Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / Episode 55: Kenny Santucci, Fitness Coach & Former Reality TV Star
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Hello, Hurdler's Emily Abadi.
- 0:03Speaker 2: Here.
- 0:03Speaker 1: You are listening to episode fifty five of Hurdle, a
- 0:07Speaker 1: podcast that talks to everyone from entrepreneurs to top CEOs
- 0:10Speaker 1: and athletes about how they got through tough times hurdles
- 0:13Speaker 1: of sorts by leaning into wellness. In today's episode, I'm
- 0:17Speaker 1: chatting with mister Beautiful himself, Kenny Santucci. He is a
- 0:22Speaker 1: self proclaimed fitness enthusiast. You also might recognize him from
- 0:27Speaker 1: past seasons of MTV's The Challenge and some other good things.
- 0:32Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say this right off the bat, this
- 0:35Speaker 1: episode kind of just feels like one big breath of
- 0:37Speaker 1: fresh air because he's so honest and open and a
- 0:41Speaker 1: good guy. Before we get into it, quick shout out
- 0:43Speaker 1: to my sponsor, Athletic Greens with twelve servings of fruits
- 0:47Speaker 1: and vegetables. Athletic Greens has got everything I need to
- 0:50Speaker 1: start my day off right. I shake it up every
- 0:52Speaker 1: morning headed to the subway with about ten to twelve
- 0:54Speaker 1: ounces of water and a few ice cubes, and it's
- 0:57Speaker 1: delicious and refreshing and just perfect. They're offering Hurdle listeners
- 1:03Speaker 1: a special deal. It's twenty free travel packs a seventy
- 1:07Speaker 1: nine dollars value absolutely free with your first purchase. Just
- 1:11Speaker 1: head on over to athleticgreens dot com slash hurdle to
- 1:13Speaker 1: claim it. No code necessary. Again, that's Athleticgreens dot com
- 1:18Speaker 1: slash hurdle. Now let's talk about Kenny. Kenny has made
- 1:23Speaker 1: himself a staple year in the New York City fitness community.
- 1:28Speaker 1: But long before he was doing things like bar bell
- 1:31Speaker 1: snatches and kettlebal cleans and coaching classes of twenty plus
- 1:35Speaker 1: through all sorts of crazy stuff. He was growing up
- 1:38Speaker 1: in New Jersey. As a freshman in high school, Kenny
- 1:41Speaker 1: was actually two hundred and twenty pounds. He wanted to
- 1:45Speaker 1: change from what he calls the cupcake kid, so he
- 1:48Speaker 1: turned to sports and fitness to transform his life and
- 1:51Speaker 1: found a ton of success actually wrestling both in high
- 1:53Speaker 1: school and at the college level. Soon enough, found himself
- 1:57Speaker 1: at an audition for MTV's The Challenge and They're He
- 2:00Speaker 1: won a few times and excelled at all sorts of
- 2:03Speaker 1: crazy things, and after the TV thing was said and done,
- 2:06Speaker 1: he ended up here in New York City. He found
- 2:08Speaker 1: his passion working in fitness and kind of went through
- 2:11Speaker 1: few different Hurdle moments on his way to find his
- 2:14Speaker 1: current job at Solace. You know, there was a time
- 2:16Speaker 1: when Santucci was living in his car and just trying
- 2:19Speaker 1: to make ends meet and do the best he code
- 2:22Speaker 1: with what he had. In today's episode, we talk a
- 2:24Speaker 1: lot about what that transition was like, finding his place
- 2:27Speaker 1: here in New York City, finding his place in the
- 2:29Speaker 1: fitness community, and just learning to be the best guy
- 2:33Speaker 1: that he can be. Like I said, this episode's full
- 2:35Speaker 1: of really inspiring stuff. Kenny and I have been friends
- 2:37Speaker 1: for a while now, and it was really great for
- 2:39Speaker 1: us to find the time to sit down have an
- 2:41Speaker 1: open and on its conversation, one that I really hope
- 2:44Speaker 1: is going to resonate with all of you. As always
- 2:47Speaker 1: at Hurdle Podcast, on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. If you've
- 2:50Speaker 1: got a Hurdle moment of your own to share, I
- 2:52Speaker 1: just want to say Hi, I love hearing from you.
- 2:54Speaker 1: Shoot me an email. It's Emily at Hurdle dot us
- 2:58Speaker 1: and as always, I'm going to keep put this out there.
- 3:00Speaker 1: I love when you guys share the podcast and what
- 3:02Speaker 1: you're learning on your Instagram stories, so please keep doing that.
- 3:05Speaker 1: It's time to have some fun. Let's get to hurdling.
- 3:21Speaker 2: Today.
- 3:21Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with Kenny Santucci. He is a self
- 3:24Speaker 1: proclaimed fitness enthusiast partner at Salas New York, and you
- 3:30Speaker 1: may recognize the sud from past seasons of MTV's Real
- 3:36Speaker 1: World road Rules Challenge. Good evening, you're.
- 3:40Speaker 2: Dating me calling it good evening, and thank you for
- 3:44Speaker 2: having me. It's an honor to be here. I'm excited.
- 3:47Speaker 2: I was wondering when I was going to get the
- 3:48Speaker 2: nod to come on.
- 3:50Speaker 1: Kenny and I have known each other for a little
- 3:52Speaker 1: while now in the city, and I felt like I
- 3:56Speaker 1: was looking to mix up the kind of content we
- 3:58Speaker 1: were I was looking just to shake things up on
- 4:00Speaker 1: the pod.
- 4:01Speaker 2: Yeah, you got so many famous people on it, might
- 4:04Speaker 2: as well come on and dummy it down a little bit.
- 4:07Speaker 1: Can you tell me what a day is like in
- 4:09Speaker 1: your life. I feel like that's a big question because
- 4:11Speaker 1: I know your days start off really early.
- 4:14Speaker 2: Well, I like to start pretty early.
- 4:17Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 4:17Speaker 2: During the week, my average day, I'll get to the
- 4:21Speaker 2: gym anywhere between five am and six am somewhere around there,
- 4:26Speaker 2: teach a couple classes, two, three, sometimes four in a row,
- 4:29Speaker 2: kind of go grab breakfast, hang out, take calls, answer emails,
- 4:35Speaker 2: things of that nature. Try to get a workout in
- 4:37Speaker 2: the afternoon, but it normally doesn't happen. Come back at night,
- 4:40Speaker 2: teach some more, either privates or classes, and then when
- 4:45Speaker 2: the gym is empty and the lights lay low, that's
- 4:48Speaker 2: when I like to work out.
- 4:49Speaker 1: You didn't mention your little lady.
- 4:52Speaker 2: Oh well, I mean she's with me everywhere. It's just
- 4:54Speaker 2: it's part of my day. Yeah, after I get up,
- 4:58Speaker 2: you know, I like taking check hours in the morning, so
- 5:00Speaker 2: I get out, I'll take a shower, brush my teeth,
- 5:03Speaker 2: and by that time I have to yank her out
- 5:05Speaker 2: of bed. I have a seven month old sharpey who
- 5:12Speaker 2: kind of comes with me everywhere, should come to work
- 5:14Speaker 2: with me during the day. I don't really walk her
- 5:16Speaker 2: a lot. I mean I have, you know, a bunch
- 5:18Speaker 2: of coaches and employees who kind of love playing with
- 5:21Speaker 2: her as well, so they'll take her out and they'll
- 5:23Speaker 2: feed her and things like that. So when I'm running around,
- 5:26Speaker 2: I'll come back upstairs into the office and they're like, oh,
- 5:28Speaker 2: I already took her for a walk or I already
- 5:30Speaker 2: fed her. So I'm like, all right, it's done.
- 5:32Speaker 1: I don't know it's all sun.
- 5:34Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 5:34Speaker 1: Okay, so you have an interesting path to finding your
- 5:40Speaker 1: career right now in fitness. So let's rewind it back
- 5:43Speaker 1: a little bit. Tell me about where you grew up
- 5:45Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff.
- 5:47Speaker 2: Yeah. I grew up in Yark, New Jersey, which a
- 5:51Speaker 2: lot of people find hard to believe. They're like, you're
- 5:53Speaker 2: not from Noork. I'm like, yeah, I guess I wish
- 5:56Speaker 2: I wasn't, but it's kind of like a rough area,
- 5:59Speaker 2: you know. I was one of aside from my brothers
- 6:03Speaker 2: and sisters, like we were the only like Italian family
- 6:06Speaker 2: on the block. I grew up around a lot of Dominicans,
- 6:09Speaker 2: Puerto Ricans, you know, we were the minorities in No Rk.
- 6:16Speaker 2: But my dad was one of these like old time
- 6:17Speaker 2: Gonzos who just never wanted to leave Nork, Like that's
- 6:20Speaker 2: where he grew up, so he wanted to stay there.
- 6:22Speaker 2: I went to high school in Jersey City. Growing up,
- 6:26Speaker 2: I was really out of shape, fat, you know, typical
- 6:30Speaker 2: Italian background, so we ate a lot. Yeah, I ate
- 6:34Speaker 2: a lot. My brothers and sisters were never as heavy
- 6:36Speaker 2: as I was. I was pretty heavy rolling into high school.
- 6:40Speaker 2: I was about two hundred and thirty pounds didn't really
- 6:43Speaker 2: work out. I mean, and that's why I always joke
- 6:44Speaker 2: around with my friends who played baseball, because I played
- 6:47Speaker 2: baseball as a kid, and I'm you could be good
- 6:49Speaker 2: at baseball and be overweight. I mean, there are pro
- 6:53Speaker 2: baseball players who were out of shape, overweight who were
- 6:56Speaker 2: really good at baseball.
- 6:57Speaker 1: What position were you playing?
- 6:58Speaker 2: I was playing first base, was left handed.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Oh so that's a fun place because.
- 7:03Speaker 2: Yeah, you could catch with you right now, okay. And
- 7:05Speaker 2: then when I got to high school, I told myself,
- 7:08Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm gonna lose weight. I'm gonna you know,
- 7:10Speaker 2: I wanted to play football. I didn't know what wrestling wash.
- 7:15Speaker 2: So after football season was over, the wrestling coach, I
- 7:19Speaker 2: actually got into a fight with a kid in the
- 7:21Speaker 2: football locker room and they one of the football coach
- 7:25Speaker 2: was actually one of the wrestling coaches as well, and
- 7:27Speaker 2: he's like, you should wrestle. I'm like, So when he
- 7:30Speaker 2: invited me to go wrestle, I thought I was doing
- 7:33Speaker 2: like WW stuff. So as a kid, ivo and I
- 7:38Speaker 2: was like wrestling, I'm like, this is going to be sick.
- 7:40Speaker 2: I'm going to get to pick out a costume. I'm
- 7:42Speaker 2: gonna have a song. I'm going to walk down the
- 7:44Speaker 2: entrance way. This is going to be amazing. Little did
- 7:48Speaker 2: I know it was, you know, collegiate wrestling. You're wrestling
- 7:51Speaker 2: on a mat and a single it either way. I
- 7:53Speaker 2: fell in love with it, and that's kind of what
- 7:55Speaker 2: I did, and I put my whole heart into it.
- 7:58Speaker 1: So did you start to lose to get into different
- 8:01Speaker 1: wrestling weight classes?
- 8:02Speaker 2: Yeah? So I started my freshman year. I was on
- 8:04Speaker 2: the JV team, but I was there a two to
- 8:06Speaker 2: fifteen pounder, so I'd lost like fifteen pounds up to
- 8:09Speaker 2: that point, and then I graduated high school about one
- 8:15Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five pounds. Wow. Yeah, so I went
- 8:18Speaker 2: from like two thirty one sixty within four years. But
- 8:22Speaker 2: I gradually lost it. I worked out more, I started
- 8:26Speaker 2: lifting more. You know, it was just something I fell
- 8:31Speaker 2: in love with. Like when I was in high school,
- 8:33Speaker 2: I started buying bodybuilding magazines and I was always fascinated
- 8:37Speaker 2: with the you know, I mean at the time I
- 8:40Speaker 2: grew up in the late eighties early nineties, where Arnold stillone,
- 8:45Speaker 2: like these were the gods. You know, wrestling was huge.
- 8:48Speaker 2: Everybody I ever admired was a larger than life, jacked up, oversized,
- 8:54Speaker 2: mutant first of themselves, you know. Yeah, so I fell
- 8:57Speaker 2: in love with that, and when I was in high school,
- 8:59Speaker 2: I'm like, I gotta do whatever they're doing. You know,
- 9:02Speaker 2: I gotta lift, I gotta watch pumping iron work out
- 9:05Speaker 2: and you know, look at muscle magazines. So I did
- 9:08Speaker 2: a lot of that when I was a kid. I
- 9:10Speaker 2: never really trained my legs, like we would do power cleans,
- 9:13Speaker 2: but they would be like reverse curls.
- 9:15Speaker 1: Basically, I feel like guys don't really work their legs
- 9:17Speaker 1: in general.
- 9:19Speaker 2: I think that's a statement. Yeah, well, it's it's an
- 9:22Speaker 2: older kind of thing. It's an older philosophy like Jim rats. Yeah,
- 9:26Speaker 2: nowadays I think it's more acceptable, like girls obviously like
- 9:30Speaker 2: working on their lower half and guys like working on
- 9:33Speaker 2: their upper half more just for aesthetic purposes. Yeah. For me,
- 9:37Speaker 2: it's like all I did was bench and you know,
- 9:39Speaker 2: to curls and things like that. Going into college, I
- 9:44Speaker 2: went to I went to Montclair State University. I was
- 9:47Speaker 2: on the wrestling team there, and I wanted to do
- 9:52Speaker 2: two things that at the time didn't make any sense
- 9:55Speaker 2: to do together. You know, my guidance counselor was telling me,
- 9:59Speaker 2: she's like, good here for seven years if you do this.
- 10:02Speaker 2: I wanted to do some sort of personal training, like
- 10:05Speaker 2: you know, at the time is basically you'd be a
- 10:08Speaker 2: gym coach, and I love like a fizzed teacher. I
- 10:13Speaker 2: was either going to be a phiz ed teacher or
- 10:15Speaker 2: an art teacher, and they're like, there are two totally
- 10:17Speaker 2: different paths that will never meet in the middle. So
- 10:20Speaker 2: I started taking some kinesiology class. I loved art. I
- 10:23Speaker 2: still love, you know, I appreciate every form of art,
- 10:28Speaker 2: and now with the gym, I get to do a
- 10:29Speaker 2: little bit of both. So I kind of put all
- 10:34Speaker 2: my eggs in the art basket, but was kind of
- 10:35Speaker 2: doing some other stuff on the side. I got my
- 10:38Speaker 2: first personal training certification right out of college. I wanted
- 10:44Speaker 2: to do that, and I was fascinated with the gym.
- 10:48Speaker 2: Everything I ever did was you know, I'd leave work
- 10:51Speaker 2: early to go to the gym. You know, I'd be
- 10:54Speaker 2: late for things because I was at the gym. You know,
- 10:57Speaker 2: I'd skip events because I wanted to go to the gym.
- 11:00Speaker 2: So for me, it was like I'm like I need
- 11:02Speaker 2: to be in the gym. I want to be in
- 11:03Speaker 2: the gym.
- 11:05Speaker 1: And this isn't just because you're wrestling or anything at
- 11:08Speaker 1: this time. This is just those you've developed such a
- 11:10Speaker 1: love for being there period.
- 11:12Speaker 2: It was. It was one of those things that I
- 11:14Speaker 2: realized early on that I want to do for the
- 11:16Speaker 2: rest of my life. And when people are like, you
- 11:18Speaker 2: can't work out for the rest of your life, I'm like, well,
- 11:21Speaker 2: Jacqueline did it? Are still doing it? You know, these
- 11:24Speaker 2: guys are all way older than I am and they're
- 11:26Speaker 2: still you know, working out and lifting weights. So when
- 11:30Speaker 2: I when I look at older guys and I look
- 11:34Speaker 2: at older people, I wanted to be like them. I
- 11:37Speaker 2: wanted to be someone who's always in shape. It was
- 11:41Speaker 2: never something I looked at as I'm going to stop
- 11:43Speaker 2: when I'm thirty or forty or fifty. I'm like, I
- 11:46Speaker 2: want to do this for the rest of my life.
- 11:48Speaker 2: So that's when I kind of started to make that
- 11:50Speaker 2: push towards you know, personal training or some something within
- 11:55Speaker 2: the health and wellness world. And at the time, i
- 11:58Speaker 2: mean this is late nineties, early two thousands, that it
- 12:01Speaker 2: wasn't as accepted. Yeah, when I first saw my parents,
- 12:05Speaker 2: I wanted to be a trainer, and you know, I
- 12:06Speaker 2: started kind of making moves towards that, and I was
- 12:09Speaker 2: still kind of on the show. I was still on
- 12:11Speaker 2: the show at the time. I would bring bands with me.
- 12:14Speaker 2: I was one of the first people. It's like, start
- 12:16Speaker 2: bringing bands and a jump.
- 12:17Speaker 1: Rope and like resistance bands. Yeah, not like a Metallica band.
- 12:21Speaker 2: No ship Motley threw out the challenge. I would bring
- 12:28Speaker 2: like resistance bands and you know, the short bands and
- 12:31Speaker 2: long bands and a TRX with me on the challenges
- 12:35Speaker 2: because I enjoyed working out and there was nothing to
- 12:37Speaker 2: do all day. Everybody's like, oh, the challenge must have
- 12:39Speaker 2: been so much fun. I'm like, no, you sit around
- 12:41Speaker 2: all day. There's no TV, there's no phone, there's no internet.
- 12:44Speaker 2: So we would work out.
- 12:46Speaker 1: Wait, but you totally jumped a total part in this,
- 12:49Speaker 1: which is like, so you're in college, you graduate college
- 12:52Speaker 1: in what year?
- 12:53Speaker 2: I graduate college in two thousand and five. I auditioned
- 12:56Speaker 2: for my first television show in two thousand and four.
- 13:00Speaker 1: And what drove you to do that?
- 13:03Speaker 2: I was dating a girl. I was working at a
- 13:04Speaker 2: club and it was called Sleep. It was in New
- 13:07Speaker 2: Jersey called Sleep club was called Sleep.
- 13:09Speaker 1: That doesn't really sound very enticing.
- 13:11Speaker 2: Well, there was like beds in these glass cabinets.
- 13:14Speaker 1: Oh, it's like in Sex and the City when there
- 13:16Speaker 1: was bed. I think it was called bed.
- 13:20Speaker 2: I think what was that, like Vegas or something. I
- 13:22Speaker 2: don't know New York.
- 13:23Speaker 1: I just remember that it was on Sex and the City.
- 13:25Speaker 2: So this club was called Sleep and it was in
- 13:27Speaker 2: New Jersey and I worked there and there was a
- 13:29Speaker 2: cocktail waitress who I was talking to at the time,
- 13:32Speaker 2: and we tried out for a show together. At this
- 13:34Speaker 2: show was auditioning up at Syracuse University, and she was like,
- 13:38Speaker 2: do you want to come and take the ride with
- 13:39Speaker 2: me to Syracuse? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to
- 13:43Speaker 2: hang out with you. I'd like to do that because
- 13:46Speaker 2: that would be fun to share a hotel room together.
- 13:48Speaker 2: And we had just started talking. You know, I was
- 13:52Speaker 2: I was in naive to the show. I know what
- 13:54Speaker 2: it was, but I wasn't like a fan, right, you know.
- 13:56Speaker 2: If you asked me back then, if I could have
- 13:57Speaker 2: done that or pro wrestling, I would have done PROB. Yeah,
- 14:02Speaker 2: I would have done yeah, pretty much almost any other show.
- 14:06Speaker 2: But I tried out and one thing led to another.
- 14:09Speaker 2: I was a finalist for the first show I did,
- 14:11Speaker 2: and then a year to the day later I was
- 14:14Speaker 2: on my first show. So I filmed my first show
- 14:16Speaker 2: in two thousand and five. But it takes about six
- 14:19Speaker 2: to eight months to audition. Wow, yeah, what's going on?
- 14:23Speaker 2: Background checks? And they do different rounds of auditioning.
- 14:27Speaker 1: Okay.
- 14:28Speaker 2: Uh. You know. It was always like all right, hey,
- 14:30Speaker 2: we're going to audition you. You know, we'll ask you
- 14:33Speaker 2: a bunch of questions to a whole kind of survey.
- 14:37Speaker 2: Then if we if you hear from this in a month,
- 14:39Speaker 2: you know, we're going to bring in for another audition
- 14:42Speaker 2: or another casting basically with some other people. And then
- 14:45Speaker 2: that then you wait another month and every month they
- 14:49Speaker 2: kind of just drag it along and drag it along.
- 14:52Speaker 2: But they ended up asking me to do a challenge,
- 14:55Speaker 2: which was my first show, was called The Fresh Meet.
- 14:57Speaker 2: That was the first show I did. They were like, hey,
- 15:00Speaker 2: it's a competition based show. You could be really good
- 15:03Speaker 2: at this. You know, it's a physical challenge and you
- 15:06Speaker 2: could win three hundred thousand dollars. And I'm like, God,
- 15:09Speaker 2: I'll probably never make three hundred thousand dollars. I should
- 15:13Speaker 2: try this life. Yeah, So I went. At the time,
- 15:17Speaker 2: I had a girlfriend. I wasn't that interesting. I've never
- 15:19Speaker 2: been a big drinker. I've never been you know, huge
- 15:23Speaker 2: party guy. So I went and I thought I'd never
- 15:26Speaker 2: get invited back, and I get invited back every time
- 15:29Speaker 2: for the next six years.
- 15:31Speaker 1: Why do you think that is how you got invited back?
- 15:35Speaker 2: I guess obviously the rest of the world would probably
- 15:38Speaker 2: say I've gotten it a hundred times. They're like, oh,
- 15:41Speaker 2: you're the asshole from the show, or you're me, And
- 15:43Speaker 2: to everybody, I'm just like, this is the way I've
- 15:46Speaker 2: always viewed the show. I would go and i'd work out,
- 15:50Speaker 2: and I'd spend money on trainers and work out with
- 15:52Speaker 2: different coaches before I went to the show. Yeah, spend
- 15:56Speaker 2: a ton of money on it, and I treated it
- 15:57Speaker 2: like a job. I would god make my money and
- 16:00Speaker 2: I'd leave. Other people treat as like, hey, I'm on television.
- 16:04Speaker 2: I'm going to get drunk and act like an asshole
- 16:06Speaker 2: and everything else. So for me, I said, Okay, at
- 16:09Speaker 2: any other job, if someone was there and goes, hey,
- 16:12Speaker 2: I want half your money. I want to get to
- 16:14Speaker 2: the end, but all I'm going to do is drink
- 16:15Speaker 2: and act like a degenerate for the next five weeks.
- 16:19Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, no shot. Imagine if you had
- 16:22Speaker 2: to cut your paycheck in half because someone else just
- 16:25Speaker 2: felt they belong there, right, It's like, no, I would
- 16:27Speaker 2: cut people's throats, like when there was deliberations or you know,
- 16:31Speaker 2: any of these like vote out processes. I didn't want
- 16:34Speaker 2: anybody who's a weak link on my team.
- 16:36Speaker 1: I actually feel like it's a really good time right
- 16:38Speaker 1: now to give like a very brief synopsis of like
- 16:42Speaker 1: how this works, because not everyone. Yeah, you know.
- 16:46Speaker 2: It's like any other thing. Yeah, it depends, like every
- 16:49Speaker 2: show has a different format. Yeah, but there's always some
- 16:52Speaker 2: voting process. It's if you've ever seen Survivor.
- 16:55Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's like MTV Survivor.
- 16:57Speaker 2: MTV Survivor is always the kind of the way I've explained,
- 16:59Speaker 2: it's like Big Brother. You know, at the end of
- 17:02Speaker 2: the day, sometimes it's a popularity contest and sometimes it's
- 17:05Speaker 2: a physical competition.
- 17:07Speaker 1: Got it.
- 17:07Speaker 2: If you have both, then you're you're probably going to
- 17:11Speaker 2: do pretty well. So that's kind of how it all
- 17:14Speaker 2: shook down. And I was lucky enough. I did about
- 17:17Speaker 2: eight shows. I got to the end of seven. I
- 17:20Speaker 2: made it to the end of like seven shows, which
- 17:21Speaker 2: is like a big deal in that world. Yeah, and
- 17:23Speaker 2: then I won three and I took second three times.
- 17:26Speaker 1: So do you get paid if you get second?
- 17:28Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 17:29Speaker 1: Wow?
- 17:29Speaker 2: So yeah, So over the course of eight years, I
- 17:33Speaker 2: made a lot, a lot of cash. I did okay
- 17:35Speaker 2: for myself.
- 17:36Speaker 1: Yeah, but you also like had to completely put yourself
- 17:39Speaker 1: out there into the world in all of its ways
- 17:42Speaker 1: for sure.
- 17:43Speaker 2: And what I tell people all the time why I
- 17:45Speaker 2: enjoyed the show or why I did that show over
- 17:48Speaker 2: because I was asked to do dating shows and things
- 17:50Speaker 2: like that. I never want to do that because it's
- 17:52Speaker 2: it's just more personal for me. Whereas i'd go on that,
- 17:56Speaker 2: i'd get to compete for money and when the show's over,
- 18:00Speaker 2: it's done, Whereas like a lot of these other shows,
- 18:02Speaker 2: like something like a Kardashian show, where they're following you
- 18:05Speaker 2: around in your everyday life and they're making up scenarios
- 18:10Speaker 2: as to what goes on in your everyday life that
- 18:12Speaker 2: really doesn't happen. So I always felt weird with that.
- 18:16Speaker 2: So I never want to do a show like that.
- 18:17Speaker 2: The show the challenge was, Okay, you're in this house.
- 18:21Speaker 2: You have to compete. Every day you show up for
- 18:23Speaker 2: this event, you do it If you do well, you
- 18:25Speaker 2: continue on. If you don't, it's over all.
- 18:28Speaker 1: Right. So you said eight.
- 18:29Speaker 2: Shows, Yeah, it was like eight or nine.
- 18:31Speaker 1: Okay, eight or nine shows old, and what happens? How
- 18:35Speaker 1: do you know that the eighth or the ninth show
- 18:38Speaker 1: is your last show?
- 18:40Speaker 2: Well, when I got signed to a talent agency here
- 18:43Speaker 2: in New York, they were kind of giving me the
- 18:46Speaker 2: idea that I wouldn't be taken as serious if I
- 18:50Speaker 2: continue to do reality TV. The world was a different
- 18:53Speaker 2: place back in twenty ten, twenty eleven. So when I
- 18:57Speaker 2: got signed with these talent agencies, I was doing improv
- 19:00Speaker 2: of I was doing acting classes. I spent a shit
- 19:03Speaker 2: ton of money on acting classes to realize that I'm
- 19:06Speaker 2: not a good actor. It's a lot harder than people think. Yeah,
- 19:09Speaker 2: everybody's like, I could be an actor. I'm like, it's
- 19:11Speaker 2: a lot harder to be that vulnerable and emotional all
- 19:16Speaker 2: the time because you have to develop a character and
- 19:18Speaker 2: become somebody else. I was just never good at that.
- 19:20Speaker 2: So I did a lot of hosting. I got to
- 19:23Speaker 2: host a bunch of shows with MTV and VH one,
- 19:26Speaker 2: and I had my own little thing on MTV dot Com.
- 19:30Speaker 2: So I was lucky enough to do that, and all
- 19:32Speaker 2: I had to do is be myself. You know. There
- 19:34Speaker 2: was a lot of like interviewing people and asking questions
- 19:37Speaker 2: and things like that, so it was a lot more fun.
- 19:40Speaker 2: So when I started doing a lot of that stuff,
- 19:42Speaker 2: I started to move away from the show. I always
- 19:44Speaker 2: looked at the show as not an endgame, but more
- 19:47Speaker 2: of like a stepping stone. It got me out there,
- 19:50Speaker 2: got me notoriety, and I got to do other things
- 19:52Speaker 2: from it. It was never a place where I saw
- 19:55Speaker 2: myself being there as a lifer. There's a lot of
- 19:57Speaker 2: people who still do the show who are older than me.
- 20:02Speaker 2: When you think about the show, and was like, oh
- 20:04Speaker 2: my god, that looks like so much fun. As a
- 20:07Speaker 2: thirty something year old or even a forty something year old,
- 20:10Speaker 2: do you ever plan on spending a lot of time
- 20:13Speaker 2: sleeping in a bunk bed with twenty something year old
- 20:16Speaker 2: who are just like fresh out of college. And when
- 20:19Speaker 2: I think about it, I'm like, oh God, that sounds miserable.
- 20:23Speaker 2: Like I would never want to sleep in a you know,
- 20:25Speaker 2: a single bed with someone sleeping above me or below
- 20:29Speaker 2: me screaming in the middle of the night because they
- 20:32Speaker 2: want to fight and everything else. So it's that part
- 20:35Speaker 2: of the show is nauseating. And then the production team
- 20:38Speaker 2: isn't easy to work with. They tell you went to eat,
- 20:41Speaker 2: they tell you when to get up, they tell you
- 20:42Speaker 2: when you leave, you're not allowed to leave if you're
- 20:44Speaker 2: you know, not everyone's going. So that part of the
- 20:48Speaker 2: show I always waited till the end because then we
- 20:50Speaker 2: could go off on our own and kind of do
- 20:52Speaker 2: our own thing. You could change your flight and stay
- 20:54Speaker 2: wherever we were. But it was cool because through my
- 20:58Speaker 2: twenties it was perfect. I got to travel the world.
- 21:01Speaker 2: I got to see every continent in different countries.
- 21:04Speaker 1: And where was the toldst place that you went?
- 21:07Speaker 2: People ask that all the time. I think every place
- 21:09Speaker 2: has something unique about it that you could fall in
- 21:11Speaker 2: love with. When I was in Australia, I mean, it's amazing,
- 21:15Speaker 2: there's so many beautiful parts of it. I really liked
- 21:17Speaker 2: surfers Paradise when we're there. That was a really cool
- 21:21Speaker 2: place to see. And then I love South Africa because
- 21:25Speaker 2: I really didn't know much about South Africa until I
- 21:28Speaker 2: went there and I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing.
- 21:30Speaker 2: This is beautiful country. When one of the shows they
- 21:36Speaker 2: were like all right, pack up all your stuff. We're
- 21:39Speaker 2: flying you guys to Patagonia. And so many people didn't
- 21:42Speaker 2: even know. They're like, where the hell is Patagonia. So
- 21:46Speaker 2: I was excited about that, but again, it was one
- 21:48Speaker 2: of those places I would have never gone to had
- 21:50Speaker 2: I not been on the show. Thailand was really cool.
- 21:54Speaker 2: I think Thailand was kind of the biggest eye opener
- 21:56Speaker 2: for me because.
- 21:58Speaker 1: I feel like every reality show goes to time Land.
- 22:00Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cheap when you get there, it's dirt cheap
- 22:03Speaker 2: for everything, Like you could stay in a five star
- 22:05Speaker 2: hotel for thirty five dollars a night, like five star
- 22:07Speaker 2: beautiful hotel for thirty five bucks. Yeah, it's definitely worth going.
- 22:12Speaker 2: It's expensive to get there, it takes long to get there,
- 22:14Speaker 2: but when you get there, it's pretty cheap. But it
- 22:17Speaker 2: started to open my eyes and help me appreciate other
- 22:19Speaker 2: cultures and other religions. Growing up in New Jersey, it's
- 22:22Speaker 2: everybody I knew was Catholic. You know, I went to
- 22:26Speaker 2: all guys Catholic high school. I went to Catholic grammar school.
- 22:30Speaker 2: And when I started to see other cultures and other religions,
- 22:34Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, there's Catholicism isn't the best and it's
- 22:38Speaker 2: not the only thing, and right, you know, so it
- 22:41Speaker 2: was really eye opening and I enjoyed that part of it.
- 22:47Speaker 2: So yeah, I think there was Obviously there was a
- 22:50Speaker 2: lot of great points to do in the show. And again,
- 22:53Speaker 2: like the notoriety, you noticed there were plenty of times
- 22:57Speaker 2: I've been out to dinners or events and people just oh, yeah, yeah,
- 23:00Speaker 2: we'll take care of you. Ye're like, oh, this is great.
- 23:03Speaker 1: After the eighth or ninth show, kind of figuring out
- 23:06Speaker 1: that it's time to wind down from this life.
- 23:09Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wanted something else to fall back on
- 23:11Speaker 2: it and my agency and this happens a lot that
- 23:15Speaker 2: agents will be like, well, you need to pick something
- 23:18Speaker 2: that you're focused on, because if I wanted a host,
- 23:21Speaker 2: I need to be an expert. Like at the time,
- 23:23Speaker 2: there was a lot of big shows like those house
- 23:26Speaker 2: repair shows and you know, culinary shows, like people who
- 23:30Speaker 2: had shows kind of some of the people I wanted
- 23:34Speaker 2: to do something similar to was like Man versus Food,
- 23:38Speaker 2: Like he was in the culinary world and got to
- 23:41Speaker 2: do this show. And then there was the guy who
- 23:44Speaker 2: was a contractor and got to do a show. So
- 23:48Speaker 2: I was like, well, if I have a one thing
- 23:50Speaker 2: I could work on, or one thing I you know,
- 23:52Speaker 2: one genre I was going to live in. I was like, well,
- 23:55Speaker 2: I want to do like training or something like that.
- 23:57Speaker 2: So I started to kind of do a lot of that.
- 23:59Speaker 2: But all through the show I worked out. I would
- 24:01Speaker 2: seek out different trainers in New York and New Jersey
- 24:03Speaker 2: and California and wherever I was. I wanted to work
- 24:05Speaker 2: with like the best people, and I admired their knowledge
- 24:09Speaker 2: and how much they appreciated how the body moves and nutrition.
- 24:13Speaker 2: It was one of those things I've always struggled with.
- 24:17Speaker 2: And I was like, Oh, you're in great shape. I'm
- 24:19Speaker 2: like not really. I mean I kind of a shit diet.
- 24:22Speaker 2: I don't really sleep that much. So I wanted to learn.
- 24:26Speaker 2: I want to understand. I think the more I started
- 24:28Speaker 2: to understand about training and about changing my body, the
- 24:31Speaker 2: more I appreciate it, and the more I wanted to
- 24:33Speaker 2: do for other people.
- 24:35Speaker 1: So how is this applying to your career at this point?
- 24:39Speaker 2: Because they were like, if you have a specialty, it
- 24:41Speaker 2: could be And I was like, what if I was
- 24:43Speaker 2: a trainer and I taught people how to move better
- 24:46Speaker 2: and I could do that and they're like, yeah, that
- 24:48Speaker 2: sounds great. So I kind of threw myself into it.
- 24:54Speaker 2: So yeah, one thing led to another. I was always
- 24:58Speaker 2: kind of doing I was always dabbling in it, and
- 25:00Speaker 2: then I fully committed myself around you know, twenty six
- 25:04Speaker 2: twenty seven, I'm like, all right, I'm going to be
- 25:05Speaker 2: a trainer. So that's when I got a job at Equinox.
- 25:08Speaker 1: Okay, So where's this Equinox.
- 25:10Speaker 2: On forty third and fifth Avenue. I was there.
- 25:14Speaker 1: I was personal training okay, and did you like it?
- 25:18Speaker 2: I loved it. I actually remember going home and my
- 25:23Speaker 2: father's saying to me. He's like, wait, what are you doing.
- 25:26Speaker 2: He's like, and you make money. He's like, what do you?
- 25:30Speaker 2: What do you I don't get it. He's like, I
- 25:32Speaker 2: don't know, I don't understand it. But I remember telling
- 25:35Speaker 2: him I was like, Dad, I really love doing it.
- 25:38Speaker 2: I really enjoy it, like I look forward to going
- 25:40Speaker 2: to work, and that never happened in my life before,
- 25:42Speaker 2: even on the shows. I'm like, fuck, I'm going to
- 25:46Speaker 2: go for the next five weeks and live with all
- 25:50Speaker 2: these idiots and a house that's meant for seven people
- 25:54Speaker 2: with thirty people, and be told when to eat and
- 25:57Speaker 2: when to do this, and it's like this hurry up
- 25:59Speaker 2: and wait game, because that's obviously what all production is, uh,
- 26:03Speaker 2: you know, way for people set up lighting and cameras
- 26:05Speaker 2: and wait for the director and this and that. This
- 26:08Speaker 2: was the only time I was like I want to
- 26:10Speaker 2: be there. And then when I started to see how
- 26:12Speaker 2: much attention the group fitness instructors got, they I was like, wow,
- 26:20Speaker 2: I need to do that because that's.
- 26:21Speaker 1: A group fitness instructor because.
- 26:23Speaker 2: I'm like, they get to be the personality and they're
- 26:26Speaker 2: leading this group of people and they're still doing kind
- 26:29Speaker 2: of the same thing. You just have more right, more reach. Yeah,
- 26:33Speaker 2: I fell in love with that. I loved doing group classes.
- 26:36Speaker 2: Anytime there was an opportunity I'm doing, I'll take it.
- 26:39Speaker 2: I'll do this, I'll do that. And I enjoy both
- 26:42Speaker 2: aspects of it. I like teaching someone you know, one
- 26:45Speaker 2: on one because obviously you get more done. And then
- 26:47Speaker 2: I appreciate the group fitness because of the atmosphere.
- 26:50Speaker 1: Right, Okay, so you're doing this and this leads you
- 26:54Speaker 1: to decide to open your own gym.
- 26:56Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was doing obviously I was doing CrossFit.
- 27:00Speaker 2: You know, I just told somebody this the other day.
- 27:02Speaker 2: The first CrossFit workout I did was in high school. Yeah,
- 27:05Speaker 2: my coach would have us do like emoms of bench
- 27:08Speaker 2: press and pull ups and curls and all types of
- 27:12Speaker 2: stuff and power cleans.
- 27:15Speaker 1: E mooms for those of you.
- 27:16Speaker 2: Yeah, for those of you who don't know what emom is,
- 27:19Speaker 2: it's every minute on a minute, Yeah, you do a
- 27:21Speaker 2: certain workout. It was basically a fight on bad style workout. Yeah.
- 27:25Speaker 2: We'd do like five or six stations and we'd jump around.
- 27:29Speaker 2: And then when I was on the show, I had
- 27:31Speaker 2: started working out with this trainer in Jersey who was
- 27:34Speaker 2: always like, hey, you got to try this workout, and
- 27:38Speaker 2: we'd like go flip tires and hit it with a
- 27:39Speaker 2: hammer and I'm like, oh, this is so cool, and
- 27:42Speaker 2: you know, run up the stairs with chains and do
- 27:44Speaker 2: all this crazy stuff. And then my buddy started doing
- 27:47Speaker 2: out in California, so I would like when I was
- 27:49Speaker 2: out there with him, I would go do that. And
- 27:53Speaker 2: then when they opened up black Box, I started doing
- 27:57Speaker 2: when I was moved here, so I was at black
- 27:59Speaker 2: Box for a little bit and that's when I first
- 28:02Speaker 2: realized that I didn't know how to do power cleans.
- 28:05Speaker 1: That's a big moment for you.
- 28:06Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, oh shit, I don't know how
- 28:08Speaker 2: to do it that nice like there was you know
- 28:13Speaker 2: at the time, there was a girl instructor who was
- 28:15Speaker 2: just crushing these power cleans. I was like, I need
- 28:19Speaker 2: to learn more about this. I need to do more
- 28:20Speaker 2: of this. And then Fifth Avid opened up and I
- 28:23Speaker 2: joined there. I was like one of the first members there.
- 28:26Speaker 2: And then when I was at Fifth Ave, I met
- 28:27Speaker 2: some people who had worked at Reebok and they were like, Hey,
- 28:30Speaker 2: we're looking to open up a New Jersey kind of
- 28:34Speaker 2: Fifth Avenue type of gym where it's like sponsored by
- 28:38Speaker 2: Reebok and we could do all this stuff and we
- 28:40Speaker 2: want you to be the head coach. So I'm like,
- 28:42Speaker 2: all right, cool, I'm in right. So I'm like, I
- 28:46Speaker 2: know everybody in New Jersey.
- 28:48Speaker 1: Everybody I know.
- 28:50Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm the prince in New Jersey. Let's get it going.
- 28:53Speaker 2: So I went back to Jersey started doing that. Through
- 28:57Speaker 2: this process, I'm dumping money into this thing.
- 29:01Speaker 1: But you have all of these winnings, yeah, from all
- 29:04Speaker 1: of the shows.
- 29:05Speaker 2: If I told you half the dumb shit I bought
- 29:07Speaker 2: with this, she wouldn't believe me.
- 29:09Speaker 1: Okay, so you're going back to Jersey to work at
- 29:12Speaker 1: this gym.
- 29:13Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so now I'm making the reverse commute, so
- 29:16Speaker 2: I'm leaving New York. I was living in New York.
- 29:18Speaker 2: I was driving back to Jersey doing this. About a
- 29:22Speaker 2: year in kind of realized that money's missing. You know,
- 29:26Speaker 2: I put my heart and soul into this place. I
- 29:27Speaker 2: could tell you where every stitch of paint was, every
- 29:29Speaker 2: board went. I find out that, you know, they're up
- 29:33Speaker 2: to no good. And it's funny because they actually had
- 29:36Speaker 2: to close the doors about three four months ago, and
- 29:39Speaker 2: they declared bankruptcy and the business and stuff. But you know,
- 29:42Speaker 2: I within six to eight months I had that place running,
- 29:46Speaker 2: friends there, family there, everything. I mean, it felt like
- 29:49Speaker 2: a home. It was really great. And now they just
- 29:55Speaker 2: had to shut the doors. But for actually, one of
- 29:57Speaker 2: the clients I had signed up, I had met her.
- 29:59Speaker 2: She's an older woman, she's about forty seven forty eight. Now.
- 30:04Speaker 2: I had met her at tow in the city one
- 30:07Speaker 2: night randomly, and she'd been sitting there with a couple
- 30:10Speaker 2: of her girlfriends and they were like, oh, we weren't
- 30:13Speaker 2: forget how we got to talking about working out. I said,
- 30:15Speaker 2: obviously I owned a gym, and we.
- 30:17Speaker 1: Were obviously, if you can't tell by looking at it,
- 30:22Speaker 1: obviously I own.
- 30:23Speaker 2: Obviously I'm the most fit guy in America. So I
- 30:28Speaker 2: told her. I was like, I own this gym. They
- 30:30Speaker 2: were telling me that they lived in New Jersey. I
- 30:32Speaker 2: was like, you should come by my gym because clearly
- 30:34Speaker 2: what you're doing isn't working. And I didn't mean it
- 30:37Speaker 2: like that. And they were utterly offend, and they're like, fine,
- 30:39Speaker 2: we're coming by. I was like, yeah, come by. She
- 30:42Speaker 2: ended up falling in love with CrossFit. I trained her
- 30:45Speaker 2: for the first two months privately because she didn't want
- 30:47Speaker 2: to do CrossFit. She had up fall in love with it,
- 30:49Speaker 2: and now she just bought out the gym, which I'm
- 30:51Speaker 2: super excited about. Before we had met last Monday, we
- 30:55Speaker 2: went out for drinks and we were just kind of
- 30:56Speaker 2: caught up on what she's doing, and she was asking
- 31:00Speaker 2: me like, Hey, how should I do this? How should
- 31:02Speaker 2: I do that? I was going to go in as
- 31:04Speaker 2: a partner. I just couldn't pull it off. Yeah, really,
- 31:07Speaker 2: I'm tied. My hands are tied here in New York
- 31:10Speaker 2: and be hard to commute back and forth.
- 31:12Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 31:14Speaker 2: So yeah, and she's having a grand opening party this weekend.
- 31:18Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so I'm very excited for her. It's called
- 31:20Speaker 2: crosset Reinvented. It's my old gym. Yeah, so I'm excited
- 31:24Speaker 2: for them, and obviously I want to see them do well.
- 31:29Speaker 2: But I realized that wasn't working with my old partners
- 31:33Speaker 2: kind of sold off my shares. In the interim of
- 31:35Speaker 2: obviously selling off my shares and going through this whole
- 31:37Speaker 2: lawsuit with my partners, it was a nightmare. And when
- 31:42Speaker 2: it finally was over, I felt like somebody removed the
- 31:44Speaker 2: Empire State Building off my back. Yeah, it was horrible. Obviously,
- 31:49Speaker 2: paying attorneys isn't cheap. Not having a job isn't cheap.
- 31:55Speaker 2: And I ran myself, broke everything I had. I was just.
- 32:00Speaker 1: It was done.
- 32:01Speaker 2: Yeah, it was all over, Like anything I had left
- 32:04Speaker 2: was gone. There was a point I invited my mom
- 32:06Speaker 2: into my office at my old gym and I go,
- 32:09Speaker 2: I'm like sixty grand in debt right now, and it's
- 32:13Speaker 2: that debt on credit cards and everything is just piling up.
- 32:19Speaker 2: So I was like, do I declare bankruptcy? Like what
- 32:22Speaker 2: do I do at this point? Because I can't pay
- 32:24Speaker 2: this stuff and I have no income and I don't
- 32:26Speaker 2: want to go work at another gym because I don't
- 32:29Speaker 2: want them using that against me in court that I'm
- 32:31Speaker 2: like supporting another gym and all this stuff. So I
- 32:35Speaker 2: came back to the city.
- 32:36Speaker 1: What did your mom say?
- 32:38Speaker 2: She's like, I mean, my parents aren't like well off,
- 32:41Speaker 2: so they're like, you know, you got to do what
- 32:44Speaker 2: you have to do. And at that point I was like,
- 32:46Speaker 2: fuck that. No, I'm not giving up. I'll figure this out.
- 32:49Speaker 2: I'll bury my I'll claw my way out of this thing.
- 32:52Speaker 2: So I came back to the city started going on.
- 32:55Speaker 2: I told my agents, I'm like, send me out for everything. Yeah, everything,
- 32:59Speaker 2: you could send me out for semi out.
- 33:00Speaker 1: How are you even paying them?
- 33:02Speaker 2: My agent? Yeah, well, they only take a percentage of
- 33:05Speaker 2: what I get if I book something. I was working
- 33:07Speaker 2: at a bar.
- 33:08Speaker 1: Which I hated working at the bar.
- 33:11Speaker 2: I hated bartending. Like I love to service people, I
- 33:14Speaker 2: hate the service industry. Yeah, I'll say after hours and
- 33:19Speaker 2: train everybody in their mother. Do not ask me for
- 33:22Speaker 2: a goddamn beer at a bar. I that is miserable.
- 33:26Speaker 2: I don't help people I admire. I am an overtipper
- 33:29Speaker 2: because I couldn't. I can't imagine doing that myself. I
- 33:34Speaker 2: look at nursing and some other professions the same way.
- 33:37Speaker 2: I admire people who do it because I just don't
- 33:39Speaker 2: have the ability to do it. So I started working
- 33:44Speaker 2: at this bar. I'm there one night a friend of mine,
- 33:47Speaker 2: everybody calls her cue. She's like, this awesome athlete. She's
- 33:50Speaker 2: actually I think she's having her baby soon. She moved
- 33:54Speaker 2: out too, since moved out to Nevada. She comes in
- 33:57Speaker 2: one night and she's like, you look miserable. You hate this.
- 34:01Speaker 2: She's like, why don't you just come work downtown with us?
- 34:03Speaker 2: And I was like, I can't let them find out
- 34:05Speaker 2: that I'm working at another gym I'm going through. She's like,
- 34:08Speaker 2: just come, She's like, meet the owners with I think
- 34:11Speaker 2: that was like a Thursday night, Friday night I went
- 34:13Speaker 2: in to. This was across the two and two Friday
- 34:17Speaker 2: night I went or Friday during the day. I met
- 34:20Speaker 2: the owners. Saturday morning, I was working and I was like,
- 34:23Speaker 2: just keep this on the deal. I don't want a
- 34:25Speaker 2: ton of classes. I'm trying to audition, I'm trying to
- 34:27Speaker 2: do a bunch of other things. And I was like,
- 34:28Speaker 2: I don't want and when I get my gym back
- 34:31Speaker 2: or if I could get my gym back, I don't
- 34:33Speaker 2: want to leave you guys hanging right. So everything was
- 34:36Speaker 2: so up in the air, and how are you doing
- 34:40Speaker 2: at this point because I'm driving my car. Well, I
- 34:44Speaker 2: had at the same time, So me and my old
- 34:47Speaker 2: roommate had a sweet deal on an apartment on Ninth
- 34:50Speaker 2: Avenue in twenty first Street. Okay, he had it forever
- 34:53Speaker 2: since he went to NYU. Yeah, he's forty two years old. Long,
- 35:00Speaker 2: he's forty two years old now. At the time, it's
- 35:03Speaker 2: like five six years ago. They had found out that
- 35:06Speaker 2: we were getting this sweet deal on this apartment and
- 35:08Speaker 2: they wanted to jack up the rent. So our rent
- 35:11Speaker 2: was going from like three thousand dollars a month that
- 35:13Speaker 2: we were splitting to six thousand dollars a month. So
- 35:19Speaker 2: it's like, how are we going to do this? So
- 35:21Speaker 2: I leave my apartment. Some nights I'd stay at my parents' house.
- 35:25Speaker 2: Some nights I'd stay on buddy's couches. Some nights I'd
- 35:28Speaker 2: stay in my car. But I needed to be in
- 35:31Speaker 2: the city because I'm like, this is where I can hustle,
- 35:34Speaker 2: this is where I can make some moves. I'll bartend,
- 35:36Speaker 2: I'll teach classes, I'll go to auditions. I'll do whatever
- 35:39Speaker 2: I have to do to start to make money. Funny
- 35:42Speaker 2: thing is I booked this Crest commercial. I didn't think
- 35:45Speaker 2: much of it. Thank you for Crest. I'll never use
- 35:48Speaker 2: another toothpaste butt Crest. I booked this commercial. All I
- 35:53Speaker 2: do in the commercial is smile. Commercial gets picked up.
- 35:56Speaker 2: My agent calls me and she's like, hey, you know
- 35:59Speaker 2: you're going to get this than this, And these checks
- 36:02Speaker 2: just start rolling in and I go this is all
- 36:06Speaker 2: from one commercial. I'm like, I got to book more commercials.
- 36:10Speaker 2: So it starts to help me pull out a dad
- 36:12Speaker 2: a little bit. I didn't know where the guy's from
- 36:15Speaker 2: Solace the original, you know, founding owners, Uh call me
- 36:19Speaker 2: up and they're like, hey, would you want to come
- 36:21Speaker 2: over here and work whatever they're paying you downtown, we'll
- 36:24Speaker 2: pay you more. So I was like, all right, that
- 36:27Speaker 2: sounds good. Yeah. So I was like, could I do both?
- 36:30Speaker 2: Because I didn't want to leave them hanging. And the
- 36:33Speaker 2: guys downtown were like, hey, listen, if you're going to
- 36:34Speaker 2: go up there, we'd rather just stay up there. Yeah,
- 36:37Speaker 2: I don't want you. So I was like, all right,
- 36:38Speaker 2: were fine, and they were paying they were. I went
- 36:40Speaker 2: into their officer like what do you want mm hm,
- 36:43Speaker 2: And I was like, oh my god. And I said
- 36:46Speaker 2: to them, and I could swear on a stack butt,
- 36:48Speaker 2: I go, listen, don't pay me anything. Let me show
- 36:50Speaker 2: you what I could do. You know, give me a month.
- 36:53Speaker 2: Let me show you what I could do, and we'll
- 36:54Speaker 2: take it from there. So for the first two months,
- 36:57Speaker 2: I didn't even get paid.
- 36:58Speaker 1: That's crazy, considering your sity c.
- 37:00Speaker 2: Yeah. So I well, I started to make some money
- 37:02Speaker 2: and stuff, but I wanted to prove to them that
- 37:04Speaker 2: I was dedicated, that I wanted to be there because
- 37:06Speaker 2: I really did appreciate the space and I was like,
- 37:10Speaker 2: I could grow this, I can make this happen. Because
- 37:12Speaker 2: when I first walked in, I go, this whole top floor.
- 37:16Speaker 2: You guys aren't doing anything with this.
- 37:17Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll tell them a little bit about how the
- 37:20Speaker 1: gym is set up.
- 37:21Speaker 2: Yeah, So Solace's two floors. It's eleven thousand square feet.
- 37:24Speaker 2: There's this huge in New York huge. There's this massive
- 37:29Speaker 2: floor up top, it's probably two thousand square feet, and
- 37:32Speaker 2: then there's a lower level, which is about anywhere from
- 37:34Speaker 2: sixty five hundred to seven thousand square feet. They were
- 37:37Speaker 2: only using the basement for classes. Upstairs, they were only
- 37:40Speaker 2: doing like gymnastics classes once a week or something like that.
- 37:44Speaker 2: And I said to them, I was teaching a ton
- 37:47Speaker 2: of classes. I'm doing all most of their crossfey classes.
- 37:50Speaker 2: And I go, hey, as like, I think we should
- 37:53Speaker 2: do like a hit class or something upstairs, like something
- 37:55Speaker 2: not CrossFit CrossFit esque with the essence of CrossFit but
- 37:59Speaker 2: not strictly CrossFit class, like we could do CrossFit without
- 38:02Speaker 2: a bar bell basically. And they're like, all right, what
- 38:04Speaker 2: do you need? And I go, I need five boxes
- 38:09Speaker 2: or four boxes. We started with four boxes, four rowers,
- 38:12Speaker 2: and a couple sets of kettlebells. So I started putting
- 38:14Speaker 2: these classes on class bass and teaching all of them myself.
- 38:18Speaker 2: Put five on, and then I put ten on, and
- 38:20Speaker 2: then I put you know. And when they first said
- 38:21Speaker 2: they were like, well, if this works out with fifteen
- 38:24Speaker 2: person classes, if you could put twenty classes on the schedule,
- 38:28Speaker 2: we'll be rolling in money. I was like, I don't
- 38:31Speaker 2: see how that'll work, but okay, fine. So ten became fifteen,
- 38:38Speaker 2: fifteen became twenty. Now now I'm teaching twenty of these classes,
- 38:43Speaker 2: twenty CrossFit class. So I'm up to like forty class
- 38:46Speaker 2: a week. I'm doing private here and there.
- 38:48Speaker 1: How many other instructors are there at the gym at
- 38:50Speaker 1: this time.
- 38:51Speaker 2: Well, they only wanted me teaching this thing, but they
- 38:54Speaker 2: were I mean, everybody else was just a CrossFit coach. Yeah,
- 38:57Speaker 2: so they had no real group fitness experience. And CrossFit
- 39:00Speaker 2: classes are obviously a little different than a group fit class.
- 39:05Speaker 2: It's not as obviously group fits a little faster music
- 39:08Speaker 2: and lighting and everything like that. So I would always
- 39:11Speaker 2: like trying to make it more of a group fit
- 39:14Speaker 2: class mixed with cross it. I was like, I need
- 39:17Speaker 2: to hire somebody else. I need some help here. So
- 39:19Speaker 2: that's when I started hiring other coaches and stuff, and
- 39:22Speaker 2: it started to really do well. And now it's where
- 39:25Speaker 2: there we have sixty something classes a week on the schedule,
- 39:29Speaker 2: you know. And it's probably the thing that saved the
- 39:32Speaker 2: gym because for a while they were just treating the
- 39:35Speaker 2: gym like it was a you know, the little rascals
- 39:37Speaker 2: were running it like they were running it to the ground,
- 39:40Speaker 2: and I was like, we need to change up this
- 39:42Speaker 2: model here, we need to do with something a little different.
- 39:44Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like it was also something that saved you.
- 39:47Speaker 1: Like all the had a purpose, and maybe sooner or later,
- 39:51Speaker 1: this purpose comes with not living in your car.
- 39:55Speaker 2: So it got to a point where I was doing
- 39:57Speaker 2: really well and I at the time, I started to
- 40:01Speaker 2: sub lease places, or if somebody was leaving town for
- 40:04Speaker 2: a week or a month, I would go and stay
- 40:06Speaker 2: at their place. And then finally I was on Street Easy.
- 40:10Speaker 2: I'm like, I just need my own place. I was
- 40:12Speaker 2: bouncing around so much, and I was like, I need
- 40:14Speaker 2: my own place. I find this apartment on street Easy
- 40:17Speaker 2: and it was right on twenty sixth Street. I love
- 40:20Speaker 2: the neighborhood. I used to live over there. I'm like,
- 40:23Speaker 2: I'm just going to go for it. And now I've
- 40:24Speaker 2: been in the same place for almost three it's about
- 40:27Speaker 2: three years now.
- 40:27Speaker 1: Wow.
- 40:28Speaker 2: Yeah, and my rent's ridiculous at this point, but I
- 40:33Speaker 2: love it.
- 40:33Speaker 1: And I know, how did you get the apartment without
- 40:36Speaker 1: having like a ton of annual salary to show?
- 40:40Speaker 2: So that's what happened. So I found it on Street Easy.
- 40:43Speaker 2: This girl, this woman was moving to London and she's like,
- 40:47Speaker 2: I need to be out by next week. Anybody. The
- 40:51Speaker 2: rent was three grand a month. She's like, I could
- 40:54Speaker 2: give it to you for twenty five hundred. My company
- 40:56Speaker 2: will pay for the other part of it. Yeah, And
- 40:59Speaker 2: she's like, I just need to get rid of it.
- 41:00Speaker 2: So I called the broker, or she put me in
- 41:02Speaker 2: touch with the broker. I told the broker. I was like, hey, listen,
- 41:04Speaker 2: I'll pay you up front cash if I could have
- 41:07Speaker 2: this port. And it was only supposed to be for
- 41:08Speaker 2: three months. So I paid for the three months upfront
- 41:12Speaker 2: because that's yeah, I was doing pretty well at this point,
- 41:15Speaker 2: or I made enough money where I was doing okay,
- 41:17Speaker 2: and I'm still like chipping away, like all these credit
- 41:20Speaker 2: card bills and stuff. And then when the lease was up,
- 41:25Speaker 2: they were like, hey, do you want to renew it?
- 41:27Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, I could I just do
- 41:28Speaker 2: it for a couple months because I don't know if
- 41:29Speaker 2: I can afford this, right, And that couple months became
- 41:34Speaker 2: three years.
- 41:35Speaker 1: And now we're still there.
- 41:36Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, obviously everybody would love a bigger
- 41:39Speaker 2: apartment and you know, but I love my neighborhood. That's
- 41:42Speaker 2: how I don't want to leave that neighborhood. I'm in,
- 41:44Speaker 2: like flat.
- 41:44Speaker 1: Iron and you get to walk to work every day for.
- 41:47Speaker 2: I don't buy. I have a subway card, but I
- 41:51Speaker 2: don't really use it. I don't really have to get
- 41:53Speaker 2: an uber or you know, get on a bus or
- 41:55Speaker 2: anything like that, which is my biggest pet peeve in
- 41:59Speaker 2: the world. I hate traffic. It drives me insane. I get,
- 42:03Speaker 2: you know, so anxious in you know, road rage. So
- 42:09Speaker 2: it's good because I get to walk. If I want
- 42:11Speaker 2: to run, I could run, Yeah, if my dog's not
- 42:15Speaker 2: pissing all over the place.
- 42:21Speaker 1: Taking a quick break from today's episode to give my sponsor,
- 42:24Speaker 1: Athletic Greens a little bit of love, I'm just going
- 42:26Speaker 1: to come out and say it. I am a sucker
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- 42:41Speaker 1: am running out the door first thing in the morning
- 42:43Speaker 1: and I forget to grab my shaker bottle, I know
- 42:45Speaker 1: that at least I have it with me on the go,
- 42:47Speaker 1: and I don't have to skip out on getting those
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- 42:53Speaker 1: And I mean that I feel a drastic difference with
- 42:56Speaker 1: my stomach and if I feel bloated or not, and
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- 43:06Speaker 1: to Athleticgreens dot com slash Hurdle. There they are offering
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- 43:16Speaker 1: that address is Athleticgreens dot com slash Hurdle to get
- 43:20Speaker 1: yours today, let's get back to it. So your parents
- 43:29Speaker 1: must be pretty proud of you at this point because
- 43:31Speaker 1: you have gone from talking to your mom in the
- 43:35Speaker 1: gym office telling her should I declare bankruptcy?
- 43:39Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what moved me the most was my
- 43:42Speaker 2: sister for my birthday, like two years ago, three years ago,
- 43:45Speaker 2: wrote me this card and she's like, I can't believe
- 43:47Speaker 2: you turned that all around. She's like, you made something
- 43:50Speaker 2: so negative or positive. She's like, it's so impressive. And
- 43:54Speaker 2: when I moved to New York, my whole family stay
- 43:56Speaker 2: in Jersey. They know they're all live within a town
- 43:59Speaker 2: radius of each other. I kind of came here and
- 44:03Speaker 2: just chased what I wanted, you know, and I just
- 44:07Speaker 2: always did what I wanted to do. And yeah, my
- 44:11Speaker 2: mom's always I mean, if I was shoveling shit right now,
- 44:15Speaker 2: my mother would be proud of me. So she's just
- 44:18Speaker 2: that way. She's always back. There's one person I knew
- 44:21Speaker 2: who would be at every wrestling match if I was
- 44:24Speaker 2: sitting there, if I lost one, it doesn't matter, she'd
- 44:26Speaker 2: be there.
- 44:27Speaker 1: You know what, I keep noticing. You keep talking about
- 44:31Speaker 1: your mom, and you're not talking a lot about your dad.
- 44:34Speaker 2: My dad is was supportive through a lot of this stuff,
- 44:38Speaker 2: but we would butt heads, yeah, because he's just old
- 44:42Speaker 2: school and the fact that he you know where I
- 44:47Speaker 2: get a lot of the it's always my fault. I
- 44:52Speaker 2: like taking the blame or I take the blame for
- 44:54Speaker 2: a lot of things because my dad would always make
- 44:57Speaker 2: me feel that way. It's kind of the extreme owner
- 45:00Speaker 2: ship idea. I actually just wanted to go see Jocko's
- 45:04Speaker 2: live podcast, and it's it's a very military style. My
- 45:07Speaker 2: dad was in Vietnam and then he was a cop,
- 45:10Speaker 2: and then he was a disciplinarian at a school in Noork.
- 45:13Speaker 2: So he's always been this authority figure, and it's always like,
- 45:16Speaker 2: take responsibility for everything in your life. And when I
- 45:22Speaker 2: went through the lawsuit with the business, he's like, that's
- 45:24Speaker 2: because you're an idiot. You signed this contract and you
- 45:26Speaker 2: didn't know what you're doing, blah blah blah. And then
- 45:28Speaker 2: you know, if I lost on the show, it's like, well,
- 45:31Speaker 2: that's because you're an idiot and you didn't do this
- 45:33Speaker 2: and you didn't And if I lost in a wrestling match,
- 45:35Speaker 2: he's like, that's because you're a weekend you didn't train
- 45:37Speaker 2: hard enough and blah blah. And I'm like, how is
- 45:40Speaker 2: everything my fault? But you know, I always try to,
- 45:45Speaker 2: you know, see the silver lining and things. I'm like, wait,
- 45:48Speaker 2: it is my fault. I probably didn't train hard enough.
- 45:51Speaker 2: I probably didn't dop my eyes and crossed my tea's
- 45:55Speaker 2: when it came to the business. And I think that's
- 45:58Speaker 2: one of the biggest problems that we have in this country,
- 46:00Speaker 2: is that nobody takes responsibility. If it's going wrong in
- 46:03Speaker 2: your life, you probably had you could have probably done
- 46:06Speaker 2: something differently. And I kind of started to own that,
- 46:11Speaker 2: you know, only in the last year or so, when
- 46:13Speaker 2: you start to hear other people talk about it. Especially
- 46:15Speaker 2: people you admire. It makes a lot of sense.
- 46:21Speaker 1: Why in the last year.
- 46:23Speaker 2: Well, because last year, well last April it was my birthday.
- 46:29Speaker 2: Was my birthday is April sixth I had a party
- 46:32Speaker 2: on April seventh. April thirteenth or fourteenth, my mom calls
- 46:37Speaker 2: me up and she's like, we're taking dead at hospital.
- 46:40Speaker 2: He's having a stroke. So for the first couple of days,
- 46:46Speaker 2: you know, a lot of the doctors were like, I
- 46:48Speaker 2: don't think he's gonna make it. Most strokes are you know,
- 46:52Speaker 2: good strokes. Anyway, the brain bleeds for an hour or two,
- 46:57Speaker 2: a couple hours, maybe a day. So his brain was
- 46:59Speaker 2: bleed for like two days, and they were like, even
- 47:02Speaker 2: if he comes out of this, we don't think he'll
- 47:04Speaker 2: ever be the same. Right. So it was a big
- 47:09Speaker 2: kick in the balls for sure, because at last year
- 47:12Speaker 2: this time, I'm like, oh, I just turned thirty five,
- 47:15Speaker 2: things are going good with the gym. And then I
- 47:18Speaker 2: wake up seven am to a phone call. Well my
- 47:21Speaker 2: brother called me twice, and then my mother called me,
- 47:23Speaker 2: and I'm like, something's got to be wrong. Yeah, So
- 47:29Speaker 2: everything else kind of takes a back seat. I Uh,
- 47:34Speaker 2: I'd go to work, I'd go home at night, I'd
- 47:38Speaker 2: go back to Jersey to sleep in the hospital with
- 47:42Speaker 2: my brother. You know, we'd kind of stay there. My
- 47:45Speaker 2: family's a wreck at this point. My older brother's got kids,
- 47:47Speaker 2: my sister's got a kid, so me and my little
- 47:50Speaker 2: brother kind of took responsibility and trying to be there
- 47:53Speaker 2: as much as possible. Seven months he was in the hospital,
- 47:57Speaker 2: first couple of weeks were brutal, and I'm sitting there
- 48:00Speaker 2: and I'm just trying to understand, like everything he's kind
- 48:03Speaker 2: of told me, you know, everything that's I could have
- 48:09Speaker 2: probably done differently, And I'm like, what's this going to
- 48:13Speaker 2: look like? How's my family dynamic now if my Dad's gone.
- 48:18Speaker 2: So it was it was an adjustment for sure, but
- 48:24Speaker 2: that sparked what is kind of my new goal. My
- 48:29Speaker 2: new journey is the strong ideas I wanted to do something.
- 48:34Speaker 2: I started them like three years ago, and about four
- 48:38Speaker 2: years ago I had originally drew up the plans for
- 48:40Speaker 2: like this fitness festival. I wanted to do New York
- 48:43Speaker 2: because I love events, I love bringing people together, I
- 48:45Speaker 2: love having people around. And I went to the Coffee
- 48:50Speaker 2: Festival and the Comic Con and the Arnold Classic and
- 48:54Speaker 2: all these different the boat show, and I'm going to
- 48:57Speaker 2: all these events to celebrate all these different things. I
- 49:00Speaker 2: was like, we don't have this in New York. There's
- 49:02Speaker 2: nothing about fitness in New York, and New York fitness
- 49:05Speaker 2: scene is a little bit more dynamic and a little
- 49:09Speaker 2: bit more boutiquy than anywhere else. Right, even so I'm like,
- 49:14Speaker 2: all right, if I could get everybody together under one
- 49:16Speaker 2: roof and kind of celebrate this and give it a
- 49:18Speaker 2: little purpose, Like why we all working out? You know,
- 49:21Speaker 2: not everybody wants to. New Yorkers don't work out to
- 49:24Speaker 2: be bodybuilders. I mean, how many bodybuilders do you know?
- 49:27Speaker 2: Probably know a thousand people that work out, but nobody's
- 49:29Speaker 2: who's trying to be a bodybuilder. Right. I grew up
- 49:31Speaker 2: on that you got to be a bodybuilder and eat this.
- 49:34Speaker 2: And I'm like that's miserable. You know. New York's don't
- 49:37Speaker 2: want to do that, and being a New Yorker is
- 49:38Speaker 2: miserable enough, you know. So I was like, what are
- 49:42Speaker 2: we celebrating. It's like, we need to get in better shape,
- 49:45Speaker 2: we want to have a more graceful life. So I
- 49:48Speaker 2: kind of started throwing these events where I bring in
- 49:50Speaker 2: all these people who talk about training and talk about
- 49:52Speaker 2: longevity and health and wellness and all these things nutrition.
- 49:56Speaker 2: And I originally wanted to have it at the Armory,
- 50:00Speaker 2: as I saw a bunch of shows there and I'm like, oh,
- 50:02Speaker 2: I can't be that much having Then when you start
- 50:04Speaker 2: to dig into it, you're like, that's ten thousand dollars
- 50:07Speaker 2: for generators, twenty thousand dollars for security and this and that,
- 50:11Speaker 2: and you're looking at a one hundred thousand dollars day.
- 50:13Speaker 2: And then you only could load in at during this
- 50:16Speaker 2: time and load out during this I'm like, all right,
- 50:17Speaker 2: I'm just going to do it at my gym. So
- 50:19Speaker 2: I started doing these events, and this year I wanted
- 50:24Speaker 2: to understand why this happened to my father and how
- 50:26Speaker 2: I could stop it, how I could understand it more
- 50:29Speaker 2: so it doesn't happen to my mother or you know,
- 50:32Speaker 2: my aunt or anybody else in my family. And if
- 50:35Speaker 2: I'm concerned about these things, everybody else probably pretty concerned too,
- 50:38Speaker 2: they just don't even realize it. So I wanted to
- 50:41Speaker 2: bring awareness to like Alzheimer's and dementia, because after you
- 50:44Speaker 2: have a stroke, this could happen, you know. I always
- 50:47Speaker 2: compare it to like lights on in a building. As
- 50:50Speaker 2: we get older, lights start to turn off, you know.
- 50:54Speaker 2: And why this is happening is probably not eating the
- 50:57Speaker 2: right way, We're probably not Sleeping's not the only reason,
- 51:01Speaker 2: but these things play a factor in it. So if
- 51:02Speaker 2: we kind of be as preventative as possible, kind of
- 51:06Speaker 2: live a more healthy lifestyle, we could avoid this and
- 51:12Speaker 2: what happened to my dad.
- 51:13Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wanted to kind of bring awareness to
- 51:16Speaker 3: that and teach people that living a healthy lifestyle not
- 51:21Speaker 3: only makes you look better, because that's kind of the
- 51:24Speaker 3: cherry on top of the cake.
- 51:25Speaker 2: It's going to help you live more gracefully into your fifties, sixties, seventies,
- 51:30Speaker 2: so on and so forth.
- 51:31Speaker 1: How's he doing now?
- 51:33Speaker 2: He's doing good. He uh, you know, he's still kind
- 51:37Speaker 2: of jacked up a little bit. He forgets a lot.
- 51:40Speaker 2: He's more, i want to say, subdued than he used
- 51:44Speaker 2: to be. My dad was always a kind of military
- 51:46Speaker 2: style angry, you.
- 51:48Speaker 1: Know, anger military style angry.
- 51:50Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like uh you ever watch what's a movie
- 51:55Speaker 2: full metal jacket? Like the drill and example. Yeah, he'd
- 52:00Speaker 2: always be like when he walked in the house, me
- 52:03Speaker 2: and my brothers and my sister like all right, everybody
- 52:05Speaker 2: had attention. It's all yeah, so like oh shit, and
- 52:10Speaker 2: I always kind of my brothers, you know, kind of
- 52:14Speaker 2: fell in line. I always kind of did my own thing.
- 52:17Speaker 2: I was the artsy weirdo one.
- 52:19Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 52:20Speaker 2: So yeah, so now I mean he's he's doing it right.
- 52:25Speaker 2: He called me the other day and we actually had
- 52:27Speaker 2: a pretty good conversation. Started out as, don't drive, it's
- 52:32Speaker 2: going to be really bad out ye know, yeah, it's
- 52:38Speaker 2: snowing over here, and I'm like, yeah, I was like,
- 52:40Speaker 2: it's not snowing yet here. He's like really, He's like,
- 52:43Speaker 2: maybe I should come in. He's like, how are you
- 52:44Speaker 2: going to come in? He's like, oh, I'm driving. He
- 52:46Speaker 2: hasn't driven. He's like, I'll have Mommy drive me in.
- 52:51Speaker 2: We'll hang out, we'll go get dinner or something. I'm like, great, yeah,
- 52:54Speaker 2: let's do it. He's like, you know, we should hang
- 52:56Speaker 2: out more. And I was like, my dad would never
- 52:58Speaker 2: see shit like that. Yeah. So yeah, I don't even
- 53:03Speaker 2: know how to look at him. Maybe it was a
- 53:04Speaker 2: good thing that happened to him, but he was to
- 53:07Speaker 2: see somebody you admire that much, you know. He was
- 53:12Speaker 2: always strong, Like I've seen my dad cut his hand
- 53:14Speaker 2: open and you know, put a band aid over and
- 53:17Speaker 2: not care. He was just always like such a macho
- 53:19Speaker 2: guy's guy. He never cared about anything. Yeah, to be
- 53:24Speaker 2: curled up in a ball in a bed, shriveled up.
- 53:27Speaker 2: You know, if you're in a bed like that for
- 53:30Speaker 2: six seven months, everything at trophees and falls apart. And
- 53:35Speaker 2: that's why I didn't. I don't want to see other
- 53:37Speaker 2: I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. It's such
- 53:41Speaker 2: a horrible thing. Uh. And then when you're talking to
- 53:44Speaker 2: somebody and they really clueless to who you are. You know,
- 53:50Speaker 2: a lot of the drugs they were giving them, uh,
- 53:53Speaker 2: you know, kind of messed with his brain. And they
- 53:56Speaker 2: give this for this and this to counteract this and this.
- 54:00Speaker 2: I'm like, if he would have just worked out more,
- 54:02Speaker 2: if he would have done more stuff, he could have
- 54:04Speaker 2: recovered faster.
- 54:05Speaker 1: He sound like you're done now. Yeah, yeah, well you're
- 54:08Speaker 1: the one that did this to you.
- 54:10Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's true though, And I tell everybody that
- 54:14Speaker 2: it's like, take responsibility for who you are. And that's
- 54:17Speaker 2: kind of what I said about the book. It's like
- 54:20Speaker 2: everybody's got their gifts. You know, you were asking me, like,
- 54:24Speaker 2: what books I recommend him. One is kind of a
- 54:28Speaker 2: kid's book, a child simple story about like kind of
- 54:32Speaker 2: taking ownership for who you are.
- 54:33Speaker 1: What's the book?
- 54:34Speaker 2: Well, it's called Stone Soup. And I put this up
- 54:39Speaker 2: on Instagram like a year ago or two years ago,
- 54:42Speaker 2: and somebody's like, oh, that's about a guy who tricks people,
- 54:45Speaker 2: and I'm like, all right, you can look at it
- 54:46Speaker 2: that way. I look at it the way its beggar
- 54:48Speaker 2: comes to town and he knocks on everybody's door asking
- 54:52Speaker 2: for food, help and shelter, and nobody's willing to help
- 54:57Speaker 2: him out. Goes into the center of town, starts enough
- 55:00Speaker 2: this pot of water. He's got it burning, and one
- 55:03Speaker 2: guy comes over and he's like, oh, what do you make.
- 55:04Speaker 2: He's like, oh, Stone soup. He's like you should try something.
- 55:07Speaker 2: He's like, if you have any carrots, though, it'll taste
- 55:09Speaker 2: way better if you put some carrots, and the actually
- 55:11Speaker 2: throws carrots in. Another guy comes up and he's like, oh,
- 55:14Speaker 2: what are you cook And he's like, I got you know, uh,
- 55:18Speaker 2: I got stone soup. If you had a turkey or
- 55:20Speaker 2: chicken or something we could put in there, it'll taste
- 55:22Speaker 2: a lot better. Slowly, but surely, everybody in town throws
- 55:26Speaker 2: in their ingredients, throws in their gifts, and at the
- 55:29Speaker 2: end of the day, everybody's kind of celebrating and drinking
- 55:31Speaker 2: and eating and having a good time. So it's everybody's
- 55:35Speaker 2: got their gifts right. And I think my dad's gift
- 55:39Speaker 2: was you know, I didn't understand that. I was like,
- 55:41Speaker 2: why he's so mad, whise he's so angry? And his
- 55:45Speaker 2: gift to me was that he was this, you know
- 55:49Speaker 2: kind of person who showed me at the time. I
- 55:53Speaker 2: didn't understand right the first time I went to him.
- 55:56Speaker 2: I didn't understand why he wouldn't help me, Why you
- 55:58Speaker 2: wouldn't be you know the TV dad. Yeah, but it
- 56:03Speaker 2: taught me how to be a lot stronger. It taught
- 56:05Speaker 2: it got me through those shitty times, you know, because
- 56:08Speaker 2: there's especially when you're going through like when I was
- 56:11Speaker 2: going through the lawsuits and I'm sleeping in my car,
- 56:14Speaker 2: it's easy to feel bad for yourself, be like, oh
- 56:17Speaker 2: poor me, why me? It's like, no, you fucked up.
- 56:20Speaker 2: You got to figure this out, and no one's going
- 56:22Speaker 2: to help you figure it out, you know, when you're
- 56:24Speaker 2: that lower. Even my mom was like, well, it's just
- 56:27Speaker 2: a clear bank. And it was my dad in me
- 56:30Speaker 2: that was like, don't give up. You screw this up,
- 56:33Speaker 2: now figure it out right. So that was like his
- 56:37Speaker 2: his gift. It was never there was never leniency. There's
- 56:41Speaker 2: never a give up in that.
- 56:44Speaker 1: Obviously, your dad played a huge role in shaping who
- 56:48Speaker 1: you are. But who else do you think has given
- 56:51Speaker 1: you some really excellent advice along the way.
- 56:56Speaker 2: I think my dad was that, you know, they and
- 57:00Speaker 2: my brother and my mom or the yang. My older
- 57:02Speaker 2: brother would would always be the one to be like,
- 57:06Speaker 2: do you like I liked art and everybody's like, you
- 57:11Speaker 2: can't do art. My brother's like, if you like it,
- 57:13Speaker 2: do that, Yeah, chase it, do that. And when I
- 57:16Speaker 2: said I was going to move to the city or
- 57:18Speaker 2: go on TV or do whatever, anything that would you know,
- 57:21Speaker 2: my family's very blue collar. Everybody in my family's a
- 57:24Speaker 2: teacher or cop or a fireman. And when I said
- 57:28Speaker 2: I'm going to go do all this abnormal you know
- 57:33Speaker 2: things in the eyes of my family, my brother was
- 57:36Speaker 2: always super supportive of it. And knowing that he was
- 57:38Speaker 2: there kind of backing me up. That's why I'm like,
- 57:43Speaker 2: I'm loyal to a fault When it comes to work
- 57:45Speaker 2: and different things, because that's the way I grew up.
- 57:49Speaker 2: If I knew something was wrong, I could run to
- 57:51Speaker 2: my brother, I could run to my family. I always
- 57:53Speaker 2: had that, and I find it almost sad and in
- 57:57Speaker 2: a point where people don't have that, when people don't
- 58:00Speaker 2: have somebody that could rely on when things when things
- 58:03Speaker 2: were at it darkest, I'm like, all right, I know
- 58:06Speaker 2: I can handle my shit, but I also have my
- 58:09Speaker 2: family kind of backing me up, so that that helped
- 58:12Speaker 2: me make a lot of the power plays that I
- 58:15Speaker 2: did and kind of take risks at different points in
- 58:18Speaker 2: my life.
- 58:18Speaker 1: What's been some of the best advice that you've been
- 58:21Speaker 1: given in your career. When you started at SOLA, you
- 58:26Speaker 1: were not a partner, so you've obviously taken some good
- 58:31Speaker 1: steps along the way to not only build your personal brand,
- 58:35Speaker 1: but also build the brand of this gym.
- 58:38Speaker 2: I can't really pinpoint where I heard it, or you know,
- 58:41Speaker 2: if it was ever really said to me. It's kind
- 58:43Speaker 2: of just the way I've been. I just want to
- 58:46Speaker 2: be really good at what I love because then, and
- 58:50Speaker 2: obviously it's written everywhere, it's you know, be so good
- 58:53Speaker 2: they can't ignore you. I think somebody said that as
- 58:56Speaker 2: an actor or somebody. But that's that's what I thought.
- 59:00Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm going to be so good. That's why
- 59:02Speaker 2: don't pay me to do it, because I'm going to
- 59:04Speaker 2: be I'm going to be such a vital part of
- 59:06Speaker 2: this place that you'd be an idiot if you got
- 59:09Speaker 2: rid of me.
- 59:10Speaker 1: Right.
- 59:10Speaker 2: But it wasn't something somebody had to tell me to do.
- 59:13Speaker 2: Wasn't something like I'm going to go do that. It's
- 59:16Speaker 2: just something I did on a daily basis. I enjoy
- 59:18Speaker 2: doing it. I love doing it. So my advice to
- 59:21Speaker 2: everybody all the time is like, find what you really
- 59:24Speaker 2: like doing. Find what you would do if somebody wasn't
- 59:27Speaker 2: paying you, if there was no money involved. What do
- 59:30Speaker 2: you enjoy doing, Whether it's playing video games, reading books,
- 59:34Speaker 2: you know, doing podcasts, training people, it doesn't matter what
- 59:38Speaker 2: it is, be really good at that. And nowadays it's
- 59:41Speaker 2: really easy to find an opportunity to do those things
- 59:46Speaker 2: where you could review books on Instagram or on a podcast,
- 59:50Speaker 2: you can review video games, or you know, be a
- 59:54Speaker 2: I was just watching this documentary the other day about
- 59:56Speaker 2: these kids who make millions of dollars playing video game competitively,
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: millions of dollars. Like, the most relevant person on the
- 1:00:04Speaker 2: planet right now is some kid who like plays video
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: games really well, you know, he's like a multi million
- 1:00:09Speaker 2: Like Drake's asking him to hang out. Yeah, this kid
- 1:00:12Speaker 2: who plays video games. So it's crazy to me.
- 1:00:14Speaker 1: What am I doing wrong?
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: Right? So you think about it, And that's all I
- 1:00:21Speaker 2: wanted to do, And that's why I go to so
- 1:00:24Speaker 2: many different Last week, I did a certification. This weekend,
- 1:00:27Speaker 2: I did a certification. Next this coming weekend, I'm doing
- 1:00:30Speaker 2: a service game.
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: And when you say certification, those are fitness certifications, different skills.
- 1:00:34Speaker 2: Yeah, so I did one for you know, the USA
- 1:00:37Speaker 2: w and then I a Maze certification, which is like
- 1:00:41Speaker 2: a tool that on it kind of made popular in
- 1:00:45Speaker 2: the last couple of years. And then this week and
- 1:00:47Speaker 2: I'm re certifying my CrossFit certification only because I truly
- 1:00:53Speaker 2: believe that you can learn from anyone, and I I
- 1:00:56Speaker 2: can't be the best trainer for you unless I know
- 1:00:59Speaker 2: what the hell I'm talking aunt and continue to learn.
- 1:01:02Speaker 2: So how do I service my clientele better? How do
- 1:01:05Speaker 2: I learn more? How do I learn how to make
- 1:01:09Speaker 2: you better? And if I'm doing that for people, then
- 1:01:13Speaker 2: other people notice and you know, money is a byproduct
- 1:01:17Speaker 2: of being really good at what you're doing.
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: Obviously you've learned a lot in the past five years.
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: What do you hope for the next five years.
- 1:01:27Speaker 2: But I always play every day, day to day. Anytime
- 1:01:30Speaker 2: I've ever planned anything, it never works out. Like I
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: opened that gym and I'm like, this will be my gym,
- 1:01:37Speaker 2: this will be great, and that fell apart, and anything
- 1:01:39Speaker 2: I've ever done kind of fell apart. So I just,
- 1:01:43Speaker 2: like I said, I just continue to do what I
- 1:01:45Speaker 2: do on a daily basis really well, you know, despite
- 1:01:50Speaker 2: what's going on around me, I just want to perform
- 1:01:52Speaker 2: the best I can, and people take notice of that,
- 1:01:56Speaker 2: whether you think so or not. There are people always watching,
- 1:01:58Speaker 2: there are people always paying attention. So you want to
- 1:02:00Speaker 2: operate under the the idea that all eyes are on
- 1:02:04Speaker 2: you and that you do what you can do as
- 1:02:06Speaker 2: well as possible. So if I were to tell you
- 1:02:09Speaker 2: five years ago, I would have never thought I'd be here.
- 1:02:11Speaker 2: Five years ago, I was opened to my gym and
- 1:02:13Speaker 2: I was like, this is going to be great and
- 1:02:14Speaker 2: I'll be here, And now it's gone. But it's funny
- 1:02:17Speaker 2: because now a friend of mine has now opened up
- 1:02:19Speaker 2: my old gym again. Yeah, so you never know how
- 1:02:22Speaker 2: the tides are going to turn. I mean, I didn't
- 1:02:25Speaker 2: think my family would be thrown through a loop, and
- 1:02:27Speaker 2: you know kind of deal with all that stuff, but
- 1:02:29Speaker 2: you kind of just kind of roll with the tide.
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: I always say, like, plan for the worst, but hope
- 1:02:39Speaker 2: for the best. You know, hope everything is going to
- 1:02:41Speaker 2: go well. And I know for a fact that I'll
- 1:02:45Speaker 2: continue being the health and wellness world. I told somebody
- 1:02:48Speaker 2: the other day. Somebody asked me we were talking about
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: different gyms, and I was saying, like, rumble in a
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: lot of these places kind of they're just opening up
- 1:02:59Speaker 2: a bunch of studios and eventually their plan is to
- 1:03:01Speaker 2: sell them off. I was like, I don't If I
- 1:03:06Speaker 2: create something, I don't want to sell it off. You know.
- 1:03:08Speaker 2: I want to continue to build it. I want to
- 1:03:10Speaker 2: continue to grow with it. I want to be a
- 1:03:12Speaker 2: part of it. I want to show up to the
- 1:03:13Speaker 2: gym every day. My plan isn't to make something and
- 1:03:16Speaker 2: sell it off. I said to myself a long time
- 1:03:18Speaker 2: ago that I want to be in the gym. If
- 1:03:21Speaker 2: I close my eyes, Mike puts does barbell shrugs said
- 1:03:25Speaker 2: to me, did a cool little kind of thing. One night,
- 1:03:29Speaker 2: we were all hanging out and he's like, close yourrising
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: and he's like, tell me, step for step everything you
- 1:03:34Speaker 2: would do in your perfect day. And in my perfect day,
- 1:03:39Speaker 2: I'm going to the gym and I'm going to probably
- 1:03:42Speaker 2: spend most of the day there train people and work
- 1:03:44Speaker 2: out and teach class. So for me, it's like, if
- 1:03:48Speaker 2: I could do that well into my seventies and eighties,
- 1:03:50Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, I'd love to do that.
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: It's crazy because if you think back on your life
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: right now in that whole chapter when you were doing
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: all the TV stuff, yeah, Like does it feel like
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: it almost never happened?
- 1:04:01Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. I I never bring it up. You know,
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: people are like, why is it in your profile on
- 1:04:06Speaker 2: your Instagram. I go, It's it's not a thing. It's
- 1:04:09Speaker 2: it was cool, it was fun. It was an opportunity
- 1:04:11Speaker 2: that I come up. I enjoyed it because I got
- 1:04:15Speaker 2: paid to just do what I want to do and
- 1:04:17Speaker 2: be me and hang out and compete because I'm one
- 1:04:20Speaker 2: of the things I love about CrossFit. Like even today,
- 1:04:23Speaker 2: I was working out with two of my coaches and
- 1:04:26Speaker 2: were racing each other and I'm like, I feel live again,
- 1:04:31Speaker 2: which is great. Like, that's why I loved about wrestling.
- 1:04:34Speaker 2: That's what I loved about football. People always say you
- 1:04:37Speaker 2: don't watch sports. I said, no, I fucking hate watching sports.
- 1:04:40Speaker 2: I could care less to wear another guy's jersey on
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: my back. I want to compete, obviously, I'm not at
- 1:04:46Speaker 2: the point where I'm willing to sacrifice my shoulder or
- 1:04:49Speaker 2: my leg to do so.
- 1:04:52Speaker 1: It's like things you only say if you want to
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: compete and CrossFit, I don't want to sacrifice my entire body.
- 1:04:58Speaker 2: Well, cross fit, you know, everybody's always like it's so dangerous.
- 1:05:02Speaker 2: I'm like, CrossFit is more safe. Like I did dead
- 1:05:06Speaker 2: lifts and box jumps and rowing today. I know I
- 1:05:10Speaker 2: could do all those things really well. I've done them
- 1:05:12Speaker 2: a hundred times. I can do them fast, I can
- 1:05:13Speaker 2: do them slow. I know what I'm doing. If I
- 1:05:16Speaker 2: step out on the mat and fight another guy, we're
- 1:05:21Speaker 2: going at it. He's looking to kill me and I'm
- 1:05:24Speaker 2: looking to kick his ass. I'm gonna get hurt. It's
- 1:05:28Speaker 2: going to happen, you know. The last Yeah, the last tournament.
- 1:05:32Speaker 2: The last tournament went into I couldn't talk for like
- 1:05:35Speaker 2: two weeks because I got choked out and I couldn't
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: walk because my foot was killing me. I was like
- 1:05:40Speaker 2: doing jiu jitsu tournaments and stuff because I wanted to
- 1:05:42Speaker 2: wrestle again. And there's no real, you know, league for
- 1:05:46Speaker 2: old men to wrestle. And you know, I knocked my tooth.
- 1:05:51Speaker 2: I chip my tooth again, I had a black eye,
- 1:05:53Speaker 2: and I had ring where I'm on my neck, and
- 1:05:55Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm thirty years old. I can keep doing this,
- 1:05:58Speaker 2: so CrossFit for me, it's a lot safer than wrestling
- 1:06:02Speaker 2: somebody on a mat.
- 1:06:03Speaker 1: To each their own, man, you have an opportunity right
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: now to offer yourself one piece of advice when you
- 1:06:09Speaker 1: look back on this time in your life where you're struggling,
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: You're living out of your car, your shoulder is completely
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: off engined. What do you tell yourself looking back on it?
- 1:06:19Speaker 2: Now? Keep going, Just keep going. That's all I can do.
- 1:06:26Speaker 2: You know, people always want to dwell on for me
- 1:06:30Speaker 2: why this happened? You know, this shouldn't happened. People are
- 1:06:37Speaker 2: going to do what they want to do, and things
- 1:06:40Speaker 2: happen all the time. There's no real explanation for him.
- 1:06:44Speaker 2: Why does a child die? Why is you know, that's
- 1:06:48Speaker 2: why I became more spiritual than you know. Religious things
- 1:06:54Speaker 2: are going to happen. You just always need to operate
- 1:06:56Speaker 2: the best you possibly can, have people's best intentions involved,
- 1:07:00Speaker 2: be good to people, and just move on. You know,
- 1:07:04Speaker 2: if I spent the last four or five years of
- 1:07:07Speaker 2: my life trying to get back at my partners or
- 1:07:10Speaker 2: sue them or do all this shit, I'm like, I
- 1:07:13Speaker 2: wouldn't have had all the opportunities that I had. If
- 1:07:16Speaker 2: everything I did was out of vengeance or malice, then
- 1:07:21Speaker 2: I wouldn't have had a lot of the things I
- 1:07:22Speaker 2: have right now. And I'm not saying I'm well off,
- 1:07:25Speaker 2: but I'm I'm pretty content. Obviously, everybody wants more. You
- 1:07:29Speaker 2: should always strive for more, but understand that in the
- 1:07:33Speaker 2: moment right now you have a lot, and that you
- 1:07:35Speaker 2: should just kind of move forward to what you should do.
- 1:07:38Speaker 2: Be good to people, and I think those things will
- 1:07:41Speaker 2: come back to you.
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: I love it. Thanks Kenny, Thank you, thanks for hanging
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: out with me.
- 1:07:46Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: Please take a moment to leave a quick review by
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at Hurdle
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: dot usk. Next with the podcast on Instagram and Twitter
- 1:08:03Speaker 1: at Hurdle Podcast Kenny. Where do they find you? Where
- 1:08:07Speaker 1: do they find your gym?
- 1:08:09Speaker 2: At Kenny Santucci Very easy to find. My Instagram is
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: really entertaining at Solace, New York. We're at thirty second
- 1:08:19Speaker 2: and Park Avenue and then Strong, New York. If you
- 1:08:24Speaker 2: give them a follow, and then Lola loves her following,
- 1:08:26Speaker 2: she's blown up. So at Lola the shar Pei, leave
- 1:08:31Speaker 2: her a comment and don't ask her what she likes
- 1:08:33Speaker 2: to do, because as long as she's not shitting on
- 1:08:36Speaker 2: my bed again, I'm happy about everything she's doing.
- 1:08:39Speaker 1: I am at Emily a body, another hurdle conquered. Catch
- 1:08:44Speaker 1: you guys next time