Drug Addict to Flow Addict: Finding More Flow in Sobriety with Brent Bolthouse

Hey, this is Joshua with the Flow Research Collective production team. Today's episode is a special one. It's part of our Client Spotlight series where we interview the people that we train directly. We work with executives, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who want to rework how they work so they can get more results in less time with minimal struggle and of course, a whole lot more flow. Now, if you want to level up your performance, then tune in as we dive into their daily routines, tease apart what they're learning, and shine a light on how to achieve your goals faster without sacrificing your personal life.

I think what people have to remember about Hollywood is the narrative that's been told for the last 100 years is you have a town where the most broken people in the world can run away to, to forget about whatever trauma happened in their life as they were growing up. So you imagine somebody who's had a really awful upbringing, whatever that is, whatever that looks like. But it's not pretty. They land in Hollywood. They're 22 years old. They get a part and they crush it and they make a million bucks. They never— and they come from a trailer park and now they got a million bucks. They get everyone to tell them they're the greatest thing in the world and they're filling that hole with all the stuff in Hollywood. What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before?

What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting?

Nothing is ever the same again. Great things.

Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance, access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your tallest goals. I'm your host, Ryan Dorris, and together with bestselling author Steven Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Flow Research Collective Radio listeners, I'm here with Brent Bolthouse, and you are in for a treat. This is an amazing client spotlight interview where we interview our incredible clients who were fortunate enough to be able to work with and help And in this episode, we're going to be talking through Brent's amazing, blessed life, and he's going to be telling you legendary stories about how he came up in Hollywood and nightlife, and then how he's gotten into this world of flow and peak performance and lots and lots of amazing things in between. So strap in, you're in for a treat. Brent Bolthouse, welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. It's great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a fan.

Yeah, I've been really excited to have this chat, and it's also a real pleasure to be able to this chat in person as well. So thanks for making that happen. And to kick us off, I'm going to try and make you blush a little bit here by reading your, reading your whole bio out. So you're the founder of the Bungalow Hospitality Group, which a lot of our team at Flow Research Collective Radio are a fan of. And that's a collective with a deep history in Southern California. And the portfolio currently includes the Bungalow flagship location in Santa Monica. Its sister property in Huntington Beach, and the Bungalow Kitchen, which is a new social dining experience from Bolthouse and longstanding partner Michael Mina. And the Bungalow Kitchen Belmont Shore began welcoming guests in the Long Beach community in March 2021, while the— I might need some help with the pronunciation here—

Tiburon.

Tiburon. Thank you. You should know that. While the Tiburon location designed by Martin Brudnitsky opened in November 2021, and the venue's impressive designs, coastal California cuisine, and widespread appeal have garnered accolades from Architectural Digest, Eater, Food Wine, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and many more. And you also serve as the creator of Neon Carnival, Yes. Which is the annual invite-only outdoor dance that continues to be recognized as one of the most coveted parties in the world. So as an entrepreneur and hospitality maven, you have virtually invented today's nightlife scene with the development and opening of some of the hottest nightclubs, supper clubs, restaurants, lounges, and bars across Southern California, and have evolved the art of nightclub promotion in Hollywood by pushing multiple nights a week at venues including the infamous Roxbury, the Viper Room, and the House of Blues. And before founding the Bungalow Hospitality Group, you had a 4-year partnership with SBE Entertainment Group to collaborate on high-profile nightlife venues and fine dining establishments including Hyde Lounge, uh, Area Foxtail, uh, Katsuya, and Chef Michael Mina's How do you pronounce the restaurant?

14.

Okay, there you go. The Roman numerals. Yeah. And the SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills. And with 30 years of experience as a sought-after event producer, including leading corporate events for HBO, Mercedes-Benz, T-Mobile, Samsung, and Dolce Gabbana. And finally, current work includes, as well as everything else, supporting several charitable initiatives which we'll touch on. And these include the LA LGBT Centers and an evening with women, I believe that's called. And then the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Baby2Baby, and a number of others. And we'll make sure to touch on those. Thank you for bearing with me through that. And I wanted to say, by the way, as well, Brent, that when we first connected in person, I was saying that I had a feeling you and Stephen would have met. And I mentioned you to Stephen before we were doing this podcast. And he said he had been to dozens of your parties.

Oh, good. Okay, so I feel I've made it.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, exactly. So there's a long history there. But to kick us off, I wanted to start by asking you to share the beginning of your story because you had a really interesting upbringing. Sure. A few hours outside of LA. And could you begin us with a little bit of orientation for, you know, your first 10 years of life? Yeah.

So I was born in Southern California. I was adopted at birth. I didn't know my mother or my father. A weird set of circumstances. And I think my birth mother in the hospital decided she didn't want to keep me. And so a nurse was friends with my parents at their church and was like, hey, there's a baby that's available for adoption if you want to. Get it, you have like 24 hours to decide. It's one of those weird out-of-the-box adoption cases in 1969. And so that's how I started life, which in some ways was probably not on the good foot, you know, because I don't think my mother ever held me. So that's the beginning of trauma. I would probably— I traced it many times back to that place. Um, Sorry, I'm a little, little, uh, after-COVID cough.

Oh good.

Don't worry, podcast listeners, COVID is not contagious through the airways, through the airwaves, even if you've read that somewhere. And that is definitely a conspiracy theory. Um, and so I, I landed in Riverside and my dad was, um, he had a a gas station, and he lost that in the gas wars in the '70s. People who know that story or don't know it, but there was a crisis with gas in the '70s, and they started rationing it, and gas stations started closing all over the country, and there was lines for gas, and it was a crazy time. And so he lost the thing. And what that gas station did, it fixed a bunch of trucks and things. When you have gas stations, like, you are always repairing, like, fleets of trucks for companies, or you're doing stuff, and they're coming in for oil changes, and you kind of have these accounts. And so a company that he worked for, Farmer Brothers Coffee, the guys that had the trucks rallied and got him a job because he didn't have a job anymore. Because my dad's like just a good guy and people love him. And so he took that job. And that job, his first job was working for Farmer Brothers up in the mountains near Big Bear in Running Springs near Lake Arrowhead. And so that was sort of— we moved up there, and you can imagine as a child, it's like you just moved to vacation. You're in the mountains.

What age are you at this point then, Brad?

I'm like 5. Okay, 5 or 6. And so it was, you know, utopia. You're in the forest and there's seasons and there's snow and there's sledding, and, you know, it's like— it was like a dream. And then we stayed there for like a year and a half, and then he got transferred to Barstow. Mm. Because he kind of kept getting transferred to like a bigger territory, bigger pay, all that good stuff. And, you know, when you're, when you're a kid, it doesn't really matter where you live. You know, neighborhoods are neighborhoods, right? If it's Beverly Hills or Barstow, there's sidewalks, there's streets, there's pools, there's kids playing on bikes. And you don't really know what's going on in the real world at that age. And so we lived there for 3 or 4 years and then he got transferred to Palm Springs, which is a big territory for restaurants. and my parents grew up on farms in Illinois, so not real city people. So like, that was about as big as they ever wanted to go, was a city. And then we lived in the high desert in Joshua Tree, and he would commute to Palm Springs to work every day. And when we made that transition from Barstow to Joshua Tree, I was in the 5th grade, and I was really angry. About that on a subconscious level.

About the move?

Yeah. Just like being ripped away from my friends again. Yet again. Right. You know, stability is such an important thing for the development of children and things. And not that my parents did anything sinister. It was just like my dad was doing what was best for the family. You know, he kept getting more pay and, you know, again, hats off to them because they took care of us in a great way. But I kind of landed in Joshua Tree pretty angry because again, you're in a new school, new, no friends, no people. And I ended up kind of landing in the wrong group of kids. A couple of kids I met and they were like already at 5th grade, like one of them was smoking weed and drinking beers and stealing them from his dad. And I kind of fell into this wrong crew. And so that was sort of the beginning. Of my addictive birth, I think, in some ways. I'm sure it started way back earlier, but like, and in Barstow, my best friend's brother was a couple years older than us, and so he was like listening to the Sex Pistols and the Bud Cox and Devo and the B-52s. And like, I heard music for the first time, you know, like when you hear the B-52s, you've never heard that music before in 1978, you're just like, I was like, what the fuck is that?

Gets the juices flowing.

Well, yeah, it was just such a unique— even today, if I put on like that first B-52s record, you're just like, it's powerful. Like, that music is like so radically different than what was, you know, Steels and Croft and the Eagles, right? It was like, what happened? And then obviously we know what the Sex Pistols did, right? So I was just like, music was this thing that I related to. And so, you know, I brought some of that music and was playing it to the kids in 5th grade. They didn't know what it was because they didn't have it. And this is cassettes.

So in Joshua Tree, this is like, these are rare goods.

These are rare goods. Yeah. So slowly into that and that kind of rolled into the 6th grade and the 7th grade. And by the time I landed in the 7th grade, punk rock was in full effect and I started dabbling in drugs and drinking and, you know, started my life of addiction.

Do you remember the very first moment you dabbled?

Like, I remember in the 5th grade, like, I smoked pot with some kids, but I didn't really know what it— I was just like, yeah, okay, pretending like I knew what I was doing. I choked and didn't get high. Um, but by the 7th grade, like, I had figured it out and I was getting high with some friends, and it seemed to be like every kid's dad had a weed stash, and every kid in 7th grade had some weed, and we were somehow getting high. And that just progressed into 8th, 9th, and 10th grade where it just got progressively worse and worse. And, um, by the time I made it to like end of 9th grade, 10th grade, I was like starting to do crystal meth.

And this— what age is that then?

15.

15. Okay.

14 and a half, 15. Somehow found crystal meth.

Right. Yeah, it's great. It's a good age.

It's a good age.

So pot is— we're talking 12, 13? That—

I mean, pot's the whole— like, pot was always there, like, the whole way up to then. Yeah, we were just stoners all the time, and we were listening to punk rock, and we were punk rock kids in the desert going to punk rock shows in Los Angeles. And we are of that ethos of, like, I went to Fender's Ballroom in the Olympic Auditorium, and I saw GBH and the Black Flag and the Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys, and like, we were there. I was in that space. And in Joshua Tree, there was no skateboarding. That was the other thing. Like, I went from Barstow where there were sidewalks and pools that were drained because there was a water shortage. So we're skating pools, we're skating around, and then we moved to Joshua Tree and there's dirt roads, no sidewalks. And, you know, skateboards don't work good on dirt roads. And so that also was a loss. So, you know, I just You know, suddenly found myself— by the time I was like in 10th grade, I was really addicted to crystal meth, like a daily user, sometimes sleeping— not sleeping for 10 days. A handful of those, you know, like long runs of no sleep and lots of drugs. And like, there's guys and there's guys in the bushes out there coming to get me. And you wake up in the morning, it's just a tree like this. You're just like, yeah, but you were sure all night. And you had a BB gun and you were like, you were planning your attack on that guy all night long until the sun rose. It was genius.

Oh yeah, I want to dive in actually to the experience with crystal meth in a second. It's interesting though that you mentioned the skateboarding being lost with the move to Joshua Tree. One thing we see a lot at Flow Research Collective is people who had very high-flow careers in the military and sport then transitioning out of that, not having the access to those states that they used to have.

Sure.

And then turning to other means of getting some sort of non-ordinary—

there's not F-16s in here in West Hollywood.

Exactly, exactly. If you can't fly an F-16 around, sometimes, you know, the next thing to do is take a trip down to Med Men kind of thing. And then, you know, you end up getting led down that road.

Sure.

Do you think that was part of it? You know, do you think if there was a thriving skate park in Joshua Tree and, you know, uh, plenty of bowls and a whole action sports community, do you think there's a likelihood that it would have gone a different way?

Um, I'm sure it's possible, but as we know, in the bowl, in the action sports, there was no shortage.

That's present too, right?

So it wasn't like, yeah, that was going to solve that.

Could have accelerated it.

Yeah, it could have accelerated, or maybe it just would have made maybe I wouldn't have been quite as angry. I think I was still angry just because, like, yeah, getting to know new people is always, you know, terrifying. The truth is I was just a scared kid who didn't want to be alone. And so when you don't know how to deal with your emotions, anger is such an easy target.

Do you remember the moment of moving from pot to meth, or was it just kind of this gradual acceleration?

You know, it was, it was just always like we were all— so in the desert, there's, let's just say there's 8 of us that are punk rock, and there's a whole community, whatever, to 20,000 people that live in that community. At that time, it wasn't very big. And then you had some heavy metal kids that were listening to Metallica, but we all liked Metallica because Metallica was great. And then there's like some jocks, and then there's just some, I guess, normal people. I don't know what, whatever normal people are. And so, um, but we were always just, you know, like, I remember the first day of 7th grade, my best friend came to school, this kid Jason, with a mohawk. And like, school started 20 minutes late because the quad was full of 300 kids in school looking at his mohawk. You know, it was, it was, it was just like, because you'd never seen, like, no one had ever seen a real mohawk before.

Was it dyed purple or anything?

No, it was just normal, glued up. Just glued up.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, we were just these, these like punk rock misfits who were there, and I kind of leaned in. I almost was less punk rock and more in like gothic or Bauhaus, or even sometimes dabbled in mod, but just in that same space of just dark. And, you know, um, and so I, I think it would have just been, you know, probably the same end road. Maybe I would have got there a little slower, but I got there pretty fast. Crystal meth is a rocket ship.

And how long was the crystal meth experience in total in terms of years?

And we'll dive into how you got to LA, and I think it was like a year, year and a half, you know. But if you don't— if you're on drugs, that kind of drug, for a year straight, like, that's intense.

It's time-bending.

Oh yeah.

What does it— what does it feel like if you're able to describe that a little bit for the listeners?

So I've always been a bit of an introvert and shy in nature. Like I've always been a bit reserved. And so it allows you to talk and think and come up with ideas and you're doodling, doing doodle art and you're just, you know, it's hyperfocus, right? And so, and then, you know, last time I checked, drugs don't come with instructions. So it's not like, hey, do one line, you're good for the whole night, you're not gonna sleep anyway. But, you know, we would do 10 lines. So now you have a body that just needs one to not sleep and you've done 10. So you're like 3 days of no sleep, just compounding it. And then you're just waking up the next morning or not really waking up, but rising to sunrise and you want the hangover to go away. So you just do more. It was this perpetual cycle of doing it. But it's, you know, and the thing about the desert is they cook it out there. So you need a space, you need space because it smells. It's a lot of chemicals. And it stinks for, you know, half a mile around your house. So, you know, all the cookers were out deep on the mesa, like away from town. That's why you don't really— there's no one in Van Nuys cooking up crystal meth because you'd get arrested pretty fast. So it's always out in like Palmdale or like, you know, Poway, wherever, out in the rural parts of California. And so we always had it, right? Because we were one of the sources for it. And, um, it always seemed to be available. Did coke a couple times. That shit's boring in comparison to— yeah, in comparison, he's like, oh no, let's just get back to the crystal meth.

Yeah, get back to the good stuff.

Yeah, but we would, you know, if it was— if someone brought some PCP, we smoked it. We didn't give a shit. We took mushrooms and acid, and we got Quaaludes and thought we should smoke them, right? We're those misfits. Like, aren't you supposed to smoke Quaaludes? No, dumb fuck, you're supposed to take it.

Yeah, yeah, we smoke it, see what happens if you smoke it.

And we never smoked smoke the meth. Thank God. I don't know how we didn't do that, but God, thank God we didn't smoke it.

Because how did you take the—

you snort it. Oh, and it burns like a motherfucker.

Brent, do you remember what your inner dialogue or inner monologue was like during that year with the meth use? Did you have many moments where, you know, you'd be walking alone or cooking at home alone and just reflecting on the usage of meth?

No, because it's like the inner dialogue in your mind when you're on crystal meth. It's like your mind is 1,000 million miles an hour and you're always thinking and talking about what you're going to do next or the shoulda, coulda, wouldas, right? Like, oh, I was going to do this, we're going to do that. And the next weekend we're going to— you're just anything and everything is like you're just like trash mouth. You're just dumping everything. And then you get to a place where you don't want to talk and then you find the Pegasus doodle art poster that's as big as this whole table and you start coloring by numbers and then you go into that rabbit hole and come up 6 hours later, right? And you're like grinding your teeth and you're like, wow. And then you do a couple more lines and you start talking and tell the story, you know, it's just like this circles, it just circles. Yeah. And like I said, you get to that point where— and I think what was the terrifying thing for me was I always had to go home like, so I'd be sneaking in and out of windows, or my dad would catch me. You know, my parents, I think for the early part of my drug use, they had no idea what was going on, right? These are nice Christian people from Illinois on farms that I think I saw my dad drink a beer once my whole life. So they have no context of like, you know, what's happening. And then obviously, as I got progressively worse, and I would disappear for 3 days at a time. Like, that's a clue. They got suspicious. But they couldn't control me. I was just out of control. And, you know, it was of that time, the '80s was like, fuck the police, fuck your parents, fuck the government, fuck Ronald Reagan. Like, we were just like— everyone was punk rock, angry, like, fuck everybody, don't fucking tell me what to do.

That's during the Nancy Just Say No years, isn't it? Roughly?

Yeah, she was part of, yeah. Yeah, it's Just Say No, but Reagan was president.

Right.

And you know, and like, it was just like kids were just raging pissed off. I mean, the world was at that time. There was a movement of that. But so, I mean, it really was super destructive on my whole being. Like, you know, not sleeping. Now that I know what I know about sleep, it's like shocking that I'm not as damaged as I should be. 'Cause like—

From that period.

Yeah.

Do you remember having moments of sobriety where there was just crushing fatigue or comedowns or anything like that? Or was really the whole year just one continuous?

Yeah, you'd have moments where it was like you couldn't get it or you could, you know, because the thing would be, let's just say if you run out of drugs and then you go home and you lie awake in your bed and you can't sleep because your mind can't shut up. We all have that, just normal, not on drugs, right? You're stressed about work or relationship or life, life has just got you wrapped around the axle and you're not sleeping because you're worried about life. Throw in some crystal meth, there's not a chance in fucking hell you're sleeping, right? So you're literally just waiting for the sun to rise and then you're like, okay, I'm going to go to school. Someone will have some pot or I'll have some pot, cut the edge off, do another little bump, get through the day, go do more. It was just this like hamster wheel of existence that carried on for, you know, a minute.

And then you came to LA and there was a woman you met, I believe, who helped. Was that a little bit later after that year?

So what happened was I went on like a pretty good bender and I had to come home to my parents. And it was an intense last week of using where— this is the funny part of my story— where Somewhere in a drugged-out fantasy in Joshua Tree, I cut a girl's hair short who could carry short hair. Her name was Bobbi Ball.

Meaning she looked good with it?

She looked good with short hair. Some girls don't look good with short hair, right? And granted, I wasn't auditioning girls that looked good with short hair. She just said, "Cut my hair," and I did. And maybe she gave me some pot and I was like, "Great." She comes back to school the next day, looks cute as all hell. This '80s cute Bananarama haircut, right? And so I start cutting people's hair in high school for drugs. She's like, "Brandon, cut my hair." And then next thing you know, I'm just like bartering for haircuts. So my last week of using is I get offered to cut these drug dealers' hair deep in the Mesa, up in the, you know, kind of like past Pioneer Town, way up high. and they kind of trapped me at their house. The story is that they told me was later was they thought I was a narc. They wanted to kill me. Is this true or not true? This is just weird drug stories. I don't know because I'm alive, so they didn't kill me. And so, but they also didn't let me leave for a week. And I finally escape through a friend's sister gives me a ride back into town because, well, I'm probably like 40 minutes out of town, right up on the mesa. It's a long walk. And the thing about the desert is even in the summer, it's freezing at night, right? It can— like, it snows in Joshua Tree every winter, right? It's cold. And when the wind blows across that mesa, it's freezing. And so you're not walking. And this other kid, Chris, shows up at that house too. We somehow— we all escape, go to a party on Friday night, do some drugs. Saturday rolls around. For whatever reason, that Saturday was dry. Couldn't get any drugs. So weird, right? None of us could get drugs.

So what does that look like? Does that look like not being able to find the dealers or not having money?

Or I just remember like none of us could score. Like it was just like no one could score. Yeah. Hey, call him, he doesn't have any, he's dry, he doesn't have one. Like whatever. I mean, yeah, it seemed weird, but— and we're at a party with a bunch of people and no one could score. Or maybe people could score and they didn't want to give it to us. That could be the story too. And so then it's Sunday rolls around, the kids' parents are coming back. I got to go home now. Right. And for me, to this day, it still gives me anxiety. Like, that's part of my anxiety trigger is I'm literally like, have to walk home up the driveway into my parents' house and tell them, hi, I know I've been gone for a week and I haven't called you. And just that guilt and shame, right? Such guilt and shame wrapped in that. And I do that this time and I tell my parents that I have a problem with drugs and I don't want to do drugs anymore. You know, it's like everyone's crying in the living room, typical, you know, scenario.

And did they know already at this point?

They knew I was on— they knew something was up.

They knew something was wrong, but they didn't specifically know this.

I don't think they know really, because they just don't know. But they knew that something wasn't correct. And so literally the next day it's like— and there's like 2 big guys at my door, like, we're going to rehab. Like, 8 AM. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't mean rehab today. I meant tomorrow. Typical addict, right? Like, no, no, next week, next week. I'm cool right now. I got it under control right now. I'm good. I just left. I feel good. So I end up going down to rehab in Orange County. I go to a detox center. I detox for a few days, and then they transfer me over to an adolescent unit. Because they had put me in an adult unit because my parents didn't know. Like, right, when you're in— when you're a minor and you go into rehab, it's like going to jail. You can't leave. Adult facilities, you can check yourself out. So I go into rehab and I do 30 days in rehab. And, um, the kid in rehab's father says, hey, when you get out, if you need a bed, I have a halfway house in North Hollywood. And I didn't even really know what that meant. I didn't know what AA was. I didn't know what anything was because I just didn't have any clue. So I was like, okay. And in the hospital, in rehab, I had a spiritual experience and I sort of had this white light experience and I realized that I wanted to be sober and I didn't want to do drugs anymore. And that was sort of the— that was like two double doors open. It was like, I realized that, like, okay, I had a profound spiritual experience.

What was the difference in the experience of not wanting to continue to do drugs from when you walked back up to your parents and said you wanted to not do drugs anymore versus this deeper experience?

So in rehab there's a payphone because it's of the time, there's no cell phones. So I remember being on a payphone with my buddies like, hey, man, let's get some shrooms and some weed. We're going to have some fun. I'm not going to do crystal meth anymore. But like, you know, I don't have a problem with weed or crystal meth, all that other stuff.

Mild.

No problem. I don't have a problem with that stuff. Crystal meth was the problem, right? And so after my spiritual experience, I didn't want anything. And I was like, AA is the way, right? I was like, I bought into the 12-step program and was like, That's what I wanted. And I told my parents I didn't want to go back to my friends and fall back into using. So maybe this halfway house thing was a good idea. And lo and behold, my parents let me go. I'm 17 years old. I go to, you know, up to North Hollywood to like Coldwater and Victory, and I move into a halfway house that's designed for men, not even for kids. And I start my life in L.A. Now, that halfway house, he could have had it in San Diego or in Phoenix. Or in Florida.

Totally coincidental.

I could have been in any city in the world. It just happened to be North Hollywood, right? Just by chance. And this is where, you know, like when we talked, when we had dinner that night, like, you know, I am a firm believer in that this is a mystical world that we live in. We don't know everything. We don't see everything that exists. And to think that we— just because we can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Right?

What was that first spiritual experience like that really built the desire to not continue using?

So for me, it was on my left arm. I had a cross appear, and it was like— you could see physical manifestation of a cross. And you know when you kind of pinch your skin but you don't break it, and it'll make like a red dot on your finger, stay there a little bit? Yeah, but it's like almost like a pinprick, but it doesn't— no blood or anything. It's just like blood comes to the top of skin. I had a series of those same dots all the way down in a perfect cross. And in the right arm, a three-dimensional triangle appeared.

Oh my God.

Very profound.

Was it seeing it or was it actually—

No, it was on my arm like everyone saw it.

Okay.

Yeah, it was a manifestation on my body. So those kind of things happen and you're kind of like, okay, that's something just happened, right? And for me at that time, I was raised in a Christian home. My parents were super evangelical and that's what I knew religion to be or anything spiritual was that. So it was all based around Jesus. I have different beliefs today. Still love Jesus, but like in a different capacity. And so I did— what I did was there's a third step where you turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand God. And you kind of say it's a moment of surrender in the program that you do where you're like, I— it's complete surrender at a molecular level, at a cellular level, like my photons believed me, right? And I think that's what spiritual experiences are, is when you can really get to that place of complete surrender, which is such a hard thing to replicate or even do as a human. I think those moments of surrender. But for me, it was there and that happened and it made me— it was like the obsession to do drugs was gone and it's never come back. And it is the most beautiful gift I've ever had in my life.

And that was specifically the third step, which was surrender-based. It's funny you mention that. I've heard lots of people who've been through AA specifically speak about the power of the surrender piece. What do you think it is about that step that is so impactful specifically?

I mean, we all know we have an ego, right? I think science has proven that, or at least they want to believe that they have. And I think every great spiritual teaching is about letting go of the ego, right? Dissolving the evil ego. So I think that moment of surrender in the program is really sort of like saying, get out of the way. Your best thinking got you here. Get out of the way. You don't know what the fuck you're doing and someone needs to help you. Right? And so one of the keys of the program is you need to have a spiritual connection to the universe. We don't care what it is. If it's that chalkboard behind you and that's what is your higher power, more power to you. It's the ocean. Great. It's the group collective. If that's your higher power, great. But you need to have something bigger than yourself that maybe has some answers that you don't have. Because we have a, you know, normal alcoholics are like, what do you mean you don't drink the empty cups at the front door that people left full of half-drink drinks, I drink those. You're normal, right? You're like, I'm not drinking that shit. I'm drinking that shit because that's what alcoholics do. We think differently than normal people and normal people have a hard time understanding, like, the way we think and vice versa.

Right.

But we just look at the world way differently of like, yeah, I'm drinking those, you know what I mean?

Like, all night.

You drop $100 walking out the door and I look at it and there's a part of me that goes, I'm putting that shit in my pocket.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And normal people like, hey, you dropped $100, right? No, I would today, because I have a program and I have a life, I'd be like, hey, you dropped $100. But there's still a part of me that's like, do you notice that flicker? I want to fucking put that $100 in my fucking pocket, motherfucker. He doesn't— he fucking dropped it, it's mine now, right? Right. That's that alcoholic.

Did you notice that still?

Yeah, sure, sure. There's— I'm not—

still flickers of that.

Yeah, the addiction isn't— it always lingers. Like, it's— I don't think it's something that just— I think that's the curse of the alcoholic sometimes, is they believe that that can be completely eradicated. Eradicated. I don't think it is an eradication. I think it's something you have to temper, you know? And it's a daily reprise, right? Because we as humans forget really fast our first estate. Like, we can forget so fast, right? Like, you've seen it. Your friend that was the coolest guy in the world, suddenly gets a little money and a car and a hot Victoria's Secret girlfriend. And he's like, dude, you're a dick. Like, where— what, 3 weeks ago you were like, you were like feeding homeless people. Now you're running them over with your fucking Lamborghini. It's like, what happened? Like, so fast we can lose—

we—

yeah, we are just so easily forget, right? You know, we have that gene in us. I don't know what that is, but yeah.

I like the way you emphasize with the third step the fact that even the ocean can work as something that is larger than yourself to connect to, to help with that process of surrender. Martin Seligman, who's the founder of positive psychology, talks about the common denominator amidst people who have a high level of meaningfulness or perceived meaningfulness in life simply being about, you know, connection to something larger than oneself. Yeah, that is really—

yes, it's one of the great driving forces of mankind. Like, we've always been looking for that thing, right?

Right. You know, beyond— do you remember any of the other steps as vividly as that third one? Were there any of the other ones that were really impactful on you during that period?

Well, obviously admitting you have a problem is such an— can be such a powerful step, right? Because so many people don't believe they have a problem. Denial is such a powerful tool. I mean, I unfortunately, I I crushed that. I knew I was like, I'm good.

What step is that?

It's the first step. Okay. Right. Yeah. For me, I mean, the third step, I believe if you can't master that or sort of get there and really find a higher power to help you. I mean, I had a spiritual teacher who worked in— he was a scientist also, and he had this— he did this lab a long time ago. But basically what he discovered from his work with addiction was You know, there's 3 things that addiction has. Things— there's a lack of a spiritual connection, there's a physical addiction, and there's an emotional problem.

Right.

And depending on one of those 3 categories. So if you have an emotional problem but you're treating a physical addiction, you're not really solving your problem. But if you have a spiritual problem and you're treating it with an emotional problem, but that's your issue, is a lack of a spiritual connection to the universe, but you're trying to fix your emotional. You're never— you're still not fixing your addiction. So if you can figure out one of those three buckets that your addiction, where that is, and it could be a combination of two or more, but you got to address those things. And so it's like that thing with— on that, like, you know, finding that spiritual connection to the universe is a key factor of— in a 12-step program.

A friend of mine who's a Zen meditation teacher, a really phenomenal one, I've done a few retreats with, said to me after that retreat, that addiction is the illusion that you can find fulfillment alone, which I thought was a beautiful— Alone. Yeah. Addiction is the illusion that you can find fulfillment alone. And I think what he's referring to is that third step and the, you know, connection to something broader that is needed to not be susceptible to addiction. But I found that— I found that quote really powerful.

Well, I think what AA— I mean, I think what people tend to forget about the program And I'm a lifelong researcher. I love information. I love digging down into the rabbit holes. But you have to remember that when AA began and Bill Wilson and the founding fathers of AA and the founding women of AA, these were gutter drunks, right? These weren't like frat boys having fun on the weekend. These were gutter drunks. These were the worst of the worst.

What does that— what does good or drunk look like? Just to paint a picture.

I mean, just the guy in the street who's pissing on himself on Venice Boulevard and he's just wasted and he's pushing the cart around and he's shit on himself. He's just the worst kind of drunk all day and always just drinking bottles every day. He's just like— he's just the— these are the kind of drunks that were in it in the, in the early days. So they took AA, um, in my opinion, because there's no real opinion in, in the program, is it was a spiritual program built for gutter drunks. So, so simple. It's the simplest tools for spirituality that I think have ever been created. Like, believe in God, turn your will and life over to him, take a personal inventory, make some amends, take a daily reprise, have a reflection at the end of the day to see if you harmed anybody or did anything crazy. And if you did, make an amends. Keep your side of the street clean and then go find somebody else to help. That's the program.

Right.

Right.

The sponsor piece, obviously.

Yeah. You know, it's like, go help somebody.

Right. Right.

Which we all know. We've all helped people.

Right.

You have. You have hundreds of thousands of people. Like, how— who wins in that game? You win big time. Big time. You win because helping people is the greatest gift we could ever do for ourselves. And some people who don't do that or don't know that are missing out on one of the greatest pieces of life that there is. When you watch somebody go from like— like, I've seen people come in the program that were literally pushing carts that we were just shepherding into the back. Because if you come into a room, a 12-step room, there's no rules. You can be drunk. We don't care. We just put you in the back and say, shh, keep it down.

Right.

Keep talking to yourself, but just keep it down a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Just whisper to yourself. Okay. You want a coffee? Okay. Yeah, I want a coffee. And like years later, you come around, you look at it, and then like 10 years go by and you see that same guy and you're like, Bob, Bob the cart guy. Bob, is that you? You're in a suit. He's like, yeah. I go, what are you doing? You know, I'm good. What are you doing these days? I just passed the bar.

Wow.

And you're like, you just passed the fucking bar? And you start crying because you're just like, this guy was a fucking hobo on the fucking street pissing on everybody a few years ago, and now he's a fucking lawyer.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't tell me anything's not possible. Yeah, fuck these people that complain about their problems. It's like, right, we can do anything we want to do if you just put one foot in front of the other.

Yeah, it's amazing getting to witness that up front like that. Did you— were you a sponsor then to others afterwards?

I have through the years sponsored people. Currently I'm not, but I have over the years. Yeah.

What was that experience like being a sponsor afterwards?

It's amazing. Like, you know, you get to see people's lives change. You get to see people that were living in their cars that now, like, have motorcycle shops in New York and are doing— have families and things like you get to see. You know, it's amazing. You know, you hear those stories. It's like the right attention on the wrong person can be life-changing.

Mm-hmm. Right.

We've all had that experience where, like, I was 5 and that one teacher did that one thing and it changed my life. It changed my trajectory. Right. So you got to remember, like, most people that are coming in— and that's the other thing that people forget is like, everybody in those rooms are fucking borderline scumbag dirtbags that are going to steal your car, right? You know, or doing white-collar crimes, or like, they're, you know, very few people are like spiritually evolved, highly clean as could be, you know. You know, so you're in with a room with a bunch of misfits that are all gonna— that all pretty much make the wrong mistake every time they do.

A little—

all, yeah, or a little shifty. So you get in there and you start shifting, you know, And that's the thing. You start giving some people some tools. Like, I remember— I mean, I remember working with some guys that, like, didn't know they were supposed to brush their teeth every day.

Wow.

And you're like, wait, you don't even have that life skill, right? You're like, so how are you going to— okay, let's take a couple of steps back.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you just got to love them, right? And teach them and show them that it's okay. And there's no shame in that.

Is there an element of as a sponsor, seeing something in that person you're sponsoring that they don't yet see in themselves or that hasn't been fostered properly or that has been suppressed and then kind of helping to, you know.

Yeah, but the truth is they help me more than I help them. Right. The truth is, that's the magic. That's, that's what Freud couldn't figure out because Freud and Bill Wilson were friends and Freud was like, there's no hope for these people. This category of people, there's no hope for them.

And Bill disagreed.

Well, what Bill did— Bill didn't know, but what Bill figured out is when he took one alcoholic and took another alcoholic and they could talk to each other and they could have a common shared experience and they could support each other in a way that they both understood, as opposed to a screaming wife or a yelling pastor, because that's what you would get. Or you'd get Freud just yelling at you, trying not to drink. What's wrong with you? Just don't pick up the drink.

Right.

But the magic was one alcoholic working with another alcoholic. Right. And what people don't realize is that in the early days of the program, meetings were designed to attract newcomers, to keep the old-timers sober. It was like this weird, selfish thing. It was like it wasn't about the community or the group. It was like, go find more guys because we don't want to drink, right? Go out and get some more guys. Go call the church and ask the pastor, who should we go to their house and talk to them tonight? Because we need to keep talking to some new people because I don't want to get drunk anymore. To the point where Rockefeller, all of his friends got sober that were just degenerates, that he's like hosted dinner in New York and at the at the Plaza Hotel for like Bill Wilson and all the— and it was like he toasted it as the greatest invention of the 20th century.

Wow.

Right. It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he also told Bill Wilson, you can't make it about profit. You can't make it about money.

Yeah.

The greatest thing— Rockefeller was the greatest influence on the program there ever was because he made Bill Wilson not make it about money.

That's wild. I actually read Rockefeller's 950-page biography Titan. About 4 or 5 months ago. And obviously, you know, he's a problematic character in some ways, but he also basically invented American philanthropy and did a hell of a lot of good. And that's an interesting additional—

Well, he was like, listen, you can't make it. You got to be self-supporting through your own contributions. And it's that way today. And, you know, to this day, there's no— there's leaders, there's not governors, right? So even in central office, which is the mothership of the program, like, those people only serve a tender for a certain amount of time and then they have to leave. So they don't let people stick around too long because they knew if you let an alcoholic get some power and some money and some prestige, that's a bad recipe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. So, so that's the thing. If you think about it, like it's the only charity in the world that's like they pass a basket and they make a couple of shekels. People put in a couple of dollars and it's everywhere in the world. I've been all over the country. All over the world and gone to meetings everywhere, and at last you can always find one and they're always there. And there's this, and there's magic, you know.

Yeah, it's amazing. It's an amazing movement. I've actually been to, with a few friends, a meeting once or twice as well and found them incredibly inspiring.

It's the most loving space.

Yeah, it was, it was shocking.

It's shockingly the love. Like, a model for love is in those rooms because we don't care what you do, right? You just shot your brother.

Yeah.

Did you drink? You're going to be okay, dude.

Right.

I don't know what's going to happen to you, but you're going to be okay. Yeah.

I felt that when I went to one of the Palisades. It was about 400 men. And, you know, that's a great meeting. It was wild. Within 10 minutes, someone was breaking down in tears and just the power in the room was just the most—

I mean, I used to have a men's meeting at my house for many years. It was so powerful to just get to—

Yeah.

You know, as men, it's so hard for us to bond. And it was something that I chose to do in my life of like, I wanted to have more male friends and to be intimate with men, which is such a hard thing to do. For some of us, at least for me. And so I just started doing that. And you got to see guys cry and laugh and go through things. And you got to, you know, it was just— it was beautiful.

One criticism of AA that I've heard is that the meetings themselves can become a form of dependency. What are your thoughts on, you know, that criticism or just any less positive sides to AA overall?

I think anyone throwing stones in that space is— A, the source, I'd be like, are you a narcissist? Because like, what are you— how could you even— who cares?

Who cares?

Like, who cares? Like, like if one person out of that room that you think— seeing as people are getting too dressed up for and put on cute outfits for, it's like, who cares if one person's life is saved? Is it worth it?

Yeah, yeah, right.

And I'm like, yes, of course it is. But it's like, it's like anything else. Like, that's what I was telling you. What I was kind of alluding to is like, people come in and they go into that room and then they judge it and you're like, do you remember? These are all the worst people in the world.

Yeah.

They're trying. They're trying to be better and they're failing a lot. They're going out and they're using and they're not succeeding. They're still coming back and they're here. They're not in the drugstore. They're not in the liquor store. They're in this room. So if the girls are looking a little too slutty or the guys are hitting on the girls too much, of course there's social dynamics that are going to happen anywhere.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

So I mean, yes. I mean, hopefully, you know, the truth is, is the meeting is not the program. The meeting is a place for newcomers to get introduced to it. The work is the book and the steps.

And actually doing the steps.

And, you know, and you hear a lot of people that don't do that. You can cruise around AA and be a dry drunk for a long time, right? Because I look at it as like addiction is like a pyramid, and the top cone of the pyramid is your drinking and using, right? There's still a lot of a pyramid that you need to sort out. Like, yeah, why you— why, why were you doing that? That's the mass, and that's a massive— if you think about like the Great Pyramid, take the top one off, and then you're like, okay, now let's go solve your problem. You got to go deal with all of that. You're just like, ah, let's go over here and fucking do this and smoke some more cigarettes and drink more coffee.

Right?

It's like nobody wants to go into the dark night of the soul and dive down. But AA gives you a little bit of— or the program, I'm not supposed to use AA, but it gives you some tools for living. Not all of them. It's not the deepest spiritual practice, but it's enough to get you on a path.

Yeah. And for you, I mean, and to pivot back into your story, that was— it sounds like that was really a massive pivotal point, that program in North Hollywood. Where did you go from there? And so, you know, you've done, let's say, the year-ish of meth, you've gotten into the program. Can you orient us from there and then, and then take us on?

Yeah, so then, you know, I get this job in North Hollywood. I mean, I get this— I move into this house. The next day I drive down Sepulveda Boulevard And there's a gas station at Ventura and Sepulveda, this Mobil gas station. If anyone lives in Sherman Oaks, they know where it is. And there's a help wanted sign in the window. And I'm like, I know how to do that. My dad taught me how to fix cars and I could pump gas and change oil. And I knew that I could do that. So I go in there and I go and I say, I'm here to apply for the job. And there's a lady in there and she's like, okay. And I fill out the application. She interviews me, you know, and for whatever reason, 17 years old, 38 days sober. I tell her I'm sober, like AA sober. Like, you probably don't do that to your boss. It's not a good move.

Right?

Right. And so she kind of pauses and looks at me. She goes, really? She goes, how much time do you have? And I say, I got 38 days. And she's like, I have 90 days. Right? And again, here's the universe and the mystical journey of life. And so I find myself taking that job. Her name was Judy. She still owns the gas station. She's still my friend. She gave me a cake a couple of years ago. Amazing woman. And she only hired sober guys. So I was living in a halfway house. I was working at a gas station with only sober guys. It was like this. So, and I was going to meetings and it was just this great sober thing. And it was the greatest moment, job of my life. Like it was just this innocence. Cigarettes were $0.99 a pack.

Lovely. Perfect.

You know what I mean? I was making $3.25 an hour, minimum wage.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Times were good. Couldn't go to the movies, but I was having the best time of my life.

Yeah.

And so is that luck? Is that coincidence? Is it serendipity? Is it mystical? Is it God? What is it? Why did I lend myself at a job where the woman was sober?

What about that period was so pleasant in contrast to the first year? Do you remember? Was it just the feeling of being clean and free and empowered, or do you remember what it was that made up the positive experience?

Well, I was always a city kid more than a country kid, so I love being in the city. Um, and it was just this new lease on life, right? It was like I was clear. I wasn't really sleeping. I still had struggles with sleep. I always have a little bit. Like there was that trauma of sleep I still wrestle with to these days. And, you know, I just— it was just, I don't know, something innocent about it, right? You know, and I think I've come to believe that there's this thing in life, right? We all can. We all have tasks to do in life. We all have jobs that maybe we don't want to do. Right. But I approached that job like that was my dad's garage. I cleaned that bathroom like it was my bathroom. I took care of that place like it was my place. I took pride in what I was and I was happy and joyful in that space. And I believe that we all have that choice. You can be— you can be that way in any job that you have if it's Bill Gates or it's the guy pumping your gas. There's no difference. Happiness is a choice. And so I had a— and I wasn't consciously doing that. It was just— I was just in this space of happiness and really being grateful and happy to have a job. And it was true and it made it amazing. It was just a gas station, but it still was magical. You know, like I wouldn't change it for the world. It's the greatest year of my life.

And that's 17. And then from there, the— I believe the entrepreneurial activities start coming in a few, a few years after that.

A few, few years later. So, you know, I eventually leave the gas station. My dad says, hey, if you go to college, I'll pay your rent. And when you're making $3.25 an hour, Your dad says he's going to pay your rent.

Yeah, yeah.

You pay the fucking attention.

Yeah.

You're just like, oh, that's a good deal. Yeah. And so— but then I pause and realize that I'm an undiagnosed dyslexic who was terrified at school, did terribly in school, and did not want anything to do with college. So I don't know how I stumbled into Santa Monica City College. And I found that they had a cosmetology school at college. I was like, what's that? That's in a hair school. I know how to cut hair. I'm gonna sign up for hair school. So I signed up for hair school, told my dad I enrolled in college, kind of told him what it was. And he was like— now my dad does not cuss, but he was like, motherfucker, that is not what I fucking meant. But goddamn it, I'm gonna keep— my dad is a man of his word. He's He's the most stand-up guy I've ever met in my life. And he paid my rent and I worked at— I did start at hair school. So, and then I was about two-thirds of the way through hair school and I slipped a disc in my back and had to have a major back surgery.

And were you given pain meds for the back surgery? Do you remember?

I didn't take them, but you were because I was newly sober and I didn't have anyone telling me that it was okay to take pain medication if you have a pinched sciatic nerve running down your leg and you're crying yourself to sleep at night. Like, hey, you can take pain meds. That's when you're supposed to do it. It's okay. But I didn't because I just was thinking it was— I was too new and I didn't know. It wasn't even risky. I just didn't know. It wasn't even just— like I said, the obsession was lifted, right? And like, doing drugs wasn't an option for me.

Yeah.

So I end up, um, having to have back surgery and have another spiritual experience around that back surgery. I, um, have to go get an MRI because I need to see what's happening with my back. And this is 30-plus years ago, and MRIs back then were much longer and much more intense. They're not quite as quick as they are now. And like, laying flat on a table pinched my nerve even more. So it was like putting that nerve in a vice grip and just pinching the whole length of the MRI for whatever the hour I was in the MRI tube getting it done, right? And so it was like I kept trying to do it and I kept coming out of it. I couldn't do it, it was too painful. And in that process, they gave me liquid Valium, they gave me some pain medication, still didn't help. So it's like the day before surgery, the doctor's like, listen, I have to have images so I know what I'm doing with your back. I can't go in blind. So you have to go get this MRI. So I go in, and it's in Palm Springs at Eisenhower Medical Center where my parents live. And I go and I get the thing, and I go into the tube And something lays on top of me. Some entity. Maybe it's an angel. Maybe it's a spirit. Maybe it's an alien. I don't know. Something lays on top of me. Weighted. I felt it like a weighted blanket. And I have no pain. Hmm. I mean, I had pain for 6 months and I would cry myself to sleep every single night. It was traumatic. Like the crying yourself to sleep where you're like, God, If you make it go away, I will be a missionary for you in the Philippines and I will dig ditches for Jesus for my whole life.

And this is only, what, 18 months after getting sober?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like 18 years old, so I'm just like making deals with God because the pain is incredible. Have the MRI, come out of the tube, whatever thing is on top of me goes away and the pain comes back. I have the surgery. Surgery is very successful. They had to remove part of my back because there was no microscopic surgery at that time. It was a microscopic surgery today would be in an outpatient program, would be done in 30 minutes.

Right.

Back then it was like a crazy procedure. And with, you know, that was on like on or around my birthday, which is December 18th. I was home in L.A. at a New Year's Eve party a week and a half later, 2 weeks later.

Wow.

Right. That's how fast healed. Back was done. It was all good.

I mean, that's wild to have that level of adversity that soon after, you know, the year of meth and then getting sober.

Was it—

did it, did it feel like it tied into the whole narrative arc of things in any way, or where does that fit in?

We don't know what happened with my back and why it went out.

No one—

there wasn't an incident that we know that happened. It wasn't like, oh, he fell and that's what— it was just like it just kind of went out and it it went out. And so, you know, that was in December of 1988. And then in March of '89 is when I did my first nightclub. So between like January and March, this kid was bugging me to do clubs. And I was like, what's that? A club? What's that? I didn't even know what that meant. I knew a couple people in LA. I didn't know anybody, really nobody. And he kept pursuing me and pursuing me and pursuing me. And some friends of mine that happened to be fashion designers at the time were like, you got nothing to lose. Why don't you try it? Give me one of those talks, you know, where you're just like, what do you got to lose?

Yeah, right.

I guess I don't have anything to lose. Okay, let's do it. And I remembered that I had gone to like a weird frat party with a friend of mine who went to USC. And we got on a bus. God, I didn't go to college, but I guess you get on a bus and you go to a party and they keep you all from drinking and driving, they put you on buses. They're like, there's like 20 buses.

Yeah.

Take it and take you back to, back to school, right? I mean, I guess it makes good sense. Yeah, keep you safe, right? Um, so I said, oh, I know this place where we went to this party, this USC party. It was cool. And we went there and now we, we got that place and that's where we did our first club in Hollywood. And it was a— and, you know, I didn't really understand what happened at that moment in time until I read Outliers. Because it was like the right place, the right set of circumstances, and the right upbringing brought me to this point, this moment where everything was aligned perfectly for success.

Yeah, yeah. Right. It's the Malcolm Gladwell Outliers thesis.

Malcolm Gladwell, right. Where I was just like, there was no other big Hollywood party that night. There was no other promoter doing a big party. There was no celebrity doing a party in Hollywood. There was no rock star having a show at the Hollywood Bowl. All the things that could go against me Didn't happen that night. And I had on a Friday night in Hollywood, there was nothing happening that Friday and we grabbed it.

What was it like that first night? You could feel the momentum.

You could feel there was lines around the block. It was so crazy. The fire department came in and closed us down at like 12:30. It's overcapacity.

So you knew at that moment this was going to be a thing?

I don't think we knew. I didn't know at that moment, but we did it again. And so that party we did, we did the first Friday of every month was what we did with that thing. And we did it for a few months. And then the owners of the restaurant came to us and said, hey, you're making us some money. And, you know, like after the second one, that first one, we didn't make any money. The second one we made like I made $500. And for a kid who was like massive from making minimum wage, some $500 an hour or whatever it was. Yeah, it's getting $500 cash in your hand. I was like, what the— What the hell just happened?

Right?

So the owners of this restaurant was this old Russian restaurant called Misha's. They were like, why don't you do something every week? Because we're making the money. We're like, okay. And this is where my entrepreneurial story starts, I think. So we sit down and negotiate with them and they say, we start the negotiation. I'm like, whatever the deal is going to be. Like, I don't know. What do I know? I'm fucking 19. I don't know. And they go, we'll give you half the bar. And me and my buddy are smart enough to know, like, that's a good— we say, great, we'll take it. Negotiation's done, right? So we're now, we're getting half the bar. And somewhere in my brain, I have no idea where this comes from. I have this marketing idea because at that time in the world, in every city in America, in the world, nightclubs you paid to go to. It was $10 to get into. It's not like today. So everyone paid $10 to go to a nightclub. So I said to my partner, I said, I have our marketing plan. Let's charge $1 and then we'll put it on the flyer and we'll promote it that way. And I was like the first promoter in Hollywood to hand out flyers to people at clubs. Nobody was doing it when I did it. And this is like 1989.

Right?

So we start handing out flyers to people. People look at it. It's got a DJ they know on it, and it's $1 to get in. And you're like, let's go. What do I got to lose? It's $1. Who cares if it sucks? We'll leave. It didn't suck. It became the it club of the summer. It was like a blockbuster. Somehow in the program, I became friends with Drew Barrymore. And we ran around town together. So I started meeting people through her. She was my cashier. We had out of nowhere, like, Tone Loc and Young MC are freestyling with the DJ in the main room through headphones. The Beastie Boys are in the side room with these DJs, because in those days DJs would travel the world to find 45s and 12-inch records. Like, you would go to Cuba or London or anywhere you wanted a record or a beat from a different country, you had to go to that country. You couldn't find it in America. Very rare. Like, you know, you go to the import section at Tower Records and it was like, there's one, there's one crate, and then there's 3,000 crates of non-imported records. So you— and, and the import consisted of the world. So it'd be like 3 records from Jamaica, 1 record from Japan, 1 record from Germany. So you— so these guys were like known for like going all over the world and having the best collection of 45s. So like the Beastie Boys were coming from New York and they would fucking be on the turntables with them. Like just hearing these beats these kids were doing because they were so ahead of their time. And it just became this crazy, like Emilio Estevez is in line, Robert Downey Jr.'s in line. Like it just was this club that just became this the club of the summer in 1989. It's called Papa Willy and it was legendary at that time. And anyone who was of that time and knows it knows exactly what I'm talking about.

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And who were some of the, you know, folks who ended up becoming sort of big household names that were hanging out with you guys at the time? And you mentioned Robert Downey Jr., but was there a whole— you were sort of mentioning when we were having dinner, there was a whole era of people, some of whom ended up becoming stars, but you guys as kids used to all just hang out at this club in the late '80s.

Yeah, so I mean, really, I mean, part of my career was just, you know, coming into this young Hollywood thing. And that's what I did. Like, we did that thing with this kid Taff. He's not a kid, he's a grown man. Sorry, Taff, no disrespect, I love you. Um, and he kind of went into the house music scene that was, was starting to come around, right? So that was like the beginning, like the Happy Monday days, wasn't it?

Around then?

Yeah, it was like under the underground. There were still like— LA was still— there were still an underground downtown scene in LA that was amazing.

Rave-y kind of scene?

Kind of rave-y. House music warehouse parties were happening, right, in downtown LA. It was amazing at this time. So Taft really, he gravitated more towards that. So we kind of stopped doing business together and he went down that path. And I went down the path of Young Hollywood because I was like, I saw the— I just saw something there. And like, you know, we're all attracted to celebrities. Any of us that says we're not, you're lying. So there was that. But then what I ended up seeing was there was just people in our lives that, like, weren't famous one day, and then one day they were famous, right? And you were just like, oh, that happens too, which you don't really know unless you live in this town for a long time, right? It's different today. It's just this weird time in the world. I don't know what it's like out there now because I don't do Hollywood stuff anymore. When we were doing it, it was like, oh yeah, this guy Scott's driving models around and picking them up and taking them around and helping us hand out flyers. And then it was like, oh, where's Scott? Oh, he's in the studio making a record. Oh, cool. Fuck. MTV. Scott's on MTV. He's in a band called Stone Temple Pilots. And like, Scott Weiland is now fucking the biggest rock star in the world.

Yeah, right. You're just seeing—

but he was like in our house, having pizza, folding flyers. Dating, you know, it was just, it was just like, and that's, you know, same with like Charlize and Cameron Diaz. And I met Leo before he had a TV show. And like, there's these kids, like, it was just like this time of innocence where people were not like yet famous, you know.

Like, what was it like seeing all these people just sort of pop off, you know, here and there from basically your sort of young kid social circle?

Well, I mean, like, we kind of like created this— what we did with, with what I, what, what I did with, with Nightclub Promoting was like early in my career, I figured out you could do like a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday. So we created like multiple nights a week. So we kind of had a lock on the market. We did that for like two decades.

And so the whole '90s, the whole 2000s.

Yeah.

You rode those two waves like the whole way. Yeah.

Like New York had Studio 54 for like two years. We had the '90s and 2000s.

Yeah.

Like we had decades of like crazy fun nights that were just nuts at all kinds of levels. So, you know, we And basically it was just like out of nowhere, people just became, you know, they, you know, this is a town of opportunity, I think more than most towns. Right. It's also a super forgiving town. And we just watched people rise. It was like, you know, if it was like Charlize coming to model dinners and at Roxbury with us and not eating for a week, but that was her big meal for the week. And then one day she gets a movie and next thing she is who she is and like, you know what I mean? When you're friends with people before they're famous, and we were, we were friends with tons of people and they were in our world coming to our clubs, getting in, having a blast, and then their careers turned. And we always liked just cool people that had good energy and we would take care of them. And a lot of those people turned into super famous people that would look at us and go—

Super famous.

Super famous.

The most famous people on earth.

Yeah. Yeah. And they would look at you and go, You know, like, I saw Leo at Neon Carnival last year and he was like, dude, we've been doing this a long time. I know. Yeah, dude, since you're 14. He's like, I know, dude. Like, you liked me when nobody liked me. Yeah, he's like, I know, you know what I mean? And people remember that you were like that person that wasn't there for them then. Yeah, like, I watched the new Spider-Man movie and Tobey Maguire's in it, and when Tobey was a kid, he used to sit outside our clubs writing poetry. With my partner, sat on the stool. He was always on the stool forever and he never had made a movie. And then one day he does. And it was, you know, it's just like that thing where you're just like, yeah, we were friends with you before you were that thing. So there's something in that space of like, hey, it's one thing to like me when you know that I'm the king of the world. It's another thing to like me when I'm nobody and you're still really super cool to me. And I'm getting into the hot— I mean, granted, and they were still the hottest nightclubs in the world at that time, right? You know, we were— we kind of started— it started and took off really fast. My career, it was like out the gate, a rocket ship.

Did you notice relationships change with, you know, some of the people who took off, like, you know, Leo DiCaprio and whatnot, um, over time? Or did it pretty much stay consistent before and after in terms of, you know, how they would interact and make time for, you know, you guys or other people who didn't quite pop off in the same way?

Was it pretty Um, most people that were around that we knew were still pretty— like, I, I— this is like the outlier story. Like, since I— like, my, my journey of life, like, moving and not always having this weird thing about having deep connections with people was part of my trauma from moving from city to city. So I always had this thing where I was like, I wasn't trying to be Leo's best friend. Yeah, yeah. Like, I kept that boundary and he kept— and it wasn't like I was like trying to go to his house for the afterparty afterwards. I went home and went to sleep because I was sober. I didn't want to go to the late-night party. But it was like that thing where I just— I sort of always had this weird boundary with people. And I think it served me well. Some people I was closer with, obviously, and then some people I just had it. But I think, but I think, you know, to this day, like, you know, I can run into people and they're like, it's all warm and fuzzy, all good stuff, you know, like I don't have to see them all the time, but And we don't do that anymore. But like, you know, like I did Paris's 16th birthday. She wasn't like Paris Hilton then.

Yeah.

Her mom was like, I want to have a party for her. I mean, we obviously— everyone knew who the Hilton family was. It wasn't like they were a secret, but it wasn't like—

she wasn't a thing.

She wasn't that thing at that time. And, you know, all that stuff. But like, you know, it was like we all— it was just like an age of innocence. We all were kind of growing up, you know.

Was there anything common to all of the people who did end up taking off? Like, was there a certain, I don't know, star factor or level of gravitas that you could feel off some of those people before they took off, or did it seem fairly random?

I mean, I think there's certain people always have a dynamic energy. You're always like, oh yeah, something interesting, and there's some sparkle in their eye, but you don't really always know. I mean, you've seen that and nothing's ever happened because you run into people like that. But so I don't, you know, again, this town is such a weird, like, what makes, you know, what makes you make it. Yeah. What makes you make it, right? I think some people, like, could Leo be anything but an actor? Probably not. He's really good at it, right? And so I don't, you know, I don't, I don't really know, right? Um, but yeah, I mean, I mean, my partner Jennifer could always sometimes identify kids with, that kid's going to be a star. She can kind of, she could kind of see some people. You would see I'm like, remember Brad Pitt was coming around before he was Brad Pitt and people were like, that kid's gonna be a star.

That jawline.

Yeah, they were just like, that kid's gonna be a star, right? And like he was around and people were trying to get us to host fundraisers and put him on his name on flyers and do stuff in those early days. 'Cause people like—

They could just tell.

They just knew, right? They probably knew, like, 'cause there is that thing where there's like backdoor castings and people seeing what people can do before the movies come out. Sometimes a movie, gets shot and doesn't come out for 2 years. So the people are like, oh, that performance was amazing. Yeah, we know that guy.

I see.

But we haven't— the public hasn't seen it yet, but the industry kind of knows. So I think there's that little word gets out a little bit. Yeah, word gets out a little bit. Yeah.

So we had the— you had the first, um, gig from, from '89, and then that lasted what? How many years did that one last? And then what was after that? What was the night that was after that, or the main venue after that? First one.

Well, I think the big thing that happened after that— I did a couple of things, but then I really started doing like a Monday night at Gaslight was this little bar in Hollywood. And then I did Thursday nights at Roxbury. There's that movie Night at the Roxbury. Some people remember. And then we did a big thing called Saturday Night Fever, which was this disco club on Saturday nights, obviously, that had like a funk and rock room and then a full disco room in the front. And that thing was the greatest club I think we ever did because it was— hey, disco is so fun, right? As a music. Yeah, it's just fun, happy. It's just, it's just fun, right? It's, yeah, it's not violent or it doesn't— it's just happy. Disco's happy music, right? So we had like this VIP room, but it was this place where it was like— and this is like in the mid-'90s— so we had all of a sudden that was like Cher David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Peter Tompkins, like all these '70s stars, like legends are like coming to the club and dancing on the dance floor because they loved it. It had gone away. Like the '80s were the '80s, which they probably were like, what happened? And then, I mean, to this day, Cher is like, can you bring that club? Because I'm friends with her and she's like, can you do that Saturday club again? That was so fun. I'm like, Cher, that was like 30 years ago. Yeah, it's been a long time. But, but, but it was that thing where it was like, it was so much fun. We did that club. This is what's different about clubs now as then. We would do clubs that last 5 years. That Saturday Night Club lasted 5 years.

What has decreased the endurance of clubs, do you think?

Now I think cell phones and internet and communication. And, you know, there was a thing about our clubs, I think, where there was an anticipation of going out in Hollywood where you didn't leave early because you didn't know what was going to happen and you didn't want to miss what was going to happen. Because in our places, anything was possible. Jay-Z could get up and freestyle through the headphones with with DJ AM because he just wanted to be there and do it, right? Right. And, or Snoop would just be there like going through the, you know, headphone freestyling and doing a show because they just wanted to do it. Like, people would be like, I don't want to miss that. Like, you know what I mean? Like, Justin and Britney had a dance-off on one of my dance floors, right? Like, you didn't leave because you were like, what, what could happen?

And cell phones took away the what could happen, you think?

Yeah, Hyde is the line in the sand where it all ended. The first Hyde on Sunset, the original OG Hyde.

What year is this? This is—

I mean, I'm with SBE at that time, so it's got to be 15, 16, 18 years ago. I don't know.

Okay, so we're talking '04, '05, something like that?

Yeah, something like that.

Can you give us that breakdown on what that line in the sand was?

So Hyde was this, um, little jewel of a club on Sunset and Crescent Heights. It— I think the legal capacity was 79 people, right? Right. So maybe we could put 110 people in there on a packed night. And we, and we made this rule: we weren't going to play— we, we only played like rock and funk. We didn't really play hip-hop, and we, we didn't let any press in there. That was our rule. And for decades, we had a thing called no cameras. We wouldn't— we had a sign outside that said no cameras allowed. We wouldn't let— you couldn't come into our clubs with a camera. If you got caught in the club with a camera, you got escorted out. So we also built this environment within young Hollywood where agents, managers, producers, people trusted us because you could send your clients in there. You weren't going to read about it the next day and we weren't going to sell a story Now, if something was crazy enough and big enough and you couldn't contain it, it is what it is. But like, if some actress is going to kiss a girl, we're not selling the story, right? It's like it's just they're in the corner making out. No one cares. No one's taking pictures of it. And it's not coming out of our camp. And everyone kind of knew that. So we had a lot of trust in the industry. And so Hyde, we wouldn't let any media in. I got into a war with Perez Hilton, this blogger, because we wouldn't let him in because he was— he had like a show on E! and everyone knew what he looked like. I was like, Perez, I can't.

He had the dyed hair.

Yeah, I was like, you can't let you in because like we don't let any press in and you're like the biggest press guy in the world. Like, I like you, but like, I can't. And so, and that was the last nightclub that I think And nightclub is a big word for a room that holds 80 people, but it was like this room where it was like, it was open 7 days a week, but literally it would be like Paris, Lindsay, Britney Spears, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jared Leto, Cameron Diaz. Like, it was just like— and there was 10 seats in there, but every seat was like that. And you walked in that room and you're just like, holy, what the hell, right? It was like Oscars. Yeah, yeah, right.

That's crazy.

And so it was just like, that was like 4 or 5 nights a week. That's how that place was. It was white, white hot. And there was a huge crowd. Nobody could get in 'cause we couldn't let people in, right? And then we had this, we had this, these, then it started having these, and that's where Harvey stood outside with TMZ. He stood outside Hyde videotaping all that. That's where he got like the whole thing with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, the fire crotch thing. And like all this stuff that happened. Britney getting outta the car with no panties on. That was going to Hyde on a Sunday night. I was there. It was crazy, right? It was nuts.

I mean, you were—

so you were running Hyde at the time?

Yeah, Hyde. I created Hyde.

You created Hyde?

I created Hyde, yeah. And so, you know, it was just all this stuff happening in that little space, and celebrities were still coming out. And then TMZ was birthed. And then right after that time, cell phones got on phones, cell phones got cameras, and then you couldn't stop that. You couldn't tell people you couldn't bring your phone into the club, right?

Right, right. And then so it was—

and then so That, and it was also all that mess that happened, all that stuff that happened with like Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, like all that. They got all that press around there and there's all that hot press around them and what they're doing and the war they had with each other. And it kind of made this thing and it kind of tainted it a little bit. And like publicists started saying to their actresses like, ah, it's not a good look. You shouldn't be going out to those clubs. It's getting a little trashy, right? So you had that going on in Hollywood, and then you had cell phones happening, and then you started seeing things come out on video, and people— things started to happen, and you saw that. But I think Hyde is that line in the sand where it was like old Hollywood, new Hollywood.

It's crazy to think about, you know, like a 120-person club like that having, you know, massive global penetration through the media cycle. All the way to Ireland where I grew up. I remember these stories as a kid coming through tabloids and things like that.

So somehow my journey is I'm really good friends with Lachlan Murdoch. I go stay with him in Australia. We all know who he is. I'm sure you know who he is.

Lachlan Murdoch.

Yeah, his son running the empire. And I go stay with him and Sarah and we get down to the Sunday paper and he's, you know, this is when you're still reading paper. He's got 20 papers, right? That's what they do. He's looking at— he goes, oh, here's your— he goes, look, your club's on the front page. And like, the Sydney Times, yeah, on the front cover of the page is like, what happened at Hyde last night? Yeah, it's on the COVID of the newspaper in Sydney, right?

Right.

And we're both chuckling about it. He's heckling me about it. Yeah, but we're looking at— I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Like, that's on— that's like on the COVID of the paper of this whatever big paper is in Sydney. Yeah, man, I remember this. It was It was crazy. I was like, you know, I was kind of like that moment where I was like, wow, it's like that. Yeah. Because when you're in it, you're not really—

Yeah, you assume it's just the local social circle kind of thing.

Well, you know, I mean, we knew it was bigger than the local social circle, but you don't really know exactly, you know, because it was just one of those—

You don't know that it's literally global. Yeah.

That's global.

Yeah. Yeah. That's wild. And so just to close on the— entrepreneurial journey. How did the rest of that scene sort of evolve and change from kind of mid-2000s to now? And then how did the rest of your arc look as things sort of shifted from that line in the sand with Hyde?

So, you know, I really took my nightclub promoting and then I, you know, I somewhere in the journey, like before we did the deal with SBE, we did a deal with MTV and we did The Hills. And so, you know, The Hills was again like this weird show.

The Hills.

Yeah, it was this weird phenomenon that it was just like—

it was huge, wasn't it?

Huge, huge show.

I remember that.

It was a massive show all over the world. And so— and at the time, this is like the beginning of like early reality TV stuff, right? I mean, Hills was still late in it, but it was still relatively early in what it was. And so we'd been approached by so many people to do reality shows. I'm just like, what? Okay, how does this work? You tell me how the show plays out. Hi, Gwen Stefani. I know I'm doing your New Year's Eve party and I have a reality TV show that wants to come into your house and film us putting together your New Year's Eve party at your house. It's not going to work. That's never going to work. Because how is it— how is that possible?

Why would she say yes?

Why would she say yes? Yes, she's not going to. So we always just said no. So then I get approached by Adam DeVillo, who created the show, and he, and he's like, pitches me the idea. And at the time, we had a pretty big event company like you talked about. So we, somewhere in our journey, Janet Jackson contacted me and said, will you throw my record release party? I hate the way the label do the parties. I love your clubs, they're so fun. Do that for my record release. I want to have fun and dance with my dancers. That's how it was with every artist. Prince, the same way. Like, he was just like, I just want to dance with my friends and have fun. I'm a club kid. I can never do that. Can you, can you do that for me? I was like, we can do that for you, right? Because that's really— in some of these people, that's who they are. They grew up in their club— they were 16-year-old club kids, you know, and they wanted— they want that, and they can't do it anymore. At some point they get so big that it's not possible. So we do that for Janet Jackson. That kind of starts our event career. That was really successful. So we have this big event company that we're doing corporate events, corporate events. Like, we were the first company to do all the Maxim events. So all those legendary Maxim Super Bowl parties you heard about, the first decade of Maxim, that was us. We did all of those things. So before SBE, MTV is like, you know, do you want to do this show? So at the time we were doing tons of stuff for MTV on the corporate side. Like, we do corporate events for them for some of their shows and their things, or we just be the backend production company that would do their production work for them. Or we'd be doing like VMA parties, but we would do the— like, our VMA parties would be like, we're doing them for Korn and the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. Like, we were doing all the celebrities. So the MTV, we were just— it was all like one entertainment, right, kind of thing happening. And so at the time, I was pretty friendly with the top brass at MTV. So I just call them. I'm like, hey, what's happening with this show? Why do I— why should I do this show? Tell me. I go, I don't want to get punked. So my friend Dave Serledic, who's running MTV at the time, he ran MTV News and all the programming for MTV. He was like, I don't care about you. Have the girl work for you. If you don't like her and it's a problem for you, fire her. We'll leave your office immediately. That's your, that's your exit. Right? I was like, okay, easy out. Easy out. Right? So we do it. Girl films. She kind of has a half-assed job for the first whatever season. It becomes this worldwide phenomenon and everyone stops working, but it still continues in the reality way. But it was like And I think what's made that show really great was, A, Adam was such a great producer and really captured a moment in L.A. that was a beautiful— like, it was kind of a love letter to L.A., right?

Was it a peak, do you think, of L.A.? That, that sort of era or period?

No, because it was still the SBE. SBE was still later. Like, they missed a bunch of golden stuff.

Okay.

But it was still a good time because Adam wrote this love letter to L.A. and it was like, I think what was interesting about that show is a— like, it saved Teen Vogue. What people don't know, like, Teen Vogue was going out of business and The Hills saved Teen Vogue and the record company. She worked at a record company, Audrina. So it didn't— nothing really happened with that because she wasn't— it didn't— she didn't hit. But Heidi worked for us. And so you would be like watching The Hills. You'd see it, you'd see it on nightclubs that were real nightclubs. This is all real stuff where we're doing a party in Vegas and they're following us to Vegas and they're doing it. And so you'd be watching The Hills and you'd be reading, and then you would pick up Us Weekly because this is before blogs or the internet had really taken off. There's still printed magazines. So you would like pick up Us Weekly and you'd be like, oh, Jessica Lynn Simpson's leaving Area. And The Hills is on— is that area filming? So the girls on The Hills are at Area. Jessica Simpson's at Area. So it made it seem extraordinarily real because it really was like they were really filming in our clubs during real nights.

With actual stars there and stuff.

With actual people there. And they would go into a corner where they'd figure out how to do the sound and make it all work. But they figured out a way to do it and film in our spaces. And it was very real. So that show had a sense of authenticity that I think has never been reproduced, you know, hasn't really been reproduced in that space because it's hard to get access to places like that. But they were in like— and at that time we had the hottest clubs in the world and they were in there filming in the hottest clubs in the world, which is invaluable.

You know, I think a lot of people have this idea about showbiz being sort of empty or superficial. But I'm curious because the way you talk about it at least makes it not feel that way. It sounds really, you know, meaningful. And obviously the way in which you did it was— do you think people overestimate the degree to which elements of that world are superficial or empty, or is there truth to that? What did it feel like on the inside?

So I think what people have to remember about Hollywood is the narrative that's been told for the last 100 years is you have a town where the most broken people in the world can run away to, to forget about whatever trauma happened in their life as they were growing up. Right? It's the great escape. So you imagine somebody who's had a really awful upbringing, whatever that is, whatever that looks like, but it's not pretty. They land in Hollywood. They're 22 years old. They get a part and they crush it and they make a million bucks. They never— and they come from a trailer park and now they got a million bucks. They get everyone to tell them they're the greatest thing in the world. And they're filling that hole with all the stuff in Hollywood. And we know, and I know you know, and I know a lot of people listening to this podcast know that that's not what you fill a hole with. That's not the emptiness inside of you that you need to fill it with. Right?

That's not going to work.

It's not going to work. It's like you're pouring water in in your right hand and it's leaking out of the bottom of your foot and you're wondering why you're thirsty still.

Right.

Right. And so you have this town and everyone's not broken and there are good people here. I think the thing about L.A., and I tell this to anyone who moves here, it's like you got to give L.A. a few years.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, there's some towns that you can go to and you can drop in and connect. First weekend you go to the biggest bar and you meet some people and you meet some solid people that are not.

Yeah.

They don't care where you work.

Right.

In this town, people ask you like, where do you work? What do you do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

And so it is a weird, shallow town in that way. And that is absolutely true. And anyone coming here should know that. But it also is a town where you can be nobody today and somebody tomorrow. That doesn't happen in Philadelphia. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't. I mean, if it does, it's, it's like super rare.

Yeah, yeah, right, right.

I mean, I guess now with Instagram and Instagram models, I guess anyone in Philadelphia can be a star, at least in their own mind.

Yeah, I mean, even— well, all the Instagram stars are here too, is the reality, you know, right?

Yeah, but you know what I mean. But I'm just saying that like, so LA does have this weird thing where it does have that, and— but it is a lot of broken people.

Yeah. So that's where the superficiality comes out of is more trauma.

I think there's a lot of dysfunctional things happening here and people trying to be functional.

Yeah.

But it's like I said, like if you don't, if you don't deal with your trauma or your dysfunction, like, and you just keep moving from one thing to the next thing, the next thing, it's going to— your past is going to catch up with you eventually. Eventually. Right. If you don't do the work, And no one wants— I don't want to do the work. You don't want to do— nobody wants to do the work. Nobody wants to go see Mr. F, right? Like, nobody wants to go into the dark night of the soul, you know what I mean? I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't think anybody— I don't think Perseus was like, let's go find Medusa, I'm ready for her. He was not excited to do that.

Yeah, well, that's the perfect segue into the, the kind of, uh, next thing I wanted to ask you about, which is First off, let's start with, you know, your journey with flow and finding our work. I'm curious if you could tell the audience about that. Obviously, we're working with you and the Bungalow Group and your team.

Yeah.

And then I would love to hear just about more of your journey with flow and peak performance and the other kind of inner work and psychological work you've done. But we can just start with how you came across flow and we'll steer from there.

So I was— I'm friends with Aubrey Marcus.

Yep.

I'm sure some of your listeners are familiar with his podcast. If you don't know it, I suggest you jump over there quickly because he's so smart and so cool. So he invited me down to Fit for Service and I went down for the weekend in Austin and did that with his whole group. Was such a beautiful— so great because I love that he mixes a little bit of like biohacking and like what you guys do and throws in a little bit of plant medicine and some spiritual stuff and sacred masculinity.

Good blend in there.

Yeah, because, you know, it's but it's all still part of life. And so that spoke to me in a big way. And Jamie Wheal was there that weekend and he talked. And so I was listening to Jamie just give his little talk and I was like, oh, you know, and I've been on this journey a very long time, since I was 16. And I've done a lot of spiritual work and I've done a lot of different things from Hoffman to the Meadows to ayahuasca to all kinds of stuff I've tried in my journey to achieve happiness. And sometimes when people come to things like Fit for Service, this is the first time they're doing anything. First time they're taking a look into self-discovery.

Right. It's the gateway drug into that world.

Right. It's the gateway. It's that thing. And, you know, so sometimes— so I'm always sometimes at these things and I'm like, I'm not hearing much. I'm like, okay, I get it. It's beautiful.

Yeah.

But Jamie really was speaking some wisdom. He's a really smart, very wise human. And I was like, whoa. So I kind of dove into his work a little bit and found Stealing Fire.

Yeah.

And then ran into Steven and started looking down that rabbit hole and kind of led me to you guys.

Yeah, right.

And then I started listening to one of Steven's books and I was like, oh, that guy's really smart too. Yeah, right. And I started thinking, like, looking at it all and then looking at it and then, you know, you guys are great because it's like this, like it's a screening process, right? It's like this. Just like, ooh, am I going to get in?

Yeah.

It's like signing up for Soho House. You're like, I'm going to make it. I don't know.

So we let you in.

I know you. Thank you. I appreciate it. So I'm doing that. I'm doing the thing. And then I'm thinking, I'm thinking about it all. I'm like, I can't afford this, right? I was thinking like, let me just get— let me hear because I probably can't afford it. And then it was— came back and was actually reasonably fairly priced, I think, for what it was for 8 weeks and what it is.

And this is Zero to Dangerous.

Zero to Dangerous. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, I can do that. And then you're like, yeah, you can pay over 2 months. I was like, I for sure I can do that.

Right, right.

It was great. It was like you guys made it so that I could do it.

Yeah.

And I did it. And it was, it was so great to do Zero to Dangerous because it reinforced some things, some habits I already was doing. Just I didn't know, I didn't have a name on them or label for them. But, you know, if you're being healthy and you're moving towards the light and you're trying to evolve and be a conscious human, it's the same stream, right? You're going to find the same stream upstream, right? Right. So you swim upstream, you're going to find the same source. Your water is the same source as my water. And maybe it's— I say it differently, bottled differently. Maybe it's bottled differently, but it's from the same source. So I started seeing like, oh, I'm doing some stuff that actually you guys just validated through your research, your science, your discovery. So I'm like, oh, I'm on the right path. So that was really comforting for me as a human. I'd be like, okay, I'm doing some things right. And then I learned a bunch of other things, right? And I love the fact that, that Stephen really kind of like saw this thing and was like, how do we, how do we take this lightning and put it in a bottle?

Yeah, yeah, right.

Because so many people could look at that and be like, I don't know how to do that That's too much work. Fuck it. Right. He obviously—

it's a nice way to put it. Yeah. And that, you know, I think that actually does nicely sum up what we are trying to do is take flow, which, you know, I think lightning is a nice way to describe it and make it accessible and systematic and reliable for people.

We've all been in flow states, right?

Right.

Even if you don't know what it is or you have no idea what that possibly could be, but you've all been in a conversation with your friend or you've made out with a girl on a couch and you started making out and it was 8:15 and now it's 12:15 and you're fucked, her parents are going to be home and you got to leave. That's a flow state, right?

Like, particularly fun one.

But hey, those are— that's the best flow state, right? Where you just— we've all been in that. Like, you know, like I just realized I had to do— I'm doing some business in San Diego and I just drove down there and I was like doing some stuff and I was just in a groove and I was like, oh shit, I'm in San Diego. I was like, I'm here all of a sudden. I was like, oh, I was just in a flow state, rolling calls, doing things. And I didn't have the label for it until after I did the course. But it was like, oh, okay. And you know, like I'm also like a lazy sod to some degree, so I need to practice the principles probably more. Like, you know, there's, I'm a slow learner because learning to me is like anything that's a curriculum, as you know from my story now, that I'm like, ah, yeah, I don't want to do that.

It's scary.

I gotta learn something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can ask me a spelling test, I'm gonna fail. But, um, no, I got a tremendous amount. And then, and then I, you know, I signed up my whole team. We have a small team, it's not a big team. Yeah. Um, and so we just signed up the whole corporate team to sort of bring us together because it was— it felt great after like coming out of COVID and kind of all being dissipated and then coming back together to, to be a bonding. I think it's becoming a bonding thing. I've missed a couple of weeks with my team because I had just— I got COVID and I was away and that's just some travel and I've obviously done it, so it's okay to miss it. But I, you know, but I'm hearing really positive feedback from my partner and some of my team members that like it's I hope it's going to be really— I think it's powerful what you guys are doing.

I think it's really—

it's so great to like, again, it's, it's, it's digestible. It's easily understood. I do want to get you guys connected. And I think I'm assuming Stephen's the more of the scientific side. Who's the scientific side? Is it you or Stephen?

Both of you? Yeah, it's both of us. And then our chief science officer, Dr. Michael Mannino, is, you know, officially the science, the science guy. Yep.

So there's a woman in Arizona that I see. Her name's Lois Laney. She does a thing called restorative breath and her whole platform— she's writing a book and I'm going to send her to you so you can get her on here.

Great.

We're going to help her. Yeah, but she works on all 12 cranial nerves.

Is it craniosacral that she does?

She doesn't do craniosacral. Okay. What she does, she's like your grandmother who knows all this weird shit about life and health and medicine and will tell you to do something weird on your tongue and put it through your nose and your cough goes away. Like, she just is like one of these old-time people, but she does this stuff with cranial nerves and her whole platform is getting all the cranial nerves to fire properly in humans. And most people are not. 99% of the people out there have cranial nerve issues. It could be all the way back from like like coming through the birth canal, things got wonky, right? To a fall and hit your head, whatever it could be. And she, she'll do some tests on you, right? So when I started seeing her, she'll do some testing. She'll be like, okay, close your eyes. She goes, I'm going to touch you. She touches you. Okay, where did I touch you? Uh, you touched my arm, my shoulder, and my ear. Nope, I touched your foot, your knee, and your—

oh wow—

and your hand. And you're like, I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? She goes, because your nervous system is a little bit confused, a little frenetic, and it's a little spread around, but we're going to— we'll get you firing and we'll get all your nervous system firing up. And when it's totally firing, the system works so much better. I think it's a piece of what you guys are doing that you haven't touched on. Because if you— because if you can't get all— because Obviously we can't make any claims, right? So this is— I'm making this claim. Lois is not making this claim. But one of the things that she does, she works with kids with autism and she gets them about 80% better. It's really interesting because, because you got to think about the cranial nerves, right? So it's, it's— there's 12. It's simple analogy. You have a 12-cylinder car, you have 6 cylinders not working, right? You're still driving down the road. Yeah, you're just not driving very well and you're not driving very fast and you don't have, you don't have the horsepower you need to go to gun it if you got to get through the red light or go up the mountain, right? But you can get where you got to go, and you've been doing that for 30 years, so you think that's just as fast as your car goes. She gets it all going and you're like, holy cow.

Yeah, it's remarkable how possible it is to improve symptoms of autism. People underestimate it dramatically. There's recent research on intravenous fish oil, funnily enough. I bet that actually has shown to move people along the spectrum and make dramatic, dramatic—

She has amazing stories of helping kids that, like, you just are like— And she has all the things she does. Like, one of the things she does that's really fascinating is, like, she'll take, like, some essential oil and put it on a Q-tip and put it up your nose. Now, you know, if you put anything up your nose, within 3 seconds you're supposed to sneeze. That is a normal human response that is supposed to happen. Go home tonight, put a Q-tip in your nose. If you don't sleep, that cranial nerve is like the COVID test. Yeah, you're supposed to sneeze right afterwards. That's a normal response. If you're not doing it, that cranial nerve is not functioning properly and you got to train it to do it because it's just out of training. Once it's— it's like everything with the body. Once it gets back into homeostasis, it stays right. Like I did it with my son. Like she got him all his nerves like firing literally at like— he was like 1 year old. He could barely walk. He could stand. He could hold on. She had him on like a vibration plate. Like it's not at high hertz, but it's more like a rocking, but it's moving, right? She has a big light board that you would use for like an athlete to chase lights, to get neural functionality, to chase lights, to just get that connectivity. So she turns on the kids doing it now. So he's standing on there, he's looking at lights, he's touching lights with both hands. She's like, he couldn't do that if all his nerves weren't working, right? Because I have grown men that I put this exercise to that fall over. Yeah, yeah, because they can't do it because their nervous system short circuits and they fall over.

That's interesting.

It's interesting, right? She's interesting. She does all this stuff and she just sees it and she sees it through this certain lens. But it's just— I'm just obviously— I love her clearly by the way I'm talking about.

We'd love to have her on. I'd love to.

I love, you know, like she's just, she's just finishing publishing a book. I just did a foreword for her, or a little blurb. And I just feel like in this space, there's— because everyone from Aubrey to Ben Greenfield are my friends, but there's this piece that's like not— we're not talking about the nerve, the cranial nerves, and they serve such a function. Cranial nerve number 5 is your teeth. And so when you connect your teeth, you activate cranial nerve number 5. It takes the most energy of your body to run cranial nerve number 5. Nerve. So when you work out, you put something in between your teeth because it stops that from happening and it gives more nerve energy to the rest of your body. Just a simple function. Could be a popsicle stick, right? You know, like, I can't give her justice because I can't speak the way she speaks, but it's just these simple things that you find like, oh wow, like I get a little more performance. Like, you know, like the Under Armour gives you the thing for your mouth so you can lift weights stronger. Yeah, the truth is You're disconnecting that nerve. You're biting. You need that tense, but you, but you disconnect that nerve and then suddenly you're functioning better.

So, Brent, I would love to hear a little bit of a breakdown of some of the changes you've made from a, you know, performance, health, and overall well-being perspective in the last, let's say, 5 or so years from the flow work you've done with us and the performance work with us and then otherwise. Because I know you've done lots of other work.

I mean, I think the biggest catalyst for like— I mean, I've been on a pretty health and wellness kick for many, many years. Long time. Like, I stopped doing sugar like over 10 years ago. I stopped drinking sodas like 20 years ago, something like that.

Right.

But probably You know, Ben Greenfield is a friend. I met him through Neil Strauss, the writer.

Yeah, yeah.

He's one of my closest friends. And, you know, discovering his platform, you know, he's just such a wealth of information.

Yeah.

And he has so many great people on there. So I've learned so many things that I didn't know about health and wellness through him. I think he's such a great portal for that. So I recommend anyone who's on a journey of like trying to be healthier. It's like Ben certainly gives it to you in a way that's easily digestible. I think for me, like we were just talking about, like one of the great things I think I've done is I've stopped being a mouth breather. I tape my mouth shut at night. I still do it. I've known it for like 3 or 4 years now just to train my system to get out of that. Lowest was another one, like really figuring out, you know, I went and had some surgery on my nose. I could breathe better and easier and freer because I think we all underestimate the power of the breath. We all know breathwork is such an important thing. I probably need to do it more than I currently do it. I think intermittent fasting has been such a great tool for me. Like, I think more like having an eating window where I really eat eat between 12 and 7.

And then outside of that, you just fast pretty much?

Yeah, I do my best not to. I mean, listen, if I'm hungry at 10:30, I'm eating in the morning. Or if I'm, you know, sometimes you have dinner and you just can't avoid eating later. But in general, I do that. I found that that's— it's interesting how the body will self—

kind of self-correct.

Well, you just kind of get to a weight where you kind of stay and your body kind of stays the same and you're not— you're still eating. And, you know, I was like, I don't necessarily not eat. I eat bread, I eat pasta, I eat pizza sometimes, but not like all the time. But like, you know, you can kind of have— you can still do that. I think that's been really impactful on my life.

Um, what gets you into flow most these days, Brad?

What gets me into flow? I'm working on that. Like I'm trying to figure out like the things that get me into it the most. Like music's always been a thing that can get me in flow. Like I love music so much I can just be like lost in an album for a couple hours. And I don't know if that's technically a flow state or not, but I assume there's a level of absorption at least. Yeah, I think it's something— I think, um, again, like you said, like even when you take your course, there's there's like, watch 2 videos, but there's 5 you're supposed to watch. I'm still unpacking it. It's only been a few months. So I'm working on cultivating more flow, I think. But, you know, I find when I'm doing something that I love, or if I can at least drop into that space of love, of a pleasure, of like enjoying the moment, like flow comes easier for me.

What about in social situations? Because I mean, what I find remarkable about your story is that that all of that, all of those nights, God knows how many thousands there were, were sober.

Yeah.

Which is wild.

Yeah.

So are you in flow in those contexts generally?

I would say yes. I think, you know, when I'm— like, the closest thing to like my old life is like Neon Carnival.

Yeah.

Right? Where— and obviously there's nothing like Neon Carnival. It's a party for 10,000 people in the middle of the desert.

Right.

You know, so, but you're just— to me, it was always work. Like, I always had this boundary of like, okay, I'm not here to have fun. I'm not here to get laid. I'm here to like, make sure you're having— that you're good.

Yeah.

Because my responsibility is you're hosting. I'm hosting. I'm supposed to make sure I have some level of responsibility there so I can be in that flow state of doing that and like, obviously building Building and designing, like launching restaurants and bars, that puts me into a good flow state.

Like when you're going out to San Diego, that kind of—

Well, no, like we just opened Tiburon with Bungalow Kitchen and just like getting the team up there, the furniture's there, the art there, and you're kind of figuring out where it's all going to go together. And it's just this kind of like, it's this opus that you're kind of creating that you're not sure where everything— you know where some things are going to go and you've looked at it on paper for so long. And now it's coming into focus into the real world, right? So you're kind of in this euphoria of like, here it is. And, you know, you're doing that and it's always late nights, hanging art, doing stuff. And next thing you know, it's like, fuck, it's 1 in the morning.

Yeah, yeah.

We got to go home. Let's stop and come back tomorrow. Get fresh eyes.

Right, right.

So there's that. Obviously, I've been doing like, you know, I have a sauna, I do red lights. I started doing this thing that Lois suggested is I have a vibe— I have a vibe plate now.

Yeah, yeah.

And I stand in front of the red lights and do the vibe. And what she says is, she's like, don't do it for exercise. She goes, just stand on it for 10 minutes every day morning, and it, it, it helps your nervous system hugely.

Vibration is another sort of modality that is massively underestimated, but right.

So I've been doing that recently, and I really am liking like just standing on the front of the red lights because I like to do double things. If I could put it all, if I could put it all in a sauna. Yeah, do it all at the same time. I would stack it all together.

Audiobook on 4x speed.

Oh yeah, exactly. Now I can't do that because the audible change of the voice makes me crazy. But so the vibration plate I think is really great. And obviously just like really for the first time in my life, like just lifting weights. That's interesting, right? Like, I built a gym during COVID There's a great company called Sornex that I got all my stuff from. Awesome company, great guys. I think they build the best gym stuff in the world, but it's just old school stuff that's like forever, right? And part of my doing that is I have a 4-year-old son and I really wanted to imprint on him like that dad every day is in the gym working out, lifting weights, lifting weights.

Well, yeah, I actually—

working out.

I had a conversation with Dr. Matt Kaeberlein last night, who's one of the world's leading experts on longevity, and he was stressing very strongly that weightlifting trumps cardio, and people still underestimate the extent to which weightlifting is superior.

No, no, all the research is showing that, like, cardio is like— yeah, not that it's bad. I mean, we can do it, but like—

right, right.

Weightlifting, I think, has really changed me as as a 52-year-old man now, like, I'm in better shape than I was.

It's amazing.

Yeah, the one in my 20s, like, but I'm like, you know, squatting and deadlifting and just kind of these old school moves.

Yeah, compound movements.

Compound movements. Like, you're like, wow, your body actually really responds, right? You feel rooted in your— yeah, yeah, you know, you're really rooted in it. Yeah, it's like, it's great.

It increases interoception, like that internal sense of bodily awareness. Which makes you feel more grounded.

Yeah.

So what brands— I mean, first off, obviously you've had a wild life, if that's not apparent to everyone from listening so far.

I say blessed. I feel like I've had a blessed life.

Blessed, wild. Yeah. I mean, definitely sounds blessed as well. And we missed or at least skipped over God knows how many incredible details and stories. I'm curious what, you know, is next for you. You know, you've got hopefully another good 50 years at least on the planet.

Yeah, I mean, the next 50 years going to look like, do you think? Um, you know, we, we were, you know, before COVID we were, we're kind of teed up. We had a bungalow going in La Jolla, we had one in Dallas, we had one in Berlin, and all that kind of evaporated because of COVID And somehow we managed to make our way through COVID, which is really hard, you know, I don't have an investor and we're self-made. And I kind of left all those kind of partnerships to be on my own again because I felt like that was the best decision for our company. So we've kept it pretty lean and mean and we managed to make our way through COVID, which I think is just a miracle that anyone survived it in the hospitality space. But now we're just really getting back into like opening more bungalows, right? So, you know, we're looking at some other deals and getting some stuff because The thing with these deals is they can take years to come to fruition, right? So those deals I worked on for like 2— some of them were like 3 years before COVID and then it ended. So it was like 3 years of like, oh, it's not going to happen. And the projects just evaporated because of COVID COVID.

Yeah.

So it's really like getting back into that mindset of really finding some properties. And we have some stuff teed up and we're looking at some stuff and hopefully we're going to get into some LOIs and and, you know, build more Bungalows because, you know, the dream of me for Bungalow is, you know, it's this great neighborhood bar. It's not a nightclub. There's no doorman. Everyone's welcome. If there's a line, if you stand in it, you're going to get in.

Right.

And we want to go to underserved markets. Right. I don't want to be in New York or Miami. Like, I want to be in Oklahoma City. I want to be in Denver. I want to be in Dallas. You know, there's like— it's weird. When we went to Santa Monica 12 years ago, it was a ghost town. Nobody was in Santa Monica. Things were happening in Venice or Culver City, but it was like— so I like this, this idea of bringing something world-class to communities that don't have it. And it seems to work really well. And so I just want to do more of that. And then, you know, God willing, maybe we turn it into a hotel brand. If we're lucky. We'll see. It's on the— it's on— it's always been on my radar. I love hotels. Maybe that's a crazy thought.

I like that. Yeah. I mean, Bungalow has this epic sort of open to the public house party feel.

Yeah, it's supposed to.

And it's, it's really, it's really got an amazing vibe.

I am writing a memoir.

Yep.

So I'm in the process of doing that with a writer because I'm not, as you know my story now, I'm not much of an academic. So if I wrote a book, it would look like it would be written with crayons outside of the lines. So I'm hopefully going to do that. We're going to try to get it hopefully done in the next few months and get it to some publishers and see if we can get a bid and then write the book. And I want to go out and use that platform to help people. I mean, my big calling in life, like, as you can tell, like, you know, one thing that the program does really, really early in my life and I'm so grateful for is like, it taught me how to keep my side of the street clean. It taught me how to be of service, which is one of the great gifts that we can do in this life is to help people. So, you know, and I've, you know, I'm speaking at USC Marshall in like 3 weeks and they were— it was like from speaking there and at Harvard sometimes those kids are always like, like, you got to write a book. This is crazy. A lot of speakers coming in and talk to our business class about this, but your story's nuts. Like, right, there's like nightclubs and drugs and the mafia, and there's all this crazy stuff that's happened in your life, and movie stars. Like, we never hear this shit. So they kind of— it was like all the kids in those classes, would they— because they write you letter, they actually write you physical letters afterwards, you get to read them. It's pretty beautiful. Um, and So I was like, oh, I could maybe help some people, give them some tools. Maybe I can do that. And I want to do it and hopefully in a beautiful, humble way of like telling my story of— because I've had success, I've lost it all. I've had success, I've lost it all a couple of times. I'm on, you know, I think everyone's on this weird balancing, you know, feels like Elon Musk could topple at any time, right? Like Twitter goes sideways, this goes bad, then boom, suddenly he might It's all, you know, I mean, permanent juggling. Yeah. I just feel like even if you're him, like, does he still have that sense of like completion? Shit, it all could just come.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Could it all come, go, go away? You know what I mean? So I think we all have that as entrepreneurs. But I wanna, um, you know, I really want to write a book and, and go out and help some people if I can. Is that— and then from there, who knows? Like, I still want to do bars, but I think like, you know, I love the health and wellness space. I love, like, what you guys are doing. Like, obviously it— that resonates in my soul in a different way than maybe getting kids drunk every weekend.

Yeah, yeah.

But I can also say I, I've helped hundreds of people get sober. I've fucking tackled assholes from dragging girls into cars and stopped them from doing that. Jesus Christ. You know what I mean? Like, I've tried to be beacon of light in this dark world, in that space, which is traditionally a dark place, you know, where we try to bring some integrity to that space. But, you know, like, if we saw weird shit going down with chicks, it was like, yeah, yeah, think about that, dude, because you're never ever getting back into this— to my world ever again, right? So you should either walk away.

Yeah.

And I'll put her in the cab.

Yeah.

And they walk away. Yeah, it's happened. 50 times more times than I care to think. But, you know, you just see this. But when you're sober and you have your—

yeah, you see it.

You see the predators out in the world. And we've always tried to stop that behavior from happening.

If there's one sort of distilled message that you would like people to be left with after reading the book once it comes out, what is that? What is that core message?

Hmm. I think that we all have to be a little more kind to ourselves. Right? Because sometimes we can be our own worst critic. You know, like we got to learn to love ourselves a little bit more and we got to remember I feel it's either in a Tony Robbins book or a Wayne Dyer book, but there's this great story where there's a guy on a train in New York and he's got 3 kids and the kids are just going crazy, jumping around. They're out of control. They're like out-of-control Rugrats. And there's a guy and there's a guy on the train and he's just and he's looking at this guy and he's getting irritated. This is like, you know, and he's— and then the guys have an attitude, like, just control your kids. Like, fucking, what's wrong with you, man? What's wrong with this guy? Can't he just control his fucking kids? Fucking, fucking crying. They're torturing all of us. And the dude's kind of just sitting there and he's looking around and he kind of just kind of like halfway through the train ride, and I— it seemed like it was like a long ride, maybe out to, out to the Hamptons or something. It was a long train ride. And he kind of looks up and looks around at the people that are looking at him. And you can kind of sense that everyone's looking at him. He goes, listen, I'm really sorry about my kids. Their mom was killed in a car crash yesterday, and I don't know what to do.

Yeah.

Drop the mic. Right. We got to remember, we don't know what someone else has gone through or what they're going through. As we cast judgment upon their behavior. We don't ever know. Right. And we forget so fast. So I think we all need to have a little more compassion about what's happening to our fellow humans around us. Sometimes it's not about us. Right. Hey, are your kids okay? Do you need help with them?

Right.

You know, like, I don't know what that move is in that situation because that's a terrible story, right?

Yeah.

You know, but just being a little more open and curious of like, maybe, maybe he's had a bad day.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

I just remember reading that and it was such a powerful— yeah, obviously it lands heavy. You're just like, oh shit.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's been in the position of being the person who snaps at that guy. And then later finds out what has actually happened, you know?

So, I mean, I constantly can be like an asshole to the guy at the DMV, right? And I'm not, I'm not proud of that. But I mean, there is— and that could just be I got low blood sugar, I didn't eat properly, or yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever, you know. Yeah, whatever happened. There's— we all have reasons why we act that way.

Yeah.

But it's okay to do that. But the right thing to do is to walk back in and say you're sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I try to do whenever I can. Sometimes I catch myself and I go, all right, well, I got to go keep my side of the street clean, right? That's what they tell me. If I want to stay sober, I keep my side of the street clean.

Well, on that note, Brad, thanks so much for just sharing all your wisdom and your tales and everything with the audience.

Of course.

This has been a legendary episode. Where can people learn more about you, support the work you're doing? And one, one thing everyone can do is drop into the Bungalow. Yes, it's Santa Monica. That's a no-brainer.

There's one in Santa Monica, there's one in Huntington Beach.

Yep.

Um, maybe one coming to a city near you.

Yeah.

Um, obviously, uh, the Bungalow— at the Bungalow SM is Santa Monica's, like, there. Or if you just go to thebungalow.com is our website where we keep all of our stuff. Um, and I'm at just, you know, @brentboltshaus as my Instagram is really the only thing I'm kind of on, except I did this thing called Flow Collective Research where they told me to turn off Instagram, so now I'm confused.

You haven't posted since you did Zero to Dangerous.

I'm— I did. I took 8 weeks off.

I did it.

There we go. I did 8 weeks off. It was awesome.

Okay, nice.

Um, but yeah, like, um, bungalowkitchen.com is our restaurant in— up in the San Francisco area, in Long Beach.

So super.

We hopefully will continue to Yeah, let people celebrate life in our venues.

And we'll do, we'll do a round 2 as well when the book comes out. Thanks so much, Brian, for that.

Thank you, bro.

Amazing. Boom, from Oura Ring to Oura Rings, dude.

It was crazy. I watched an Oura Ring commercial on TV last night.

Oh really? I was shocked. Commercial? Yeah, that was amazing.

I was like, oh yeah, early adopters.

They're going big, they're going big. Yeah, they're crushing it. Amazing product. So yeah.

All right, next time. All right.

Yeah, no, thank you, Brent. That was epic.

Great.

Appreciate it.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Question for you: when was the last time you were in the zone? When you were in so deep that afterward you were stunned by how much you got done even though very little time had passed? Now you've got bold goals, yet you're slammed with work and you're short on time. And you know the heights of productivity you can achieve when you get into the zone because you've been there before. But it's a mild form of torture knowing how productive you're capable of being without access to that level of output all the time. So how do you get into the zone whenever you need it? There's still a lot that we don't know about flow states, but over the last 25 years of researching it, we've learned a lot, and we've shared our findings with thousands of high performers. You're in flow during those moments of total absorption when you're so focused on the task at hand that everything else disappears. Time passes strangely and performance just soars. I mean, motivation and productivity, creativity and innovation, learning and memory, cooperation and of collaboration all skyrocket, in some studies as high as 500% above baseline. Now imagine what you can accomplish if you could reliably increase your productivity by 5x. And the best part? Flow is accessible to everyone, anywhere, at any time. You don't need to pop a pill. You don't need to be surfing a monster wave. You don't need to meditate on a mountaintop for 10 years to get there. Flow is accessible to you right here, right now. If you'd like to amp up your productivity and get leverage on every second, go to getmoreflow.com. .com. Just think of your 10 out of 10 days when you get more done in the morning than you typically do in a full day. Now imagine if you tapped into that level of performance with push-button consistency every day. All this is possible when you trigger flow frequently and reliably. Just go to getmoreflow.com, unblock your flow, and unlock peak performance.

If what you've heard on Flow Research Collective Radio has been helpful, please consider doing us a solid and leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this. Reviews help us connect to a wider audience so we can get these peak performance principles out to more people.