Fatherless & Raging to Running a Men's Movement | Luke Kayyem

Entrepreneur, speaker, peak performance coach, and founder of Fathers of the Future, Luke Kayyem shares his raw, no-excuses story. Born to a single mom, haunted by an absent father who was in and out of prison, Luke spiraled into rage, multiple DUIs, bar fights, and self-destruction — until a near-miss with his newborn daughter became the wake-up call that changed everything.

Now 17+ years sober, Luke opens up about intentional suffering, plant medicine journeys, surrendering to faith, and building The Crucible — his legendary 32-hour men’s transformation experience that combines physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges.

If you’re a man struggling with purpose, identity, trauma, or just ready for the next level — this episode hits hard.

Key Topics:

• Growing up fatherless and the rage that followed
• Rock bottom: DUIs, fights, losing everything
• The moment his daughter was born that forced change
• Sobriety, CrossFit, and rebuilding identity
• Plant medicine, breathwork & intentional healing
• The Crucible: 32-hour men’s transformation (what really happens)
• Faith, surrender, and becoming the man you needed
• Fathers of the Future movement & helping the next generation

Chapters:

00:00 Intro & Luke Kayyem’s Powerful Story Begins
01:53 Fatherless Childhood & Early Trauma
04:45 From Rage & Alcohol to Sobriety Wake-Up Call
08:20 Building The Crucible – Intentional Suffering for Men
12:30 Plant Medicine, Breathwork & Deep Healing
16:40 Faith, Surrender & Letting Go of Control
21:30 The Crucible Experience – What It’s Really Like
26:00 May 1-3 Crucible + May 3 Mental Health Walk
30:00 Final Advice: Show Up, Don’t Quit, Smile (Your Face Is Your Fault)

Check out Luke’s upcoming events at LukeKayyem.com
Follow Luke on Instagram: @lukekayyem

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Mike's Website: mikelindstrom.com
Scott's Website: scottleeseconsulting.com

Show website coming soon!

Transcript

Luke Kayyem: 0:00

So every year I've been doing that for a different times on some journeys to let go of some anger and some rage that still sat with me even after being sober all these years. I learned to drive in LA here in Scottsdale. It doesn't work well, right? So I've had to learn to really relax and through.

Mike Lindstrom: 0:17

It's not a metaphor, by the way. It's a

Luke Kayyem: 0:19

They keep getting worse through the medicine, couldn't see. And so this last one, it was in the calendar. And I had a good friend who's a healer, and she said, hey, we're coming into town with a couple people. Do you want to do the 5MEODMT, which is the God molecule, which is the buffalo or the frog or.

Intro Band: 0:47

Lean in closer. This is your time. Hold on. Go. Your crooked. Way. What's your story? Hey! Say the words out loud. Mike and Scott gonna crack that crowd. What's your story? Hey, turn it up! Let's go. Every voice, every scar. Every road. What's your story? Mike and Scott. Let's talk.

Scott Leese: 1:42

What's up everybody? Welcome to another the podcast with Mike Lindstrom right here.

Mike Lindstrom: 1:49

That's me.

Scott Leese: 1:49

I'm Scott Leese.

Mike Lindstrom: 1:50

That's him.

Scott Leese: 1:51

Good to be back in Arizona,

Mike Lindstrom: 1:52

Oh well, it's not as hot. Not yet.

Scott Leese: 1:53

No. Not yet. Not yet.

Mike Lindstrom: 1:55

On the ramp up, baby. We're coming up.

Scott Leese: 1:57

We're sneaking a bunch of episodes in before

Mike Lindstrom: 2:00

Yeah. I don't know how you're timing that up this works. Yeah, it was rough. It was rough. Yeah. Good to see you. All cool, though. We're good.

Scott Leese: 2:07

All right. We're here today with a very Local guy. His name is Luke Kayyem. He's an entrepreneur. He's a speaker. He's a coach. All around badass. He's got a killer program called "The Crucible" that we're going to get into. He's all about helping people overcome obstacles and difficulties and everything you're going through in your life, no matter what's going on. No excuses. Reminds me of some other people that I'm thinking of. I'm probably get a chance to talk to him about it. So welcome to the show, Luke.

Luke Kayyem: 2:33

Thanks for having me.

Mike Lindstrom: 2:34

Thanks for having me,

Scott Leese: 2:35

Yeah. We're excited to talk to you, hey, what's your story? That's the whole premise for everything. We go from there. So tell us a little bit about what's your story, man?

Luke Kayyem: 2:44

Yeah. Good news. I've been practicing it for

Scott Leese: 2:48

All right.

Luke Kayyem: 2:49

So the best way I can introduce it or open for about 20 years. Dropped out of college right after my first semester playing football and got into the fitness industry. Started running what we call the Globo Gym in Palm Desert, California, and moved up through the ranks really quick. I was born with a fixed mindset, if you will. A lot of scarcity. And even though my family came from some good fortune, there was a lot of problems and challenges. My mom had me at 45 years of age, only child in a time where blood transfusions and the HIV virus was new. And she got one of those when I was born and who knows what could have happened. But I survived birth. I was born into the world without a father figure. And this is a big part of my story of how we got here. My dad was a what I call a phantom. So unlike a ghost, he was in and out of my life. But I never met him. I never saw him. And so my mom did the best that she could. But growing up as a young, athletic, active Alpha. I got into a lot of trouble, and my mom did the best she could to control that. But I used a lot of not having that father figure as being a victim for the majority of my life. And I played sports, but I barely got through school. And when I was in eighth grade, he started writing me letters. He was in, in and out of prison. And my mom had warned me, be careful, right? This guy is shady. And as a young eighth grader, you don't care. You never met your dad in your whole life, and all you really care about is having a father figure, a role model, a hero. And he got out of jail. I wrote the cards, the letters, the cigarettes, the stamps and all the things. He even told a few friends and his date to get out. He didn't show up. And so that's a key word in my life. Show up. It's on my license plate. It's on a lot of the nomenclature and the things that we talk about in our program, because it truly is one of the most important and vital lessons of my life that I saw firsthand from a man that never showed up. And so a couple years goes by, and now I'm in high school, and I'm getting into even more trouble. And I get into sports and fitness and health right out of college. Once my athletic career ended and I'm in the gym business and Palm Desert, California, it's a great place and my mom starts getting a little unhealthy. And her thing was prescription medicine, and it was a part of that late 90s pain management, as they called it. And so ultimately, my mom had an accidental overdose on prescription medicine, and I found her in her bathtub when I was 24. And so that is my story. And there's a lot of better parts to it. But if I look back and realize what were some of the turning points into my life, my why, my purpose, my mission, it has to do with loss. And it was really hard to deal with at 24. But it goes back to when I was five and six. I had a lot of death in my family at a young age, and I really didn't know how to deal with it or process it. And so I was angry. And that anger would come out in very unhealthy ways over the years. Drank a lot of alcohol starting at about 14 and got into just a ton of trouble. And so when my mom finally passed away and I went through that, I had the ultimate green card to go and live this scarcity mindset and that I was born into this series of problems and that I had no control over actually changing or shifting it. And thank God I was in fitness. And thank God that my mom had planted some really good seeds in me, but it took a couple more years to really get it all out. I got into some trouble, some drinking trouble in California, and I got two DUIs within about three years and two really dangerous fights, one with an off duty police officer and one with a fireman. And both of those led me to getting a county year in California. Well, I turned myself in, hired the best attorneys, and I was fed kicked about 24 hours later because I was a nonviolent criminal and I really didn't have much of a background besides drinking. That didn't change my life. I just that was not rock bottom yet. I don't know my rock bottom. I had a scuba tank. I like to spend a little time down there. That was the series of events that really started. Moved to Hawaii, packed everything up and said, let me run away from my problems and see if I can't solve them. Was early in obviously fitness, but also in residential development. Before the real estate boom. I was cashing six figure checks and being a raging alcoholic before noon and nobody could stop me or talk to me. And again, going back to no purpose, no true vision of what my life was, I just figured, hey, I'll just burn it all down and live the best life that I possibly could. And so at 24, this is the big, major milestone in my life where I start to look around and realize, man, my my life doesn't have purpose. What is my purpose? So I left Hawaii, went back to California and kept drinking, right? Nothing really changed at that point. And this woman who I was dating in high school, my high school sweetheart that I knew from seventh grade, she throws a drink in my face in August of 2004 from Hawaii and throws a couple birds at me and says, I never want to talk to you again. For many reasons, I was all of them. But for many of those reasons. And so I let it go and we ran into each other New Year's Eve in Lake Tahoe. And of course I said, don't throw a drink in my face. And we had a couple drinks. And long story short, what happens there is this is a high level executive. She's one of San Francisco's 40 under 40 at that time, and she wanted nothing to do with her former alcoholic ex troublemaking boyfriend from high school. And between her mom at that time and our high school counselor, they said, you got to dump that loser. And I still remember this to that day. Two weeks goes by, I go back to Palm Springs and she calls me and says, hey, I'm I'm pregnant. And I said, oh, wow. Freeze, stop, pause. Don't do anything. I'll be right there. And I flew up to San Francisco, and I spent about three days on bended knee telling her, I'm gonna change that. This is what we needed. And all the things any man says when they're ready to start some type of commitment. And she said yes. And so we had a shotgun marriage, got married in May. Her son was born in October. I still didn't quit drinking for about two more years, but this was the beginning of the end of that version of me. I call it 1.0, and we moved here in Arizona in 2008. Wife got pregnant again with our second child. I was getting back into the fitness industry, and so I was starting over. And a friend of mine shout out to Chris LaLanne, the heir of Jack LaLanne.

Mike Lindstrom: 9:44

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 9:45

Told me about CrossFit. And right down the street at this EOS. I went in there and did my first CrossFit workout, formerly Gold's Gym, for all the old heads out there. And that was another big step in the turning point. And then my daughter was born, and I remember I was still having drinks, beers and wine. And, you know, I had gone through all the different things of why I needed to quit. And everybody always tells you you're like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you need to quit. But I didn't really care because I used all that trauma for the negative of what I didn't have or what things weren't working for me versus the positive. And there is a switch and it comes really soon. So my daughter's born, she's 30 days old. I get pulled over and I'm like, this is it all over again, right? I haven't changed, I haven't learned anything. And the police officer says, hey, your tail lights missing, right? Something so minor. And she gave me a warning. I remember driving home, sitting in the driveway. Same neighborhood I've lived in for 17 years. And there's a part of that story that's super important. Not just the getting away from it before the home we live in. I moved 32 times in my lifetime.

Scott Leese: 10:55

Wow.

Mike Lindstrom: 10:55

Wow.

Luke Kayyem: 10:56

I've lived in this home for 17 years. My daughter will graduate high school living in one house.

Mike Lindstrom: 11:02

Big deal.

Scott Leese: 11:02

Big difference.

Luke Kayyem: 11:03

It's a huge.

Mike Lindstrom: 11:03

It's a big deal.

Luke Kayyem: 11:04

It's a huge deal. And when she was born, looking at my whole life, looking at all the things I had faced and dealt with as a man, I realized not number one, I wasn't a man. I didn't know what a man looked like. I didn't know how to model or emulate a man. I didn't have that guide to truly mentor me. And at that time, CrossFit was my true only modality. Right. High intensity intensity, functional fitness. I wasn't in some of the other spaces and places yet in my career and in my life, but it was a great start because it taught me a lot about discipline. So I got my first 30 days sober and I was like, man, this is boring. Let's get back at it.

Scott Leese: 11:44

Which everybody says.

Mike Lindstrom: 11:47

We've heard this one before. Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 11:48

Yeah. And then and then it really hit me and And some days I started to look at my family. I started to look at my past. I started to look at the opportunities that I had. I've unpacked a lot over these, call them 15 to 18 years. I've been sober now 17 years.

Scott Leese: 12:05

It's awesome.

Luke Kayyem: 12:06

I'm coming up on 18. Thank you. Great. And I'm such an open dialogue about it because it's never been more socially acceptable to not be an alcoholic or a drinker. Right? 50 years ago, they would have hung us.

Scott Leese: 12:19

Yeah. You're ostracized. Like there's a famous saying that's never trust somebody you can't have a beer with. Yeah, that's some quote like that. I don't know if you've heard that before, but.

Mike Lindstrom: 12:27

That says that.

Scott Leese: 12:28

Yeah,

Mike Lindstrom: 12:28

No one says that anymore.

Scott Leese: 12:29

I know that's... Yeah, changing a little bit. Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 12:32

It's not only socially acceptable, And the new generation gets it even more that you don't have to be a raging alcoholic to be successful. You don't have to be any type of have a relationship with alcohol in your business to be successful, because that's one that I deal with a lot in my own practice of coaching executives and entrepreneurs and business owners is like, how do I go to that for our commercial real estate dinner? Right? How do I sit through that? How do I go to this bar club or this event? And it's possible. It really is. I have a tattoo of a what they call a Jagermeister symbol. Yeah. And I figured this was the right platform to share all of it. But, you know, that's how committed I was to, to my sauce. And looking back on it now and seeing it and being involved in a lot of men's lives who truly do need to eliminate and change that relationship. I was one of the first ones. And now looking back on it, like all of the trauma, all of the death, the hardship. A lot of the PTSD that our military faces every day. Like I didn't face it for no reason. The reason is to get to this place. And the reason is to be able to be a light in somebody else's life who doesn't know that they have a chance or a path, or that they can be something that they've never been. I talked about Luke 1.0, and that was a big transformation right around 24, 25. And so then I go through this fitness journey in CrossFit, and we were first to market literally a mile from here, 83rd place right next to Costco and saw great success with it. Family business. My wife joined. Our kids were raised in that gym, but I was very one dimensional and one sided, and I knew that God had a greater calling in my life, but I didn't know how or where or when or why or what. And so I'm going to talk about this June because it'll be ten years. Our lease ended June 2nd, 2006 at the space. We had been for eight years and we were looking for buyers. We were looking to sell out, to move on. Right. Every every businessman's dream is to be acquired and paid. And it didn't look like that for us. It's like the lease ended and here's your equipment. And we sold the equipment. We sold the brand, we closed the gym. And I spent a year spinning, really lost. And I didn't have any close calls to drinking again. I feel that I truly have solved that problem in myself, and I have no problem saying sober, alcohol free, an idiot when he drinks, whatever language is used, or some of my clients choose to opt in for alcohol free versus sober for whatever judgment they face. I'm as open and vulnerable in that as needed. Eliminating alcohol changed my life and put me on the path. Now those problems are still there, but I have some absolute clarity to face them. And so after that first year in the gym business, I did all the things right. I went and saw Tony speak, and I spent all this money hiring coaches as a coach. I went back to reinventing myself outside of being the fitness guy. And it was hard because so much of my identity was in that and so much of my neighborhood, my community, people that I worked with from the beginning, it was hard to figure out what that was without going and getting a job. So every couple of years, somebody in business would say, you'd be great at this.

Scott Leese: 16:04

I sign up for a W2. Houses.

Luke Kayyem: 16:06

Yeah, right. You want to sell luxury cars? You come work for me. And it's always I always look at it. But I've never been employed since the time I was 16. I worked at a Oasis water park when I was a sophomore in high school in Palm Springs, did some valet and got right into the fitness industry. And so I only know how to work for myself. And that can be a challenge sometimes, as any entrepreneur knows, right? Where's the playbook? Right. What do you do now? Oh, you sold your company. That was your identity. But who are you now without that? Oh, your kids are graduating. Going off to.

Scott Leese: 16:44

School? Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 16:44

Who are you now without that identity there?

Mike Lindstrom: 16:47

Yeah, that's a whole new chapter.

Luke Kayyem: 16:48

And that's coming. Right. So there's another reinvention coming. But the one that I really am proud about is I've coached so many people in my lifetime. I've coached a lot of personal trainers who are unhealthy, unhappy, and underpaid, and they don't know what to do. So they are forced to go get a job. And I saw that happen in the CrossFit world, where these guys were like, they left corporate to open an affiliate, super successful. And then the money dried out. Oh, wait, there's seven competitors within a block.

Scott Leese: 17:20

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 17:21

And that was our challenge that we faced many direction. But I knew there was a calling in me to share my story, to give my testimony and to help others. And I didn't want to go do something else. So about a year into that, the movement fathers of the future had a little bit of light really, in teaching men how to be present, active, and engaged. Teach him how to be savages and warriors physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially. How to be multidimensional, how to be well-rounded, how to be amazing fathers, but also leaders and how to serve. So we launched that, and it was slow in the beginning trying to figure it out. My first business model per se, was the 995, 1995, 49, 95 leaving the gym. But I could do it. All I need is 1000 subscribers. And I attempted to become what I would call a digital marketer and realized how empty that was, and had a guy that I trust and love. He baptized me on my 45th birthday. A grown man, just a savage warrior for God. He sat me down and said, do you want impact or influence? And I was like. What does that even mean? Let alone what do I want? I want impact, I've seen the views, I've seen the likes, I've seen the DM's, I've seen what comes with that. And there's nothing in that I truly want more than helping somebody change their life so that they change their children's life, so that they change generations lives. And I'm sure that can be done online. I know it can, but it wasn't my vision of where I was going and Covid happened, as we all know. And so that forced the model to be very Zoom oriented. And it was great. You got to do keynotes in my underwear with a sport coat on the Fantastic Five figures for that. Hey, this is awesome. But it also was very empty. And so just working through that these last couple of years while staying committed to the process, having kids in high school, seeing how fast that four years goes by, staying committed to being sober and not just committed to being sober. Because a lot of challenges I see with the traditional sobriety program is it's the same three things repeated over and over again.

Mike Lindstrom: 19:41

You're talking about referring to 12 steps,

Luke Kayyem: 19:43

Yeah. And I'm careful with that because I'm I go to a meeting. There's a great meeting here at Cornerstone on Tuesday nights. It's a savage meeting. I explained it as the opening scene from Tango and Cash. When they go to prison, you got to be tough to go in that room. But I love it because it reminds me of what could be. And if we don't have those reminders of what could have happened or what we could have been, or what man had, we continued on that path. Sometimes we think that doesn't exist anymore and I'm cured, or I'm saved and I'm free. This work, and I don't just mean the alcohol free, the sobriety, the work of not being your own worst enemy. And maybe not every man is. But when you are for a very long time, you realize, man, that's the remedy. That's the secret sauce, right? Like that's the path. Just get out of your own way. Yeah. And see what happens. And so going to those types of meetings, being in other rooms, being a beginner's mind in a church or around a men's group. I was, I was anti religion, faith, all of it for many years because I told people, including myself, just meditate, just breathe, right? Just chill out. Doesn't matter what you choose, just do something. And that worked for a while, but I wanted to open another door.

Mike Lindstrom: 21:06

When you were going through the sobriety especially when you go through the 12 steps, the surrender and all that, which will I won't ask you about. So it sounds like the faith part didn't really take hold during these times when you were becoming sober until later in life. You were baptized at 45. So what was the gap there just did you just believe, hey, I can figure this out through meditation and work on myself enough to believe in a higher God.

Luke Kayyem: 21:28

Yeah, I didn't trust men and I put men with. The problem with most issues in the world is man. And whether that's men specifically or men in general. But religion is human right. Faith is God. And so I just tried to steer around it as much as possible and talk down the middle versus all in or all out. And I also wanted to protect what I would call my business and not cross any lines and be afraid by that. I have closest friends in the world, are Jewish. I have closest friends in the world, are not believers. I have closest friends in the world who are. And so instead of sitting back and trying to make everybody pleased, I just decided that this is my true calling and I need to not be so afraid of it. And it's not like that happened in those years ago. I may have gotten baptized on my 45th birthday, but that next year I said, man, is this it? The spiritual work like your sobriety, like your fitness, like your mental health, like your relationships, it's a practice. And I just didn't have much of a practice. I meditated, I learned really well how to do that. I went and sat for five days with some Buddhists in a colony. I learned to breathe. I did all the cold, I did the fasting. I did all the protocols that we can see are on Instagram every day.

Scott Leese: 22:53

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 22:54

But now when people started to talk about it was like, hey, no. Yeah. Oh, you're part of a church or you're part of a type of, hey, I don't want anything to do with that.

Scott Leese: 23:03

Yeah. There's just a little bit of distrust Absolutely. Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 23:07

Yeah. And then you get into religion, and it might as well be politics in many ways.

Mike Lindstrom: 23:13

Well, especially now, moment to figure out where they can put you on a spectrum. Left. Right. Trump. Biden. Blue. Red. Just five simple things you might say. And that's not the filter we had growing up. No, that's just where we are. So the fact that you were able to overcome that. You know, what is what it is. This is who I am. I'm pushing all in on it. And when you have that all in, people respect that. And that's where the impact starts to happen, I believe. The difference between influence and impact is if somebody pushes all in. Yeah.

Scott Leese: 23:41

Don't you agree?

Luke Kayyem: 23:42

And you start to see men of faith who you can Brad Larson, the man I mentioned who baptized me, man, like I saw him and I was like, that's a dude. And he's preaching about God. Wow. And then Pastor Travis at Impact Church. That's a dude. Okay. There are more men like that. Maybe I can start to trust that and be open to that and be vulnerable in that. And then it opened in my practice, right? Where in my business I would teach breathwork, meditation. I would even teach gratitude as the first step to lead to prayer. But when we got close to prayer, that's your personal choice, right? And so now it's, hey, can we pray together? Right. Cool. Yes or no? No big deal. Awesome. Because I'm never going to be that guy who's now trying to be an evangelist and get you to think any different. I'm going to give it all to you.

Scott Leese: 24:31

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 24:31

Hey, here's what I did. Here's the 87 mistakes I made and the four things I did right. Those four things are pretty solid. If you apply a few of those, you'll do well if you apply all four man, let's see what could possibly happen to you in your life.

Scott Leese: 24:46

Yeah.

Mike Lindstrom: 24:46

One of my favorite Jerry Colangelo is a And he's obviously very influential, not just in NBA and basketball, baseball, this as a human being, he's a Christian. He's a believer. And he was in the early 2000. This is when kind of the internet was starting to take hold. Scuttle was Jerry's big believer. We're going to put him in this bucket, and he'd get up and give the speech for the International Basketball Association when they were building like the Dream Team and all that stuff. He gets up there on the microphone. There's no video of it. I wish there was. And he goes, how you doing? How you doing, everyone? I'm Jerry Colangelo and I'm a Christian. He just started with it. Because I just want you to let you know where I stand before I start opening my mouth. And that's how he believes. If you interview him nowadays, where he stands with faith. Because everyone knows what I believe. Let's give him a bad time. But people still want to do land deals with me. People still want my money. So it's just funny when you have that all in on it. But the people I've looked up to, I agree with you. They stand firm on what they believe.

Luke Kayyem: 25:37

And then when you do practice and surrender it's wow, those blessings were there the whole time. What were you so afraid of?

Mike Lindstrom: 25:44

Yeah, there's that word again,

Scott Leese: 25:46

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 25:46

Surrender.

Mike Lindstrom: 25:46

We got. Oh, you gotta give us the definition Every guest has talked on this has talked about surrender. What's the definition to you?

Luke Kayyem: 25:52

I died a couple weeks ago intentionally. And I don't know where plant medicine fits on this conversation, but I gotta imagine it fits.

Scott Leese: 25:59

It fits.

Luke Kayyem: 25:59

Works okay. Like I said, the same question asked to me over and over. I want to go into all these different rooms, right? So as a peak performance men's life coach, I look at the entire structure of somebody, right? Not just their habits, their disciplines and their patterns, but like the past. And how do we rewire some of that? Right. You're stuck. What are you stuck from? Right. Is it something that happened a year ago in business, or is it something that happened when you were six as a young boy? Right. And I've really learned to release Let Go and surrender to a lot of those things, not pretend they don't exist, which is what I did for a long time. And what alcohol helps you mask is that the real is not there, right? It's truly a mask. His. I do some programming with my clients and I obviously do it myself. We call it creating a map, and Tony Robbins is very familiar with it. It's a massive action plan. So we design a one year map, right? What is this going to look like physically? What is it? What are we going to start to do mentally? What are we going to read? Where are we going to go? Who are we going to travel? Who are we going to help? How are we going to serve? What are we going to give? This one right here is called healing. And it's just in my calendar once a year. And I don't know when it's going to happen, but there's a healing practice that's going to happen. And I'm either going to go sit for five days in a monastery, or I'm going to go do some type of plant medicine journey to heal something that I can't get to every single day. Now, as I preface this, when everyone said, go do ayahuasca in the rainforest seven years ago and it'll solve all your problems, I was like, no. I'm addicted to everything, so I'm not going to do that yet. But what I am going to do is I'm going to master breathwork and holotropic breathwork and hire a bunch of coaches who can teach me how to get high on my own supply. You know, Wim Hof talks about, and I was able to go into some depth levels that I couldn't have got to on a normal day to day. And that was the of, okay, there is this other layer of life that we can't see and everything that we do and the work or the practice helps you see it differently. So every year I've been doing that for a couple of years, done psilocybin a couple different times on some journeys to let go of some anger and some rage that still sat with me even after being sober all these years. I learned to drive in LA. Here in Scottsdale, it doesn't work well, right? So I've had to learn to really relax and through.

Mike Lindstrom: 28:21

It's not a metaphor.

Scott Leese: 28:22

By the way.

Mike Lindstrom: 28:22

It's a reality.

Scott Leese: 28:23

Through.

Luke Kayyem: 28:23

They keep getting.

Scott Leese: 28:24

Worse.

Luke Kayyem: 28:25

Through the medicine, couldn't see. And so this last one, it was in the calendar and I had a good friend who's a healer, and she said, hey, we're coming into town with a couple people. Do you want to do the 5MEODMT, which is the God molecule, which is the UFO or the frog? And I had done it once before, after Lahaina. And so I was heavily involved in the Lahaina fires after just from my roots being there. And I once you see some things, you can't unsee the trauma. For those of us who have dealt with trauma in the past, it comes back like that. And so I shared it a lot that seeing what happened to that community and that culture, intentionally or not, what happened to those people and not having the support of the nation and not having the support of the government and the military to. Help them and being on the ground in the trenches. I got really angry and upset and we did three different missions to Maui over the course of about 90 days, raised 5000 in cash and just handed it out directly. And it was great, but I brought it home with me. And that was another big phase where I said, hey, I need to go and heal and let go of this thing. So the medicine shows you something where you are at that time in life and tells you what you need. And again, I say this as a coach, as a facilitator, that it it didn't solve every problem that I have. I didn't go to it to solve the first problem, you got to eliminate the big problems first that you have control over. And if you're drinking alcohol or taking any kind of opiates or drugs or addicted to something that sedates you, you got to move that first and then you got to do it naturally as organically as possible. And then you can seek out some other modalities. But getting back to that question on surrender. Right. So I died intentionally about three weeks ago, four weeks ago now. And I came out of it and I wasn't clear and I didn't have the And then a couple days later went by and I thought, man, the story that I'm telling myself is that I want it to look a certain way. Let's call it Paradise, right? And Paradise doesn't necessarily look like that. Or at least I don't know that it does. But what does look like that is the end of my life, and there's no way around it, right? We're not getting out of here alive. And so it refreshed me to realize I have a lot more to do and I gotta continue serving. So surrendering was me to let go and not try to control everything. Alphas. Type A's. Right. Peak performers. We've. Haha.

Scott Leese: 30:57

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 30:58

Right. And the second it doesn't go here, nope. Now you're frustrated. And sometimes that can come out as anger or upset.

Scott Leese: 31:05

And yeah, I.

Luke Kayyem: 31:05

Don't want to carry anything man. I spent a Yeah. And it's so much more freeing and gratifying to just let it go.

Mike Lindstrom: 31:15

Sounds like Dave Scatchard. Do you know Dave And he's a local guy. His kids go to Notre Dame hockey. Okay. He's our first guest that we ever had on the show. And he did almost the exact moment you just showed. He talked about going back in his life. Yeah. And looking him down on himself as a baby and pulling him out of the rubble. He gives him the it's on camera. It's on the first episode. It's powerful. Talking about lifting himself up and looking at his baby self going, man, I'm sorry I put you all through all that. So all these journeys that he's done, that's part of his was going in the past and talking to his former self, led him saying, I'm going to be free here forward. And I'm sorry for the things that I brought you to this point. But it got us to this point for a reason. It's powerful stuff.

Scott Leese: 31:53

Yeah, that's powerful stuff.

Mike Lindstrom: 31:54

I gotta ask him about the Crucible,

Scott Leese: 31:56

Hear about where that came from and what it

Mike Lindstrom: 31:58

The Crucible this. I saw it on a lot of Tell me a little bit how that happened. Yeah. What's about.

Luke Kayyem: 32:04

So shout out to all my Marines out there. I'm a civilian, but I have a lot of military law enforcement that I've worked with over the years. Great relationship with being one of the first CrossFit guys out here. I was coaching Olympic weightlifting and functional fitness, and they were teaching and coaching me about being aware, learning practical skills, self-defense, how to survive. And so I've had just a phenomenal relationship. But it's a marine term. And so a lot of the Marines that don't know me don't like it. And it's just the way that I see it is the Crucible is a transformational experience. So over the course of these past 15 years, since I went from fixed mindset to growth mindset, I've learned how important it is to invest, especially in yourself training programs, coaches, right? Travel information, just learn as much as you possibly can. And when most people go from fixed to growth and they realize it, they're the ones who end up, this is going to be the rest of my life. I got to keep learning. If I'm not learning, I'm not growing. If I'm not growing, I'm dying. And I immersed myself in Seal Fit. It's Mark Devine's 52 hour crucible. He calls it Kokoro camp, but it's intentional suffering. I did a 100 mile race, I climbed Kilimanjaro, I swam Alcatraz a couple times, I did 24 hour obstacle course races. I went back to Kokoro because I didn't like the way I finished.

Scott Leese: 33:26

Oh, geez.

Luke Kayyem: 33:27

And a lot of this comes from me being a young Let me get back to the Crucible. But it doesn't do justice unless I frame it like this. There's a great book by John Eldredge called Fathered by God, and that was a wake up call for me when one of my mentors said, God's always been there in your life as your father and being fatherless. I remember just breaking down and like surrendering again and letting go to that idea, because I always thought I'd never had a father figure, and that was such a healing thing for me. So in that book, he talks about the six stages and phases of a man. If you do it right. You go from boyhood to cowboy to warrior to lover, to king to sage. Being an only child with a single parent, I was thrown from boyhood to king without proper training. Then I went back and I spent way too many years as the cowboy. It started young, so my boyhood was cut short. And then I became the cowboy. The cowboy was awesome, but that's where most of my trouble came from. And then I got sober. And then I got into doing crazy things, hard things, intentional suffering. And I was warrior. Well, I've been practicing lover for a while, but I'm still not ready to give up warrior. And I'm far from a king. And so I look at that all the time, and I coach that sort of framework for guys to realize, like, where are they in this journey? And so I signed up for everything I possibly could because I was soft. And although I may not have looked like it on paper, how I look, I was really mentally weak and soft. I always found ways to take the easy route or to get out of things, or not lean in or like necessarily choose the obstacle. But you know, get out of it. How do I get out of it? How do I make it a little bit easier? And so that's when I started to find out what are some of the hardest challenges on earth. And then I went through them, and then I came back and said, all right, this is experiential based training is how I learn. You give me a book, I might take a couple key takeaways, right? You teach me the class, I might, but for me, I need to learn it and then I need to go apply it. And if I can do that together, I'm gonna rocket fuel how fast I can begin to implement. So I did all these things. I came back and I said, all right, we need an event. And I had one guy I had been coaching at the time, this is 2017. And he wasn't moving fast enough. Right? When it starts to feel like therapy for me and my practice, that's it. We're not doing this again. We did it this week. Next week I'll meet you on Camelback. I'll meet you in the weight room. You're coming to my house. We're going to cold plunge. We're going to we're going to do something experiential based, because if we just sit there and talk, there's no real movement or action. So I did that and I put him through the first one. In the beginning, I was doing one crucible at a time, and at that time it was about 5 a.m. till 10 p.m. and then it started to evolve and we went overnight. And then we started to put small groups together. And so our next crucible is May 1st and second here in Scottsdale in the backyard. It's for men only. It's a 32 hour immersive experience. We've done over 40 of these so far in the past seven, eight years, and over 120 men have gone through it. And if you ask any one of them, not my testimonial because I'm the guy who created it, but I've been in every one of those. You do it with them? Yeah. When I was a coach, you're not just standing there going, hey, you can do it. You can do it. I hated it when someone now, I may not be doing the torture beatdown in that moment. Yeah, but I'm every hour of that 32 hour experience. I'm in the trenches with those guys because again, as a coach, you pay for all these things. You sign up for all these things and then you see what it really is and you're like that sucks. Yeah, right. What a letdown. Like I, I've been watching that guy's videos for months. I signed up for his program and now you give me three of his junior coaches.

Scott Leese: 37:21

Yeah, the minions show up.

Luke Kayyem: 37:22

Where's the Guy?

Mike Lindstrom: 37:23

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 37:24

Yeah, right. And then the guy comes in, like, it's like Wizard of Oz, right? Like what?

Mike Lindstrom: 37:31

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 37:31

So I've been disappointed enough by those all of a sudden now my practice is blowing up."Fathers of the Future." The movement's expanding. I'm starting to work with people that I'm working with. Like my dream is coming true. When I left the brick and mortar fitness business of how to still be an important factor in someone's life and help them change their life without having to quit what I was doing. And so this became the evolution of the practice, working with men one on one. Peak performance coaching, and then giving them this amazing experience that when they survive and they all have when they successfully pass it, unless they have a military background, most men do not have a true transformational experience in their life. Right? They don't have a journey. It's like they they went to school. They graduated. They went to college, they graduated. They got a job. They got married. They have kids. And now they're like, why do I feel so empty? Well, when was the last time you did something so hard, yet so rewarding that it changed the way you look at everything in your life? And that's what it did for me. All those crucibles and all those different trainings and protocols. Like after getting my ass kicked enough times to realize, man, this is really great. I understand and respect the intentional suffering. But now let me look behind the curtain. What are you doing that I don't see the value in? Or that I want a 2 or 3 x. The value on right? This is why my program is very intimate. I work with about 20 guys a year, and 40 or 50% of them are repeat multiple years. So I'm not looking to work with a thousand guys or even a hundred guys, because that's where the true change is going to come from. And then because it's so intimate, like I learned their family, they learned my family. And some of this is happening online as well. I've got a bunch of East Coast clients, right? But we find a way like you're coming out here to do the Crucible or I'm coming out there on my way to visit my daughter in college like that. Facetime from a business man and understanding how to serve and create massive value. I flew to Boston for less than a day to support a client. Surprised him in the Boston Marathon. You would have thought like, I paid for his kid's college tuition, and I didn't do it for any reason other than to serve. But the rewards that came after that, it's undeniable. One of the greatest selfless acts that I've had in the past 18, 24 months. And I would do it again over and over because of the way his face looked when I was walking out the door with him to hike Boston or to run Boston. So those are those moments where I just believe in serving and giving and everything else comes after that. So this crucible is a combination of every program I've ever been in. It's.

Scott Leese: 40:21

You got Mike to do one yet?

Luke Kayyem: 40:22

Not yet. Not yet.

Mike Lindstrom: 40:23

But what's the one what's the thing you do and there's 4 or 5 guys. Yeah. And they literally they have they take a gun. It's not it's fake, I assume. Right. Yeah. Throw it in the middle of the octagon. And you gotta who can get to the gun first and who can fight off four other people. So what the heck is that?

Luke Kayyem: 40:40

Yeah. So nobody is coming to save you. That's one of the things I've learned over my years of training and living. And it's even more important when it comes to safety, security, and survival. And so we want to teach them either a their body is a weapon and they know how to defend themselves. Or B, they have absolutely no clue. But when they go back home, they're going to have a greater understanding and idea of what their gaps or chinks in the armor are. And for most men, self-defense is one of them. And we're not spending hours on it. Right. It's, hey, we take you, we show you a picture of your family that you've told us how much you care about and why you're here, and 4 or 5 guys hold you down in the middle of the ring, and all you got to do is touch the fence and then.

Mike Lindstrom: 41:26

But, dude..

Scott Leese: 41:26

How bad do you want it?

Mike Lindstrom: 41:27

They're all...

Luke Kayyem: 41:27

How bad do you want it?

Mike Lindstrom: 41:28

They've got these guys in headlock like those saw you doing it where they were on you. And of course, he's a lot stronger and he knows the heck he's doing. You take the average guy who's never probably throwing a punch in his life, doesn't know how to defend himself. You put him in that ring. It's a struggle.

Scott Leese: 41:42

I don't think I can get to the fence. I know.

Mike Lindstrom: 41:44

You're thinking it's like,

Scott Leese: 41:46

I think I'm crazy enough to die trying,

Mike Lindstrom: 41:48

I don't think...

Scott Leese: 41:49

I don't know if I can make it,

Mike Lindstrom: 41:51

Is that part of the program,

Luke Kayyem: 41:53

It is. That's part of the program. What you saw with the firearm. That's another sort of advanced step in that, where those were it was myself and one of my coaches. And we're just showing like some training programs that you're not going to get to. You're not going to go to the local gym and hit your boxing class, and they're going to do that.

Scott Leese: 42:10

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 42:10

So that was truly survive or die. And that video shout out to Randy Stanky, who's an MMA UFC coach over at the MMA lab. I've been with him for over ten years in all these crucibles. He's my striking and combat training coach, phenomenal human being. Got a great story as well. And that video went viral. It's got a couple million and a couple hundred thousand comments. Yeah. Very intense. That one hit home. So we do that. What's really powerful in the program is that we have a teens version of this, and this is we've been doing it now for about three years. Phenomenal. We do it right around graduation time. This year. It'll be June 12th and 13th. It's the same thing as the adult version, except it's geared towards young men and their mission to manhood.

Scott Leese: 42:54

That's really cool.

Mike Lindstrom: 42:55

So tell us what you have coming up. You that again. And you have this June thing you just mentioned. Anything else that you have on the calendar?

Luke Kayyem: 43:01

The Crucible - May 1st through third here in Arizona. You can check out our website, LukeKayyem.com, and all the social media channels to do that and have a conversation with me to see if it's the right fit.

Mike Lindstrom: 43:12

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 43:13

But May 3rd is something that's even more We're offering and creating a free community event. It's a men's mental health awareness walk and talk, and it'll be here on Sunday morning, May 3rd. We'll start at Chaparral Christian Church, and we'll walk ten miles down to Indian school and optimize on Indian school, where guys will get a chance to walk and talk with each other, and every mile change in exchange, a different partner, a different brother, and share some of the challenges that we all face as men. So I mentioned to you, I lost a client a couple of months ago to suicide, and it really just woke me up to not be afraid or shy or intimidated by the conversation to have. And when I am in an intimate conversation with another man, ask him something that maybe I wouldn't have before. Right. Yeah. And we're just creating a really cool event and a platform.

Mike Lindstrom: 44:08

That's awesome.

Luke Kayyem: 44:08

For guys to come and join us. So we'd love everybody's participation. It's a free event and you can come and join us for that. And if ten miles seems like a lot, you can walk one mile, you can be part of the caravan and you can throw some water bottles at us, or you can just meet us at optimize afterwards and get in the cold plunge with us.

Mike Lindstrom: 44:25

The there's something about the whole walking Bible. You've seen this before, but I was researching an event that I did 90 days ago for couples. It's like a Yale group for couples and just doing typical research. Chatgpt, what's out there. And all of the studies kept coming that married couples just walked with each other. Take a walk. What happens inside the brain is such a simple thing. And it's true about business creativity. You and I go on a hike for an hour. Things are going to come up. Yeah, right. So the fact that you're doing it in this format, I think is powerful.

Luke Kayyem: 44:57

Yeah.

Mike Lindstrom: 44:57

That's powerful.

Luke Kayyem: 44:58

Steve Jobs, the trillionaire coach bill Bill It's a great book. Talked about how many walk and talks. He would go on and just leave the phone, get out of the space and hit a block. And how much growth can happen in that versus I'm the superior, you're the inferior and hurt.

Mike Lindstrom: 45:13

So leave us with a quote, Leave us with that or a couple quotes.

Luke Kayyem: 45:18

Yeah, okay. So "Show up. Don't quit." That's the starting point."In the absence of action lives, fear." And then of course,

one of my favorite "Smile: 45:25

your face is your fault."

Scott Leese: 45:30

That's a good one. That's a good one. Oh, that's good. All right, man. Well, I appreciate you spending some time with us, man.

Mike Lindstrom: 45:34

Yeah.

Luke Kayyem: 45:35

Absolutely!

Scott Leese: 45:35

All right, everybody, This has been Luke Kayyem. That's Mike Lindstrom. I'm Scott Leese. Next time.