Our next superhuman guest hardly needs an introduction. She is Stephanie Quayle, the nation’s top country music voice who has recently had the honor to sing in front of the five living presidents. Reflecting on life and career, Stephanie generously passes a few pearls of acquired wisdom.

When you own your flaws, own the narrative, no one can use it against you’Click To Tweet

Find Your Source

To navigate the landscape of life and business it is important to have a ground, a base out of which to operate. For Stephanie it is health. She is, admittedly, freakishly on point about her nutrition and exercise. It’s what helps her stay on top of her game, regardless of what life brings next.

Receive it Well

Speaking of which, life, especially for someone as out there as Stephanie, throws sticks and stones at you from every direction. It is how we react to them that counts. Stress is the number one cause of anxiety and illness, and the best way to eradicate it is not let it affect in the first place. Weigh your reactions right, Stephanie submits, for a more stress-free time on this Earth.

It’s connected to a wider philosophy of life. We can’t control the input of info, positive or negative, but we sure can decide how to receive it.

Make sure you do what you love. ‘Cus if you love it, it’s gonna work @StephanieQuayleClick To Tweet

Protect Yourself

We always hear about happiness, but rarely praise joy. For Stephanie, happiness exists in relation to joy. While happiness is free-flowing, shifting, external term, joy is the internal, sustained happiness that doesn’t rely on current emotional states. If nurtured, guarded, joy is an ever-present, your very own no-matter-what feeling of happiness.

So protect it, let joy be the source of your being. Challenge it too, surrounding yourself with people from different backgrounds and of different profiles. But, minding your reactions, make sure that joy prevails.

Make sure to check out…

Stephanie’s Website

Stephanies’s Twitter

Book – Made Stick Ideas

Book – Tipping Point Little Things

Book – Leaders Eat Last Together

Our guest for today is Dani Solorio, founder and CEO of the remarkable Compton Health Bar. Running her unusual, yet highly impactful business, Dani opens up on the nature of diet and healing itself.

Lowering your stress even a little bit throughout your day echoes a long way’Click To Tweet

Diet is not just another thing on out to-do lists. Whatever we eat, it becomes a part of us. As an activity, it has the potential to either build or break the anxiety cycle. With this idea in mind, Dani created an oasis of stress-free diet haven, the Compton Health Bar, where people can come, relax, eat healthy, and get much needed advice on their nutrition.

It’s Simple

Dani makes nutrition refreshingly simple. Going to doctor or a nutritionist creates a sort of a compulsory treatment or diet plan. At the bar however, all they do is talk. Conversation is the most powerful tool to reach people. Make them open up to ideas they themselves know of, but never had the encouragement to follow. Simple conversation, simple advice, is all we often need, but sorely lack.

Your to-do list is just as important as to-be listClick To Tweet

Health Comes from Within

Healing knows no doctors. Treatment does, but healing is something that comes from within. To start with, the fatal flaw of humans is that we consider ourselves disjointed from nature, a separate entity. Rather than separate, we are part of it, fully invested in its healing and deteriorating cycle and laws. Reconnecting with nature is the precondition to any healthy life. Dani suggests to start with the basics, eating more greens for instance.

The trick is to learn the most natural thing in the world – teach your body heal itself. So very different than state healthcare system; so very similar to treating the cause rather than a wound.

Nature of Business

Dani’s natural health efforts have a lot to teach us about the nature of business itself. Her unusual bar is situated in Compton, a most unlikely of places for such a place. It is hard to see where income is coming from yet she manages to run a successful business in a difficult place, and help a bunch of folks. ‘Heart and mind in it’ is Dani’s business philosophy. Heart and mind.

Make sure to check out…

Dani’s Bar Website

Dani’s Instagram

Book a Consultation

Book Recommendation

Interview with Seth Bolt

Our today’s guest is Seth Bolt, an author, builder, and the bass player for NeedToBreathe. Starting his entrepreneurship carrier at 16, his creative output led him to many realizations about business and life. Willing to share them, Seth is here to preach some wisdom on taking a break.

Intentionality is superpowerClick To Tweet

Success is predicated on work ethics instilled in us at very young age. Still, work ethics means very little if it is not directed, or intended, towards what matters to us. To build something of value means driving your intention towards a goal, your goal. Otherwise, with no intention in place, all you do is wallow in self-indulging busy-ness.

To have intentionality stretches far beyond business value. It’s a life value. It’ll make your all you do authentic, make you stand our as who you are.

Slow Down

We live in the world of constant distraction where it is often challenging to process everything that happens during a day. Seth has a universal solution to the human drama of busy schedule – it’s called take your time.

Because that’s what nature time is – a retreat. Someone has, with our approval, robbed us of ourselves. We have confused daily tasks for life. It is high time we recognized it, and took back what’s ours. Putting your phones away and pay attention to nature is one way of doing it. This is not escapism; if anything it’s returning to who we really are instead of getting pulled by forces we cannot control.

Manage Your Time Well

A highly creative person, Seth emphasizes a distinction between creative TM and managerial TM. The two types operate on different schedules. Managers are more day-to-day, hour-to-hour, one task at the time types, while creatives aren’t all that time bound. They have fits of output, not steady flow. This is important to know if you have a creative on your team or are yourself one.

Time management is definitely important, but best moments in life come when we lose track of it.

Great time management means chunking out some time for rest and recharge.

Welcome the Obstacles

Journey to the destination is the point, not the destination itself @DrSethBoltClick To Tweet

A final piece of wisdom from Seth is not to avoid obstacles. Appreciate them rather, as growth points. Running into an obstacle means running into an opportunity to grow. Living a life or running a business, you will run into challenges either way. The mindset with which you approach them is what counts.

And remember, take a long break.

Make sure to check out…

Seth’s Tree House Rental Website

Seth’s Twitter

Book – Breaking Out of a Broken System

The Majestic Tree House Video

Seth’s Book Recommendation

Our today’s guest is Matt, the President of BeYoutiful a non-profit cancer support foundation. A self-motivated entrepreneur by admission, he is on a path to create something truly worth our universal admiration. Matt is here to remind us of the often overlooked importance of giving back to the community.

Let the nice staff be the by product, not the focusClick To Tweet

Create

In today’s world it is no longer a guarantee that formal education will get you where you want to be unless you have the right mindset. No diploma will land you a dream job and opportunity today unless you push for it, passionately. Because you are what you create, not what is created for you.

Mind Games

Setting your mind on a path to success needs to be laden with the right motivation. No matter where you draw it from, the motivation needs to morph into a structure of set goals. Ask yourself what you want to achieve through this particular job.

Look beyond the material. Chasing dollars for dollars’ sake will get you to that ‘now what’ moment where everything is empty. Look for that something that makes it worthwhile to get up in the morning. Financial status will inevitably come as the result of hard work directed by the true intrinsic reasons for it. Your own reasons.

It’s incredibly important to have mentors that are outside your space because they give you the perspective that maybe you would never have @MatthewCoulterClick To Tweet

The Beauty of Giving Back

Matt has found his in the giving back space with his non-profit foundation. He has created a platform to actively improve lives of cancer patients and survivors, through active engagement of all who would help locally.

Find Your Passion

There are things money cannot buy. Passion, for instance, is one. Knowing what you are passionate about to the core, waking and sleeping, sets you on the right path. Giving back keeps you on it.

Make sure to check out…

Matt’s Twitter

BeYoutiful Website

We have a special guest today, Jay Feldman, a man en route to becoming something big. Combining the final stages of medical school with running a business, he has a lot to teach us about managing our time. Listen in as we hear how Jay in the face of atrocity, managed to find the strength and get back on the right track.

Overcoming Challenges

Your personality and business self is shaped by many things, especially the horrible or challenging stuff that has happened. Those can really rock hard, but are also the valuable experience resources you can incorporate and gain control of. Jay’s prison time and his parent’s divorce only served to work even harder towards his goal.

Hold Yourself Accountable

A driven man, Jay is not a down-to-schedule type of guy. Yet, admittedly, you have to become one at least in part to keep all the projects afloat. Still, more important than sticking to schedule is sticking to your word. If you said you’ll do something, you better do it, or else hold yourself accountable. No apps will help you here, donating a failure dollar is hopeless, the accountability thing has to come from your deep inside.

Surround yourself with what you need to do and learn how to hold yourself to the things you say you’re gonna doClick To Tweet

Clear Your Head

Success is not directly measurable by the amount of hard work we put in, but by how efficient we are. One thing Jay learned, he shares, is that for high productivity you need an outlet, an activity that will help you chase off the bad clouds from your brain. It’s gym for him, lifting the ever greater weights to clear his head and mark progress, both physical and mental. His other head-clearing activities include stretching, juice in the morning, volleyball, and travelling.

Yes, There’s Time

And it’s not true that you don’t have time for this stuff. A medical final year student, a CEO, Jay still do it all by parceling out the time wasted here, rising up 30 minutes earlier there. So yes, there’s always time.

Final Pieces of Advice

Don’t delay things. There’s no perfect starting point towards your goal. Ask yourself what’s the first move towards it and just do it.

Make sure to check out…

Jay’s Instagram

Book – 4 hour workweek



On today’s show we have cleansing and nutrition specialist Elissa Goodman and her story on battling with cancer at an early age and conquering it through a specific diet but then losing her husband too soon also to cancer. She has the expertise and first hand experience that goes along with the saying “You are what you eat”.

Cleansing is a lifestyle @ElissaGoodmanClick To Tweet

Your thoughts are extremely powerful – they can affect you and your health negatively or positively. You get to choose. After Elissa lost her husband to cancer, she went back to school not set out to become a nutritionist but to save her family – to learn about PTSD and trauma and the various things that can alter not just our emotional and mental health but our physical health.

Inside Out Mentality

Often changing our outlook on life or mindset about certain topics is a lot harder than taking a handful of supplements or juicing daily but is so vital to your success and overall health as an entrepreneur.

Optimize your immune system

Juice on a regular basis fresh organic vegetables only at home and drink immediately. Leaving fruit out also means you are leaving sugars out of your juice.

Simple juicing option: 

* Celery – detoxes the liver + calms down the brain

* Cucumber – detoxes the kidneys

* Lemon – helps alkaline and detox the intestines

* Ginger – anti-inflammatory

* Parsley – great for cleansing heavy metals

*option to rotate the greens with dandelion greens or arugula/romaine/spinach/kale etc

Juices are like a liquid IV of vitamins and mineral which CLEANSE YOUR BLOOD

Stress really creates havoc with our gut (and its micro-biome)

Your gut is really crucial for your immunity and the ability to break your food down so it gets into your cellular level. Hence why juicing is so great as it goes directly into your bloodstream bypassing the process of your gut breaking down the food for you to gain the nutrients.

Elissa also recommends the following to help boost and build your immunity system:

* Eidon Zinc Liquid concentrate for immunity and protects your organs

* SEED – probiotic just released

* Sleep is so crucial for your overall health immunity along with staying hydrated.

Toxicity in the Body

Heavy metals, pesticides (your produce),viruses (mono, canker sores, herpes etc) can lay dormant in the organs with other toxins and when we become stressed, ill or our immune system is compromised.

Food is medicineClick To Tweet

Eating vegetables at every meal is really crucial and still incorporating fruit into your diet like berries which are antioxidants and will help lower inflammation. Burdock root and dandelion greens are great to help detoxing the gut and liver from toxins. Algae, turmeric, oregano oil and ginger are things that have been around forever and very powerful in helping detox your body from viral and fungal things.

Want to feel better within a few days? 

Eliminate gluten, sugar and diary from your diet and you will begin to see immediate results. Juicing 7 days, or buying a green powder and putting it into a smoothie (amazing grass), limiting your animal protein to once a day and watching your sugar intake while being mindful of what ingredients are in the foods you are eating.

 

Make sure to check out…

Our today’s guest is the founder of the distinguished CrossFit exercise program Greg Amundson. Former DEA agent and army captain, Greg is fitness and yoga instructor and one of the country’s top experts in integrated wellness. Greg is here to explain the importance of training your mind as well as body, and present what he thinks are the 3 pillars of life success and fulfillment.

We need to refocus our discipline on what’s the most importantClick To Tweet

That between Your Ears

Getting your body in shape is great, sure, but only if it runs parallel with the mind development. It is a mistake to think about CrossFit in simplistic terms of getting your gear together. In its devotional potential, in the intensity of the trainings, cross fit initiates must hope to find the integration of their mind, body, and spirit.

In the Beginning There Was the Word

In emphasizing the holistic approach to development, Greg points out that the spoken word is preceded by one’s thought, which will later through action affect everything we set out to do in this world. Hence the quality of our thinking determines the righteousness and success of our actions. Therefore in CrossFit, and indeed in life in general, you should seek to improve your thought process as it is the underlying reason for the quality of your life and career.

Beyond Thought

Commitment

Of course, thinking is the start, but not nearly enough. To become an achiever, a high level of healthy commitment is required. The right sort of commitment will always spring from the well-formulated thought; will be tangible and its presence sensed by others; and self-sufficient as when properly formed, the Universe will conspire for its fulfillment.

Discipline

Another pillar of success is surely discipline. We all have it, in one way or the other, but the question remains what we are disciplined to. Setting the hierarchy of priorities we ought to recognize the most important of them and become disciplined in it.

The Sacred Wisdom

Our next pillar is the wisdom contained in Holy Bible and virtually every other spiritual text – seeking gratification not in the treasures of the outside world, but in the richness and grace inside you. Just as the warrior from Greg’s book finds that what he set out to find was inside him all along, we ought to appreciate and draw life source from within.

The Mornings

Silence is sacred @firebreatherfitClick To Tweet

For Greg, how you start a day is of tremendous importance. Meditation, exercise, smoothies, yes to all that, but the thing he stresses out the most is silence. Also the first word we utter into this vastness of silence. We must be aware of the power of the spoken word and not waste it in vain. The first words you utter will set you on a day’s trajectory leading to a more complete, fulfilled, and successful experience.

Make sure to check out…

Greg’s Website

Greg’s Twitter

Book – THE WARRIOR AND THE MONK

In the Kitchen with Greg

CrossFit Program

Our today’s guest is Dr. David Jockers, Doctor and CEO at Exodus Health Center. Presence and an expert in the field of wellness and nutrition, Dr. Jockers is here to unveil truths, or else dispel a few myths that have been associated with the ketogenic diet.

Whatever diet you’re on, drink water the first thing in the morningClick To Tweet

Simulation of Fasting

Ketosis is no news. Aside from using it in regulating gut microbiome in psychologically challenged children since 1920s, low carb fasting is the way our ancestors turned to when food was scarce. They had to use ketones for energy and were in effect much more focused, much stronger, much more resilient in times of fasting then of feast. The Keto of today is a simulation of their fasting, only much more developed and refined.

Truths, Half-truths, and Myths

The longevity of Ketosis helped spin a few myths around it. The following selection is an attempt to explain the chief among them.

Myth No.1

Weight loss has for long been tightly knit to keto diet. Whereas weight benefits do exist, Keto is also much more than just that. The ketones flowing in your bloodstream act as epigenetic modifiers that will help reduce brain inflammation. Helping genes express themselves is a tremendous health benefit gained from Ketosis.

Myth No.2

Many have proposed that turning to 60-85% fat diet is stressful for our bodies. Though there is some truth to this, the high-fat low-carb diet is indeed stressful to people already stressed out. That is why the mindful approach is necessary, that is, easing the body, adapting it to become a fat burning machinery using ketones.

With keto you lose the emotional addiction to many of the common foods that we’ve run our lives on @DrJockersClick To Tweet

Myth No.3 and No.4

There is a general misconception that Ketosis is an all meat diet, which is misleading. Keto is in fact roughly 60-85% fat, 10-30% protein, and 5% carb taken from different, mostly green sources. Meat does have health benefits but is rough on the gut taking a lot of energy to digest. Although some fat in Keto comes from meat, the majority is healthy fats from avocados, olives, nuts, and such.

The next myth is somewhat related to the previous, as it states that Ketosis is poor in fiber so valuable in running our system. But haven’t we mentioned avocado? Food that’s so rich in fiber and thus extremely helpful in keeping the gut microbiome regulated.

Myth No.5

This one has it that Ketosis is restrictive, that is not sustainable over long term. Again here, the truth is easily verifiable. We only need to ask the thousands of people battling obesity with ketosis and dropping pounds precisely due to their determination. And besides, low carb diet will free you of those constant carb and sugar cravings, relieving you of the emotional addiction you’ve so long been slave to.

Make sure to check out…

David’s Website

David’s Twitter

Free Keto Edge Summit

Our guest Evan Delaney is a fashion guru and entrepreneur thriving in the men’s clothing space. Having started at the likes of Chanel and Calvin Klein at only 19, Evan epitomizes everything we mean when we say the word gentleman. Appreciating the fines things in life, he opens up on the difference that a custom suit will make on our lives.

It’s incredible the response you get from dressing rightClick To Tweet

Personalize Your Clothes

The old ‘clothes maketh a man’ may not hit all the truth marks, but there is an undeniable connection between a man’s inner qualities and his desire to dress well. Clothes reflect who we are on the inside, and the colors and cuts of the suit should complement your character.

That is where, Evan firmly believes, the clothing industry gets it wrong most of the time. The retailers are bent on selling the brand, having the company in mind rather than the customer. The opposite is true however; your suit is the extension of your character, it needs to make you transparent, to bring out those presentable qualities you possess.

Dressing up

True enough, a nice personalized suit is an immense confidence builder. But the way you choose to present yourself will also have a huge impact on how people perceive and interact with you. Seeing you in a suit suitable to your character, they’ll rightly think more highly of you, but also themselves too. They’ll figure that you respect them, since you went all the trouble to present yourselves to them. Your presentation dictates the response you get from people around.

Overdressing

Having established the importance of dressing well, might there be such a thing as overdressing? Evan argues yes. Dressing too nice, or too perfect has an element of dishonesty as none of us is indeed perfect. Remember, your suit reflects who you are, and too perfect is just never it. Besides, overdressing will make you robotic and with an unapproachable guard up all the time.

The way Evan makes his suits is that he’ll always sneak a slight imperfection in. This almost unnoticeable touch will add the human essence to the suit, making you more honest, approachable, more natural.

Stay True to Yourself

Having good habits is the best habit to have @projgentlemanClick To Tweet

Though necessary for a gentleman, the suit is only an outward expression of your motivation, your thoughts, and your service to others. Get those and the clothes will naturally follow. But not just any clothes; the ones that will ring true with who you are.

Make sure to check out…

Evan’s Website

Evan’s Twitter

Book – The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Book – Tribe of Mentors

Our today’s guest is Kwame Christian, a corporate attorney and the Founder of The American Negotiation Institute. He revels in using psychology to help him build negotiation strategies. But Kwame is primarily a teacher, and is here to share a few rules regarding the art of persuasion.

You’d be surprised at how many things in your life are negotiableClick To Tweet

Getting Started

Negotiation is everywhere. From negotiating our status as kids on the playground all the way to the high-stake business operations, any conversation where you want something is classified as such. But where the opportunities abound, we often pass on them for the fear of entering a conflict.

Precisely these two challenges, the awareness of negotiation situations and overcoming the anxiety thereof, are the pillars towards making you a great negotiator. Once dusted, applying the psychology behind negotiating your status will have an impact on real people and relationships.

Brushing up

Learning the skill of negotiation is of little value if you don’t practice it out in the world. Kwame has a unique approach to keeping himself sharp, it’s called the rejection therapy.

What he suggests doing is deliberately engage in negotiations that you are not likely to have your way. This is a way of flexing the negotiation muscle which sets high goals and gets you comfortable with rejection. Over time. It will the eliminate fear of rejection, the single most toxic reason why you’re not engaging in more fruitful negotiations.

Conflict is an opportunity @KO_ChristianClick To Tweet

Business and Life

Acknowledging that negotiation situations are all around, private life ones are of a higher stake given that we have more to lose. But engaging in a fruitful negotiating conflict with our closest ones is the only way to find out what’s wrong strengthening the good, or ending the bad relationships.

Up the Ladder

Business too, is a touchy field when it comes to negotiation. If your goal is to, say, negotiate a higher pay, the secret is not to ambush your employer with a direct question, but engage in a series of mini negotiations whereby you’ll ease the impact of the questions once it comes. The ideal strategy would be to ask questions and gather the information on what are the criteria for pay raise, and then go and meet those criteria. Then tactfully present your claim for deserving to climb up the pay ladder.

Success Indicators

Timing

Much of the negotiation results will depend on the timing. The hour needs to be the most practical one, that is, when the person you’re talking to is at their rational best to receive the message.

Body language

Body language is among those indicators that can tell you how the process of negotiation is going. But it can also fool you if you take too much meaning out of too small a sample. Rather than looking for isolated patterns, search for clusters of behavior that happen is succession within a 2-3 seconds span. It’s a great tool, the body language, if that you know how to use it.

Make sure to check out…

Kwame’s Website

Kwame’s Twitter

American Negotiation Institute free guides