What I did when I lost everything

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, produced, and edited by me, Albert. Our goal is to empower US military veterans to live their absolute best lives, and we do that by providing tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that they can apply into their lives to become wiser, stronger, smarter, more resilient, and more capable human beings in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about here can obviously apply to you. And if you like what we have to say, any information we provide, and the guests we bring on, please head over to iTunes and write us a written rating and review. It really helps to spread word about the show and to get this helpful information into the hands of more veterans so that they can in turn improve their lives and shape the future of this country.

This podcast is brought to you by the amazing, the wonderful f bomb nutrition. They make awesome, delicious packets of fats. These are portable snacks that you can carry with you anywhere. It's so hard to find a low carb snack out there, but these guys have done it. They got macadamia nut butters, they mix them up with chocolate, they mix them up with sea salt, they mix them up with pecan butter.

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Use the code Warrior Soul at checkout, and you'll get 20% off your first order. This podcast is also brought to you by the amazing awesome people at Save the Brave. Save the Brave is an organization that provides camaraderie events for veterans. They do fishing events. They do golfing events.

They do other sporting events, and they also do a lot of work to help gold star families. And look, we've all heard stories about veterans charities where the executive boards are taking these giant salaries, and I don't have a problem with that at all. But here's the thing, I wanna make sure that whatever organization I'm talking about is doing amazing work. Savethebrave.org is doing absolutely outstanding work. Their board doesn't take any salary whatsoever, and they are having an amazing impact.

They're focused on getting veterans to live their absolute best lives, and that's what this podcast is about, and that's why we wanted to work with them. So if you're interested in volunteering or donating to save the brave, head over to www.savethebrave.org and make your donation or your request today. Finally, this podcast is brought to you by Warrior Soul Apparel. This is a clothing company that I actually helped to start a couple years ago as we were beginning the brand Warrior Soul. We've got some amazing t shirts.

We've got skivvy shirts with some pretty funny funny sayings on there like, I love Jesus, but I cuss sometimes. We've also got some awesome hero shirts. We have the amazing hard times, breed hard people series, and these are just great shirts that I've helped create, and they support the show. So if you're interested in getting some Warrior Soul shirts, head over to www.warriorsoul.shop. And finally, if you're interested in joining a new group that we are putting together here at Warrior Soul, a group for those who are looking to live epic lives worthy of epic obituaries, stick around to the end.

We'll have some information for you to check out. With that, let's get into the episode.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

What's going on everybody? Hope you guys are doing well today. By the time you're getting this, it is gonna be November 1. And what I wanna start doing is I kinda wanna start doing a monthly review of of the things that we covered. Right?

Because we've got some amazing guests. October was an absolutely outstanding month for guests. And I have to see this, running a podcast is amazing. I get to sit here and I get to talk to really interesting people. People who have done amazing things with their lives, people who served this country, people who've gone on to to, you know, do really big things.

Right? And it's awesome. And what I have to remember as I'm sitting here is that those are people. Those are people. They're human beings just like you and me.

Right? And one of the things I think that you need to keep in mind here is that when I'm doing this show, obviously, I try to bring on interesting guests. And, yes, I definitely want the show to be entertaining, but the point of the show is not to entertain you. The real point of the show is to show you, hey, look, these are human beings. They've done amazing things.

Some of them are veterans just like you, and you can go out and you could do absolutely amazing things as well. Right? That's what this is about. And one of the things I discovered early on, because at first, this podcast was gonna be like just me talking into a microphone, which wasn't gonna work. Right?

Because here's the biggest thing I learned in doing the show, you need other people. Right? You don't have all the answers. You don't. Right?

You might think that you have them. You might think that you can manifest them, but that's not gonna happen. Right? In order for you to do anything big, you need to get other people involved. And I am a massive introvert.

Right? Like, I don't really like talking to people. Right? On a I don't it's not that I don't like talking to people. I don't like I don't make an effort to go out and talk to people.

There's days where where I could be working here in my office, and I could not talk to anybody all day long. Right? And some of you, I know that probably sounds like heaven. But one of the things I discovered was that, well, hey, Chris, you want to build a media company. You're trying to turn more of your soul into the best media company in the world for US military veterans and anybody else who's willing to listen.

Well, guess what, dude? You're gonna have to go out there and you're gonna have to talk to people. So I had to swallow that and essentially start reaching out to a lot of guests. Right? Now when you're reaching out to a guest, and I'll say this, because I know there's a lot of you out there who also wanna start your podcast, and I'm a 100% in favor of that.

Like, you should definitely be trying to do this because anybody could freaking do it. But, and and honestly, I'm nobody special. Right? But here's the thing. The big mistake a lot of people make when they're reaching out to guests is they they reach out to them and they fanboy out.

Right? So like, hey, I love you, blah blah blah. You're so awesome. Could you please come on to my show? It would be so amazing for me.

I'd be able to tell everybody about it and things like that. Right? That is a bad way to do it. And why is it a bad way to do it? It's a bad way to do it because essentially, when you're fanboying out, it's all about you.

Right? It's not about the guest. When you're approaching a guest and you're trying to bring them on, essentially what you're doing is you're making an offer for a JV partnership, a limited time JV partnership. And partnerships need to be two way streets. So when you're offering something to a guest or when you when you're inviting a guest on, you need to show them what what's in it for them.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna get a bunch of sales or anything like that. Being a veteran oriented podcast, one of the best things about us is that, hey, they get to come on, they get to talk to this amazing audience that we've built. And for a lot of these people, it's right within their target audience. Right? So that's part of it.

You mentioned that you're going to to promote the show as much as possible. You mentioned that a lot of these people could potentially become followers for you. Right? And that's how it works. Right?

It's a two way street. And so if you're thinking about building a show, you're thinking about trying to bring guests on, when you're when you're reaching out to guests, you've gotta show what's in it for them. Right? You gotta show them what what is how are you gonna benefit them, and how is this this this show that you're gonna create gonna impact people. Right?

Because that's what I think most people want. They want some sort of impact. They want to increase their impact in some way. Alright? Now, this month has been an absolutely amazing month with guests, and it all started with Robert Greene.

Now, if you don't know who Robert Greene is, he's one of my favorite authors. He wrote The 48 Laws of Power, which is the book he's probably most famous for. He just released a book called The Laws of Human Nature. He's also written 33 Strategies of War. He's written The Art of, Art of Seduction.

He's written The 50th Law with 50 Cent. I mean, really awesome author, and he agreed to come on. And the thing about Robert Greene that I I I like a lot besides his writing is that he, as a person, knows what it's like to be out there and to live, right, and to live in the real world. Like, he wasn't always this famous author. He actually he didn't become famous up until his his early forties.

Right? His book didn't get published until his late thirties, and and for a long time, he was kinda aimless. He didn't know where he was going and what he was doing. He worked everything from construction all the way up to to private private investigation. And he worked in Hollywood for a while, and he saw everything that was horrible going on down there.

And you get the sense of that from his books. And that I think was one of the biggest lessons I got from that interview here is that, you know, it's not too late for you. You can find what your purpose is. You could find what you're good at, But you've you've got to keep going. You've got to be open to it.

Alright? And you really get that sense from that interview. I know there's a lot of you out there who aren't happy with where you are. Right? You're not happy with where you are.

And what you got to understand is this. It's not up to the world to to make you happy. Right? It's not up to your wife, not up to your husband to make you happy, it's not up to your kids to make you happy, it's not up to anybody else to make you happy. Alright?

It's up to you to bring meaning to this life. Right? I'm gonna get a drink of coffee real quick. Hold on a second. It's up to you to bring meaning to this life.

And you do that by getting out there into the world, seeing something that maybe isn't right, and then putting some work into fixing it. Right? But a lot of us, we it goes back to that introvert thing again. We want to keep to ourselves. We don't wanna we don't wanna venture out in the out there into the world.

Right? And or if we're we're we're doing it, we're only doing it half heartedly. Right? And I think that if you're gonna commit yourself to something, you gotta you've gotta commit yourself to something all the way. Right?

That doesn't mean quit your job and and go off to find yourself or go off to save the world. But that does mean that, you know, if you're gonna commit to something, you gotta commit to doing it every day. You gotta burn the ships, and we talk about that during the interview with Robert Greene. You gotta you gotta be on your death ground. And I think back to to when I was first starting this business.

You know, I went through a period of time, a real rough time. I'd opened up Metroflex Gym in Long Beach. And when I opened up that gym, and, you know, I had a cofounder, a co owner, and we were struggling. Like, we were struggling. He had money.

Right? He had his parents taking care of him and things like that. I was a bit older. My mom lived across the country. I didn't have family taking care of me.

I had been in the Marine Corps, and I'd been in school. Right? I didn't have money saved up. So when we opened that gym, I lived off of $500 a month for three years. $500 a month for three years.

And it was one of the most stressful, like, deteriorating times of my life. I went into debt like crazy. I ended up going into bankruptcy years later or a year or two later, and eventually ended up losing my shares in the gym. Alright? Because I couldn't financially keep up.

So basically got forced out after three years of, you know, working there twelve to sixteen hours a day, getting very little sleep, going through a divorce, going through all kinds of crazy stuff, ended up completely losing my shares of that gym, Everything that I'd fought for, everything that I dream dreamt of. And there was a a point there where, you know, the the shit finally hit the fan. And remember I was living out of my car, and I drove over to Redondo Beach. And I was sitting in a park looking out at the ocean, watching the people go by. And I felt for an instant lonelier than I'd ever felt in my life.

You know, I thought back to my time in the Marine Corps and how different my life would be, how had I just stayed in, had I just signed another enlistment. Right? And, you know, I'm I'm 40 years old right now. My twentieth year would have been this year. You know, I I I was thinking about that.

Right? I was thinking about what if what if I hadn't, you know, moved across country to California? What if I hadn't pursued this this crazy dream that I had? What if I had just gone and got a secure job and all these different things? And essentially, what I was doing was I was just sitting there feeling sorry for myself.

Right? And I was telling myself what a fuck up I was, what what a screw up I was, how awful I was, how big of an idiot I was, just constantly coming down on myself. And then I realized something. You know what? Had I not done those things, had I not gone out there and tried to start a business, had I not moved out to California, had I not tried to pursue that dream, well, then I wouldn't have had the experience.

And it wasn't like I was dead. Right? That was another thing that came to my head. I wasn't dead yet. I was still alive.

And I had, at this point, had no wife. I was going bankrupt, so I really had nothing to lose. Right? And I literally had no reason not to do everything I could at that very moment to make my life better than it was. And sitting on the car, staring out at the beach, looking at the water, feeling sorry for myself, well, that wasn't gonna help anything.

And so I was immediately driven to action. And over the next six months, I put 100% focus in getting myself back on my feet. I started a YouTube channel. Right? My friend Mike Rashid gave me a computer and me to start a fitness YouTube channel.

And and so I started doing that. Right? And started talking about nutrition and started talking about training because, you know, when I opened up the gym, I was training a lot of lot of interesting people and and guys like C. T. Fletcher and Mike Rashid, and ended up putting myself into a position to where people were listening to me.

Right? And then I started getting emails from people asking me if they could work with me, asking me if I trained people. And a lot of these people, they're I mean, they weren't coming from my local area in California. They were coming from, like, Australia and England, and I had a couple from The Middle East, and I had people from from all over the country just contacting me to see if if they could work with me. And, you know, I I didn't know anything about online business at the time, but I figured it out.

I figured out what, you know, Google Docs were, Google Sheets, and I started writing programs on there, and I started sharing them out with them, and and slowly started making money, and eventually got enough money to put myself into a rented room. Right? It wasn't anything fancy, but it felt like a palace to me at the time. Then I got myself enough money to get myself in from there into an apartment. And then today, I live in a house.

Right? And that's the point here, guys. That started because I had a singular focus on where I wanted to go. The the I wasn't worried about making a million dollars at the time. I wasn't worried about becoming super rich.

And I I you can't go into anything hoping to become rich. You go into something because you you see a problem out there that that needs to be fixed. Right? And so when I was doing this for a while, was doing this for a couple of years, writing programs for people helping out athletes from around the world, helping helping people get cheap from around the world. One of the things I noticed was that, well, there came a point where that wasn't fulfilling to me anymore.

And so I ended up looking for something else. Right? And at the time, you know, I'd served in the Marine Corps, and I looked out at what was going on with veterans. And I was catching news from home from a lot of guys I knew who are who are dealing with issues. I said, well, what can I do to help these guys out?

What can I do to to change this situation? Right? To have some sort of impact on this situation. And that's where the idea for Warrior Soul came about. Because I saw there was a problem going on in the community.

I saw that there was a lot of issues, right, that related to suicide, to veteran homelessness, to all these things. But here's the deal. What I saw as far as in terms of content, I saw a lot of entertainment out there, which is still it's great. Right? I love you know, don't give me I love I'm gonna have Donny O'Malley on the show in a couple of weeks.

I I'm a huge fan of Matt Best. Right? A huge fan of Matt Best. But I don't think entertainment's enough. Right?

And then the other aspect is we had this 22 thing going on. This twenty two Veterans Day thing going on. And I had I have a lot of academic background guys. I studied psychology. And prior to open up the gym, worked on a PhD up at UC Santa Barbara, studying, you know, the influence of the human mind.

And I know about a concept called social proof. And when the media highly publicizes suicides, guess what? The numbers of suicides go up, right, in specific populations. And generally, if the person who committed suicide exhibits attributes that are similar to other people, those people are gonna be more likely to commit suicide. Now here's the thing.

Like, I posted about this on social media, and obviously, I I had Vince Rocco Vargas on here. We talked about this a little bit. But I had people coming at me on social media being like, nobody commits suicide because somebody else did it or they saw a number. And that's not what I'm saying at all, guys. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is that it makes it more of a possibility. Right? You're not nobody's going to commit suicide just because they see the number 22. Right? Nobody's gonna commit suicide just because they see that.

There's a lot of factors that go into it. But guess what? If your life isn't going the way that you want it to, if your life isn't, like, isn't a happy life, And then you're hearing about all these people who are doing this or doing that. Well, it makes it more of a possibility. And that's what I'm saying. Right? And so what I focus on here, right, and I made an early commitment not to focus on on just on entertaining or just on on that other aspect.

What we focus on here is empowerment. Right? What the reason why I'm bringing these interviews to you isn't because these people are interesting or because I wanna kiss their ass. I'm bringing these people to you so I can dissect them in front of you, so that I can get their story out there to you and into your brain. So that you can gain those tools, those tactics, those strategies, those ideas to move your own life forward.

And in turn, come back to the community, become a leader, become an influencer, become a doer, somebody who is going to help not only this community, but this country become stronger and more resilient. Right? And that's what it's gonna take, guys. That's why we're here. That's why this podcast exists, and that's why I make the effort to get such amazing guests onto the show.

So those were some great interviews. And and, you know, Robert Greene and Vincent Rocco Vargas, and I think I think those in a really we had a couple of entrepreneurship podcasts that you should check out. We had one with Rhett Power. He was the author of The Entrepreneur's Book of Actions. Then we had Chris and Eric Martinez, who both had they both teach fitness professionals how to start their businesses.

And then we had mister Rob Jones on. We wanna talk about resilience. This is a guy with a who's a double above the knee amputee, who has traveled across country on a bike, rode across country on a bike in the dead of winter, and then did 31 marathons in thirty one days. Like, I couldn't do that with two legs, and this dude's doing that. It's the second time on the show he came on this time to talk about his congressional campaign.

Why? Because Rob Jones didn't feel sorry for himself. He went out there. He freaking did everything he could to help other people. Did everything he could he could to learn more, to make himself stronger, and now he wants to help the country by running for congress.

I think that's outstanding. So definitely check that episode out. Check out the episode we did with doctor Kirk Parsley. Because while you're trying to do big things, you need to take care of your brain and your body. And a huge factor in that is gonna be your ability to sleep.

Kirk Parsley is one of the preeminent experts on sleep in the country. So you definitely wanna check that out. And that's about it, guys. That that was our month. So listen, let me know what you think.

Let me know what you think of the show. You can you can hit me up on our private Facebook group, the Warrior Soul Agoge resilience and motivation group that we have up on Facebook. You can also write us a review up on iTunes, which is what I highly suggest. Definitely do so. The more that you do that, the more you get this information into the hands of more veterans.

And if you're interested, we got a new group here at Warrior Soul. It's called the Warrior's Obituary Society. And it's a group of men who are empowering each other to live absolutely epic lives. We've got a good mix of veterans, civilians, and active duty military who are currently in the group. People who are currently scattered across the globe doing different things.

But the big thing we have in common is that we're men trying to make the most out of this life and trying to live our best lives. When you come into the group, you start with an eight week development program. That's where you're outlining your vision, you're creating your goals. And then we're focusing on specific areas. We're getting you schooled up on fitness, so create your own customized fitness program.

We're working on your personal finance, getting you to the point where you can save and you can invest and where you can seriously cut down on that debt. We're going to be working on your relationships, your ability to find a partner who's gonna support you and, you know, be a compliment to everything you do. But we're also gonna be working on your relationships with people, trying to get you surrounded with people who are gonna be a good influence on you. People who are going to inspire you to do bigger things, not try to keep you exactly where you are. So if all this piques your interest, listen, you can head over to www.warriorsobituarysociety.com or warriorobituarysociety.com, and you can check that out.

And if you have any questions about it, I put my email out there, guys. You can email me over at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com. Alright? With that, guys, I will be back at you on Monday. We're coming into the period of time, the most amazing period of time in the year, the Marine Corps birthday and Veterans Day.

Like, how crazy is that? Back to back. Back to back. Two awesome amazing days. Right?

So on November 11, we're gonna have Michael Reagan on. He's the son of president Ronald Reagan and head of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. He's gonna come down come on to talk about the walkway to freedom that they're building out in Normandy, or they have built out in Normandy. So if you ever get a chance to visit those hallowed grounds, you're gonna get a chance to see that. Alright, guys.

Thanks again, and I will be back at you soon. Get out there and live your best lives while you can. Peace.