#52 - Nick Koumalatsos: From Criminal to Marine Corps’ Special-Ops to CEO (How He Created Discipline From Chaos) - Choose Hard with Cody McBroom

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Choose Hard podcast, one and only fitness
and nutrition podcast that goes way beyond just training and
nutrition and helps you choose hard every day to help transform
your body and your mind. Today on the show we have, I'm
going to read this because there's no way I'm getting it
right even though I'm reading it.
Nick Kamalatos I think I got that right, man.
Apologies if I didn't. I probably didn't, but this is a

(00:22):
phenomenal podcast, phenomenal conversation, man.
It really like it just hit me hard right in the gut multiple
times when he was talking. And this podcast is going to
it's going to touch on some touchy subjects.
It's going to poke some nerves. And and I wanted that.
I wanted a podcast that was going to get deep.
Was going to talk about a very big problem in today's world,
which is weak men and the absurdamount of depression and

(00:45):
dependency that men in today's world have.
And it is failing our country. It is failing our families.
It is failing our lives and the rate of success that we can see
as men because there's a lack ofleadership.
So this is podcast specifically is mostly for the men, women.
If you want to listen to, I think there's plenty of gems in
this podcast and send it to yourhusband's if you're married
because I think they need to listen to too.
Every guy does, whether he is ontop of his stuff with these

(01:08):
things or not. But regardless, we're going to
talk about Nick's history growing up a two time convicted
felon, transitioning from there to get his GED, work his off to
eventually get into the Marines,served 12 years.
I believe it was going overseas,touring, doing all kinds of
crazy stuff, coming back, becoming basically an alcoholic,
almost committing suicide. And by the grace of God did not

(01:29):
pull that trick and changed his life for the better, Became
sober and started coaching othermen on how to change their lives
as well. Amongst being a father, a
husband, a business owner to multiple businesses, and being
the leader of multiple communities.
This podcast not only touches onthose touchy subjects, but it
shows a man who went through it all, came out on the other side,
grew because of it, and is now teaching others and leading

(01:51):
others on how to do the same. This one is going to really,
really touch you in a profound way and I'm excited for you to
listen. Please take notes, give it a
second listen if you you need tolet this sink in and make the
changes you need to make in order to be the leader you need
to be. Now any further ado?
Let's talk to the one and only Nick Tamalatos.

(02:12):
The greatest things in life all start with.
A challenge you. Must accept that everything is
hard before it gets easy. Every every, every everything
you want in life. Begins with a hard path.
All right, man, so the first thing I really want to just
start this with is in a nutshell, describe yourself, you

(02:32):
know, like what? What do you tell people when
that you know who is Nick? What does he do?
Like kind of fill us in just so people can get a just a broad
scope. And then I'm going to just kind
of pick apart your story and really, really show people who
you are as we go. You know, that's an interesting
question that we that we talk about a lot, because you ever

(02:53):
heard the Bob Proctor's whole thing about who you are?
I haven't. Oh, it's great, man.
And I think a lot of people struggle with that and realizing
they, they're like, I don't knowwho I am.
And they're like, well, I'm Nick.
Well, no, I you're not Nick because someone picked that name
for you. Do you know what I mean?

(03:14):
Like, yeah, I'm this. Well, no, you, you were born,
you were born a dude. You didn't get to choose that
either. So then who, who, who are you
really? And I think for me, man, it just
comes down to like the, the my why.
And what, what really moves me is, is I'm this, this grown kid

(03:34):
who comes from an immense amountof perseverance and our
struggle, our adversity comes from immense, immense amount of
adversity and had to persevere through a lot of different
things. In, in a lot of ways that has
shaped me into who the man that I am today.
And in my core values of prioritizing the intentionality

(04:00):
of being a father and, and leaning into having an elite
level marriage and, and seeing the things that really matter
the most in life. When you strip away all of the
BS, all of the, the hard work and the grind and all that kind
of stuff that people say as an entrepreneur and, and I'm right
there with it. I mean, I, I think that my fear

(04:22):
of being unsuccessful is, is going back to being poor and
going back to this, you know, getting my clothes from Goodwill
with lice in them. And there's a lot that drives me
there. But at the same time, I've, I've
had this fortunate ability to through I guess life and

(04:43):
experience seeing what's really freaking important.
And you know, you can make millions of dollars, but if you
don't have your life squared away and your priorities squared
away, it means nothing. It means nothing.
And I say this thing all the time is like, what is it worth
to get to the finish line and cross this amazing finish line,

(05:05):
this business exit or whatever it is, but you're alone and
you've, you've left your family behind.
And so that's something that I would say that, that I, I've
figured out that that's a priority, But I wouldn't say
it's something that I've, that I've, I just, I, I talk a lot

(05:26):
about that with my wife now. And like, this is, I know what
it matters, you know what I mean?
I know what matters. So it's like this, you know,
this delayed gratification fightbetween building something of
substantial that's going to create generational wealth for,
for, you know, generations to come and living in the now and,
and trying to balance that. I think a lot of guys, I think a

(05:48):
lot of guys, you know, fight that.
But as far as who I am, it's kind of a beautiful thing to
know, to know who, to know who you are and, and what makes you
tick. And, and, and when you figure
that out, man, there's such an, an immense amount of peace that
you get with that. And, and it's like, you know,

(06:08):
it's that they'd be cliche is like, I'm just a dude, man.
I'm a dude that has all the sameproblems as everybody else.
I just refuse to allow myself tohave excuses about them.
And I want to keep my prioritiesstraight, which what matters
most. I do who don't Donald Miller is
author of Building a story brand.

(06:31):
He. Oh, I do, I do.
I didn't know the name, but yeah, I know.
It's a great, great book. Both, both books that he came
out with on that subject. Great.
Really good. He I was listening to an
interview with him and Steven Furtick and he was talking about
a retreat he went to in Tennessee.
And a part of it is you have to remove your phone and you cannot
tell anybody what your name is and you cannot tell anybody what

(06:53):
your profession is. So they strip you of what you
think is your identity to an extent, right?
And he said it was one of the most eye opening things.
And it gave him so much more anxiety than he realized 'cause
he wanted to tell people what hedid for a living, 'cause he
that's what he valued in himselfmost.
And he didn't realize that untilgoing through that.
And it was pretty eye open to even just listen to that.
But I love that you started thiswithout saying I am a fitness

(07:17):
coach or I am this role or anything like that because we
are so much more right before I get into more of your
background, which I have plannedthings for, I want to ask you a
couple questions based on how you intro yourself.
Number one, what what do you do by trade?
Just so people have context there, what would you say you do
by trade? This is.

(07:38):
Funny. So it's funny because I don't
even talk about it anymore because.
Because, I mean, I you probably came across my book.
I wrote a book about leaving theMarine Corps.
Nice communicator, Warrior. Yeah, And and that was the big
identity shift, right? Like losing that.
And really, you know, I was actually just writing an e-mail
about one of the worst nights ofmy life.

(08:00):
I I learned that what you do is not your identity, it's just
what you do. And so anyways, I'm sorry, go to
the question again. That, that, that was great.
What do you do by trade? What do I do by trade?
I sell soap. I'm a soap salesman.
Legitimately, I'm the CEO of oneof the fastest growing organic

(08:22):
grooming companies called JohnnySlick's.
It's an amazing brand and I think it's just booming.
We have a great team. We're truly changing, changing
the changing the world in our own small way.
All American made manufacturing,all organic, all raw ingredients
sourced right here in the UnitedStates.

(08:42):
We're vertically, we do. We do all of our own
fulfillment, our own manufacturing, providing jobs to
Americans in our local area. So that's one thing that I do my
day job my and then I am a managing partner of a hormone
replacement clinic, nationwide clinic called Core Medical
Group. I've been with them for almost 8

(09:03):
years now. And dude, we've, we've just
changed so many men's lives withbalancing out hormones and blood
work and, and optimizing their health and getting them, you
know, really legitimately saving, saving people's life.
Like myself. That's what kind of it came out
of my own story there. And then finally, I have AI have

(09:23):
a men's community, a men's community that, you know, and I
that started, jeez, in 2018 off of a ask and it's just evolved
into something, you know, amazing.
And, and it's changed every yearand it will continue to change
every year. But the guys that we have in

(09:45):
there, I mean, we have guys in there that have been here the
whole time. They've been there since the
beginning. It's wild.
But you know, you, you are who you surround yourself with.
And so I'm, I'm proud to be a part of that community itself.
Yeah. I love it when How old are do
you have one kid 2? I have 3 three working on

(10:05):
working on another one. Love it.
Yeah. How old is your oldest?
23. OK.
Were could you say that you had,I mean, I wasn't asked if you
had an appreciable amount of success when you had your first
kid. But the reason I'm asking is
because you talked about coming from a lot of beds. 20 years
old, I remember holding this little baby girl who I just

(10:28):
thought was like immediately I was in love with.
I mean, you know, this feeling like you have that bait, you
just look, you're like you are the most beautiful, amazing
creature I've ever seen in my entire life.
And, and realizing that that like some things had like it was
time for me to grow up. Yeah.
And and I definitely did not getting get everything right,

(10:50):
you know, because you got to think like you're a starter
baby. Well, I'm a starter dad.
And it's very different now thatI have a four year old.
You know what I mean? I'm the second, the second go
around of this thing is much different than than the first go
around, but yeah. I'm sure you would say the
answer is yes to this, but so I'm just going to go ahead and

(11:11):
assume going through struggles at an early age, going through
adversity, going through shopping at Goodwill and having
to pick out lice and all that stuff, Going through that, going
through I'm sure plenty more through the military and stuff
which we'll dig into soon, shapes you into the person.
You are right, the struggles like being broken down is what
builds you up, and the strugglesyou go through is what helps you
create the characters you need for success.

(11:31):
How do you instill those into your children when you know your
children don't have to shop at Goodwill, don't have to go
through those struggles, and as a father you don't want them to.
You do everything you can to make sure they don't, but at the
same time, you know that's what helped shape you.
That's how do you instill that yeah, it's a catch 22, right?
Because as a parent, our our, our knee jerk reaction is to is

(11:52):
to do things for them, right, tokeep them safe where our job is
to keep them safe. And the reality is they need a
little bit of danger in their life.
They need a little bit of failure.
And so one of the, one of the biggest things that I do and,
and you know, and I, I have to, I, I don't want to say I get on
to my wife, but I'm like, I, I, as a man in the house, I'm like,

(12:16):
no, this is, he's going to do ithimself.
I don't do everything for him. I don't, I, I, I, I just don't.
And, and people sometimes can look at that as like neglectic,
but Jordan Peterson has a reallygreat talk on being on parents
who are, if you look at young parents, they're neglectic in

(12:39):
some way, right? Because they're kind of like
oblivious or they're just focused on their own selves.
But what happens to those kids? They grow up more self resilient
and reliant on themselves, right?
And, and if you look at the way I grew up, I mean, I grew up
with a single mom and my brotherand, and, and we were left to
our own devices at the ages of like 5 and like under.

(13:04):
Yeah. They're like, I mean, this is
the, and this is like the mid 80s, like 1985.
You know, you're, you'll be all right kid, you know what I mean?
And that was normal. And so I think you, there's this
loop where you don't have and, and I talked about this with
adults now, but it, it happens early on with children, people

(13:28):
like, well, I don't have the confidence to do the thing.
Well, you don't, you're never going to have confidence to do
the thing. You need courage to do the
thing. Once you have courage and you
and then you do the thing, you get the experience, which
creates the confidence and then you go back in the same loop,
right? But people never start.

(13:49):
But I think that when you back in that generation of those
times, you were doing stuff so much and you were just out on
your own playing outdoors. And I mean, like, dude, it was
kind of crazy, man. Like there's some places that we
went as kids and growing up thatI'm like my parents had my mom

(14:09):
had no idea where I was at and Iwas doing some really shady,
dangerous things. That reminds me of what was the
standby, the standby, Me, the movie of the kids and the robo
jacks and they find a dead body.I think so, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, great movie, but it was
like that. It's like we're like Goonies
kids with the neighborhood, you know what I mean?
We're just off. But I think that that's what

(14:30):
made that portion of, you know, the whatever you call it,
whatever generation that was, Gen.
X, early 80s, seventies, made them so resilient and have grit
because we were raised in that, right?
So when it comes to my kids now,I put them into situations and I
didn't do this with my older girls.

(14:51):
And we I talked about that with them.
I'm like, yeah, I kind of failedyou guys on a couple
departments. You know what I mean?
That's what you get for having astarter dad.
But you know, now it's, you know, there's a great book
called The Intentional Father, and I don't think I have it.
I've heard of it. Great book, Christian based

(15:15):
book, small, but nonetheless, ithighly suggest everyone read
every father read the intentional father.
But that's really what it's about at this stage is is being
that intentional father and everything you do with
intention, whether you do something or don't do something.
Like I really forced my kid to have struggles and you know, if

(15:35):
you even from it's like trying to pick his bike up over a curb
to put it on the on the porch. It's like, no, dude, like we're
going to stand here and you're going to fight through this
because I'm not going to do it for you, you know, and the easy
thing is just like to grab the bike and put it on there, but
that, that you just robbed that kid of his confidence.
You just robbed that kid of learning that he can do it
himself, you know, and, and I was on a coaching call with my,

(15:59):
my community were talking about this and I had a client in town
and, and they piped up and they said, hey, just so you know,
Nick's not BS ING like I've witnessed this myself because
the other client's spouse was, was going to jump in and help my
son. And I was like, whoa.
I was like, no, no, no, he's got, he's like, you sure, Mike,

(16:20):
he's got it. You know, So they've witnessed
this like, and it is, it is hardto watch.
It's hard to watch them fall andget hurt.
It's hard to watch them do thesethings.
But man, if you would meet my son, you would be like this kid
is a different creature. He is the most I'm like, I'm

(16:40):
like, dude, you're awesome. You're a warrior.
He goes, I know, like his, his self-confidence is is is almost
too high. You know, we've had him in jiu
jitsu since he was we had him ina toddler program when he was
two years old, learning how to do, you know, just basic moves
in jiu jitsu twice a week. So he's been in that for almost

(17:01):
three years now, you know, but that's the reason why is you
have to a lot. You cannot you protect your
kids, yes, but man, you have to allow them to experience
failure. You have to allow them to to to
just break down sometimes and tofail.
That's because because that's what gave us our superpower.

(17:22):
All this. I wouldn't change one Cody.
I wouldn't change one freaking thing in my life.
All of the abuse, the things that happened to me in my past
there, there's nothing that I would change because every
single one of those obstacles, every single one of those
struggles has made me the man that I am today.
And you take 1 little thing awayand maybe I'm not here.
And I'll tell you what, man, I've done so much Dang personal

(17:44):
growth and work on myself. I like who I am.
I love that. That's so good man.
And it's so true. I think it it is hard and it's
hard for people to watch other parents do it.
It's hard for the parents themselves to do it.
I do the same thing and sometimes I'll get looks from
neighbors and it's it's because I know I I don't want to give
her the easy way out, especiallybecause realistic it's nothing
harmful. It is carrying like we grow on a

(18:05):
walk and she wants to ride the bike and she doesn't want to
push the bike up a hill. Well, sorry, you brought the
bike. You got to push up the hill and
I'll cheer you on all the way up.
You know, we could take all day,but it is they'll they'll thank
us later and we know it. So that's and that's what really
matters, you know, but it goes. Against your, it goes against
that like internal genetic code of what, how you're created to

(18:25):
protect him, right? So it's something that you have
to be super aware of and then you have to be very intentional.
I cannot use that word enough. Being very intentional about the
way that you parent and the why you do things.
And one of the things that we don't, we don't say is because
that's another parenting thing. I never say well, because or
because I said so. Yes.
Because and and what we have in our word, we have in our thing.

(18:48):
And even him at three years old,he was like, I was like, he goes
because and I'm like because is a preparatory word for the
reason why. So if you say because, you
better tell me the reason why. And a lot of parents say, well,
because I said so and they're like, well, I don't have the
time to explain. It's like, dude, that kids
asking because because why he's asking the reason why he's

(19:09):
wanting to understand. If you can't articulate yourself
for a moment to tell that per, to tell that young man why you
want him to do a specific thing,well, he's not learning
anything. It's so true.
And I've got, I've made some videos about that and I've got a
lot of Flack, Flack over it. But it's just one of our rules,
man. We don't say because we don't
because I said so. Like if I'm, if I'm making a, if

(19:32):
I'm telling him to do something,I better have a reason why I'm
telling him that. I could articulate that to him
so that he understands why this thing is important, whether it
be safety work, whatever it may be.
And I heard somebody else I lookup to say to never say because I
said so, yeah. And it made sense.

(19:52):
And I listened to yeah, that makes sense.
And then I caught myself doing it.
As Oh yeah and. You're like, oh, maybe I do this
more than I realize. And so I started really paying
attention and that alone was such a game changer because I
think, and this is what people don't like about it is #1 it
forces you to actually show up and be a good parent, right?
And then two, you'll find that you might just be a lazy parent.

(20:15):
So if somebody, if a kid wants to do something, have fun or
play with and you don't feel like it, you'll say, because I
said so. But if it's just because you are
tired, you're fatigued, you're bored, you're whatever, and you
won't spend time playing with the kid, like check yourself,
right? And I've had to do that.
Actually, it's like, I don't matter of fact, I don't know why
I'm saying no, I don't have a good reason.

(20:36):
You know what I mean? Maybe it is because I'm lazy.
Like you got, you got to have a reason because.
And what's great is I don't remember exact scenario, but I
did say something and he asked me why and, and I said, you know
what, son? I, I don't have a good reason.
So let's, let's, let's go somewhere.
Let's do something else. You know what I mean?
And I couldn't articulate myself.

(20:57):
And that caught me. And, and if you think about
that, if you've grown up that way, you're creating an
individual who is a thinker and a questioner, you know, not just
a sheep in the herd. Yep.
And, and I don't know about everybody else, but I would
never, I would want my children to make their own decisions
based off what's in the best interest of them and theirs, not

(21:20):
the herd. Absolutely.
Yeah. So what brought you to the
military? Like how did that come about?
And then just just brief like what you know, how you how and
what you served in the military.So we can have some context
there before I kind of get into the post military story because
I know you have you have different chapters of this
story. So I'll try to keep it real

(21:42):
short. So I convicted felon, 2 time
convicted felon by the time I was 13 years old and then went
through this whole like getting like my life cleaned up by the
time I was 15. I was on the straight and
narrow, not doing, not drinking,not doing drugs, girls,

(22:02):
etcetera, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, I grew up in Florida.
So that if anybody understands like, oh, that kid, that makes
more sense now. But yeah, 90, you know,
teenager, early 90s. Yeah, I did a lot of dumb stuff
and then got cleaned up by the time I was 15 and then really
went into just making like focused on making money, putting

(22:25):
a lot of my energy into working hard and making money.
And by the time I was, I finished the second.
Like school was a whole deal. Like I failed and had to go to
an alternative school, which waslike something out of like a rap
90s movie with barbed wire around.
And anyways, I escaped that process.
And, but I, I finished the 10th grade and then that summer I was

(22:49):
working a job and I was making close to 4 grand legally at this
point. I just want to caveat that
legally was making close to 4 grand a week, almost 90
something percent of the cash. So I was from 6:00 AM to, and,
and that's why I talk a lot about work ethic and the

(23:10):
generation now versus then. Like from 6:00 AM to 2:00.
I was, AI was a audio visual tech for Bay Point Marriott's
Convention Center. So I was setting up projectors
and lights and microphones and stuff for conventions and things
like that. And these big, you know, suite,
you know, ballroom suite things for meetings and presentations.

(23:31):
And then I would take a 30 minute break from 2:30 to 10:00
at night. I was a bellman at the same
hotel. And that's just cash tips all
like all day long. So the end of the week I'm like,
I'm making, I mean, you're literally could be making 800 to
over $1000 a day. So, and this was, this was the

(23:51):
night, this was what, 96 or 7 orsomething like that.
And I was making, I want to say $15.00 an hour at the Convention
Center like which is crazy for that time.
And so I was making a good amount of money.
And at one point I was, it was time to go back to school for my

(24:14):
11th grade year. And I was like, that doesn't
make any sense. I'm not going to talk about
photosynthesis 8 hours a day anddissecting frogs and giving this
out. No way.
I lived, I had a house on the beach, had my own, my own, my
own life. I lived.
I had a roommate at the time, but I had my own house.
And you know, I'm 17 years old. I'm like, I'm not going back to
school so I can sit in a classroom for 8 hours.

(24:35):
So this doesn't seem like a goodbusiness decision.
So I, I worked and I did that life for a while.
And I remember one, one point there was I saw the gut like the
lead bellman and the hotel manager.
And in my mind they were like agent, they were probably like

(24:57):
younger than I am right now. But in my mind they were like in
their 50s or 60s. And I saw my future for like
20-30 years prior or in the future going, oh, that could be
my life. And growing up, I was never in
the same school for longer than six months.

(25:20):
My mom moved around. I used to make a joke saying
that she moved around, like to get away, like she was running
from the cops. But in the reality, she was
literally just going from job tojob, making ends meet, trying to
take care of, you know, two boys.
And so I was used to kind of living on the go and having
constant change in my life. And so when I started to get a

(25:40):
little stable and I saw that that could be my future for the
next 20-30 years. Granted, I would have been
successful in whatever I did andcome up, but I'm like just doing
the same thing around the same people for 20-30 years.
I, I panicked and I talked aboutit like, so how I put, I hit the

(26:02):
nuclear button and, and just blew my life up.
Like I quit the jobs, I gave up my place.
I went. Well, I first I went to I said
I'm going to go join the military.
So I'm going to join the hardestbranch of the military.
And at the time, this is before the really the Internet.
You know what I mean? I mean, obviously the Internet
was there, but as it is today, Yeah.

(26:24):
But I didn't know anything. So you just thought knew what
was on commercials. And back then, the commercial
was for the Marine Corps. Was the dude fighting the
dragon. I don't know if you remember
that. Have you ever seen that
commercial? You have to Google it.
It's on YouTube. It's looked old and cheesy, but
that's what we had on TV, man. I'm like, this dude's fighting
Dragons, like with a sword. I'm in.
Sign me up, you know? And so I went and talked to the

(26:47):
recruiter and, you know, he did me, he did his whole spiel and
told me no. And once he did his whole spiel,
once he ran my information, he came back and, and, and he was
like, I never forget his face when he walked back in.
And now he's Klein, Michael Klein.

(27:07):
He actually retired. He lives up north of this town.
So he's actually here. My recruiter and I remember,
forget him coming in and looked at me and just shook his head.
And he's like, kid, there's no way you're joining the Marine
Corps. Not only are you not joining the
Marine Corps, you're not joiningany branch.
You're a two time convicted felon in a high school dropout.

(27:28):
And I said, so I'm clean. I'm here.
Like, what's the big deal? Like I want to join.
You need people. Let's go.
And he's like, it's not going tohappen.
And when he told me no, that wasone of the biggest things that
the biggest mistakes he ever met.
Because I have this toxic trait of this rebellious person.

(27:51):
And when you tell me I can't do something, it truly my brain up
to where I'm like, OK, I'm goingto show you, which is a great
thing. It is a great thing, great
personality trait. The only reason I stay at 43
that I've learned is sometimes maybe I shouldn't do certain
things. Maybe I should just accept no

(28:14):
and continue on with what I'm doing.
Because I now that I've, you know, I'm a little bit wiser.
I checked myself and be like, isthat a path that I need to go
down? Or is it, do I, do I want to go
down it just because someone told me no, because I can force
things to happen. I, I can forced force things,
you know, if they tell me no, I can make anything happen.

(28:35):
I truly believe that. But sometimes they, they, they
don't need to happen. So anyways, I spent almost two
years fighting that system and, and eventually I got in.
I mean, I dropped out of I quit my, the reason I quit those jobs
is I went to, started going to college because the military
they, they hate high high schooldropouts, but they love a

(28:56):
college dropout. So I got my GED, went to college
and then I was going to drop outmy after my first semester.
And they're like, oh, your college dropout done.
Let's go. We will take you all day.
And then I, and then I worked nights at a movie theater
minimum wage back then. I want to say it was like 425.
And I remember getting my first check after two weeks, making 4

(29:20):
grand a week. And after two weeks, I got my
check and it was like 175 bucks.And I'm like, what?
How do people survive off of this?
Yeah, and but I kept doing it and moved in with my grandmother
and for two years we just grinded out, had 100, let over
100 letters of recommendation, had to go to, you know, take the

(29:44):
test multiple times, how to takepsyche valves.
And it, it was a grind, man. And finally I got in and talking
about my life being a perseverance to adversity.
I finally get my shot right after almost two years.
At this point, I'm I'm 18 years old, I'm 18 years old.
The head, you know, I turned 19 in in recruit training because

(30:05):
it take it was taken. It taken that long to get in.
So I make my shot. I get there on training day 7.
Been there seven days, maybe, maybe 8.
I don't know. But on training day seven, I
broke my wrist and got dropped and it was like, damn, dude.

(30:28):
Like you just can't win. Like why can't things be easy?
And, and that, that, that created a whole chain of events
where I wanted to quit and all kinds of stuff.
But once I pulled my head out ofmy and I use it as an
opportunity, ended up just driving forward, man, end up
spending 5 1/2 months on that island and, and really turned

(30:49):
pain, pain into purpose. And what I realized once I got
over my little pity party is that, well, I'm, I'm a criminal,
like I'm a former criminal. So what I need to do here is I
need to learn every single shift.
I need to learn how this island works.
I need to learn how these drill instructors work, what the

(31:09):
training schedules are, what is the knowledge that I need to
move forward. And I just gained the system.
And then when I healed back up and got back in, got back in
there, I ended up being number one in the entire company and no
one could even touch me because I just knew the system.
I knew all the phases. I knew who went where, I knew
who, what personality was, why. And I just, I just did the did

(31:33):
the con man thing and just figured it all out, learned what
I needed to learn and no one could touch me.
And I and I used and I used my hardship as a way to level up.
And that was really one of the first things as like an adult
that I'm like, oh, let's let's make a what's the deal?

(31:56):
You know, lemonade out of lemonssituation here.
And you can do that with anything in life.
And anyway, so Fast forward yet ended up doing that and then
taking selection for forced reconnaissance, which at the
time, this is before special operations adopted the Marine
Corps. That was the top unit in the in

(32:17):
the Marine Corps got past that selection process got out of the
second force did some time out in Oki with third Recon ended up
coming back. That's when we stood up special
Operations and and became a wentthrough selection again for
Marine Special Operations Command came a Marine Raider and
then over my entire course of deployed Iraq, Afghanistan, all

(32:41):
over Southeast Asia, Turkey, allall directly in in support of
the global war on terrorism. And then in 2012, I, I, I called
it quits. It's time for me to exit.
How many years total was that? 12. 12 years.
Yeah, man. And you returned and what now?

(33:05):
I mean, I got to imagine after 12 years, you're, you're so, I
mean, you're a new person. So obviously your identity has
shifted in many good ways, but Iwould assume one of the not
necessarily bad ways, but one ofthe hard ways is that you
identify as a soldier who is deployed.
And when you come back, you're no longer a soldier that is

(33:26):
deployed. You're just back into the normal
world. Like, yeah, what did you do at
that point? It's interesting.
So I was very bitter and and it's it's my own fault.
I stayed operate. I never did like a a break in my
12 years. So, you know, I, I joined in
2000, 2001 happened the very, I was at my first duty station

(33:49):
when, when 2000, when, when September 11th happened that
that changed the course of my entire life.
And so I never, and soon as thathappened, I was basically, I
immediately went in this operational mode where I started
deploying. I mean, I deployed one year
exactly after, after September 11th and I never stopped when my

(34:14):
daughter was born. My second daughter was born when
she turned 5. I had done 4 deployments by the
time she was five years old and I did that up until the year I
got out. So out of 12 years, I was gone
for six years. And because of that, I got very

(34:45):
bitter and worn down and be started to become a very angry
person and started to lose the joy and the job that I was
doing. Not to don't don't get me wrong,
I still like doing the job, but I I'd stopped having as much fun
as it's the one regret that I tell young people like what,
what would you what advice wouldyou say?
And I was like, dude, listen, like riding motorcycles out of

(35:09):
about of out of the back of helicopters with, with guns on
and all your friends, like kind of a once in a lifetime kind of
situation, You know what I mean?When you're riding it, your
helicopter lands and you do, youknow, you ride your bike off the
back of a ramp with, and you gota bunch of guns on and they make
in the movies, dude. And you don't get that

(35:30):
opportunity much in life, right?Very few people get that.
And, and we get that. And as cool as it was, I was
very focused on the professionalism of it as I
should be. But I also let a lot of the, the
politics and the BS get to me too much.
And my SO my 1 and I don't have many regrets in life, but the

(35:51):
one regret I would have, I probably would have just not
cared about the, the politics because guess what I got out in
2012 is 2025. I, I go roll with, you know, I
do jiu jitsu with all the young guys that are still at the unit.
And guess what? It's the same politics in the
same BS Nothing's changed. So I don't need to worry about
it so much. I should have just had fun, you
know what I mean? And but The thing is, is you

(36:12):
stay operationally that long andyou get burnt out, you get burnt
out. So I had, I had burnout for a
lot of different reasons. You know, keep in mind those
times we were directly in combatthe entire time.
So it just takes, it takes a toll on you.
It takes a toll on you. And, and, and so when I got out,

(36:33):
I was telling a friend, I said, oh, I'm already transitioned.
I'm I'm mentally ready to be out.
I want to be a civilian. I'm going to, this is the next
chapter of my life. And he just kind of laughed.
He said, all right, bud, becausehe had, he got out two, two
years before me. And he was, he was like, yeah,
we'll just take it slow. You know what I mean?
Just ease into it. I'm like, oh, no, I'm good, man.

(36:54):
You're not good when it comes and, and I'm sure you have a lot
of law enforcement, probably military and law enforcement
people in your community. It man, it is who you are.
What you do is who you are and it, it's very hard to not for it
not to be that way because it is.

(37:16):
You know, I got out and I was AIwas a force Recon Marine.
I was a Marine Raider. Like that is who I was as the
neighborhood that I lived in. It was the, the schools my kids
went to was the people I hung out with.
It was the things I looked up onthe Internet, the gear, the, the
lifestyle, everything. I mean it, it, it was the
lifestyle. And all of a sudden, and I write

(37:37):
about it in my book, talking about that, you know, you turn
your badge in, you have to have an access badge to be in on the
compound and you turn that badgein and you walk out that door
and that door shuts and you can't get back in.
And I remember standing out by the memorial when I walked
outgoing. Wow.

(37:58):
That's it. That's the culmination of 12
years right there. And, and, and it was, you know,
and I and I had opportunity and whatnot, but it was more on the
personal side that things started to take a decline rather
rapidly actually. And, and within two years, man,
I was just, I was pretty much within a year and a half to two

(38:20):
years, I was at my lowest. And it really just comes down to
your overall health, your hormones, and then your
identity. And I didn't know who I was.
If I wasn't this Marine Raider, I wasn't this guy who was super
fit. And now I was like super unfit,
having a host of medical issues and you know, to be honest,

(38:43):
mental issues. Then who, who is this guy, you
know, And then you start going down the, the lines of like, oh,
all of this was for nothing, Like I was lied to.
There is no brotherhood. Cause the phone stops ringing,
your friend stop 'cause they're all still working.
And Nick's good. He's making a bunch of money,

(39:03):
he's contracted now he's good. I don't need it.
He's already on his next chapter.
We don't need to check on him, you know?
And the reality is it was the worst part of my life, you know?
But of course you put this face on, you know, oh, I'm making all
this money, life's good, blah, blah, blah, blah, Inside told
Devastation. How long did it take for you to

(39:27):
make a shift? And when you made that shift, is
that what led you into coaching other men?
No. Well, I mean, I guess in a way.
So I had this opportunity when Igot out and, and people thought
that I was doing good. I had this opportunity to start
helping some veterans and, and this was later on, this was like

(39:50):
about a year and a half, two years in when and well, to go
back, what really happened was the I had the intentions of
committing suicide one night. That little voice in your head
that starts off with. You can sleep in.

(40:13):
You've had a hard life. It's you're, you're out now.
You, your body's tired. You probably need the the rest.
So just you know, sleeping in one day is not going to kill
you. Skipping one workout is not
going to kill you. You can eat that burger you put
your time in. You know what I mean?
It's like you don't have to takethat cold shower, except
whatever that little thing is that that that rationalizes you

(40:34):
not choosing hard right, That doing the easy thing, the, the,
the amygdala that that tricks you into, you know, keeping you
safe. I tell people that that voice,
while it starts innocent, is theexact same voice that will talk
you into taking your own life. And the way that sounds is

(40:55):
you're holding people back. You're the problem.
And the voice for me was I was with problem with my family, my
wife at the time. We'll find somebody else.
You are not a good father because you're not there.
So she'll get remarried to somebody who's going to be more

(41:18):
present for your kids. Right now you're probably just
causing more damage than than actual good.
Everything that you've lived foris a lie.
So you're actually doing people a service by checking out.

(41:38):
That's the same voice that tellsyou that you can have the
cookie, that you can skip the cold shower or the cold plunge
or the OR doing the workout. It's the same voice, it just
starts super small and it just gets louder and louder and
louder and louder. It's a it's a horrible trick of

(42:01):
the devil, man. And you got to, you got to shut
the voice up early on. You got to shut the voice up
early on before it gives it to you because you can't keep
feeding it every time, every time.
And I love your choose hard thing because every time that
you choose easy over hard, everysingle time that you, you feed
that voice, you feed that monster and it becomes more

(42:21):
powerful. So for me, and I talked to AI,
talked to a, a neuroscientist doctor about this.
I told him my story, Doctor Brendan Bowerman, who came up
with, I don't know if you ever seen him, he came up with a he
they're treating TBI and post traumatic stress through a
virtual reality system that theydeveloped.

(42:43):
And it's about providing, creating new blood, blood flow
and pathways to the prefrontal cortex.
Because what they're finding is that that when people go into
this kind of negative mode or they're starting to have like
this fight or flight or they're suicidal or whatever, maybe
they're depressed. There is little to no blood flow

(43:05):
in the, in the prefrontal cortex.
So you're not thinking clearly. And that's like the 1-2.
That's like the, the straight upevery TBI post traumatic stress,
there's no blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.
So you're basically operating off this like reptilian part of
your brain. So I told him my story and, and,
and for me, and it's all writtenout in the book.

(43:30):
I went to the beach and my intention of going to the beach
was that it would be an easy cleanup.
But so I was like, you know, I live on the beach down here.
So, you know, it's just flip flop shorts and a shirt.
I grabbed my gun. I went down there, left my
family behind. I had been drinking and I mean,

(43:51):
I was always drinking. So that was just the constant
went down there. But then at that, at that point,
I, my feet were in the sand. I was here in the ocean and come
to find out there's this whole frequency thing with the ocean
and then having your feet in thesand that down regulates your
fight or flight response. So he was able to explain to me

(44:14):
on a scientific level. He goes, honestly, if you would
have went anywhere else, if you would went to a parking lot like
of Walmart and sat in your truck, he goes you probably
would have taken your own life. He goes, the fact that you took
your shoes off and you went to the beach and listen to those
waves and had your feet in the sand.
He goes, that more than likely saved your life.

(44:37):
And my intention was for doing it was.
And this actually, I just learned this probably about a
year ago after I told him the story.
And then he like pulled up all this literature and apps and all
this kind of stuff about frequencies and realigning in
your head and everything, which I, I, I believe for a long time
and grounding. And now we do grounding sheets

(44:59):
and we get all, we get all kindsof weird, but nonetheless, I, I,
I made the decision not to do itbecause I had all these positive
thoughts start to rolling through my head, which again
aligns with removing the negative frequencies, realigning
your, your body frequency to theearth.
And then, so I realized that that things were really bad and

(45:23):
something had to change. I had zero tools on how to
change it and how to improve it.However, I knew that something
had to be done. So I went home and you know, I
remember walking in and my wife at the time, my ex-wife, and was
like pale as a gut, like I thinkshe knew something was up.
She was white as a ghost. And and I just grabbed the

(45:46):
bottle of Maker's Mark and started drinking again.
But I because that's the only tool I had at the time.
And then from then from that point on, it was I started to
research and to put myself in these really uncomfortable
situations and vulnerable situations of therapy.
And it was pretty much, I went all in on growth, whatever that

(46:11):
looked like. And I really at the initial
part, I really, really started to go to, OK, what veteran
therapy programs are out there? And I'll be the Guinea pig.
And the reason for that is because almost simultaneously I
met this man named Carl Munger who is helping veterans and I
had had a lot of guys from the teams reach out to me and
they're like, no, Nick, you're being super successful.

(46:33):
I was like, well, I was like, what we could do is we can start
putting go into some of these events and I'll introduce you to
every to my network like these VPS and these presidents and
these CEO's, these companies. And we'll just bypass the HR
process because at the time I was like, well, if I can get a
guy like a six figure job out ofthe Marine Corps, like he's
good, right? And I didn't realize it was all

(46:54):
the personal human being stuff that really needed to be worked
on. But that's the initially what I
was doing at the same time as I was going through all of my
therapy stuff. And then I started my me and my
friend Josh Hansberger sort of really connect the dots on, oh,
this is a kind of a human performance problem.
This isn't really a veteran problem.

(47:15):
This is a, we need to do some internal work, you know, some
internal growth and, and, and get rid of the ego and, and let
go of the identity of this thingthat we're think we're supposed
to be this really badass tough guy.
And, and let's go back to being a human being.
Let's go back to being a man anda father and a husband.
And let's, let's, let's nail down that.

(47:37):
And, and it wasn't overnight, man, it was years, you know, but
I, I can say that there is a bigshift between 14 and 16 and then
16. I went through some personal
adversity and really 16 to 18, 2018 was probably one of the
biggest shifts for me. I got really super fit in 2017.

(48:00):
So 16, I was still a disaster, but I was working on it.
You know, it's a slow, slow, slow start. 17, I got in a
phenomenal shape for the first time since I've been outside the
outside of the military. And then and then the year after
that, I said quit drinking completely.

(48:21):
So it's been August will be 6 years.
And then it was just I got, I started paying for coaching for
myself, both physically and nutrition wise, both in business
and personal growth. I had like 4-4 different coaches
and four different things. So I just went all in on my own
personal development and it was like a rocket ship at that

(48:44):
point. It was an absolute rocket ship.
Like I started investing and people said, oh, you don't need
this and you that. I was like, dude, they have the
information, they have the lessons learned.
I'm done with the ego. Like I just want to learn.
I just want to make myself better.
And man, it challenged me so hard.
And but that's when Bull was crazy, dude.

(49:08):
And you know this better than anyone when I did that.
My business has exploded. My relationship just got, I
mean, we were dealing with so much from the past.
You know, I've been with my wifenow for this October be 11 years
and we were dealing with so muchwhen I we first met because I
was just a hole. I was just a straight hole.

(49:31):
So I had to deal with all that. But like when I went all in on
myself and coaching and pay and really paying for personal
development, everything exploded.
Like my whole life turned aroundthe businesses started.
I mean, that's that's when like we turned nothing into two eight
figure businesses because of that.

(49:52):
And and and that's it, man. That was the that's it in a
nutshell. So sorry, it's long winded.
Run a rant now. That's great, dude.
And it's crazy too. This is, I mean, it's to me,
this is where, like, God's preparing you for something, but
you think about all that you went through, all that you
overcame, and then you started shifting, creating the tools and
the practices needed. You changed.
And then you got yourself into aposition where you can help
others change. Yeah.

(50:12):
Boom, a worldwide pandemic hits and men are isolated and getting
more depressed than ever. But you're prepared to help.
You know, it's yeah, wild. Because it.
That literally was perfect timing.
It was perfect timing, right? Yeah, it is.
Wild. And so obviously that led to is
it I'm going to butcher a goje? The a gogi.
A Gogi first what does that meanand then I want to dive into

(50:37):
these 4 phases because I'm assuming you're you're crazy
transformation and journey and through all this is what helped
you yeah and your partner createthe four phases but.
So the ago, yeah, the agogi, youknow, it's funny, we started out
calling it the, the first thing that we called it for the first
couple years was surviving the cut, you know, and it was just
like cutting fat off your body, right?
We would just help men lose weight and, and you probably

(51:00):
know, you probably started the same way.
It's like Google Sheets and justthe most rudimentary, difficult,
you know, Facebook group with Google Sheets and like them
having to put their mat. I mean, it was just an
operational nightmare. But we, that's how we started,
man. We got it done.
And nonetheless, we started run with that.

(51:21):
It was, it was mildly successfuland but we loved it.
We loved building the community.We love getting the men
together. They were calling for it.
They needed it. And then 2020 happened and one
of the things that happened withme in 2020, I don't know if you
found it, was I had AI had a public gym that was one of my
businesses and it got raided by the cops.

(51:44):
Now we did, we did shut down. Before anybody loses their mind,
we shut down for like 2 weeks, two or three weeks.
But then the the governor came out.
It was supposed to be. I don't know if you remember the
initial thing was a two week shutdown.
Oh, no, don't I feel like dude over here in Washington, there
was, I mean, Jim's shut down. Well, some of them indefinitely
because they went out of business, but some of them for

(52:06):
months and months and months. And I have a buddy that he, he
just didn't and he's, he actually grew through it because
a lot of police officers were like, I'm going to go there
because I need to train, but. Yeah, Greg Anderson didn't ever
shut down either, so. He is in Washington and my
nephew actually is one of his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu students up

(52:27):
there. Awesome.
Yeah. Great dude.
Yeah. And so so we shut down for two
weeks and then not knowing what we we didn't know.
We didn't know. And then and then the governor
came back out and he just was like, he just tore the state
apart. Like he destroyed the state.
And I'm like, wait a minute, there's not, there's no
information. We're supposed to stay closed.

(52:48):
And Heinz. And I'm glad we didn't because
hindsight. California gyms open before
North Carolina gyms. We were the one of the last
states in the entire yes, strip clubs were open here.
Gyms were shut down that. Makes sense?
So 2 weeks in, 2-3 weeks in, guys were hitting me up.
You know, my employees have built.

(53:10):
I got to pay bills my employees have to have as their own
personal rents do. I got to get them paid.
People are hitting me up saying,Nick, I got to come to the gym
we live in. At the time there was 2500
people in this town. We live in such a small little
beach town. There's nobody here.
There wasn't one case of COVID. Nothing was happening.
Like we're so small. And anyways, so I looked at the

(53:33):
CDC guidelines, Bedros Collion, who is the owner of Fit Body
Boot Camp. He put he's a friend of mine.
I was coaching with him. He put out this like great, like
pandemic, like, hey, this is howwe're running our gyms.
I was like, I'll just copy that and the CDC guidelines and we
did and then we got raided by the cops.
I mean like stupid rated and that of course made national

(53:57):
news and fox and you know, I went on that, but then I started
to so Cody, I started to realizeI'm like, how could this happen?
It was like Rambo. I was like John Rambo first
blood. They they raided my gym all I
you didn't know my, my, you didn't know my political,
religious or any affiliation. I was making videos on YouTube.
I was just having fun. I had long hair or skateboard

(54:18):
and surfing all the time and like I was just a fun time guy
and you didn't I wasn't really stressing things.
I'm like, you want to lose weight, you should let's go.
But it wasn't like I wasn't the guy that I am now that just
hammers the system all the time,right and, and just pushes back
on everything. And when this happened, I'm
like, how can I serve my countryfor as long as I did and have my

(54:42):
rights taken away from me, the right to earn, the right of
prosperity, the right of all these different things and like,
and these unconstitutional like shutdowns.
And I'll, I'll go to my like, I'll go to my grave saying all
this like it was wrong. It was wrong.
And I started, look at my, how did we get here?
How the hell did we get here? And I went back to and, and

(55:03):
everything I landed on was men. Men became fat, sick, dependent,
distracted. And if men were the men they
were 30-40 years ago, there's noway in hell this would have
happened. They could have tried, but the
men in the community would have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

(55:25):
This is not in the best interestof our kids, our families, our
community and our business, our local businesses.
So we're going to try, we're going to find a different way.
I get this is something going onhere, but you're not shutting
art, You're not shutting our world off.
You're not taking my kids and putting them through like the
stuff they did with kids during that time.
Like is there are still, there are young adults now that are in
their early 18/19/2022 that werepart of that TikTok world that

(55:53):
are still suffering mentally because of what they were put
through. And if I would have looked at
like got men like Martin Luther King, like those type of men,
would that have happened if we had those type of men that were

(56:15):
not afraid to stand up to a tyrannical government as a
community, Not just one man, butall men in the nation united for
your family, for your local businesses, for your community.
It wouldn't have came out that way, but we they systematically,
slowly eroded masculinity, made us fat, sick, dependent,

(56:40):
distracted, lose touch with God,pornography, gambling, alcohol,
tobacco, drugs, whatever it may be, take over a whole country
without firing a shot. And you know, and I looked at
it, I started seeing America through the lens of Mike like

(57:00):
asymmetrical warfare. I'm like, oh, I see what they
did here. If I want to take over a
country, I don't worry about women.
I don't worry about children, I don't worry about the elderly.
I worry about military age males.
And if I can make them fat, sick, independent and
distracted, I could take over anentire country without firing in
a single shot. And that's exactly what they

(57:22):
did. And that's when my focus turned
towards men and poking them in the chest.
And I was like, you're the problem.
You're the real pandemic. Men are men are the real
pandemic of this nation, but they're also the solution.
Yeah, and you came up with a wayto help them.

(57:46):
Obviously, you know, we're both very passionate about this, but
I love how you have these 4 phases and it's, it's kind of
parallel to some of the stuff I talked about on here.
I actually just did a podcast. It was, it was about morning
routines, but it was, it covers 4 pillars.
And the whole point of that is there's a lot of ways to do it.
You know, I talked about like health, head, heart muscle, you

(58:09):
can say faith, family, fitness, finance, like, I mean, they're
familiar with bodybuilding, balance, business, core 4.
Like there's so many different ways and you it all is.
Basically the same. It is, there's four things that
we need to focus on. And I love that you instead of
having pillars, the pillars are ingrained in this, but you have
4 phases that you take guys through, which is a really cool
way of doing it. You have master yourself, lead

(58:30):
your family, master finances andbuild your legacy.
So can you, can you kind of justbriefly go through what that
means for the guy listening so that they know?
Yeah, absolutely. What they need to do?
Bedro say this says this thing, that fitness is a gateway drug
to success. Yeah, I love that.
Because it you, not you and I both know it is you get a guy

(58:51):
that's totally wrecked and you start, you get him physically
fit. He's his whole life is going to
change. And it's not because he's
physically fit. It's the work and the the habits
that he had to instill to turn his life around and become
physically fit. And so that when we talk about
the reason why that we phase oneis mastering yourself and phase

(59:14):
one, you, I could send this to you, I can send you the
breakdown of each phase. But phase one is, is it's not
just physical, physical fitness,it's your identity, it's your
core values. And the reason why we have to
do, we have to master ourselves as we used to do this, we used
to run these. Do you ever run 38 challenges?

(59:34):
Yeah. Yeah, I hate them.
Absolutely. We're not big on challenges
either. We don't do.
We've done different challenges within our members.
Funny enough, we actually just did our first ever, like public
challenge that we people paid for.
It was 8 weeks, so it's longer than 30 days, yeah.
But yeah, I'm not a huge challenge guy.
Because we know it's going to happen, right?

(59:55):
Like they're going to do the challenge and then they're just
going to go back. Like 90% of them are just going
to go right back to what they were doing because we didn't
actually instill any, any true habits.
It's like, oh, I'm just doing this challenge like mentally.
Yeah, it's great if you can get people who have been on the
fence and not taking action on their goals.
It's a great business. It's a great business marketing
thing to bring them initially in.
And then, yes, you know, I don'tknow about you, but we saw about

(01:00:17):
a 10% conversion of people who stuck around.
Right. Yeah.
And then we'd had these people that would just wait for the
next challenge and then jump on the next challenge, and they'd
gain all the weight back. I'm like, why are we doing this?
Can we anyways? So we started doing these things
and these guys would come in there and be like, all right, I

(01:00:37):
got my macros and they would be like, all right, they'd be just
trying to clean out the pantry of the house and like the whole
family's now on macros and the family's like, dude, I just saw
you eating Cheetos out of your belly button last night.
What? On the couch watching Netflix
off your gut, Like, who are you?What are you talking about?
And so we would, we would see a lot of rub.

(01:00:58):
And I'm like, well, yeah, dude, you're, they don't believe you.
You're full of and so the whole purpose of this is there's a
difference between your perceived identity and your
actual true identity, right? Like what we show people versus

(01:01:20):
what how people perceive us. And you can say whatever you
want to say, but the reality is people look at you a certain way
based off your habits and the way that you show up, right?
So for us to be taken seriously,if we really want to change,
turn our life around, we have toown our own.

(01:01:41):
We have to master our self first.
This isn't about your wife, thisisn't about your kids, this
isn't about your family. It's not about anything else but
you and the internal work that'sgoing on.
The reality is this one in four men have been sexually abused.
One in three men have been physically abused.
And that is a that is a statistic that stays true to

(01:02:02):
this day. And I can get 20 men in a room
and if I get them to open up, that statistic will stay 100%
true. How many men openly talk about
that? This is the stuff that's causing
them this trauma that they've never dealt with and maybe some
of them don't even remember is why they yin Yang.
It's why they can't stay consistent is because something

(01:02:25):
in their life is wrong. And then we have to master us.
We have to master that. We have to deal with it.
We have to process it. We have to get healthy and move
past it. And that's when all the other
things will happen. And the reason why, like why
can't, why I need to get my finances in order, Bro, you're
never going to get your financesin order if you don't have the
discipline to put the cookie down.
What makes you think that you'regoing to save 10% of your, of

(01:02:45):
your monthly income? You're not discipline.
There is discipline there. That's the way it works.
So that's the reason why. And there's a lot of things that
like having your family on board, your wife coming on
board. So we want to show our family
who we are as men. We want to show them what we're
capable of, not through what we say, but through our actions and

(01:03:08):
through our results. Now when that happens, now we
can enter the conversation of, hey, this is what I would like
to do with our family and why? Because now we've built trust.
Dad's gotten results. Whatever's working for dad, he
shows up differently, he communicates differently.
He's he's a, he's a different father.
He's a different husband. Now that somebody that I can

(01:03:29):
follow, right? Most men are not leading.
They're just existing in their household.
But when you can truly master yourself, something happens to
you. I think on a very spiritual
level that you become the man that you were created to be.
I think men were created by God to lead and to live with

(01:03:49):
purpose. And when you start to master
yourself, you start to fulfill that purpose and people will see
you in that light. And it's only then that we can
then lead our family, that we can have the relationship with
our wife about nutrition that wecan have about our core values,
that we can we can create a family plan.

(01:04:12):
Because it's not just me talking.
I'm already living it on my own and that's when we started
seeing, that's when we started seeing big changes in our
community. Now then not only that and guys,
I understand this is difficult. This doesn't happen overnight.
This is a, this is a takes months and years to auto to flow

(01:04:35):
through. But then once we lead the family
and we get the family on board and you and your wife are in
step with each other and synced up.
Well, now I can do things in my finances because I can be on the
same page with my with my wife, right?
But if I'm like, Hey, we're justgoing to do all of this.
She's like, Oh, and you got to stop.
You got to stop going to that Starbucks everywhere, every

(01:04:56):
every day. You know what I mean?
Like, that's not going to fly. Like you guys have to be, you
guys have to be symbiotic of each other.
But the only but that starts with you.
And then we get into, you know, once you've mashed yourself and
then now we now we have the, thereputation to lead our family,
the expectation that, that in the results that I do want to

(01:05:17):
follow dad because of the way hecommunicates, the fact that he's
stoic, that he's patient, that he's a teacher, that he's
communicating. He's not saying, because you
know what I mean, he's being an intentional father.
Well, then we can get into finances, start turning our
whole life around our finances. And then phase 4 is really about
the legacy. It's like, OK, well, now you've,
you've achieved the pinnacle of what you're supposed to be.

(01:05:41):
You're becoming almost like the elder of your family.
And it's now it's like now it's time to not only protect the
wealth that you've created and, you know, dynasty, trust, high
value cash, life insurance, things like that.
But it's also in that phase we discuss you now as a leader need
to start creating more leaders how and, and how to do that.

(01:06:05):
And the reality is most men are waiting for permission to do so
when they can start today. Yeah.
And so we go through this whole 10 lesson course.
So it's very educational. It's about, you know, 1510 to 15
videos per phase with worksheetsand everything that we've, you
know, so it's I, I felt like we needed a very heavy educational

(01:06:28):
platform, something tangible. I don't like this like, well,
you're just going to give it to God.
What does that mean? What does it really mean?
Like men, men are a we are tactical creatures.
We need executable tactical things that we can take care of.
You know, yes, it can be spiritual.

(01:06:48):
It can have to do with God. But I loved the guy who runs our
faith portion of the agogi. It's called men a faithful
action. He goes, God won't drive a
parked car. That's good.
Right. I'm like, he's not going to
drive a parked car, gentleman. Like you got to put it in drive.

(01:07:09):
You know what I mean? You got to do the work.
You got to show up and you got to ditch your hands dirty and
you got to do the work. And so that's what we're really
focused on is the the tangible tactical things that we can
execute on, not just hyperbole. God won't do what you can do
yourself. I've heard.
Yeah, a great pastor say multiple times.
So it's like there's still work involved.

(01:07:31):
We still got to do the work, youknow, and we can have faith in
God and especially in guiding usin the right direction, but he's
not going to do what you can do for yourself.
You know, that's why we're goes back to what we're talking
about, kids. I'm not going to do what you can
do for yourself because that won't teach you anything in the
process. That's right, we're we're
literally built with this physique to be able to endure
stress and work. Yeah, it's.

(01:07:53):
What we're built for. Yeah, so good man.
Yeah, I could literally talk about just those 4 phases with
you. Probably put another couple.
Hours. We're we're we're at the hour
mark. So I'm going to wrap it up here.
And I just have one final question for you before we
before we close it out. And and that's just what does
choose hard mean to you? Oh man, that is keeping the evil

(01:08:16):
away. Choosing hard over easy me is is
delaying my delaying gratification for a bigger
reward in the future. And that could be physically,
financially, relationship with my wife, my kids, everything.
But having that battle with choosing easy 1st and over

(01:08:36):
choosing hard. I know the road that that takes
you down and I don't ever want to go down that road again.
I literally have a shirt that that we wear that says choose
hard over easy. I love it.
And and is it matter of fact? Yes, wallpaper on your phone.

(01:08:58):
I love it man. I stare at it every single day,
man. It's, it's a, it's a mantra.
It's, it's, it's a way to live because I know that a true, a
true life of happiness is when you choose hard over easy.
That's, that's when you're trulyfulfilled.
That's where you get the, that'swhere you get the, the
accomplishments, the dopamine. Yeah.
Yeah, so good. Well, dude, thank you so much

(01:09:20):
for taking the time with me today.
This has been phenomenal. I love these kind of
conversations. More and more people need to
hear these kind of conversations.
So I'm really grateful that you could come on and I'm honored to
have you on the podcast to Shareyour story and hopefully open up
some more eyes, tell everybody where they can find you on
Instagram. I know you have a bunch of
places and things that you're doing.
So all of it is listed on Instagram, but just give them
your your Instagram handle. So I can put that and everything

(01:09:41):
else in the. Description.
Yeah. And that's that's where I
actually engage the most. So I'm able to actually talk to
people the most. It's just easy for me to talk to
talk to people through Instagram.
So it's Nick Kamalazos. Good luck.
Yeah. Nick Kou on Instagram.
And then, yeah. And then my website, all of my,
all of my stuff is on my website.

(01:10:02):
Yeah. Love you guys.
Appreciate you, Cody. Yeah, absolutely.
I'll, I'll put that in the description of this podcast.
Go give him a follow. Listen to his podcast.
He's got a lot of great content.If you like this, you'll like
everything else he does. So I'll put that in description.
Thank you guys for listening. We'll catch you next time.

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#52 - Nick Koumalatsos: From Criminal to Marine Corps’ Special-Ops to CEO (How He Created Discipline From Chaos)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#52 - Nick Koumalatsos: From Criminal to Marine Corps’ Special-Ops to CEO (How He Created Discipline From Chaos)