In this podcast interview, host Mike sits down with Brandon Epstein, author of Programmed to Fail, to explore how subconscious programming sabotages personal achievement. Epstein explains that he felt "programmed to fail" due to deep‑seated beliefs formed by family, culture, and generational conditioning. A pivotal "Matrix moment" came when he ingested 5‑MeO‑DMT from the Bufo alvarius toad, inducing an ego‑death that revealed the layers of programming governing his identity. Guided by a mentor, he then undertook a six‑month "Inner Planet Cleanup"—a systematic, energy‑based process of uncovering and rewriting subconscious beliefs about worth, money, and self‑identity. By reprogramming these core beliefs, Epstein transformed his own life, growing his fitness business to over $1 million, improving relationships, and gaining confidence to coach elite athletes despite lacking formal credentials. He describes how he now detects completed reprogramming through somatic cues (e.g., sensations in the stomach/chakra) and acknowledges that new limiting programs surface as one progresses, requiring continual effort. The conversation blends personal anecdotes, practical techniques, and the philosophical framing of beliefs as software that can be debugged and upgraded.
Chapters
Well, I believed I was worthless. Why wouldn't I want intimacy from a woman? Because she's in love with someone who's worthless. Well, there must be something really wrong with you if you're in love with a worthless man.
Yeah. Guys, I am so excited to talk with today's guest, Brandon Epstein. He is the author of Program to Fail. And he is doing what I would love to be doing as well, which is coaching a lot of pro athletes, top execs as well. I do coach a lot of executives and leaders, but I just love this guy's energy. He's super sharp. He understands the nervous system, the subconscious mind, and so much more and how to get that unbelievable edge. So, Brandon, welcome to the show, and I can't wait to connect.
Mike, thank you for having me. And everyone, thank you for taking the time out to listen. We're going to provide a lot of value. You're going to walk away from this conversation a better man or woman. So let's get after it.
I love it. Well, Brandon, first question is like, why did you title your book Programmed to Fail? I'm so curious about that. Why Programmed to Fail?
Yeah, well, viscerally, I was programmed to fail. And when I had my awakening, which we can get to that story, you know, it sounds like a very spiritual wee-woo thing, but really it's just like, you know, Neo, you want the red pill or the blue pill? You understand that like there's all these generations that came before you and this society construct that you're born into and then your family. There's all this construct and programming that you didn't choose, and some of it's working for you, some of it's working against you. And so my experience was a lot was working against me. And so I wasn't getting a lot of the things that I wanted in my life, starting when I played football in college. I was like, man, why am I so anxious? Like, why can't I just show up and just like play with a free present mind. And so I was like, the first time I started to realize this and it's a whole rabbit hole, I really had to go through almost every bucket of my life. I'd say the area I was programmed to succeed in was romantic relationships. I've had my issues, but my parents have been together for 50 years. Amazing model. So anyone could look at their life. Yeah, just look at your results.
Plus, right.
And then you can—
Plus you're a pretty good looking dude.
It doesn't hurt, bro. Sorry about that. But yeah, if you just look at your life, you can see where you've been programmed to fail. And so it really came from my experience. And I started, you know, doing all this one-on-one coaching and just seeing all these clear patterns within people. It's like, oh man, you really boxed yourself into a corner here and you don't even know how you've done it because you've been programmed at the subconscious level. So that's the premise around the book. And really my mission is to awaken people to the fact that they were programmed. There's something they could do about it. And there's areas you're not seeing success in your life right now. I guarantee you it's going to be at least partially, in my opinion, probably mostly linked back to some of this programming.
Yeah, I'm so with you, man. Our program is our operating system and it's, it's just running in the background. I'm curious, when did you first start like embracing this idea that, hey, it's all about the programming? Like, was there a pivotal moment when you were a teenager where you're like, boom, this hit? Like, because I didn't stumble on it until probably when I was 16, 17, 18. That's when I first started really learning about it.
But I'm curious when you really— Yeah, you're early to the game, man. For me, I started going down this path of personal growth and discovery and learning some of these mental tools I use to this day when I was 18. Like I talked about, I was riding the bench in my freshman year playing college football. And so I was looking for solutions and I was able to connect with This dude, he's not my sensei. Really funny guy, interesting character, very wise, very much a technician at all kinds of fun mental, emotional, spiritual, physical techniques. And so he started to introduce me to some of those techniques when I went to him when I was 18 years old. But I didn't really understand the programming aspects until about, say, 5 or 6 years ago. That's when I really was like, whoa, you know, I had my Matrix moment. I had my first experience with the Bufo alaverus toad, which most people probably aren't familiar with. A few fringe people, maybe. Uh, it is a toad in the Sonora Desert which contains 5-MeO-DMT in its back. So it's a venom. And basically, if you squeeze the back of these toads— it sounds funny, it sounds a little crazy, but hear me out— uh, you squeeze it, this pus comes out, this venom comes out. You dry it and then you smoke it and then you have a forced ego death. And so I had this experience. Why did I want to have this experience? Well, I think these things call to you and they may sound funny to someone who's never had these types of experiences before, but I somehow knew intuitively that my ego, my construct, my identity of myself was too strong for me to be able to take the next step on my spiritual personal development. Journey. And so I was seeking something to break that, really. And I heard Mike Tyson, of all people, smoking the toad on his podcast. The first episode of his podcast, he had experienced the 5-MeO-DMT, uh, Bufo toad. And so it didn't take long, uh, I was at some hippie event in Venice Beach and someone told me about a shaman who holds ceremonies where I could do this. So I went and had the experience and What it is, is a complete ego disillusion. And so that means, like we talked about, we've been programmed. So we've been programmed to believe, hey, my name is Brian Epstein. I have parents, I have siblings. I'm from this town, this whole identity that we built up. I'm good at these things. I like this. I don't like that. When you have an ego death, you lose all that. And the only thing that's left is just this essence of who you are beyond all the ego or identity framework that has been programmed into you since you were born. And this is a really incredible experience for me because it just showed me and had me experience God in a real visceral way. It's like, okay, there's me connected to this greater source. Wow. Got it. Heard about it. A lot of religions talk about it. Now I feel it viscerally. I know it to be true. And so that was a beautiful experience to have because now I have something greater than myself to surrender to. And then when I came back from that experience, I came back into my identity. It became blatantly apparent all the pieces of programming that I still had that were causing me to suffer unnecessarily. And so it had been years since I worked with that sensei that I spoke about earlier, and I circled back to him. I said, hey, man, whoa, I just had this crazy life experience. Now I'm seeing all this stuff bubbling up. That causes me to suffer unnecessarily. And I believe it may be the reason why I haven't unlocked some of these other achievements and just ways of living and feeling in my life that I desire. And so he took me through a program that he has called the Inner Planet Cleanup, which is essentially going into the subconscious. There's a lot of techniques that are used to do this. It's energy work at its core and uncovering what I believe to be true about myself. What do I believe to be true about other people? What do I believe to be true about the world? And then starting to dissect, what do I believe about money and my body and all the things in my life that I surround myself? What are my beliefs and how are those beliefs deleting, distorting, and generalizing all the other data in my life that could lead to a better lived experience? So I went through that interplanetary cleanup. I started adding to this practice that he gave me, and I kind of made it my own. and I took myself through it. I did 6 months of deep dive reprogramming on myself, and then of course I was already a practitioner on this stuff, so I just started bringing it into my client work after I did the work on me. In the last, yeah, 5 years or so, um, it's really come to the forefront of what I teach. And so I wrote the book about it, and I'm really passionate about giving these tools to people.
Wow, love it. And so curious, what were the ways that you had to reprogram yourself? From failure to success? Like, what were the core things that, man, this was my top 3 core issues?
Well, I believed I was worthless. That was like a core belief that I had. And so you'll hear me talk about beliefs synonymously with programming because beliefs are how we store this programming at the subconscious level. Mike, I know you know this, but for your listeners who haven't heard you talk about it ad nauseam, our beliefs are how we store our program. Programming. And so I uncovered, oh, I believe I'm worthless. Okay, well, now it became very apparent, like relationships I maybe struggled with in the past, like why wouldn't I want intimacy from a woman? Because she's in love with someone who's worthless. Well, there must be something really wrong with you if you're in love with a worthless man.
Yeah.
Oh, right. So that's like, oh, cuts right to the deep.
Yeah, it's so good.
And then there is just a lot that were more like specific to things in my life. Like, I started looking at like my money beliefs, and at the time I was running a fairly successful fitness company, but we never really got over the hump to like not quite fuck you money, but like money where like I was very comfortable. And I was wondering like what that was, and I realized that I believe that money, lots of money, goes for rich people, and then I'm not a rich person. So like my identity was like, that's not you, bro. So you're not going to get there.
Yeah.
And I would stub my own toe and delete, distort, generalize opportunities to get there to maintain that identity that was programmed that you're not a rich person. And so they did that reprogramming work in that first year. After that, we made over $1 million in the business. And so there's a lot of things that happen externally that led to that. But there's a lot of things in my life that I just saw very clearly. I changed the programming and then I had just different results in my life. Everything from feeling better about myself, feeling more peace, having a better relationship with my wife, to making more money, to just believing that I deserve to even do the work that I'm doing now, to be honest. You know, because just like you.
Yeah.
Ever since I uncovered this mental performance, this deeper inner work, I really wanted to bring it to athletes because that was my calling. But I just didn't believe I was worthy of it. You know, I don't have a doctorate. I'm not a sports psychologist. All these things, all the boxes I haven't checked. And then I just built the identity of believing I was worthy of it. And what do you know? Those clients started to show up for me.
Boom. Pretty badass, dude. Um, well, I'm curious, now that you've done the work, how did you know that you've done the work? Like, that you feel, hey, this part, I can check this box, I've worked through this worthiness component enough. Like, when do you know that you're really on the other side of a, a core belief?
Yeah, reprogramming, it's such a feeling thing for me personally. So it's a skill. And so when I first got started, it was clumsy. And now that I've done it so many times for myself and for other people, like, I can do it like in seconds. Like, something will come up inside my body and I actually feel it. So if it's— if it needs to be reprogrammed, it's because it's living in an emotion I don't want it to be in. So I might find it in my upper stomach, the third chakra area for people who study like Eastern philosophy. And it's like, oh, there's fear there. Well, I'll ask myself, what am I believing to be true that makes me feel afraid? And I'll feel it. I'll accept my way through it. I'll release it through these techniques I have, and then I'll reprogram it. And I can just feel it. I know it to be true. It happens very quickly. Um, there's a lot of techniques that I give people in the book and my clients that aren't as familiar with this, and it takes maybe a little bit longer. But for me, it's like anything else, like it happens quickly when you have so many repetitions. And I could feel it in my body, but that doesn't mean the work is done, period. Because as we try to strive for more, anyone who's ever like tried to level up in different areas of your life, there's going to be a new piece of programming that we didn't even know were there that meet us in that new place. It's like, oh, well, you've never done this before. And it's like, what? Because really a lot of programming is almost instinctual, evolutionary. Like, you're fine, you're doing fine, you're safe. Just stay where you are. Stay in that homeostasis. Just stay put. That's what the body wants, that homeostasis. Just stay where you are. So we have to— I've experienced, I've had to, and my clients, we have to continue to move through the resistance. Some of my friends like to call it the governor, right? You're going 100 miles per hour. You don't need it. It's dangerous. Don't go any faster than this. I want to go 120, though. Right? And so we have to push through that.
