058: The Secret To Becoming Your Best Self!

Have you ever wondered what it really takes to transform your life?
This raw and powerful conversation explores how profound loss can become the catalyst for extraordinary change.

After losing his mother to cancer when she was just 32, our guest developed a unique perspective on time and opportunity.
 "My life was spared," he reflects, contrasting his survival through nights of reckless behavior with his mother’s lack of a second chance. That realization sparked an urgency that continues to fuel his success:
"It's go time. There's no sitting back."

The conversation dives deep into the critical role of mentorship and environment in personal growth. Citing Harvard research that shows 95% of success is influenced by who you spend time with, he shares his journey from "succeeding at getting high" to building relationships with world-class business leaders. That network shift fundamentally altered his trajectory, helping him overcome the failures of his early restaurant ventures.

With remarkable honesty, he breaks down why those businesses failed—despite good products and passionate staff:
 "I wasn't yet the person I needed to be."
Instead of treating symptoms, he tackled the root cause: himself. His philosophy is clear—growth is like a tree: always reaching upward, unless something holds it back.

Now co-authoring his second book on creative sales approaches, his story is a powerful example of continuous reinvention. For anyone feeling stuck or searching for motivation to make real change, this episode delivers both inspiration and actionable insight

Chapters

• 0:00 Life's Urgency After Mom's Passing
• 2:45 Success Through Mentorship Networks
• 5:35 Overcoming Self-Identity Obstacles
• 7:28 Trees Grow As Tall As Possible
• 9:00 Restaurant Failures: Lessons Learned
• 14:08 New Book on Creative Sales Approach

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Right, there's no sitting back, at least as it relates to what I can become, what things I want to accomplish, who I have to overcome in terms of my own self, and what life we live, what kind of experiences we create now.

Speaker 1: 0:16

Is it just, you know, overnight? No, but it's. What can I control? The reason why I'm so urgent in my time is because my mom passed away from cancer, like I said earlier, and she didn't get a second chance. She was 32 years old, right, right. And so here I was, right around the same age. Here I was saved, not so much as scarred, hurt, injured at that time when I was partying, going crazy, driving drunk home I can't even count countless nights, not even as so much pulled over, thrown in the slammer, not a reminder.

Speaker 1: 0:55

And you know, obviously you have a belief in certain things. But I was like, hey man, my life was spared. And now what would I be if I was cheating the time that I was allowed on a second attempt or the third attempt, whatever number that is. But my mom didn't get it Right. So now I operate from that place of it's go time, it's fucking go time. Right, there's no, there's no sitting back, uh, at least as it relates to what I can become, what things I want to accomplish, who I have to overcome in terms of my own self, and what life we live, what kind of experiences we create. Now, is it just you know overnight? No, but what can I control? I can control my approach, my energy, my effort, the things that matter, like that, so that I don't feel that I am not leaving it and laying it all on the table Right.

Speaker 2: 1:49

So but, yeah, man. So in that case you talk about making that change. You know, once again, 29, sober, doing these things, and you talk about the no regrets and and hey, not waiting. But, um, you know we all get to choose between. You know, discipline and regret, and you you're choosing right to make a change and be better and grow and and and push yourself.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Um, and you brought up another interesting thing is you talked about, um, you know those relationships, putting yourself around people or the gentleman on the stage. You're talking about the speaking aspect and recently had read an article talking about Harvard University and a long ongoing study they had done about and talking about how 95% of success and failures are direct relation to those you spend the most time with. So you surrounding yourself with people that were doing the thing right and learning from them and striving to want to replicate that and growing yourself obviously allowed you to succeed. Um, unlike hanging around all the people, that was the bad influence and doing the things and partying and, once again, that that took you down that path right, I succeeded at getting high yeah yeah, yeah, there was success there, but, uh, yeah, not the kind of you're experiencing today.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Yeah, so definitely, definitely the mentorship that I have in my life is unbelievable. I mean, it is the network that I've employed that are playing at a high level is still sometimes a surprise to me and I pinch myself. And it was hard for me initially to decide that I was going to help with sales, because I didn't want to be looked at as a sales guy. I didn't want that to be part of the branding. But then I looked back and I realized that a current mentor, slash partner, is one of the best sales professionals and individuals that has sold tens of millions of dollars worth of his own products on stage, off stage, online. And then I have another mentor is a dear friend of mine we're writing a book together right now who is one of the top B2B sales trainers in the world and has one of the largest channels and followings in sales from original deployment of their brand and so forth. And so then I have working at a company here in Vegas with another very big business influencer that is known as one of the top closers in the world, and it's like it goes on and on and on.

Speaker 1: 4:39

And so here I am talking about a story, right Again, being around the right people. So when I go to you and you're trying to figure out why you should hire me and you're thinking about, well, can you help me? And I'm sitting here telling you like, hey, man, this is what I've done. Number one here's where I've been. Number two and here's who I've been around. Number three Right, right, right, right. I mean, if you go back, I mean I remember, I think, distinctly sharing that on one of that, those original calls that we had with that group, the peer group, which was, you know like, tell us about yourself. And I'm like, well, you know, I know I can sell, I know I've sold a lot and I know I've been around the best in the business, so I think I know some stuff. You know kind of like that uh version of it and, um, yeah, you just realize like, and again, that's that kind of inward battle you're going through where you're not calculating perspective properly and I felt victim to that.

Speaker 1: 5:32

I don't like to use that word, but the reality is.

Speaker 1: 5:35

I fell for the illusion that's the better way to say it. That's the better way to say it. I fell for the illusion of thinking that and letting my ego drive this idea that, oh, it would lower me. It was such an inconclusive decision-making process that prevented me from taking faster action on the sales concept that, because I was avoiding it and having such a hard time, I created other stresses in my life for over a year or two years maybe, versus if I knew this ahead of time, it would have just been decisive and we've been gone way before.

Speaker 1: 6:12

But but this is the point of always on the grow for me, which is the concept of us always and never, ever giving up on figuring out that next version of ourselves, which is constant progress, which means, well, I just had to overcome some of that stuff. That's some of that purging of that identity in there that doesn't support you and it's not fun, it's hard in the moment, it's like you want to quit, you want to give up, you think it's time to put in the white flag, but you're like no, I've committed to something, to figuring this out. And because I committed to that, over time it started purging itself out. It started sweating itself out sweating itself. Now I can't turn you guys away fast enough. Man, you guys want to throw me all your money.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Well, you know, the essence of life is growth. You know, and you can talk about the continuous growth, always on the grow. Do the best you can when we talk about always learning, always growing. If you look at a tree, how tall will a tree grow? As tall as it can. Right, it doesn't stop at my height and say, okay, I'm done. No, it grows as tall as it can. It could have other trees around it. That holds it back, right? Sure, yeah, doesn't get the daylight, doesn't get some of the nourishments. But you know, once again, you know it goes back to you. Take those out of the guy. It's going to continue to want to grow, it's going to grow, it's going to take off that's it.

Speaker 1: 7:47

And you know, we, funny enough, we had a tree right here out in front of our yard as of as of maybe two months ago now, that that son of a bitch was getting big, it was becoming a nuisance and I'm like okay, and so then, not long after that, because we have a really amazing uh, property management, and association here that takes great care of our neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 8:06

It's pristine and, uh, I'm thankful for that standard. But they came in and they started pulling that son of a bitch out of the ground and uprooted it and it was out.

Speaker 2: 8:14

I'm like oh, I didn't even know you were doing that. They don't tell you, by the way, because this is their land.

Speaker 1: 8:18

They just do what they want, um, and so he ain't there no more. So unless you uproot the thing right and and and and take it out like that, you know, in that case he's done because he ain't got no more roots down there, but if he wasn't, he probably would have grown all over this place. Yeah, they just keep going, they don't stop. But to your point.

Speaker 2: 8:36

That's a great point, man yeah, so turn things back a little bit. You touched on, uh, the 18 months of of restaurant ownership, which sounds amazing and fun. It's, especially at that age. What was the biggest contributor, do you believe um sort of take out the partying aspect to the demise of those three businesses?

Speaker 1: 9:00

Sure, that's a great question. I really didn't know what I was doing operationally.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Okay.

Speaker 1: 9:08

That's. I think you figure that out. So I was glorified in the idea of owning the business rather than being the business owner and figuring out how to actually be that person. Obviously, I wasn't that person, right? So there's just no chance. There's no chance. I mean, you have you, even in that case, man with my identity, the way that it was, for example, the night before we opened our milkshake shop, uh, for friends and family, I'm talking about the night before I'm at edc las vegas, the biggest carnival for fucking electronic dance music with the biggest DJs in the world, and I'm fucking high as a kite. And, to make matters worse, I remember very distinctly on Sunday morning or, sorry, monday morning, because it goes Friday, saturday and it's Sunday, and Sunday goes until midnight 5 am, 5 am.

Speaker 1: 10:14

It closes. Monday morning I popped a molly right around 5 am to finish, and that night we had our friends and family for the opening of the restaurant.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Goodness.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Shake shop. So you just you don't know what you're doing when you're running the business. You're not learning to figure it out, you're just running in circles. I'm running a muck out in las vegas. I mean it was a host of different things, right, um.

Speaker 1: 10:44

But again, man, I mean I forget sometimes, and my wife would even tell me she's like you know, and, and you know because in a newer level of life, I still feel there were some versions of those scars that haunted me and taking steps in this now modern day, and I realized that there was a very big value in a lot of the things that I did, because I did hire people. I had a great team of people that loved did hire people. I had a great team of people that loved coming to work. I had a great energy there. You know, we had people that came in that loved our product.

Speaker 1: 11:24

We had a variety of things that were working well, that kind of demonstrated the things that I was good at and so, uniquely, that's not everything you need, because you know, again, it's just one of those unfortunate situations that business just kicks your ass if you don't know what you're doing and so, yeah, man, I mean there's no way to pinpoint it, outside of the fact that I was not yet the person that I needed to be in order to run and build and hold on to a successful restaurant. There's no other way to look at it. You can look at the actual disease, or you can go look at the fact that there's a symptom coming out from the disease and you can try to put the bandaid on the symptom, or you can go in and you can, like the tree, take the damn root out, right, and so for me, the root was just hey, I wasn't who I needed to be.

Speaker 2: 12:18

No, fair enough. Fair enough, I was just kind of curious, you know, if it reflecting back at that that you pinpointed, and it sounds like there was a few things, obviously, that influenced that. And you know, um, and yeah, it's been a couple of years, right? So you know, you touched on too. You always had this desire, this entrepreneurship desire, and and in, I think statistically I don't remember the exact number, but I know that it's a large chunk, this, you know, maybe it's 35, 50 percent or whatever they have a kind of intent of desire to be in business or be an entrepreneur, but yet today standing, I think it's somewhere around six percent they are actually entrepreneurs. Um, so you are obviously um part of that minority.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Today, not only did you that desires, as those that did, but actually you've done it multiple times, right, you continue to say this is what I want to do, um, I'm going to be in business, I'm going to control my destiny, and I commend you on that. You, you know, obviously you never given up. You're always trying something different. Um, you touched on um currently co-authoring a book. Um, this sounds like it's in process, but you also mentioned in the past um about a book as well. So what was this book that you wrote in the past? How long ago was that and what was it about?

Speaker 1: 13:35

Yeah, that was right when I came out. So you know, when I started my journey of sobriety right after that, when I told you I wanted to become the speaker sort of the gateway or what I was sold or told was the you got to have a book right and it's kind of the door opener. I bought into it, I'm like all right, great, let's go, you know. And then then shortly after that was oh, podcast. I'm like, wow, I can start a podcast. So basically they kind of came back to back the book, first podcast, second, um, but at the time I I just took my story man of of uh, it's actually it's right there, okay, wonderful so Las Vegas.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Las Vegas. So it's four, part Right, and so it's. It's. It's if you can see there, and I'll read it out loud so if you're listening you can hear it. But part one was the struggle, and then part two was the discovery of fuck, my life's a mess. Part three was the reflection, going back in time to look at all the things that I had to think through, work on understand, and then part four brought us back to the moment of the present, and so in that I basically just documented all the crazy stories, told people what the journey was like and then shared with them what it was like for me to come out of that and then what I started working on and the new perspective that I had and, yeah, man, it was a great experience.

Speaker 1: 14:58

I was very proud to write the book. Obviously, that was the first book and so a lot has changed since then. There's still a lot that we want to accomplish. Obviously, a book is a book, you know again. Now, in the world of sales, you know nothing is to get to its potential without a sale. So you know, obviously you want to sell a lot of books. The book writing world is great, but the book selling world is even better, because if you can sell a great book many, many times over, well then that's a whole different ballgame.

Speaker 2: 15:28

And we all know there's millions of books out there.

Speaker 1: 15:30

Yeah, right, exactly, yeah. Only a few have been sold, right, right and so yeah. So the next one is revolving around creative sales and communication. To really think about the process differently, and I'm fired up about this book. This book is going to be like anything, or should I say unlike anything anybody's ever seen.

Speaker 2: 15:54

I personally have been through your sales appeal program. Or course the book will tie into the sales appeal, or is it?

Speaker 1: 16:09

something totally different is a parlay of skill sets and experience that my mentor one of my mentors has taught me has lived, has made his fortune off of, and we took that course. I recorded it from the angle of it being mine hours at the time, cause he's like go for it, you know, cause we, we basically have this opportunity. So let's, let's do something great with it. Cause it's go for it, you know, because we, we basically have this opportunity, so let's, let's do something great with it, because it's great material, obviously, you know that. So that's a, that's a partnership, that's a separate product. And then I have my own, what is now evolving method that I've created, based on a lot of other things that I've experienced and what I find to be my sweet spot, my wheelhouse for how I sell and how I get out into the marketplace. So they definitely they're independent, but I'm very much a user of both methodologies, because both methodologies have been a part of everything that I've done.

Speaker 2: 17:16

So you think they would complement each other, then, as far as once, it's yeah, yeah, absolutely. Hi, I'm Mark Thomas, founder and CEO of Current Tech Solutions and CyberGuardians. We know business owners like you want to focus on growing your company, not worrying about IT problems or security threats. That's where we come in. Our team uses AI to protect your business from cyber risks and keep everything running smoothly. If you're ready for peace of mind and a stronger future, reach out to us today. Let's secure and elevate your business together. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.