Ep 30 - Ivan Fredette

Ivan Fredette has lived what many of us fear: addiction, loss, numbing pain. Ivan didn’t hide from it. Instead, he built a way out. After 17 years of battling alcohol addiction and being wounded by the tragic suicides of a cousin and sister, Ivan decided to take full responsibility for his life. 

Today, he’s the founder of Ironclad Brotherhood, where men come together to reclaim discipline, purpose, sobriety, and legacy. He’s not just a coach. He’s a man who’s walked through the fire and now guides others through the flames. Outside of the mentorship world, he runs Safe Tree Ltd., a successful 7‑figure business in Niagara, proving transformation applies in business too. 

As a husband and father of three, Ivan brings to the table not just business savvy and recovery wisdom, but the real world challenge of living the legacy you teach. In this episode we’ll talk about: how to turn wreckage into leadership, what real accountability looks like for men, how fatherhood reshapes your mission, and why choosing life is the first step to building something meaningful.

Follow Ivan on Instagram @ivanfredette

Website: https://www.ivanfredette.com

This episode was sponsored by Matthew Stevenson Insurance.

Website: https://matthew-stevenson.ca/#work

Instagram: @mattstevensoninsurance

This episode's Dad Jokes Sponsor is Spicer Landscaping and Snow Removal.

Website: https://www.spicerlandscaping.ca

The Clothing and Swag Sponsor of the show is OneBone Clothing.

Website: https://onebonebrand.com

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
This Shit My Dad Taught Me episode is brought to you by an
amazing sponsormatthew-stevenson.ca.
He's wealth strategy, tax smart,estate smart, legacy smart.
Thank you, Matt. Shit, my dad's up, my dad's up
and we've already been laughing for like 20 minutes before we
got. On here we've had a pretty fun
off camera. Yeah, man, I have no idea what

(00:24):
we're going to get into. Here, we're going to go deep.
Yeah, let's get the formal shit right out of the way.
We start it with a ChatGPT intro, So I'm going to introduce
our get guest today, Ivan Fredette.
Yep. Here we go, man.
Ivan Fredette has lived what many of us fear.
Addiction, loss, numbing pain. And he didn't hide from it.
Instead, he built a way out. After 17 years of battling

(00:46):
alcohol addiction and being wounded by the tragic suicides
of a cousin, a sister, Ivan decided to take full
responsibility for his life. Today he's the founder of
Ironclad Brotherhood, where men come together to reclaim
discipline, purpose, sobriety and legacy.
He's not just a coach, he's a man who's walked through the

(01:06):
fire and now guides others through the flames.
Outside of the mentorship world,he runs Safetree Limited, a
successful 7 figure business in Niagara providing transformation
which applies in his business life as well.
As a husband and a father of three.
Ivan brings to the table not just business savvy and recovery
wisdom, but real world challengeof living the legacy you teach.

(01:30):
In this episode, we're going to talk about it all, so welcome my
guest, Ivan. Can I steal that from my bio?
It's available. Oh, and by.
The way where did this 11 inches.
Come from We did say we're goingto go deep.
Yeah, that's right. We did we.
Edited for the folks. So where do you want to start,

(01:51):
Ivan? You want to go right back to the
beginning, man. Tell us about being a kid.
Where'd you grow up? What?
Was that like, so I grew up in Niagara, pretty normal
childhood, I guess, for the mostpart.
Nothing spectacular. Regular parents, regular life
until I turned 17. You know, actually it was, it

(02:12):
was late 17, it was a month before my 18th birthday.
My cousin Tyler, he was my best buddy.
Like we grew up together. We were same age, our fathers
were brothers. And you know, he even lived in
my house. He, he hung himself on a
doorknob a month before my 18th birthday.
And that changed everything for me.

(02:33):
Everything, you know, without proper guidance in a man's life,
especially that age, you can go one of two ways.
And I went the bad way. I spent most of my time
partying. I became a motorcycle mechanic,
worked at Harley-Davidson. So that was kind of my crowd,

(02:55):
right? Spent most of my time just
riding motorcycles, partying, drinking, strip clubs, that kind
of stuff. And, you know, despite still
being somewhat successful, you know, growing up in a small
town. A lot of people.
Didn't see that. Normally growing up in a small

(03:15):
town, everything's on the on thetable.
But now I was still able to be fairly successful.
I was known as the the young guythat was kind of coming up, but
nobody really saw what was happening inside or behind the
scenes. Right?
Yeah, man, it's just destroying myself.
Every relationship I had, I would destroy, self sabotage.

(03:39):
And that's how I lived my life right up until I turned 35.
You know, even when I met my wife, man, I don't know how she
stayed with me. I really don't.
And even to this day, I asked her like why?

(04:00):
Because I knew what kind of person you are.
And she's like, I could see through that.
And thank God she was right. You know, it just took a while
for me to find it for myself. And for me, it was it was Boxing
Day 2020. My daughter was five years old

(04:21):
at the time. My son was five months old.
COVID, everything's, you know, chaos, the world's falling
apart. And, you know, everybody's just
going deeper and deeper into these shitty rabbit holes.
And I don't know man, something just switched.
Something just switched. Came home the night before, not

(04:45):
remembering how I got home. So I woke up, no clue how I got
home. I looked outside and my trucks
parked half in the driveway, half in the lawn, driver side
door open, snow filled driver's seat.
And it was the sound of cartoonsthat woke me up.
I mean, it's like 11:00 in the morning and I'm ready to give my

(05:07):
5 year old daughter shit. We're having the cartoons too
loud. Like that's that's where I was.
And you know, as soon as I walked out of there and I was
about to, you know, give a shit.Just paradigm shift right there.
So no more I'm like, I'm either going to take my own life or I'm

(05:32):
going to kill the man that I was.
I picked the ladder of the two, thank God, and never looked
back. Man.
It's just been upward and and onward since.
I haven't slowed down. I just keep getting better and
better every day. My main goal has just been how

(05:53):
can I improve every single day, You know, and like anybody else,
I'm human. I don't every day, but I try to,
right? And basically when I quit.
So when I decided to make that choice once and for all, I

(06:16):
looked at my sister because my sister at that time was three
years sober, but she went through the traditional programs
and, you know, she would always call me.
She just called me brother. She never called me by my name.
She's like, hey, brother, you know, like struggling, you know,
whatever the problem was and shejust say she was sick.

(06:38):
You know, I, I can't, I'm, I'm powerless.
She would say I'm, I'm sick. It it's nothing that I can
change. I just have to go to meetings
and, you know, and she was threeyears old sober and she still
called herself an alcoholic. And I'm like, I, I can't do that
to me. In my opinion is that's a

(06:59):
victimhood mentality. How can I sit in a room in a
circle of people and attach my name to an identity I no longer
wanted? Right, That it's
counterintuitive of what I want to accomplish.
I'm telling my subconscious mindthat that's what I am.
How am I ever going to fucking escape that?

(07:22):
I'm not. I watched her, she never escaped
it. So there's nothing really out
there. So I'm my entrepreneur of mine.
What do I do best is I created something.
I created a model that rather than just getting sober, I
wanted to create armor. I wanted to build armor for

(07:44):
myself so that no matter what happened in my life, I would
never fall back into the same patterns that I once had.
And those, those patterns were caused by, well, it was caused
by myself, but it was triggered by Tyler suicide.
And if I could just build a way that no matter what happened,

(08:07):
I'd never fall back into that. And that was 5 things in my
life. So, and, and I'm talking, this
was like days sitting, thinking,trying to come up with the
strategy. So I figured there's five areas
of my life. If I always for the rest of my
life continuously improved in those five areas, it would be

(08:29):
unreasonable for me to fail. And those were my aspirations,
revenue, muscle, oneness and relationships, armor.
And then I just basically focused on those and how I would
grow every single day in every category of my life.

(08:53):
And that took my addiction. So as addicts, we're often like
entrepreneurs and crack addicts are the same fucking people,
right? A lot of people just don't
realize addicts aren't sick. They have an innate ability.
They have a fucking superpower to focus on something so much

(09:14):
that nothing else matters. So if I took that same ability
and focused on those five things, then I would basically
have the same outcome that I didas an addict.
Right, except I would pull good.Things from it rather than

(09:35):
destroying my relationships, rather than losing confidence
and courage. Man, I was like 245 lbs.
And you know, I had no real aspirations.
I know I wanted to make a lot ofmoney, but I didn't know how to
get there. I had no nothing else.
So once I had that, I came up with the the six iron CS I

(09:55):
called them so clarity, confidence, courage,
consistency, core values and charisma.
So I would work on those in thatorder.
And then I would consistently measure it and watch my ebbs and
flows and adjust my life accordingly.
And then I was able to basicallytake that strategy and.

(10:17):
Share it with other dudes. That's pretty awesome, man.
That's pretty. Yeah, that's pretty crazy path
again. Sorry, I was like, here's here's
drinking from a fire hose there.There's my life.
The way to do it, man. So I got, I got a bunch of
questions. I guess maybe the first one I
want to ask is, is you had that,You had that pivotal moment.

(10:38):
You had that, you know, you can still recall it with all the
details and all the, you know, sounds and smells and
everything. How why do you think you had
that? Why do you think that was the
day? Like, because I know there's a
lot of guys that are that they, they probably feel like they
haven't hit rock bottom yet. Like they say, yeah, it's bad
and yeah, I got to do something about it.
But then they'll go and, you know, start it up again tomorrow

(11:01):
night. Till they really.
Hit it. What's what's Because I mean
that technically, I mean that that was a shitty morning and
shitty circumstances and all that stuff, but like, you didn't
really bottom out. What?
Why do you think you were in that moment?
Why do you think you had that that that pivot?
So this, this one's going to be tough to say.

(11:22):
This didn't come to me until like 2 years ago.
So it's been five years now. We're coming on this December,
December 26th. I had no idea why at that time.
So to to build up to that. So I got sober for three years

(11:45):
and the ultimate test was three years, almost to the day, right?
I and it, it was a test. My sister shot herself and like
me and her were, we were fuckingtight, right?
She was everything. Three years after you got sober,

(12:08):
Three years after you got sober on her sober path at that time.
Yeah, it was actually. So her sobriety date was seven
days before her birthday, and her death date was seven days
after her birthday. So it goes her sobriety date,
her birth date and her death date, all seven days apart and.

(12:29):
So Tyler, so to answer your question, it was the ultimate
test and, and I passed, you know, it was the very first time
in my life that I saw something tragic as an opportunity.
And as bad as that sounds, she was the most important person in
my life. That is what put me here today.

(12:53):
That is what put me in front of thousands of other men to help
them. Tyler killed himself January
26th, 2003. My sister killed herself
November 26th, 2023. I quit drinking December 26th,

(13:18):
2020. I hadn't seen my sister in three
years because of COVID. She lived in Texas and we
couldn't travel because I decided to not to to take the
and she wasn't allowed to travelbecause of her job.
So I hadn't seen her and she came home.

(13:38):
So she died in November. She was home that October
because my grandmother passed away September 26th.
So that forced her to come home.She never met my son.
She got to meet my son for the first time and then she left us
that November. Or suicide?

(14:00):
No, she left basically to me it was, you know, saying sorry to
everybody. And then she wanted me to have
everything. And she wanted those who did
this to her to suffer forever, IE her husband and his mother is
what she was talking about. He had found methamphetamine and

(14:20):
totally destroyed everything forthem and his mother died May
26th, 6 months after my sister died and he got everything
because she didn't sign the noteso it wasn't a legal document
and he locked us out of everything.

(14:40):
We didn't get anything of hers and he ended up buying the house
that she wanted or in the neighborhood that she wanted.
February 26th after her passing with her money and it's all
gone. He got remarried that same day
one year later with my sister's ring.
Sent a video of him, his wife and his kids giving the finger

(15:04):
and my mom like real dirtbag. And so now to answer your
question now it was meant to be.It was just that day, it was the
26th, You know it. Was going to.
It was going to be one way or the other.

(15:24):
Right, I don't subscribe to religion, but I believe in God.
I work for God. I'm I'm, I'm a warrior for God
because I can't deny it. And there's, and there's other
like totally fucking insane stories, but it, it was, it's

(15:48):
because it was the 26th and and that's why, and that's the only
reason, you know, and I truly believe that.
Yeah, that's heavy. Yeah, that's a lot, man.
Yeah, I. Appreciate you sharing it.
There, there, there's like, man,I've never believed in my life.

(16:11):
I've never believed in God. I've never believed in like I
always thought that, you know, shit was just coincidence.
But since my sister passed, man,it's just been boom boom, one
thing after another that. It it it's.
Literally undeniable that there is something there God energy

(16:36):
her whatever it is. You know she was a nuclear
physicist, so I always like to think that she cracked the code.
She'd always tell me she's like you know I'm I'm not right for
this planet brother. She would she would say she's
like I don't fit in with you normals.
She called us and. You know, I like to think that
when she passed away, she figured out how to cross like

(16:58):
her math that she would. Man, the the things that would
come out of her mouth, I didn't even fucking understand them
half the time. She could figure out any math
question on the planet, and I like to think that she figured
out how to to communicate acrossdifferent dimensions, right?
I know it sounds crazy, but no, not.
It's this is, yeah. We, we welcome all ideas and,

(17:20):
and I think too, so go back to your acronym.
When you were talking about armor, you had an interesting
way of saying there was something in there about the
spirituality piece, right? Oneness.
Yeah, yeah, Oneness. So that's, that's faith,
mission, purpose, confidence, courage, all that oneness is, is
probably the biggest part that the hardest to tackle for sure,

(17:41):
and, and often the hardest to identify for for guys, you know.
But again, with the other part of my strategy with the Iron
Seas, it, it kind of brings it all together.
So basically what I do with themis through the Iron Seas, I work
with them. We get clarity first.
We need 100% clarity on where you want to go in your life,

(18:04):
what you want to do, how we're going to get there.
And we break it down in the 90 day goals and the daily non
negotiables. And then we build courage or
sorry, confidence. And the only way to build
confidence, like true confidenceis to keep the promises you make
to yourself. You know, like I hear guys talk
about integrity all the time, you know, and, and then they

(18:25):
describe it as, you know, the promise I keep to somebody.
Well, true integrity is the promises you keep to yourself.
You know, how can you have true integrity if you're, if you're
lying to yourself, you know, andthen we can with our daily non
negotiables, we can create real confidence in small little wins.

(18:48):
You know, my, my very first one was never hitting snooze again.
That was literally my first non negotiable in this strategy.
And then once that became a habit, then I can change my non
negotiable to something else. I built confidence because I
kept that promise. And then they got bigger and
bigger and I was going to the gym every day and then it was
all of these other things. And then courage, like

(19:11):
confidence, it's not factory installed, right?
So courage, we would do hard things, you know, I would.
I call them acts of courage, AO C's.
So every day I try and do an AOCtoday.
This is 1 for me, believe it or not, I was like shitting my
pants on the way here. I always get nervous before I

(19:31):
talk always. And but that's my act of
courage. I'm going to go out, I'm going
to do it could be a cold shower.It could be having a
conversation that you've been putting off.
It could be just saying hi to a stranger in a grocery store.
And the more you build, the morethe courage you have.

(19:51):
Like everyone has this misconception that you know it.
Courage is something you need totake action.
It's not Courage is something that you build after you do
something that scares the shit out of you, right?
And then consistency. And this is where a journal
comes in. I created my own journal so that
I keep track of it every day. I measure it, I can see my

(20:14):
progress. Consistency kills all always.
And then a set of core values a lot of the time, and this is
this is from this is the majority of this came from the
sobriety side because I watched all of these people relapse.
And I said, well, how do I stop myself from falling back into

(20:34):
it? And I determined that I didn't
have a criteria in which to measure my choices and
decisions. Like how how often do we take do
we make a decision or a choice and we we measure it against
something, right? Like nobody fucking does that.

(20:56):
But if I had a set of values, true values, and I came up with
the acronym Learn leadership through action, evolve to
greatness, accountability to oneself, resilience in the face
of adversity, and no surrender. And those are my core values.
Anytime I was faced with a decision, whether it was having
a drink or whatever, watching porn, you know, all of these

(21:18):
different things, I would go to my core values and that would
hold me accountable. And then the last is charisma.
So I take everything I've learned and I injected into
other people, right? This is my it's talking and
expressing yourself and being passionate didn't come

(21:39):
naturally. I worked on it every day.
I would talk to strangers, I would ask them questions, get to
know them. And building that charisma has
been what led me to be able to take my strategy, my program,
and. Deliver it to other dudes and
not even women too, right? They're just a little bit

(22:00):
different. We operate a little.
Bit a lot. Different.
A little bit. A lot different, yeah.
So that's that's basically it. And yeah, the acronym ARMOR it,
it just, it just, it's kind of happened kind of float, right?
How do you how do you get this out to the world?
Like what's your what's your practices, modalities?

(22:23):
How do you how do you come to these guys and how do you guys
connect and. It was traditionally just social
media, but through some recent transitions with business,
everything kind of got put on. And I'd like to say it's just
dormant right now because I justdidn't have the capacity to do

(22:46):
it all myself. So right now I'm focusing on my
speaking career. I just, I want to get out.
I want to tell my story and thenI can kind of roll things back
in again. I feel like I did it backwards a
little bit. Mind you, I did help a lot of
guys. I helped a lot of guys and I
still do, but to be able to helpmore, I really just want to get

(23:12):
out there and I want people to know who I am.
I want them to know my story so they don't think I'm just
another fucking turd. You know?
There's so many people. You, you've said it earlier,
Jamie, there's so many people out there.
They call themselves. Coaches or or life codes or
whatever and really have nothingto back it.

(23:32):
I don't want to be grouped in with that.
I want people to understand thatI bring real, true value.
I've lived it. I've built a company like I've
felt. The.
Heartache and the pain and the tragedy to to be able to take

(23:53):
that fucking program and make something of it so yeah.
And you've. Taken your your speaking thing
to the next level. Like, tell us a little bit about
that, like your journey lately. Dude, I'm so stoked.
I'm so stoked. So in May I signed up with
Speakerslam. So it's North America's largest
inspirational speaking competition and the topic was

(24:15):
the power of known. I came third.
So that gets me into the finals,which is this month, November
22nd. Again, it's the dates are are
getting real close there. You know, the I truly believe
it's in November for a reason. And yeah, so I'm one of 14 to

(24:38):
shoot for. What are they calling it,
inspirational speaker of the year?
So if I win that, who knows? I think it comes with like a
$25,000 book signing deal and a billboard in New York or
something, maybe Times Square, Ican't remember.
Anyways, it doesn't matter. It's not what it's for.
But a book would be cool. And yeah, next year's is is Ted

(25:02):
X. I'll be I'll be gunning hard for
Ted X. Get it?
Yeah. Love that.
Hopefully they'll drop the announcements on who won first
place on November the 26th. Yeah, man, yeah.
And I think it's important to like, I mean, to anybody
listening to this, that that hasa story that that has come out

(25:23):
the other side that has tactics and has, you know, real strategy
behind that. I mean, you got to get out there
and tell people, man, it's amazing what even this little
channel has done to connect people with some some good
thoughts and some good strategy.And so, yeah, just keep, keep
putting it out there. Knowledge kept his knowledge
stolen. Yeah.
You know, I truly believe that. And there's there's two the two

(25:47):
most selfish things that I can that I think people can do. 1 is
not share their knowledge and two is put others first.
I think if you put other people before yourself it is more
selfish than anything else because you neglecting yourself
is showing an example and counterintuitive of what you're

(26:11):
telling or showing people. A little bit back to the
beginning when like my best friend hung himself when when we
were younger, like we bought ourour first houses next door to
each other and he hung himself in his house.
Do you do you know, or do you understand why he might have
done it? Like you guys were so close like
because obviously like you replaced shit back in your mind

(26:32):
so many times to be like, how did I not fucking see this
coming? We were in a different stage
because like we were fucking partying hard and stuff.
So like everybody at that time was just everybody's great,
everybody's partying and like, you just don't see it.
But like, do you look back or doyou kind of understand why he
might have taken his life at that time?
Nah man, nothing, eh? Not even a little bit.

(26:54):
It's still like, it's still boggles my mind, you know, it's
been what, I'm 40 now, so 23 years, something like that.
Anyways, 22 years. It was 2003.
And yeah, man, I, I, I still don't understand.

(27:17):
I, I, I don't know at all. Like, yeah, I, I think about it
all the time, even to this day. His 40th birthday just passed,
and that was the second time I've ever been to his grave.
It was the first time was when we buried him and, and then for

(27:39):
his 40th birthday, you know exactly where it was.
I'm far from me, but I can nevergo there.
And not because I'm mad at him. I'm not mad at him or anything.
I just just don't know. I don't understand, right?
Same with my sister, you know, Iknow what she was going through.

(28:01):
I can't imagine that pain. And I, I just, I, I was faced
with that decision December 26th, but there's no way I could
follow through with it. No way.
You know, and, and, and I understand it's like a lot of

(28:22):
people just don't get it When you think that way, you
literally think that people are better off without you.
Like I thought my family was better off without me, but Tyler
had nobody relying on him. You know, that's, I don't know,

(28:44):
it's tough, man. It's fucked up that people get
to that point. You know, my sister, my sister
texted me just before she did. She said, hey brother, just want
to let you know I love you. And that wasn't out of the norm

(29:09):
for her. She would text me that shit all
the time. So I I was driving so I didn't
text back. And you know, as soon as my mom
called me, she's like, hey, haveyou talked to Genevieve?
She got off the phone. She was really weird and I can't
get in touch with her. I knew right away.
I knew right away and man. And my sister shot herself too,

(29:44):
and that was like. Fuck yes, you.
Wanna hear something crazy, though it's less I'm gonna hear
something fucking. And this is this is the start of
it. So we got that news some or
November 26th. I booked a flight that night to

(30:09):
go to Texas because my mom was already there.
She spends her winters in Texas.She spent her winters in Texas
to be with my sister and her summers here to be with me and
my family. And so I flew down on the 27th,
got in late, woke up on the 28th.
And my sister, I talked to her the day before and I didn't get

(30:32):
a hint that she was going to do anything.
I don't think she wasn't planning it.
It was a last minute kind of choice and, and it solidifies
that in the note. But she said something to me.
She's like, hey, you know, I'm, I'm going to leave Brian.
And she said I put some of my stuff in storage in a storage

(30:53):
unit. It's like just, you know,
there's been some things happening.
He's pawned off some of my jewelry and some of the stuff.
So I'm like, OK, like do what you got to do.
Let me know if you if you need me to come down there.
And that's all I knew she had the storage unit.
So I told my mom and my cousin was down there and she she knew

(31:13):
that she had a storage unit too.Anyways, so Brian locks us out
of everything. He's Mia on a meth binge.
He's next of kin. We can't do fuck all.
Her body is in a is in a freezerbasically.
And if we can't get her body released with his signature by

(31:38):
certain time, she's buried at their discretion.
In Texas. She wanted to be cremated and
brought home. So this is devastating for my
mom. We don't care about anything
else. We're driving to the house.
This is the first day I'm there.My mom was there already.
It's 27th. I'm driving.
My mom's a wreck. My stepdad's a wreck.

(32:00):
He's in the back seat and they're I don't know if you've
ever been to like Houston area, but apparently people hate
keeping things in their house. They have fucking storage units
everywhere. Like I mean storage units.
It's like they're guys like likeBucky's but for storage units
and they're on every corner. So we're driving down the road.

(32:21):
My mom said pull over. I pull over.
I said, what's wrong? She started trying.
She's like go in here. I'm like go in where?
She's like go in this in this storage place in this U-Haul.
I'm like, ma, don't do this to yourself.
Like just fucking don't. This is going to haunt you.
We're never going to find it. She was just go in here.

(32:42):
So I go in, tell the guy a storyand he's like, she drive a White
Lotus. I'm like, yeah, it was she was
in here. She unloaded a bunch of stuff in
the storage unit. She goes she left emergency
contact. But I get the, I got the
impression that she didn't want him here.
She didn't want him to know. I'm like, Yep, that's right.

(33:04):
He goes, I can't let you in there if you have a death
certificate, you know, or, or next of kin, which is him.
So I'm like, fuck, when are we going to get that stuff anyways?
Crazy enough that we found that.And then we go to the house and
we walk in. His mother is there and she's a
real bitch. The house is torn apart.

(33:25):
They got her office. Her purse is.
Dumped out, they've just. Looking for anything to sell.
Anything to sell, they just got to place torn apart.
Anyways, I'm standing there and I'm like I said to his mother,
I'm like, can I have her cowboy boots and her Ray Bans?
My sister was all about her boots.
That's all I want. I don't give a fuck about
anything else. I just want her boots and her
Ray Bans. She's like, yeah, I don't care.

(33:46):
Take what? Take whatever.
So I'm standing there, I grab her boots and her Ray Bans.
When you walk in, there's a hallway going down and the
kitchen's on the right hand side, and then there's a
breakfast bar, right? And then behind that is the
backyard. I didn't want to look in the
backyard because that's the messwas still there.
And anyways, her Ray Bans are sitting on the on the breakfast

(34:08):
bar and they're pointing in likejust on an angle.
And I get this like, you know, when you get mad and you, you,
yeah, you get all like hot and shit.
So I get this super. Flush feeling and then all I can
hear in my mind just like look like look and I don't, I don't
know what I'm looking for. I'm just like.
All I hear is it look and it's so loud.

(34:30):
So I go. Over to grab the Ray Bans and
they're pointed at an angle and when you walk up to them there's
the Ray Bans are here and then there's bananas beside them and
then a. Bowl of fruit.
Right beside that and you could only see in between the bananas
and the fruit bowl from the angle I was coming at and
underneath the fruit bowl there was a key sticking it.

(34:52):
For the storage place. Dude, you you.
I'm not even fucking making thisshit up.
So I grabbed the Ray Bans, I grabbed the key, I put them in
my pocket and we leave. My mom hates theft so I didn't
say anything. So I said I I pulled back to the
storage unit. My mom was like, what are you
doing? I'm like, just wait here, right?
I walk in there. I talk to the guy.
I'm like, if I have a key, it's,it's good, right?

(35:13):
And he's like, yeah, absolutely.I walk in there, the fucking key
fits. I open it up.
It's all of my sister's stuff from growing up, nothing of any
value but her report cards, her like T-ball glove, her pictures,
all the stuff that meant something to her was in this
storage unit. And only, nothing else.

(35:35):
Nothing else, like anything elsewas just stuff.
And I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding.
So we just kept her mouth shut. They didn't even know about the
key or the storage unit. Nothing.
So we got all of my sister's meaningful stuff and nobody knew
anything different. Fuck, dude.
We walked away there. I come back out.

(35:56):
I told my mom. She just fell apart.
But how did she know? And then and then I said to my
step dad, I said he I said, well, that key, she must have
put it there as a clue, you know, and put the glasses there.
I don't know. She must think, you know, he's
like, no, he's like, I was in there yesterday and I put those

(36:16):
glasses there. Hey, like how the fuck did my
mom know to stop in front of that?
Like I'm telling you, we only stopped at one and there's one
on every corner, man, just like.And then after that, that's not
even the craziest story after that, it was just one after

(36:37):
another how everything started to fall into place.
It was. It's God, man.
Body wild shit. Wild shit.
Yeah, man. And every time I tell that
story, I still can't believe it.Like I'll never forget I, I, I'd

(37:00):
never been in Texas before. Well, no, that's a lie.
I helped her move there originally from Louisiana to
League City. So I was in Texas once before,
but rolling into Texas and witnessing that first day, it's.
Crazy. Wow.
Did you get the boots? Yeah, I got the boots.
They sit on my, they sit on the Mantel by my wood stove.

(37:20):
They're bad ass dude. Like my sister always rock blue
jeans and boots. Like she, she had a fucking
closet full of shoes and mold and half of them were boots.
These cowboy boots were like there's gems in them and the
bottom is like engraved like heat engraved patterns and shit.

(37:41):
Like they're no joke. So she was, she was a nuclear
physicist when she was here in Canada and in Texas.
She was a fuck, they call it. An international welding
engineer, she wrote the code forthe welders working on the
pipelines. So she was only one of two
Canadians in the US working for Trans Canada, and she wrote all

(38:05):
the. Code.
She was no joke. Yeah, right.
Which is crazy, right? Like you just think about that.
It's like she's just so fucking smart.
And she'd always tell me all thetime, so I don't belong here.
So this this world is informed she would Man, I remember when I
was a little kid, I never understood like I remember being

(38:26):
like four or five and my sister being like, I'm not from here,
like. It's not my place, yeah.
Always. So I like to think that she
found it right. Did she had kids or did they
have kids? No, he did.
He did. He did.
Yeah, yeah, that's a whole otherstory I don't need to get into,

(38:47):
but yeah, it's it. That guy's a mess.
This guy's a mess. It's getting No, no business.
How's your mom doing? She's still rough.
Is she still there and here or she?
She's on her way there right now.
She literally she's in Mississippi as we speak.
She left two days ago and years ago.

(39:12):
Well, maybe, maybe Friday she left.
I can't remember. It's just.
Her and stepdad down there now then.
Yeah, yeah. So they ended up, they ended up
staying. Kind of wish she wouldn't, but
it's not my decision to make. Is that still like just holding
on a little bit? Is that what it is?
I don't know. I don't know.

(39:32):
I I don't think so. I truly do think they love where
they are. They've got friends down there,
the same friends that they so mysister or my mom retired.
She was an accountant. She was ACFO at a credit union
and she was forced into retirement cause of a head
injury. So she sold her house, all the

(39:54):
contents, everything bought thisgreat big fuck off RV lives out
of it stays here at a campgroundin the summertime and at a
campground down down there in the winter time.
This is great. She got to see my sister for her
birthday every year and. Yeah, I don't know.

(40:15):
It's just it's, it's so hard on her, you know, no mom should
ever go through that. Yeah, you're not.
You're not put here to see your kids not outlive you.
Imagine she was with her the daybefore, too, because it was
American Thanksgiving on a weekend, right?
Yeah. And my mom beats herself up a

(40:37):
lot. She she knew my sister was
struggling and she wanted to stay, but my sister always
struggled. Yeah, you know, so.
Was there was there other alcoholism in the family like
you and your sister obviously both had a bit like anything
previous to that, like. Our our whole family, like we're

(40:57):
my dad's side is Irish and my mum's side is Scandinavian, you
know, But alcohol was never seenas an issue, an issue, even
though now I know it was like big time.
And you know, alcohol is the only drug that affects families

(41:20):
generationally, yet is advertised as a celebration,
right. You know, it's fucking crazy.
And knowing what I know now, man, you know, I don't know, I,
I got nothing against anybody that drinks.
Fuck, I was, I had my black beltand beer drinking, you know, but

(41:43):
it's just so bad, so dangerous. You know, I, I look back now and
even just having a beer at the end of the day to unwind, You
know, what kind of kind of example was I setting for my my
kids? You know, it's just just it's
it's starting that. I don't know, man.

(42:08):
So much to it, so much to unpack.
You know, we could do the whole podcast just on on alcohol.
Yeah, you know, Yeah. But no, I wish, I wish you would
find somewhere else to go. But that's her choice.
She loves it. And in saying that, if all three
of us had a choice of where we could be right now, we'd all be

(42:30):
in Texas 100. Percent.
I'd be in Texas. So I get it.
I get why she's there. Yeah, I don't know why she's
where she like Edinburgh, Texas.Dude, do you ever fucking see on
the map or it's literally on themap?
It's like this far from Mexico get.
Me far away from the border. Yeah, yeah.
I'm like, I want to be like FortWorth, Dallas.

(42:50):
Yeah, yeah, that'd be my area, too, for sure. close to the
Midwest. I got some.
I got some really good friends in Missouri.
My buddy W Ford, he's going to watch this or listen to this
podcast for sure. I met him.
So when my sister passed, the one thing that we were able to
get, we had to buy no doubt and overpay for it was my sister's

(43:11):
Lotus. I drove it here today.
I was any any time that I know there's going to be an event or
something or she comes up, I tryand take it.
That's awesome. Anyways, so my mom was able to
secure the car, get it down to her place in Edinburgh.
So I basically drove that car from Mexico to Canada, right
across the US. It was the most bittersweet trip

(43:35):
of my fucking life. 12 hours a day, four days of driving.
And then I'm in a group called Arate Syndicate is led by Andy
for selling Ed Mylette, some really awesome people.
Anyways, there's this guy in that group that I met W Ford,
and there just happened to be this Ben Newman event happening

(43:58):
at first form in the middle of my trip, and Saint Louis was
about halfway with a small detour.
So two days to Saint Louis, fullday at first form, got to meet
my brother Wes, and I'd had the most incredible day of my life.
And then two days after that, honestly, I don't even remember

(44:19):
the second two days. There's nothing like as soon as
I left. Thought about was it was being
in Saint Louis? Buddy, Yeah.
And even before that, like from from Texas to Missouri.
Oh, man, taken. I don't know if you've ever been
in a Lotus, but it's like on rails like this thing is, I went
through the the Ozarks in Missouri and, you know, some of

(44:40):
the hills in Texas, it was absolutely insane.
Like and because this car to my sister, this was everything.
Like she fucking loved that car.Like any time she had problems,
it was she would go right to that car.
She bought it brand new in New Jersey and drove it to Louisiana

(45:04):
right off the lot. And she'd had it since.
I think I put 6000 miles on it this year since May.
And then we get it to. So after the five days, I get
it, the Buffalo just to find outyou cannot import Lotuses into
Canada. You just can't.

(45:27):
Yeah. So there's another fucking
hurdle. So the only way you can make it
happen is if you get a letter from Lotus themselves, because
they removed their name from theRIV, the registry of imported
vehicles, and they didn't want to give us one.

(45:49):
It was like hard now hard no. So my mom starts working on it.
After a year and a half, my mom finally found somebody there in
in Europe, the British cars. She gets a hold of this guy and
he's like, no, they're turning me down.
They're turning me down. I can't get it.
And finally she gets a call, a phone call from him.

(46:12):
He's like, you know what, I'm fucking doing it.
Anyways, I'm going to write you a letter.
You'll get your car home. So he went behind his superiors,
wrote my mother the letter. We got the car over this May.
So it was fucking parked in Buffalo for a year and a half.

(46:32):
Yeah, dude. Yeah, yeah, I had these.
I found these wicked old boys. Shout out to Brown's Auto
Storage. These guys were like, dude, so
they're three brothers. I don't know, they're in their
70s. One had a tow truck company, one
had a auto parts shop and one had an auto repair place.

(46:53):
And they all retire. They buy this warehouse, a
heated warehouse, and then they just store high end cars and
they just sit there and eat Wendy's and drink coffee with
the door open, right? And that's yeah, they took good
care of it. Great price they had, they
bought a cover for it and like. Man, it was.
Just kind of worked out. Yeah, it was.

(47:14):
It's just this remarkable story that like, I can't even make
this shit up, you know, on how everything worked out.
It's it's fucking wild. It's crazy, man.
You've been on, you've been on ajourney.
Fuck. Yeah, the last five years have
been wild, dude. You know, even Safe Tree, my, my
tree company, before I quit drinking, you know, I had a

(47:36):
shitty culture people, guys, youknow, always calling in sick,
showing up hungover, me included.
And when I decided to cut ties with alcohol ever changed, we
went from like 800,000 revenue to, well, we're sitting at 2

(47:58):
1/2, you know, which is pretty good for a small tree company.
And yeah, man, culture's killer.Our guys are awesome, but we'd
never have anybody call in sick.I've never, I haven't had
anybody show up with a hangover since.
It's, it's, it's crazy how your life changes.
You know my son will never see me the way I was.

(48:20):
Did your crew change a lot? Oh dude.
Like your personal crew? Work crew.
All of them. All of them.
There's nobody there anymore. That was with me then, yeah,
Huge turnover. But now the quality of
personality we have in that, in that play, it's it's, it's wow.

(48:43):
We were just talking about this our crew core release today.
So I was there kind of team building this morning and I look
at the guys, I'm like, there's something that I just can't
figure out in this room. You know, it's a, if you look at
our, our, we've got 275 Google, five star Google reviews, OK.
All of our customers say it's refreshing to work with this

(49:05):
company. You know, all our guys are, are
polite and we're trying to put like a word on it.
Like these guys are so different, but they all share
one thing. And it's just like, if you could
just fucking crack that code, figure out what that thing is.
Then when we meet people, it's like, Oh yeah, he's got it.

(49:30):
Unfortunately doesn't work that way.
You know, trial and error, but and it never happens in the
first three months either. And you're taking that team out
for a good RIP today. Yeah, yeah, we're going go
karting. We're going go karting.
You know what? You know what else is funny?
So. So I got this, this car.

(49:51):
I watched a Dan Martel video once and he was talking about
how he got his McLaren and then he started going into the
supercar rides and all the opportunity that came with it.
So I'm always thinking about thepeople I want to surround myself
with. You know who I want in my
circle? And he says, you want to be in a

(50:16):
cool circle. He's like, buy a supercar.
So it was always this joke between me and my wife.
I'm like, I'm buying a fuck supercar.
I don't care about the house. We're not going to build a new
house. I'm going to go and buy McLaren,
right? She's like, you do that just to
come leave me. You might have a new circle, but
yeah, a hole in it, right? Yeah.
So I'm like. I'm telling you, babe, there's

(50:37):
an opportunity there anyways, sowe get the Lotus, so we get
invited to this Niagara 5000. It's a supercar ride in Niagara
and it's all Mclarens. And you know, there's, there's a
$4 million Aston Martin there and $8 million.
It's all big players, yeah. Anyways, I'm sitting at this

(51:01):
table. There's this this guy, you know,
super quiet, him and his his wife.
Are. Just kind of hanging out and I'm
me, right? I'm I'm I'm always on this
charisma thing and I was trying to meet new people now anyways,
we end up going coke go karting with him.
He's like, what are you doing after?
I'm like, I'm going to this go karting place and fucking try it

(51:22):
out. I've heard about it.
Anyways, he comes with us. Turns out he becomes a really
good friend of mine. He's got a really interesting
business model and I'm meeting with him tomorrow.
We're going to start putting this business model together.
That was the first supercar rideI was in, met somebody and we're
going to start a business together.
You know, it's like, and then soon as that happens, I'm like,

(51:45):
fuck, damn, what's right? And then it starts going on
these other things like, man, how do I get in?
Like if I could just be around more than Martels, you know,
more of these people. So back to kind of what I'm
doing is not just surrounding myself with these peoples.
Everybody I meet now, all the people that I want to be in my

(52:08):
circle, I try and help them in their mindset so that they can
see these things. You know, there's huge ROI in
coaching and I can coach people for free.
I'm just hanging out, going for a coffee, helping people solve
the problems, serving others. Man, anybody, anybody listening

(52:29):
to this right now, if there's anybody here listening to this
that wants to change their life,the.
Most effective way to change your life like instantly is
serve others. 100%. Yeah, just.
I've lived that for a couple decades and it comes up again
and again and again because yourDan Martel story is great.

(52:51):
And you're right, the the supercar in that scenario was
the the entry. But it's the charisma.
Once you're in the room, it's the fact that you bring the
energy of I don't want to take, I want to give watch what
happens, man, because especiallythe guys that have it, you know,
the guys that have the big businesses and the access and
all that, they have 100 people aday that want to take.

(53:11):
When you show up with authenticity, servitude towards
others, you know that charitablemindset that's different, that
that keeps you in the room. And and they say too, they
they've been around long enough,they know exactly like they're
not fucking dumb. No, no, not at all.
They are where they are. Because yeah, great, 100.

(53:33):
Percent. I tell that story all the time,
man. The the first one of the best
mentors I've ever had in my lifewas a global executive.
He worked for McDonald's like C-Suite level McDonald's,
extremely well accomplished guy,a great guy.
And I had a chance encounter with him through a connection
and he happened to say that he'sgoing into consulting.

(53:54):
He was just just just starting to retire.
And he said, you know, I'm looking for a guy that can make
PowerPoints because I know I'm going to have to do these
presentations. And right away I'm like, well,
fuck, I can do that. And then it was, well, I need a
guy that can help me get a business card.
Well, fuck, I can do that. And I just did that two or three
times. And then I worked for him for
free for probably like, I don't know, might have been a year,

(54:16):
maybe did my other stuff, but then put in as much time as I
could with him. And all of a sudden he was
walking me into this boardroom and we were sitting at the front
of this presentation. And then he was introducing me
to his friend who happened to beanother what?
And it just happened, man. And it was just because it was
the mindset of I'm not going to ask for a job.
I'm going to earn one. I'm not going to ask for a seat

(54:36):
at his table. I'm going to earn 1.
And guys like that, guys and girls like that just respond to
that man. And and that's it.
And then the other side of that is, is charity, you know, do the
coaching for free because the the ROI on that is huge.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And and it's it's paid tenfold for me.
I haven't. I've got a handful of clients

(54:59):
that I've worked with that I've charged other than that to date
has been pretty well free. Yeah, you know, I can't continue
to do that unfortunately, but. What nor nor should you
apologize for that. That's one of those things where
like we're, we're all business guys.
It, it does take money to make money.
And if you want to do something at scale, you got to be able to

(55:21):
support that. So, well, that's the way I see.
It pick and choose. Give what you can, but make sure
you keep the lights on and go out and serve more people.
Yeah. If I want to serve 100 people,
I'll do it for free. If I want to serve a million,
yeah. Create some systems that allow
you to do that right. I think the stories about your,
your family and your your connection with them still being
around specifically your sister is a really interesting one man.

(55:43):
Because I mean, just I'll tell you 2 two things having met you
because I'm like you. I always try and look bigger
picture, and I'm still trying tofigure out my spirituality piece
because I'm, you know, didn't grow up religious.
But I've had those moments whereyou just can't explain it.
Like it's just too right there. It all lines up.
Like there's two things that happened to you and I today, one
of which, you know, is I was twoor three late, minutes late

(56:05):
getting going because I happenedto get a this morning connection
from a guy who called me from Texas.
Yeah. So I was two or three minutes
late. And then as I'm sitting here, I
was smiling because your sister has a pretty unique name, but
the last person who text me before I started the show.
Genevieve was, yeah. Right.
So again, it's like. Yeah, totally, totally.

(56:28):
Man, you don't meet very many Genevieve's.
Actually. It's funny how she got her name.
My my dad wanted to name her Jenny.
My mom didn't like it. My mom's name is Eve, so it's
Jenny of Eve. So spelled with AJ, Genevieve.
That's how her name came about. Very cool.
Did you want it? Do we got a little bit of time?

(56:49):
Yeah. As much as you want.
Man, you want to hear fucking crazy story?
Yeah, we love that stuff. This one like there, it's it's
going to be tough to to tell. So all right when my sister
passed away, her and my cousin Tia were really close.

(57:10):
They had become very close over the last, I don't know, six
months, a year before that, You know, they're both trying to go
through the process of, of having a child.
So Tia's an artist. She lives in Barrie and just

(57:30):
just an amazing, amazing person.I love her so much.
Anyways, Tia does these paintings.
So when Genevieve dies, Tia starts painting, just just
randomly painting. And it turns out to be this
giant barred owl. So the painting is about 6 feet
wide, maybe 2 feet tall. A barred owl in a hemlock tree.

(57:55):
So I was asking her about the the story.
I'm like, you know, tell me why you painted that.
She goes, I can't, I just, I can't tell you.
I can't explain it. So anyways, she sends me this
big long message and it's this detailed story on why she
painted the owl and the connection to my sister, right?
And and it was just this crazy connection of, of just anyways,

(58:20):
it was all tied to this owl. And she's like, I want you to
have the paintings. She's like, you're going to buy
it off me. But I want, you know, like,
yeah, I want it. I want it from my house, right?
Or maybe I asked her for it. I can't remember.
Either way I'm getting the painting.
I still haven't bought it from her but I'm getting it and so

(58:42):
she sends me that that message. The next morning I'm heading
into work and I've got a gym at our shop.
So I'm heading into the gym. It's like 4:00 AM and on my way
in fucking the side my driver side window.
Like what the fuck was that? So I pull over and I hit an owl.

(59:06):
OK. Because everybody does that,
right? I've never hit an owl in my
life. OK, the owl lands in a driveway.
I walk up to it, I pick it up. It's dead.
That driveway is where I got thelast text message from my
sister. I was dropping, it was a

(59:27):
Community Center at Pelham Community Center.
I was dropping my daughter off her birthday party, leaving that
drive. I was literally driving out and
I got that message. Hey brother, just want to tell
you I love you, OK? I go to the office, put the the
owl in the freezer, go to the gym.
I take the owl to the taxidermist.
Later on that day, beautiful creature, right?

(59:48):
So I got a buddy's taxidermist. Anyways, it's a thing.
Take the owl to the taxidermist One year later.
OK, same month, it's February and the taxidermist calls me.
This is just after my 40th birthday.
Taxidermist calls me. He's like, hey man, you're

(01:00:10):
always ready. Come pick it up.
So I'm like perfect, same day, my sister or sorry, my wife
calls me and she's like, you know, we never really did
anything. For your birthday, do you want
to go tubing with the kids with snow tubing and Berry?
I'm like, fucking right, I do. I've always wanted to go there.
So call the taxidermist guy. I'm not going to make it today.

(01:00:32):
I'll get it next week. So duck out early from work,
pick up the kids from school, wehead up to Barry, go go snow
tubing. On the way home, we stop at the
Mandarin and Barry, I'm sitting at the table and I get a text
message from Tia. Right.
And I hadn't talked to Tia in about 3 months.
She was hey, and you're not going to believe what's in my

(01:00:54):
backyard right now. I'm like, what?
She sends me a picture of a barred owl in a fucking hemlock
tree in her backyard. It's almost identical to the
painting shoot. And she never saw an owl before
before she painted that. That was part of the the letter.
It's literally the same owl in the same tree.

(01:01:16):
And I'm 5 minutes from her house.
OK. I'm like after she's painted it
already. Yeah, this is a year later.
So I'm like, well, you're not going to believe this.
I'm in Barry right now. She's like, whoa, right, go
home. The next morning I forgot apart.

(01:01:40):
When I got to the to the gym that morning, I had forgot my
keys. I had to go home and I never
forget my keys. I had to go home, get my keys,
and then go back. And that's when I hit the owl.
So after that episode in Barrie,the next morning I drive into
the gym. It's about 4:00 in the morning.
I get to the gym, I forgot my keys.

(01:02:03):
I turn around, I go home. I come back to the gym and
fucking. Whap driver's side door.
An owl hits my fucking car on the same St. lands in a
driveway. The number to the house is 2600.

(01:02:25):
2600 in the driveway. OK, so this is a different owl.
One year later, one day after the tax, first call me about
that, all of this happening. My fucking mind is blown.
OK, one is a the first one was agrey, I can't remember the name

(01:02:48):
of the owl. Screech owl.
OK, it's small. And then the other one is a red
faced screech owl, big for screech owl.
Very rare. I get to the office, put it in
the fridge or in the freezer. I'm just like fuck all morning.
I can't, I can't even imagine what's going on.

(01:03:12):
About 8:00 in the morning, my mom calls me.
She's like, are you OK? Said yeah, why and why?
She's like, I woke up at 5:10. So when I hit that owl, I looked
at the clock, it was 410. When I hit that owl, like on the
nose, she's an hour behind or anhour ahead, sorry, whatever.

(01:03:37):
In Texas, she's like, it was 510.
And I'm like, well, that's weird.
She's like, yeah, I got this horrible feeling about you.
She's like, I had to write a letter to God.
She became very Christian after my sister died.
I said, well, read me the letter.
She goes, reads me the whole letter, and at the end of it, it
says right at the very end it says, God, please help my son or

(01:04:03):
no, I'm worried for my son. Please help him find money for
his septic bed. OK?
We ran short on building our house and I couldn't afford the
septic bed. It was way oversize on what we
thought and it was like $47,000 or something like that to build
the septic bed. And I said mom don't worry about
it. Like I got this, don't sweat

(01:04:25):
over it. At 11:00.
Few hours later I got a phone call from one of the guys in
Ironclad Brotherhood, somebody I've been working with for like
3 years. OK, overcame a lot.
Great guy. He goes, hey, I remember you

(01:04:48):
talking on the call the other night about, you know, your
septic bed and you struggling with it.
I'm like, yeah, he goes, I'm going to pay for your septic
bed. I'm like, I can't afford another
loan right now, right? He's like, I'm not the fucking

(01:05:09):
bank, Ivan. He's like, call him.
Get your septic bed in. He paid my septic bed to get
installed. The whole thing around my sister
was money. She tried to leave me
everything, left me nothing. We bought that car for like

(01:05:36):
$45,000, the same amount as the septic bad we were out, came
back and it was paid for. All through that, all of that,
fucking the owls, everything wastied together.

(01:05:58):
If that's not fucking crazy enough and all the time I've
known this guy, OK, I never knewreally a whole lot about him.
I won't get into what he did or anything since it's not my
place. But I never looked at his
Facebook page, never looked at his like at his pictures.

(01:06:19):
So I was curious. So I pulled up his pictures and
they're fucking littered with owl photos, littered with owl
photos. So I said to him, some like,
dude, what's with the owls? He's like, oh, there's this owl
and me and my wife found on a hike one time, and it was hurt.

(01:06:43):
So I picked it up or we started feeding it here and there.
And, you know, he just kind of fell in love with owls after.
I'm like, that's crazy. I've never told him.
I never told him the story even up until, you know, you mean the
money. And then he's like, yeah, we
named it Oscar. That was my sister's nickname.

(01:07:05):
And that's when I told him the story about everything.
It just fucking blew his mind. So growing up, we all had
Scandinavian nicknames from my grandfather.
Mine was buchzelars. In Norwegian, it means droopy
drawers. We were poor.
I had cloth diapers and shit my pants.

(01:07:25):
I was like 5 years old. Anyways, my sister was the only
one that didn't have a Scandinavian name.
She got Oscar the Grouch becauseshe was a grouchy bitch.
She had Oscar pajama pants and everything and that tied that
whole fucking story together. When Mike told me that.

(01:07:46):
It's crazy and. There's that service to others
piece too, right? Isn't that wild?
Yeah, tell me that's not the craziest shit you ever heard in
your life. Like.
What you put the time in, you'rehelping people out, you're
helping that guy out. I can't fucking make that shit
up every time I talk to Tia. Well, not every time.
Those two times that we talked that had to do with that.

(01:08:07):
That Bard owl? I hit a fucking screech owl the
next morning. I've never hit an owl in my
life. Where you got those two owls up
on the mantle? No, they're still at the
taxidermist. I, I don't know, man.
I'm struggling to go get them. You almost got to give that guy
one, yeah. No, I'm taking both of them.

(01:08:28):
They're going to go beside my wood stove on either side.
I know it. And then the owl picture is
going to go above it. I'm just, I'm struggling to go
get them, you know, it's like. Yeah.
Is that why you keep putting offgoing to get the painting too?
Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah, man, it's like, I don't
know, it's like my sister was. Here's the thing, though.

(01:08:55):
I don't understand the owl because my sister was so smart.
Like she was the most intelligent person.
I don't know in my life. She wasn't very wise, you know,
like she she, I don't even know how much when she was a nuclear
physicist here. I, I, she never told me how much

(01:09:16):
she made. I know it was, it was crazy
amounts. And she always said student
loan. She always had to borrow money.
You know, she was horrible managing money, you know,
horrible managing relationships and basically everything that I
coach now. She wasn't very wise.
So I don't understand the owl. But you know, every time I see

(01:09:36):
one now, you know, it's weirdestthing because I never saw owls.
Now I see them all the time. And every time I fucking see an
owl, my mom calls me. Which is not like out to lunch
because my mum fucking calls me all the time, but.
When she calls three times a dayand yeah, every three months.

(01:09:58):
Three, yeah, three times a day is is is on the low end, but
yeah, you know, that's good. You know I'm.
It's good that you're closer to that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's that's probablythe craziest fucking story I've
ever like. I don't ever remember anybody
telling me a crazy story like that, but it's undeniable.

(01:10:22):
It's undeniable that God or or whatever you want to call it.
Puts their own things in its path.
There, you know, and you know, it's our responsibility.
It is our this is the biggest thing that I took away from one

(01:10:47):
that story and to everything that's happened to me in the
last two years since I lost her,coming on to two years now, is
that it's all there. Whatever we want, whatever we
need, it's there. It's our responsibility to be an

(01:11:09):
active participant in watching for them and acting on them.
No, there's so many people I talked to that say oh, I had a
shitty hand or you know, I can'tdo this or I bullshit.
You choose not to. If people can just realize that

(01:11:34):
everything that happens in your life is happening for you rather
than to you, that paradigm shiftalone changes everything.
It literally changes everything.And I know a lot of people are
struggle hearing this because they can't comprehend it.
But success, Here's one Andy forAndy Forcella says success is so

(01:12:01):
simple that most people can't comprehend it.
Just have to be an active participant in your own fucking
life, you know? Yeah, rather than sitting on the
sidelines. You have to be accountable to
yourself. Oh, 100%, a hundred percent,
100%. You know, it's most people in

(01:12:24):
their own story. You know when they the credits
come up at the end, they're liketaxi driver #2 in their own
life. You know I won't be the main
character. Won't be the executive producer.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Jason motherfucking Bourne. There you go, you probably got a

(01:12:47):
couple questions you want to askhim.
Fire away. That's cool.
It's great, man. I I fucking love doing this.
Yeah, Dad could do this all day,every day, man.
Appreciate you sharing so much. Yeah, they got one, then a
little bit lighter. So like you got you got the
three kiddos. Yeah.
What do you want the kiddos to to say about Dad 20 years from
now? Who?
Who do you, who do you want to be to them?
Like what do you think they're going to?

(01:13:08):
Say basically, I just want them to say, you know, dad is my best
buddy. That's it won't be their best
buddy, you know, And true friends, you know, I have.
I've had a lot of friends in my time.
A lot real friends. True friends are the ones that

(01:13:34):
hold you accountable. You know, they're the ones
that'll tell you to your face, you know, dude, you're not
looking too good these days. Like you look like you ate the
old you like, fuck, what are youdoing?
Yeah, you know, true friends will come to you and be like
man. Wake the fuck up.

(01:13:56):
Right. And I'll do that with my kids.
And that's part of being a best buddy.
You know, we've got this ritual every night before we go to bed.
My daughter was first. So I carried on the tradition
from my grandfather of the the Viking names.
So because we're Vikings, I mean, I get the shittiest one

(01:14:19):
book slayers. But anyways, so I carried it on
and my daughter every time she goes to bed, we say best at
compass forever and best at compass in Norwegian is best
buds, right? And then my son just be a little
bit different is best buds. So it's best buds forever.
My son is daddy's buckaroo forever and he repeats it and

(01:14:40):
then my daughter's daddy's little cowgirl forever, right?
Same ritual every night before we go to bed.
And you know, that's our thing. So I want to be the best buddy
without a doubt. It's it's tough though, man.
You know, like I try and see thefuture as much as I can.
You know, I'm very visual personand I know that because I am

(01:15:02):
pretty hard on them to an extent, like not an asshole, but
you know, I want them to be to know that they have to be
accountable. And there's such a fine line
sometimes where you want them tobe able to bring stuff to you
and not be scared, you know, and, and that's the thing I'm

(01:15:23):
struggling with the most right now.
It's like I, I know that I want to be hard enough to know that,
that they that they know accountability is important, but
I don't want to be too hard where they're scared to bring
things to me. Yeah, where?
They're going to get shit on if they come to.
You no problem yeah. And and you know what breaking
if if if we talk about like legacy and habitual patterns,

(01:15:47):
it's so fucking hard to break the ones that you've been given
by your dad. You know, like, man, I literally
want to be nothing like my dad. I want to be the total opposite
to my kids. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't

(01:16:09):
all bad, but there's a horrible example and I see it come up
every fucking day. You know, every day I'm doing.
I just started doing the if you ever heard of the positive
intelligence PQ. No, so Joe Joe apps showed it to

(01:16:30):
me and it's helped him huge. I'm I'm doing it now and it's
all about catching yourself and being able to to identify your
saboteurs. So the things that sabotage you,
the the traits that you have that sabotage your life.
Holy fuck, man, it's like being able to catch that now and

(01:16:50):
change it on a dime is total different world.
I can't wait to bring this to myclients.
You know, this is going to be a game changer, but breaking the
habitual habits, the the we've all been given this fucking
legacy that and often we don't want it.

(01:17:12):
You know what I mean? Yeah.
So that's, that's probably the biggest hurdle, the biggest
struggle. I have to become that guy that I
don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be remembered by
because I want to leave my kids with a, with a positive legacy.

(01:17:33):
You know, 100% I was not on thatpath five years ago.
I'll tell you that. Sounds like you're doing a great
job now man, and helping others get there too.
Yeah, and you know what? I am, I am.
I'm doing an excellent job. I'm far from perfect, though.
Far from perfect. And a lot of work to do, you

(01:17:56):
know. Keep on going, a.
Little bit better every day. And the best of me has yet to
come. I will say that until the day I
fucking die. Hopefully number one on November
22nd though. Yeah, right.
Yeah. You know what?
No, I see. I really don't give a shit If I
win, I'm going to come. I'm going to give it all I got.

(01:18:17):
They don't like it. Whatever.
It's not what I'm there for. I'm not there to be the winner.
I'm there to share my story, inspire somebody, hopefully.
Like, man, when I got off stage in May, I had people come up to
me. Like I had so many people reach
out and be like, fuck, dude. Like you were talking right to

(01:18:40):
me. Like you.
You literally like went into my soul.
I'm like fuck yeah, you should accomplish.
You come in last place, those things weigh mean way more than
exactly like a metal that you get to wear on, Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. Hey, that that metal got me to
this one, you know, just like, but it's all that matters.

(01:19:01):
I could do it one more time nextyear, buddy.
You'll see me on Ted X next yearfor sure.
It's good, man. I hope so, yeah.
Yeah, I'm, I'm stoked, you know,and, and I don't even care.
I'm going to do 5-6 of them. I don't care.
I'm going to keep going. We'll see, hopefully.
TEDx Vancouver. TEDx Dallas.

(01:19:23):
There you go. You get do you do TEDx Daleks,
We'll be there. We're.
Fucking right. Yeah, we'll roll.
Yeah, yeah, we'll roll. Out.
Let's work on it together. Yeah, oh dude, we'll.
Find a way to make it happen. We'll drive down there together.
Yeah. How's that?
There you go. We'll do fucking hit up the
Ozarks, have some fun. Yeah.
You guys like cars, love. Cars.
Nah, he loves cars way more thanI love cars.

(01:19:43):
But. Yeah, Love.
Nice. Yeah, I've had a couple of those
experiences. I've been and the Bring a
Trailer website, the auction website, I've bought cars on
there down in the States with the intention of driving them
back. So when you were talking about
getting it over the border, I'm real familiar with that.
The ones I did were BMW, which pretty easy, pretty
straightforward as long as you kind of plan ahead.
Yeah, have your shit in order, but that's a fun way to do it

(01:20:05):
man. Oh dude, it.
Was. In and go.
It was awesome. But The thing is like I didn't
realize when I was in Texas. Like as soon as it started
getting dusk, I had to call the the wild boars, and if I was to
hit one of them with that Lotus,it would have destroyed.
They're all over the place. They're so bad down there.
So as soon as it started to get to dusk, that was my day.

(01:20:27):
That's that was it, yeah. 12 hours is a long day of driving.
Especially in that. Point I would do I like 8-8 or
10. Yeah, I'll.
Just take an extra day if I needto.
I had to boogie though. I wanted to get to to 1st Farm
man. If you guys ever want to go to
literally the coolest business ever, run Like, I don't know.
If you listen to Andy Furcella'spodcast, Real AF, he talks about

(01:20:48):
the culture he's got. It was always words to me.
Like it was always this, yeah, you know, I always respected
him. He's literally saved my life.
That was his podcast amongst twoothers were the reason I got
through my sobriety because I used those to build my strategy.

(01:21:10):
But it was always words. I walked into that place.
I'm telling you, you could go into the men's bathroom and the
carpet under the urinal you could fucking eat off of.
Like this place. I was in the bathroom.
The employees wash their hands. They take paper towels, they
wipe out the sink, they wipe thetap, they clean the mirror.

(01:21:32):
They throw it in and fucking leave.
That's the entire place. I mean, Andy Frisella, like
there's people all over the place.
The guy's in fucking shorts. This guy worth, I don't know,
maybe $500 million, whatever. He's got the most valuable car
collection in the world. I think he's driving a fucking

(01:21:53):
$4 million Bugatti to work and he's in shorts and he's taking
out the garbage. I walked up to him.
I got the artist shirt on. I'm like, motherfucker, you
saved my life. He's like, Nah, man.
He's like, you did that. So I just gave you the tools.
So, like, right there. You know how they say sometimes
don't meet your heroes? I'm fucking so glad I met him.

(01:22:18):
It was just two seconds. I didn't need a picture.
I didn't need, you know? Yeah.
Just shook his hand. Thank you.
That's it. But you ever want to go
somewhere cool, Go to first form.
That's probably fucking. That's cool.
Yeah, man. PHPH.
ORM it's actually one St. first and then PHORM first form.

(01:22:41):
Amazing. Yeah.
Well that, that was a great chatman.
Yeah, that. That had everything.
I was hoping you'd bring in more.
Some deep shit with. Some deep shit at.
It Yeah, yeah, man, I don't. I don't mind.
I'll go right in fucking, you know, and.
And here's the thing. Going through this experience
has taught me something very profound.

(01:23:05):
It's like I don't need to hold anything back from anybody.
You know, so many people are scared to tell their story.
They're scared for whatever reason.
You know, fear is the only thingthat's holding any of us back.
Literally, you know, the, the fear of stepping out of our, our

(01:23:27):
comfort zone. Man I just go into everything
now and wide open balls to the wall right?
If somebody doesn't like it, fuck them.
Well, not to get into like another full topic, but like,
fuck, it's also great to have a support system.
And we didn't, we didn't really talk about your wife much, but
I'm sure going through all this shit, like fuck, she stuck with

(01:23:48):
you through through all of the shit.
Dude, I'm like. With kids.
I'll never forget the day. So I'm on the my on the.
I'm on the phone with my mom. We're trying to find out where
my sister is and I'm on a messenger call with her on a
video call. OK, so she's so I'm on video, my

(01:24:12):
mom's on video. She's in Texas and she's only
four hours away from my sister. And then she's on my stepdad's
phone, like calling people. She's trying to get in touch
with Brian, but apparently he's in rehab, my sister's husband
and and all of these things. We can't find it, and then Brian

(01:24:33):
calls her on a video call. So I'm watching my mom on a
video call with Brian and he goes, Genevieve's gone.
She just shot herself. And I watch.
I watch my mom drop to her knees.
I'll never forget that. Like just watching my mom, just

(01:24:54):
her, it looked like her soul just fucking left her, her body.
Rose comes up to me. I'm like, I don't even know.
I I instantly go into shock because I know it's true.

(01:25:14):
Rose comes up to me. She's like, if you go dark, like
I'll be here. It's like, you just got to tell
me. She's like, I got this, do what
you got to do. And I'm like, never again.

(01:25:37):
Like you don't have to worry about that.
But she had me. She had my back 100% and I will
never, ever be able to repay herfor fucking what she's done for
me, you know? And there's been some tough

(01:25:59):
times, like man, even since we've had, we've had some real
tough battles. But that's relationships, right?
You know, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
But man, I'll never, ever find anybody again in my life that

(01:26:22):
loves me like that girl does. Ever.
So yeah. It's good, man.
It's good that you got that. Yeah, big time.
Yeah. What a.
Gift there's a lot of guys out there that don't have that kind
of partnership companionship that can you can build mountains

(01:26:45):
with that man if you got that athome.
Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, Rose, she doesn't always
agree with what I want to do. She doesn't agree with what I
say. She doesn't like a lot of it.
But she trusts me. She trusts that whatever I do, I

(01:27:08):
will win. Whatever I do, I do for us.
The for I was telling Jamie Boat.
Excuse me? I was telling Jamie about the
property we live at, so we bought this.
It's 20. Do we have a few minutes still?
Take as much as you need bro. So it's 2015, Rose is pregnant

(01:27:29):
with our 2nd and and I mean likefucking pregnant pregnant.
She's right. And we got this new house.
It's a 10 acre hay field. The house is a shit hole.
I'm talking like it was built in1867.
Depending on wind direction determines which wood stove we
use in the house. That's how bad it was.

(01:27:51):
Mice. We've lived with mice in the
ceiling for 10 years and but we knew we were going to tear down
the house and build a new one. Anyways, it was like 2 weeks and
buying the house. She comes out, it's just
standing on the porch like bellyout here, bare feet in the
middle of fucking nowhere. And I got a tractor trailer with

(01:28:13):
a 20 ton excavator on the back and she's like, she didn't just
buy that. Did you like, well, yeah, she's
like you idiot. She's like, what the fuck are
you doing? We have to build a house.
So just hear me out. He said the the kids, the kids
don't care about the house. They never will.
They'll remember their bedrooms.You know, they're they're not

(01:28:35):
going to be old enough. I said, I'm going to dig a pond
and our daughter is going to catch her first fish in her own
backyard. She's like, you're fucking nuts.
So you you're not going to dig apond.
There's no way you'll follow through with that.
And I said, just believe me. She goes, OK?

(01:28:56):
She goes, so I trust you. For three years we called it the
dirt farm. We were dirt farmers.
There was fucking piles of dirt everywhere and like, like
massive piles. And the dust was awful.
Like it was horrible. Our house is like living in
Saskatchewan. It's fucking farm fields all

(01:29:17):
around us. And so three years I dig this
pond, my daughter catches her first fish in her own backyard.
And since I've dug a second pondthat's deep and I've planted
over 200 trees, it's not even recognizable from when we first

(01:29:37):
bought it. And we just built a Muskoka
home. We started last June, just over
a year now, we built a Muskoka home 22 feet off of the water.
So we have waterfront property without waterfront tax and yeah,

(01:29:58):
it's beautiful. So it's got it's Muskoka.
So it's got the big triangle windows on the front with a full
loft upstairs and you can stand in the loft and oversee
everything. Anyways, the day the loft went
on, there was no front wall yet on the on the House.
It's just half of it. So we were sitting on the 2nd
floor with our feet dangling off, and the pond is right in

(01:30:21):
front of us. And she grabs my hand and she
puts it on my lap. And she's like, she's kind of
doesn't look at me, but just kind of looks over.
And she's like, OK, again, I getit now.
Yeah. Nine years later.
Fucking thanks. She's like, I see it.

(01:30:44):
And she's like, it's exactly what you said.
Like, I get it. Yeah.
It was just a tough. Legacy.
Good there. Yeah, legacy.
That's it, man. I'm having some vision, so I
only have two more things. One is, do you want to plug
anything else? You want to tell the people how
they get in touch. I'm easy.

(01:31:05):
Ivan fredette.com has everything.
I'm Ivan Fredette everywhere at Ivan Fredette.
Ivan Fred on Facebook, Ivan Fredon LinkedIn, Ivan dot Fred at I
believe for YouTube. But yeah.
Follow the journey and join the journey.
Yeah, that's it. We have a fun way of closing it

(01:31:25):
out. It's Bring us your best dad
joke. How do you find Will Smith in
the snow? Look for The Fresh Prince.
There you go. OK.
Yeah, that's. Good.
I was like depending on the answer might lose in a crowd, so

(01:31:45):
I'm not. That's great.
I'm like there's like the new generation might not get that,
but you know. You were talking to the right
audience here. Maybe, like Will Smith, didn't
he just had a home run for the Dodgers.
Yeah, buddy, it's so funny because for me that was you get
off school, you go inside and you either watched music videos

(01:32:08):
or Fresh Prince. It was Fresh Prince and then
Family Matters. Yeah, that's right.
This was. A story all about how.
Right on man. Thank you so much for coming on.
Oh. Man, thank you for your.
Time out and keep us posted, man.
Yeah, Can't wait to see you. Can't wait to see you at Ted X
and we'll be rooting for you. Yeah, fuck yeah.
And for you guys, you know, timeis the one non renewable

(01:32:31):
resource that we all have. And I want to thank you guys for
giving me so many years. Yeah, man.
Appreciate that, man. OK, appreciate you.
Thank you.