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5: Let’s Get Giving w/ Anthony Fracchia · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is harder than life a podcast about self-love self-awareness business and health We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple practical advice. You can start using today. Let's get living
• 0:15
  Welcome back to the Harder Than Life podcast. I'm Kelly Siegel. Today's guest is special to me personally. We'll get to that in a moment. Let me tell you about Anthony Frackia, the businessman. First, he built Altruist Benefit Consulting to a multi-million dollar business, then sold it. All the while running his Aspire Detroit charity, oh, and just to make things tougher, got married and divorced and is now truly living his best life. I met this beautiful individual in college and he...
• 0:42
  was a rival yet friendly fraternity to mine. We clicked immediately and 30 years later, here we are on the Harder Than Life podcast and he's going to explain to you, the listeners, how he makes life look so darn easy. Ladies and gentlemen, my brother from another mother, Anthony Fracchia. How you doing, sir? I am well, um...
• 1:05
  I'm going to start this off a little different. You haven't seen my book. I have not. My book. I'm going to read an acknowledgement to you, and I want to get your... You have an acknowledgement of me in your book? Of course I do. Wow. Anthony Fraccia, my ride or die who took me in when no one else would. I see you, boy. You're my brother from another mother. I appreciate that, man. You're the second person to get a book. Oh, and it's autographed? It's autographed and inscribed. It's going to be worth some money someday. I hope so. But...
• 1:36
  I'm trying to compose myself because, you know, the listeners don't know that at the time that we really become close, close friends, I was facing a 60 year jail stint and everybody turned their back on me. And.
• 1:51
  Western Michigan University threw me out of school. My fraternity threw me out of fraternity. And there was Anthony Fracchia. Come on, live with me. And California Avenue. I got pictures of it. So I just, my first question to you is where does all your compassion come from?
• 2:10
  Oh, wow. That's a, that's a good question. Um, you know, I, I think, you know, the way I carry myself, I'm a, I think you and I are both very authentic people. And I think the challenge that authentic people have sometimes is when you are truly authentic, um, it, it can rub people the wrong way when you're not acting the way that other people think you should act in, in given situations. Um,
• 2:33
  Um, and so where, where I think with respect to you, um, and where my compassion comes from is I know you're a good person at heart. I, you always have been. Um, and that's because you and I, that's because we've taken the time to develop a relationship. I think when people see somebody from afar, um, and they see decisions that your bad decisions, right? We all make bad decisions. Right.
• 2:57
  First and foremost, we all fail. And I think when people look at that from a distance without going any deeper, they have the tendency to become pessimistic. They have the tendency to become judgmental and they don't go any, any further than that. And they say, this person made this decision. And because of that, I'm going to, you know, distance myself from this human being.
• 3:22
  But what happens if your brother makes a similar decision, your actual brother? What happens if your father or your child makes a similar decision? You have that relationship there to know that, okay, I know this is a good person. I know they have a good heart. They've just made a very bad decision. So I knew that with you back when we were in college. I knew you were a good person. I know you have a good heart. And I'm the kind of person where...
• 3:46
  good people can make bad decisions, right? That doesn't change how I feel about you. And also noticing that when the world was kind of crashing down around your feet, no one was stepping up to extend a hand. And I know I have the ability when I see that happening to put myself in that situation. Yeah.
• 4:11
  And, and I know how I would like to be treated. I know how I would like someone that is a close friend to react to that. And so I think that's where it kind of came from.
• 4:23
  Well, everybody needs to have that trait, and I love you for it, and keep doing it. And when we talk about bad decisions, I've made a lot. And every single time you've been there, so I really, really appreciate it. Absolutely, man. So to get serious for a moment, so tell us about Altruist Benefit Consulting and how you built it to be so successful. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you and I went to Western Michigan. I changed majors I think I graduated with.
• 4:52
  with two majors and three minors, none of which had anything to do with what I chose to do as a profession, which I think is hilarious. Well, that's not too funny because I'm a criminal justice.
• 5:06
  I forgot about that. Yeah. For those of you that don't know, I left with a felony. So it's been since expunged and it's God's or no, I don't use, I'm not in the criminal justice field anymore. Not into it. Okay. Yeah, it makes sense. So I started my career at Ernst & Young. I was doing management consulting for about five years right out of school. Loved it. You know, traveled the world on an expense account in my mid twenties and just had a blast.
• 5:31
  It was a very, very corporate and very bureaucratic structure. And I did learn from that experience that that was not an environment that I could flourish in. I also come from a family where, you know, I'm an only child. My father was self-employed for most of his life. So I think I've got some of that in me. And, you know, after five years of having fun, I just realized that I felt that I would be better suited working for myself.
• 5:58
  At the time, I grew up in the restaurant business. My father had Italian restaurants. I've been working nonstop since I was 10 years old. I'm 47 years old now. And, you know, I look... Don't tell people how old we are. I look back at that and, you know, I think it was a good experience. And my father would always tell me, like, hey, you know, I'd rather you learn how to make money and save money and be responsible with it at an early age than have you, you know, figure that all out for the first time after college. And so I think that worked out. But...
• 6:28
  My father, you know, got out of the restaurant business right around the time I was leaving consulting and got into the insurance business. And when I was, you know, leaving the consulting business, you know, it was probably the first time in my life I didn't have a plan and it did not work well with me. I was I was really struggling, actually, because I didn't know what I was going to do next.
• 6:48
  And my father was like, hey, you know, you should you should check out this model. It's it's pretty good. And I think you'd like it. So I came home. I was living in Denver, Colorado at the time. I came home, sat with him and learned the business model, obviously recurring revenue model, which is which is the best model you can get in, in my opinion, if you're going to start a business.
• 7:08
  And I mean, that's where it started. And no joke, I went from making six figures down to $0. And I started this business with my father out of my mother's basement 20 years ago. Flash forward, we're top line revenue, well over $5 million. As you know, I sold the business. I bought my father out.
• 7:28
  About six years ago, optimized it a little bit more, took on a business coach, Fadi Bardi, Bardi Business Performance, amazing man, helped me tremendously. And we conditioned this business. After I bought my father out, we conditioned this business for a sale. And there are actions that you should take specifically if your intention is to sell a business. And he taught me that.
• 7:53
  And so, yeah, I've got another story about this, but someone came knocking at my door and wanted to buy us. And it was around the time where, you know, I'd been in the business for 20 years and I thought there'd, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to start the next chapter. So we sold.
• 8:11
  I didn't, all the years I've known you, I didn't even realize that our story was exactly the same. I literally, I was making six figures for working for a direct company and I just quit and went to zero and started off my reoccurring revenue dream, which was at the time Kelly Communications, which is now into national technology. The reoccurring revenue model is fantastic because, you know, when it's winter, you're still getting paid.
• 8:37
  Uh, so if you can start a business that is reoccurring, that's where you want to start though. The big one times are great, but they won't get you through the tough times. So yeah, a hundred percent. And I tell you when the pandemic hit, I, that's the first thing I looked at. I was like, Oh, is everyone going to pay their bill? And everybody did. And when it did, and I was like, Oh, thank goodness. So we got a stay of execution for a month. But, um, so yeah.
• 9:01
  The one thing, another thing about you that is fantastic is that you're very strict on your boundaries. So what are some of your non-negotiables in life and in business, whichever, whichever you want to talk about? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was having this conversation with a friend a little while ago and I didn't even realize it until he kind of talked, you know, we're in this conversation, having this dialogue and he kind of said back to me what he was hearing and it's
• 9:27
  It's a code. It's kind of a life code I've unconsciously developed over time. I think the first thing is honesty and integrity. I think people who try to portray something that they're not is something that I don't have a lot of tolerance for. I can take someone who might be a little bit rough around the edges, but who's authentic.
• 9:56
  Hello. Who is authentic and doesn't try to be something that they're not. That's a big thing for me, right? Because that's the way I am. I don't, you know, I have a statement on my Instagram post that says, speak less than you know and have more than you show. That's really nice. Yeah.
• 10:15
  I call that big hat, no cattle. Yeah. I mean, I just think, um, I think it's, I think people that have a tendency to show a lot, but don't have a lot. Um, another thing that doesn't really, you know, jive with me. Um, but I think what it comes down to at a very pure level, um, I think is honesty, um, and integrity. Um,
• 10:35
  And, you know, if I can, I'd rather someone tell me bad news and be honest, then, then talk around it and make it sound like everything's okay. When in fact it's not, um, because that's the kind of way I am. There's no, I don't have much of a filter. I'm, I'm a very direct, um, a very assertive person. And, and that doesn't, that works well for a lot of people, but it doesn't work well for a lot of people. And that's okay. Um, the one thing that I think you understand more so than most people.
• 11:04
  I don't need everybody to like me. I stay true to myself. And if that's okay with you, great. And if it's not okay with you, that's great. Because I have developed a core group of people in my life that I love to death. And I don't need anybody else. Now, if other people come into my life and they're okay with the way that I handle myself and my business and my experiences, great. And if not, that's okay too. No hard feelings.
• 11:32
  This is a first pivot now. So you said something that's just paramount in personal development and just living a good life. I always say to people now, and it took me years, probably now sitting here talking to you across from you, I realize that's another thing that I admire about you was the ability to not...
• 11:51
  It's none of your business what people think about you. And I've adapted that. And it's really comes with loving yourself. And it starts at a really young age. If you have fabulous parents, which I did not have. So I just want to rerun that back. Cause it's so good. It's not being concerned with what anybody says, even the good or the bad about you and what they think about you. That is loving yourself and having respect for yourself. And that comes with,
• 12:17
  honoring your word to yourself. It's just comes with having the right intentions as well. When you know you're at, when you know you're doing things with the right intentions and those intentions aren't nefarious, those intentions aren't to hurt people or damage people or to try to, you know, screw people over in life, in business when you're, when you're,
• 12:38
  doing things with the right intentions. I think that's a big thing. And to kind of go a little bit further, it's so funny that you brought that up because I just posted, I post quotes and I know we're going to get into Aspire, but I post some quotes because I think that they're, they're kind of, they kind of champion the message and the core of what we do at Aspire. But there was a Thomas Sowell quote, which I loved, which said, you can't do anything. You can't stop people from saying bad things about you. All you can do is make them liars.
• 13:06
  I saw that and man, did it hit home because you know, you were right there with me. The couple of you were in the pandemic hit that I had to deal with some, some of the fariest people that said some and did some bad things and attacked my character that very quickly.
• 13:22
  uh, exposed is to be false. So Thomas Sewell is very intelligent. I need to see more and more and more of this man. He's incredible. I got to get some of his books. He's like the best kept secret. So if anybody doesn't know about him and look it up, uh, he's got some amazing insight on life. Absolutely. But that's powerful, man. That's,
• 13:44
  The truth always comes out. It just takes a little bit of time. And a lot of times people meet resistance with resistance where, oh, you know, somebody says a lie about me. I mean, that's great. Cool. Somebody says something good about me. Thank you very much. I acknowledge it. I don't even give it any energy at all.
• 14:01
  Because the people who know you and care about you aren't going to fall for things like that. So the only people that that will permeate are those that don't know you and are not a part of your circle. So if someone says something crazy about me and puts that out into the ethos, right?
• 14:16
  My group of people are going to look and be like, you're there's the people that matter. You mean exactly? Yes. The people of the people in my circle, the people that I embrace are going to look at that and say, that's, that's a false statement. I don't have to defend that. Now people that are out there that might hear that and don't know much about me. I'll say, Oh my God, he did what, or he's who I don't put a lot of credence into the opinions of people that don't know, that don't know me, don't know my heart, don't know my intentions and don't know my level of integrity. Um,
• 14:44
  That's gonna happen, that's life. It's going to continue to happen for as long as we are here. So the way that we deal with that also says a lot about our character, right? If someone says something bad and you have a hair trigger reaction where you're gonna go after that person, if it's false, why are you so upset about it? It's so backwards, life is so backwards because we're worried about people that don't even matter to us. Why do you care, especially people that aren't doing better at that particular thing than you.
• 15:13
  If we just haters going to hate, it's good to be hated by the right people. All right. Back to the regular scheduled program. What makes you get out of bed in the morning?
• 15:24
  Uh, that, that, that's a, that's a great question. And that's something that's evolved over time. Um, you know, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned, you know, in your, in your intro that I, that I have gone through a divorce, it was a very difficult time. And I, I was raised Catholic by my parents. I, um, I drifted a bit from that faith. Um, you know, when I was in college, um,
• 15:46
  Because of what I saw, again, you know, integrity, right? The way that I saw the Catholic Church and how they handled a lot of the abuses in the Catholic Church and the way that that was handled did not sit well with me.
• 15:58
  One of the minors that I took was philosophy. I actually wanted to be a philosophy major, and my father told me that I would never make any money doing that. And if I wanted to go to school for 30 years and make 70 grand a year, go ahead, do that. But one thing I learned, I fell upon Eastern philosophy in that pursuit and fell upon Buddhism. And so I was a Buddhist for a while, practicing Buddhist. Yeah.
• 16:22
  And then kind of drifted from that because there was a lot of challenges with how I lived my life towards, you know, and how that compared and contrasted to that faith. And then for a couple of years, I was lost. I really didn't embrace a faith. And after my divorce or going through my divorce, one of my good friends who, you know, is, thank God, now a U.S. Congressman, John James,
• 16:44
  Big plug for John. He's one of the most phenomenal men I've ever met. He's a very, very close friend of mine. One of the things I admired about him most is his faith and how he carries his faith. And he never put it on me. He never said, hey, you've got to come to church with me. He waited for me to ask him. And I waited.
• 17:04
  very long. Um, and I was in the gutter when I asked him, I said, I'd like to go to church with you. And his face just lit up. So what gets me out of bed today, um, is my faith. What gets me out of bed today is, is my belief, um, in God's grace and what he has in store for me that day, because it's neither good nor bad. It's every, every day I get up and,
• 17:28
  good things are going to happen and bad things are going to be, are going to happen. And they're all for my benefit and how I handle those. So that's what gets me out of bed today. I always say what life is happening for you, not to you. So when I joined you that day at church, which I'm Jewish, so I go to church with you, uh, that sermon spoke right to me. So it was, it was very, uh, uplifting and I really appreciate it. And I like to take a minute to, to, to give a serious attaboy, uh, to John James. He, he really showed, uh,
• 17:57
  And I told him the last time I spoke to him that I admired his perseverance. You know, he lost two previous times and kept going, kept going. And that man is an assassin savage. He's going to change this country. And big shout out to John. Proud of you. And if he can't do it, nobody can. And why he's going to be so successful, in my opinion, is because of how selfless he is.
• 18:23
  He is, at his core, he is everybody else before self. That's his military training. And at his core, he is a servant. He's a servant of God. He's a servant of his faith. And he is a servant to other people. And I've seen it. I knew it before he started running. And that's why he will be successful at everything is because he puts himself behind everybody else. Sometimes what I tell him to his fault, but that's the way he is. He's a servant.
• 18:53
  Well, if you think about it, that's literally what politics is supposed to be. That's what it should be. They're servicing us, but I don't understand how, and I try to stay away from politics, but you talk about you wanting to be a philosopher. I wanted to be in the political science arena, but I kind of screwed that up with the selling of the drugs. I frown upon that. I don't understand why. There's a bunch of crooks in Congress. Anyways, I digress.
• 19:17
  I'm looking forward to it. I really am. I admire him tremendously and I'm glad to call him a friend. So absolutely. What's the most important decision you, sorry, what's the most important decision you've made in your life? In my life?
• 19:34
  That's a, that's a thinker. Um, I'll, you know what? I think I'll go back. I'll go back to the faith. I think the most important decision as of in, in recent years, in the last probably decade, um, the most important decision I've made is to, to go back to church. Most decision I've made, that's the most important decision I've made is to re-engage in my faith, um, and resuscitate my relationship with God. Yeah.
• 19:59
  That's fantastic because most people, it's fear over faith. They're both believing in something in the future. Why not believe in faith? And faith doesn't necessarily mean religion, just faith that in some sort of source slash energy slash higher power, you know, you can talk more about it from your Buddhist background. It's just talks about love and everything is love. I have a saying in my house, it's up in my bathroom. It says, love everybody and tell the truth. So...
• 20:26
  We're made up of a lot of, you know, I want to take a step back and talk. We kind of brushed over the fact that, you know, you went through a divorce and we I met with you. Not with you. We had dinner several times through that difficult time. And, you know, this is harder than life. And you've lived an amazing life and most way more good than bad.
• 20:48
  Talk about what you learned through that process. It's, it's, it is, for those of the people that have been through it, it is the most, one of the most difficult things. They say it's like death. Give us, give the listeners some advice, you know, some things to look for. Their best advice about that. Yeah. You know, I think it's, I think it's difficult. Anytime you spend years of your life with another human being,
• 21:18
  You're both evolving through that time, right? So you and I aren't going to be the same person we are today 10 years from now. We aren't the same person. Thank God. Yeah, exactly. We're not the same people we are today than we were 10 years ago. I think the challenge in committed relationships in general, whether it's personal or whether it's professional, is...
• 21:39
  Do you have a good sense that you and your partner are going to grow kind of in the same direction, right? Is your belief system compatible? Are your choices, are your goals and what you want to achieve in life, are those compatible? You know, in my personal situation, you know, you think that, right? I waited a long time to get married. I got married when I was...
• 22:07
  34, 34. I think I got married when I was everywhere. So I waited a little bit. And, you know, my partner, my ex-wife is not a bad human being at all. We actually have a great relationship today. We just realized at some point, man, did we try. You know, we threw everything in the kitchen sink. It was not for lack of trying. Right.
• 22:30
  I think we realized at some point that square peg, round hole, you know, it, it, we can keep doing this and we can keep trying. But are we ever going to achieve what we actually deserve in life? And to sit down with another human being that you're, you know, committed to and having that discussion is a...
• 22:50
  It's a challenging thing. It's a difficult thing. It's a monumental discussion. But we made the decision that we decided we weren't the right people for each other. And that rather than spend the rest of our lives fighting for something and maybe not having the outcome or likely not having the outcome that we want or deserve,
• 23:13
  we decided to part ways in an amicable way. And you know this because you were with me through it. We didn't, we did it ourselves. We didn't bring on attorneys. We sat down like adults and discussed through it. And I said, listen, if we can do this ourselves, we'll,
• 23:29
  I will go above and beyond whatever you ask for. And that's how it ended. I have a friendship with this person today, and I'm grateful for the way that we did it. What I will say, what I found very surprising...
• 23:44
  um, throughout this. And even I'm now what, four years removed from my divorce is we have so many people out there that see friends or go through terrible divorces, right? Or you may have a friend that's gone through a terrible divorce. And a lot of times people, most of the time they say, okay, why can't people just do this in a, in a, in a better way? Why can't people do this in an amicable way? And what I found, which I think is very interesting is when I, even when you do it in an amicable way, people look at you strangely, like how to,
• 24:13
  how did you do that? Wait, you're still talk with your ex. Why do you still talk with your ex? I'm like, Oh, we share a dog. And I spent 10 years of my life with this person. I don't, I don't want anything bad to happen to this person, but just because it didn't work doesn't mean that's a bad human being that doesn't still deserve kindness and respect. Yeah. She's, she's great. What I, even in,
• 24:36
  down times you win. Even in a down situation that most people don't win, you win. You're amazing. I just love you. And there's so much to learn from you. And I look forward to what's coming next. And I'm going to switch again and say, you know,
• 24:51
  When I decided to quit drinking, it was like three, four, maybe six days into it. And I was sitting on my steps in my house and several things happened. My COO quit and my company, my friend freaking left and the world was falling in on me yet again.
• 25:10
  And I was sitting on my steps and you called to check in on me. And I was, and literally you said, Hey man, you're not a bad, you said the same advice you just said. You said, you're not, you're not a bad person. You've made some bad decisions and some bad people. And I just burst out in tears. And I remember that at that moment, I felt like giving up. I didn't say this to anybody. I mean, literally my, my, I carry a gun, a gun sitting right there and I just was sitting rock bottom, man, rock bottom.
• 25:40
  And I thought that this isn't what I want. And hearing your phone call take me, took me through that. And I'm grateful. I mean, two of the toughest times in my life, you've been there. So I love you for that. And then it's going to lead into our next question, which don't tell us about a time that you almost gave up, how you felt about that and what you did instead of giving up. Yeah.
• 26:09
  And it's okay if you do. You may... I don't know if you've ever thought about giving up. I mean... I don't...
• 26:16
  I will say that, you know, I will say that I don't necessarily think it was giving up, but I'd say, interestingly enough, one of the most challenging times in my life, believe it or not, was when I left my job after college. And didn't know what I was going to do.
• 26:41
  Um, that, that had never happened in my life. I didn't know that about you. I feel the plan plan to fail. And you do not like being a, you don't like just going with the whim. I do not. Um, that is a, uh, that's something that is hardwired into me. And I didn't know it until, until I was actually in a situation where I did not know what I was going to do, you know, in life. And, and, um,
• 27:07
  A lot of this goes back to, you know, being a child of divorce, right? You know, when you have parents and, and as you know, I, I, I, you know, I tell people that I'm an only child, but you know, I've, I had a sister and you know, that she was, you know, she was murdered when I was younger and, and what that did to my parents, right? That happened. My parents got divorced when I was 10.
• 27:28
  My sister was killed when I was 13. And so when you're in that situation at that age, you're right at that cusp where your brain's not necessarily mature enough or developed enough to really comprehend the brevity of a situation like that. But what I did see is I saw how it affected my parents.
• 27:48
  And I committed to myself as a 13 year old, if you can believe this, you can go one of two ways in a situation like that. I had every excuse in the world to be an absolute degenerate drug addict, good for nothing, useless piece of garbage. Right. I had and anyone would look at me if I did that and say, well, that's because these things happen to him.
• 28:10
  The other path you can go is you can say, I'm going to take this and I'm going to be super kid because I'm looking at what my parents are going through right now. And I'm going to try to make up for it. Now, that's a that's a lot for a 13 year old to take on. But that's that's what I did in that environment. So part of that and getting back to your question and why this was so hard for me was because from that moment forward, I had a plan for everything and how I was going to.
• 28:37
  You were gonna control. How I was gonna make up for what had just happened. You were gonna try to control what's not really controllable. 100%, and that's what a 13 year old would do, right? Right. I know it as we all do. At my age now, I know that's not a possibility, but at 13, in being immature and thinking I can actually do this, that's the persona I took on. So when the time came where I didn't have that, because I'd committed, at that point, gosh, I was what, 27 years old? I committed 14 years of my life to that concept.
• 29:05
  And, you know, to try to make my parents proud above and beyond what their expectation would be to try to take some of this pain away from them. And when that, when I didn't, when that broke and when I didn't have a plan, the impact on me was, was dramatic. I really like it was, it was not, it was a not getting out of bed type situation. I didn't know that. I know. And not a lot of people do. And, and it seems. Yeah.
• 29:29
  on the surface, a very, you know, it doesn't seem like a very traumatic experience, but for me, that's, that had a profound impact on me. Well, that's, that's the childhood trauma that we all run from. So you just basically outlined the heart of the life book that I wrote. It's, I did, I did,
• 29:47
  go down the path of drinking and drugs and all that, and then kicked it and said, let's take this to the next level. But everybody, my grandmother used to say to me, hey, you have every right to be a bum, but you just didn't choose it. And life is a choice. There's so many things that you just said that we can unpack and go all over the board with. But Dr. Joe Dispenza says, you figure out the what and the why, and the how always makes it sound. So I'm sure you've, since we've gotten older,
• 30:17
  a path always, you just take one step forward, one step forward, and a path always appears. Of course. You just have to have that faith that we talked about earlier. Yep, 100%. If you could have dinner with one person alive or dead, who would it be and why? Hunter S. Thompson. No question. Who is that?
• 30:36
  Hunter Thompson. Leave it to you to stump me. Oh, I know this because people ask me this question all the time. I find him to be one of the most interesting human beings on the planet. He's no longer with us. But he is an author. He was the one who pioneered gonzo journalism. He wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He wrote The Rum Diaries. He wrote, you know, a number. And he's, you know, he's...
• 30:56
  He is a, I don't even know how to put it. This guy is probably, he was probably borderline insane, but just in a very creative way, I find him to be one of the most interesting human beings. I've read a lot about him. I mean, he lived in Aspen, Colorado his whole life. He ran for mayor at one point. And I am absolutely enthralled with his style of writing and the way that he sees the world. So that is a human being that I tell you, I would love...
• 31:25
  to spend, and it wouldn't be a dinner, because it would start as dinner, and it would morph into a 12-hour bender of, you know, we would start at, I envision us starting at dinner, and then going to a bar, and then at some point, we're going to be shooting machine guns out in the middle of a field at trees or something, and he's going to be telling me why this is an important aspect of life. I find him to be one of the most interesting human beings on the planet. It's sad that he's no longer
• 31:53
  and read with the, and read this guy. He's just, he's, he's phenomenal. That's awesome. I'll, uh, now I'm going to pick that up. I had dinner with you a couple of months ago and we had a mandate, which I thought was hilarious. Uh, the two of us just stayed at home and had cooked dinner and just caught up, which is, it's just so fricking awesome to me. Uh, you told me about this changing world order. Uh,
• 32:17
  Describe what that is to you and to the people, because I watched the whole thing, it was fast. Did you watch it? Anything you send me, I look at it. If you're winning, I'm gonna emulate that. I'm no dummy. Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. So for those of you who don't know, Ray Dalio is probably one of, if not the most successful fund managers of our time. That's a fund called Bridgewater.
• 32:42
  And he is also a student of history, which most successful people are, right? Most successful people understand the concept. If you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it, right? So he has a video out on YouTube and a book that goes into much more detail, but it's a
• 32:59
  It's a 45-minute video called The Changing World Order. And what he does in this video is he explains the cycles of empires, right? All the way back to, like, the Mongols, right? And then, you know, you have the advent and the ruling of, you know, the French and the Dutch and the British and now, you know, the USA.
• 33:20
  And he explains in these cycles, they all follow the exact same path. And I'm not going to, you know, dictate the entire thing, but the concept is effectively when you have a, when you have a power, you know, a empire that is, you know, what we say empire and decline, right? They've been.
• 33:39
  They've been on top for so long they've gotten used to it. They've become maybe a little lethargic. They've become content. They've become lazy, for lack of a better term. And that's when the decline starts to happen. Then there is a surging power in parallel with that that is rising at the point where the empire in control is declining. So is this America and China? This is America. Well, what he believes, and I absolutely believe it as well, is now we're seeing...
• 34:05
  Anyone can look at what's happening with our political system today and see what's happening with us as a culture. I'm very disappointed in the culture of our country right now and what we seem to place a high level of importance on and what we are ignoring. And so he explains the cycles and explains exactly how they happen. It's really one of the most, as you watched it, it's fascinating. It was fascinating because it was simple. He made it so simple.
• 34:35
  documentary that's so boring. It was, I watched it. It makes perfect sense. And what's even more fascinating is how similar every cycle is. So that again, if we don't know our history, we're doomed to repeat it. Right. And so now we're in this challenge right now where we've got a rising power and what I believe is a declining empire. And, and I really would love to,
• 34:56
  to see us correct course and make some fundamental changes, get back to our constitution and, and the rules and the philosophies that made us the country we are. Will that happen? I don't know, but that is one of the things that interests me, right? It's just seeing the similarities in the course that every ruling power has
• 35:16
  has, has followed and the decline and when it starts and how it starts and when it goes out is almost identical with everyone. Well, it's fascinating because I believe, and it's been a couple months since I've watched it, but it talks about how the dissension starts from within. Yeah. And that's kind of what I, I always say this all the time. It's united. We stand divided. We fall a hundred percent. And, and, and just because you don't agree with, listen, we don't agree on everything. Right.
• 35:43
  But I respect you for it, and I listen to you about it, and it's everybody. We've forgotten what we learned in kindergarten, which is communicate and come to some sort of compromise. And just because the left and the right, we're part of the same airplane, we're part of the same, we have to learn to communicate. And just because you don't think the way I do doesn't mean I want you to perish. It's like shooting the pilot because you don't believe him. Let's crash this plane, and that's what's happening. And that's what he says.
• 36:12
  again we have amazing people like John James and we need more and I think it was Joe Rogan that said this is a joke in one of his stand ups founding fathers wrote this 200, 250 years ago you haven't made any changes to this yet? yeah
• 36:28
  Man, we wrote that with a feather. Yeah. So we definitely need some, especially with the advent of the internet and the way things are, we have to make some changes. Term limits, maybe some age stuff. I even think maybe some changes to the party system. I'd like to see some models of what would happen if we introduced a true third party.
• 36:51
  It's difficult when the people in control of making the decisions are the ones that will be impacted by those decisions. Well, if you pay attention to what's going on in the world, and I don't mean this to go political, we've got to raise awareness of this. And you saw that the vaccine was pushed on us, and you see people dying out of nowhere. I'm not saying there's a...
• 37:16
  causation, but there's definitely a correlation. Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not an advocate of the, of the vaccine or against the vaccine, but we've got to get more truth. We've got to get more transparency from our government who serves us. Yeah. Absolutely. Agreed. Which is great. Here's my next question. If you could create one law, what would it be and why? I forget which country does this. I think it's a Nordic country, but the one law that I love,
• 37:46
  legislatively that if you want to introduce a new bill or a new law, you have to pick three laws to get rid of that around the books. That's interesting because there are so many laws that you would have to dust off from the thirties and the forties that are no longer applicable. Here's the thing. When, when you, when you have just an infinite number of laws on the books, right?
• 38:10
  you know, you'll go, you'll go forever. You won't exercise those, you won't enforce those, but maybe somebody does something that you don't like. And you go back in your Rolodex of things that can trip somebody up and find something from 1912. That's still on the books that you're going to enforce to trip somebody up. I mean, you know, I am, I am not a fan of overregulation. You and I are business owners, we're entrepreneurs. And I think that from a business perspective, um, the, the legislation and the burden of that is,
• 38:40
  It's not necessary. I think we, you know, we live in a society. I'm in the insurance business, right? I live in an environment and I operate in an environment where if one person in my industry does something wrong or bad to somebody, our entire industry is guilty. And now there's seven more laws everybody has to follow because this one dude over here did something that hurt a senior citizen. Right.
• 39:03
  Um, but that's, that would be it. I mean, because what you're doing is you're, you're, you're creating new legislation today that's applicable today and you're eradicating legislation that is no longer applicable or antiquated. And I like that concept because now what we'll do is every time we, right now we just keep piling laws on top of laws on top of laws on top of laws. And it just gets to the point where it's, it's, it's not sustainable. It's so brilliant. You're so brilliant. Your mind, I love the way your mind thinks that. Yeah.
• 39:32
  I know I read this, but I don't know if it's true, because I don't know where the heck I read it, but I believe the United States Constitution is the largest in the world. Yeah. Do you know that to be true or not? I don't know that, but it sounds right. And for that exact reason, it just we keep adding, we keep adding, we keep adding. So it just always amazes me how people could go and run for office and be well off and then come out billionaire.
• 39:57
  I don't understand. How are you serving the country and getting rich off of it? Yeah. And so, I don't know. It's one of those things that make you go, hmm. Yeah. What does your daily winning routine look like?
• 40:11
  Um, so, you know, I'd say as of late, um, I have a, uh, you know, I have a daily, daily scripture I read in the morning, you know, so before I get up, um, I love these little daily things like pop my email. So I get out of bed. It's the first thing I do is I'll.
• 40:27
  Read a, read a verse. It'll, there'll be some dialogue behind it followed by a prayer. So, um, that's, you know, one thing I try to do now, I don't do it every morning, but it's one thing that I try to do because it sets, it sets your intentions for the day. Um,
• 40:43
  No matter where I am, even the fact that I've sold my business, my staff will tell you I am always plugged in no matter where I am. It's just the way that I'm geared. So whether I'm working remotely or in the office, I'm on early. I'm making sure that things are going in the right direction.
• 41:03
  I get done with work, you know, try to get done with work early afternoon. I'm not like you. I really wish I could wake up at whatever you wake up at three in the morning. Um, and, and work out in the morning. I, I unfortunately don't sleep well because I have a hard time turning my brain off at night. My body's tired, but I have a hard time during my breath. So I'm an afternoon. Exorciser. Do you meditate with being from Buddhism? Do you meditate at all? Not, not as much as I should. Um, and really not much at all right now. Yeah.
• 41:32
  But I know that's an issue as well that I'm working on. So, you know, wake up with my verse, hit the company, make sure we're on track, work out. I cook probably 90 plus percent of the food I eat. That comes from being a child of, you know, growing up in a restaurant. My parents are amazing cooks, both of them.
• 41:52
  Um, I'm not an amazing cook, but I make, I eat like a fricking caveman. I'm, I'm paleo. I don't care what it tastes like. I want the nutritional value. Um, and then I'm usually home. Um, you know, maybe watch a little TV, play some guitar, try to stay up on that read. I dude, I'm in bed by nine o'clock.
• 42:11
  Yeah, so am I. I tell you. So I don't sleep very well, but I don't sleep because I'm so excited. My brain shuts off. It just falls off at the end of the night because I'm so busy. But I have no problem falling asleep. I have no problem staying asleep. And then when I wake up, my mind is fired up and ready to attack each day and win each day.
• 42:31
  So I just go to the gym and dispense justice. So I saved the best for last. I'm really most proud of you for this Aspire Detroit charity that you're a part of. So let's bring this thing home with telling me about it and how the listeners and how we can support you in that because I know that's your passion. So tell us about it and the floor is yours. Yeah.
• 42:56
  Aspire was, so I've been involved in the youth mentoring space, primarily young men, high school age for a while. As a volunteer, I'd say probably goes back 10, 12 years as a volunteer. I served on the board of an amazing organization here that's still in effect called Threads for Success, started by a man who, just an incredible human being, Rob Walkler, who unfortunately,
• 43:22
  passed away last year. So shout out to Judy Walkler and your family. Just an incredible man with an incredible heart and soul who I learned a lot from. I was on the board of that charity for some time and we had a lot of discussions on how to evolve that charity. The construct of Aspire was what I brought to the table.
• 43:44
  And, um, they just, we, you know, we decided as a group against it and it never left me. Um, it was one of those things, as I'm sure, you know, when you're, when you're very excited or passionate about something, you have trouble sleeping, right? You're waking up in the middle of the night, writing ideas down because you don't want to forget them. And that's what I found myself doing with this idea. So, uh, I stepped down, you know, gracefully from the, from the charity. I'm still a big part of it.
• 44:09
  And I reached out to a school administrator that I had worked with through Threads for Success, explained what I wanted to do. And he said, hey, if you if you do this, I'll give you a classroom to teach it in. So I went to work. You know, I saw Aspire is basically a curriculum that we've that we've developed from the ground up, focusing on three main principles, personal responsibility, financial responsibility and professional responsibility.
• 44:37
  So to dive a bit deeper into each of those, the personal responsibility really just starts with the basics, right? We literally start off with the importance of saying please and thank you. We talk about how to give a real apology. What are the components of a real apology? We talk about accepting apologies. Most of these young men and women now, they're involved in sports. So we talk about winning and losing with integrity. We talk about identifying and embracing a core value system and why that's important.
• 45:06
  It's important to kind of hold yourself to principles that you believe in and things that you look for and you would like to see in other people and friends and family. And then we talk about goal setting, right? Herman Edwards said something great. He's a former NFL coach, and I love this quote, and I use it in my curriculum. He said, a goal without a plan is a wish. And I explain that to these kids. You can't just say, I want X, Y, and Z, and gosh, I hope it happens.
• 45:33
  It likely won't, right? Putting together a plan to achieve a goal dramatically increases the probability of you achieving that goal. So we go through that. Then don't forget it takes action. It takes action as well. Absolutely. And then we transition to the financial side. And this is something that I'm very passionate about because we don't teach...
• 45:51
  financial responsibility in schools, right? It's not part of a public school curriculum. And as a result, we have young adults coming out of high school, coming out of college, getting into the working world with bad financial habits. And so we get very basic, right? We start with,
• 46:07
  What is your take-home pay, right? If someone gives you a job and pays you $50,000 a year, $50,000 a year is not going into your bank account. So why we explain that, right? Now you know what your take-home pay is. We then dovetail that into setting up and running a personal budget and listing out, this is the money coming in, this is the money coming out. If the money coming out exceeds the money coming in, you've got to make some adjustments. Okay.
• 46:30
  Once we know that, then we start teaching about how to save money for short-term, medium-term, and long-term financial goals. We talk about owning a home versus renting a home and which is better and at what time in your life should you make that decision. We talk about the basics of compounded interest. We talk about the dangers of personal credit card debt and how that can bury you. We talk about credit scores, things you can do to improve your score and things you can do to damage your score. So what we do is we want them to start with the personal benefits.
• 46:59
  you know, theories and philosophies. We then want to layer financial on top of that. And once we have those two in place, then we talk about professional responsibility. So this is all about writing effective resumes, right? And we're talking about high school kids. They're not going to have a lot of experience. There's techniques for how they write a resume. We talk about marketing yourself. We talk about the importance of LinkedIn. We talk about how to interview properly. And we just, what we do is we have a lot of ideas and techniques and tactics
• 47:29
  that will help separate these young adults from their peers. And that's really what we're trying to do is, you know, in a sea of young adults that are out there looking for work, what is your differentiating aspect? What's making you different than your peers? So we nailed down on that. That's our core curriculum. I started teaching it in schools by myself. I've done that for the last three years.
• 47:51
  I'm obviously, as you know, I'm moving to Utah here next week. So I had a directive. I put a directive upon myself to say, if I want to keep this going, I have to convert this curriculum into a virtual micro-education curriculum. I'm going to give a shout out right now to my very good friend, Mark McManus, who is a very successful entrepreneur here in Michigan. And one of the companies he owns is a group called Intellizy.
• 48:18
  And he connected me with them. And what they do is they literally convert physically delivered curriculum into virtual microeducation format. Amazing team, right? So now I have the ability to go to any school and I can license my content to a specific number of young adults that want to take it. I can license it to an entire school and let them run rampant with it. There's a lot of things we can do.
• 48:44
  So that's the base curriculum. And now that that's established, now what we're doing is kind of taking a master class approach where we're going to be layering accelerated classes on top of that, but the students have to go through the base curriculum first. So we're going to talk about reading financial statements. We're going to talk about personality profile tests and why they're important, how to write a business plan, things like that. Things that these kids aren't going to get from school that people like you and I have learned for years,
• 49:13
  you know, 40 plus years on this earth and trying to get them, trying to condition them for what the world's going to look like when they get out. Right. Cause it's not, it's not, it's not always a beautiful place. So what was the website again? Is it aspire Detroit.com? It's aspire Detroit.com. And, um, but again, we're, we call it now we reference it as aspire because we're going to be bringing this to different communities across the country. It's not just going to be local to Detroit anymore.
• 49:37
  Make sure that that's in the show notes as well as the Fadi, the business coach Fadi. Yeah. You've met him. Yeah, I know him. Two outstanding individuals and setups. So I was...
• 49:51
  recently did a podcast and I asked that question of what, uh, what law, what, what law that we should enact. And, and I want to add this to you. He said, everybody should, we should teach personal development slash emotional intelligence in school. Yeah. So I would challenge you to throw, uh,
• 50:09
  Another one of their big, big thing out there is EQ, emotional intelligence. I would challenge you to throw something in there to realize that, you know, take the three second rule and just, you know, you can't just start popping off. Yeah. Because I used to have a huge ship on my shoulder. Me too, dude. And we, you know, somebody come at me, I'm coming right. I'm like, yeah.
• 50:28
  I'm not telling you how to run your charity, but I would love to help you with that if you need my help. And I want to be involved, as I've told you a thousand times. So Anthony's socials will all be in the show notes. I can guarantee, personally guarantee, that your best is yet to come because you're constantly working on yourself. You're brilliant. I love you very, very much. And I'm glad you're in my life. Thanks for coming on. Love you, brother.
• 50:57
  Thank you for listening. Please rate and subscribe to Harder Than Life, and let's take this to the next level. Get connected at the links below.