What If It Did Work?
What If It Did Work?
Chris Duffin On Fear, Grit, And Building Real Strength
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What if fear isn’t a stop sign but a compass? We sit down with Chris Duffin—engineer, world-record powerlifter, entrepreneur, and author of The Eagle and the Dragon—to unpack how real strength is built: by choosing meaningful pressure, not chasing comfort. Chris grew up homeless in the wilderness, learned to respect fear while holding live rattlesnakes, and later rebuilt his body and businesses after brutal setbacks. His thesis is simple and hard: specific adaptation to imposed demand applies to everything—bones, teams, mindsets, and companies.
We dig into the Six Ps of resilience—Precipice, Plunge, Pit, Pull, Peak, Plateau—and how to use each phase instead of fighting it. Chris explains why motivation fades, values endure, and entrepreneurship only works when it’s an expression of what matters most. We talk leadership that paints a visceral picture of now and next, micro-bravery that compounds into macro-capability, and the quiet courage of hard conversations that prepare you for big leaps. If you’ve ever felt stuck, his challenge is direct: turn into the pain, ask what you’re avoiding, and take the smallest scary action this week.
You’ll hear how he returned from a devastating back injury to elite performance by owning the process, coordinating experts, and refusing limiting stories—and how a documented case of a double-quad reattachment led to a 700-pound deadlift in seven weeks. The takeaway is practical and liberating: most limits are stories repeated until they feel like physics. Rewrite the script with systems, accountability, and consistent action.
If this conversation moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a quick review so more people can find it. Then tell us: what’s the one hard step you’ll take this week?
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Opening And Guest Intro
SPEAKER_00I've never told no one that my whole life I've been holding back every time. So fucking two hooded stomach heroic, you think you are big.
Chris’s Wild Upbringing And Early Lessons
SPEAKER_04All right, everybody, another day, another dollar, another one of my favorite episodes of my favorite podcasts. Because I'm biased. What if it did work? Five years running. Yeah, I gotta say, man, pretty excited, pretty stoked about this guest. Today's guest is the kind of man who doesn't avoid pressure. The man, he engineers it. From breaking world records and powerlifting to rebuilding bodies, that doctor said we're done. Chris Duffin, proof that limits are often just poorly tested assumptions. The founder of Kabuki Strength, a world-renowned coach, the author of The Eagle and the Dragon, where he teaches how to turn pain into power and resistance into growth. If you've ever felt stuck, who hasn't, burned out, who hasn't, are capped by what you think you can handle. Today's conversation is about to stretch your mindset. Like a heavy deadlift stretches the bar. Chris Brother, welcome to the show. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Dude, man, you you're like just reading your bio, it could create well, if you're a chick, like a lifetime movie. And definitely for like a dude, like man, you're the epitome of like that, like every time growing up, and even now, like whenever you know, muscle and fitness has like a compelling story, you brother, you have a compelling story, man. From most people, you know, when they say that, oh, I'm unlucky. You've you've heard that, right? The victim. I have, yes. Oh, dude, it's genetics. I suck, I do this, I'm not successful. And and and they want the Titanic, the soundtrack played. But dude, you you had uh by far not the most ideal upbringings, correct?
From Survival To Scholarship And Leadership
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that's uh a bit of a uh I guess an understatement. I had a very unique upbringing, and that's what it's a best-selling autobiography. If anybody wants to check it out, it's on Audible. But we'll tell the story, you can bypass that if you want, and it is being made into a documentary, but it I tell the story not to say, oh, I've accomplished so much or anything, it's really I started sharing it because I found that people could see maybe not their own story, but see the tools that were used, be able to use some inspiration from it and understand that like it there's hardship, like life is fucking hard. And I I I I put that out there. I so many people in this social media world, which I've been in myself, like to present this this imagery. And I could like life is real, life has its ups and downs, and you know, shit gets to you and it's hard, and you've just gotta you've gotta work through it. But if you if you put your head down and you take one step in front of the next, like, and you just keep doing that and making sure you're charting that path, you'll end up looking up and looking back and not realizing how far you came. So, for how far I came, like it's it's a little surreal. Like I literally grew up homeless in the wilderness in Northern California. And this was an area, there's actually a documentary series on Netflix about it called Murder Mountain. I lived about 50 miles more deeper and more remote. You know, six years old, I was living in a tree fort because there was rattlesnakes, you know, all over the place. Each my siblings had a tree fort, my mom was pregnant. We had no vehicle, like this is not a campground. This is you can hike to get to the nearest dirt road. And then, you know, it's still a long ways before you even get to the nearest town, which the nearest town has, you know, a few hundred people in it once you finally get there. And I'm being taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes at six years old. Because my brother was three years younger than me. I needed to protect him while we were just out playing. And let me tell you, it's like in that environment, there's certain lessons that I was allowed to learn. For me, like holding that rattlesnake in my hand and having it coil around your arms is the ultimate lesson in fear. And it's the message certainly is not like the raw, raw mantra out there of no fear and just trying to shut shut down your emotions. And guess what? If you don't respect that fear in your hand, you're fucking dead. But if you let it overpower you and you freeze up and you know what you're supposed to do, and you have been trained and have the steps in front of you of what to do and just walk through that while you're while the fear is coursing through you, you're okay. But if you let it overpower you, you're dead. That is like such an invaluable lesson. But yeah, that upbringing was is pretty wild. I mean, I dealt with we were in the golden triangle, so my parents were running drugs, and so we were dealing with all sorts of folks. I mean, murderers, uh, there was there was a serial killer that tracked the uh the family, there was human trafficking that affected all of us, like essentially every type of trauma I've experienced. And it's my message, I want to be clear is not that, hey, you know, that all makes you stronger. It's not that the case, like you can't experience so much that there's not necessarily a great rebound from, but you can always figure out a way to to use and empower yourself to be better. It doesn't mean you had to experience that much to improve, but it means there's always that path to be able to make that choice and figure out how to use that and leverage it. And so by the time I was in high school, I was chasing trying to excel. Like I wanted out of that environment. So I did all the things. I was an academic, I was an athlete, I got myself a full ride scholarship and was pursuing a dual engineering degree. And I took custody of my three younger siblings, my three younger sisters, and I raised all of them. I started raising them while I was going to college, and then while I was uh pursuing my career, and that was a lot of people like to commend me for that. Oh, but like, what what are you gonna do in that environment? Like, you're gonna step up and do the hard thing, and so it's just like one step just focused on like where I wanted to be, but not getting lost in like this vision, this dream. Like, so many people I remember it when I was in school, people, you you got a dream to achieve big. It's like I know so many freaking dreamers, but they can't like put their foot to the ground to take the step towards that. Like, don't get lost in the fact of if you get too like thinking about that dream, it seems so far out there. If you project that image and that picture of like where I want to be, the gap between where you're at now and there can be overwhelming. And that overwhelming is just like that fear. So thinking that fear management, what are the steps? What do I got to do? And it's like, what can I do today? What am I doing this week? What am I doing this month? But every day, are you taking you? The steps may be so small that you don't even feel like you're moving for years, but you are, and you're you're taking that steps, you're building that foundation to to move forward. And you know, that was that was my early life. I'm rambling here, ranting.
Comfort, Stress, And Real Growth
SPEAKER_04Oh brother, ramble away. But when when you when you talk about dreams and all, I I mean, I I was stuck in academia too. And and what I realized being in the real world and seeing highly successful people that aren't uneducated compared to you're like, oh my gosh, this guy's got an MBA, but yet you know, he hasn't done shit with his life. Is because the person that keeps on reading, and it's like they keep on bullshitting to themselves because you know, after academia, they don't want to fail, they don't want to do anything. They're waiting for the perfect opportunity. It's it's like fuck they're like Nassau fucking scientists trying to create the formula like of getting here to the moon while this incompetent motherfucker, you know, he keeps on doing everything and anything, and eventually he hits because he keeps on shooting.
Entrepreneurship As Values In Action
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, it's the thing you keep trying and you fail, but you learn that you can overcome, and that strength builds incredible confidence, and that's what I got growing up was I had to create my environment, you know, hang the tent, dig the trough so I didn't get buried. Well, like it was just constantly doing that and figuring stuff out and failing. And you're so on point here because this is the problem. There are biological, and I'm gonna get into some some science around this, but biological drivers that compel us to take that step into the unknown when we're younger. The moving out of the house, the saying hi to that hot number across the way at the bar, or the taking that to a relationship, having kids, like these are all there's this mixture of fear and anxiety and excitement all together, but there's these drivers that make you want to take a step into that unknown, into that that scary place. But then you see so many people they get to that point, they just stall out because those drivers disappear, and we want to find comfort. And it is the essence of life, the essence of growth is having something to push against. And I'm not being ethereal here at all. Go break your arm and put it in a cast. There's stress on that bone and it starts healing, but that muscle starts the process of atrophy near instantly. You cut that cast off and you're weak. Your arm is weak. Right? Simple process. It's called the specific adaptation to impose demand, the basis of sports science, right? And that applies to all things, that applies to human beings or life in general. If you we don't have that, if and you need to be purposeful once we get past these biological drivers to go, what is the thing that I'm going to chase that truly scares me? This isn't like choosing to, I'm gonna go in a hard uh cold plunge because it's hard. You do that every fucking day. Shut up. That is not hard. Yeah, how about the fact that you're scared of doing public speaking or scared of going to dance or doing like go do something that's fucking hard that you don't want to do every now and again, but be purposeful. I don't want to send the the the the the the the Gary V or the whoever hustle porn, like just be grinding, grinding, grinding mentality. Like, you need to be purposeful with what you choose because that is what you're choosing to develop for your strengths, and there's there's there's micro there you can look at the big things that you need to tackle in the world, but also the micro. I mean, how many people come to you? I want to start a business, I want to do X, like, and it's like you can't even have a hard conversation with your coworker. How the hell are you gonna like go like how about take that step first? Like, you you can't talk to your your your your brother-in-law because you're like, shut the fuck up. Like, I'm sorry, I hope this isn't a clean podcast, but I see this all the time. It's like, how about you go tackle that and tackle that and learn to fucking deal with that shit? But you that's the stuff that you choose to step into.
SPEAKER_04But but Chris, people are so fucked up, like in their alignment, when they say they want to own their own business, it's not it a lot of the things is like, well, because I want more free time, and it's like you need that's the opposite, yeah. Exactly, exactly. When I usually believe it or not, that's number one. I I I want I wanna the buck stops with me. I want to be the decision maker. No, it's like Chris, these motherfuckers don't know what they want to eat for lunch, and yet they they they want to run an organization or a company. No, the thing is, oh, my boss told me to do something, so that's why you know I want to be not told that.
SPEAKER_03Well, you're gonna be get being told that by everyone now, exactly.
SPEAKER_04Everybody's your boss because uh that that's the that's the number one thing I I learned. You're you miss new municipality. There's so many bosses out there. The customer is, yeah, that's number one boss, but you have so many, and you have so many people sticking their handout that you you're like, Well, what about me?
SPEAKER_03I want control of my schedule. You're gonna have control of your schedule that is 24-7. Uh, it won't stop.
SPEAKER_04Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_03It is what what stepping into that is it's if you have your values and you understand what they are, entrepreneurship or business ownership is the ability to take your values and express those in the world, to be able to create that into the world, to see what you see in the future and bring it into the reality now. And to me, it's the ultimate expression of art at the end of the day, the ability to transform culture, community, like within a company, it's expression outside in the world. And it is freaking hard work. But if, and that's why you need that, because it's not gonna come from temporary motivation, it's not gonna come from a motivational poster or getting yourself hyped up or do it like it needs to, if you're gonna be successful at this, it needs to be worth more than the money, worth more than that extra time that you're gonna get because it's gonna be brutally hard. And it you're gonna be successful because it's aligned with your values and the way that you want to live and the interaction you want to have with the world. Now that is money. When you can do that, then you're ready to go chase that. But the first thing I tell people when they come to me saying, Hey, should I do that? Is no, dude.
SPEAKER_04You're like, talk, talk about being the bearer of bad news, man. You're you're even worse.
SPEAKER_03Well, if you can't if you can't come overcome some external person telling you you're gonna fail, you're gonna fail. So that's that's the first step.
SPEAKER_04They want you to give them the cyber hug, yeah, the kudo, the attaboy. They don't want you to hit them with reality. You know, they want you they want you to be like their own personal Tony Robbins and go, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03But if you if you need someone else to tell you and give you approval or motive, you know, that the approval to go move that forward, I'm sorry, you're in for something else.
SPEAKER_04But sorry, I'm supposed to be motivating, but but no, but dude, people are doing it not only looking for external motivation, but now they've got chat GPT to to do a decision. Should I start my own business, chat GPT, or shall I stay? Because I don't I don't have the balls to you know, plus it's owner, you know, you you can say if you fail, well, man, I only failed because you know, chat GPT told me, you know, go for it. Yeah, because because you know it's hard to look in the mirror. It's hard to look in the mirror when you talk about you know, everybody wants to do things, dude. It's it's already beginning in February. Uh every grocery store across America bogos for every protein bar, every protein shake, everything out there. At least before, when we were growing up, people lied to themselves at least the first quarter. Now it's like, hey, it's like right off, man. And any pressure, and the best part is because yes, I I I did get the book and I looked through it. And you're supposed to run towards discomfort, run towards pain. But these people, it's not like touching the hot stove. What they do is the hot stove is turned on and they're like 20 feet away, and they put their hand up and like, yeah, I I can feel it, man. The same for me.
The Six Ps Of Resilience
Why We Try To Skip The Hard Part
SPEAKER_03So let me walk through the process, and I can show you like how I've like this is what somebody wants needs to do to walk that path. So I I gave some really you know blasé examples here, but step one is recommending recognizing what I call the precipice moment. This is the moment where that thing is in front of you that is scary, it's got that mixture. Maybe it's big, like changing careers, going back to school, starting a business, so on, but maybe it's smaller. I did, I was a corporate turnaround executive for 20 years. Then I went into being a serial entrepreneur, being a public speaker. Well, guess what? That life I lived growing up, let I was a very introverted person with a lot of insecurities. Do you know what I went to school for engineering and I got towards the end of that and I went, you know what I need to do? I need to step into a job as a leader. And I took a job in management. That's what I did because that was fucking hard for me. But it was gonna shore up because I knew I could be an incredible engineer. And I'm like, what happens when you get down the road so far? All these engineers stall out, they go nowhere because they don't have the skills to be to deal with people, to interact and communicate. So I chose to go the that route up front, recognizing those premises, precipice moments, both micro and macro. Of there's a piece on the other side, that vision, that dream I see, that peak that's over there. So it's like a square root symbol. We're gonna talk through it's the six P's the precipice, the plunge, the pit, the pull, and the peak, and then the plateau. It's a little square root. The just recognizing you're at that precipice moment and you need to take a step into that unknown, that place that's beyond your capabilities. You're gonna the goal is over here. But guess what? The first thing you're gonna do is start going into a whirlwind of oh my God, what have I done? Where am I going next? I can't believe I did this. Like this free fall, that's the plunge. You need to know what to do in each one of these steps. So the press is about recognizing the right ones, both micro and macro, just like a micro training cycle and you know, a larger training block. Same thing. We're talking about specific adaptation to impose demand. Uh, it's basic physiology, mental, emotional, physical. In that plunge step is a huge opportunity. That is your time to learn about yourself. To I talked about fear and you know, feeling and living your emotions. This is a big thing that gets wrong out there, I think, in a lot of the self-help or whatever realm. And that is like kind of blunting and just like pushing through. You need to to live those and experience because they tell you about yourself. When you take that step and you're like, Where am I going? What happened? We're not in the pit. We're not in the middle of just like, okay, this sucks. I'm fucking working through it now. But that moment is to turn inward on that and meditate on those things, whether it's sadness, depression, shame, whatever it is you're experiencing, to learn, you know, feel where's that coming from? Because that's gonna help you with that piece I talked about earlier, that knowing your values, what is truly important to you to set that North Star to make sure where you're going is gonna be where you want to land. So take that time to just go into those emotions, live it and feel it, right? There's a it's a there's opportunities in life where that happens. A year and a half ago, I had a company that I built, eight figures, globally renowned, ripped out from under me. It's just like, whoa. And I was able to turn, and that's exactly what I did in that moment is like what is truly important to me. And that ended up being the greatest gift to me instead of this horrible event. It was an incredible turning point for me to be able to recognize where some gaps were in what I was doing and not being able to express the values in the way that I want to give and be in the world. But then there's the work of like, all right, I'm in the fucking, I made that choice, I'm going back to school or doing whatever. And it's just like, it's just brutal. That is usually when I'm talking to people because they're it's just a rough time in life. You don't know where to turn to like, I don't know when this ends. And again, recognizing where you're at is incredibly important. It's so empowering to you to go, oh, this isn't life. This is where I'm at in life right now. And and more so, like, think about any business book you may have ever read. That whole business book tells usually almost always tells the story of this like horrible phase, but it was amazing. You should have been part of it. You walk into some company, it'll tell you about the glory days. You should have been here back in the day. Well, if you traveled back in time, they everything was gonna be better once they got through that phase. I'll use the example. I'm here in Portland, Oregon Shoe Dog, uh, Phil Knight. Nike. That book is all about like this horrible period of. Time and it's glorified. It's the action book of life. So the next step of acknowledge step two is celebrate. Holy shit, this is the storybook of my life. This couldn't be the story that I'm telling others or writing to share. I'm going to be so proud of this. When I get to the other side and I overcome this, acknowledge, celebrate that because this is the thing that you're going to remember on your deathbed, or you tell your grandkids, or you do like, or maybe it's a story you can't tell, but it's going to be deep to you of what made you. It's the action book story of your life. So yeah, it's brutal, but it's exciting. And you're going to be so freaking proud of yourself when you get to the other side of that. That's where I was a year and a half ago. Like, damn, this is going to be freaking a hell of a ride. And it's going to be fun to go from I went from, you know, doing this and having this globally recognized company that was everywhere, ripped out, don't have a job, and I'm going to turn back and fucking around, and this is where I'm going to be, you know, a year from now. And that's where you do the last step, leverage. ACL, like your knee. Acknowledge, celebrate, leverage. Because you know you care and you know it's going to bring about the best in you. We want to shorten the time that you're in that. That's also like if it's really bad, it could be like the trauma or the other things that I experienced earlier in my life, right? It's the downward thing. But when you're down there, coming out of that is when you build the strength. That's when you build the muscle, the resilience now, when you're practicing and developing those skills that maybe you developed on other microcycles, like that hard time you had talking with your coworker and you wanted to start a business. Well, you you stepped into some hard conversations and now you're leading people. Ah, it's a little easier that I did that before I started this. Like the more of these micro ones you do, the better the easier the big ones are going to do. That's why you need to be purposeful. That's the pull. And that's just the hard work of climbing and finally hitting that peak, that that piece of vision where you want to be. And for anybody that owns a business or is a leader, anything like that, I mean, that process, uh, you may recognize like that's the arc of every book and story and movie. Of course. Like it's the hero's arc. Like for a reason, it is life. And that's how you lead an organization to like you have to sit there and be able to paint this picture of like, here's where we are now, and it's painful. And you may have to paint the picture of the pain so that people experience and see and feel it and make that greater and that step of the next set of pain of jumping into that unknown being worth it to get to where you're gonna go. And you have to paint that that picture viscerally, and not just getting up in a bunch of front front of a bunch of people, you got to go tell it one-on-one to every person and see how they fit into that. Same, it's the same process, and that's the peak. And then we get to the next phase, which is just the plateau. Make sure you have some time to reflect and not and recover and not just but don't spend too long. You because it'll be you drink my ties at the beach for for for a couple weeks, you come back, you feel reinvigorated, you're ready to hit it for training and work. Well, you do it for six months, you're soft, you're weak, you're gonna get you're gonna get hurt. So, anyway, that's my that's my six piece of human resilience.
SPEAKER_04Why do people though you just you've described it two questions on that one? Why do people want to bypass the process? You have to go through the fire in order to become the blade, but yeah, people are like, Yeah, no, I don't want the C D E and F. I I want I want the hey, I'm starting a business, you know, and credits no right before credits, hey, successful roll credits, and the story that that never does that work, and in fact, that shows you like when somebody takes a shortcut losing weight, when someone friggin' gets wins, I don't know, ten million dollars on a slot pull, that money's gone because they didn't go through the process, the hardship, the fire of every step of earning the first 10,000, then a hundred thousand. You know, everything just given, there's there's no muscle, but yeah, people and people right. Why is it though that people like, yeah, no, there's gotta be a way, and and we've been trying, everybody's been trying that in every aspect of their life. Let's just bypass the work and the suffering.
Ownership Over Victimhood
SPEAKER_03I I will yeah, I'll pull on the engineer in me. Like, we are creative beings, and I think that we're always trying to find an easier solution, and that's what makes us human. That's an amazing thing about the human mind, right? Well, the thing about doing that is trying to find the easy route, so it does have a phenomenal output of it, it creates everything in the world that we know today, otherwise, we'd still just be living in a cage if we didn't if we didn't have that piece of it, right? But it has to be intentional because that also means we're going to seek comfort. That is our nature, and so that's why I started this with uh what once people get past these biological drivers that kind of force you into that, that's where most people in their 30s, so on, like all of a sudden they're 60, 70, and they're like, Where the hell is life a bit gone? What what happened? Because they it's they're not in, they're not engaged, they're not engaged with their family, their life itself, like it's just there's nothing there. Like that that's life, but you got yeah, you it's just something that you have to know needs to be intentional. And I'm lucky I I learned that the hard way, I think early on in my life, and maybe not consciously. It took me later to reflect on what brought about kind of the the skill set, the drive, the desire to do things the way that I did uh in reflection. But that's that's my belief. That's my background.
SPEAKER_04That's where uh your your foundation, think about it this way. I mean, you hear people discussing, oh, I had a a hard childhood, man. My my family wouldn't let me go to sleepaway camp.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you know, I I I had to I had to take a shower, so man, I had to get the gel and jugs and hike down to the stream, fill it up, then bring them back and set them out on the rock in the sun, and then later in the afternoon I could dump it over my head and wash myself. And uh it was a different, I'd say it's a different experience than most people have gone through.
SPEAKER_04Most people, especially when they want they they they want people to hear their story in this flight. Yeah. But think about it this way I I'm sure you hear it without interjecting, and you're somewhere you're like, oh my gosh, if if if this fucking idiot only knew, yeah. My my story, you know, he he's yammering away trying trying to trying to win the Academy Award for best dramatic, you know, performance, telling you all this stuff without knowing, really, you know, you yeah, that was I I I used to own uh a gym.
SPEAKER_03Well, actually, I know I still own a gym side. I just don't go there that often, but I had a bunch of people that I was I was I I was coaching, and you get new people all the time in, and they didn't know who I was. I just show up after work and I'd be training and helping people, and you'd be like, Yeah, you're you know, you're not getting the results that you want. You really should, you know, tell them, oh, but I've got I've got you don't know my life, it's so hard. And it's like you just let them tell the story, and and then uh you'd see somebody else watching you'd you know, they'd go over later, hey, you know, you're you're telling Chris that you don't have enough time in your life. You realize like he's turning around an aerospace company right now, he's got 150 people that are gonna lose their job if he doesn't uh accomplish this. He's got kids at home, he's rebuilding this house, he owns this gym and is coaching all these people. Like, it's like, oh and oh, he's competing at a world class level. Like again, that sounds very braggy, right? That's not my intent there. My intent is to go like be careful, like assuming, and I know that somebody out there is outworking me. If I go, hey, all that there's always doing that, like there's always someone, like that is not uh me saying I'm whatever, but it's it's just it's it's really interesting people's perspectives sometimes, and I well, sometimes it's it's like uh a swift kick, like like a wake-up call, because there was times like before I tore my ACL, I ran marathons and you know out in the middle of nowhere, mile 21.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, you know, no, it you know, this sucks for me, and then you see the person running with a guide, and he's got a you know, there's a blind runner, or there's so many other there's so many stories and so many people, then you quickly shut the fuck up and go, Well, you know, I I I I I guess my my little drama or you know, my little boo-boo pain, you know, it just suck it up and and and push right through it. Yeah, yeah.
Redefining Limits With Science And Coaching
SPEAKER_03I mean, it's just like the same thing. People see the big weights I've lifted and they're like, Oh, you know, if I if I just you know, I've got this bad back, you know, I can't do anything. And I'm like, well, you know, I I injured my back like so bad. I had I couldn't move, I had to learn to walk again after I got out of the walker. I yes, I was using a walker and I had to learn to walk again. I had drop foot for like a year, like and I came back from that and you know, squatted and deadlifted a thousand pounds, but I walked that fucking process. I got to know everybody in the clinical space and became an expert in that process. Now that now that's my career, but I fucking went deep and I fucking figured that shit out. Like, yeah, there's there's experience, and you can just you can make the choice to go, I'm the person with a bad back, and this is who I am, the bad back person. We can do this. I'm using a back, it can be anything, but it is defining yourself by this thing instead of empowering yourself to go, I own fixing this. This isn't someone's else or some other system to come in here and give me the answer to fix this. Like I own that, and I can I can figure out and chart that path to do this. It may take a long time, may bounce against dead ends, but work that, take ownership and believe that you can do it so that you can move that forward, but certainly don't ever define yourself by that thing, and that is just so horrible to see that when people come to that. Like, I am the person that is always like gonna be this way because of this thing. It's like, really? That's because you are like you you've made that conscious decision. There's no way out of this if you think that that is somebody else's job to fix this for you and move you forward. Like, that is an absolute certainty because you have Chris.
SPEAKER_04You don't understand my circumstances. Uh that one, yeah. My my hamstrings, man. My hamstrings, they're built differently. That's why I can't do you know a proper deadlift.
SPEAKER_03There's there's so much stuff that you can do and access this world today. I mean, I I've got a published case. I'm gonna veer off for a little bit, but veer, veer off if you want, but you know, I I'm known, I've figured out I had to figure out, I had to figure out extreme rehab processes to accomplish what I did. I wasn't necessarily the strongest. I was strong genetically. I was definitely genetically gifted to recover fairly well. Like, I won't say that those things aren't a reality. But I had to like learn all this so I could push myself to accomplish these world record feats that I did. And, you know, I got to know him for that. And people seek you out for those things. Like, I had this gentleman, uh, and there's only a few cases I can talk about. I work with some global celebrities, it'd be fun to talk about. But um, this gentleman tore off both quads, detasked them from the bone, ripped his legs off the knee. Okay, he's in the hospital and has to have surgery. If you look at clinical outcomes, sixty percent of people at two years are still in pain or stiffness or both. 50% of people never return to uh to sport or their full capability. Standard, if you can walk two miles in six months, that is considered amazing. And I said, he's like, I'll do everything. And I said, Are you are you sure you will do everything? I will. And I said, All right, let's lay out a plan. And I laid out the plan. It included all sorts of things. I mean, it was just a daily regimen of like, all right, here's some peptides we have to inject, here's supplements that we need, here's special training tools that are gonna create a stimulus, like walk through this rigor mole. He followed it to a T. He was committed seven weeks after being in the hospital and having his legs reattached, seven weeks, he was deadlifting 700 pounds. Shortly after that, did a powerlifting total. The numbers probably don't matter to anybody uh listen to this, but uh in the 0.0001% of the world population for strength with zero pain, zero stiffness, full range of motion. I did the work of figuring out who could help him get there and finding that person and committing to the process, but he took ownership and also believed that he could do it and empowered himself to find the people, the tools, and to follow through to do that. That is completely impossible. What I just told you is flat impossible. You go tell anybody that in the medical realm, and they'll say, This guy's making that up. And I can say that person's name is Travis Rogers, and you can go look at his YouTube channel and his Instagram, and the whole process is entirely documented. You can see it live.
SPEAKER_04You know what I not only that story, but the number one thing that I loved about your book, and I had to write this down, because this is 100% true, it's not a an opinion, it's a fact. Most limits are stories we repeat until they feel like laws of physics. And you know, that someone just creates their it's their reality because it's it's the bullshit story that they they've told themselves so much that they anchor in it, like thinking, you know, the world is round. I can't do this. It it's it's virtually impossible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yep. I could tell a lot of stories like this, and there we can accomplish so much more than that we think is capable. That is the whole point behind like the grand goals campaign that I did. It was wanted to push myself and see what I was capable of, and that truly was like the to me is a self-exploration to do something that I can look back on right now and go, that was impossible. I can't do that. But I did it. I walked through that process and I pushed myself in a manner and I failed, and I figured out ways around it. And I I built the team, I did all the things. It wasn't just like brunt force work, like there's so much more that comes to it. Like, be smart, you know, use your head, use your body, use your drive, like be like be intelligent, but figure out a fucking way. And you can, if you really truly believe that you can do something, we can do things, we do it all the time, we see it all the time. Uh and it can be you, that can be your reality.
Breaking Cycles And Changing Legacy
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but what's stopping people, it's right there, their muscles, their their biggest muscle, their head, dude. Because think about it, man. I mean I'm sure he heard from the doctor he he listened to the diagnosis, but he didn't have to listen to the prognosis. Oh, you'll never be able to do this, you'll never be able to do that. He was a stubborn motherfucker and he said it straight up. Fuck that. Watch me now. And but that's how we should live our life. Right? In every every aspect. You're you know, if if we go by odds and bullshit, you should have been dead like a at what 16, 18, 19.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. No, I mean, every there's everybody that I grew up with uh is either in dead is either dead in prison or they're living in a tent in the wilderness. Like I I i i it's uh it's devastating. I was just actually thinking about this last week the inordinate amount of of death that I have uh seen in my life based on the life that I've lived. It is sad how many family members, close friends that I've just I've lost from the people living that life. And to me, you know, the proudest thing that I have done amongst the things that I my resume, which we haven't gone through, but it's fairly impressive. Um trust me, I've I've read the notes and the book.
SPEAKER_04It's very impressive.
SPEAKER_03So uh the proudest thing that I've done is break that cycle of uh generational you know trauma. I know it sounds so freaking you know what we hear all the time, but it it is really I'm very proud of that. That that stopped dead and cold with me, with my children. Not necessarily my sibling, like, but here it did. They have no experience with that kind of life whatsoever. I still make sure that they're not overprotected and challenged and all those other things, but that's a completely different realm than oh, completely than white, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And but you you were the master of your life, the creator of your destiny. You changed your legacy, yeah, flat out because you know that's what odds are for, man. They're to overcome them, they're they're to overcome obstacles. It's not to be like, oh shit, man. You know, people look at you know, there's people climbing you know Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest, while other people look at a friggin' landfill mountain, those big those parks made with landfill, those hills, those fake houses, whoa, I don't know, man. I've got bad knees. I've you know, I don't know if I can climb that. And that that's that's how you know the human spirit, everybody loves the story of the karate kid, the Rocky. They just don't see them, they don't realize they can be that.
Skill, Setbacks, And Rebuilding Faster
SPEAKER_03It can't be me. It can't, yeah. That's some other person, yeah. Don't really believe that they can at the end of the day, and that's not uncommon. I mean, self-doubt is there, but you just some point you gotta step, put your big boy pants on and go, I'm gonna walk that walk. I'm gonna see like the there's only we are defined by our boundaries, right? And that means you don't know who you are unless you go peer over the edge of that cliff that is your boundary every now and again. Go find out where the fuck that thing is, go look over the edge. Oh, that's fucking scary. All right, and then when you come back next time, you'll find it's moved a little bit further. It's getting back to that whole concept I've been talking about. That that that adaptation thing, right? Just and most people are not willing to find out. I think that they're afraid to find out and think that they're not capable of what they're capable of. And as a like that was how I did a lot of the transformations. I talked about this painting the picture, but the other side of that is like I mentioned it's on an individual basis, and that was telling that story of how somebody fit in and what I believed that they were gonna be able to in a in giving him the thing that was out of reach for them, making them step and do that thing. And you'd have some people that would pick up and they would get that done, and they would look back, it would be transformational for them individually, realizing how much more capable they would be, how much more capable they they were than they thought they were. And then they would start changing as a person. You would start seeing that elsewhere in their life. It would I you transform people, you get them to be because what this does is. It brings engagement and motivation at a whole nother level, and it gets them to realize that they can continue to do that and push on. That's something like I've never held a job that long. I've had people work for me for over two decades, follow me from career to career. I've had people that I've let go come back and ask and beg to work for me because they realized what I was trying to say, what the messaging was, and then ingrained that in their life and went, I need to come back and prove something to you that I changed. Like that's an amazing thing. But again, it's that forcibly taking somebody and putting, yeah, doing a little of this, and then once they realize that themselves, that is the big movement.
SPEAKER_04But they had to have that aha moment because yeah, they did when you were pushing them, they were probably like, Oh man, Chris is such an asshole. Yeah, god, I hate that motherfucker. Yes, what a dick of a boss, what a jerk, man. Why doesn't he just back off, man?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I can't get that done. It's so I I think it's that insecurity piece. Uh and again, these are things that we all feel. I'm no different, you're no different. That that self-doubt, that other piece of creeping, but find out who you are, find out what you're made of, see what those limits are.
SPEAKER_04People are so resilient, but they just don't know it. That that that's what's crazy to me. Uh you you know, they're they're the type that uh the per they're they're the guy that goes to the beach and and walks on the the sand and it's hot, so they're like, Oh fuck it, the same for me, it's time to go home, man. And it's like uh to me, it's it's a gift, man. Ping is a gift, uh rock bottom is a gift, you know. God in the universe gave you a gift that you you didn't want as a kid, but it be it molded you, yeah.
SPEAKER_03It created that you put normal people in extreme circumstances, and they will end up stepping up to survive and do like over and over. I mean, this is like, oh my god, that hero, that amazing person, it's like that's just a person, we're all capable, yeah. They weren't my resume, whatever. That's because I had a chance, I had a life that forced that out of me. Okay, and I'm well, what can I do? I can try to share what I learned out of that. It doesn't mean I'm harder or better than anyone, it doesn't. And but you I'm just like anybody else.
SPEAKER_04You you use it as a reference, as this is where the what people don't realize is there's two focuses. Most people focus on this is who I am, the people that died that are in jail, that are living out in the woods, this is my story, uh, and lived by it till the day they died or incarcerated or living in the wilderness. You don't didn't embrace it. You said, Yes, that's who I was on telling you this, but that's not who the fuck I am today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because exactly that is the essence of the eagle in in the dragon, like it is can you tell I I yeah, I can tell it was the only reason I tell the story of the past, which isn't me, is to help share the messaging stuff.
Where To Find Chris And His Work
SPEAKER_04Same here because people would I you know any public speaking, and I say this is where you know where I was from, it's not because I want you to give me a hug after afterwards, because people fail to realize that it's like no, this is what I was, I overcame it. End of story, it's not like you know, I'm I'm out at a bar going, oh my god, back in from 1973 when I was born to the year here. Oh man, you know, it's like the person, the people that well, I I'm a fuck up because of my parents. It's like, so are you 16? No, I'm I'm 45. Oh, well, shit.
SPEAKER_03From I know so, and that's unfortunate about uh the current state of you know the social political climate or whatever you want to call it, but that is that is like what people are looking for is being able to express that I am this way because of these other factors that have happened.
SPEAKER_04Well, everything it's like fucking get over it and go take control of what you have control of, like uh, but but it's funny because we always like because uh one of my buddies, because we we laugh about it, like when the Menendez brothers that they're so many people wanted to let them out because oh, their childhood it sucked, and it's like holy shit, how many other fucking people had a horrible childhood? They didn't go out and smoke their fucking parents and then go party.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, uh you know, that should be all right because their parents went through this really horrible stuff. That was just a result of what so you know, so uh they sh you're gonna laugh.
SPEAKER_04So whenever we hear about something wacky and all that, it's always like, but what about their childhood? Yeah, that that's a go-to on anything, any serial killer, whatever, yeah, you know, anybody that that's living in toxicity or drama, or you know, your your your business partner takes everything, hey, you know, in a court of law, hey man, my childhood. And it's like your childhood, what bro? You're you're fucking an adult, man. Let's because you know, people and and that's why I'll tell you what you need to do, and this is hard.
SPEAKER_02This is fucking hard is even when all right, you've accepted this is somebody else's fault. Somebody took my business, stole it from me, fired me.
Final Challenge: Face The Pain
SPEAKER_03There is absolutely no fucking way you're gonna grow from that. The only way is to take that accountability and responsibility yourself. Like that was my fault. Whatever factors led up to that, how that route, the people that I brought in, whatever that is the choices that I made. And if you the only way to grow in life is to take that responsibility and accountability yourself, even if it's not there, if it's a half-still figure out how to make it yours. Take the blame, take the ownership because that's the only path to be better.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I had a similar experience. Uh my ex-wife, we were business partners, and then we well, we were married for like 20 years, but we had 20 years of being owners of a franchise, five locations, similar story, and yeah, it sucks, man. But you're right.
SPEAKER_03Overall, I had to accept you you there was a bunch of things that let it like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04At the end, and then you have to embrace the pain and just fucking let it go, man. Because if if you're gonna live in that story, dude, we could have a pity party, yeah, it could be like the 10th year anniversary. Oh, it was amazing. No, okay, it it sucked, but did you move on from it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what were the signals I should have seen? What did what decisions could I make? What can I do differently as I approach things? And again, not living in fear or like looking for like, but like if I take responsibility for these things that led to that, I can figure out how to be stronger, how to be more resilient, how to be a better person. It's the only path. Oh, yeah, but it can't it's hard because we want to. That's again that human nature thing that is hard on the ego.
SPEAKER_04Oh, dude, just yeah, the ego is hard because like because you want to be like fucking scarface or you know, say hello to my little friends, or or and it's like, but ultimately, the best revenge is just like, hey, bye, see ya, my and do better, be better, and show show them if they ever see you. It didn't affect it, affected you temporarily, it was a gift, and now you're a bigger rock star.
SPEAKER_03Yep, and that's exactly where I'm at. Like, I sat down the day after that happened, you know. Semi-truck showed up, loaded up all the machines, moved them across the state, let I had 50 employees, let them all go after I an hour after, like all that happened an hour after I was let go. And uh the next day I was like, I'm fucking excited. Like, I the world is open to me now. Like the ability to that's a beautiful thing. If you can remove the fear blinders and the things that you're trying to hold on to and not lose in life, and just accept, like, if I had nothing, what would I do today? Where would I go with my life next? The creative potential opens when you're like so consumed with I gotta hope I don't get written up at work or I'm gonna lose my job or this, or like you're you're so like hyper, like, what if I don't make the mortgage like scenario, right? Oh, go meditate into the worst case. Go I just get into it and live it and go now. In that, get yourself there mentally, do this exercise and go, what would I do next? And figure out map what would that look like? And then once you've done that, roll back to reality and go, oh, oh, I don't lose everything because I got a whole lot of fucking shit and I can do a lot with that from here and go go where I want to go and actually chart a better path. And now I have all these things to work with. Guess what? I've got a house, I've got a whatever. Like, ah, this is great from instead of starting with like that. Is a a nice practice to realize where you're at. And so, yeah, that next day I was like, all right, I'm fucking excited, let's go. And we had the next year mapped, and like it was it was a gift, like uh amazingly freeing and so much better. Continue to move forward and advance because everything that I built there, I still I still have the skills, the strengths, the network, the connection, the uh the I could go on and on. It's all there.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's like a muscle. People don't realize that when you hear those stories, oh, that guy like Walt Disney went bankrupt three or four times. He came back because it's a muscle. When when when you're you're successful, it it's like, yeah, that guy hit a 700-pound deadlift, but he he worked out. You know what I mean? It wasn't like some guy that you know from the biggest loser. Yeah, yeah. You know, he's like, fuck it, you know, I've I've never worked out. And he's like, Chris, you know what? I believe I I believe I you know overnight I can start, you know, do winning a weightlifting competition. I'm I'm gonna do a a snatch at like you know, within a month of like 225, and you know, just go from there. No, man. That muscle is always there. We we have this fear that if something is gone, no, you said it best, your life experience. You learn how to be a leader, a manager, you you know how to network, you know how to market. If someone starts from zero and they have all that, they can build themselves way quicker than the person that that's waiting for the best opportunity.
SPEAKER_03You walk that hard path and develop that shit. If it was given to you, you wouldn't have that. Now it's stripped away and you do have nothing because you wanted it the easy way, God handed to you, you know. Daddy gave you the business or whatever it was, like uh you didn't it's that that person's always the biggest douche, too.
SPEAKER_04Okay, it's like the biggest swagger, but swagger is not confidence, swagger is this bullshit. You you're you're in a paper house, not realizing, you know, yep, yep, shit can go sideways. Now I can I can talk to you. We're we're kindred spirits, brother. But you know we live in a TikTok society, and I know a man like you has like a million things to do, probably save save an orphanage, uh, save kids from a burning burning house and whatnot. You know, I read the book. Yeah, and I only plug and promote the hell out of shit that I love. Because if not, okay, yeah, where do they get it? And then that's it. It's like this is a must-read, man. To to me, personal business development, whatever. Throw this shit that shit out, man. Because this book, it's really about mindset and growth. You you you think, oh man, that this motherfucker is gonna teach me how to go from like bench in the bar to 225.
SPEAKER_03I think there's three pages on lifting in the whole book. Yeah, yes, exactly. People are pretty surprised by this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but what when I I or I'm like, okay, I'm like, but it's like something that when you pick up, you're like, people love the Harry Potter and all that bullshit because you know, your mind, it takes away your pain. But this you'll start embracing the pain, and this is like the ghost of Christmas present and future, all wrapped up, man. So, how do they get the eagle and the dragon? Is my first question, most important question.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's on Amazon, it's on Audible. You can go to my site, Chris Duffin.com. Uh you know, it's I'm I'm I'm indifferent. Uh Nomar, you're you're an author as well, right? You don't really make money from books. Oh, dude.
SPEAKER_04So people people think I'm like when I got my the company taken away from me, a guy's like, but you wrote two books. And I'm like, I'm like, is this motherfucker trying to insinuate that I'm like hanging out with Oprah and I'm getting ready to jump on her couch?
SPEAKER_03There's a couple people that make money from uh books, and that's about it. Uh yeah, yeah. So I yeah, whatever platform works for you, uh let me know. I do read the audible myself. They told me not to. They said, you know, you need a professional to to read that. And I said, Don't worry, I'll figure it out. I got it. And and I've had a lot of compliments, and they came back and said, Yeah, that was really good. So I think how how do you write an autobiography not reading yourself?
SPEAKER_04That's my my my oh dude, it I always get fucking pissed when it's someone else, and but you want the author because you know, especially if if you're like fanboy and it's some guy that doesn't even you can hear him like this motherfucker doesn't even sound like the guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like this voice does not sound right at all. This is not a match, like, yeah, dude.
SPEAKER_04Your your voice goes goes to the body and everything, so yeah, definitely. And they can find you on Chris Duffin.com.
SPEAKER_03Yep, they can social media stalk you, yep, it's mad scientist duffin, but I'm pretty easy. You just type in Chris Duffin on any social. I'm honestly not on social right now. I've got some big accounts, but uh I'm focusing on my YouTube, some really long form science-based and uh content, and yeah, I'm really enjoying getting into the nuance in detail. Um, but I'm pretty easy to find on any platform. If you want, I've got a private community. That's the best place to interact with me. If you go to my website and you go to the top and hit community, you can join. It's absolutely free. Yes, you'll get a DM that says, yes, you'll get a DM afterwards that says, Hey, why don't you pay for the extra 1800 videos and 350 hours a lecture for$29 a month? You can skip that if you want. The tons of free, it's all like tons of free articles interaction.
SPEAKER_04Don't be cheap, people. Don't be fucking cheap.
SPEAKER_03I I try to provide all the education around things wherever possible. The thing is the people that want to work with you, you can put everything out there for free. The people that want the individual guidance are still gonna come.
SPEAKER_04So exactly.
SPEAKER_03Amen.
SPEAKER_04And one final question, brother. This is for everybody out there. If someone feels stuck right now, what's the first uncomfortable action they should take today?
SPEAKER_02They need to feel stuck. I mean There's something about yourself that you're not addressing.
SPEAKER_03You need to look inward. Why are you choosing to suffer right now? Because if you're stuck, you're suffering. You're stabbing yourself on an ice pick every day, living a life going in circles, going nowhere. Why are you choosing to suffer? What scares you?
SPEAKER_02Be real with yourself. It's a hard thing to do. But spend some time.
SPEAKER_03I know I've said it many times. Turn fucking into it. Turn into whatever fucking pain is there and address it straight on. What's your weakness? What do you need to grow in? And just do it. It's gonna be scary. Whatever that thing is that's scaring you and keeping you in that pain.
SPEAKER_02Take an action step and take a step to it next week.
SPEAKER_04My drop, brother. Thank you for the hour. Thank you for spending time. Dude, you're to me, you live in service. That's why it$29.99, it's not a money grab. I tr I've seen money grabs, dude.
SPEAKER_03I know it's so prevalent in this industry.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, trust me. And then personal and business development, 98% of people out there, that's the money that is not. And for me to say that, uh full transparency, it's not a money grab, brother. Thank you. And I know you'll be a guest again in no time because you are a rock star. Thank you, brother. Thank you.