my parents made in an entire year. And that I would do that all the time. But I was miserable, so I had to. I had to get out of that because just destroying my insides. And then I move into something else, rise to the top of that particular thing, become very successful in that arena. And then business partners and I don't see eye to eye. We have a falling out. They don't believe in my vision any longer, and I'm out. So I have to pivot this time now, not because I decide that I'm going to get out, but because somebody else says, you got to get out. And I remember that that time caught me more off guard than the first time when I was the miserable one and making the changes. This time it was something that I didn't necessarily see coming, could have. You know, in hindsight, it's always easy to see the writing on the wall.

Right?

We know that. So I look back, I can see it. But then I was caught off guard and I remember what, what I was doing and where my head was at and what I was more. More intentionally looking to focus at, focus on at that time, which helped me to get out of that and create what we've been doing ever since, which we absolutely loved. So, you know, now we've got a disruption with this thing, this virus thing, which we'll get to in a minute. But take us back to that time, and it could be you coming to a new country, it could be the ending of your marriage, whatever was going on. And if you can remember what it was like in that moment, what was happening for you, what was going on in your head and what was the worst sort of thoughts you were entertaining at the time. If you.

The time when I came to America.

Well, I'm saying in your bio it says refugee turned divorcee on the verge of bankruptcy. So I've probably condensing that a bit.

But, yeah, so I had many dark times in my life, you know. You know. You know, I remember it all started, you know, my dad left us when I was three. Never saw him again, you know. You know, then our country went to the war and we got bombed on every night and we had to go under, under the stairs in the basement every time we hear sirens. I came to America expecting I'm going to go to Beverly Hills, because that's what I saw on tv. And we went to the worst neighborhood I've ever seen to this day, where outside there was drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and people were getting shot outside of my uncle's store, you know, then, you know, coming to America, you know, my favorite sport I played all my life in Iran was soccer and they didn't have a soccer team. I got cut from the basketball team, I got ridiculed, I got beat up, I got bullied, I got name called because I didn't, I wasn't, I was the only minority in school, you know, then, you know, you know, starting and going, going through chiropractic school and college because my mom said become a doctor. I got my doctor because of my mom and started my first business. Then the recession hit. Recession, you know, hit, you know, worse times when my ex wife was pregnant with our first child and I have minus $314 in the bank account, you know, then I concentrated to try to get the business backing back in. So from 2008 to 2013 I was broke and you know, I was 2014, I was broke. I was trying to make ends meet. Finally I started turning things around and then I got served with divorce papers. You know, I mean, and we still to this day, you know, as we're talking about, even off camera when you saw me picking up the phone, I'm still, even though that I got remarried, I'm still having issues, you know, to this day with my ex wife and co parenting and you know, and all that kind of stuff. So just because you see that the house, the mansions and you know, all this kind of stuff, you know, that doesn't mean that you don't have adversity in life. You know, in life you either in a problem, you know, you know, going, you know, headed towards a problem or just left one, you know what I mean? So there's always going to be something. And I wholeheartedly believe that God puts adversity in front of you to test you to see if you're worthy of his blessing.

Yeah, I definitely don't think there's anything that's going on for any of us that we're not capable of. I absolutely believe in a loving, kind universe. And sometimes kindness comes in funny, in funny ways because something that helps you to grow, really a kind thing, it's a beautiful thing. It doesn't necessarily feel that way in the moment.

Right? Yeah, goes that way. You know, I always, you know, say this, I always say this analogy. What I love if you ever watch MMA or boxing and sometimes when you see somebody, you know, get punched straight in the face, they get punched and they shake it off and laugh and let the opponent know, yeah, you hit me. That was a good one. You Got me good on that one. And to me, the more you get punched, the more you're used to it, the more you're able to maneuver through adversity, you know, and in life, man, it's the same thing. Just like boxing, you know, you won't be. You know, the first time that guy got punched straight in the face, he wasn't laughing, I guarantee you that. The first hundred times he got punched in the face, he wasn't laughing, I guarantee you that. But he got punched so many times. He understood that being punched was a part of the game. And if you're playing this game called life, adversity is going to be part of the game. So embrace it, smile at it, look at it and say, hey, what am I going to learn about this today, how I'm going to maneuver it, and what's the other blessing that's going to be on the other side? Every time I've gone through some kind of a huge adversity, any. Every single time when I thought my life was over, I became better at the end. But have I given up? How about just throwing the towel? I'm an organic. The. Where I am right now.

Yeah, it's just in that genre. I grew up watching Muhammad Ali. Now, you know, I'm a little. Maybe a couple years your senior. But. And, and I remember Muhammad Ali, I mean, he. I'm not old enough to remember when he was, when he didn't, didn't accept his, you know what, wasn't willing to go fight in Vietnam and for religious purpose reasons as well as other reasons. He said, hey, I'm just, you know, I'm a conscientious objector here. And that was tough. I mean, he was threatened, you know, death threats and every other, you know, kind of thing was thrown his way. And then, of course, missing, missing time, missing a good part of the prime of his career coming back and, and standing in that ring with the likes of Joe Frazier, Joe Foreman, George Foreman, sorry. And. And in the ring, he would smile at guys who punched him square in the head. I mean, you know, he could take a punch. He could. And he also had that little move that he would do where it's sort of like he. He would aikido the punch. You know, he called it the rope. A dope. He'd get on the ropes, right, and he kind of move his head back and forth, and guys would sort of be hitting him, but not quite hitting him. And, you know, it's like he was absorbing the blow. I mean, the guy was Just a genius. He was a genius on and off the, you know, in and out of the ring. And there's. There's something to the fact that all of us have to do that. I mean, obviously, you know, with, With Ali, it's a, you know, you could call it a shame, but it's also just a part of life. The man ends up with Parkinson's and this. This great, you know, big hulk of a guy, this, this champion and this guy who could speak like nobody's business. I mean, this perf. Consummate showman. And then he can't really communicate. You know, it's like his communication left him as well. So I think there's an element of. Of all of us having to just sort of learn how to, to roll with the punches. I mean, I just want to go with that analogy. I mean, that's, that's really what we're talking about here, right, Sam? I mean, you can't, you can't really take it on the face too much. I mean, because Rocky, you know, Rocky, I guess, maybe is an example of both, because in the first movie, right, the. As far as I'm concerned, The only Rocky, 1976, you know, Rocky and Apollo Creed, and the guy gets knocked down and knocked down and knocked down every single time. He just gets back up, smiles, shakes it off, right? Says, that's, that's good, but it's not good enough, right? It's not gonna, not gonna knock me out. And he wins our hearts, but he loses the fight, right? He loses the fight in the end. So I'm not certain that we want to have people leaning into the punch. But, but to be able to roll with those punches, right? I mean, you gotta be. You gotta be smart about it, too, right?

Well, you don't. You know, nobody leans into a punch, you know, on purpose anyway, you know, you know, you obviously want to avoid punches, but you also understand if you want to play the game, you are going to get hit. Floyd Mayweather, the best defensive fighter of all time, he got hit. If he got hit, then you're going to get hit and everybody else is going to get, you know, and nobody has gone through life not getting hit again, guarantee you that. And if there was some day, for whatever reason, some kind of a trust fund baby who just got billions of dollars and all he did was just eat pineapples and, you know, be by the swimming pool, I guarantee you, you'll be the most depressed person in the world. Because what is life without adversity? What is life without Overcoming what is life without learning what is life if you're not playing life?

Yeah, I feel like you're describing resilience. How do you define resilience, Sam?

Resilience for me is somebody who doesn't let outside forces bother him. They have a goal and they're willing to do whatever it takes to go through to get to that goal. They don't care. They don't care about the past. All they care about is where they need to go. And they're willing to pay the price to get there, any price to get there. That, to me, is resilience. My definition of resilience.

What are you excited about these days? I know you and I had talked right before we hit the record button that there's some opportunities out there and that might be part of your excitement, but what's, what's really got you jazzed up right now?

Honestly, man. Fatherhood.

Yeah. Being a daddy, huh?

Well, like, you know, I mean, yeah, there's opportunities out there and I'm all about it and I will jump on those opportunities, you know, don't get me wrong, you know, and my main focus is quite quality time with the family. Spend time with the family, be with the family. That's what my main focus is right now.

Yeah, you can't get those days back. Our kids, I think I'd said this to you also just a little bit ago that our kids have left the nest. So my wife and I, Randy and I, we are empty nesters and enjoying that. It's like I'm supposed to feel guilty, I think, but I don't. I. I feel like this is a. This is a wonderful time to see our little chicks fly on their own. We had a meeting last night, actually gathered our crew together for a family meeting to just talk about this coronavirus because, you know, it's got a lot of people in fear. It's got, I mean, our kids, we got two in college, two that are out, two that are in, and they've just moved. The entire UC system has moved to online classes now. So you got kids in, you know, living on campus who are now not attending classes on campus. They're attending them through their computer. That's a big, It's a big change, man. I mean, well, what do you. I asked you before, but I want to get you on now just talking about this. What do you, what do you make of what's. What we're seeing with this, with the response to the virus? And I don't mean like the CDC response. I mean, the response of everyday people.

To it, to me, you know, I think these days everybody is so influenced by the media, by the social media, and we talked about it, you know, even with that, with a walking example, with everyone, what everybody else is doing, you know, and again, you know, that's why I created my 1% brand. 1% brand is all about seeing what the masses are doing and doing the opposite. Doing your own thing, do your own, you know, thing. Not being a sheep and being a lion. Making your own decision, you know, and, you know, making your own paths. You know, Warren Buffett said that, you know, if you want to be successful, look at what the masses do, do the opposite. And it's so true. Never, never been more true than that. So today is a great day, great time right now to be aware, to be able to just think clearly, do your own research, come to your own conclusion. You know, if somebody came and told me, man, don't do an interview with Adam, that guy's a jerk, I'm not gonna take that. What I'm gonna do is I want to make my own research, I want to come to my own conclusion about who Adam is and what he does and all that kind of stuff, you know, and most so many people are just jumping ships, you know, especially with a wild, you know, spread of social media and everything that's happening right now, you know, everybody's all in a panic. There's no toilet paper, there's no water.

Yeah. No hand sanitizer. People buying hand sanitizer for a hundred bucks.

I mean, what on earth, you know, there, you know, we went to get diapers for my 77 month old, you know, and then it was like, we have to go to three different targets to find diapers. I'm going like, wow, okay, you know, but guess what? You know, you know, the toilet paper companies are happy, you know.

3M is happy, you know.

Yeah, exactly. So that's how millions, millions are made and millions are lost. But you have to be able to understand it, look at it, and see what, you know, how to react. If you look at a back of Lysol for many years, it says coronavirus on it. Coronavirus has been around forever. You know, this might be like a little stronger thing, but the people who are really going to pass away from coronavirus are people who are immune systems compromised, you know, you know, older people who are going to die from influenza, you know, people are going to, you know, you know, and, you know, influenza virus, the flu virus, kills more people than coronavirus has ever did. 10 times more. You know, nobody talks about, you know, obesity and how many, you know, how much obesity kills in America, but yet we come up with a new flavor of Doritos, a new flavor of, you know, you know, cheese whips and, you know, and all that kind of stuff, you know, so it's time is a good time to be awake, Good time to make your own decision and not follow just the masses and the media as that is as just making everybody panic. You know, there's no channels out there, no, no news out there that says, oh, we'll tell you what's all the good thing that's happening. There's no, no news of. It's a good news news because you know what? Nobody would watch it. Yeah, nobody wants.

So interesting. Sam and I really want to invite people to repeat the words that Sam just said, which is, it's a good day to be awake. It's a good time to be awake. I mean, if there's only one thing you take out of this discussion, that would be it for me. It's a good time to be awake, to be aware, to see what's going on. And it's rare that you get to see the herd all in, all in one direction. You know, like if you, if you watch a herd, you know, and, or you watch a, you know, documentary where you see fish swimming in schools under the water, it's rare that you can see so many people going in the same direction globally. Sometimes you see it in your own market, that's where you live, etc. But, but we're seeing a global herd moving in a certain direction. See it in the stock market, you see it in other places. This is a great time to be a contrarian. So that concept of 1%, be that 1% that just decides, you know, I'm going to swim upstream today and just look and see, you know, what do I notice? What am I, what, what can I be aware of? What opportunities are out there?

100%. I agree. 100%, Sam.

So tell us a little bit about the camp transformation centers and what was the inspiration for, for starting that business and where's that, where's that at today?

Everything that I've done that was a success, it all started because it was a failure first, you know, so it wasn't like this genius idea I came with. And it was really out of desperation. I started my personal training business in February 15th of 2000, and I started doing good by my standards, which is very low. I come from a very low income area called Sharon, Pennsylvania, where you made $2,000 a month, you were really doing good, you know. So, you know, I started my business, you know, I started making 10, 15, $20,000 a month. I thought I was Bill Gates, you know, and I was making more money in a month than a lot of people were making a whole year back home. But, you know, I didn't know anything about investing or, you know, doing money correctly and saving up or anything like that. I bought it. House, a lot of cars, you know, like, you know, stupid shit, you know, that, you know, a lot of people do when they don't know how to really manage money and delay gratification. So in 2008, the recession hit. Nobody could afford personal one on one training and my business started tanking and I didn't know what to do, you know, so I had to come up with creative ideas to be able to retain my clients because nobody could afford six or eight hundred dollars a month bail, no more. So I came up, you know, after two, two, two years, two and a half years, three years of failing at so many different programs. You know, I created a group training concept where, you know, we could have one trainer with as many as 20 to 30 clients and train them. Now we lower the cost for the clients. So don't have to pay $800 a month, no more $600 a month. They pay $100 a month, they can afford that. But we also, what we did was also lower the cost for the company because with one on one training, every time we had a client, you had to have a trainer. So when our revenue went up, our payroll chased it. But the biggest thing that we discovered, because, you know, I come from an old school bodybuilding background, that you have to have one trainer with one client, you got to lift heavy weights and all that kind of stuff, is the fact that after that we actually got better results for our clients. Clients stayed longer because they were working out with their friends. And it was a much better vibe than the one on one training because one on one training became a therapy session. After a while when you and the trainer kept talking, all it was, did more talking, less lifting and that was, you know, totally, you know, stumbled by, you know, by accident. And that's when we, you know, find the magic because we failed the recession. Out of desperation comes inspiration and creativity. When you're doing good and this and that, you don't want to be creative because you're comfortable. Desperation is when you have to be, get creative and you have to try to make things work and that's when genius ideas really come up.

Yeah, necessity is the mother of invention. It's, you know, old statements like that exist for a reason. And yeah, it's in the five Fs. This is a part of the philosophy that, that is that you share with kids. Faith, family, fitness, finance and fun. This is an important thing to you. I get that you spend a lot of time working with kids. That's a part of the model to me, man.

You mean I work with everyone, kids, adults, and really let them to understand what is really, what game are they really playing. See, a lot of people are just playing the wrong game, you know. You know, they think they want money, but that's not what everybody wants. They want freedom. They think that they want more money, but they want more time with their, with their kids. All that's available now, but you have to make sure you're aware of it. Again, I'm going back, we're going to go back to the same thing over and over. Awareness. Awareness. Most people are just walking around, just not aware of what they're eating, what they're drinking, what they're doing to their body, their finances. They're just walking around, just existing without really honing in on the particulars. And so when I sat down, like, okay, what areas of life somebody needs to be to become fulfilled? That's the sixth F that I never talk about. Because at the end of the day, all of us want happiness and fulfillment. Everything that we do in life, we're going towards happiness and fulfillment. So for me, you know, faith, okay, Now, I don't care what religion you are, I don't. None of my business. But you have to understand that there's a higher power. And you're here for a reason greater than for yourself, for you to eat shit and sleep and repeat. God has put you here for a reason. If you don't believe in God, you have to live in a higher power. That's your business. I'm not going to get into religion for you, but there's got to be a higher power that you believe in and something greater than yourself. Two family, okay? We all want better relationship with people who brought us in this world. We'd be able to be around them. People that brought us in this world, our relatives, our family. And some of them is not even our family. Someone can be friends that are close, closer than families. I have some friends that are a lot closer to some of my family members. Basically, our personal relationships, family and our personal relationships are very important. And to this day I don't care if you own a business, an online business. I don't care if you have a brick and mortar business. I don't care what kind of business you are. In this day and age, you will not survive without relationships. And relationship is going to be your biggest advantage over anyone, you know. So thirdly, fitness, okay? Now, you know, you got to be able to be at your top state. You have to be able to function optimally for you to be able to do, you know, to bring the finances and be with your family and do everything else. If you're not taking care of your fitness and your health, then everything else going to fall apart, you know. And you know, and last but not least, you gotta have fun. You gotta stop and smell the roses. You have to be able to say, man, you know, what am I doing all this for? If life is not fun, then what are we gonna do?

Indeed, brother, indeed. This all again filters back to me in almost like a recipe for creating resilience. And the thing about resilience is the time to create it is before you need it. And right now it's. You know, when we were talking about resilience a year ago, two years ago, that would have been a better time to be working on your resilience than. Than when the coronavirus has stopped. You know, change things for you, change the landscape. But the time is here. And now is the moment where you get to, as you say, be more aware, and I would say be more aware of what it is that you're doing to be the best you can be, take care of yourself now so that not. Not just that you can thrive again or survive what's going on now, but that you've created a. A new trajectory for yourself, a new path. Because as you said, Sam, this is not the last adversity you're going to face. In fact, this won't be anything like what you might be in your worst moment of what if ing. It will not turn out to be that anyway. But rest assured, there'll be another something that challenges your comfort zone a month, a year, 10 years from now, whenever it is. So, Sam, what's one thing that you do on a ritual basis to produce greater resilience for yourself?

I like to just put myself in uncomfortable positions. I like to take the hard way. I like to do. I like difficult. I don't like easy. Easy is not fun to me. You know, I like to do things. You know, I like to take the stairs. I like to do things that I'm uncomfortable with. Recently, I started yoga, you know, and I'm a bodybuilder. I'm a short dude with muscle mass that have zero flexibility. Yeah, I go in there and I'm just humbled. I'm by far the worst in class. You know, I like to put myself in stuff and things that I don't like to do. That's how you build resiliency. I would like to get myself out of a comfort zone. It's weird now, you know, over the years, I've learned that when I'm uncomfortable, I'm happy, and when I'm too comfortable, I'm not happy. I'm sitting home on the couch and just sipping on, you know, wine and watching Netflix. Like, I'm like, oh, I feel like I need to read a book. I need to go exercise. I need to go jog. I need to go. I need to do something. For me, that's not happiness for me. For me, discipline equals happiness. And I just learned that that's who I am. It's weird, you know, it's. You know.

You know, I think you put it. You put your finger on it, Sam. It's who you are. I mean, we all get that. There's no recipe for us, for all of us. Our recipe is. Is the thing that we discover about ourselves through that awareness.

You.

You're speaking about.

I'm uncomfortable when I'm comfortable is weird. It's weird.

I feel the same way. I mean, I know what you're talking about. Sitting around when things are good. I'm never keen to sit around too long. I want to read a book. I want to get out and get to the gym, walk, swim, do something that puts me on my growth edge a bit. And maybe that's one good takeaway from this, is that, folks, wherever you're at right now, and we're all at some place at this moment, be it on our growth edge or in a more comfortable position, all. All roads will lead back to what. What works for you. What works for you. I mean, it's. What works for Sam isn't going to work for you necessarily. Or what works for me. You got to find your own. You got to find your own path. And that's what that awareness is so good for. To be awake means you're not going to follow the somebody else's path. You're not comparing yourself to other people based on what you're seeing on Instagram or some other social platform or what you're hearing from the media. This is about you. You make your own Path. I mean, what else have you got at the end of the day anyway, right? Sam, we're all going to get to the end of our days. It's either, did you. Did you live your life? Would you live someone else's?

100%. Can I agree with you more?

Stuff. Good stuff, brother. Well, I will. It's a good place to end, I think. And. And also to remind everybody to create a ritual for yourself in the. The morning. Sam, I don't know if you agree with this or not, but to me, the beginning of the day is a very powerful catalyst for what that day is going to look like. There you go. What'd you just hold up? Because I know not everybody's going to look at this on YouTube.

I just hold up my schedule that I print out on a nightly basis. So for me, today, my day starts the night before. So what I do is I don't even have my schedule on my phone. I print it out because I don't want to be on my phone, get distracted. So I print out exactly what I'm doing, what time I'm doing it, what needs to be done. And I have it very detailed out. So if you want to be productive, if you want to get somewhere in life, you can't just get up and say, well, what am I going to do today? I wonder what you need to do. You have to be intentional about your day. You have to be intentional about every minute that you spend. Again, I've said this many times in many different podcasts. You know, everyone agrees that, you know, time is so much more precious than money, but we never see someone drive around the neighborhood just throwing money out the window. We never do that. We keep money. And we are more careful with money. We're more careful with money than our time. Yeah, we're wasting time all the time. I see inefficiencies in people's day all the time. We're just wasting time. And if you are wasting time, that means that you might as well just throw money out the window, because that's it. That's cheaper than you wasting time. Cheaper than you just sitting and not doing anything and not have a plan. Do not have a plan, then what is going to be given to you? One that you're not going to like.

Yeah, it's a day by design or a day by default. Interesting, right? I picked up my phone just when you said the places we waste our time. And I picked it up just to show you this because a kind of interesting thing. I turned my phone to Grayscale about two months ago. And it was after watching a documentary about this thing and how this thing is addicting our kids. Forget about us. Right? We're adults, we get to, we got personal freedom. We make our personal choices. If I'm addicted, I'm addicted. That's, that's my issue. But, but it really, it really started to strike me about not just my kids, but now thinking about on my, our grandkids and the fact that, you know, there are kids that you see sometimes at the airport. I've seen this a couple of times where people have their kid in a, you know, little, little carrier and, and sitting, I mean like 6 months, 7 month old child with a little device sitting right in front of them. A little iPad or iPhone or Android or whatever it is with some app that the kid is looking at. So I mean, it's my personal experiment that turning it to grayscale. I touch it about a third of the time and I think what you just showed people, which is a piece.

Of paper, an old school piece of.

Paper, just like something as simple as planning your day. I want to use your words. I start my day the night before. My day starts the night before.

Look, I get up at 3 o' clock in the morning because I don't want to work out when, you know, I want to work out when my family's sleeping. I don't want to come home from, you know, from office and then take time away from the family and go to the gym. That's not what I want to do. You know, I'm crystal clear on what I want out of life and how I want to spend my time. My number one priority in life, other than serving humanity and faith and all that, my number one priority in life is to spend as much time with my family. Number two is to provide for my family. Number three, stay healthy so I can do one and two. Yeah. You know, and so once you're crystal clear on your mission and decision making becomes really easy, you know, then you know exactly what you're going to do and more, more importantly, exactly what you're not going to do.

Yeah, they become non negotiables.

Yeah, non negotiable. So, you know, and that's why, you know, I do. So at 3 o' clock in the morning when I get up, guess what I don't want to do. I don't want to figure out what am I doing today? What am I supposed to do? That's not what I want to do. I already know the night before and I'm supposed to do. Guess what else I don't want to do at 3 o' clock in the morning, I don't get up, 3 o' clock, morning, what I'm going to wear to the gym. No, my clothes already set out. Like my planners already set out. I'm reading, I'm getting dressed, you know, you know, my clothes are set out, looking at my planner, I'm reading my goals, then I'm headed to the gym. I call it, you know, I have what I call a perfect day, formula, routine for me to be able to be at peak state.

It is about exactly peak state. As though, as though I sometimes ask this when I keynote a corporate conference. I'll ask the people, what if. What if every day that you went to work, every day you were a man, you know, picked up your responsibilities as an executive, as a leader? What if every day somebody's life depended on you being at your best? Meaning it's an Olympic gold medal performance that's required from you every day that you get into the office. Because I was a lifeguard long ago, not so long ago, but When I was 19 years old, for about seven summers, I worked at a beach, very active beach in New York. Hundreds of thousands of people on a Saturday or Sunday would gather on that beach. Thousands of people in the water. We had crazy rip currents. This was no Baywatch thing. This was literally. We had our down days, we had our moments when the water was calm, it was like a lake and all that kind of thing. And midweek was always fun. But on those days, man, we rock and rolled like nobody's business. And you couldn't be distracted from your goal. You couldn't, you weren't allowed. You didn't have the margin for error to be distracted or to be tired or hungover or any of that other bullshit. Because people's lives depended on you being in that stand and at your best. And that's what you're describing. It's like, what if you treated your business, what if you treated the things you say are important to you with degree of sanctity? What would it look like for you?

And it does. And for me, it does. I mean, you know, somebody's life, I need to perform because somebody's life depends on me. Who depends on me? My wife, my children, you know, you know, I got to be able to be that superpower. I got to be able to provide for them. I got to be able to lead the family and I'll be able to. Their life depend on. It doesn't doesn't need to be a matter of life and death, but if I don't perform, their life goes down. I'm not going to be able to provide for them. I'm not going to be able to be a role model for them. Them. That to me is just as important as somebody dying, because that's a slow death. If I'm not being able to be a leader in my house and be able to, you know, be able to be respected or what I do, I don't be like, oh, my dad was a deadbeat. All he did was smoke weed and watch tv and he never provided for us. Is that what I want my legacy, my children to say about me? Or that's what I think about? It's more than that. What kind of example am I setting for my family and the next generation?

I feel that, brother. And I know everybody who's listening to this can feel it. And hopefully it's a good moment for everybody to take a nice collective deep breath, just be a bit more present in the moment, a little more awake and aware, and then let's go from there. No answers. Not going to pretend to give you something to do other than what maybe you've been inspired from this conversation to think a little bit about. So, Sam, it's been a pleasure. Really appreciate your presence.

Adam, thank you for having me.

Yeah, a blast everybody. Wake up tomorrow. Have a plan for your day. I know my plan every day I put my feet on the floor is to thank God and to say these words out loud. I love my life. Yes, keep ciao for now, everybody.

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