158: How A Simple Morning Routine Can Lead To A Life Of Freedom And Success | Michael Chernow

I sit down with Michael Chernow to talk discipline that protects what matters: faith, family, fitness, and business. We unpack his non-negotiable morning routine, recovery and sobriety, hard boundaries with technology, and why leaders control the temperature at home. Simple isn’t easy. Apply it every day, starting now. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 02:47 Morning Routine Insights 12:49 The Power of Prayer and Sobriety 29:04 Faith and Spiritual Journey 37:49 Transformative Power of Faith 44:28 Overcoming Addiction and Finding Purpose 48:39 Setting Boundaries with Technology 54:47 Balancing Work and Family Life 01:05:50 The Power of Discipline and Commitment 01:21:12 Entrepreneurial Journey and Curiosity 01:32:41 Hitting Rock Bottom 01:38:53 The Turning Point 01:42:45 Rebuilding Through Wellness 01:49:03 Kreatures of Habit and Future Goals 01:56:29 The Power of Habits 01:58:50 Final Reflections ORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 20% off FOR LIFE ⁠ https://bpn.team/member⁠ https://bpn.team/member%E2%81%A0 IG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠ YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitness

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nick Bare?

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• 0:37Nick Bare?

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• 1:14Nick Bare?

  Today on the podcast, we have Michael Chernow, Creatures of Habit. What's going on, brother?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  What up, man? Thanks for having me.

• 1:23Nick Bare?

  It's been a long time coming.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I know. I know. We've been on the DM, we've been on the DM text chain for a minute now.

• 1:28Nick Bare?

  Yeah. Well, it's good to have you down here in Austin, Texas from upstate New York.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I bought a pair of Tacova boots, man.

• 1:37Nick Bare?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Dude, I had to.

• 1:39Nick Bare?

  Which ones you get?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I didn't go crazy. I got these guys.

• 1:43Nick Bare?

  They look good, man.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, I'm stoked on them. I'm really, I've wanted a pair, you know, the PBR comes to Albany every year. And so we always take the kids to, uh, to go see the bull riding.

• 1:54Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  And every time I'm there, I'm like, God damn it, I need a pair of cowboy boots. And my wife's in a question. So my wife is on a horse every day and, um, you know, I'll get there, I'll get there, I'll get on a horse. But you know, it was, it's fun. And in Texas, I was like, all right, this is the time, this is the place.

• 2:10Nick Bare?

  You got to. I was, uh, I was driving into work yesterday and this new Aaron Watson song popped up. Aaron Watson's a Texas country artist, real Texas country artist.

• 2:23Nick Bare?

  And just like his music, it was that perfect song. All I wanted to do was throw a pair of cowboy boots in on going to back Texas country road. Put the windows down and just fly, just fly, man.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Especially in that truck dude, cuz that that truck, that thing is incredible.

• 2:42Nick Bare?

  Have you seen the old truck?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 2:44Nick Bare?

  The seventy four?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, that is so cool.

• 2:46Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I love it's uh.

• 2:49Nick Bare?

  It's been a project that I've wanted to bring to life for a long time now. Came across the perfect truck.

• 2:58Nick Bare?

  And it just got delivered last week. The kids love it. I love it. My wife's afraid of it. But it's it's all good things.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Dude, I mean, when I pulled up and I saw that I saw I saw you post about it last week. And I was just, man, that's a good looking truck.

• 3:14Nick Bare?

  It's fun.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  The color too, like the whole spec, the whole project. I mean, is it is it is it all gutted? It's like, is it fully restored?

• 3:21Nick Bare?

  It's fully restored, but it still drives like an old truck. I mean, speedometer doesn't work really well. Fuel gauge doesn't work really well. Everything's manual. And I was dropping my daughter off at school last weekend. And I want to get to get back in the truck after dropping her off and to unlock it, you gotta put the key in the door. Turn it. And this woman was passing me saying, I haven't seen one of those in years.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Where you gotta actually open it with a key?

• 3:48Nick Bare?

  And I said, you mean the truck? She said, no, you're using a key to open your door. I guess you're right.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 3:55Nick Bare?

  So from my understanding, you, like many of us, myself included, are a creature of habit. I think a lot of high achievers are creatures of habit.

• 4:07Nick Bare?

  And also from my understanding, your morning routine is pretty robust and built out. I thought it'd be a good way to set the stage for what is to come in this conversation. What is your morning routine? What's it look like? What's it consist of? How long does it take? Share it, share it with me.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Sure. So I actually have two morning routines. I have the nonnegotiables, which get done no matter what, no matter where I am, no matter how tired, no matter, you know. The nonnegotiable morning routine is is a little bit more concise. My ideal morning routine, meaning I'm in my flow, I'm at home, I'm not traveling. You know, I've got all my tools. I've built my.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Home life to accommodate my family, of course, first and foremost, but to accommodate the most important hours of the day for me between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM. I believe that the morning hours are where we grow. And my non-negotiable morning routine is where I connect with God. And, you know, I know that's not for everybody, but for me, God is massive in my life. And I can't tell you exactly what, why, where, or how, but I can tell you that God has given me an opportunity to do all the things that I do today.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Because prior to my relationship with God, about 21 and a half years ago, I was a lost soul, you know? And so, my morning routine now, and I know you probably hear this all the time, but it really does start at night, you know? It starts at, I don't do this anymore, but for anybody listening, I feel like if you really want to get ahead of a morning routine, or initiate or implement a morning routine, don't worry about your wake-up alarm. Worry about your go-to-bed alarm. The go-to-bed alarm is, in my opinion, the commitment that we need to make. Because if you go to bed at 9:30, waking up at 5:00 or 5:30 is just gonna happen naturally, right?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  And you'll get a good seven and a half to eight hours of sleep, which is my sweet spot. So I go to bed every night at 9:30, and that's just the way I do it. And I have all sorts of tools that I use in bed just because I want to optimize this opportunity, eight hours of my day. Like, imagine, right? Like, you're just given eight hours, and you can either make the most of it, or really dilly-dally, right? Like, getting a strong eight hours of sleep could change your life. Most cases will. So, I go to bed at 9:30 every night. I have... These really incredible ear headphones that I put in. They're, it's actually a new thing that I've started doing. It's a, it's a, it's a company that sent these things to me.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  They're super flat. And so they, they're like, you don't feel them in your ear. And um, you can set it to a certain sound, like a sleep sound, like a white noise or whatever. Anyway, so I put those guys in, I have a, an eye mask.

• 7:13Nick Bare?

  What's, what's, what sound do you play? I'm very interested in this right now, cause my nighttime routine is very built out and structured, as well as my morning routine. I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm, I'm feeling you, I'm hearing you right now. Me and my wife, we have all the tools built around like how we go to sleep with our sauna and sometimes cold plunging at night and our red light therapy and our, our sleep mask and our eight sleep on our bed. And we're also in bed by nine 30 PM. Like we have our rituals and our routines for the evening. And I also agree with, if you're trying to set yourself up for success, if you're trying to set your day or yourself up for success right now, for right now, you're already behind.

• 7:58Nick Bare?

  I'm constantly looking forward and planning backwards. Good example of that, this morning, as I'm prepping my breakfast, I was also prepping tomorrow's lunch and third meal of the day. So I'm always like one step ahead. So I, I love where you're going with this, but let's go back. I'm, I'm curious about these sleep.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  So this, so this, so the sleep, the sleep pods are called Ozlo, O Z L O. They, uh, so they have about 15, 20 different sounds you can play. I'm currently on cloak. That's the sound that I listen to.

• 8:33Nick Bare?

  Nice.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And it's just like, uh, it's a subtle white noise, right? These things are a game changer. I'm just, I'm just here to tell you.

• 8:40Nick Bare?

  I'm gonna get them.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  They're amazing.

• 8:42Nick Bare?

  I'm gonna get them.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  They're incredible. And the coolest thing about them is that they're super flat, right? Like I typically always go to bed listening to an audio book or a podcast. That's just something that I've done for a long time. And it's a funny story about that, actually. When we, when we, so we, we, I bought this property about two and a half hours north in New York City in 2012. And I got an interesting story about why we did that too, but we'll get to that later, maybe.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  This property is incredible, right? It's a 55 acre piece of land.

• 9:11Nick Bare?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  It's a big piece of land. It's got a, you know, a 300 year old farmhouse on it. Cool outbuildings. It's just like a beautiful property that was like peanuts. 12, you know, whatever 12, 13 years ago. Now, because of the pandemic, that whole region just got flooded and people were buying property site on scene. So the, so it's a very different environment there now than it was when we bought it. Anyway, uh, we move, you know, we, we were using this place on the weekends and I was going to the farm store, which is like right down the road from me every weekend. And then, you know, about three months after we moved there, this woman stops me in the farm store, super eccentric, like I just knew she was a little bit wackadoodie. And, uh, she goes, I've been seeing you here.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Just move into the area. I was like, oh, you know, we, we, we bought a house right down the road. And she was like, oh, where? I was like, we're on the other side of the Taconic, you know, it's about a, you know, quarter mile ish off the Taconic. And she's like, which house? And I was like 1230 Harlemville. And she goes, uh, oof, do you know about that house? And I was like, I mean, I, I love it, you know? It's a, we were excited to be there, you know? She's like, I rented your house like 25 years ago before we moved up here and it was poltergeist haunted. And I was like, appreciate that information. Really nice to meet you.

• 10:36Nick Bare?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for your kindness. I'm going to continue shopping now, you know? And, um, and it just sent, you know, like scary stuff, right? Like, you know, the house haunted house, house is super old. Anyway, so when we, when I would go to bed there, you know, I would, I'm like, after she said that, I'm thinking like, all right, like any noise is something. And the house is old, so there's creaks and cracks and. I started going to sleep with an AirPod in, you know, or like a headphone in to be able to like dull out any of the noise. Right. Cause I just, you know, I'm not, I'm not trying, I'm scared of ghosts, man. I'm just scared of ghosts, you know, there's a few things I'm scared of. One of them is ghosts.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Anyway, so the Ozzy Sleep Pods really do help me with that. So, so I, I, I, I go to bed and the cool thing about them is that you can set up the sound, but then you can also stream a podcast or an audiobook and then you set the timer on that and as soon as that timer goes off, you go right into the sound. I'm asleep typically after hitting a podcast or an audiobook within 90 seconds. Like I put my head down, I'm out. I've just gotten really, really good at falling asleep. So I wear an eye mask, I have an eight sleep mattress and, um, and we have blackout shades. So I like hit the bed and I'm asleep, you know, and, and when, when entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, or, you know, just people reach out in general, I'm sure you get a bazillion

• 12:04Speaker 01

  DMs from people saying, hey, can I, you know, chew your ear for a second? I got, I'm trying to figure out how to do this next thing. People I meet in person, friends, you know, they'll say, you know, what, what, what can I do to be more committed, more disciplined, you know? And I, the first question I ask is I, what time do you go to bed? You know, the truth of the matter is nothing really great. You'd never heard, you never hear great stories outside of potential war stories.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  But you never hear great stories of, of achievement, of, of, of, of, of goal, of uh, success after 10 o'clock at night. You know, it just doesn't happen. Yeah. Most success stories happen in the morning or during the day at some point. And so if you want to optimize that, go to bed earlier. It's just, it's just a simple thing that you can start doing. And the way I always tell people to do is legitimately.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Put a go to bed alarm in your phone or on your, you know, on your watch, whatever it is, and then commit to it. And so that even if you're not tired, that nine thirty clock dings, you just go. You just go. And, and you will get better at it, you know? Um, and then, you know, so my morning routine is, so I wake up typically somewhere between five and five fifteen. This is my ideal morning routine. I wake up somewhere between five and five fifteen. Uh, my wife had, does not wake up between five and five fifteen. Um, she has banned me from our bathroom. I have to sneak out and go downstairs to the guest bathroom. And so I sneak out, I go downstairs to the, to the kitchen first, and I fill up a thirty ounce jug of water, um, with a bunch of supplements that I put

• 13:41Speaker 01

  in there just to kind of kick off my, my hydration. Um, I get into the bathroom, I brush my teeth, I floss my teeth, I rinse my mouth, scrape my tongue, uh, take a piss. I put cold water on my face, I put on my contact lenses, and then I hit my knees. And so this part of my morning routine is something that I've been doing for, you know, little over twenty-one years. And, uh, when I first got sober, I've been in recovery for that long, little over twenty-one years. The first guy I met, um, that introduced me to this new world of, of freedom, from addiction specifically, he, he, he wrote a whole plan for me, but he told me that I would have to pray if I wanted to work with

• 14:23Speaker 01

  him. And I didn't grow up in a religious household. I didn't really know much about prayer. But he said, you know, all you gotta do is get on your knees and ask for help. That's all I'm asking you to do. In a humble, humble position, on your knees, in the morning, just connect with God. That's it. Ask for help. It could just be help, right? And so, um, obviously my prayers have, have evolved over, over the years. Um, but so I pray for about five minutes. And, uh, most recently, I've changed a few things in my prayers where I used to ask God to remove certain things that I didn't like about my life, or certain things that could potentially present as hurdles, fear, insecurity, character

• 15:05Speaker 01

  defects, character assassinations. I mean, basically, I would say every morning, you know, God, please help to remove my fears, my insecurities, my character defects, my character assassinations, my wrong thinking, and my rationalizing. And then I would finish with, please allow me to be of service today. And more recently, in the last probably six months, I was having a conversation with a buddy. And, you know, we were talking about God and our prayer. And, uh, and he said, you know, you're putting that into the, into the universe, that negative stuff, the fear, the insecurity. You're saying it every morning. Why don't you flip it on its head? And instead of saying that, just say, hey, God, please help to bring optimism and positivity and confidence and courage and kindness and presence and,

• 15:50Speaker 01

  you know, joy into my day, as opposed to asking him to remove the bad stuff. Because if he introduces that stuff, you know, they say it's, it's pretty, it's, it's really hard to be angry if you're smiling. Right? Like if I get that stuff, then I don't have to worry so much about the fear and the insecurity. Right? Like if my day is blanketed with this positive stuff. So that's, that's one thing I do. So, so I say my prayers and I call it prayers, pushups and poses. I do as many pushups as I can right after I pray. I'm in that like 76 to 77 range right now. And it just, it's gotten, as I've gotten older, they haven't gotten smaller. They've actually grown. Consistency works.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And then I do some yoga poses. I do up dog, down dog for five rounds. And then I do cat cow for five rounds. And then right when I'm done with that, in the guest bedroom that's connected to the guest bathroom, I, uh, I sit on my little meditation stool. I turn on my red light and, um, and I meditate for about 10 minutes. And, um, I kind of think about prayer as, uh, as talking to God. And then I think about meditation,

• 17:01Speaker 01

  as listening to God. Right? And so I like to try to spend a little bit more time listening than I do talking. And so I meditate for about 10 minutes. And then, uh, I walk back out of the, the guest bedroom, make my way into the garage. And that's where I have my sauna, my cold plunge. Um, and I sit in the sauna for about 20 minutes. Uh, and that's where I get my reading done. I like to read in the sauna. And then, um, it's a battle every single morning. Never, it's never like, oh, I'm just gonna hop in the cold plunge. It's just always a battle. I'm always trying to convince myself that it's just, I did it yesterday and I just don't need to do it today. I could just go take a cold shower. It'll be easier, faster.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  But you know, I always fight that fight and end up in the cold plunge for somewhere between three and four minutes. Um, and that's where I get to like really slow down my breathing, really get centered, really get focused. The cold plunge is uh, you know,

• 17:59Speaker 01

  obviously, there's a lot of talk about cold plunging and all the health benefits. And for me, I really do believe, and I've been doing cold plunge for

• 18:10Speaker 01

  probably about 10 years. And um,

• 18:14Speaker 01

  for me, it's, it's uh, it's understanding this idea that, you know, um, we are going to have to do things that we don't want to do if we want to get to places that we've never been.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Right? And if you could start your day like that, because every day, I mean, every day, it's a battle to get in that thing. Thirty-nine degree water in a, you know, thirty-degree garage, if not colder in the wintertime, you know, it's just, it's hard. It's hard. And so I set myself up for success, giving my, you know, grabbing the confidence to just go in there and do it. And then I get out of there and I'm like, unstoppable, man. I feel so good.

• 18:53Nick Bare?

  The dopamine dump from a cold plunge, I mean, that's, that's why I cold plunge. It's because I know what is to come when I get out. That dopamine dump is unlike anything else.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Can't beat it.

• 19:05Nick Bare?

  You're alive. You're awake. You're ready.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  So alive.

• 19:08Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It just fires up every system in your body, right? Like every system in your body, especially if you're able to slow down your breathing. And, you know, for years, I used to cold plunge with my hands under my armpits and my legs crossed. And now I'm just like, you know, and I got, I mean, I'm kind of lucky. I have a really incredible cold plunge. Um,

• 19:28Nick Bare?

  Which one do you have?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I have the new plunge G2.

• 19:32Nick Bare?

  Okay.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Thing is sick. It's like, I don't know, I don't know what it is about that. And I've had plunges before from plunge. This one is just, it's the granddaddy. Like I just, it's just so cool. So I love that thing. I love and I love and hate it. I love and hate it. Um, but cold plunging has definitely been an asset for me, uh, mentally, physically, spiritually. You know, there's a lot of things you can do. But trying to actually slow it down in a really, really intense time.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  prepares you for life.

• 20:09Nick Bare?

  Agreed.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  You know, even if it's only for three minutes. So I do that every morning and then, and then, you know, I, I have a little mirror on the wall. You know, my gym is in the garage. And so, once I'm done with that cold plunge, I walk past the mirror. I give myself a look in the eye. I used to say all sorts of, you know, um, uh, what do they call it? Positive affirmations. Now, all I do is I just look at myself in the eye. Good, hard look. And I say, today's the day, Mikey. Go get them. I walk out and at that point, it's about, you know, whatever. An hour and a half after I've woken up, an hour and change. My wife and kids are just starting to get up. And I am the absolute 100% best version of myself. Period. Done. I am dad, I am husband, and I'm ready to be that person.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And, um,

• 20:58Speaker 01

  I, you know, if nothing else good happens, right? Like if nothing else good happens, because you know, in business, some days you're gonna be high fiving and hugging. But more days than not, you're gonna be navigating the weeds and trying to figure out how to get yourself out of them.

• 21:15Nick Bare?

  Blocking and tackling.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  That's it. So like, you do that for yourself in the morning. And the other thing that I've said, you know, that I, that I, that I feel is, is those, those hours, those, those hour and a half and change I get in the morning, could be spent sleeping, you know, some people, a lot of people will, you know, the, the, I've been talking about a morning routine for a long time, you know, and morning routines were hot and heavy, right? Like three, three years ago, like everybody's got their morning routine. Now it's got, begun a lot different, you know? I don't care what people think about my extensive morning routine. It makes me a better person. It just does. I have the confidence to do it. I have the discipline to do it.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  And I'm not saying if you don't, you don't have those qualities and values. But for me, it doesn't matter to me what you think about my, you know, 15 step morning routine. When I'm done with it, I am a better human being than had I not done it. Yeah. Um, and then, you know, like I, I typically will hang with the wife and kids, have breakfast every morning at the breakfast table. Um, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take the kids to school. Uh, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go straight to train. Tuesday, Thursday, I drop them off at school. I'll train and then I, and then I head to the office.

• 22:39Nick Bare?

  I also love my mornings. So I wake up at four thirty AM every morning.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:44Nick Bare?

  To give myself at least two hours before the family's up.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 22:48Nick Bare?

  I got younger kids, so my daughter's three and a half. My son is one and a half.

• 22:55Nick Bare?

  They pretty consistently wake up between six thirty and seven thirty AM. However, there's the occasion where someone's up at four and stays awake. But I'm pretty confident in my morning routine, knowing that if I wake up at four thirty, I at least have typically two hours. And my morning routine is just as robust and built out. But I know that if I can commit that time to myself,

• 23:24Nick Bare?

  I'm going to be the best version of myself for that day.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 23:27Nick Bare?

  I would much rather wake up at four thirty. I even during the weekends now, wake up at four thirty, have my two hours to work on myself and then be prepared and ready to be with my family.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Well, well, also just think of this, right? Like, so you're, you're, you're sacrificing, you're sacrificing. Like, people will say, oh, that, you know, morning indulgence routine, selfish. I'm like, not when you're waking up before everybody else, right? Like, I'm not sacrificing their time. I'm not sacrificing my time with them. I'm actually sacrificing my time to be able to do that. But you just earned, not only did you earn the ability to be the best version of yourself between four thirty and six thirty, but you just earned two hours of life that are insanely productive every single day. So that's three hundred and sixty-five times two is whatever that is. My math is probably not going to be right, but six hundred, you know, whatever that is,

• 24:25Speaker 01

  seven hundred and fifty hours a year that you just earned by waking up earlier of life, of progressive, intense time that you're spending on yourself so that you can benefit everybody else in your life.

• 24:41Nick Bare?

  Yes.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  I mean, how could you not want to capitalize on that? Like, I just don't see that. There is zero downside.

• 24:51Nick Bare?

  I agree. I also love that you said, nothing great really happens after, say, nine thirty PM. When I try to read in the evening, it is like a forty percent effectiveness reading score. I'll read myself and I'll lay in bed and I'll read a book or I'll read my Bible. And I'll get through a certain section and I'm so tired from the day. I think, I don't know. I just read.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, read it like four times.

• 25:20Nick Bare?

  I reread it and I'm not actually like digesting and consuming and really holding on, retaining any of that information, any of that content. But when I do the same thing in the morning, like I listen to audiobooks or podcasts on my runs. I will read my Bible as soon as I wake up in front of the red light. I'm retaining every single, not just word, every letter. My brain is firing. One of the biggest game changers for me and my wife last couple of months, we only started recently using red light therapy. Immediately upon waking up, I go to the fridge. I have a shaker bottle of twenty five ounces of cold water that has electrolytes in there.

• 26:02Nick Bare?

  I'll come back, I'll sit in front of the red light infrared light therapy for fifteen to twenty minutes. That's been a game changer for both me and my wife to wake up and feel really good in those first thirty minutes upon waking.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, like, I know the science, there's a lot of science on red light. I think the science is changing a little bit. At the end of the day, sitting in front of a light that's going to ultimately penetrate you on a cellular level, no downside. Like, there's just no downside, right? Like, if you have access, you know? And so, do I, you know, so, so, so there's that, that, that super structured, robust morning routine. And then there's the non-negotiable morning routine, which is way simpler. And sometimes I'll even do this, like on the weekends, I'll even do this because I want to get a workout in earlier and not have to, you know, on the weekend specifically.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  All I care about is like hanging out with my wife and kids. That's a fact. Like, that's what I want to do. Like, that is what I want to do all, like, for my life in general, like. The more time I'm spending laughing and loving my wife and kids, the better my life is gonna be. And then, of course, peppering in friends as well. But, so my non-negotiable is basically, I wake up at the same time. I head downstairs, I drink a bunch of water. If I'm traveling, I go wherever I can and drink a bunch of water. I get into the bathroom, I brush, I floss, I rinse, I tongue scrape, I wash my face, and I do prayers, push-ups, and poses.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And if that's all I can do, I'm good. You know, I think that connection, I do have to put an emphasis. All that other stuff is wonderful. And I, like you, am blessed to have worked my butt off to be able to collect all these tools to have at my disposal in the house. But none of this stuff is possible for me. First and foremost, without my recovery and my sobriety. But second, just without a relationship to God. And again, you know, I can't...

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I can't tell you exactly who, what, where, when, and why it worked so well. But talking to God in the morning for me is like,

• 28:30Speaker 01

  you know, putting on my shoes before I leave the house. Like, it has to happen. And it's been very powerful. You know, the one thing I've done, you know, staying sober is a very difficult thing to do. Getting sober is very hard. Staying sober long-term is really, really hard because there's, you know, so many influences. Life throws curveballs. Things get really hard. Things get really awesome. You wanna celebrate, you wanna mourn, you know, like it's a lot of, you know, feelings are hard. Feelings in general are just hard. Whether it's coming from family, or business, or friends, or death, whatever it is. And you know, human beings, I believe, are conditioned, especially now, to not want to feel.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  We are looking for comfort. It's just what it is. There's been great books written about it recently. You know, I don't know if you've read The Comfort Crisis, or, you know.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  But there's, there's, there's, we're, for whatever reason, we want to be warm. We want to be fed. And we don't want to have to lift up heavy things, right? Or, you know, run, fight. Yeah, fight. It's just, and, um.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  You know, the one thing I've done every single day, since I've made the decision to put a plug in the jug and stop using substances, was pray. It's the one thing. I've done a lot of other things. Lot, a lot of consistency, but the one thing I have been unbelievably consistent with, without fail, is prayer.

• 30:13Nick Bare?

  When did that first action of prayer evolve and turn into a relationship with God?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  It's a great question.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Honestly, recently.

• 30:27Nick Bare?

  Like years recently, or months?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Months recently, where I really believe, I.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  I never thought of meditation as listening, right? And I've been meditating on and off for years now. But I was talking to my therapist, um, six months ago. And she's Christian, and she, we don't really, you know, it's like, kind of church and state, right? Like, we don't always, you know, talk about God in, in therapy session. But, you know, she said to me, she asked me a real, a question that, like, I kind of got, I kind of got stumped, right? She was like, what is your relationship with God?

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And I was like, I mean, I pray every morning, and my life is, is, is great, not without its faults and challenges, but, you know, my, my prayer. And she's like, so, so.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Let me ask you a question. She said, if you were in a relationship and you were just the only one speaking, like, what do you think the other person in the relationship would feel if you're the only one talking? Because right now, your prayer in the morning, like, you're the only one talking. You know, you're not giving God a chance to talk. You're not receiving. You're just talking. And so I was like, wow, that's a really interesting perspective, you know? And so about six months ago, I started meditating and journaling on

• 32:09Speaker 01

  this idea that it's gotta be a two-way street. And I didn't really understand that. Because I, you know, I'm, I don't, my wife is a self-proclaimed atheist. And so it makes it really difficult, because I try my best, because how, you know, how powerful God's been in my life. But she is just adamant about her belief, and I'm fine with that, right? I'm not trying to force or convince or whatever, her to want to start looking at God the way I do. But I don't go to church, right? Like, I've been, I've been doing,

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I've been like YouTube-ing my way through this thing. And, and so she, she had proposed that I, after my prayer, I sit in silence for, you know, two to three minutes, just to receive. And then throughout my day, instead of, you know, something hard comes up saying, God, you know, I'm going through this, brother, like, just, just receive. And that has begun the, what I believe to be the, the chapter two, after 20 years of, you know, talking a lot. And now also, kind of understanding that that meditation practice is also an opportunity for me to listen, you know?

• 33:31Nick Bare?

  I love to hear that. What I've learned through my walk in faith is

• 33:40Nick Bare?

  there is religion, and there is faith. And religion is the study of people, and culture, and systems, and beliefs. But faith is a relationship with, with God. It's truly believing.

• 33:58Nick Bare?

  That relationship is a two-way relationship. There's the speaking and there's the listening. And I do a lot of my prayer in the sauna in the evening. And it is like 15 minutes of intense prayer. And I can feel the Holy Spirit

• 34:19Nick Bare?

  talking back to me, answering my questions. Things just come to me and.

• 34:26Nick Bare?

  Yeah, are you in scripture? Are you in the Bible at all yet?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I've like started, I mean, I read, I just started in the beginning of the year, reading Jesus's Calling, which is a really cool book and it kind of like gives me an opportunity to focus on certain verses that

• 34:46Speaker 01

  simplifies the Bible for me. I have not read the Bible. And it's definitely something, you know, for, so I'll also say that for the first

• 34:58Speaker 01

  19 years of recovery,

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I came, I came up through the 12-step programs. And in the 12 steps, they are strategically, they strategically present faith,

• 35:17Speaker 01

  relationship with higher power in such a way that it doesn't turn anybody off because, you know, lots of people have, you know, trauma around religion, right? If you grew up in a really religious, very strict household, that might have been what propelled you to want to drink later on in life or use later on in life. So they basically say this is an opportunity for you to create a higher power of your own understanding. Doesn't matter what it is. For me, for a long time, it was water. I was like, you know, I want to have something to believe in, you know, water keeps me alive. If I don't have water in my day, you know, I'm parched, I'm, if I don't drink for a few days, I'm dead. So, you know, let me, let me just use something as this ability to have a understanding of something that's going to help me stay alive.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  And if this is what they're saying, I need to stay sober, also known as alive for me,

• 36:08Speaker 01

  water seems like a good one, you know? And so, but over the last year and a half,

• 36:17Speaker 01

  I have.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  And it's not like I've been on a journey looking for it, but Jesus Christ has been showing up in my life in abundance. I mean, so much so, this might be a little woo woo, but we're on the topic. So I'll just share the story. I was driving in Utah about four months ago with a buddy of mine who's also Christian. And we were just, you know, we were talking about life and, you know, Jesus Christ and things like that. And we were driving and I looked up and Utah is amazing. I mean, it's a beautiful, it's just beautiful country. It's just, there's mountains everywhere. And, and I looked up and I saw Jesus.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And I like had to pull the car over and I, and it was just bizarre. Like it was, you know, I'm not the guy that's going to be like, oh my gosh, you know, I just saw Jesus, but I did. And whether it was a figment of my imagination or it was a sign for me to start walking that direction.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I saw Jesus, man, you know, and, and I've, and I've met a number of people that have just been talking to me way more about that. And so I'm

• 37:34Speaker 01

  if I get, if I have subliminal reasoning to want to lean a certain direction that I haven't, that there's no downside towards. I lean, you know, and so it's, it's a new thing for me, but it's become certainly some, like my prayer has now gone from God to Lord Jesus.

• 37:54Nick Bare?

  I love that. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing woo woo about it, you know, and I would encourage you

• 38:03Nick Bare?

  like lean in to those feelings and God calling you. Because in a lot of situations and circumstances,

• 38:13Nick Bare?

  I found myself in the past of resisting that calling. Because to be honest, I didn't want to be that guy. And when I surrendered everything to Him, changed my life completely, completely.

• 38:30Nick Bare?

  I mean, my life in the last year is not the same life it was a year ago. I've only recently in the last couple of months committed my life to fall in Christ. And I went all in and surrendered everything and in the word. And if you're interested, I'd love to share some, some resources with you after this.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Nick Bare?

  Like books that I've read, how I've gotten started reading the Bible and being in scripture. Cause scripture is, it's the truth. It's, it's the word. And it has transformed my life.

• 39:02Nick Bare?

  My joy, my peace, my rest that I've never experienced my life before, my relationship, my marriage, me as a father, a leader, a husband.

• 39:12Nick Bare?

  There's a, there's a good Bible that I read that I highly recommend. It's John Maxwell's Leadership Bible.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 39:20Nick Bare?

  And throughout scripture, it'll have these little blurbs throughout from John Maxwell, who's one of the, the best business leadership coaches, mentors in the world. And it translates scripture to leadership principles and how to apply it to your life or your business, your family.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 39:39Nick Bare?

  I'll, I'll send you a copy of this Bible and it's absolutely amazing.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  But you know, I, I kinda like, I, I, I look at this topic as if I really just sort of peel back the onion and say, okay.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Whether you believe it or not, even if there's a slight chance as a, as a ambitious, smart human being, that you have support from this being that is almighty. All you have to do is connect to it. Believe that that is with you and within you, helping you make decisions, helping you get through things, not going to fix your life, not gonna, not gonna, not gonna pull you out of a burning building necessarily. But there's an opportunity to.

• 40:34Nick Bare?

  Work with, live with, enjoy grace. Like, why would you not do that? Yeah, you know, I mean, your, your life is saved by faith through grace.

• 40:54Nick Bare?

  Christianity is the one religion in belief where you are not judged based off of your actions, but based off of your faith. And that's because of grace. It's pretty amazing. And I found that when you align your priorities in life of God, family, marriage, and then everything else, life works out. It's not gonna be all rainbows and butterflies. And you still are going to suffer and there's still hardship and you're not resistant to all the other obstacles and hardships of life. But when things are in those priorities,

• 41:38Nick Bare?

  it makes life restful, peaceful, filled with joy, and purposeful.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  And you're never alone, never. So I think that's the big one, right? Like,

• 41:54Speaker 01

  if anything,

• 41:57Speaker 01

  you can, you can have faith that you're not, you're not doing it alone.

• 42:04Nick Bare?

  I would encourage you, like,

• 42:07Nick Bare?

  I'm still new on my walk,

• 42:11Nick Bare?

  but use me as a resource. Because I've had people in my life who, very strong believers, people here at BPN, very strong believers, that took me under their wing and mentored me and guided me, gave me the resources, the tools, the insight.

• 42:31Nick Bare?

  And it was so helpful. So if you need any help along the way, right?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one, the, the only one semi hurdle I just have to, and, and I've talked to people about this is, is the fact that my wife battles with it, you know? She just doesn't have the, um...

• 42:48Speaker 01

  My wife and I are, I mean, I'm blessed. I want to just preface by the saying that. Like, I've been married in April, oh no, excuse me, April, July. Will be 20 years, I'm married, congrats, thanks. And I met the woman of my dreams, you know, 21 and a half years ago, right after I got sober. And no one ever would have pinned me as the guy that was gonna settle down at 25, right? But I met this woman and she's never seen me have a drink, she's never, you know, I've never used a mind-altering substance. And we're very different, like, super-duper different.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  And she knows, I mean, you know, she used to, when I, I used to work super late at night, and when we first started dating, I told her that I, you know, I'm recovering in sobriety. I pray every morning and I pray every night. I train my ass off, because at that point, I was, you know, when I got sober, I was introduced to Muay Thai kickboxing, which ultimately saved my life, along with God and, you know, the 12 steps. But I used to get home late at night, because I was working in the restaurants. And I would get home at 3 o'clock, sometimes 4 o'clock in the morning. And I'd be so tired, and I'd get on the floor of the bathroom, in prayer position, I'd say my prayer. And I'd fall asleep, just like that.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  And she used to wake up in the morning, go into the bathroom, and I'd be on the floor, in prayer position, sleeping. And she'd be like, wow, you know, and I'd be like, this is who I am, you know, this is who I am. And so she knows the guy I am, she has the whole time. But, you know, things evolve, right? Like, my faith has evolved, my, you know, and, and, and I'm feeling really confident about...

• 44:40Speaker 01

  These signs that I'm getting, I just can't not. And so the hard, the hard part though is, is, is, you know, she's not comfortable in that world. And so the advice I was given was just like, keep doing what you're doing. Don't push, shove, convince, coerce. And then hopefully one day, maybe, never, but maybe one day. You know, Jesus will show up in her life and she'll follow. But like, don't stop doing what you're doing, you know? Find the, find the medium, find the balance, right? Like, you don't have to talk about God or Jesus or scripture at the dinner table.

• 45:21Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  You know? So that's kind of like where I, I've just like hung my hat on that. And I'm like, you know, this is, this is so, it's powerful for me, you know? Cause I, I can't tell you it's the thing, but I can tell you it's the, it's the thing that I've done consistently since I've, since I've gotten sober. And, and by the way, like before I got sober, I flatlined. I was dead. I died, I overdosed on heroin, dead. And I came back and to think that I had lived 10 years in this dark, like weak place of hiding and running and lying and cheating.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  To be able to go from death to two weeks later, a life that is just so unbelievably different in such an incredible way that there, you know, there's so many people that are struggling with addiction, man. I mean, it's, you know, everybody's saying, oh, man, you know? Alcohol sales are down, you know, 50%. America's not drinking anymore. And I'd love to believe that to be true because it is true. There's less alcohol consumption, but it's because this is what's keeping people from drinking. Cause they're at home on their couch, not moving. Now, do I think it's better than getting wasted and probably committing crimes and doing bad things like that? Maybe, but this is almost as bad.

• 46:47Nick Bare?

  I'd agree.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Almost as bad, right?

• 46:50Nick Bare?

  Mind wasting. Time wasting.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  I invested in a new phone that I can't wait to get. I get it in February called the Light Phone 3.

• 46:59Nick Bare?

  Dude, I've been, I've been thinking about, do it, buying the Light Phone.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Do it, dude. You and me will lead the charge. I'm doing it.

• 47:07Nick Bare?

  I love that.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I'm doing it. I'm gonna leave this at the office. So this will always be at the office because I have to be, you know, on social media and, you know, similar to you, like, you know, you've, you've, you've got VPN and you've got your brand, you know, and, and they, they work so well together, but you have to be active, right? Like, people are expecting you to be active. And so I have to do that, but I don't have to do that when I'm at home.

• 47:30Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And having this thing, just like, it's like, this thing lives the best life out of all human lives. Because this thing gets so much attention. This gets so much attention. And typically, when something really cool is going down, the first experience that that, that, that, that, the, the first thing that gets to experience that is like this. Like, like I'm on, you know, we're on this podcast, man. I want to capture this moment. I gotta get a, I mean, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna get a great picture of this. But at the end of the day, this thing should not experience my kids' play at school before I do.

• 48:15Nick Bare?

  I agree. Yeah, I, uh, I've had that same idea, actually, is to, to buy the Light Phone and keep my, my iPhone at the office and use the, the Light Phone at home. Because the truth is, we are weak individuals and people. I even have apps downloaded on my phone that block my social media apps from certain times. But you know what I do? I turn those apps and I turn them off.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 48:46Nick Bare?

  I'm like, what am I doing?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  I know.

• 48:48Nick Bare?

  I'm better than this.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 48:51Nick Bare?

  It is the greatest addiction that we all have. And I actually love that you say that. The, the world is raving that alcohol sales are down. And they are. But it's because we are glued to our phones day in, day out. First thing that's done upon waking and the last thing that's done before closing our eyes and going to sleep. It is horrible. I mean, I walk around, uh, You know, we were at an event in Pittsburgh this past weekend. And we were talking to people, we were getting photos with people. And individuals kept walking in between

• 49:32Nick Bare?

  where we were standing and getting photos because they're walking like zombies, looking down at their phone, not knowing what's in front of them. Walking into us, walking through the line. Oh, my gosh, we're all dead.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Well, the commitment that I made last year, which I've stuck to, which I'm proud of, is, and it just came to me, I was on the train in New York City. And I was on the train, a packed train, and I just like looked up from my phone. And I like looked across and there was like someone on their phone. And then I had someone on their phone, someone on their phone, someone on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone, on their phone. No one in the train, outside of a few people in their 50s and 60s, were looking up. Everyone, 100 people, were on their phone. And it dawned on me. We don't experience life anymore.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  We question why there's this like male loneliness epidemic. We don't experience life because we expect, we want a constant flow of stimulation and dopamine from our phones. We don't look up. Imagine trying to run a race, not looking up. Well, life is a race. Whether it's a marathon or a sprint, different times, different seasons. If you're looking down, there's no shot you're gonna win. Zero chance. Bar none. The person who's looking up, they got a shot.

• 51:04Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  So I just, I made a commitment. On the train? No phone. Waiting on a line for anything? No phone. In a social environment that I don't know many people are, easiest thing to do? Boom, pull out your phone, hide behind that thing. No phone. I do not pull out the phone. Experience with my wife and kids? No videos, not doing it. I want to be there, I want to be present. I want to, I just like, want to experience it. And, you know, we're so like, we want to like, like, how many pictures do you have in your phone?

• 51:38Nick Bare?

  Probably eight thousand.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  How many times do you go back and look at all those pictures?

• 51:41Nick Bare?

  Only when I'm flying.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so like, we rarely go relive those experiences, right? There's some thing that's kind of,

• 51:52Speaker 01

  we believe that capturing the moment is like,

• 51:58Speaker 01

  going to optimize our lives, optimize the experience. We'll make, you know, we'll be able to look at it. And yeah, there's definitely great times for that, right? Like, but at the end of the day, I've got twenty-one something thousand videos on my, I mean, photos on my phone. And I just, the only time I really go back and look for those, look at those photos, and this is sad, but it's a fact, is if I'm trying to create a carousel on, on, for a,

• 52:24Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I relate to that.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  You know, like, that's when I'm like scrolling those photos, right? To try to create a great carousel for Instagram posts.

• 52:32Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Anyway, we're on a tangent, but.

• 52:36Nick Bare?

  Have you,

• 52:39Nick Bare?

  you know, coming from a,

• 52:42Nick Bare?

  a historical background of addiction, which I want to get into,

• 52:47Nick Bare?

  do you see similarities between the addiction of your device, your phone, and substance addiction that was two decades ago?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Unequivocally, worse, worse, because it's widespread. And totally acceptable.

• 53:10Nick Bare?

  Do you feel that the tools that you were provided in substance rehab apply to technology addictions?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  There are twelve step programs for technology addictions.

• 53:22Nick Bare?

  That's wild.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  It's the demise of humankind. I, I, I just, I just, I believe it. Like, I would, I would, I, right here, right now, if somebody was sitting here, some decision maker, and said, "Chernow",

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Give me your two pinky toes right now. Cut them right off. I will eradicate cellphone use. Everything will go back to communication in person, conference call, writing a letter. I would do it. I swear to you right now, I would do it. I would cut them off right this second and I would deal with the pain. 100% because I'm trapped. You're trapped. I, when I'm on a plane, I look around and you know, I see people watching movies and you know, and I, and I can't do that. Like in my mind, I'm like, no, no, no. Like you gotta work. You have emails to catch up to. You be a constant.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Like it is a constant for people in business that have been blessed to be able to have some success and leading teams. There's never not a moment in time as an entrepreneur where I am not required to respond.

• 54:44Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Required. Doesn't turn off. Like I'm sitting here right now and thinking about this. I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna, it's my favorite place to get work done on a plane. But why can't I just watch a movie, man? You know, like if I didn't have an email, the biggest deals in history were done prior to email. Rockefeller got real rich without email. You know, like, how can we do that? What can we do? Like, how can we kind of slow it down?

• 55:15Nick Bare?

  I don't know if you can at this point. We're, we're expected to be so accessible and responsive. I know when I get out of a podcast or from a busy day, I open up Slack and email and everything's bold because that means there's unread messages and then it's playing catch up. And I don't know how we go back to being

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Human.

• 55:41Nick Bare?

  Human, unresponsive.

• 55:46Nick Bare?

  Inaccessible.

• 55:49Nick Bare?

  I think it comes down to, and this is really hard, but setting really hard boundaries. Even going back to the early, earlier conversation of,

• 56:00Nick Bare?

  "Hey, I'm going to bed at 9:30." And that means that before 9:30, I have to do X, Y, and Z. It's part of my evening rhythms and routine to be asleep at 9:30, to wake up at, you know, anytime early in the morning to start my morning routine. And that requires setting boundaries with people, with ourselves, clear expectations. When it comes to work and social relationships and technology, it's really hard to set boundaries. I don't know why, because we do it in other parts of our life.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Well, what I did at Creatures of Habit is I, once I saw, I was able to pivot out of the restaurant business and create this new business where like, you know, the busiest time of my day was not between 7 o'clock and 11 p.m., 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., which was the busiest part of my day as a restaurateur.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I said to the team, "Hey, I'm not gonna start emailing expecting you to respond

• 57:04Speaker 01

  earlier than 8:30 in the morning. I will not, I, I might, I might start banging out emails early if I, if I have like a, you know, a deadline or if I have something, but I don't expect you to respond earlier than 8:30 in the morning." Similarly, I close my computer every single night at 5:30. I do it. Committed, I do it. And it was hard for me to do that because I was like, "Dude, are you really a nine to five guy?"

• 57:34Speaker 01

  And then it dawned on me. Nine to five is done for a reason. Nine to five was created to not only have a life of work in a condensed period of time, because eight hours is probably the right amount of time to have your focus in full throttle without, you know, diminishing returns on either end. But it also gives you an opportunity to do what life was really presented to us for, which is to love.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  We are love beings. It's really, really hard to love the people around you when you're stuck in an email. Chase. So 5:30, I shut the computer every night. I get to the, I walk to my truck, get in my car. I really, really try to decompress on the drive home. Right before I pull up into the house, and this is something that I've done, and I'll tell this story because this is like a really, really, very pertinent to this conversation. But right before I get to the house, I create a buffer for myself because the energy that I have, I have a lot of energy and I'm a hard-charging guy, very much like you.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  There's a difference in the energy between being a hard-charging dad and a hard-charging businessperson. My hard-charging businessperson is the opposite of the energy that I want to introduce to my kids as a hard-charging dad. As a hard-charging dad is all love. As a hard-charging businessperson, it's discipline. Right? And so I get to my house at about 5:55, dinner's on the table every single night at 6:00. My wife is incredibly punctual. It's my favorite part of the day, sitting down at the dinner table with my wife and kids. Pull the truck halfway up the driveway, I shut the thing down, I close my eyes, and I do about three minutes of breath work.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  And it'll be either box breathing, or I'll do the double inhale, long exhale, or if I'm really fired up and amped up from a crazy day at work, I'll do both. I'll do four or five rounds of box breathing, and then I'll do four or five rounds of the double inhale, long, slow exhale. And it really calibrates me. It brings me back to baseline. It just does. And so anybody that's listening, like if you're struggling separating business and family, and you walk in and you sit at the dinner table and you're just completely not there, I'm not here to say that it's going to fix that problem totally because there's definitely times where I sit down at the dinner table and my wife won't be talking to me, and I'm just looking at her, like totally lost in space on other things. But it definitely helps. It helps.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  In the beginning of the pandemic, probably 2021, 2022, I was not doing that. And I was just starting creating, you know, I just kicked off Creatures of Habit and it's a new business for me, completely new business. I'm learning on the fly. I'm like literally YouTube in my way into creating a D to C brand.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  And so I'm under a lot of pressure. I've raised some cash and I just like wanna, I wanna succeed. And so I'm just like, I gotta get it in. And I pulled a truck into the, into my driveway, shut it down and I pick up my phone and I'm just like, I gotta get these last few emails out. Right? And, and I'm doing that as I'm kind of like walking into the house. And at that point, my kid, my kids were probably six and four.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  And my son, I get into the house, I don't, I don't acknowledge anybody. And, and I'm kind of like replaying this story, kind of like looking at it from above. Right? Cause this is, I can only imagine what it felt like. And I'm walking in and I throw my bag down and I know that dinner's ready and I'm like just trying to like bang it out. And my young, my older son Finn walks right next to me and he goes, daddy, daddy. And uh, I didn't respond. It's daddy, daddy, I want to tell you something. And I just didn't respond. I'm like on the email and he says, dad. And I look over and I'm like, say, dude, don't you understand that I'm doing something right now?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  And I watched his face crumble.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  And

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  I just couldn't believe that I had the fucking part of my language, audacity, to take the one thing that my son wants in life, the one thing. He doesn't want my car. He doesn't want my bank account. He doesn't want my job. He doesn't want the fancy house or the, or, or the, or the title. Only thing my six-year-old son wants in life from me is attention. That is it. That is all he wants. He wants me to hug him. He wants me to teach him. He wants me to lead him. He wants my attention. Period. Done. Nothing else. And I took it from him.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  And it makes me emotional to say that because uh,

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  It's just, it's insane that that, that, that, that, that I thought that that was okay. And so from that day, after I was able to, to reflect on that a little bit, because it sounds a little dramatic, right? Like, oh, my God, I told him to, you know, leave me alone, I'm finishing up this thing. But it was such a burst of failure for me as a dad, because my relationship with my father was absolutely terrible. And there was no attention, it was really sad. And it changed the way I see my leadership as a dad. All my children want is my attention, period.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  That is all they want. And it's crazy to think that way, but it's just a fact. They love getting a Lego set. They love, you know, going skiing and, you know, going to Mexico. But I guarantee you, if you were able to get in the brain of the child looking up at his father, all that stuff can go to the wayside as long as his dad is paying attention to him, you know? And so, you know, that, that story is, is, I think, super relevant because I think we do that a lot in our lives. And yes, it's like, it was so powerful for me with my kids, because there's nothing I love more in life than being a father.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I just, if you were to look at my childhood, you would say, if you had to bet, if there was a betting man, he'd say, oh, he's going to be a terrible dad, based on the blueprint that he was given. And somehow, some way, I've been able to, well, I know how. I'm sober and I, and I have faith. And I met the woman of my dreams that supports me.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  But if you looked at my childhood and you had to make a prediction of what my my fathership skill set would be, you would never say that this guy cares about, you know, the attention for his kids.

• 1:04:41Nick Bare?

  If we're not intentional with the way we show up, especially, I really found that transition from leaving the office and work to coming home. If you don't intentionally

• 1:04:57Nick Bare?

  create that that time and space to

• 1:05:03Nick Bare?

  kind of download, and as you walk into the home, walk in with a new temperature,

• 1:05:10Nick Bare?

  you will carry all your problems from work and the day into the house. And one of the best things my wife has ever said to me was, as the leader of the household, you are like a thermometer. You control the temperature, whether hot or cold. And if you come in from work into the house hot, if before you got there, everything was comfortable, that thermometer is going to go hot right away or cold right away. So whatever you bring into the house, just know like the rest of the day, the rest of the night, that is the temperature of the household.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:05:46Nick Bare?

  And it's tough. It's tough going from a hard day, an exhausting day, a stressful day. Now, the same thing, I'll drive home. I'll try to

• 1:05:58Nick Bare?

  disconnect, chill, get in the driveway, park, and before I go in, ask myself, how am I going to show up as a father? How am I going to show up as a husband? And I try to bring all this new energy in. Because if you're not intentional with the way you show up, you will bring all that crap from the day into your family.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:06:22Nick Bare?

  And I think it's super relevant to hear from a lot of my audience's younger, new dads.

• 1:06:30Nick Bare?

  And it's tough, whether you're a business owner or not, trying to manage and build a career and take care of your family and lead your family and be professionally driven, but also personally content.

• 1:06:46Nick Bare?

  Doing both at the same time while raising a family and being a dad and being a husband and being a leader. It's not an easy time. It ain't just gonna happen on its own passively.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  So I, on my drive over, I was listening to your podcast about discipline, commitment and consistency. And

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  you know, I think that there's this, when people hear the word discipline, most people kind of cringe a little bit, right? Because we think discipline is militant, discipline is hard, discipline is

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  punishment, right? And what I've learned is that discipline is

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  freedom, right? I think Jaco Willink says this. I actually have it tattooed on my, my hand because of how powerful when I read that book, Discipline Equals Freedom. I was like, okay. But when he says it in his book.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Discipline, in my opinion, is the greatest gift human beings can have. And the beauty of discipline is that it's free. And it's, and it's available for all of us. It just is. And running a business, being a great dad and a great husband, taking care of yourself and staying fit and eating well and like, that requires discipline.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  It's free.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  It's just free. Like, a lot of the time, we have a, we, we can't get out of our own way, you know, in my opinion. And I've helped so many guys over the years come out of the darkness and start to see the light when it comes to

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  recovery and sobriety. And sometimes I just want to shake them and be like, dude, all you gotta do is do it. Like, stop asking questions, stop trying to find an easier way. All you gotta do is do it. That's it. Like, how do you start? You gotta do it. You gotta, you gotta do it. Like, nothing is coming on a platter. No one is gonna take you, walk you across the line. And, and, and, and, and I know it's, it's so much harder than you just gotta do it. But at the end of the day, that is a fact. It's simple. It's simple. And what I have, like, I've kind of created this philosophy called the three Cs, which I think

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  kind of helped paint the picture.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Because,

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  you know, just because it's simple, or just because it's simple does not at all mean it's gonna be easy.

• 1:09:40Nick Bare?

  Exactly. They're very, people assume they are synonyms, simple and easy, but they can be very contrasting.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Totally. So I, I, I think that the number one most

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  powerful skill to master

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  is commitment. I think everything and anything you want to do that you'll want to tell stories about as you, you want to tell your grandkids about requires commitment. It's the number one. The cool thing about commitment is that it's really, really hard.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Especially if it's a big change. Commitment is like, one of the hardest things. Long-term commitment is very, very tough. But the cool thing about commitment is that commitment breeds faster than any other thing you can do. Commitment breeds confidence.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  It just, it blossoms confidence. Because, once you understand this concept that, oh, wait a second, I can commit to this. Like, I can do this? I can stop drinking for five days? Oh, I can, I can, I can go to six days. I can go six days. I can go seven days. Wait, he did tell me to, like, go outside for a walk, you know, after the seventh day. I'm gonna go outside for a walk. Walking makes me feel good. I'm gonna commit to the walk, and I'm not gonna commit to the not drinking. And then, before you know it, you start to begin to understand how this commitment breeds confidence component. So, you got commitment breeds confidence.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  And then, once you, and I'm not talking about it in an egotistical or a conceited, cocky way, confidence. I'm talking about just like, starting to feel good in your own skin. Starting to feel like you are, you are, whether you win or lose, you have the ability to execute.

• 1:11:42Nick Bare?

  Stand firm in what you believe and what you accomplish and what you know you are capable of. Yeah, it's not, it's confidence in the most humble way possible.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Totally. So, this commitment breeding confidence piece is where, you know, you can live for a long time, right? Like, years. And then, ultimately, with enough confidence and enough trying and failing and trying and succeeding, you begin to develop courage. And there's a lot of courage that's required for commitment, but there's a difference between courage that you're confident about and courage that you're like, alright, I'm gonna die if I don't do this, right? Confident courage is what people write books about.

• 1:12:31Nick Bare?

  Hmm, that's really good. That's boldness.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  It's knowing, it's knowing that you have done enough of the thing to be able to step through the next door. You've been here enough. You've done, you've been consistent enough. You've gotten feedback enough.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  That you're willing to, wanting to, and have been encouraged to by just organic feedback from others and from your outcomes, that you can then go open a business, that you can then go run a triathlon or do a triathlon, that you can then go run 100 miles. You don't know if you're going to finish that 100-mile race, but you've run 10 miles enough to say, you know what? I'm going to go for this. Going from never running to 100 miles rarely ever happens. Maybe David Goggins might be the first guy to ever do that, right?

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  But that succession, commit, breeds confidence, and then ultimately, they write books about courageous people all the time.

• 1:13:52Nick Bare?

  I really love that courageous confidence. And like, as you were saying that, I had these images come into my mind. So I'm just going to try to like, describe what's going on in my mind right now. Do that. There's like three words or three descriptions. One, confidence. Two, courage. And three, selflessness. And I think there's three things. I think that's what makes a man a man and what separates a boy from a man. Being a selfless servant and leader,

• 1:14:35Nick Bare?

  being confident in being courageous. Because you can be confident without being courageous, but that lacks boldness. You don't know what you stand for, what you believe in. You are wavering in.

• 1:14:55Nick Bare?

  Conforming to the world. If I think of like the men I respect and look up to the most in the world. They're selfless servants and leaders. They are very confident, but they're courageous, they're bold. They are unapologetic with what they're doing, what they speak into, what they believe in. And I think if not just men, but more people. Put those three characteristic traits on a board and look at this every day. How do I become more selfless? How do I breed more confidence?

• 1:15:39Nick Bare?

  How do I be more courageous? We would have more success and we would have greater contributing members of society in this world that aren't trying to conform to what is worldly or normal or accepted, but what is renewed, reborn, reimagined, transforming this world into something great? That spoke to me a lot.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:16:10Nick Bare?

  Courage is powerful.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  I mean, if you are. When I think of courage, really funny enough, the vision that I think of is The Gladiator, the movie, you know? It's one of my favorite movies of all time. Love that movie so much. And it takes a certain kind of person that is willing to go out and face whatever is on the other side of the door. This notion or the buzz of soft men, men being softer.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  It's inevitable. We're given way too many creature comforts, right? We're just, there's too many ways to not be less courageous, right? Like, you don't have to get up. You know, when you think about consistency, only until like the last maybe 100 years or so, right? Maybe 150 years. Human beings were doing the exact same thing every single day. It wasn't like weird to like wake up at the same time, get out into the fields and work, have lunch at the same time, eat the same thing,

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  have dinner at the same time with the family, go to bed at the same time because if you didn't get up, you know, your chickens and your cows weren't going to get what they needed to get. You know, this last 150, maybe 200 years of introduction of some waiver in the human evolutionary track has taken us out of this ability to feel and do. Like, there was never like a question about like, oh, how do I? If there's something I really want to do, how do I do it?

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  You do it. You just do it. If that means, how do I get in great shape? Simple, right? Doesn't mean easy. You gotta change the way you're eating and you gotta move your body in ways that you have not been, you have not moved it before. Typically with some sort of resistance training and, you know, getting a certain amount of steps in on a daily basis. Yeah. Like, if you just do that, anybody listening, anybody's curious about how to get in the best shape of their life, change the way you're eating.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  Resistance train five days a week, four days a week. And walk 10,000 steps a day if you can. If you do those three things.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  It's that's all you do, that's it. That's that is, that is the solution. To to that question, that problem. People ask me all the time, how do I, you know, how do I get in better shape? Like, what should I do? It has nothing to do with the plan you're on. It has nothing to do with, you know, somebody, some great, you know, trainer coming into your life and, you know, telling you what to do. It's it's change the way you're eating.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Walk 10,000 steps a day.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  And lift weights three, three to five days a week. That's that is literally, and if you don't even have a plan, if you just got into the gym and literally YouTubeed. Give me five exercises to do today. Go on a, you know, I know we're talking technology, but like go on a chat GPT and say, hey, give me five things to do today in the gym. It's going to help me on this path. It'll give you a bazillion. It's all you gotta do.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  How do you start a business?

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  You start connecting with as many people that are doing what you want to do. It's humanly possible. And if that means that you gotta go on social media and just start cold DMing people, I promise you 20 of them will say no. And one of them will say yes. You just gotta do it. People are like, well, what do you mean? You just gotta do it when it comes to business. I'm like.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Any way that you can get closer to people doing the things you want to do. You gotta go.

• 1:20:41Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  Have the courage to do it. Commit to the 20 DMs a day. You're getting a lot of no's.

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Every no is getting you closer to a yes. Yeah.

• 1:20:55Nick Bare?

  It is simpler now, more than any time ever in the history of the world to succeed. And I said this on a recent podcast and I believe this fully and people are going to hear it and they're going to say, no, no, no, no. It is actually, in order to be successful in anything, anything, it is quite simple. It is hard, it is challenging, it's not easy, but it is quite simple. You referenced ChatGPT a little bit ago. You can literally go on ChatGPT and you can prompt it with a few questions. You can have a meal plan, you can have your macros, you can have your workout plan, you can have a blueprint for building a business, you can have a full business plan, you can have a marketing plan.

• 1:21:40Nick Bare?

  I mean, you can have your layout for a book that you want to write. It is simpler now, more than ever before, to succeed. There are no excuses anymore with AI. Blessings and curses. When we both started our first businesses, we didn't have the blessings of ChatGPT and AI, it was just figuring it out. So I do strongly believe that there is no excuse now to not be successful in whatever it is you want to be successful in. The reason you're not successful, the reality is you're not willing to do the work. I do want to talk about your entrepreneurial journey.

• 1:22:24Nick Bare?

  Cause I do want to contrast between the brick and mortar restaurants and what you're now running as a D to C CPG brand. Going back to, you know, when you first started your first restaurant, I want to know how you went from early to late teens addiction sobriety, and then having the confidence and the courage to start that first restaurant.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Well, I guess I'll preface by saying, I think I, I really do believe that some people are born with an inherent.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  Need to discover curiosity gene. I think that really at the core is what an entrepreneur has.

• 1:23:21Nick Bare?

  I agree with that.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:23:23Nick Bare?

  It's an itch.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  It's an itch, right? Like, one of my favorite things to do with my sons in the summertime and the spring and in the fall too, is to like walk out into the woods and just lift up rocks and just see what's under there, you know, snakes and salamanders and frogs and like, I'm just ferociously curious. I can't tell you why, but I just have and I always have been very curious dude. Like, I just wanna know about you. I'm like, when it comes to people, I could, you, I could, you could put me anywhere. My wife absolutely hates this, but I am just making friends everywhere I go because I'm curious. I wanna know people. I wanna, I wanna, you know, like, I'm just very curious.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  And so from an early age, you know, I, I, my, we grew up in a tiny little apartment. My mom, my father, my sister and I, it was really, really tight quarters. My father was, you know, he was physically sick and he was verbally and physically abusive and he was also mentally ill. So I, you know, it was a tough situation. What that did for me though, was it, it, it made me wanna look elsewhere for the things that I was trying to get at home. So I was constantly sharpening my EI skills, right? Like, I knew that if I wanted to go to my friend's house and sleep over, because I'd much rather sleep there than sleep at home, I, I needed my friend's parents to like me.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  And I remember so clearly in first grade, sitting at Ross Della Field's house in his apartment and they had dinner around the table. Um, and I was invited over to have dinner and I had never had dinner around the table before, but my family never once did that.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  And I was like, wow, this is cool. Like they're all having dinner together, talking about their day. It's like, I, I want more of this. And I said, man, I gotta figure out how to get Danny, which is his dad, and I forgot his mom's name. I gotta figure out how to get Danny to like me. So I invite me to sleep over so I can do this more. And it just like that sort of started to hone this skill for me of like, understanding people, understanding where I would be successful when it comes to developing relationships. And I know it sounds crazy as like a first group, but this is like really the, the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey of, of connecting with humans at scale. I mean, I think that's kind of like what my superpower passion is.

• 1:25:48Nick Bare?

  I think that most entrepreneurs,

• 1:25:51Nick Bare?

  founders, you can identify those traits and characteristics in superpowers early on. Maybe not in real time, but similar to you, like me growing up, I was displaying these characteristics and abilities that would prove to be strong skillsets for my entrepreneurial journey. So I think you can, you can see these things developing at a young age.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean,

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  yes, I, I, I do. I had a podcast before the creatures of habit podcast called born or made. And it's because I am incredibly curious

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  to know if Nick Baer was born with the ability to do what you've done, or if you were made over time through, you know, intentional. I mean, I, I do think it's probably a combination of both, especially it's combination of both is when you get to the level that you're at. But I do think it's very, very, I do believe that there is an inherent component to it.

• 1:26:59Nick Bare?

  I agree.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  You know, and so when I was a little kid, you know, if I had toys that I wasn't using anymore, they didn't like collect dust in the corner of my room. I would ask my older sister to come downstairs with me. And I lived in Manhattan, so I was like, I lived on a busy street in Manhattan. I would set up a blanket at like five, six years old, sheet, a blanket. I'd lay it out on the corner of eighty seven street and second avenue. And I put all my toys out on it and I'd sell them for a buck. And I got like, once I got that, like the taste of blood, you know, of like making a transaction at a young age. I was just all in. I wanted to, I was like collecting cards, collecting comics, going to the comic book store, buying a five dollar grab bag of comics, taking a comic out that I wanted to read. And then standing in front of the store, this young kid, I'd be selling comics for a buck, you know, like,

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  I just always had this make, do, create, grow mindset.

• 1:27:49Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  Uh, anyway.

• 1:27:51Nick Bare?

  I can relate to that.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I just felt like this, I was like, it was a good feeling when I was able to like, have a win like that, you know, at a young age. And so I also gravitated towards sports. So I was an athlete as a kid and I loved winning that way. You know, like, I really was like, I became very passionate about hockey. I played a lot of hockey, whether it was street hockey, I ended up getting into ice hockey. But around twelve, thirteen years old, it just got really ugly at my parents' house where I grew up, you know, my, in our apartment and um, it was just bad, it was violent. My father and I became very violent with each other and uh, and he was home, sick, on permanent disability,

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  essentially a hoarder. And I just didn't want to be there anymore. Just didn't want to be there. Child services were involved because the cops had been called a number of times. Eventually, at around thirteen years old, I, I started to drink and smoke pot and I was already smoking cigarettes. And you know, I, I, at that point, I really mastered the skill of, of making my, or convincing my friends' parents to like me. So I was never at home. I barely stayed at home. I was always sleeping out. And so at fifteen, it got, you know, the, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Child services basically showed up at the house. We, my father and I got into a fight. They said to my mother, look, you know, this is unsafe for your child here.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Either he's gonna have to go, your son, or your father.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  One of them has to go. We can't. This is too, you know, it's too dangerous. And it put my mother in a very uncomfortable position because my mom was also abused and scared of my dad. So I made it easy on her and I said to her, hey,

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  tell the child services people that, you know, we're gonna figure this out over the next 24 hours. I'm gonna leave. How old are you at this point? Fifteen. Fifteen. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna leave.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  You know, I'm, I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about a 15 year old kid, but I was basically like, you know, I'm gonna be okay. I've been doing this a long time now. It's not like I'm like for the first time sleeping out of the house. I was like, but I'm much happier to leave than have to have you deal with, you know, the crazy guy. And so I did. I left and stayed in high school, but I moved out and I was, I was really, that point at 15, I was, I was fully, you know, addicted to drugs and, and alcohol. Are your parents still alive? My father passed away a long time ago. He passed away 25 years ago. So not long after I moved out, five years after. Do you still have a relationship with your mom?

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My mom and I have a, have a relationship. I love my mom, you know, she's been through a lot, you know, she's, she hasn't been dealt the easiest hand.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  And she's, she's, you know, she's, she's got a lot of stuff, but I love her to death and I do my absolute very best. I have a tattoo on my arm here that says, bless you, change me. One of the most, my grandmother used to say this to me all the time and she was my father's mother. And I, and I, and she was the most influential person in my life, my grandmother. From a little, little kid, she was just the most wonderful grandmother ever. And she felt so sad that my dad was the way he was. She didn't, she obviously didn't know what to do, but she was a very spiritual person. And I used to call her and be like, grandma, like, I just, this is so bad. And she used to say, honey, I know.

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  But there's nothing you're gonna be able to do to change your dad.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Best advice I can give you is every time you know you're gonna walk into a situation with him and it's not gonna be fun, just have a saying in your head and say, bless you, change me. And I was like, should always say that, bless you, change me. And I think that that is like,

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  if you can live your life like that, where like, you're not gonna allow someone's way of living, someone's thought processes, uh, someone's actions, someone's thoughts to impact you, and you're also not going to try to, you know, project the way you live onto, onto others and, and get disappointed because chances of them taking the bait on that are slim. If you can say, you know what? Bless you.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  If I wanna feel good in this situation, the one that's gotta change is me. And so I, I practiced that with my mom, you know, I'm not gonna change her. She's set in her way, she is who she is, and I love her. If I wanna be able to manage her, like, where I don't get frustrated when we talk, the only person I gotta change is me. And so that's been powerful for me. So, I, I moved out, I was crazy, I was running the streets of New York, using drugs, selling drugs, getting into trouble, being a, I was just a, I wouldn't wish me on any parent. I just wouldn't, at that stage in my life, I mean, I was, I was a real rebel, and I was terrified, I was scared. So I drank a lot, and I did a lot of drugs, and I was not a tough guy, but I pretended to be,

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  you know, getting into fights and doing all this stuff that like, you know, if my son was doing, it'd be, it'd take all the, all the power for me not to just, you know, grab him, throw him in the car and like, drive far, far, far away and hold him in a house with me for like, a year, and just watch him, just not let him do what he's gonna do.

• 1:33:31Nick Bare?

  This is not some like, small town in Texas, this is the, the streets of New York City.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:38Nick Bare?

  So there's real stuff going on there.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, I was, you know, I got pistol whipped, duct taped, tied up, thrown in the bathtub, you know, robbed, you know, bad, it was bad.

• 1:33:47Nick Bare?

  Yeah, I can imagine.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  It was ugly. So I, I lived this really, uh, you know, but by the way, I should just say that like, in the beginning, it did save me. Like, I was suicidal at 12. I was like put into a mental institution because I slit my wrist in front of my father, thinking that he was gonna come and save me and love me and give me a hug and tell me he loved me. And he like kicked my ass. And they put me into a pain wany because they thought I was like, I didn't really wanna kill myself, but I was ultimately cry for help, you know? But the alcohol and drugs came, you know, shortly thereafter and I really do believe like blanketed that period of my life where I was like actually able to feel okay.

• 1:34:28Nick Bare?

  Got you out of it.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Got me out of it. So, so, you know, I, I, all through my teens, I was working in restaurants, working in nightclubs, stay, I graduated high school, I actually did a year of college. And um, from like, my father died when I was 20, it was a wonderful excuse to just continue to just get crazy and get worse with my addiction and dive deeper. And people around me were kinda like, oh, his father just died, you know? In my mind, I was like, this is perfect excuse for me to just go double down on it, you know? And so from 20 to 23, it was just dark, just super dark. I hated myself, truly hated myself. People loved me. They did.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I had, I always, I am who I am, you know, like I care about humans.

• 1:35:25Nick Bare?

  Was it one of those classics?

• 1:35:28Nick Bare?

  The only outside, bright, bubbly, personable, but the inside dying?

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  Dying, dying. And, and then when the, when the drugs shifted from predominantly like alcohol and cocaine to heroin, which was like the last six months of my addiction years.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  I was genuinely dying. I didn't think so. If I really think back on it, like, I was still working, I, I, you know, I, I mean, I always had a job, legit job, always had a job in a restaurant. But I was dying. Late July, summer 2004, New York City. I was with this woman in this apartment. We were, you know, using heroin for probably three days straight. Um, sleeping, getting up, using, you know. And I had just used some heroin. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I was naked. I looked, there was a mirror at the head, at the head of the bed. And I was sitting on the edge of the bed and I remember like it was yesterday and I looked to my right

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  and I saw my reflection in the mirror and from my forehead to my toes, I was white like this, kind of like this. Like I had been pale and looked gray and green, you know. In my face, my hands, I've seen my hands, like I remember my hands would get super pale. I had never seen my chest, my stomach, my legs, everything, just white like a ghost. And it scared the daylights out of me. And so I jumped up. Blacked out. Face plant, dead, I OD'd. And I remember her shaking me, you know, grabbing me and I kind of remember coming to, called the ambulance, she was terrified, didn't want to call the ambulance. She somehow got me into the bathtub. She like dragged me into the bathtub and threw me on my back in the bathtub.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  And then just turned the cold water on. She was terrified to call the ambulance. She didn't call the ambulance. I could have very well just died in that apartment. But the cold water was on my chest and I remember like sort of coming in and out of consciousness. And then finally I came out and, um, and I sat in the, I got, I got back into that bed and I lied in that bed for a couple of hours, shaking, shivering, terrified, just terrified, thinking that I had just, I had just. She was like, you stop breathing. I started to feel a little bit of life come back into me and I remember walking, I left that, I left the apartment at like four or five in the afternoon, walking west on 13th Street towards Avenue B. And I had said to myself, dude.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  This is the, this is the bottom of the rope. Like you cannot do this anymore. You must stop. You just died. It does not get worse. It doesn't get worse. You will die if you continue doing this. You just did. And I got to my apartment and I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop. Four hours later, I was right, right back at it.

• 1:38:41Nick Bare?

  Using it again?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Couldn't stop. And so I have such empathy for people that are addicted to drugs and have an addictive personality and, and you know, their family, their friends, the public are, are just like, how could you not see this is a, like, can't you just? It's not easy. It's really hard when you, when you walk around with a force field, a feeling force field. When you've, when you've, when you've taken enough action to, to dig a deep enough hole where you're just never not covered in dirt. And you have this ability to just numb that out. You're dirty as hell. You haven't showered in years.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  You're just covered in dirt in this dark, dark hole. But there's this way to like, forget about all that for just a period of time. You just want to continue forgetting. Cause you don't know that there's a way to like, find a branch or find a vine that you can just start pulling yourself out. Anyway, I went on a two week death march. Had basically said to myself, this is how you're gonna die. You don't have the balls to kill yourself. Just, just get it done with the drugs. Just do as much as you can. Just get it, get it done. And somehow, some way I didn't. I didn't die.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Uh, the morning of August 2nd, 2004, I, uh, came to in my room. After being up for about three or four days. Uh, I'd slept 16 hours. I blacked out. Um, and I remember right before that, there was a real conversation I, I was having with myself about just jumping out the window. But I just didn't have the courage. I didn't have the courage to do it. I didn't really care about anybody else. Like, I didn't really, I didn't care about myself. I just didn't have the balls to end it that way. I'm so grateful that I didn't have the courage to do that.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  But came to, and I remember the sun coming through the window.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  And I had slept through work for the umpteenth time. Called my boss, said Frank, I'm sorry, man. He was like my come downstairs. I lived upstairs from the bar that I worked in. And he said, Mikey, I love you. And he was, he really did, you know? He was like my surrogate dad at the time, you know? And I was like, he hired me two and a half years before. So, and everybody, like I said, like people loved Mikey, the bartender, you know? People loved being around me. I mean, I, I was like, I was a guy I am right here. But I was just

• 1:41:23Nick Bare?

  Fun.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  Fun, but just scared of life. And I just used all these substances.

• 1:41:28Nick Bare?

  I knew people like this in college. Who were the life of the party. Everyone wanted them around when it was time to party. But then when it wasn't time to party, no one called these people.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:41:43Nick Bare?

  And these people were in a dark, dark place.

• 1:41:49Nick Bare?

  And I can see how you, you find yourself in those situations where you need to keep being the life of the party. Because that's when people want you and need you and invite you back. So it's your identity.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  And it was also the only people that I associated with, right? Cause a lot of people around me were doing the things I was doing, right? Cause they just were like, I wasn't, I wasn't hanging out with, you know, the guys going to the gym.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  So anyway, I remember the sun coming through Frank calling me up. I went down to the restaurant. He told me he loved me, but he told me he had to fire me. He's like, you're dying, dude. Everybody knows it. You're, you know, like you need help. You need to get sober. And so many people have said that to me over the years. I mean, I was in outpatient rehab when I was 16, you know? For whatever reason, when Frank said that to me that day, I just heard that word sober like a, like an echo chamber. It was like

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  And I begged him for my job because it was the only thing kinda like tethering me to like any semblance of life, right? Everything outside of that place was just debauchery and ugly.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  And he said, "Look, you know, if you get sober, I won't let you work behind the bar. I will not let you work in this restaurant at night. But if you get sober, you can come here and clean the restaurant with the porters at 8 a.m. And you call me when you get here. If you're a minute late, you're fired. If I find out you have a sip of alcohol, you're done. Drugs of any kind, I'll know, I'll find out, you're done."

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  And I went back upstairs. Sun was still coming through the window and it was God right there. God just showed up, just right then and there, right through the window in my bedroom. I felt, I just don't know what happened, but I got, the grace of God showed up in my life and told me to make a phone call. And I called my friend Karen, told her I was ready to get help. She called her friend Marcus, her boyfriend Marcus. Marcus showed up and saved my life. And I haven't had a single sip of alcohol or a drug since that day.

• 1:43:52Nick Bare?

  That's amazing.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Marcus introduced me to wellness. He was this weird wellness guru, covered in tattoos, hardcore Muay Thai kickboxer, showed up, listened to my story, asked me to tell him my story and wrote this plan for me that day. And he said, "You know, this is gonna be a very structured plan. You don't seem like the kinda guy that can manage structure right now." And he's like, "You don't have to do this. But if you do, sex, success is inevitable. Success, you have no idea. You're 23, like you haven't even begun. You start doing these things now, you'll live a life way beyond anything you can imagine."

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  And I wanted to believe him. And I think the thing that Marcus did for me was, he was a really cool guy that I want, like out of, like right away, his energy, the way he looked, the way he listened to me. I wanted to impress him. I wanted to be like him. I wanted him to pat me on the back. And I think that is really also a very key element for people in sobriety, for people that are, that want to get sober, trying to find, finding someone who they really want.

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  As a mentor.

• 1:45:12Nick Bare?

  An aspirational.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  An aspirational human that they can sit with. And then I decided that I wanted to go back to school about a year after I got sober. So I was gonna, I was gonna go to culinary school and really um open up a restaurant. And so I went back to culinary school while I was doing the culinary arts program. Cornell had partnered with the French Culinary Institute to create a restaurant management program, which is like Dave Cornell's got the best hospitality program in the country, arguably the world. And so they came together with FCI. They offered one scholarship. The scholarship was to write a fully baked business plan and submit it. Uh, and you know, if you, if they thought it was good enough, you know, whoever, they were gonna give a full scholarship to one person. And I wrote the plan.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  I don't know how many other people wrote the plan, but I got the scholarship. And so I, I, I spent a little two and a half years there. When I graduated, I started writing a plan. And uh, like a real business plan. And I spent a year working on the plan and the, you know, I convinced my old friend Daniel to, to come back to New York and do this with me. And at this point, I'm like 27 and

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  I've been working at Frank for, since I was 20. So all the regulars at this restaurant have kind of seen me go from this like young, fun, party animal kid to getting sober, to meeting a woman. Uh, I got married in 2007. That like basically that year that I graduated, I got married and um, and I, and I, and then going back to school. Anyway, these guys saw the arc.

• 1:46:55Nick Bare?

  That's cool to see. Yeah. The evolution.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  I put a plan in front of all these regulars, business plan. And 14 of them wrote me $25,000 checks. And that's how I started the meatball shop. All the guys that watched me sort of grow at Frank, the restaurant, uh, invested in the business. And so I opened up the meatball shop and. It was just crazy. It was gangbusters, you know, we projected to do like a million bucks our first year. We did four million and.

• 1:47:23Nick Bare?

  Is that with one, one shop?

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  One store, yeah. A thousand square feet, all in, thirty eight seats. It was nuts.

• 1:47:30Nick Bare?

  I was checking out the, the Instagram of the meatball shop and it made me instantly crave.

• 1:47:36Speaker 01

  Meatballs.

• 1:47:38Nick Bare?

  Is it still, is the menu, is the operations, is the vision still intact today from what it first started as?

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  It's, it's very different.

• 1:47:50Nick Bare?

  Cause you're no longer operational in the meatball shop.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  No, I sold the majority of my equity at Meatball Shop in two thousand and fourteen and then started Seymour's, which is my second restaurant concept. I, I kept equity in the business because I love the business. But I, Daniel, my partner and I just couldn't see eye to eye. We had a couple of things happen that was, you know, pretty tough for us to navigate together. Partnerships are really hard, you know?

• 1:48:16Nick Bare?

  That's what I've heard.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're hard and we had an opportunity to really do a deal that would have changed our lives and still owned a significant piece of the business. And I couldn't convince him that that was the right decision. And when I knew that, the two of us had started, we each invested twenty thousand bucks of money that we'd saved. And we had an opportunity to sell, you know, sixty percent of the business at a forty five million dollar valuation. That would have changed our lives drastically.

• 1:48:43Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  And he thought it was worth more. I told him, I, I was like, dude, you're nuts. Like you're crazy. This valuation is way inflated. And he was like, we have a store in construction. We have a store in negotiation. Seven months down the road, we'll open up that store. Six, you know, ten months down the road, we'll have another store. And I'm like, Dan, the business is worth like twenty five million. These guys want the business. They want it, they want to spread these across the country, man. They, they, they want us to say yes to the deal. And it's the same guys that did Shake Shack. David Swinghammer and Ken Fox from, uh, Stripes Group. Anyway, couldn't convince them.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  I knew that that was my cue to like, go create again, cause I, that just didn't make sense to me. I was like, dude.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  In three and a half years, you will have turned 20,000 into 10 million personally.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 1:49:41Nick Bare?

  Great return.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Dude, and still owning 15, 20% of the business.

• 1:49:47Nick Bare?

  Yeah, it's uh, I think it's the downfall of many entrepreneurs and founders is,

• 1:49:55Nick Bare?

  you know, in this period of time, your business may be worth X. In any period of time, you can say, yeah, about one year from now, three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, it'll be worth X plus. That is always the case, potentially. What's your goal with creatures of habit? Do you want to build for it to be a, a legacy family company? Or is it something that you're building to sell?

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  I'm building it to sell it. I know now at this point in my career that I really, really love community, culture, brand, creativity, connecting. And um, I think those are at their peak within the first 10 years of building a business.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  And, and I could be wrong, but from my experience, specifically in the world of restaurants, what I saw was, I went from one restaurant to six restaurants and sold a bunch of equity. I went from six restaurants to 13 restaurants. And what I learned was my role as the founder, CEO of the company was real estate deals, managing construction crews and leading management meetings. That was the brunt of my job, leadership meetings.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Managing construction crews and doing real estate deals, dealing with landlords essentially. And I was like, that's not what I signed up for.

• 1:51:35Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  Like, I signed up because I love being with the people. I love being with the people. You know, I'm, I was like New York City's youngest restaurant guy, like owner, right? Like, if you saw me in the restaurant and you didn't know who I was, chances are you thought I was a server or a busboy. And I was down with that because I was always serving and bussing tables, you know? Because I loved it. I loved it. I spent many years as a technician before I was a, you know, there's a, there's an unbelievable book that I always love to suggest aspiring entrepreneurs to read. It's, it's called The E-Myth Revisited by a guy named Michael Gerber.

• 1:52:10Nick Bare?

  Never heard of that one.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Great book. Basically, he describes this idea that like, just because you're a technician does not mean you are going to be a great owner. Just because you're the greatest plumber at the plumbing company, doesn't mean that you're going to be the great plumbing company owner.

• 1:52:30Nick Bare?

  That's true.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  If you are going, and it, and it also clearly defines what partnership has to be in order for it to be successful. If you're going to go into partnership with someone, you need to have a very, very clear delineation of labor. You need to know very clearly what you are going to do, very clearly what your partner is going to do. And there needs to be a boundary between the two of you that is deeply respected. Deeply, deeply, deeply respected. And if that boundary starts to get crossed, and if someone thinks they're, they're, they're doing more than the other person, you start valuing your roles to their role, it's over. It's just over.

• 1:53:07Nick Bare?

  Resentment is birthed and destruction and erosion from there is just chaotic. But I can imagine the brick and mortar space is just.

• 1:53:19Nick Bare?

  It's different from Ecom, CPG, but yeah, tougher, more overhead.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Well, it's just, I think the human capital component of it makes it really, really hard. Because at any, at any given time, ten to fifteen percent of the people are not having a good day.

• 1:53:33Nick Bare?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  You know, it's just, it's just life, right? Like, you're lucky if ten percent of your life is awesome. I mean, if, if you only have ten percent of your life, that sucks, right? Like, most of the time, I would say eighty-five percent of my days are great. I'm happy. Fifteen percent, right? Just like, can't shake a shitty feeling, you know? And so, at any given time, you gotta know that fifteen percent or something like that of your team is, is, is having that day. And every time that, a guest or a customer comes into contact with someone like that, they tell their friends that they had a shitty experience, you know? And so, you know, and, and in the restaurant business, dissimilar to Ecom, where, where, I don't know.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  I mean, we have how many different opportunities to market? How many different marketing strategies? How many, you know, you've got so many ways to get in front of people. In the restaurant business, they're gonna walk by. You know what I mean? They have to walk by your place. Or you've gotta have some kind of local PR thing that hits.

• 1:54:37Nick Bare?

  And it's a live, close by to use the product or service.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  So, the only way to, to efficiently market in the restaurant business is through offering the greatest experience. It is, you know, when people used to ask me in the world, when I was, when I was like, when I was kind of like, had evolved a little bit in my role as a restaurateur, people would say, what do you do? And I know it sounds corny, but it's just way more fulfilling to me to say, I'm a memory maker than I own restaurants. Because what do I really do? I make memories for people all day long. My number one priority, number one goal, as a business person, is to create a memory that you tell your friends about. That's all I'm trying to do.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  And the memory comes from great service, good food, cool environment, good music, good lighting. You know, it all is kind of like a medley.

• 1:55:33Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  You know, and, um...

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  You know, like, I think where the things get hairy, and this was for me, you know, when my role became far less about the hands-on, boots-on-the-ground stuff. Leading the business with a P and L just never sat well with me, you know? And when the money guys get involved, because they did in my businesses, all they care about is what that piece of paper says. And I used to say, like, we used to start our board meetings with the numbers. And I'd look around and I'd say, hey, guys, I'm just gonna say it again. This never happened.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  A guest walked into our restaurant, looked around, smelled all the smells and said, "Gosh, I wonder what the P and L is like in this place." You know? Never not happened one time.

• 1:56:32Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  And you're prioritizing the one thing that the guests never, ever come into contact with or think about. And the only, the only sign of success for us is if they walk out the door 10% happier than they when they walked in. It's only gotta be 10%.

• 1:56:51Nick Bare?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  It's not a big, it's not big. Your number one priority is the paper? That you can really make say anything, right? You can project, you can, you can, you can project it to say anything you want. The truth is in the experience and, you know, and that's what's tough for me.

• 1:57:15Nick Bare?

  Yeah, it's the battle between the subjective feedback versus the objective feedback. And objective feedback and results will tell a story, but the solution isn't often objective in itself. It's a subjective problem-solving approach.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  That said, I am like, I, I really believe that I am, I am more aligned in creatures of habit than I've ever been in business before, because creatures of habit is...

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  It's given me an opportunity to really share what, share some habits and tools that I've used in my life.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  That's only brought me joy and happiness. Foundational wellness. My habits almost killed me. And then they created me. And I like, I just know that habit like habit is everything.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  The same decisions over and over again. People are like, oh, that's so boring. I'm like, no, no, no. Not when you're getting better every time.

• 1:58:32Nick Bare?

  Yeah, there's power in it. There's power in habit, power in consistency, commitment, ritual. And it's been powerful in my life. And I think it's fundamental. It's a principle.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  I mean, if you

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  do something for the first time, you're not going to be great at it.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  But if you continue doing it,

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  you're going to get better at it. It's just the way life is. And that is why ultimately habits work. Because, you know, I think in the beginning it's hard. And then it becomes a chore. And then you continue in the chore phase long enough. It becomes a habit. And then habits, you know, could last forever. Especially if you're intentional about them. Because you'll just, you will see that you will get better and better and better. I go to the gym. Training for me is, you know, life. It's like, it's life. I

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  I wouldn't, I, I, I, I wouldn't know what to do without it. It wasn't always like that.

• 1:59:41Nick Bare?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? Like going to train in some way, shape or form is it is just not even a thought. Like, oh, am I going to do it? It's just, I do it, you know?

• 1:59:55Nick Bare?

  Part of your day, part of your life, non-negotiable.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Nick Bare?

  You know, it's, it's cool to see, witness and now hear this story. And see where you started. And the journey to where you are today. And the highs and lows and everything in between. I think it's an inspiration to a lot of people of You know, you look at someone at where they're at in a point of time.

• 2:00:22Nick Bare?

  And you probably think, oh, I know exactly how this person got here. You have no clue, no clue. And I'm sure now you don't even recognize the person you are and what you've accomplished compared to the person you were at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old.

• 2:00:39Nick Bare?

  Almost dying from overdose. But the journey is so beautiful and so rewarding and it's a reminder to everyone of no matter where you're at today. It can change tomorrow.

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Never too late, man.

• 2:00:53Nick Bare?

  Never too late. It's amazing, brother.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 2:00:57Nick Bare?

  But I appreciate you coming on in and sharing the story and just insight into what it's taken to get to where you are today.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Thank you, man.

• 2:01:03Nick Bare?

  Truly powerful.

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me and dude, you've been such an inspiration, you know, I mean, just in all things, you know, I. When I also, you know, I see what you've done with this brand and you've done, it's just, it's like. And I'm sure you probably have a lot of things to say about this, but just like for a guy that's just coming into this industry.

• 2:01:26Speaker 01

  You know, four years in and just seeing how you've done it. The community that you've built, dude, is just incredible.

• 2:01:33Nick Bare?

  I appreciate that.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 2:01:35Nick Bare?

  Thank you.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  And also hearing you talk about God, right? Like. That's inspiring for me.

• 2:01:42Nick Bare?

  I would encourage you to lean in and be unapologetic, be courageous and bold in that walk. Because in my opinion, in my walk since beginning my life. It has been the best decision I've ever made. And. It's put all the pieces that I've been trying for years to just match together. My life was this puzzle where I just cannot finish. The puzzle, I cannot put it all together. Putting God above all other things. Allow me to sit back and start to move some of those puzzle pieces back where they belong.

• 2:02:24Nick Bare?

  Now things make sense because there's the truth, there's the way, the only way. So I'm. I'm pumped to hear that you're on this journey and.

• 2:02:38Nick Bare?

  Like I said, if I can be a resource

• 2:02:42Nick Bare?

  in any way.

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  I'm gonna knock on your door, man.

• 2:02:44Nick Bare?

  Let me know.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  I appreciate you having me on, dude.

• 2:02:47Nick Bare?

  Thanks, man.