June 2, 2025 • 44 mins
From viral TikToks to coaching thousands, Michael Smoak from Higher Up Wellness reveals why the fitness industry is broken, how young men can reclaim their confidence, and what really matters when your world falls apart.
You’ll hear the story of how the death of his father became the catalyst for a spiritual awakening… and how physical discipline became the gateway to faith, purpose, and real transformation. Whether you’re 19 and lost, 40 and stuck, or just searching for clarity — this episode will hit you where it hurts and heal you where you need it most.
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Topics Covered:
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The truth about creatine, nicotine, and dopamine addiction
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How to stop chasing cheap dopamine and find real fulfillment
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The Higher Up Wellness challenge changing lives on TikTok
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Why physical health is the foundation for finding your purpose
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How grief, faith, and fatherhood forged Michael’s mission
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Breaking free from vices and reclaiming discipline
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What it really takes to become the man you’re meant to be
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, It's not often that you get to have
somebody come on your show that literally is exploding in
an industry in a way that might not be the
most conventional approach. And this is what one of my
favorite comments from watching Mike's stuff on TikTok and Instagram
(00:23):
is I hate the fitness industry.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Like Mike.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
When when I find that in so many your videos, dude,
I'm like, this is the guy I'm gonna listen to.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This is the guy that I want to understand.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And so, you know, getting the fact that you took
time out of your insane schedule, you're telling us what
you had going on to come on to our show
and chat with us not only about the fitness industry,
but the most important thing for me and I hope
we really dig into this is inspiring young men to
get off their asses and change their lives, for sure.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So thank you so much for coming on, brother.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
No, it's truly an honor.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I was stoked that Buck connected us and started doing
some research on you and your background. Appreciate everything you've
done in your past and your history, and I'm excited
to hopefully create as much value as I can and
if just one person takes just one thing from this conversation,
at least on my end, it'll all be worth it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, i'll tell you what, just before we even started, Geordie,
who's a fitness I mean, he's still grinding hard at
his age, and we we talked automatically about.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Loading up on your dose on creatine.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So I think that's one of the benchmark topics right now,
that one of the things that's infused into everybody's daily routine.
So let's just start with something viable like that. What
talk about the new science that popped and what are
your thoughts on it?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah, I am often anti supplement as they are meant
to supplement an already healthy lifestyle, and I think people
try to use them as one of the, as doctor
Lane Norton calls it so beautifully, the big rocks of
their health, because you have big rocks and small rocks.
Your big rocks are obviously we know your sleep, your training,
your nutrition, and your recovery and anything that recovery looks
(02:18):
like for you. Anything outside of that is truly a
small rock. Supplementation meal timing. But that being said, there
are a few key supplements that I think are dare
I say critical, but definitely pertinent. If you're not looking
to just be practical, but you are truly trying to
take it to an optimal level, there are things you
can do to give.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
You an edge. And creatine is absolutely a staple for me.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Not only is it the most well researched performance supplement
in history as far as exercise goes, there are thousands
of pieces of peer reviewed literature on it. It's been
studied for fifty years, and it is shown time and
time again that in the gym, if you take creatine
on average, unless you're a non responder, you are going
to increase your ability for force output. And what that
(03:04):
translates to in plain English is if I can move
more weight over time because I'm stronger on creatine, I'm
probably going to build more muscle over time. And muscle
is the organ of longevity. If we have more muscle
on our frames, we are less likely to die from
any of the great all cause mortality risks, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke,
and it increases our survivability of everything by massive percentage
(03:28):
points if we just have lean tissue on our bodies.
But to your point, the new literature that's come out
is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
They're starting to look at.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Creatine not just as an exercise performance supplement, but as
a cognitive ability and longevity supplement. There is a study
done that basically stated overall after twenty four hours of
moderate to severe sleep deprivation, and I think the parameter
was five hours or less, which I know.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You know what it feels like to operate.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Sleep deprived my whole life. I've been sleep deprived all week,
damn it.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
It's my baseline sometimes too.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
And I know that with your background and seal training
and everything that they operate, I'm trying to get you
to perform in a deprived state. And they did a
study on creatine that showed a mega dose can actually
offset sleep deprivation in what they called activities that strained
the prefrontal cortex, or the things that require a lot
(04:23):
of thinking and brain power, if you will. And anecdotally
I've noticed that I told you guys, I'm a little
bit sleep deprived. I was out late last night, probably
got five and a half six hours of sleep, and
so I took which the follow up question a listener
might have is how much is a mega dose? I
took about four times the standard dose, so five to
ten grams is typically what most people take for exercise performance.
(04:47):
The formal dosage is zero point one grams per kilogram
of lean mass, so I'm about ninety kilos, so I
just take ten grams a day. I took twenty or
twenty five before this episode because I want to be
sharp and I love it. But for the average person,
five to ten grams a day is plenty effective. It's
the cheapest supplement you can buy. It also happens to
be one of the most effective. So I love that,
(05:09):
and I'm a huge proponent of that, as well as
a daily magnesium supplement and a vitamin D supplement because
of the amount of Americans that are deficient in those
minerals and vitaments.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I love that you drill down Almost all of the
videos that I watch, you drill it down to the
regular person, not the person that's doing two hours in
the morning, two hours in the afternoon, engaged in trying
to do, you know, national level high rock competitions, whatever
(05:41):
those ultra performance levels are. You really pushing it towards
those young men out there, young women out there that
are trying to figure out how to improve that self.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Esteem and self worth.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
One of the things that one of the videos that
really caught my attention recently that you were posted was
your video about nicotine, right, because I think creatine is
also you know, I think it's an absolute in anybody
who's paying attention whatsoever. But there's also this fad, this
craziness of nicotine. I mean, I travel the country, you know,
(06:14):
the country. Every week, I'm out on the road, and
I'm with these young wholesalers, and like you said, man,
some of these guys are going through a whole tin
of nicotine a day. What are some of the negative
effects that you were talking about from too much nicotine?
Because I liked where we were within the cognitive enhancement abilities,
and so I'd like to just float around that for
(06:36):
a little bit and then we'll go to something else.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Yeah, I think it's important when you're diving into this.
There's a lot of nuance and ambiguity within nicotine, but
also in the class of supplements that it falls under,
which is neotropics. And I love nootropics. Nootropics, for those
who don't know, are brain boosting compounds. They are compounds
that have been shown in studies to improve reaction time, mentalkatuity,
(07:00):
and overall focus and mental clarity. And there's a ton
of them. There's caffeine is a nootropic. It's the most
common nootropic, but people don't know that it is a drug.
But it is also a nootropic. We have lines made mushroom, ginko,
biloba alpha GPC. There's this whole class of supplements that
people play with and they are fun. I've experimented with
all different kinds of nootropic supplements and I love them.
(07:22):
Nicotine in and of itself, isolated as a chemical, is
a drug, but it is a nootropic. It has been
shown to boost mental acuity and energy. And one thing
I want to highlight is in that video I very
clearly wrote in the caption but did not state my
opinion on daily, habitual nicotine usage, not the occasional nootropic boost.
(07:44):
There are some titans in the space who promote nicotine.
Doctor Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman. They've talked about it and
it works. And the downside for me and you talk
about empowering young people, young men and young women, is
it's the concept and principle of having a vice and
really weighing the pros versus the cons. You know, if
you want to get dialed in, you've got a big
(08:05):
conversation or a big podcast, you want to do something
cognitively demanding, and you throw a zin in and that's
like once a week for you. Fine, all things in moderation.
The vehicle also matters. I am not talking about smoking
a cigarette before a big meeting. I'm not talking about
I'm not sparking up a Marlborough light before I go
into a podcast, and I'm not throwing in a big
(08:28):
old lip a grizzly long cut, because tobacco is highly carcinogenic.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Can I just interject at my height, I was doing
about two tins of Copenhagen a day and smoking and
pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and my final day was
July fourth, two thousand and three, and man, as soon
as I went away from it, everything started to improve
for me. So that's my little sidebar on that, because
(08:57):
when it does overwhelm you, it becomes incredibly destructive.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, well, congratulations on quitting, because it's something a lot
of people say they could do any day and never
actually do. And it's stuff like that, right, the cigarettes
and the nicotine or the dip they cause cancer. Nicotine
isolated doesn't seem to do that. Now here's just to
get really plain and simple on it, the pros and
the cons. Yes, it can boost mental acuity. I have
(09:23):
used it to do that and it works. Sometimes it
can cause nausea or cold sweats, or you feel a
little lightheaded and dizzy, but ultimately it's the principle of
I don't want to go through my day, and I
don't want people to go through their day feeling like
they have to depend on some substance outside of themselves.
And that's what people were. It's almost in the comments
(09:44):
of that video I just posted, people like, well I
can't enjoy anything, I can't have anything. It's like, well,
I mean, have you tried enjoying life sober in your
present mind? Revolutionary take, I know, but it's are people
are chasing dopamine and they'll go through any route, modicum
or vehicle to get to it. And so I just
want to make my stance clear. It seems to have
(10:06):
benefits cognitively. It can be fun to use in that state,
but you need to be mindful of your vices and
the principle of I don't want a substance to have
a power over me. That's the point I was trying
to make.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And that's my favorite aspect of how you frame these arguments. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It's it's you know, it's that higher up wellness.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, it's what takes, what goes just beyond the superficial
aspects of a particular sub element of a particular exercise,
of a particular skill set.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Right, whatever that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Is in terms of health, what are the contextual Maybe
obligations is too strong that human beings need to integrate
into how they view performance. Right. You know, I think,
you know, as you talked about, the one I think
that just popped in my head.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Was the idea of dopamine.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right. And obviously your success is a residual of that
uh particular uh uh insatiable appetite for dopamine. Right. And
and you're earning, you know, you're you're you're living by
by influencing people at a very large scale, two million
plus followers across all platforms, your podcasts you you had
(11:22):
said recently was doing over one hundred thousand downloads a month,
you know, per per week or per month, forget what
it was per week I thought it was and and
you know, you're you're just getting bigger and bigger. And
so the question I have for you as a as
a person who's always evaluating these input impacts is is
(11:43):
the correlation to dopamine in your life? Are you cognizant
of of that reaction in your own what is the
what's the best way to say it? In your own
state of execution, right in your own state of delivery?
Are you also cognizant?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh? Man, I'm doing the same thing in what I'm
doing right now.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I love this question because I always say getting fit
is not about suffering, It's about raising your awareness. I
think that's across all platforms of life. If you have
the awareness to know all I'm chasing and most of
my life is dopamine, then I know there are cheap
(12:27):
ways to get that dopamine, and there are expensive ways
to get that dopamine. A cheap way to get that
dopamine is to hop on my phone and scroll for
an hour, or you know, with someone like me with
my social media, I can open it up and it's
ninety nine plus one hundred plus and they use certain
colors to grab your eyes and just hijack your brain chemistry.
I'm aware of that, and I'm not going to sit
(12:49):
here and say it doesn't feel good to see the
followers exploding in a video go viral. It does feel
good because it is engineered to make us feel good,
and so.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
I have I have rules in place.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I have principles in place about my screen time, and
I don't always follow it.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I fall short. I'll catch myself scrolling.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
For an hour and a half, pissing away an afternoon
wondering what the fuck I'm doing. But I know if
I'm chasing dopamine and I get to the root, which
is what do I want to feel right now?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I want to feel good.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I'm going to invest in an expensive route to get there,
and it's not going to be scrolling or junk food.
It's going to be you know, before the show, I
hopped in the ice bath. I did two minutes in
the ice bath on my patio out there. Sucks while
you're doing it, but I know it elevates dopamine circulation
by up to two hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And that's sustained for hours.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
I can do a hard training session, or go on
a long hike, or spend time with loved ones, and
you get that same neurotransmitter through a different route and
it ultimately feels better. It does feel better, it's just
more difficult to get to. So I am aware of.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
It, and sometimes I do fall victim to it. I
am not perfect.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
And when I catch myself, the difference is I catch
myself and I pull myself off the phone outside, go
for a walk in the sunshine with no headphones, go train,
hop in the sauna or the cold plunge, and I
get my dopamine from those more expensive vehicles.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
If you will see that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
That's the other aspect that I love about your stuff is.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And you know, my favorite ones are when you talk
about your hangover cures. I'm gonna I'm gonna make my
hangover food in the house some you know, you know,
I went out last night, but this is how I'm
gonna get.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Through it today.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And and you're just there's an honesty in your approach
that's that's tangible for the app for most people.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And so as as you began.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This journey, you know, and you're starting, you're thinking about
that that that elevated approach, right, because you know you
talk to this about people you know fifty five and above.
You know they look at you like, what I have
to get in an ice bath? I have to take creating,
I have to you know, and they're like, what the hell?
(14:55):
But the younger generation certainly knows it now. I mean
they've been on TikTok long enough, they've been on Instagram
long enough, most of them through their whole lives.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
How do they as you were getting going, how did
you know how what was going to emerge?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
How did you how did you know you were to
find your own space, to find your own niche?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
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(15:43):
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Speaker 2 (15:54):
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Speaker 4 (16:13):
Honestly, David, I think I've thought a lot about this
because there was a time when this was really I mean,
it's still growing fast, but it started to grow really quickly.
I was very fortunate to not have to be the
creator that grinded for six months to get his first
ten K.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
My third video ever did a million and a half views,
and that that's so awesome got me to ten thousand
followers overnight, and it was from there it continued to
just steadily blow up. And I've dived into this a lot,
and people were asking me how do I grow my
social media?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
What are the strategies, what are the tips? And the
truth was I didn't know. I didn't know what was
going on. And I think a huge component of this
is that God has blessed me with the opportunity to
step into what I think my God ordained purpose might be,
which is to help people. I don't know exactly with
what yet, I don't know exactly how, but I don't
have a fear to start, so I'm able to figure
(17:08):
it out through just stepping on one stone at a time,
and the stones are the videos. I'll make videos about
one thing it doesn't do well, or I'm not fired
up about it. Okay, let's pivot a little bit. So
I think a lot of it is God's grace. I
truly do, because some of the metrics and the stats
and the timelines aren't conventional in terms of I didn't
really have to wait. So ultimately it came down to
(17:30):
God blessing me and looking back on my life making
me so hyperfixated on taking care of myself. In the
thousands of hours of podcasts I listened to in research,
I wondered why I was so obsessed with it, and
it got me to this point right here. It all
built to this, and so dare I say one hundred
percent of it is God's grace and his blessing all
my life and what he wants me to do. But
(17:53):
it also comes down to the fact that I now know,
looking at it from a more analytical perspective, what I
was unconsciously doing and now am consciously doing is just
practicing radical authenticity. That was the boiling point for me
was I said I hate the fitness industry because I do.
I think a lot of people are putting on a facade.
(18:13):
They're wearing a mask which ultimately has no longevity. You
can't do that forever because it's fucking exhausting to be
an actor. And I want people to know what I
once thought was that getting an even pretty elite shape
compared to the average person is actually not in what
these crazy fitness influencers are doing every day with their
biohacking routines. I enjoy doing those things, but you don't
(18:36):
have to. If you just walked outside twice a day
for half an hour, or walked after every meal, got
off your phone an hour earlier, and ate eighty to
ninety percent food that grew in the ground, grew on
a tree, or had a mom and dad close to
source of the earth, your life would be Every part
of your life would be dramatically different. And a lot
(18:57):
of people lose sight of those big rocks in fitness
because of creators talking about ice baths and supplements and
meal timing and protein frequency and all this bullshit that just, frankly,
if you're not trying to win the Olympia or be
a CrossFit Games World champion, it doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
It just doesn't. And if you do, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And if you can just embody the one percent rule
every single day of just doing this much to get better,
that will compound and it will work like compound interest
over the course of months or years. But it's very
hard for the average person to conceptualize on marginal return
over years.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I feel the same way about it.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I mean, from the first time I got into doing
this type of thing back in six it was like
every the idea was like, all right, do I have
to mimic what a Navy seal does to be an
elite performer?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I was like, God, I fucking hope you don't.
I was like, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Turn into you know, human being that only thinks about
the destruction of other life forces, and you're somewhat sociopathic
in nature, and you have a really bad drinking problem,
then and yeah, let's go for it now, you know,
get here's the hose and here's the ice, and you know,
I'm going to beat the snot out of you for for.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Eight months straight.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
And and it was like, man like, it was confusing
to me that that's somehow that had that's what emerged.
And then god, you know, posts the binladen rate. It
turned into an epidemic.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Of of what of of.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Contorting the underlying components of what it's all about, right,
which is, you know, young men deciding, Hey, I want
to do something that's bigger than myself, and I'm willing
to expose myself to the thousands, if not tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands of little things I got
to do every day to get there.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
And and and.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I think you're approach of breaking it down in that
level without it being correlated to some personal record, man,
is really unique.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then the sarcasm. I'm always a sucker for sarcasm.
I mean, I just if I hear a sarcasm person online,
I'm like, and I'm like, that's a dude.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
So that would buck send me to stuff?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I was like, Oh, I love this guy already, so
tell me you know again, you you it happened really quickly.
Now you're settling in obviously. I mean, And what I
love is it's it's not just fitness, it's not just health.
It's not just nutrition and sleep and metrics. Man, I'm
I'm listening to you talk about sales calls. I'm listening
(21:45):
to you talk about public speaking. I'm listening to talk
to you talking about how much you hate Celtic Sea
Salt right, you know, is it are you realizing now
that the the ideas are why people are there, not
just the fitness.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, that's and that's a hard.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Place, right when people realize, Man, the spectrum of what
people like cause And again I'm going all over the
place an apologists.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
But so what I do when I ask questions?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
When I started to like get out there a little
bit more, and it wasn't only about all right, how
do I perform under pressure?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Under fire?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That was always the question, right, how do I execute
when the world is caving in around me? But then
it was like, hey, man, I'm really struggling as a
dad or I'm really struggling, and man, for years I
was just like, I'm not I'm not qualified to answer that.
I don't know, you know, how are you processing that?
(22:51):
Because it is happening so fast for you.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I really think that the most valuable piece of advice
I ever received through I think it was a TikTok.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Video was you are the niche.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
It's not the fitness content And this was just this
was a creator talking to other creators, and I again
feel that God's grace on my life has allowed me
to embody these things that I think are simple to implement.
But people continue to ask me, how do I get
out of my own way? And I say, well, the
answer is in the question. You get out of your
own way? How do I not care about what people think?
(23:30):
You stop caring? And I think because God pushed me
onto this route, of this path of helping people in
some way. I'm looking back on all my experiences of
being in a sales program in college, to B to
B corporate sales, to years of sales training, and it's
all playing into what I'm doing now in my content,
and I'm just not afraid to talk about the things
that I love.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And the things that I love are sales, they are fitness, They.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Are public speaking communication, and how the baseline, the root
and foundation of physical fitness is the launching path for
all of it. That's that's how higher up wellness was born.
I was in a business school learning. I loved business,
was really good at the course work and understood and
it fired me up to learn what made businesses and
business owners tick. But I also loved how I showed
(24:15):
up when I was sleeping, eating and training well. I
felt like I could answer questions more quickly and into
the end of the office. In corporate world, sales calls
went better. When I was dialed in on my food
and my training and my sleep, opportunities started to arise.
People treated me differently.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
I worked at a five hundred person family owned business
where I was the youngest guy on the floor by
like twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So in a world where agism is very real in
the corporate world, what do you know, You're just a greenhorn?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
You just got here.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Drives me nuts.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's the worst, you know.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
It's having that physique and that level of fitness is
something that triggers the reptilian brain and people of like,
you know something I don't, or you're doing something I'm not.
And that gave me a sense of I guess authority
to these other people that ended up opening their world
up to me and teaching me a bunch and giving
me great opportunities I probably didn't deserve as a twenty
(25:08):
six year old. And so I think once all of
those skills came into the content and I just have
one message, this is what The page started on sharing
easily implementable ways to improve your life, and I never
confined it to just the fitness, and so I'm going
to continue to talk about things that I love that
I am convicted on because I know it's like my
dad said when we started, and like I said at
(25:29):
the beginning of this show, if just one person gets
something from what I have to say, whether it's sales, fitness,
public speaking, communication, my talk about my hangover remedies because
I do still go out and drink with my buddies.
I'm a twenty seven year old guy in a big city.
Then it's all worth it. And that's the message I
want to spread. I think everybody has a gift that
(25:49):
maybe the vehicle they can spread that gift on is
content and I'm seeing it now in real time through
a challenge I accidentally launched on TikTok that is changing
people's lives and it's really cool to see.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
What was the challenge.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
I made a video about communication skills being a huge
launch pad to change your life, that a lot of
people have these great skills, these great ideas, but frankly
they suck at talking and communication is a skill and
we can train it and we can sharpen it just
like our bodies in the gym.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
But you have to practice.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
And in the video, I just say one of the
things you could do is set your camera up just
like I'm doing right now on this TikTok because I
was speaking in my front camera on the phone and
record yourself speaking for sixty seconds. And I didn't tell
people to go post it. I said, create a burner
account if you want, and all of a sudden the
video blew up and I woke up one day to
six hundred mentions and it was higher up. Well Inness
(26:43):
public Speaking Challenge. That's awesome, it's amazing, and it was
an accident. Again, I think God placed his hand on that.
I think it was anointed. And it's probably over five
thousand people now have created TikTok accounts and are speaking
every day for thirty days. Some are transcending to one hundred.
There's one guy that stands out and he was sort
of the second catalyst. His name's Brandon, a young guy
(27:06):
early twenties and made a burner account, was zero followers
and put the camera up and said, Hi, my name
is Brandon. Public speaking makes me very nervous, but I
was inspired by Michael higher up Wellness to do this
challenge for thirty days.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
His first video ever went viral.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
It's got four and a half million views, he's got
forty thousand followers, and now he's documenting his life and
it's that's what it's all about. You know, you could
be one video away from changing your life because you
have a gift that somebody needs to hear. And that's
that's where I think is what I'm supposed to be
doing and what I'm going to be working toward every
day really lies is in just giving people the power
back and tell them that their life is in their
(27:45):
own hands if they take accountability for it.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
All right for me, that that's like a dream come
true because that was the same thing that inspired me
to do it my first video back in two thousand
and six on YouTube, right me with my I just
bushy old, you know, Afghan beard, and you know my
tats and a T shirt and down by Beach and
just like all right here the eight missions that I
(28:09):
believe forge your self confidence. And now that thing's just
gone around the world a couple of times, and you know,
there are detractors though, there are people out there who
are are There's a I think an advocacy growing towards
being anti content creator, anti wasting your time on social media,
(28:30):
antie this, antie that, And well, if everybody's creating content,
then what substance do we have that's actually engaging and
creating the future world that we need to live in.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
So what's your response to that?
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I can't get into the market, I can't be a
content creator. It's too saturated. Hear it all the time,
And the first thing I could say is, well, look
at me. I didn't start till twenty twenty three and
here we are two million followers later.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
So is it saturated.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Maybe, but it's saturated with bullshit, and it's saturated with
low quality ideas and content. But ultimately the best argument
for that is nobody is you, so it is not saturated.
It goes back to you are the niche. No one
can be you, and so long as you don't try
to be like other creators, which a lot of people are,
and it's why their content doesn't work. In my opinion,
(29:22):
you are you and that is your superpowers. There is
no there is no better argument than that. I don't
think there's a counter argument for it is our authenticity,
our vulnerability, which is something I'm huge on is I've
shared every facet of my life to millions of people,
and every time I do, the feedback I get is
overwhelmingly positive. So the formula of authenticity plus vulnerability plus
(29:47):
consistency always equal success in my opinion, that that's phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
All right.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
So one of the I love listening to you tell
your origin story too, about being in college forty five up?
You know, I mean when I weighed in in freshman lacrosse,
I think I was one hundred and fifty nine pounds.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
A year later I was two five, right, and that was.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Not great you know great development? That was you know
that that was bush pounders in the kiddie pool with Paul.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
McKelvey right over the summer, right. I love you, Paul.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
And and so there there are young men right now
that are finding you. I know some have found me
over the past, but they're more so finding you right now.
What's the key initiator for them?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Right? Is it?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Is it the health part first? Is it getting pushing
and pulling and feeling better? Is it the motivate? You know,
drilling down on the motivational idea. What is their potential?
How do I go after it?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Or is it just simply the recognition that of that
inch by inch process? How do you like?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Cause I know you get bombarded with this. I'm a
twenty three year old kid. I don't know what to do.
I don't know where to start.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
What should I do?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Probably the most commonly asked question I get from young
men and young women is I'm that age, I'm nineteen,
twenty twenty one, twenty three. How do I find my
purpose in life? Which what a big question? I mean, no,
wonder your biggest agony and anxiety. You're trying to figure
out life's greatest question and you haven't even voted in
your first fucking election yet.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I'd be overwhelmed too. I think a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Of it is is the tension you create when you
feel like you have to have it all figured out.
Is manufacturing suffering within your own mind. And I had
the opportunity to interview a guy named Peter Cron on
my podcast and talk about an anointed conversation. That podcast
got one hundred and fifty thousand plays practically overnight, which
outperforms any of my episodes of all time, and he
(32:01):
has a theory that all of our suffering is manufactured,
none of it's real, It's all created based.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
On the narratives we tell ourselves.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
And one thing I really resonated with was that the
fact that you think something is hard and should be
easy create suffering rather than sitting in the tension of
this is hard and that's okay, what is it trying
to teach me? So I wanted to quickly speak to
that that a lot of young people are creating suffering
because of the people they see on social media, you know,
the young guy with the supercar and the Rolex making
(32:29):
one hundred grand a month, probably lying about it and
feeling like they have to get there. But to really
answer your question, I do believe, and I'm convicted on
the fact that I think it always starts with the
physical body. If you can't clean the gunk and the
crap out of your mind with that brain fog, everybody
talks about that low energy. If you don't have clarity,
(32:50):
you don't have vision, and you can't find your purpose.
Without vision, you become myopic. And that's something cool I'm
seeing in my coaching community. I've got clients that have
been with me for four months now, and it started
because they wanted to lose fifty pounds. And now we
had three people on my group call yesterday say I
feel called to sign up for marathons. I feel called
to open my Bible, I feel called to I've never
(33:12):
been religious, but I'm curious about God. And I think, yes,
one incredibly powerful. But two, I think the launching pad
is if you're not where you want to be in
life and your physical health is not a priority, well
it's no wonder you're not where you want to be
in life because getting clear in the form of proper nutrition,
proper sleep, proper hydration, cleaning that gunk out of the
(33:33):
physical body creates room for ascension in other facets of
your life. So any guy or gal listening out there
that's young. If you are not prioritizing exercise, daily movement,
whatever you enjoy, whatever you like, there is no best
compliance is the science. Do what you like, and we'll
stick to figure that out first. And I really do
think as you continue to pursue, because fitness is such
(33:56):
a good microcosm for delayed gratification, you'll start to really
understand what you were put here to do.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
But it has to start with the physical body.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I couldn't. I couldn't concur more with that. We are
physical beings. We are rooted in the physicality of how
we perceive all things, right, from a from a neurological perspective,
from the way we perceive through our vision, through where
we interpret that information itself within that prefrontal cortex, right,
which then ultimately generates what that metacognition, which creates our
(34:29):
own potential. Right, So all of those factors are at
the highest level.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You have mentioned several times being.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
In the presence of of of that Holy Spirit and
being in the presence of what you would describe as
a divine process. Has that always played a role in
your life? Was that a part of the initiation to change?
And if not, how did it present itsel elf? In?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
How do you.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
What is it? How do you.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Do?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
How do you nurture it?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
How do you I don't I don't want to sound cheesy,
like how do you work out your faith?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Now?
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
But but that's what I'm asking, like, how does that?
How does that grow?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And what are the supplements and the exercises and all
that that facilitate that.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
It was not always in the picture. I was always
the lukewarm Christian of there's there's a God, there's no way,
there's not.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
A higher power, But what is it? How did it
get it? What does it all look like?
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I was, you know, I was a classic I'm spiritual,
not religious tuly, just a way of saying I'm lukewarm.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
But it it took.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It took hitting what in my adult life was a
rock bottom for me, which was ultimately losing my dad,
or not losing.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
My dad, but him passing away.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
And that the man was my best friend, biggest role model,
and he taught me a lot of what I know.
And I make a joke all the time. I was
like that if you if you grew up in my age,
you'd have two million followers, not a million. You'd do
better than I ever could.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
He was special And I moved home. Name. His name's
Michael Smoke. Also that's cool. Yeah he's Michael Lee. I'm
Michael Thomas. So not as junior.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Technically, he was my biggest role model, and he's a
very special, special man who everyone looked to and looked
forward to and leaned on in hard times.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
He was the one giving eulogies for the grandparents' funeral.
He was the first guy that ever ignited the fire
for public speaking in me because he was so proficient
at it. And he said to me, when I was
a little boy, he came in for career day and
gave a presentation on his job, which at the time
was selling sports equipment goalposts, foul netting, track surface turf.
(36:52):
And that's not going to interest a bunch of third graders,
But I remember him bringing in props and making jokes
and looking around and seeing all these little boys and
girls interesting and what this old man had to say
about goalposts. And he said to me, he was like, remember, buddy,
there's no better feeling than getting up in front of
a room full of people and knowing there's a question
they can't ask you that you don't have the answer to.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
It's empowering. And I thought, wow, that was pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
And I moved home for a little while in a
chapter of my life where I was resetting, I was
living on my own, moved.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Back home and come home to it.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
I hadn't seen him in maybe a month, and he
looked sick, and I was like, well, you look like
you're losing weight.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
What's going on? He's like a bubby. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
I don't feel good, I'm tired, I can't eat. And
being the health and wellness person I am, I immediately
was like, are we seeing doctors?
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Are we setting appointments?
Speaker 4 (37:40):
And I started doing that for him, Holistic doctors, real doctors,
GI doctors, Western and Eastern medicine. And they could never
figure out what quite was wrong with him. And I'll
spare you the details. It was cirrhosis, that it was lymphoma,
massive blood clotting. But ultimately what happened was my dad
began to lose all of his muscle mass, all of
his autonomy. He lost about sixty pounds in five months,
(38:03):
and he was already sixty two point lean guy, and
he got to the point where he was practically skin
and bones and had all the symptoms of liver failure.
But he was never a drinker and so he was.
They were confused, but that was brutal to watch my
hero lose all sense of autonomy and freedom. And that's
(38:24):
where I really turned to God because I didn't have
anywhere else to go. I couldn't lean on myself. I
couldn't lean on my family. I couldn't lean on him.
You know, he was the guy. He was the guy
I shared my wins with. That was my support system
and my confidant. And you know, when your earthly father
begins to fail, you turn to your heavenly father. And
that's where I started to experience supernatural peace, that thing
(38:46):
that they say you can't explain. But it was after
a lot of traumatic days of becoming my dad's full
time hospice nurse. You know, I tried not to get
emotional talking him about it, but I took him to
excuse me. I took him to an appointment and before
(39:08):
we were getting ready, I was putting his shoes on
because he couldn't bend over to do it anymore. And
he he reached around and patted my back, and uh,
he said, I'm just looking for your wings.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
You know that I was his angel.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
And yeah, God put me there to be with him
in his last six months, and I'm so thankful for that,
and put me in a place with a lot of
God fearing men because he knew i'd need the support
system and men that really weren't a part of my
life until about four months before shit really hit the
(39:48):
fan for me, and I'll always be thankful to God
for giving me that time with him.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
But you know, they you.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Think about God's purpose for your life and what his
purpose for my life was. And to watch my dad
lose his autonomy as a result of what was probably
not living a life centered around health and wellness.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
You know, he was never overweight, but he grew up
in the fifties.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
He smoked from the time he was a kid until
the day he almost the day he died, until he
couldn't go outside to smoke.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
He ate whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and he didn't.
He stopped exercising in his forties.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
He's a D one two sport athlete at Georgia and
he would always say, Bubby, I hit my exercise quote
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
You know, I think I've heard myself say that one
to my daughters recently.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
I'm all weight lifted out, That's what he would say. Yeah, yeah,
But the beauty of.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Watching my dad go through that and being there for
him was It's made me so much more convicted on
teaching people that everybody has a lot of problems until
they have a health problem, and then they have one
problem because nothing else. When your body fails you and
you don't have a spare one hanging up in the closet,
(41:03):
you just don't. And I'm thankful that God granted me
the ability to suffer through that, because it gave me
a true power and conviction to teach people how important
this is, and not only how important it is, but
how attainable health and vitality is.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
It is not unattainable.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
It is in the four or five key choices you
are or are not making every day, and if you
don't make them, they will materialize in the form of
a lifestyle related disease on average, not always.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
You can play the odds.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
You can gamble like my dad did, so you don't
always win that. You don't always win that bet, and
so I'm fortunate and it's you know, it reminds me
of one of my favorite verses of all time that
really got me through that, which was James Chapter one,
verse two through four, counted all joy, brethren, when you
face trials of many kinds, because you know that the
testing of your faith produces perseverance, and let perseverance run
(41:54):
its course so that you may be full, complete and mature,
not lacking anything. That process made me mature, it made
me complete, and it's just a piece of my journey
to prevent me from lacking something in the future.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
So ultimately, I'm not thankful my dad passed.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
I miss him every day, but I'm thankful for what
that experience taught me and how it's going to allow
me to pour into other people.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, I'll tell you what, man, as trying to figure
out what it was that sucks me in every time
you start ranting on in front of that screen, and
and now I know, thank you for sharing that with everybody.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
That's beyond anything I could have imagined you would be
willing to share with me, Man, And that's proof that
you are who you say are and you do believe
what you believe. So where can people come and follow
and participate and get on this journey with you?
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I appreciate that. I do thank you for saying that.
And it goes back to vulnerability. I want everybody to
know that their vulnerability and their authenticity is their superpower.
And don't be scared to show the world who you are,
because if anybody judges you, or thinks differently of you,
it doesn't matter. It's like Goggins says so beautifully, You'll
never be shit on by anybody doing better than you.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And I want people to remember that and to live it.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
And if they're interested, yeah, if they're interested in coming
along and learning more. My username across all platforms is
the same. My name is Michael Smoke, but my username
is higher Up Wellness on everything.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I have a podcast called the Higher Up Podcast.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. And if
they're interested in working with me, they can simply DM
me the word fit on Instagram and it triggers in
my inbox to start a conversation with you and we
can learn more and figure out if we're potentially a
fit to work together and if we're not.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
No worries.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I hope that they get some value from the content alone,
and I appreciate you giving me the time and the
space to come on and be a part of your platform.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Is truly in honor and it was a It was
a great time, man. I had a blast.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Awesome. God bless you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Brother, you as well.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
M hm m m hm.
All right, It's not often that you get to have
somebody come on your show that literally is exploding in
an industry in a way that might not be the
most conventional approach. And this is what one of my
favorite comments from watching Mike's stuff on TikTok and Instagram
(00:23):
is I hate the fitness industry.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Like Mike.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
When when I find that in so many your videos, dude,
I'm like, this is the guy I'm gonna listen to.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This is the guy that I want to understand.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And so, you know, getting the fact that you took
time out of your insane schedule, you're telling us what
you had going on to come on to our show
and chat with us not only about the fitness industry,
but the most important thing for me and I hope
we really dig into this is inspiring young men to
get off their asses and change their lives, for sure.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So thank you so much for coming on, brother.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
No, it's truly an honor.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I was stoked that Buck connected us and started doing
some research on you and your background. Appreciate everything you've
done in your past and your history, and I'm excited
to hopefully create as much value as I can and
if just one person takes just one thing from this conversation,
at least on my end, it'll all be worth it.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well, i'll tell you what, just before we even started, Geordie,
who's a fitness I mean, he's still grinding hard at
his age, and we we talked automatically about.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Loading up on your dose on creatine.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
So I think that's one of the benchmark topics right now,
that one of the things that's infused into everybody's daily routine.
So let's just start with something viable like that. What
talk about the new science that popped and what are
your thoughts on it?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Yeah, I am often anti supplement as they are meant
to supplement an already healthy lifestyle, and I think people
try to use them as one of the, as doctor
Lane Norton calls it so beautifully, the big rocks of
their health, because you have big rocks and small rocks.
Your big rocks are obviously we know your sleep, your training,
your nutrition, and your recovery and anything that recovery looks
(02:18):
like for you. Anything outside of that is truly a
small rock. Supplementation meal timing. But that being said, there
are a few key supplements that I think are dare
I say critical, but definitely pertinent. If you're not looking
to just be practical, but you are truly trying to
take it to an optimal level, there are things you
can do to give.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
You an edge. And creatine is absolutely a staple for me.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Not only is it the most well researched performance supplement
in history as far as exercise goes, there are thousands
of pieces of peer reviewed literature on it. It's been
studied for fifty years, and it is shown time and
time again that in the gym, if you take creatine
on average, unless you're a non responder, you are going
to increase your ability for force output. And what that
(03:04):
translates to in plain English is if I can move
more weight over time because I'm stronger on creatine, I'm
probably going to build more muscle over time. And muscle
is the organ of longevity. If we have more muscle
on our frames, we are less likely to die from
any of the great all cause mortality risks, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke,
and it increases our survivability of everything by massive percentage
(03:28):
points if we just have lean tissue on our bodies.
But to your point, the new literature that's come out
is really interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
They're starting to look at.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Creatine not just as an exercise performance supplement, but as
a cognitive ability and longevity supplement. There is a study
done that basically stated overall after twenty four hours of
moderate to severe sleep deprivation, and I think the parameter
was five hours or less, which I know.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
You know what it feels like to operate.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Sleep deprived my whole life. I've been sleep deprived all week,
damn it.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
It's my baseline sometimes too.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
And I know that with your background and seal training
and everything that they operate, I'm trying to get you
to perform in a deprived state. And they did a
study on creatine that showed a mega dose can actually
offset sleep deprivation in what they called activities that strained
the prefrontal cortex, or the things that require a lot
(04:23):
of thinking and brain power, if you will. And anecdotally
I've noticed that I told you guys, I'm a little
bit sleep deprived. I was out late last night, probably
got five and a half six hours of sleep, and
so I took which the follow up question a listener
might have is how much is a mega dose? I
took about four times the standard dose, so five to
ten grams is typically what most people take for exercise performance.
(04:47):
The formal dosage is zero point one grams per kilogram
of lean mass, so I'm about ninety kilos, so I
just take ten grams a day. I took twenty or
twenty five before this episode because I want to be
sharp and I love it. But for the average person,
five to ten grams a day is plenty effective. It's
the cheapest supplement you can buy. It also happens to
be one of the most effective. So I love that,
(05:09):
and I'm a huge proponent of that, as well as
a daily magnesium supplement and a vitamin D supplement because
of the amount of Americans that are deficient in those
minerals and vitaments.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I love that you drill down Almost all of the
videos that I watch, you drill it down to the
regular person, not the person that's doing two hours in
the morning, two hours in the afternoon, engaged in trying
to do, you know, national level high rock competitions, whatever
(05:41):
those ultra performance levels are. You really pushing it towards
those young men out there, young women out there that
are trying to figure out how to improve that self.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Esteem and self worth.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
One of the things that one of the videos that
really caught my attention recently that you were posted was
your video about nicotine, right, because I think creatine is
also you know, I think it's an absolute in anybody
who's paying attention whatsoever. But there's also this fad, this
craziness of nicotine. I mean, I travel the country, you know,
(06:14):
the country. Every week, I'm out on the road, and
I'm with these young wholesalers, and like you said, man,
some of these guys are going through a whole tin
of nicotine a day. What are some of the negative
effects that you were talking about from too much nicotine?
Because I liked where we were within the cognitive enhancement abilities,
and so I'd like to just float around that for
(06:36):
a little bit and then we'll go to something else.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
Yeah, I think it's important when you're diving into this.
There's a lot of nuance and ambiguity within nicotine, but
also in the class of supplements that it falls under,
which is neotropics. And I love nootropics. Nootropics, for those
who don't know, are brain boosting compounds. They are compounds
that have been shown in studies to improve reaction time, mentalkatuity,
(07:00):
and overall focus and mental clarity. And there's a ton
of them. There's caffeine is a nootropic. It's the most
common nootropic, but people don't know that it is a drug.
But it is also a nootropic. We have lines made mushroom, ginko,
biloba alpha GPC. There's this whole class of supplements that
people play with and they are fun. I've experimented with
all different kinds of nootropic supplements and I love them.
(07:22):
Nicotine in and of itself, isolated as a chemical, is
a drug, but it is a nootropic. It has been
shown to boost mental acuity and energy. And one thing
I want to highlight is in that video I very
clearly wrote in the caption but did not state my
opinion on daily, habitual nicotine usage, not the occasional nootropic boost.
(07:44):
There are some titans in the space who promote nicotine.
Doctor Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman. They've talked about it and
it works. And the downside for me and you talk
about empowering young people, young men and young women, is
it's the concept and principle of having a vice and
really weighing the pros versus the cons. You know, if
you want to get dialed in, you've got a big
(08:05):
conversation or a big podcast, you want to do something
cognitively demanding, and you throw a zin in and that's
like once a week for you. Fine, all things in moderation.
The vehicle also matters. I am not talking about smoking
a cigarette before a big meeting. I'm not talking about
I'm not sparking up a Marlborough light before I go
into a podcast, and I'm not throwing in a big
(08:28):
old lip a grizzly long cut, because tobacco is highly carcinogenic.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Can I just interject at my height, I was doing
about two tins of Copenhagen a day and smoking and
pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and my final day was
July fourth, two thousand and three, and man, as soon
as I went away from it, everything started to improve
for me. So that's my little sidebar on that, because
(08:57):
when it does overwhelm you, it becomes incredibly destructive.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, well, congratulations on quitting, because it's something a lot
of people say they could do any day and never
actually do. And it's stuff like that, right, the cigarettes
and the nicotine or the dip they cause cancer. Nicotine
isolated doesn't seem to do that. Now here's just to
get really plain and simple on it, the pros and
the cons. Yes, it can boost mental acuity. I have
(09:23):
used it to do that and it works. Sometimes it
can cause nausea or cold sweats, or you feel a
little lightheaded and dizzy, but ultimately it's the principle of
I don't want to go through my day, and I
don't want people to go through their day feeling like
they have to depend on some substance outside of themselves.
And that's what people were. It's almost in the comments
(09:44):
of that video I just posted, people like, well I
can't enjoy anything, I can't have anything. It's like, well,
I mean, have you tried enjoying life sober in your
present mind? Revolutionary take, I know, but it's are people
are chasing dopamine and they'll go through any route, modicum
or vehicle to get to it. And so I just
want to make my stance clear. It seems to have
(10:06):
benefits cognitively. It can be fun to use in that state,
but you need to be mindful of your vices and
the principle of I don't want a substance to have
a power over me. That's the point I was trying
to make.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And that's my favorite aspect of how you frame these arguments. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
It's it's you know, it's that higher up wellness.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Right, it's what takes, what goes just beyond the superficial
aspects of a particular sub element of a particular exercise,
of a particular skill set.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Right, whatever that.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Is in terms of health, what are the contextual Maybe
obligations is too strong that human beings need to integrate
into how they view performance. Right. You know, I think,
you know, as you talked about, the one I think
that just popped in my head.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Was the idea of dopamine.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right. And obviously your success is a residual of that
uh particular uh uh insatiable appetite for dopamine. Right. And
and you're earning, you know, you're you're you're living by
by influencing people at a very large scale, two million
plus followers across all platforms, your podcasts you you had
(11:22):
said recently was doing over one hundred thousand downloads a month,
you know, per per week or per month, forget what
it was per week I thought it was and and
you know, you're you're just getting bigger and bigger. And
so the question I have for you as a as
a person who's always evaluating these input impacts is is
(11:43):
the correlation to dopamine in your life? Are you cognizant
of of that reaction in your own what is the
what's the best way to say it? In your own
state of execution, right in your own state of delivery?
Are you also cognizant?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh? Man, I'm doing the same thing in what I'm
doing right now.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
I love this question because I always say getting fit
is not about suffering, It's about raising your awareness. I
think that's across all platforms of life. If you have
the awareness to know all I'm chasing and most of
my life is dopamine, then I know there are cheap
(12:27):
ways to get that dopamine, and there are expensive ways
to get that dopamine. A cheap way to get that
dopamine is to hop on my phone and scroll for
an hour, or you know, with someone like me with
my social media, I can open it up and it's
ninety nine plus one hundred plus and they use certain
colors to grab your eyes and just hijack your brain chemistry.
I'm aware of that, and I'm not going to sit
(12:49):
here and say it doesn't feel good to see the
followers exploding in a video go viral. It does feel
good because it is engineered to make us feel good,
and so.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
I have I have rules in place.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I have principles in place about my screen time, and
I don't always follow it.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I fall short. I'll catch myself scrolling.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
For an hour and a half, pissing away an afternoon
wondering what the fuck I'm doing. But I know if
I'm chasing dopamine and I get to the root, which
is what do I want to feel right now?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
I want to feel good.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I'm going to invest in an expensive route to get there,
and it's not going to be scrolling or junk food.
It's going to be you know, before the show, I
hopped in the ice bath. I did two minutes in
the ice bath on my patio out there. Sucks while
you're doing it, but I know it elevates dopamine circulation
by up to two hundred and fifty percent.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And that's sustained for hours.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
I can do a hard training session, or go on
a long hike, or spend time with loved ones, and
you get that same neurotransmitter through a different route and
it ultimately feels better. It does feel better, it's just
more difficult to get to. So I am aware of.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
It, and sometimes I do fall victim to it. I
am not perfect.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
And when I catch myself, the difference is I catch
myself and I pull myself off the phone outside, go
for a walk in the sunshine with no headphones, go train,
hop in the sauna or the cold plunge, and I
get my dopamine from those more expensive vehicles.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
If you will see that.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
That's the other aspect that I love about your stuff is.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And you know, my favorite ones are when you talk
about your hangover cures. I'm gonna I'm gonna make my
hangover food in the house some you know, you know,
I went out last night, but this is how I'm
gonna get.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Through it today.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
And and you're just there's an honesty in your approach
that's that's tangible for the app for most people.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And so as as you began.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This journey, you know, and you're starting, you're thinking about
that that that elevated approach, right, because you know you
talk to this about people you know fifty five and above.
You know they look at you like, what I have
to get in an ice bath? I have to take creating,
I have to you know, and they're like, what the hell?
(14:55):
But the younger generation certainly knows it now. I mean
they've been on TikTok long enough, they've been on Instagram
long enough, most of them through their whole lives.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
How do they as you were getting going, how did
you know how what was going to emerge?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
How did you how did you know you were to
find your own space, to find your own niche?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
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(15:43):
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Speaker 2 (15:54):
All of my dining dining needs.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
So please visit firecrackerm type in rot fifteen. That's Romeo
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Speaker 4 (16:13):
Honestly, David, I think I've thought a lot about this
because there was a time when this was really I mean,
it's still growing fast, but it started to grow really quickly.
I was very fortunate to not have to be the
creator that grinded for six months to get his first
ten K.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
My third video ever did a million and a half views,
and that that's so awesome got me to ten thousand
followers overnight, and it was from there it continued to
just steadily blow up. And I've dived into this a lot,
and people were asking me how do I grow my
social media?
Speaker 4 (16:47):
What are the strategies, what are the tips? And the
truth was I didn't know. I didn't know what was
going on. And I think a huge component of this
is that God has blessed me with the opportunity to
step into what I think my God ordained purpose might be,
which is to help people. I don't know exactly with
what yet, I don't know exactly how, but I don't
have a fear to start, so I'm able to figure
(17:08):
it out through just stepping on one stone at a time,
and the stones are the videos. I'll make videos about
one thing it doesn't do well, or I'm not fired
up about it. Okay, let's pivot a little bit. So
I think a lot of it is God's grace. I
truly do, because some of the metrics and the stats
and the timelines aren't conventional in terms of I didn't
really have to wait. So ultimately it came down to
(17:30):
God blessing me and looking back on my life making
me so hyperfixated on taking care of myself. In the
thousands of hours of podcasts I listened to in research,
I wondered why I was so obsessed with it, and
it got me to this point right here. It all
built to this, and so dare I say one hundred
percent of it is God's grace and his blessing all
my life and what he wants me to do. But
(17:53):
it also comes down to the fact that I now know,
looking at it from a more analytical perspective, what I
was unconsciously doing and now am consciously doing is just
practicing radical authenticity. That was the boiling point for me
was I said I hate the fitness industry because I do.
I think a lot of people are putting on a facade.
(18:13):
They're wearing a mask which ultimately has no longevity. You
can't do that forever because it's fucking exhausting to be
an actor. And I want people to know what I
once thought was that getting an even pretty elite shape
compared to the average person is actually not in what
these crazy fitness influencers are doing every day with their
biohacking routines. I enjoy doing those things, but you don't
(18:36):
have to. If you just walked outside twice a day
for half an hour, or walked after every meal, got
off your phone an hour earlier, and ate eighty to
ninety percent food that grew in the ground, grew on
a tree, or had a mom and dad close to
source of the earth, your life would be Every part
of your life would be dramatically different. And a lot
(18:57):
of people lose sight of those big rocks in fitness
because of creators talking about ice baths and supplements and
meal timing and protein frequency and all this bullshit that just, frankly,
if you're not trying to win the Olympia or be
a CrossFit Games World champion, it doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
It just doesn't. And if you do, it doesn't.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
And if you can just embody the one percent rule
every single day of just doing this much to get better,
that will compound and it will work like compound interest
over the course of months or years. But it's very
hard for the average person to conceptualize on marginal return
over years.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I feel the same way about it.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I mean, from the first time I got into doing
this type of thing back in six it was like
every the idea was like, all right, do I have
to mimic what a Navy seal does to be an
elite performer?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
And I was like, God, I fucking hope you don't.
I was like, if you want to.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Turn into you know, human being that only thinks about
the destruction of other life forces, and you're somewhat sociopathic
in nature, and you have a really bad drinking problem,
then and yeah, let's go for it now, you know,
get here's the hose and here's the ice, and you know,
I'm going to beat the snot out of you for for.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Eight months straight.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
And and it was like, man like, it was confusing
to me that that's somehow that had that's what emerged.
And then god, you know, posts the binladen rate. It
turned into an epidemic.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Of of what of of.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Contorting the underlying components of what it's all about, right,
which is, you know, young men deciding, Hey, I want
to do something that's bigger than myself, and I'm willing
to expose myself to the thousands, if not tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands of little things I got
to do every day to get there.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
And and and.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
I think you're approach of breaking it down in that
level without it being correlated to some personal record, man,
is really unique.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
And then the sarcasm. I'm always a sucker for sarcasm.
I mean, I just if I hear a sarcasm person online,
I'm like, and I'm like, that's a dude.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
So that would buck send me to stuff?
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I was like, Oh, I love this guy already, so
tell me you know again, you you it happened really quickly.
Now you're settling in obviously. I mean, And what I
love is it's it's not just fitness, it's not just health.
It's not just nutrition and sleep and metrics. Man, I'm
I'm listening to you talk about sales calls. I'm listening
(21:45):
to you talk about public speaking. I'm listening to talk
to you talking about how much you hate Celtic Sea
Salt right, you know, is it are you realizing now
that the the ideas are why people are there, not
just the fitness.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, that's and that's a hard.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Place, right when people realize, Man, the spectrum of what
people like cause And again I'm going all over the
place an apologists.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
But so what I do when I ask questions?
Speaker 1 (22:17):
When I started to like get out there a little
bit more, and it wasn't only about all right, how
do I perform under pressure?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Under fire?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
That was always the question, right, how do I execute
when the world is caving in around me? But then
it was like, hey, man, I'm really struggling as a
dad or I'm really struggling, and man, for years I
was just like, I'm not I'm not qualified to answer that.
I don't know, you know, how are you processing that?
(22:51):
Because it is happening so fast for you.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I really think that the most valuable piece of advice
I ever received through I think it was a TikTok.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Video was you are the niche.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
It's not the fitness content And this was just this
was a creator talking to other creators, and I again
feel that God's grace on my life has allowed me
to embody these things that I think are simple to implement.
But people continue to ask me, how do I get
out of my own way? And I say, well, the
answer is in the question. You get out of your
own way? How do I not care about what people think?
(23:30):
You stop caring? And I think because God pushed me
onto this route, of this path of helping people in
some way. I'm looking back on all my experiences of
being in a sales program in college, to B to
B corporate sales, to years of sales training, and it's
all playing into what I'm doing now in my content,
and I'm just not afraid to talk about the things
that I love.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
And the things that I love are sales, they are fitness, They.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Are public speaking communication, and how the baseline, the root
and foundation of physical fitness is the launching path for
all of it. That's that's how higher up wellness was born.
I was in a business school learning. I loved business,
was really good at the course work and understood and
it fired me up to learn what made businesses and
business owners tick. But I also loved how I showed
(24:15):
up when I was sleeping, eating and training well. I
felt like I could answer questions more quickly and into
the end of the office. In corporate world, sales calls
went better. When I was dialed in on my food
and my training and my sleep, opportunities started to arise.
People treated me differently.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
I worked at a five hundred person family owned business
where I was the youngest guy on the floor by
like twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
So in a world where agism is very real in
the corporate world, what do you know, You're just a greenhorn?
Speaker 3 (24:43):
You just got here.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Drives me nuts.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's the worst, you know.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
It's having that physique and that level of fitness is
something that triggers the reptilian brain and people of like,
you know something I don't, or you're doing something I'm not.
And that gave me a sense of I guess authority
to these other people that ended up opening their world
up to me and teaching me a bunch and giving
me great opportunities I probably didn't deserve as a twenty
(25:08):
six year old. And so I think once all of
those skills came into the content and I just have
one message, this is what The page started on sharing
easily implementable ways to improve your life, and I never
confined it to just the fitness, and so I'm going
to continue to talk about things that I love that
I am convicted on because I know it's like my
dad said when we started, and like I said at
(25:29):
the beginning of this show, if just one person gets
something from what I have to say, whether it's sales, fitness,
public speaking, communication, my talk about my hangover remedies because
I do still go out and drink with my buddies.
I'm a twenty seven year old guy in a big city.
Then it's all worth it. And that's the message I
want to spread. I think everybody has a gift that
(25:49):
maybe the vehicle they can spread that gift on is
content and I'm seeing it now in real time through
a challenge I accidentally launched on TikTok that is changing
people's lives and it's really cool to see.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
What was the challenge.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
I made a video about communication skills being a huge
launch pad to change your life, that a lot of
people have these great skills, these great ideas, but frankly
they suck at talking and communication is a skill and
we can train it and we can sharpen it just
like our bodies in the gym.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
But you have to practice.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
And in the video, I just say one of the
things you could do is set your camera up just
like I'm doing right now on this TikTok because I
was speaking in my front camera on the phone and
record yourself speaking for sixty seconds. And I didn't tell
people to go post it. I said, create a burner
account if you want, and all of a sudden the
video blew up and I woke up one day to
six hundred mentions and it was higher up. Well Inness
(26:43):
public Speaking Challenge. That's awesome, it's amazing, and it was
an accident. Again, I think God placed his hand on that.
I think it was anointed. And it's probably over five
thousand people now have created TikTok accounts and are speaking
every day for thirty days. Some are transcending to one hundred.
There's one guy that stands out and he was sort
of the second catalyst. His name's Brandon, a young guy
(27:06):
early twenties and made a burner account, was zero followers
and put the camera up and said, Hi, my name
is Brandon. Public speaking makes me very nervous, but I
was inspired by Michael higher up Wellness to do this
challenge for thirty days.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
His first video ever went viral.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
It's got four and a half million views, he's got
forty thousand followers, and now he's documenting his life and
it's that's what it's all about. You know, you could
be one video away from changing your life because you
have a gift that somebody needs to hear. And that's
that's where I think is what I'm supposed to be
doing and what I'm going to be working toward every
day really lies is in just giving people the power
back and tell them that their life is in their
(27:45):
own hands if they take accountability for it.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
All right for me, that that's like a dream come
true because that was the same thing that inspired me
to do it my first video back in two thousand
and six on YouTube, right me with my I just
bushy old, you know, Afghan beard, and you know my
tats and a T shirt and down by Beach and
just like all right here the eight missions that I
(28:09):
believe forge your self confidence. And now that thing's just
gone around the world a couple of times, and you know,
there are detractors though, there are people out there who
are are There's a I think an advocacy growing towards
being anti content creator, anti wasting your time on social media,
(28:30):
antie this, antie that, And well, if everybody's creating content,
then what substance do we have that's actually engaging and
creating the future world that we need to live in.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
So what's your response to that?
Speaker 4 (28:46):
I can't get into the market, I can't be a
content creator. It's too saturated. Hear it all the time,
And the first thing I could say is, well, look
at me. I didn't start till twenty twenty three and
here we are two million followers later.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
So is it saturated.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Maybe, but it's saturated with bullshit, and it's saturated with
low quality ideas and content. But ultimately the best argument
for that is nobody is you, so it is not saturated.
It goes back to you are the niche. No one
can be you, and so long as you don't try
to be like other creators, which a lot of people are,
and it's why their content doesn't work. In my opinion,
(29:22):
you are you and that is your superpowers. There is
no there is no better argument than that. I don't
think there's a counter argument for it is our authenticity,
our vulnerability, which is something I'm huge on is I've
shared every facet of my life to millions of people,
and every time I do, the feedback I get is
overwhelmingly positive. So the formula of authenticity plus vulnerability plus
(29:47):
consistency always equal success in my opinion, that that's phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
All right.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
So one of the I love listening to you tell
your origin story too, about being in college forty five up?
You know, I mean when I weighed in in freshman lacrosse,
I think I was one hundred and fifty nine pounds.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
A year later I was two five, right, and that was.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Not great you know great development? That was you know
that that was bush pounders in the kiddie pool with Paul.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
McKelvey right over the summer, right. I love you, Paul.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
And and so there there are young men right now
that are finding you. I know some have found me
over the past, but they're more so finding you right now.
What's the key initiator for them?
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Right? Is it?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Is it the health part first? Is it getting pushing
and pulling and feeling better? Is it the motivate? You know,
drilling down on the motivational idea. What is their potential?
How do I go after it?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Or is it just simply the recognition that of that
inch by inch process? How do you like?
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Cause I know you get bombarded with this. I'm a
twenty three year old kid. I don't know what to do.
I don't know where to start.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
What should I do?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Probably the most commonly asked question I get from young
men and young women is I'm that age, I'm nineteen,
twenty twenty one, twenty three. How do I find my
purpose in life? Which what a big question? I mean, no,
wonder your biggest agony and anxiety. You're trying to figure
out life's greatest question and you haven't even voted in
your first fucking election yet.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I'd be overwhelmed too. I think a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Of it is is the tension you create when you
feel like you have to have it all figured out.
Is manufacturing suffering within your own mind. And I had
the opportunity to interview a guy named Peter Cron on
my podcast and talk about an anointed conversation. That podcast
got one hundred and fifty thousand plays practically overnight, which
outperforms any of my episodes of all time, and he
(32:01):
has a theory that all of our suffering is manufactured,
none of it's real, It's all created based.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
On the narratives we tell ourselves.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
And one thing I really resonated with was that the
fact that you think something is hard and should be
easy create suffering rather than sitting in the tension of
this is hard and that's okay, what is it trying
to teach me? So I wanted to quickly speak to
that that a lot of young people are creating suffering
because of the people they see on social media, you know,
the young guy with the supercar and the Rolex making
(32:29):
one hundred grand a month, probably lying about it and
feeling like they have to get there. But to really
answer your question, I do believe, and I'm convicted on
the fact that I think it always starts with the
physical body. If you can't clean the gunk and the
crap out of your mind with that brain fog, everybody
talks about that low energy. If you don't have clarity,
(32:50):
you don't have vision, and you can't find your purpose.
Without vision, you become myopic. And that's something cool I'm
seeing in my coaching community. I've got clients that have
been with me for four months now, and it started
because they wanted to lose fifty pounds. And now we
had three people on my group call yesterday say I
feel called to sign up for marathons. I feel called
to open my Bible, I feel called to I've never
(33:12):
been religious, but I'm curious about God. And I think, yes,
one incredibly powerful. But two, I think the launching pad
is if you're not where you want to be in
life and your physical health is not a priority, well
it's no wonder you're not where you want to be
in life because getting clear in the form of proper nutrition,
proper sleep, proper hydration, cleaning that gunk out of the
(33:33):
physical body creates room for ascension in other facets of
your life. So any guy or gal listening out there
that's young. If you are not prioritizing exercise, daily movement,
whatever you enjoy, whatever you like, there is no best
compliance is the science. Do what you like, and we'll
stick to figure that out first. And I really do
think as you continue to pursue, because fitness is such
(33:56):
a good microcosm for delayed gratification, you'll start to really
understand what you were put here to do.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
But it has to start with the physical body.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
I couldn't. I couldn't concur more with that. We are
physical beings. We are rooted in the physicality of how
we perceive all things, right, from a from a neurological perspective,
from the way we perceive through our vision, through where
we interpret that information itself within that prefrontal cortex, right,
which then ultimately generates what that metacognition, which creates our
(34:29):
own potential. Right, So all of those factors are at
the highest level.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
All right.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You have mentioned several times being.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
In the presence of of of that Holy Spirit and
being in the presence of what you would describe as
a divine process. Has that always played a role in
your life? Was that a part of the initiation to change?
And if not, how did it present itsel elf? In?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
How do you.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
What is it? How do you.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Do?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
How do you nurture it?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
How do you I don't I don't want to sound cheesy,
like how do you work out your faith?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Now?
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
But but that's what I'm asking, like, how does that?
How does that grow?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
And what are the supplements and the exercises and all
that that facilitate that.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
It was not always in the picture. I was always
the lukewarm Christian of there's there's a God, there's no way,
there's not.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
A higher power, But what is it? How did it
get it? What does it all look like?
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I was, you know, I was a classic I'm spiritual,
not religious tuly, just a way of saying I'm lukewarm.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
But it it took.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
It took hitting what in my adult life was a
rock bottom for me, which was ultimately losing my dad,
or not losing.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
My dad, but him passing away.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
And that the man was my best friend, biggest role model,
and he taught me a lot of what I know.
And I make a joke all the time. I was
like that if you if you grew up in my age,
you'd have two million followers, not a million. You'd do
better than I ever could.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
He was special And I moved home. Name. His name's
Michael Smoke. Also that's cool. Yeah he's Michael Lee. I'm
Michael Thomas. So not as junior.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Technically, he was my biggest role model, and he's a
very special, special man who everyone looked to and looked
forward to and leaned on in hard times.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
He was the one giving eulogies for the grandparents' funeral.
He was the first guy that ever ignited the fire
for public speaking in me because he was so proficient
at it. And he said to me, when I was
a little boy, he came in for career day and
gave a presentation on his job, which at the time
was selling sports equipment goalposts, foul netting, track surface turf.
(36:52):
And that's not going to interest a bunch of third graders,
But I remember him bringing in props and making jokes
and looking around and seeing all these little boys and
girls interesting and what this old man had to say
about goalposts. And he said to me, he was like, remember, buddy,
there's no better feeling than getting up in front of
a room full of people and knowing there's a question
they can't ask you that you don't have the answer to.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
It's empowering. And I thought, wow, that was pretty cool.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
And I moved home for a little while in a
chapter of my life where I was resetting, I was
living on my own, moved.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Back home and come home to it.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
I hadn't seen him in maybe a month, and he
looked sick, and I was like, well, you look like
you're losing weight.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
What's going on? He's like a bubby. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
I don't feel good, I'm tired, I can't eat. And
being the health and wellness person I am, I immediately
was like, are we seeing doctors?
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Are we setting appointments?
Speaker 4 (37:40):
And I started doing that for him, Holistic doctors, real doctors,
GI doctors, Western and Eastern medicine. And they could never
figure out what quite was wrong with him. And I'll
spare you the details. It was cirrhosis, that it was lymphoma,
massive blood clotting. But ultimately what happened was my dad
began to lose all of his muscle mass, all of
his autonomy. He lost about sixty pounds in five months,
(38:03):
and he was already sixty two point lean guy, and
he got to the point where he was practically skin
and bones and had all the symptoms of liver failure.
But he was never a drinker and so he was.
They were confused, but that was brutal to watch my
hero lose all sense of autonomy and freedom. And that's
(38:24):
where I really turned to God because I didn't have
anywhere else to go. I couldn't lean on myself. I
couldn't lean on my family. I couldn't lean on him.
You know, he was the guy. He was the guy
I shared my wins with. That was my support system
and my confidant. And you know, when your earthly father
begins to fail, you turn to your heavenly father. And
that's where I started to experience supernatural peace, that thing
(38:46):
that they say you can't explain. But it was after
a lot of traumatic days of becoming my dad's full
time hospice nurse. You know, I tried not to get
emotional talking him about it, but I took him to
excuse me. I took him to an appointment and before
(39:08):
we were getting ready, I was putting his shoes on
because he couldn't bend over to do it anymore. And
he he reached around and patted my back, and uh,
he said, I'm just looking for your wings.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
You know that I was his angel.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
And yeah, God put me there to be with him
in his last six months, and I'm so thankful for that,
and put me in a place with a lot of
God fearing men because he knew i'd need the support
system and men that really weren't a part of my
life until about four months before shit really hit the
(39:48):
fan for me, and I'll always be thankful to God
for giving me that time with him.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
But you know, they you.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Think about God's purpose for your life and what his
purpose for my life was. And to watch my dad
lose his autonomy as a result of what was probably
not living a life centered around health and wellness.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
You know, he was never overweight, but he grew up
in the fifties.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
He smoked from the time he was a kid until
the day he almost the day he died, until he
couldn't go outside to smoke.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
He ate whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and he didn't.
He stopped exercising in his forties.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
He's a D one two sport athlete at Georgia and
he would always say, Bubby, I hit my exercise quote
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
You know, I think I've heard myself say that one
to my daughters recently.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
I'm all weight lifted out, That's what he would say. Yeah, yeah,
But the beauty of.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
Watching my dad go through that and being there for
him was It's made me so much more convicted on
teaching people that everybody has a lot of problems until
they have a health problem, and then they have one
problem because nothing else. When your body fails you and
you don't have a spare one hanging up in the closet,
(41:03):
you just don't. And I'm thankful that God granted me
the ability to suffer through that, because it gave me
a true power and conviction to teach people how important
this is, and not only how important it is, but
how attainable health and vitality is.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
It is not unattainable.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
It is in the four or five key choices you
are or are not making every day, and if you
don't make them, they will materialize in the form of
a lifestyle related disease on average, not always.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
You can play the odds.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
You can gamble like my dad did, so you don't
always win that. You don't always win that bet, and
so I'm fortunate and it's you know, it reminds me
of one of my favorite verses of all time that
really got me through that, which was James Chapter one,
verse two through four, counted all joy, brethren, when you
face trials of many kinds, because you know that the
testing of your faith produces perseverance, and let perseverance run
(41:54):
its course so that you may be full, complete and mature,
not lacking anything. That process made me mature, it made
me complete, and it's just a piece of my journey
to prevent me from lacking something in the future.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
So ultimately, I'm not thankful my dad passed.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
I miss him every day, but I'm thankful for what
that experience taught me and how it's going to allow
me to pour into other people.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, I'll tell you what, man, as trying to figure
out what it was that sucks me in every time
you start ranting on in front of that screen, and
and now I know, thank you for sharing that with everybody.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
That's beyond anything I could have imagined you would be
willing to share with me, Man, And that's proof that
you are who you say are and you do believe
what you believe. So where can people come and follow
and participate and get on this journey with you?
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I appreciate that. I do thank you for saying that.
And it goes back to vulnerability. I want everybody to
know that their vulnerability and their authenticity is their superpower.
And don't be scared to show the world who you are,
because if anybody judges you, or thinks differently of you,
it doesn't matter. It's like Goggins says so beautifully, You'll
never be shit on by anybody doing better than you.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And I want people to remember that and to live it.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
And if they're interested, yeah, if they're interested in coming
along and learning more. My username across all platforms is
the same. My name is Michael Smoke, but my username
is higher Up Wellness on everything.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I have a podcast called the Higher Up Podcast.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
It's available on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. And if
they're interested in working with me, they can simply DM
me the word fit on Instagram and it triggers in
my inbox to start a conversation with you and we
can learn more and figure out if we're potentially a
fit to work together and if we're not.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
No worries.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I hope that they get some value from the content alone,
and I appreciate you giving me the time and the
space to come on and be a part of your platform.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
Is truly in honor and it was a It was
a great time, man. I had a blast.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Awesome. God bless you, Thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Brother, you as well.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
M hm m m hm.
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Buck Sexton
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