May 5, 2025 • 62 mins
Erin Whitehead, a brain health expert and CEO of Ambitious AF, shares her journey from surviving a traumatic car accident to coaching Navy SEALs on mastering attention through neurobiology.
• Survived a car crash in 2007 where another driver attempted suicide, leaving Erin with a traumatic brain injury
• Made a spiritual promise after her near-death experience that took a decade to fulfill
• Left traditional employment after being fired from every job and launched her own coaching business
• Now teaches Navy SEALs and other high performers the neurobiology of decision-making
• Works specifically with selective attention in the parietal lobe of the brain
• Believes mental toughness is not offensive and not optional
• Advocates for a "zero deviation" mindset - treating every day as Day One regardless of past success
• Rigorously vets clients for her coaching program to maintain high standards
• Recommends four daily critical tasks: one-word foods, physical activity, supplements, and quality sleep
• Recently discovered Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and finds it empowering for situational awareness
• Emphasizes the connection between physical health and brain function
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Warriors fall in.
It's time for formation.
Today, I'm joined with ErinWhitehead, who's a multifaceted
professional with expertise inbrain health, neurobiology and
cognitive coaching.
She holds credentials fromHarvard and King's College in
London and she serves as the CEOof Ambitious AF, which stands
for about face right, right, nod, nod, wink, wink.
(00:29):
Erin, thank you for joining meon the podcast today.
I really appreciate you givingme the time and effort.
I followed you on Instagram forquite a while and I like a lot
of your material, but I'minterested to learn a lot more
about you during thisconversation, so thank you for
giving me this opportunity.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So, erin, I just want to start off with talking about
your journey into the field ofneurobiology and brain health.
What inspired you to pursuethis path?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So, for those of you who do not internet stalk me,
you would have no idea about thestory.
And for those of you who doknow the story, when I tell it,
people are not really expectingthis.
So on April 19, 2007, I was thefront seat passenger in a car
(01:17):
with a driver who suddenlydecided to die by suicide.
I have no memory of the impactand when I woke up, I was being
braced to see a caller throwninto the back of an ambulance,
lights and sirens to thehospital, spine twisted in the
wrong direction, thinking, holyhell, this is going to be it.
I'm either going to die tonightor I'm probably going to be
(01:39):
paralyzed right, because that'sjust my luck.
And, yes, I was left with myown traumatic brain injury.
But that night I prayed so hardlike Lord Jesus if you give me
one more chance, one more chanceat this life, I promise that I
will help everyone who crossesmy path.
(02:00):
I will change my life around.
I will do everything possibleto be the child of God that you
have created me to be.
And I made it through the nightlong, story short, and that's
really where the journey began.
And, to be honest with you, Iwas still egotistical, so I
wasn't acting so much as anasshole like I was before.
(02:24):
So I was doing a little bitbetter, but I really wasn't
doing what I needed to be doing,and it would be a decade until
I would actually fulfill thatpromise.
So, if you don't already know,I've been fired from every job
that I've ever held.
I just don't fit into thoseboxes.
It just is what it is, which iswhy I signed the front of the
check now instead of the back,and so I really needed to come
(02:45):
to terms with my life.
And what are you doing?
I didn't feel fulfilled.
I didn't know what my purposewas.
If somebody had asked me whatmy core values are, I really
couldn't rattle off any words.
I really hadn't done that innerjourney and inner work that
people talk so much about, andso that's what I did.
And I went on this innerjourney and it got really dark.
(03:07):
There were a lot of tears, andthen it got even darker and then
there were more tears, and whenI sort of surfaced, if you will
, I didn't have that epiphanythat so many people talk about.
They're like oh my gosh, like Ifinally saw the light.
No, I knew exactly what thehell was going on with me.
I knew exactly what I needed tochange and I had been trading
(03:28):
my dream of being anentrepreneur for the day job,
for the safety of the paycheck,for the health insurance, for
the 401k.
For the middle-class familieslike myself who, when we grew up
, it was like this is what youdo you go to high school, you
graduate, you go to college andthen you find a job and you work
at it for the next 40 yearsuntil you retire and hopefully
(03:49):
you'll get married, you'll popout a few kids, you'll live
happily ever after.
And I was like that just didn'tfeel right.
So I did a cannonball off thehigh dive and I was like I'm
going to start my own business.
It's going to be like it'sstart my own business, it's
going to be real this time.
I'm actually going to do it.
And that's what I did.
(04:10):
And in that journey also camedivorce, which was better for
the both of us, to be quitefrank with you.
And now I'm sort of able tospread my wings in a way that I
didn't feel like I was able tobefore, and because I signed the
front of the check, I feel likeI don't have to walk around
with a muzzle.
I don't have the HR departmentinternet stalking me and fear
(04:30):
mongering.
Be like.
You can't say this aboutpolitics, you can't say this
about religion.
And that is how I found humanperformance.
And I just thought to myselfhow can I marry my love for
genuinely wanting to help peoplebetter their lives with this
kind of psychology-esque passionthat I have?
(04:54):
And that's how I found humanperformance and that is how I
found neurobiology and I marriedthem together and now I teach
people, including Naval SpecialWarfare, how to master their
attention attention so you cancontinue becoming an uncommon
force for good in the world.
And I do it all through thepower of neurobiology.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That is a that is a crazy journey.
I wasn't expecting that.
I wasn't expecting, you know,an accident where another driver
was death um, death by, youknow, by accident, by suicide,
um, you know how that affectedyou.
So when did that accidenthappen?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
April 19th 2007.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I have.
No, I have no memory of theimpact, god, um, it's called
retrograde amnesia and um, thereis a story in between the
impact and when I woke up, bestsaved for another time, perhaps
a potential future podcastepisode um, where I did
(06:00):
experience the afterlife and andso that's cool.
And so, um, people ask me allthe time like I, I wish I could
be more like you.
I wish that I could dust off mycourage and find my fire.
I wish I had as much confidenceas you.
I wish that I could speak upout loud and I'm like you can.
(06:21):
This is your life and it'sending one minute at a time.
That's fight club reference,right, but it is, and I strongly
suggest that you act like it,because this life will end for
you.
It will end, it will be done,and you don't want to be left
with any type of regret.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I was just asking, promised I was just asking yeah,
that's definitely underlyingand and bold faced right there,
that's for sure tomorrow.
I actually recently had aco-worker, um check into the
doctors on a monday and byfriday he was no longer with us.
Um, so tomorrow is neverpromised for sure, um, I just
(06:59):
asked when that happened,because I I know some people
think that you know they get tooold to pivot, to change, to
take a different course, and itsounds like that hit you kind of
like mid-range in your lifemaybe, and some people are too
afraid to take that leap by then.
So that's absolutelyfascinating.
And as far as your studies, sothen you started to pursue your
(07:22):
studies at Harvard and King'sCollege.
How did that shape yourapproach to the cognitive
coaching overall?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I think coaching gets a bad rap generally speaking,
for a number of reasons, and Iactually agree with it.
The coaching is not a licensedprofession.
Like law, like medicine, likereal estate, like finance,
anybody can call themselves acoach, throw up a website, print
a business card and charge youmoney.
And 99% of the coaches outthere either don't know what
(07:53):
they're doing or they're what Ilike to call framework coaches.
So it's like pay me some moneyand we'll turn to page four, and
then you'll look at thissentence, you'll fill in the
blank like you're a little thirdgrader, and you might see some
5% marginal gains, right, butthat's transactional, it's not
transformative.
And I wanted to learn how can,how can I learn how to dive
(08:16):
underneath the surface of what'sgoing on in the human body,
specifically in the brain, ourhead brain, so that I can help
others help themselves?
And that's where it started.
And I thought what is thiswhole neuroscience thing Like?
What is it like now?
It's like the sexiest term onInstagram, right.
(08:38):
It's like you can't go throughyour feed without hearing the
words neuroscience or dopamine.
It's like these are the sexyterms, most of the time used
incorrectly.
But I thought, well, if I havea brain injury and I can learn
how to heal myself through myown studies and my own actions
and how I'm living my life, thenmaybe I can help others do the
(09:00):
same, whether they have a braininjury or not.
But, like you said, a lot ofpeople are stuck in paralysis,
in their 50s, for example, andthey're like I really wish that
I could make all of these majorchanges in my life, but, but,
but and they're doing math Okay,so if you're in America, you
can retire, you know, sayofficially by the age of, say,
(09:22):
65 or 67 or whatever it is foryou.
And they're thinking, okay,well, if I just hang out another
decade, then I'll actually beable to do whatever it is that I
love.
And then you know, their valuesjust don't match with their
life.
They wake up, they feel like afraud.
They so wish that they couldmake changes.
(09:43):
You know the number one reasonwhy people who try to start
their own business becausethat's one of the things that
people want to do they want tostart their own business.
And the reason why they fail isbecause of an unsupportive
spouse.
Your spouse is not supportive.
Why?
Because when you do acannonball at the high dive, it
does not provide certainty, andthe human brain is a prediction
engine and it looks for alookalike scenario that is
(10:06):
preferably not cloaked infailure.
And so if certainty cannot bepredicted, then uncertainty is
predicted, and people get realantsy about traveling into
uncharted waters.
And I can certainly understandthat.
You know very much so.
But again, this is your life andyou have to make choices and
(10:32):
decisions for yourself.
And, yes, it matters who is inclose proximity to you, but, at
the end of the day, your talentsmatter, and if you're not
putting those talents into theworld that could make the world
a better place, then you'redoing the rest of us a
disservice.
Quite frankly, we want you toput your talents into the world.
(10:53):
We want you to put yourskillset into the world.
And it's not that people don'thave the passion and the drive.
They know what they want to do,but they don't know how to do
it.
And that's where the paralysiscomes.
It's like okay, well, so how doI build a business model from
scratch and launch it into themarket and land my first paying
client in 12 weeks or less?
How on earth did I do that?
I don't know how to do that.
I'm an attorney, I'm anaccountant, I'm an actor.
(11:17):
They think they have to have anMBA.
You don't.
You don't even have to have abusiness card.
Spoiler alert you don't evenhave to have a website.
I sent everyone to LinkedIn forfour years because I didn't have
money for a website.
I was like if you want to learnabout me, go on LinkedIn.
What is a better way to learnabout somebody than whatever it
(11:39):
is that they post on socialmedia?
And that in particular,platform allows you to
illustrate your education, forexample, or any certificates
that you have in about sectionand things like this, and it
dives in a little bit more onthe professional stuff.
And that's where I senteverybody.
I was like go there and if youlike it, let me know and we'll
(12:03):
talk.
Like that's all I have.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
That's all I have to offer, yeah that's actually a
great place to learn, uh,someone's background and and
resume and linkedin.
I don't spend as much time onthere as far as posting stuff,
but I do spend time on therewhen I'm doing research on folks
and man.
Aaron, you have as muchtenacity and fire as the name
brand of your company.
I love it, though I think thatout of a bad situation came a
(12:30):
lot of fire.
It sounds like and what bettercoach than a coach that's
actually been through it beforethat actually has the battle
scars to show other folks to saythis is what happened to me.
And here I am today.
Folks to say this is whathappened to me and here I am
today.
So talk to me about how youconnected everything with
special warfare.
(12:50):
How did that come about and howdid you get connected with that
?
And talk to me a little bitabout the connection there.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So my father served our country in the United States
Navy two tours in Vietnam.
So that is my tie to themilitary, specifically my tie to
the Navy.
I am what you would call awhole life citizen.
So I've never been a militaryspouse, I've never served in the
military.
(13:18):
I don't know what it's likewhen my husband is deployed.
I don't know what it's likegiving birth in a hospital while
my husband is not with me.
I don't have that perspective,but I do have the whole life
citizen perspective.
And so I continue to postonline.
(13:41):
And this one gentleman reachedout to me and he said hey, I saw
what you're doing.
I really love it.
I see that you're in humanperformance.
I am in naval special warfareand I was wondering if we could
have a conversation.
Sure, long story short.
We get on the phone, right, heis a SEAL and he's like I've got
all these coaches in my life.
(14:02):
I've got like psych, I've gotcareer coach, I've got life
coach.
I have, like you know, allthese people Right.
And then I I pushed back reallyhard.
I was like you don't havecoaches in your life.
It's like that's some fuckingbullshit.
You don't have coaches in yourlife.
He said like.
What are you talking about?
I'm like you have glorifiedconsultants and what people
don't understand is thatcoaching is not telling.
(14:26):
Consulting is telling.
So if I'm telling you, hey, kp,this is what I think that you
should do, this is how youshould adjust your resume, this
is how you should conduct aninterview, this is how you
should work for a job and I'mconsulting with you or these are
the risks that you're going totake if you make these types of
business decisions.
You're a consultant.
That's not coaching.
(14:46):
People derive coaching from whenthey played t-ball when they
were a child, or they played onthe soccer team or the football
team.
And what does your coach do?
What does your tennis coach do?
Your tennis coach tells youhere's how you hold your racket,
here's how you have to hit itto get some topspin, here's what
your footwork looks like.
Like a lot of telling, buttraditional coaching is actually
(15:12):
asking high empowered questionsthat dive under the surface.
That gets your client to comeup with their own answers that
live within, and you have what'scalled an aha moment, which is
a chemical reaction in the brain, and then the coaching right
Applying laws of constraint, soholding you accountable and
getting you to take actionagainst whatever it is a
decision that you just maderight.
(15:33):
That is actual coaching.
And so I was giving him all thispushback right.
I was like you don't havecoaches, you don't have coach,
right.
And so we end up partying awayand like two months later he
reaches out and he's like youknow what?
You're right, I don't haveanybody like you in my life.
Would you please considercoaching me in your style as I
transition out of the Navy,which was like another nine or
(15:56):
10 months.
At that time I said absolutelyso he's meeting with me, we're
coaching like once a week.
You know we're moving throughthis and just a change it really
quick.
I was 100%, absolutely notprepared for what was about to
happen.
I had never had a very closefront row seat, like with an
eagle's eye transition out ofthe military.
(16:19):
It was the biggest bullshitI've ever seen, but story for
another time.
So it was extremely volatileand I have told him today that
had he met me four years ago,five years ago, six years ago as
a coach, I would not even havebeen prepared.
So everything that I had donein neurobiology, in human
(16:40):
performance, all of theeducation, all of the excess
reading, everything that I wasdoing on the back end came to
fruition and because of him Ibecame smarter, sharper and
stronger in my skillset.
So four months goes by, right,and DevGrew invites me to be
(17:03):
part of this fundraising eventin downtown Nashville.
And we're there and I say justso casually over dinner hey how
long have you guys been SEALTeam 8?
.
And they looked at me andthey're like what?
Who told you we're Team 8?
I'm like, oh, I'm like I'vejust landed in a pile of shit.
(17:27):
What's going on?
And I gestured to one of themlike didn't you tell me you're
teammate?
It's like, well, I was team two, then I was team eight and now
we're team six.
And then I said it in my brainseal team six.
And that was four months into itthat I didn't even realize the
(17:48):
level of caliber who were in mycoaching practice, because it
was never about developmentgroup, it wasn't really about
Naval Special Warfare, it wasabout helping those who were in
the Special Operations Forcescommunity transition out
successfully.
And that's how I ended up inNaval Special Warfare.
(18:09):
And so you wouldn't know thisunless I told you because it's
not advertised, and so yeah, andso that individual led me to
other individuals and it's, likeyou know, just like good
old-fashioned American valuesshould be.
If you like what you see, ifyou like what you hear, if
things are working for you, gotell your friends and in the
SEAL community it's extremelytight, and so for them to raise
(18:33):
their hand and say, hey Joe, youneed to talk to Erin Marie like
she can help you, it means theworld to me, yeah.
So I've had several of themcome through my human
performance trading firm and Iwalk them through the
neurobiology of decision-makingand teach them the skill sets
that they need to know as theytransition out and to be out
(18:55):
successfully to continuebecoming an uncommon force for
good in the world.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Because that's what we need them to do.
That's a very cool story.
Very cool story and it's justkind of that wasn't your target
client.
It just so happened that theyfound you, more or less, and
what better client to have thanSpecial Warfare and Navy SEALs?
Very great folks, um, and Godbless you for helping them with
(19:27):
the transition out of themilitary.
I know that as a former uh armyguy myself.
Like getting out is not an easything to do and I think a lot of
times for us, uh, it can be alittle bit of a sucker punch
when you come out into thecivilian side and you realize
that a lot of the things thatyou did in the military don't
really translate uh easilyacross the table from a
recruiter.
And then also, too, you have tofigure that out.
(19:49):
How do I draw those lines?
I personally do volunteer workand I'm a board member with Act
Now Education, which we helpfolks make that transition out
of the military.
So I'm glad there's coacheslike you that actually help
people execute, because that isa huge thing, like executing and
taking action.
We can talk about it all day.
I could talk about making apodcast all day, but until I go
(20:12):
buy the actual microphone andjoin Toastmasters to learn how
to talk and speak and presentand then actually do a few
episodes to get better, thanwhat's the point of even talking
about it that.
So, um, that sounds like mytype of coaching and it's
interesting because, let's faceit, like you're a woman and, at
the end of the day, for you tobreak into that side, um,
(20:35):
especially being a woman like um, that must've been real
difficult for you.
Have you reached any kind oflike resistance or pushback
because of that?
Or is that something thatpeople have kind of, at this
point, guarded your respectbecause of the clients that
you've had?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So what I know about Naval Special Warfare is that
whatever happened yesterdaydoesn't mean shit today.
I know that I have tocontinually sharpen my iron, to
be continually invited into thecommunity, and the day that I
think, oh, I've made it, oh, I'mhere, look at me, look at me is
(21:11):
the day that they're going tokick me to the curb and they'll
never let me back in, and Iappreciate that very much.
So it I don't want to be.
I don't want to be part of acommunity where there's anything
lackadaisical that's happening,that there's any, put your feet
up, kick back, we'll deal withit whenever it comes.
No, like I am, I am reading, Iam studying, I am learning, I am
(21:37):
diving into clinical literature, I am applying the knowledge, I
am asking them how I can getbetter, et cetera.
So the pushback that I get inthe Naval Special Warfare
community never comes from theSEALs, never it comes from the
females.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's actually, I mean, that's just a very
difficult group to break intofor anybody in general.
So it's amazing that you gotthrough and and you're doing
great things for them.
Um, and I want to talk about,uh, ambitious AF, all right,
ambitious about face right oryou know, we all know what AF
stands for.
So you're the CEO of ofambitious AF and, um, so what
(22:21):
are the core core objectives of?
So what are the core objectivesof?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
your business To build a coalition of mentally
tough individuals that areinspired to eradicate mediocrity
from the planet, because thefate of the next generation
depends on it.
Period.
Oh boy, that's what we aremyopic about no-transcript,
(22:47):
showing up and holding extremelyhigh standards for ourselves
and high standards of others.
We are not afraid to disturbpeople.
It is sense that we are outmaking our lives purposefully
harder.
We're not making our livesharder, we're making them
(23:08):
purposefully harder, and indoing so, we are able to change
the narrative.
And the narrative is thatmental toughness is offensive.
It's not.
It's not offensive and it's notoptional.
And by making our livespurposefully harder through
nutrition, through sleep hygiene, through physical fitness,
(23:30):
through hydration, throughpersonal development, literature
, through right, what it is thatwe ingest into our brain,
through shedding interpersonaltoxic relationships that are no
longer functional, right All ofthese things that we're doing,
other people can see, and whatpeople want more than anything
(23:51):
is to give themselves permissionto be who they really want to
be.
They want to give themselvespermission to chase their most
ambitious desires in life,whatever that looks like for you
.
Not only that, to givethemselves permission, but the
second thing is that they wantvalidation.
That, okay, if I do start myown business, if I do go on the
journey to try and lose theweight for good again, if I do
(24:14):
try to increase my wealth, if Ido want to become more
spiritually sound, if I want todouble down on my marriage, if I
want to double down as a parent, am I going to fail?
Am I going to be a big fatfailure once again?
Right, and so we're out thereshowing people.
If you make your lifepurposefully harder and you
(24:34):
operate with a zero deviationmindset and you run over anybody
who tries to get in your way,like a freight train, we show
others what's possible and indoing so, it gives other people
the silent permission to do thesame in their life.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know we've done, we've done ourselves a real
disservice in this country Idon't know about the rest of the
world in this country notraising our kids to be tougher
and and right now we are seeing,we're seeing the results of
that and we've had.
I mean, I can tell you rightnow I can't, I can't even count
how many 20 something year oldboys, men, whatever, that can't
(25:13):
do a pull up, can't do a push up, that just don't have any grit,
any fight.
And I feel like it's mygeneration's fault.
I'm 45 years old.
I feel like it's our fault,because I know too many kids
that are still living at home,who are like 25, 30 years old,
have never really experienced inlife, have never paid, paid a
(25:34):
bill, have never got left theirown county.
Um, so is it difficult for folkslater on in life to find that
that grind, that grit, that fire, that that you found after your
accident is that, is thatfrustrating for you at times to
try to put, because I know forme, like I've tried to do that
to folks and I've lost friendsand family over it, like
(25:56):
whenever I try to mentor theiryoung kids, their young adults,
it's like, oh, you know you'repushing them too hard.
And who do you think you are?
And and I get, I get a lot ofshit for it.
But like, at the end of the day, like I'm a person who cares,
that's who, who I think I am andI'm a person that knows,
because when I was 19, 20, 22years old, I was physically
(26:17):
strong and mentally strong and Iwent to war at 24, was gone for
the entire year.
What's it like for you?
How do you not get frustrated?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
The way that somebody chooses to live their life has
nothing to do with me.
So if I choose to focus on whateverybody else is not doing or
what I think they should bedoing, that I'm not focused on
myself.
And so, just like branding,just like marketing, just like
(26:51):
right, people have to have Xamount of touches and
familiarity with what it is thatyou're doing that's working,
and then they're trying tofigure I think that they're
trying to figure out, okay, howdo I figure out how to pull that
and embody it into my life ifI've never known that before?
Right?
(27:12):
So, like, this is how do I putit?
It's like there's a lot ofcodependence.
That's taught specifically inAmerican culture and that's
really what you're referring tois codependence.
Everything that we do atAmbitious AF, right, the
critical tasks that we puttogether and the parameters.
One of them is that yourcritical tasks cannot be
codependent.
(27:32):
They cannot be.
You cannot rely on someone orsomething else in order to
execute that task.
You can only rely on yourself.
Now, you and I were raised by adifferent generation.
We were raised by the Vietnamgeneration, for example, right,
okay?
So totally different mindset.
Now we have our generation,who's having children, and so
(27:55):
that is the participation trophygeneration and participation
trophy generations now arefinding each other and they're
getting married and they'rehaving participation trophy
babies.
So the answer to your questionis certainly it's frustrating,
but understanding that it isgoing to take multiple
generations to course correctwhat has happened.
(28:18):
Right is one thing, and so howcan you be part of the solution?
You focus on yourself.
You focus on becoming bettertoday than you were yesterday,
not as good as tomorrow, right?
Zero deviation mindset.
You pull in nutrition.
Specifically one word foods.
It's not that hard and that'snot donuts, wings, alcohol,
(28:40):
cheetos right?
Actual one word foods.
You know what I'm talking about, like cauliflower and lettuce
and potatoes and salmon, thingslike this.
You focus on physical activity.
Do you want to be able to be onthe floor at the age of 65 and
be able to stand up without aconsiderable amount of help?
Right?
That starts today with howyou're building skeletal muscle,
(29:01):
getting sleep hygiene in andgetting your sleep under your
belt and making sure that you'regetting actual rest so that
your brain can function duringsleep the way that it needs to
and is required so that you canthink clearly.
And when you can think clearly,you can make better decisions
right.
And the more that you utilizeall of those neural pathways,
(29:25):
the more that you move intoeffective ways of thinking, the
more your central nervous systembecomes familiar with what that
feels like and what that lookslike.
And we need it to become notjust familiar, we need to become
dominant.
So those of you who arelistening who are like well, I
want to start new habits, I wantto do something different or I
(29:46):
want to lose the weight for good.
Whatever it is for you, right,you have to stop entering into
your own start-stop patterns.
You have to treat every day asday one.
That's your problem.
That's what you're not doing.
You're not treating every dayas day one.
You're like, oh, I have six orseven consecutive days.
Oh, I have 10.5 consecutivedays, yeah me.
(30:07):
It's like, no, what'd you dotoday?
Nothing you did yesterdaymatters, right, it doesn't.
It's just, it's put you on apath and most people will say,
oh, I've been doing so good foryou know 10.5 days.
I think I will take a breathe.
I don't need to work out today.
I've been working out for 10.5days.
(30:27):
I've been doing so good.
I'm going to pat myself on theback and I'm going to just put
my feet up and take a breather,and I can promise you there are
people out there who aredominating their nights,
weekends, holidays, vacationsand you're not.
And so, by default, you aretaking 10 steps backwards, and
that's why you wake up andyou're spinning in your same
tired circles, because you'remaking the same poor, tired
(30:49):
decisions.
So if you want to do better,you got to know better.
If you don't know better, it'sbecause you don't have the
knowledge and in that sense,it's perspective.
So you don't have theperspective of actually pushing
(31:15):
through, through the end, sothat you experience a
breakthrough.
That's what you're missing, andyou don't have that, and so you
think that you can't do it.
And you can.
You're dead wrong.
You absolutely can.
You just haven't pushed hardenough, long enough, whatever
that looks like, whatever thatlooks like.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, you know I grew up yeah, you know I grew up
watching rocky.
I grew up watching, like, thosetypes of heroes that like
literally came from nothing andfought their way to the top, and
I feel like today we just don'thave that.
And, um, I love the amount ofaccountability that you're
talking about, um, for yourcoaching program.
Um, well, going back to also, Ilearned, I learned for myself
(31:54):
when it comes to mentoring, Iwill not take anybody's kid on
as a friend unless they show mesome type of willingness to do
so.
I think a lot of times I wantedmore for people than they wanted
for themselves and I learnedthe hard way that you can't do
that.
You can't push for things thatpeople don't want for themselves
(32:16):
, especially these young adults.
Today, you know, if they don'tshow me anything, no work, then
I don't even waste my time tohave that conversation.
It is what it is Go smoke yourmarijuana and hang out and play
video games all day until youfigure it out.
Do you, do you prescreen any ofthe clients and folks that you
decide to take on for coaching?
Do you?
Do you do that just to see ifthey're like there?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
There is a very high vetting process.
In fact, my program is not evenadvertised, so I have a paid
program that I don't evenadvertise.
So if you hear about it, it'sprobably from somebody who's in
the program or you hear about itdirectly from me.
And there's a very high vettingprocess.
Why Not just for you, but forthe participants who are already
(32:59):
in the program, who deserveother people, who want to be
sharper and smarter, who want tobe spiritually awake, who want
to double down on their mostambitious desires.
We just don't take anybody.
That's not the way it works.
Otherwise I would be doing adisservice to the people who are
part of the program and itwould be immediately diluted and
(33:22):
we're not diluting at all.
And to be a private client,that's a whole other level.
The answer is probably no foryou.
So, um, yeah, you knoweverybody, everybody wants to
know, like you know, what do youteach the navy seal?
We want to know what you teachthe navy seal like first of all.
(33:44):
I'm not even sure if you're onthat level.
So I mean, I can teach you allday whether you go and implement
what I'm teaching you and howyou pull that into your life.
You're probably going to do itfor a little while until you
don't, just like 98% of themasses right, they're doing the
backstroke in an emotionaldumpster fire, they're doing a
(34:05):
backstroke in the cesspool thatthey call life, but yet they'll
scream at the top of their lungsand get blue in the face and
tell you that they're not.
No, but I'm not.
It's like we look at you and wecan see your miserable life
just by the way that you look,or we can see it from a distance
and you think that we can't andwe don't want that for you.
(34:26):
We know that you don't wantthat for you, so you've got to
get your ego out of the way,first of all.
And also, you know people haveto fall on their face, so I'll
tell people like you knowprivate clients who raise their
hand.
I think I want to be.
I want to come into your, yourtrading firm, and like okay, and
I'll say have you ever paid outof pocket for any other
(34:51):
coaching?
Oh, yes, I have.
Okay, did you complete theprogram in its entirety?
Almost always the answer is no.
How come Time?
That's the first thing they sayOkay, so it's not the program,
it's you.
So it's just like if I were ahealth coach.
I say this all the time, right?
If you come to me and I was ahealth coach, I'm not I.
(35:11):
If I were a health coach I saythis all the time, right?
If you, if you come to me and Iwas a health coach, I'm not.
I'm not a fitness coach, I'mnot a nutritionist, I'm not a
health coach.
But if I were and you were 300pounds and you're like, okay, I
want to lose the weight for good, I swear, I want to lose the
weight for good.
I'm going to do it this time,right?
Why is this time any differentthan any of the other times that
you've tried?
Why is this?
You know what?
You know why?
Because you're not sitting infront of a doctor and your
(35:33):
doctor's not telling you, if youdon't make a change, you're
going to die, and because youhaven't been presented with a
health scare.
It's the reason why youcontinue to spend in your same
tired circles.
Because you think tomorrow'sgoing to come for you, you think
that you're going to be atdinner tonight, you think that
you have more time and I tellthose people go, gain 50 more
pounds.
You're not fat enough.
(35:54):
It doesn't pinch hard enoughfor you to actually make the
change.
What's it going to take for youto finally abandon the pieces
of your life that you claim youhate you?
claim you hate pieces of yourlife.
You might have to hit it twice,three times, right?
Like I say, all the time, yougot to be inside this
performance domain, right?
So that's what I call it withthe seals.
(36:15):
You got to be inside thisperformance domain, like this
trading ground.
There's an on-ramp to it andthen you have to perform and
then you get through it and thenthere's an off-ramp.
You know what?
You got another shit stormcoming, so you enough to be able
to learn the lesson and notjust learn it, apply it.
Why?
(36:35):
Because you got people outthere who are going around and
they're giving advice.
They're like oh, here's whatyou should do, here's what you
should do.
And you're like why aren't youdoing, stop running your mouth
and go do the work that nobodysees or claps for behind closed
doors.
Maybe then you can give advice.
You need to become the personwho can go into the gates of
hell.
Shine the light, show the pathand say follow me, I can show
(36:59):
you the way out.
But I'll give you an examplePeople who are trying to lose
weight.
Right, your training grounds isthe grocery store candy aisle,
or it's like the potato chipaisle.
If you travel down that aisleand you're like I'll just get
the 50% less salt potato chipstoday.
You know it's like you haven'tbeen in your training grounds
long enough.
(37:20):
That's your hell.
You don't know how to getthrough that aisle to get to the
milk and the meat and the eggs,and then travel back through
that aisle without pickingsomething up that you know damn
well that you shouldn't bepicking up.
Those aren't your one wordfoods, right.
So if you haven't been in thattraining grounds long enough to
deprive yourself of all of that,to literally change your
neurobiology, then you have nobusiness telling other people
(37:44):
what they need to be doing intheir life.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, well said, well said.
And I could tell you from a gymperspective how many times have
I seen a fitness coach at a gymthat's not fit and I'm like,
why?
Why would I hire you when youdon't even look fit yourself?
Um, that, no, it's well said.
And the discipline part is isthe most difficult part.
And you know, I think, goingback to what you said earlier, I
(38:09):
think our last generation, wewere brought up by the Vietnam
War era veterans and, like mydad, was drafted in 71, did 20
years and being raised by him,you know he's an Army Ranger
drill sergeant for five years.
There's a significantdifference between me and my
half siblings and it mattersdifference between me and my
(38:33):
half siblings and, and itmatters like growing over time
and learning that disciplineover time.
It's a huge.
It's a huge cliff for someoneto climb to instill discipline
in their life and making surethat they're ready to be coached
.
Um, so I can imagine thatthere's some misconceptions
about, you know, brain health.
Um, are some of themisconceptions about brain
health that you encounter inyour practice?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So I will rarely use the term mental health.
I'll do it because that's thepop psychology term, but it's
really brain health.
So what you feed your body, youfeed your brain.
(39:24):
How you treat your body, youtreat your brain.
And people don't think aboutthis because it's not the
primary narrative.
In not focused on mentalstrength training or mental
endurance, or feeding yourselfthe right type of nutritious
food so that your brain canoperate optimally, you're going
to decline.
(39:45):
It's like dementia, it's likedivorce.
It happens slowly until one dayit happens suddenly, and that's
what people don't understand.
It's that things are happeningright now to you that you likely
are not even aware of becauseit's happening slowly.
So one of the best things thatyou can do for yourself is just
ingest foods that are good foryou.
(40:06):
Literally eat Good for you.
Literally eat, eat properly andget your sleep.
Sleep hygiene is huge, huge,right.
We've got to flush out thetoxic stuff and we've got to
flush in the good stuff, and wedo that.
A lot of that happens duringsleep.
Sometimes it takes seven tonine hours, right.
(40:27):
So we need our sleep.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
We need our rest, shit, um, and.
But it's just trying to say,hey, look at me, look at me,
look at me constantly, and thatinvolves your sleep as well, and
it causes us to stay up late.
Uh, tries to grab our attention, tries to get us sucked in
emotionally and get our you know, our feelings all up in our.
Our feelings, you know, and anduh, scrolling.
That's a big thing too.
Sleep is huge, um, and I thinkfor a lot veterans that has been
(41:09):
a major problem is getting tosleep and staying asleep.
And finding that REM cycle ishuge too, and I'm sure you talk
a lot about that when you doyour cognitive coaching.
But can you share a successstory where your cognitive
coaching has significantlyimpacted an individual and
(41:31):
personal and professional life?
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So what I do is I work in a special place in the
brain.
So if we take your brain and wejust divide it into four parts,
just very, very, very simpleright, and you put one hand on
your forehead and you put onehand right behind it, right,
this is what we call yourfrontal lobe and then you have
this little zigzag like zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, right here
(41:54):
, right, it's called your sulcus, and then right behind it, if
you put one hand here and onehand here both sides right and
left side this is called yourparietal lobe.
This is where I workspecifically in a space called
selective attention.
So in a space called selectiveattention.
So your parietal lobe isresponsible for a number of
things like memory, learning,language, spatial recognition.
(42:15):
It's how I know the door isover there, it's not up here
right in my face.
It's how I know you're a male,I'm a female, things like this
where we are in proximity.
But most importantly, it'sresponsible for perception and
the way in which we see theworld.
So neurodegenerative diseasesthat affect or are affected by
the parietal lobe that you'veheard of schizophrenia, bipolar
(42:39):
disorder, body dysmorphia, ADHD,right, these all have to do
with a distortion of reality.
So, to answer your question,the majority of people, if not
all of the people that I workwith, are either officially
diagnosed or self-diagnosed asADHD right.
(43:01):
So I work in the space ofselective attention.
That's where I work.
You can look it up.
It's a thing in neuroscienceand basically our ability to
focus on the goal-orientedenvironment is critically
dependent on our ability toinhibit or ignore distracting
(43:21):
information.
So, since a lot of youraudience are in the military now
or have transitioned right,it's very distracting to
transition out of the right.
It's very distracting totransition out of the military.
It's very distracting to wakeup and just turn your phone over
.
We live in a distracted world,but you have to have the ability
(43:43):
to inhibit what is notnecessary or what is pulling
your focus.
So, to answer your question, asuccess story would be teaching
someone what to do in thosecritical moments where they feel
like they can't raise theirhand and say I need help.
(44:04):
So how do you teach somebodyhow to be independent in those
moments when they feel like theycan't reach out to somebody and
say I need help?
They feel cloaked with shame.
They're like if somebody knowsthat I need this kind of help,
what's going to happen to me?
Am I going to get Baker acted?
Am I going to be put into somesort of you know rehab facility?
(44:27):
Am I going to lose my job?
What's my wife going to think?
How am I going to be able tosupport my family?
So, again, it's very importantthat you focus on how you need
to perform inside those domains.
What do you need to pull oninside those moments?
(44:50):
Right?
Some people would say gratitude, Some people would say prayer,
OK.
Some people would say what,what?
But what are those things?
What is gratitude?
What is prayer?
This is a focal point of yourattention.
That's what it is.
So all of the success storiesare people who have touch points
(45:12):
with ambitious AF andunderstand where is the focal
point that I need to draw on?
Where's the skill set that Ineed to draw on in this moment
that matters the most,especially when you have a
monkey wrench that's thrown intoyour day.
And then some of the biggerthings that happen in our lives,
like we have to file forbankruptcy or we are evicted, or
(45:32):
a car gets repossessed, orwe're served with divorce
paperwork or something you know,or we lose our jobs, and like
very, very major things thatdon't happen every day.
You know there's a death in thefamily, right Aside trauma and
grief, because that's somethinga little bit different, right,
we don't deal with these thingson a daily basis and when they
happen to us, we don't know whatto do with ourselves.
We don't know what to do withourselves.
(45:55):
So what do we do?
We press pause, press pause onlife, press pause on goals.
(46:16):
We're trying to figure it out.
We're like, oh my gosh, what amI going to?
What am I going to do now thatmy car's repossessed?
How am I going to?
You know, I just lost my job.
How am I going to pay my bills?
Like all of bankruptcy, ifyou've lost your job, all of
that is, in the past, alreadyhappened.
What are you doing right now,in this moment, to take steps
forward?
And if you don't know what to do, what you need to go do is go
lace up your sneakers and takeit out on some of the iron at
the gym.
That's one of the first thingsthat you can do.
(46:38):
You can go running, you can gowalking, you can hydrate.
You have more control over yourlife than you think in those
moments.
You have control over whetheryou groom yourself when you
leave the house, how you'redressed.
You have control over what youingest and put into your brain.
With respect to personaldevelopment literature, you have
control over how you treatpeople.
(46:59):
How about that?
You have so much control overyour life than you think.
That's the focal point.
So, as this is being recordedright now, every single Navy
SEAL who has had touch pointswith ambitious day up has not
been found next to an emptybullet casing because they have
been taught the neurobiology ofdecision-making and what to do
(47:20):
in those critical moments wherethey feel like, oh my God, I
can't raise my hand.
The ambitious day of narrativesaves lives 110 percent.
Come closer to it.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I love it, man, I love it.
I'll tell you, overall, I lovehow you created, how you create
a community.
I love how you create acommunity of and you create a
community and you have folkssurround themselves with folks
that are highly accountable.
And you mentioned that you dothe pre-screening for folks
(47:51):
before they join your coachingprogram, which can be rigorous.
But I want to touch on you alittle bit and what you do.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
But I want to touch dealing with kids or whatever
these critical tasks get done,zero deviation.
One is nutrition, so it isalways one word foods.
And people will ask me all thetime well, what diet should I do
?
Should I do the carnivore diet,should I do the vegan diet,
should I do the paleo diet?
And I always say, like the onethat you're going to stick to.
(48:43):
So go figure it out and thenstick to that one.
Two, fitness, so physicalactivity.
So I do a minimum 45 to 60minutes.
So it's quantified that I haveto reach at least a zone two, so
I don't flip into a downwarddog for 45 seconds and call it a
workout.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
(49:05):
So I'm actually working out,I'm breaking a sweat, and this
is for like a significant amountof time.
Vitamins and supplements and, ifyou notice, I keep it vague.
So, for example, resveratrol,which is sort of an extract of
red wine, so it's got all thegood stuff instead of, like any
of the bad effects of alcoholwasn't added to my regimen until
(49:28):
two years ago.
So vitamins and supplementsthat help me stay optimal
cognitively and then sleep.
So I go dark at 2100.
Like you won't get a textmessage back from me.
You won't hear from me.
My phone doesn't ring or dingafter 2100, right, I am like in
(49:50):
bed like Fridays and Saturdaystoo, like I'm like boring.
I have like the most boringlife, but it's like the best
life ever because I try and getseven hours of sleep every night
.
Now, whether I sleep a fullseven hours is another story,
but that that's the goal, every,every.
So those are the four criticaltasks that I put in place and I
(50:11):
also sorry, personal developmentliterature.
So 10 pages of 10 minutes everyday and it's the exact same
book.
It's not on audio, becauseaudio books, or like listening
to podcasts, allow you tomultitask, and the point of
putting critical tasks togetherin your life is to actually
carve time and to have thediscipline to do it during that
(50:32):
carved time.
And you have until midnight.
So you get your critical tasksdone every single day until
midnight.
And I tell you something whenpeople put critical tasks
together and we give you theparameters for this right and
you actually do this, you learnwhat is positive in your life
versus what is not so positivein your life.
(50:53):
So if you're making time forcritical tasks, it means you're
saying no to some of the otherthings that you have been doing
or have been engaging in thatmay not have been so great for
you.
You also learn how to say no topeople, which is extremely hard
for people to do.
It's an extremely hard thing.
A lot of guilt gets associatedwith having to tell somebody no,
even if it's like I'm sorry, Ican't go to dinner tonight.
(51:15):
People say yes more often thanthey want to.
Yeah, they don't know how totell people no, but where's your
focus?
If your focus is on vitaminsand supplements and getting good
sleep and exercising and eatingone word, foods like then your
focus isn't everywhere else.
So, again, critically dependenton your ability to inhibit or
(51:36):
ignore distracting information.
So you learn how to not bedistracted in a world that's
full of distraction.
And when you can cut through allof that chaos and you can cut
through all of that nonsense,right, you start to see more
clearly.
And you start to see otherpeople who are like oh my gosh,
I can't believe I used toassociate with that person.
(51:57):
They're so toxic.
Or that person just loves togossip and drama Like all these.
Like I can't believe I used toassociate with that person.
They're so toxic, or thatperson just loves to gossip and
drama Like all these, like Ican't believe I was part of any
of that stuff.
You begin to level up, youbegin to believe in yourself,
you begin to chase ambition in awhole different way.
You begin to stop caring aboutwhat everybody else thinks
because you're reaping all ofthese really good benefits.
(52:18):
So if it's one piece of advicethat I could leave for the
audience today, it's that youneed to go chase the boring, all
the boring stuff that peopleare like.
But you're in bed at nineo'clock on Fridays and Saturday.
Yeah, it's boring and it'sawesome.
It's so awesome.
It's awesome to wake up andfeel refreshed, right.
(52:40):
It's awesome to be able to bespiritually awake at church on
Sunday morning.
It's awesome to be present withmy children, to be able to look
them in the eye and not feel socognitively taxed Like your
brain is going to look forreasons to give you, you know,
excuses to.
I don't want to say cut corners,but look for an easier path,
(53:01):
because it doesn't want to becognitively taxed.
You have only so much brainglycogen, right?
The brain does not storeglycogen the way the rest of the
body does, because you'reconstantly utilizing it, right.
So it tries to store as much aspossible so that if it needs to
be used for something major, ithas access to it.
(53:22):
And so it tries to give youreasons throughout the day to be
like no, no, no, don't work outno complex strategic thinking
for you today.
Let's just take it easy, right,let's just take it easy.
No, you can't.
You have to force yourdiscipline until it becomes
trained discipline.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Wow yeah.
And for folks to see the otherside of themselves and look back
on themselves, that must be ahuge transformation for them.
And during this whole interviewyou've gone back to the
connection between mind and bodyand physical fitness related to
your brain health.
I also noticed too and I haveto touch on this because it's a
(53:59):
passion of mine I noticed you'vebeen in doing some Brazilian
jiu-jitsu, right.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yes.
I can't believe it's taken thislong to get into this most
awesome community.
Oh my gosh, I'm having the timeof my life and I tell you I
haven't been training that longmaybe Six months around.
At this time I feel so muchmore empowered than I have ever
(54:29):
felt in my entire life.
I feel on top of the world.
I have a trainer who Is a blackbelt and it's not from one of
the studios who just is like ifyou've been here this long, then
we're going to award you withthe next level.
Or you do X, y and Z and yousort of do it okay and we're
going to award you with the nextlevel.
(54:50):
These are people who have beenin this discipline for over a
decade, two decades, right.
These.
These are people who havetrained under other schools of
thought and have come to thisand they're like we were trained
wrong and we didn't even knowit.
Yep, so I have a privatetrainer and then I have another
(55:11):
one who works with me in like agroup setting.
But I train three times a weekand I'm like I feel like this
little secret weapon, likenobody sees coming right.
I just I feel, I feel like Ican handle my body and I feel
like I can handle.
I feel like I can detect asituation before it happens, so
(55:36):
that I can remove myself fromthe environment, and that's
really the majority of what I'mlearning from jujitsu is to be
ultra aware of my surroundingsso that I can detect if
something might happen and, ifso, I can remove myself before
something does.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird because I just gavea course on situational
awareness and, just based off mylaw enforcement background and
military background, um, Ithought it was pulling from.
I thought that I was pullingfrom that, but there's a lot of
things that I learned inBrazilian, brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
(56:13):
things that I don't think about,that I naturally do to try to
avoid situations.
And um, back when I startedtraining in 2008, it was still
black magic for a lot of the lawenforcement community and I
remember one time during a classI mentioned to the entire class
, I said hey, you know, if youencounter someone that has like
(56:33):
cauliflower ear and it's allknotted up, like you know, they
have a wrestling background.
And I got laughed at and I'mlike you guys are stupid.
Like, at the end of the day,now we know in in 2025, like
that is a thing, like you haveto have telltale signs.
It's not just about the, thetight t shirt that somebody's
wearing, but if you look, if youlook at the person and you see
(56:54):
that they have a knotted up earand, like you know that they
have wrestling, judo or jujitsuin their background and you need
to be aware of who youradversary might be, and that and
I've always told that it justcracks me up now that I look
back 2008 and how I got laughedat by some.
Uh, it was a prison warden, aformer prison warden that and
I'm like, look, if you don'tknow, like today's mma, so many
(57:16):
folks out there are soinfatuated with it, they're
playing it on Xbox, they'retraining it in a gym and they're
watching it on TV.
So it's, it's interesting thatyou found it and I'm glad that
you did, and it's it's a realpassion of mine, uh, to to do
that Kind of, as I show I'mheaded to this evening.
I'm going to go to open massand um nice.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
And just one thing, really quick too, that that ties
in with ambitious AF is that Itake a real harsh stance against
women's self-defense classes.
I think the majority of them doa very, very large disservice
to women because they are, orthey teach a hyper-reliance on a
weapon, for example, or likemace, for example.
And you know, and I can tellyou from a neurobiology
(58:03):
standpoint, if you have not beenin a situation where your
adrenaline is pumpingimmediately, and if you even
have that mace pulled out andsomeone knocks it out of your
hand, what then?
Right, stop being so dependentand reliant on anything other
than two hands and two feetright In your brain.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I just yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Be careful who you train under ladies.
Speaker 1 (58:25):
I just got skewered on Instagram because I was
watching a reel and it this ladywas showing a move of what
happens when someone grabs yourponytail and my whole point was
that, look, that's great thatyou watch an Instagram reel, but
here's the thing If I grab yourponytail and you do that to me,
I'm gonna slam you on theground and it's it's.
It's, that's just the realityof it.
(58:47):
All folks think that they cantake the, the self-defense thing
or watch it on tv or watch iton their phone, and then they're
gonna do it under stress andanxiety.
That's not realistic at all.
So you gotta to train.
You got to know what it's liketo have a sore neck.
You got to know what it's liketo have your limbs bent and
different.
You got to know what it's liketo be smashed.
(59:07):
That's the only way to getbetter, not watch Instagram
reels.
And I got skewered by all thesereplies because on this
Instagram account, I know whatI'm talking about at the end of
the day, so I think a lot offolks and also your central
nervous system is going torespond and go back to what it
knows best.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And if it doesn't know anything, that's exactly
when you can freeze up.
That's a very dangeroussituation to be in if there is
an imminent threat.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I train men and women .
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Train, train often.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, I've trained men and women in law enforcement
, so it's like these people onInstagram aren't going to tell
me how it is and what it smellslike.
That's for sure, right, erin?
This has been such an awesomeconversation.
Thank you for having me.
I have so much more to ask you,but before we log off here, I
just want to ask how can ourlisteners out there cultivate
(01:00:10):
ambition while also ensuringtheir mental well-being?
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
So if you do cultivate your ambition, you are
ensuring your mental well outinto the world in a way in which
you actually want to.
So if you really want to dothat, give yourself permission
to do so.
Give yourself permission to gobe ambitious.
Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
You know I this whole conversation has been all about
that tie between physical andmental health.
Right and everything.
Or brain health, I should say,not mental health but, brain
health and I think it's a greatmessage.
I love how you focus on gettingfolks to execute and take
action.
Yeah, and for folks out there,a store.
(01:00:55):
Down to the bottom of thepodcast description you can find
Aaron's social media.
As far as like Instagram.
What else are you on?
You're on TikTok, no.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I'm on LinkedIn.
That's where you'll find meprimarily.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
LinkedIn and Instagram.
Okay, I'll make sure that thoselinks are down there at the
bottom.
If you're listening to this ona podcast, scroll down to the
show notes If you're watchingthis on YouTube.
Thank you for joining us.
And you can find those down inthe description as well If you
want to click on those links andfollow.
Aaron, it's been fantastictalking to you today.
I hope I get anotheropportunity to interview you
(01:01:31):
down the stretch.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Absolutely, absolutely Just name the time of
day.
Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
All right, sounds like a plan.
And for everyone else out there, as always, I want you to stay
tuned, stay focused and staymotivated.
Warriors fall out.
Warriors fall in.
It's time for formation.
Today, I'm joined with ErinWhitehead, who's a multifaceted
professional with expertise inbrain health, neurobiology and
cognitive coaching.
She holds credentials fromHarvard and King's College in
London and she serves as the CEOof Ambitious AF, which stands
for about face right, right, nod, nod, wink, wink.
(00:29):
Erin, thank you for joining meon the podcast today.
I really appreciate you givingme the time and effort.
I followed you on Instagram forquite a while and I like a lot
of your material, but I'minterested to learn a lot more
about you during thisconversation, so thank you for
giving me this opportunity.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Great, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So, erin, I just want to start off with talking about
your journey into the field ofneurobiology and brain health.
What inspired you to pursuethis path?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
So, for those of you who do not internet stalk me,
you would have no idea about thestory.
And for those of you who doknow the story, when I tell it,
people are not really expectingthis.
So on April 19, 2007, I was thefront seat passenger in a car
(01:17):
with a driver who suddenlydecided to die by suicide.
I have no memory of the impactand when I woke up, I was being
braced to see a caller throwninto the back of an ambulance,
lights and sirens to thehospital, spine twisted in the
wrong direction, thinking, holyhell, this is going to be it.
I'm either going to die tonightor I'm probably going to be
(01:39):
paralyzed right, because that'sjust my luck.
And, yes, I was left with myown traumatic brain injury.
But that night I prayed so hardlike Lord Jesus if you give me
one more chance, one more chanceat this life, I promise that I
will help everyone who crossesmy path.
(02:00):
I will change my life around.
I will do everything possibleto be the child of God that you
have created me to be.
And I made it through the nightlong, story short, and that's
really where the journey began.
And, to be honest with you, Iwas still egotistical, so I
wasn't acting so much as anasshole like I was before.
(02:24):
So I was doing a little bitbetter, but I really wasn't
doing what I needed to be doing,and it would be a decade until
I would actually fulfill thatpromise.
So, if you don't already know,I've been fired from every job
that I've ever held.
I just don't fit into thoseboxes.
It just is what it is, which iswhy I signed the front of the
check now instead of the back,and so I really needed to come
(02:45):
to terms with my life.
And what are you doing?
I didn't feel fulfilled.
I didn't know what my purposewas.
If somebody had asked me whatmy core values are, I really
couldn't rattle off any words.
I really hadn't done that innerjourney and inner work that
people talk so much about, andso that's what I did.
And I went on this innerjourney and it got really dark.
(03:07):
There were a lot of tears, andthen it got even darker and then
there were more tears, and whenI sort of surfaced, if you will
, I didn't have that epiphanythat so many people talk about.
They're like oh my gosh, like Ifinally saw the light.
No, I knew exactly what thehell was going on with me.
I knew exactly what I needed tochange and I had been trading
(03:28):
my dream of being anentrepreneur for the day job,
for the safety of the paycheck,for the health insurance, for
the 401k.
For the middle-class familieslike myself who, when we grew up
, it was like this is what youdo you go to high school, you
graduate, you go to college andthen you find a job and you work
at it for the next 40 yearsuntil you retire and hopefully
(03:49):
you'll get married, you'll popout a few kids, you'll live
happily ever after.
And I was like that just didn'tfeel right.
So I did a cannonball off thehigh dive and I was like I'm
going to start my own business.
It's going to be like it'sstart my own business, it's
going to be real this time.
I'm actually going to do it.
And that's what I did.
(04:10):
And in that journey also camedivorce, which was better for
the both of us, to be quitefrank with you.
And now I'm sort of able tospread my wings in a way that I
didn't feel like I was able tobefore, and because I signed the
front of the check, I feel likeI don't have to walk around
with a muzzle.
I don't have the HR departmentinternet stalking me and fear
(04:30):
mongering.
Be like.
You can't say this aboutpolitics, you can't say this
about religion.
And that is how I found humanperformance.
And I just thought to myselfhow can I marry my love for
genuinely wanting to help peoplebetter their lives with this
kind of psychology-esque passionthat I have?
(04:54):
And that's how I found humanperformance and that is how I
found neurobiology and I marriedthem together and now I teach
people, including Naval SpecialWarfare, how to master their
attention attention so you cancontinue becoming an uncommon
force for good in the world.
And I do it all through thepower of neurobiology.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
That is a that is a crazy journey.
I wasn't expecting that.
I wasn't expecting, you know,an accident where another driver
was death um, death by, youknow, by accident, by suicide,
um, you know how that affectedyou.
So when did that accidenthappen?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
April 19th 2007.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, and.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
I have.
No, I have no memory of theimpact, god, um, it's called
retrograde amnesia and um, thereis a story in between the
impact and when I woke up, bestsaved for another time, perhaps
a potential future podcastepisode um, where I did
(06:00):
experience the afterlife and andso that's cool.
And so, um, people ask me allthe time like I, I wish I could
be more like you.
I wish that I could dust off mycourage and find my fire.
I wish I had as much confidenceas you.
I wish that I could speak upout loud and I'm like you can.
(06:21):
This is your life and it'sending one minute at a time.
That's fight club reference,right, but it is, and I strongly
suggest that you act like it,because this life will end for
you.
It will end, it will be done,and you don't want to be left
with any type of regret.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I was just asking, promised I was just asking yeah,
that's definitely underlyingand and bold faced right there,
that's for sure tomorrow.
I actually recently had aco-worker, um check into the
doctors on a monday and byfriday he was no longer with us.
Um, so tomorrow is neverpromised for sure, um, I just
(06:59):
asked when that happened,because I I know some people
think that you know they get tooold to pivot, to change, to
take a different course, and itsounds like that hit you kind of
like mid-range in your lifemaybe, and some people are too
afraid to take that leap by then.
So that's absolutelyfascinating.
And as far as your studies, sothen you started to pursue your
(07:22):
studies at Harvard and King'sCollege.
How did that shape yourapproach to the cognitive
coaching overall?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
I think coaching gets a bad rap generally speaking,
for a number of reasons, and Iactually agree with it.
The coaching is not a licensedprofession.
Like law, like medicine, likereal estate, like finance,
anybody can call themselves acoach, throw up a website, print
a business card and charge youmoney.
And 99% of the coaches outthere either don't know what
(07:53):
they're doing or they're what Ilike to call framework coaches.
So it's like pay me some moneyand we'll turn to page four, and
then you'll look at thissentence, you'll fill in the
blank like you're a little thirdgrader, and you might see some
5% marginal gains, right, butthat's transactional, it's not
transformative.
And I wanted to learn how can,how can I learn how to dive
(08:16):
underneath the surface of what'sgoing on in the human body,
specifically in the brain, ourhead brain, so that I can help
others help themselves?
And that's where it started.
And I thought what is thiswhole neuroscience thing Like?
What is it like now?
It's like the sexiest term onInstagram, right.
(08:38):
It's like you can't go throughyour feed without hearing the
words neuroscience or dopamine.
It's like these are the sexyterms, most of the time used
incorrectly.
But I thought, well, if I havea brain injury and I can learn
how to heal myself through myown studies and my own actions
and how I'm living my life, thenmaybe I can help others do the
(09:00):
same, whether they have a braininjury or not.
But, like you said, a lot ofpeople are stuck in paralysis,
in their 50s, for example, andthey're like I really wish that
I could make all of these majorchanges in my life, but, but,
but and they're doing math Okay,so if you're in America, you
can retire, you know, sayofficially by the age of, say,
(09:22):
65 or 67 or whatever it is foryou.
And they're thinking, okay,well, if I just hang out another
decade, then I'll actually beable to do whatever it is that I
love.
And then you know, their valuesjust don't match with their
life.
They wake up, they feel like afraud.
They so wish that they couldmake changes.
(09:43):
You know the number one reasonwhy people who try to start
their own business becausethat's one of the things that
people want to do they want tostart their own business.
And the reason why they fail isbecause of an unsupportive
spouse.
Your spouse is not supportive.
Why?
Because when you do acannonball at the high dive, it
does not provide certainty, andthe human brain is a prediction
engine and it looks for alookalike scenario that is
(10:06):
preferably not cloaked infailure.
And so if certainty cannot bepredicted, then uncertainty is
predicted, and people get realantsy about traveling into
uncharted waters.
And I can certainly understandthat.
You know very much so.
But again, this is your life andyou have to make choices and
(10:32):
decisions for yourself.
And, yes, it matters who is inclose proximity to you, but, at
the end of the day, your talentsmatter, and if you're not
putting those talents into theworld that could make the world
a better place, then you'redoing the rest of us a
disservice.
Quite frankly, we want you toput your talents into the world.
(10:53):
We want you to put yourskillset into the world.
And it's not that people don'thave the passion and the drive.
They know what they want to do,but they don't know how to do
it.
And that's where the paralysiscomes.
It's like okay, well, so how doI build a business model from
scratch and launch it into themarket and land my first paying
client in 12 weeks or less?
How on earth did I do that?
I don't know how to do that.
I'm an attorney, I'm anaccountant, I'm an actor.
(11:17):
They think they have to have anMBA.
You don't.
You don't even have to have abusiness card.
Spoiler alert you don't evenhave to have a website.
I sent everyone to LinkedIn forfour years because I didn't have
money for a website.
I was like if you want to learnabout me, go on LinkedIn.
What is a better way to learnabout somebody than whatever it
(11:39):
is that they post on socialmedia?
And that in particular,platform allows you to
illustrate your education, forexample, or any certificates
that you have in about sectionand things like this, and it
dives in a little bit more onthe professional stuff.
And that's where I senteverybody.
I was like go there and if youlike it, let me know and we'll
(12:03):
talk.
Like that's all I have.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
That's all I have to offer, yeah that's actually a
great place to learn, uh,someone's background and and
resume and linkedin.
I don't spend as much time onthere as far as posting stuff,
but I do spend time on therewhen I'm doing research on folks
and man.
Aaron, you have as muchtenacity and fire as the name
brand of your company.
I love it, though I think thatout of a bad situation came a
(12:30):
lot of fire.
It sounds like and what bettercoach than a coach that's
actually been through it beforethat actually has the battle
scars to show other folks to saythis is what happened to me.
And here I am today.
Folks to say this is whathappened to me and here I am
today.
So talk to me about how youconnected everything with
special warfare.
(12:50):
How did that come about and howdid you get connected with that
?
And talk to me a little bitabout the connection there.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So my father served our country in the United States
Navy two tours in Vietnam.
So that is my tie to themilitary, specifically my tie to
the Navy.
I am what you would call awhole life citizen.
So I've never been a militaryspouse, I've never served in the
military.
(13:18):
I don't know what it's likewhen my husband is deployed.
I don't know what it's likegiving birth in a hospital while
my husband is not with me.
I don't have that perspective,but I do have the whole life
citizen perspective.
And so I continue to postonline.
(13:41):
And this one gentleman reachedout to me and he said hey, I saw
what you're doing.
I really love it.
I see that you're in humanperformance.
I am in naval special warfareand I was wondering if we could
have a conversation.
Sure, long story short.
We get on the phone, right, heis a SEAL and he's like I've got
all these coaches in my life.
(14:02):
I've got like psych, I've gotcareer coach, I've got life
coach.
I have, like you know, allthese people Right.
And then I I pushed back reallyhard.
I was like you don't havecoaches in your life.
It's like that's some fuckingbullshit.
You don't have coaches in yourlife.
He said like.
What are you talking about?
I'm like you have glorifiedconsultants and what people
don't understand is thatcoaching is not telling.
(14:26):
Consulting is telling.
So if I'm telling you, hey, kp,this is what I think that you
should do, this is how youshould adjust your resume, this
is how you should conduct aninterview, this is how you
should work for a job and I'mconsulting with you or these are
the risks that you're going totake if you make these types of
business decisions.
You're a consultant.
That's not coaching.
(14:46):
People derive coaching from whenthey played t-ball when they
were a child, or they played onthe soccer team or the football
team.
And what does your coach do?
What does your tennis coach do?
Your tennis coach tells youhere's how you hold your racket,
here's how you have to hit itto get some topspin, here's what
your footwork looks like.
Like a lot of telling, buttraditional coaching is actually
(15:12):
asking high empowered questionsthat dive under the surface.
That gets your client to comeup with their own answers that
live within, and you have what'scalled an aha moment, which is
a chemical reaction in the brain, and then the coaching right
Applying laws of constraint, soholding you accountable and
getting you to take actionagainst whatever it is a
decision that you just maderight.
(15:33):
That is actual coaching.
And so I was giving him all thispushback right.
I was like you don't havecoaches, you don't have coach,
right.
And so we end up partying awayand like two months later he
reaches out and he's like youknow what?
You're right, I don't haveanybody like you in my life.
Would you please considercoaching me in your style as I
transition out of the Navy,which was like another nine or
(15:56):
10 months.
At that time I said absolutelyso he's meeting with me, we're
coaching like once a week.
You know we're moving throughthis and just a change it really
quick.
I was 100%, absolutely notprepared for what was about to
happen.
I had never had a very closefront row seat, like with an
eagle's eye transition out ofthe military.
(16:19):
It was the biggest bullshitI've ever seen, but story for
another time.
So it was extremely volatileand I have told him today that
had he met me four years ago,five years ago, six years ago as
a coach, I would not even havebeen prepared.
So everything that I had donein neurobiology, in human
(16:40):
performance, all of theeducation, all of the excess
reading, everything that I wasdoing on the back end came to
fruition and because of him Ibecame smarter, sharper and
stronger in my skillset.
So four months goes by, right,and DevGrew invites me to be
(17:03):
part of this fundraising eventin downtown Nashville.
And we're there and I say justso casually over dinner hey how
long have you guys been SEALTeam 8?
.
And they looked at me andthey're like what?
Who told you we're Team 8?
I'm like, oh, I'm like I'vejust landed in a pile of shit.
(17:27):
What's going on?
And I gestured to one of themlike didn't you tell me you're
teammate?
It's like, well, I was team two, then I was team eight and now
we're team six.
And then I said it in my brainseal team six.
And that was four months into itthat I didn't even realize the
(17:48):
level of caliber who were in mycoaching practice, because it
was never about developmentgroup, it wasn't really about
Naval Special Warfare, it wasabout helping those who were in
the Special Operations Forcescommunity transition out
successfully.
And that's how I ended up inNaval Special Warfare.
(18:09):
And so you wouldn't know thisunless I told you because it's
not advertised, and so yeah, andso that individual led me to
other individuals and it's, likeyou know, just like good
old-fashioned American valuesshould be.
If you like what you see, ifyou like what you hear, if
things are working for you, gotell your friends and in the
SEAL community it's extremelytight, and so for them to raise
(18:33):
their hand and say, hey Joe, youneed to talk to Erin Marie like
she can help you, it means theworld to me, yeah.
So I've had several of themcome through my human
performance trading firm and Iwalk them through the
neurobiology of decision-makingand teach them the skill sets
that they need to know as theytransition out and to be out
(18:55):
successfully to continuebecoming an uncommon force for
good in the world.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Because that's what we need them to do.
That's a very cool story.
Very cool story and it's justkind of that wasn't your target
client.
It just so happened that theyfound you, more or less, and
what better client to have thanSpecial Warfare and Navy SEALs?
Very great folks, um, and Godbless you for helping them with
(19:27):
the transition out of themilitary.
I know that as a former uh armyguy myself.
Like getting out is not an easything to do and I think a lot of
times for us, uh, it can be alittle bit of a sucker punch
when you come out into thecivilian side and you realize
that a lot of the things thatyou did in the military don't
really translate uh easilyacross the table from a
recruiter.
And then also, too, you have tofigure that out.
(19:49):
How do I draw those lines?
I personally do volunteer workand I'm a board member with Act
Now Education, which we helpfolks make that transition out
of the military.
So I'm glad there's coacheslike you that actually help
people execute, because that isa huge thing, like executing and
taking action.
We can talk about it all day.
I could talk about making apodcast all day, but until I go
(20:12):
buy the actual microphone andjoin Toastmasters to learn how
to talk and speak and presentand then actually do a few
episodes to get better, thanwhat's the point of even talking
about it that.
So, um, that sounds like mytype of coaching and it's
interesting because, let's faceit, like you're a woman and, at
the end of the day, for you tobreak into that side, um,
(20:35):
especially being a woman like um, that must've been real
difficult for you.
Have you reached any kind oflike resistance or pushback
because of that?
Or is that something thatpeople have kind of, at this
point, guarded your respectbecause of the clients that
you've had?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So what I know about Naval Special Warfare is that
whatever happened yesterdaydoesn't mean shit today.
I know that I have tocontinually sharpen my iron, to
be continually invited into thecommunity, and the day that I
think, oh, I've made it, oh, I'mhere, look at me, look at me is
(21:11):
the day that they're going tokick me to the curb and they'll
never let me back in, and Iappreciate that very much.
So it I don't want to be.
I don't want to be part of acommunity where there's anything
lackadaisical that's happening,that there's any, put your feet
up, kick back, we'll deal withit whenever it comes.
No, like I am, I am reading, Iam studying, I am learning, I am
(21:37):
diving into clinical literature, I am applying the knowledge, I
am asking them how I can getbetter, et cetera.
So the pushback that I get inthe Naval Special Warfare
community never comes from theSEALs, never it comes from the
females.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
That's actually, I mean, that's just a very
difficult group to break intofor anybody in general.
So it's amazing that you gotthrough and and you're doing
great things for them.
Um, and I want to talk about,uh, ambitious AF, all right,
ambitious about face right oryou know, we all know what AF
stands for.
So you're the CEO of ofambitious AF and, um, so what
(22:21):
are the core core objectives of?
So what are the core objectivesof?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
your business To build a coalition of mentally
tough individuals that areinspired to eradicate mediocrity
from the planet, because thefate of the next generation
depends on it.
Period.
Oh boy, that's what we aremyopic about no-transcript,
(22:47):
showing up and holding extremelyhigh standards for ourselves
and high standards of others.
We are not afraid to disturbpeople.
It is sense that we are outmaking our lives purposefully
harder.
We're not making our livesharder, we're making them
(23:08):
purposefully harder, and indoing so, we are able to change
the narrative.
And the narrative is thatmental toughness is offensive.
It's not.
It's not offensive and it's notoptional.
And by making our livespurposefully harder through
nutrition, through sleep hygiene, through physical fitness,
(23:30):
through hydration, throughpersonal development, literature
, through right, what it is thatwe ingest into our brain,
through shedding interpersonaltoxic relationships that are no
longer functional, right All ofthese things that we're doing,
other people can see, and whatpeople want more than anything
(23:51):
is to give themselves permissionto be who they really want to
be.
They want to give themselvespermission to chase their most
ambitious desires in life,whatever that looks like for you
.
Not only that, to givethemselves permission, but the
second thing is that they wantvalidation.
That, okay, if I do start myown business, if I do go on the
journey to try and lose theweight for good again, if I do
(24:14):
try to increase my wealth, if Ido want to become more
spiritually sound, if I want todouble down on my marriage, if I
want to double down as a parent, am I going to fail?
Am I going to be a big fatfailure once again?
Right, and so we're out thereshowing people.
If you make your lifepurposefully harder and you
(24:34):
operate with a zero deviationmindset and you run over anybody
who tries to get in your way,like a freight train, we show
others what's possible and indoing so, it gives other people
the silent permission to do thesame in their life.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
You know we've done, we've done ourselves a real
disservice in this country Idon't know about the rest of the
world in this country notraising our kids to be tougher
and and right now we are seeing,we're seeing the results of
that and we've had.
I mean, I can tell you rightnow I can't, I can't even count
how many 20 something year oldboys, men, whatever, that can't
(25:13):
do a pull up, can't do a push up, that just don't have any grit,
any fight.
And I feel like it's mygeneration's fault.
I'm 45 years old.
I feel like it's our fault,because I know too many kids
that are still living at home,who are like 25, 30 years old,
have never really experienced inlife, have never paid, paid a
(25:34):
bill, have never got left theirown county.
Um, so is it difficult for folkslater on in life to find that
that grind, that grit, that fire, that that you found after your
accident is that, is thatfrustrating for you at times to
try to put, because I know forme, like I've tried to do that
to folks and I've lost friendsand family over it, like
(25:56):
whenever I try to mentor theiryoung kids, their young adults,
it's like, oh, you know you'repushing them too hard.
And who do you think you are?
And and I get, I get a lot ofshit for it.
But like, at the end of the day, like I'm a person who cares,
that's who, who I think I am andI'm a person that knows,
because when I was 19, 20, 22years old, I was physically
(26:17):
strong and mentally strong and Iwent to war at 24, was gone for
the entire year.
What's it like for you?
How do you not get frustrated?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
The way that somebody chooses to live their life has
nothing to do with me.
So if I choose to focus on whateverybody else is not doing or
what I think they should bedoing, that I'm not focused on
myself.
And so, just like branding,just like marketing, just like
(26:51):
right, people have to have Xamount of touches and
familiarity with what it is thatyou're doing that's working,
and then they're trying tofigure I think that they're
trying to figure out, okay, howdo I figure out how to pull that
and embody it into my life ifI've never known that before?
Right?
(27:12):
So, like, this is how do I putit?
It's like there's a lot ofcodependence.
That's taught specifically inAmerican culture and that's
really what you're referring tois codependence.
Everything that we do atAmbitious AF, right, the
critical tasks that we puttogether and the parameters.
One of them is that yourcritical tasks cannot be
codependent.
(27:32):
They cannot be.
You cannot rely on someone orsomething else in order to
execute that task.
You can only rely on yourself.
Now, you and I were raised by adifferent generation.
We were raised by the Vietnamgeneration, for example, right,
okay?
So totally different mindset.
Now we have our generation,who's having children, and so
(27:55):
that is the participation trophygeneration and participation
trophy generations now arefinding each other and they're
getting married and they'rehaving participation trophy
babies.
So the answer to your questionis certainly it's frustrating,
but understanding that it isgoing to take multiple
generations to course correctwhat has happened.
(28:18):
Right is one thing, and so howcan you be part of the solution?
You focus on yourself.
You focus on becoming bettertoday than you were yesterday,
not as good as tomorrow, right?
Zero deviation mindset.
You pull in nutrition.
Specifically one word foods.
It's not that hard and that'snot donuts, wings, alcohol,
(28:40):
cheetos right?
Actual one word foods.
You know what I'm talking about, like cauliflower and lettuce
and potatoes and salmon, thingslike this.
You focus on physical activity.
Do you want to be able to be onthe floor at the age of 65 and
be able to stand up without aconsiderable amount of help?
Right?
That starts today with howyou're building skeletal muscle,
(29:01):
getting sleep hygiene in andgetting your sleep under your
belt and making sure that you'regetting actual rest so that
your brain can function duringsleep the way that it needs to
and is required so that you canthink clearly.
And when you can think clearly,you can make better decisions
right.
And the more that you utilizeall of those neural pathways,
(29:25):
the more that you move intoeffective ways of thinking, the
more your central nervous systembecomes familiar with what that
feels like and what that lookslike.
And we need it to become notjust familiar, we need to become
dominant.
So those of you who arelistening who are like well, I
want to start new habits, I wantto do something different or I
(29:46):
want to lose the weight for good.
Whatever it is for you, right,you have to stop entering into
your own start-stop patterns.
You have to treat every day asday one.
That's your problem.
That's what you're not doing.
You're not treating every dayas day one.
You're like, oh, I have six orseven consecutive days.
Oh, I have 10.5 consecutivedays, yeah me.
(30:07):
It's like, no, what'd you dotoday?
Nothing you did yesterdaymatters, right, it doesn't.
It's just, it's put you on apath and most people will say,
oh, I've been doing so good foryou know 10.5 days.
I think I will take a breathe.
I don't need to work out today.
I've been working out for 10.5days.
(30:27):
I've been doing so good.
I'm going to pat myself on theback and I'm going to just put
my feet up and take a breather,and I can promise you there are
people out there who aredominating their nights,
weekends, holidays, vacationsand you're not.
And so, by default, you aretaking 10 steps backwards, and
that's why you wake up andyou're spinning in your same
tired circles, because you'remaking the same poor, tired
(30:49):
decisions.
So if you want to do better,you got to know better.
If you don't know better, it'sbecause you don't have the
knowledge and in that sense,it's perspective.
So you don't have theperspective of actually pushing
(31:15):
through, through the end, sothat you experience a
breakthrough.
That's what you're missing, andyou don't have that, and so you
think that you can't do it.
And you can.
You're dead wrong.
You absolutely can.
You just haven't pushed hardenough, long enough, whatever
that looks like, whatever thatlooks like.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, you know I grew up yeah, you know I grew up
watching rocky.
I grew up watching, like, thosetypes of heroes that like
literally came from nothing andfought their way to the top, and
I feel like today we just don'thave that.
And, um, I love the amount ofaccountability that you're
talking about, um, for yourcoaching program.
Um, well, going back to also, Ilearned, I learned for myself
(31:54):
when it comes to mentoring, Iwill not take anybody's kid on
as a friend unless they show mesome type of willingness to do
so.
I think a lot of times I wantedmore for people than they wanted
for themselves and I learnedthe hard way that you can't do
that.
You can't push for things thatpeople don't want for themselves
(32:16):
, especially these young adults.
Today, you know, if they don'tshow me anything, no work, then
I don't even waste my time tohave that conversation.
It is what it is Go smoke yourmarijuana and hang out and play
video games all day until youfigure it out.
Do you, do you prescreen any ofthe clients and folks that you
decide to take on for coaching?
Do you?
Do you do that just to see ifthey're like there?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
There is a very high vetting process.
In fact, my program is not evenadvertised, so I have a paid
program that I don't evenadvertise.
So if you hear about it, it'sprobably from somebody who's in
the program or you hear about itdirectly from me.
And there's a very high vettingprocess.
Why Not just for you, but forthe participants who are already
(32:59):
in the program, who deserveother people, who want to be
sharper and smarter, who want tobe spiritually awake, who want
to double down on their mostambitious desires.
We just don't take anybody.
That's not the way it works.
Otherwise I would be doing adisservice to the people who are
part of the program and itwould be immediately diluted and
(33:22):
we're not diluting at all.
And to be a private client,that's a whole other level.
The answer is probably no foryou.
So, um, yeah, you knoweverybody, everybody wants to
know, like you know, what do youteach the navy seal?
We want to know what you teachthe navy seal like first of all.
(33:44):
I'm not even sure if you're onthat level.
So I mean, I can teach you allday whether you go and implement
what I'm teaching you and howyou pull that into your life.
You're probably going to do itfor a little while until you
don't, just like 98% of themasses right, they're doing the
backstroke in an emotionaldumpster fire, they're doing a
(34:05):
backstroke in the cesspool thatthey call life, but yet they'll
scream at the top of their lungsand get blue in the face and
tell you that they're not.
No, but I'm not.
It's like we look at you and wecan see your miserable life
just by the way that you look,or we can see it from a distance
and you think that we can't andwe don't want that for you.
(34:26):
We know that you don't wantthat for you, so you've got to
get your ego out of the way,first of all.
And also, you know people haveto fall on their face, so I'll
tell people like you knowprivate clients who raise their
hand.
I think I want to be.
I want to come into your, yourtrading firm, and like okay, and
I'll say have you ever paid outof pocket for any other
(34:51):
coaching?
Oh, yes, I have.
Okay, did you complete theprogram in its entirety?
Almost always the answer is no.
How come Time?
That's the first thing they sayOkay, so it's not the program,
it's you.
So it's just like if I were ahealth coach.
I say this all the time, right?
If you come to me and I was ahealth coach, I'm not I.
(35:11):
If I were a health coach I saythis all the time, right?
If you, if you come to me and Iwas a health coach, I'm not.
I'm not a fitness coach, I'mnot a nutritionist, I'm not a
health coach.
But if I were and you were 300pounds and you're like, okay, I
want to lose the weight for good, I swear, I want to lose the
weight for good.
I'm going to do it this time,right?
Why is this time any differentthan any of the other times that
you've tried?
Why is this?
You know what?
You know why?
Because you're not sitting infront of a doctor and your
(35:33):
doctor's not telling you, if youdon't make a change, you're
going to die, and because youhaven't been presented with a
health scare.
It's the reason why youcontinue to spend in your same
tired circles.
Because you think tomorrow'sgoing to come for you, you think
that you're going to be atdinner tonight, you think that
you have more time and I tellthose people go, gain 50 more
pounds.
You're not fat enough.
(35:54):
It doesn't pinch hard enoughfor you to actually make the
change.
What's it going to take for youto finally abandon the pieces
of your life that you claim youhate you?
claim you hate pieces of yourlife.
You might have to hit it twice,three times, right?
Like I say, all the time, yougot to be inside this
performance domain, right?
So that's what I call it withthe seals.
(36:15):
You got to be inside thisperformance domain, like this
trading ground.
There's an on-ramp to it andthen you have to perform and
then you get through it and thenthere's an off-ramp.
You know what?
You got another shit stormcoming, so you enough to be able
to learn the lesson and notjust learn it, apply it.
Why?
(36:35):
Because you got people outthere who are going around and
they're giving advice.
They're like oh, here's whatyou should do, here's what you
should do.
And you're like why aren't youdoing, stop running your mouth
and go do the work that nobodysees or claps for behind closed
doors.
Maybe then you can give advice.
You need to become the personwho can go into the gates of
hell.
Shine the light, show the pathand say follow me, I can show
(36:59):
you the way out.
But I'll give you an examplePeople who are trying to lose
weight.
Right, your training grounds isthe grocery store candy aisle,
or it's like the potato chipaisle.
If you travel down that aisleand you're like I'll just get
the 50% less salt potato chipstoday.
You know it's like you haven'tbeen in your training grounds
long enough.
(37:20):
That's your hell.
You don't know how to getthrough that aisle to get to the
milk and the meat and the eggs,and then travel back through
that aisle without pickingsomething up that you know damn
well that you shouldn't bepicking up.
Those aren't your one wordfoods, right.
So if you haven't been in thattraining grounds long enough to
deprive yourself of all of that,to literally change your
neurobiology, then you have nobusiness telling other people
(37:44):
what they need to be doing intheir life.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah, well said, well said.
And I could tell you from a gymperspective how many times have
I seen a fitness coach at a gymthat's not fit and I'm like,
why?
Why would I hire you when youdon't even look fit yourself?
Um, that, no, it's well said.
And the discipline part is isthe most difficult part.
And you know, I think, goingback to what you said earlier, I
(38:09):
think our last generation, wewere brought up by the Vietnam
War era veterans and, like mydad, was drafted in 71, did 20
years and being raised by him,you know he's an Army Ranger
drill sergeant for five years.
There's a significantdifference between me and my
half siblings and it mattersdifference between me and my
(38:33):
half siblings and, and itmatters like growing over time
and learning that disciplineover time.
It's a huge.
It's a huge cliff for someoneto climb to instill discipline
in their life and making surethat they're ready to be coached
.
Um, so I can imagine thatthere's some misconceptions
about, you know, brain health.
Um, are some of themisconceptions about brain
health that you encounter inyour practice?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
So I will rarely use the term mental health.
I'll do it because that's thepop psychology term, but it's
really brain health.
So what you feed your body, youfeed your brain.
(39:24):
How you treat your body, youtreat your brain.
And people don't think aboutthis because it's not the
primary narrative.
In not focused on mentalstrength training or mental
endurance, or feeding yourselfthe right type of nutritious
food so that your brain canoperate optimally, you're going
to decline.
(39:45):
It's like dementia, it's likedivorce.
It happens slowly until one dayit happens suddenly, and that's
what people don't understand.
It's that things are happeningright now to you that you likely
are not even aware of becauseit's happening slowly.
So one of the best things thatyou can do for yourself is just
ingest foods that are good foryou.
(40:06):
Literally eat Good for you.
Literally eat, eat properly andget your sleep.
Sleep hygiene is huge, huge,right.
We've got to flush out thetoxic stuff and we've got to
flush in the good stuff, and wedo that.
A lot of that happens duringsleep.
Sometimes it takes seven tonine hours, right.
(40:27):
So we need our sleep.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
We need our rest, shit, um, and.
But it's just trying to say,hey, look at me, look at me,
look at me constantly, and thatinvolves your sleep as well, and
it causes us to stay up late.
Uh, tries to grab our attention, tries to get us sucked in
emotionally and get our you know, our feelings all up in our.
Our feelings, you know, and anduh, scrolling.
That's a big thing too.
Sleep is huge, um, and I thinkfor a lot veterans that has been
(41:09):
a major problem is getting tosleep and staying asleep.
And finding that REM cycle ishuge too, and I'm sure you talk
a lot about that when you doyour cognitive coaching.
But can you share a successstory where your cognitive
coaching has significantlyimpacted an individual and
(41:31):
personal and professional life?
Speaker 2 (41:34):
So what I do is I work in a special place in the
brain.
So if we take your brain and wejust divide it into four parts,
just very, very, very simpleright, and you put one hand on
your forehead and you put onehand right behind it, right,
this is what we call yourfrontal lobe and then you have
this little zigzag like zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, right here
(41:54):
, right, it's called your sulcus, and then right behind it, if
you put one hand here and onehand here both sides right and
left side this is called yourparietal lobe.
This is where I workspecifically in a space called
selective attention.
So in a space called selectiveattention.
So your parietal lobe isresponsible for a number of
things like memory, learning,language, spatial recognition.
(42:15):
It's how I know the door isover there, it's not up here
right in my face.
It's how I know you're a male,I'm a female, things like this
where we are in proximity.
But most importantly, it'sresponsible for perception and
the way in which we see theworld.
So neurodegenerative diseasesthat affect or are affected by
the parietal lobe that you'veheard of schizophrenia, bipolar
(42:39):
disorder, body dysmorphia, ADHD,right, these all have to do
with a distortion of reality.
So, to answer your question,the majority of people, if not
all of the people that I workwith, are either officially
diagnosed or self-diagnosed asADHD right.
(43:01):
So I work in the space ofselective attention.
That's where I work.
You can look it up.
It's a thing in neuroscienceand basically our ability to
focus on the goal-orientedenvironment is critically
dependent on our ability toinhibit or ignore distracting
(43:21):
information.
So, since a lot of youraudience are in the military now
or have transitioned right,it's very distracting to
transition out of the right.
It's very distracting totransition out of the military.
It's very distracting to wakeup and just turn your phone over
.
We live in a distracted world,but you have to have the ability
(43:43):
to inhibit what is notnecessary or what is pulling
your focus.
So, to answer your question, asuccess story would be teaching
someone what to do in thosecritical moments where they feel
like they can't raise theirhand and say I need help.
(44:04):
So how do you teach somebodyhow to be independent in those
moments when they feel like theycan't reach out to somebody and
say I need help?
They feel cloaked with shame.
They're like if somebody knowsthat I need this kind of help,
what's going to happen to me?
Am I going to get Baker acted?
Am I going to be put into somesort of you know rehab facility?
(44:27):
Am I going to lose my job?
What's my wife going to think?
How am I going to be able tosupport my family?
So, again, it's very importantthat you focus on how you need
to perform inside those domains.
What do you need to pull oninside those moments?
(44:50):
Right?
Some people would say gratitude, Some people would say prayer,
OK.
Some people would say what,what?
But what are those things?
What is gratitude?
What is prayer?
This is a focal point of yourattention.
That's what it is.
So all of the success storiesare people who have touch points
(45:12):
with ambitious AF andunderstand where is the focal
point that I need to draw on?
Where's the skill set that Ineed to draw on in this moment
that matters the most,especially when you have a
monkey wrench that's thrown intoyour day.
And then some of the biggerthings that happen in our lives,
like we have to file forbankruptcy or we are evicted, or
(45:32):
a car gets repossessed, orwe're served with divorce
paperwork or something you know,or we lose our jobs, and like
very, very major things thatdon't happen every day.
You know there's a death in thefamily, right Aside trauma and
grief, because that's somethinga little bit different, right,
we don't deal with these thingson a daily basis and when they
happen to us, we don't know whatto do with ourselves.
We don't know what to do withourselves.
(45:55):
So what do we do?
We press pause, press pause onlife, press pause on goals.
(46:16):
We're trying to figure it out.
We're like, oh my gosh, what amI going to?
What am I going to do now thatmy car's repossessed?
How am I going to?
You know, I just lost my job.
How am I going to pay my bills?
Like all of bankruptcy, ifyou've lost your job, all of
that is, in the past, alreadyhappened.
What are you doing right now,in this moment, to take steps
forward?
And if you don't know what to do, what you need to go do is go
lace up your sneakers and takeit out on some of the iron at
the gym.
That's one of the first thingsthat you can do.
(46:38):
You can go running, you can gowalking, you can hydrate.
You have more control over yourlife than you think in those
moments.
You have control over whetheryou groom yourself when you
leave the house, how you'redressed.
You have control over what youingest and put into your brain.
With respect to personaldevelopment literature, you have
control over how you treatpeople.
(46:59):
How about that?
You have so much control overyour life than you think.
That's the focal point.
So, as this is being recordedright now, every single Navy
SEAL who has had touch pointswith ambitious day up has not
been found next to an emptybullet casing because they have
been taught the neurobiology ofdecision-making and what to do
(47:20):
in those critical moments wherethey feel like, oh my God, I
can't raise my hand.
The ambitious day of narrativesaves lives 110 percent.
Come closer to it.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
I love it, man, I love it.
I'll tell you, overall, I lovehow you created, how you create
a community.
I love how you create acommunity of and you create a
community and you have folkssurround themselves with folks
that are highly accountable.
And you mentioned that you dothe pre-screening for folks
(47:51):
before they join your coachingprogram, which can be rigorous.
But I want to touch on you alittle bit and what you do.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
But I want to touch dealing with kids or whatever
these critical tasks get done,zero deviation.
One is nutrition, so it isalways one word foods.
And people will ask me all thetime well, what diet should I do
?
Should I do the carnivore diet,should I do the vegan diet,
should I do the paleo diet?
And I always say, like the onethat you're going to stick to.
(48:43):
So go figure it out and thenstick to that one.
Two, fitness, so physicalactivity.
So I do a minimum 45 to 60minutes.
So it's quantified that I haveto reach at least a zone two, so
I don't flip into a downwarddog for 45 seconds and call it a
workout.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
(49:05):
So I'm actually working out,I'm breaking a sweat, and this
is for like a significant amountof time.
Vitamins and supplements and, ifyou notice, I keep it vague.
So, for example, resveratrol,which is sort of an extract of
red wine, so it's got all thegood stuff instead of, like any
of the bad effects of alcoholwasn't added to my regimen until
(49:28):
two years ago.
So vitamins and supplementsthat help me stay optimal
cognitively and then sleep.
So I go dark at 2100.
Like you won't get a textmessage back from me.
You won't hear from me.
My phone doesn't ring or dingafter 2100, right, I am like in
(49:50):
bed like Fridays and Saturdaystoo, like I'm like boring.
I have like the most boringlife, but it's like the best
life ever because I try and getseven hours of sleep every night
.
Now, whether I sleep a fullseven hours is another story,
but that that's the goal, every,every.
So those are the four criticaltasks that I put in place and I
(50:11):
also sorry, personal developmentliterature.
So 10 pages of 10 minutes everyday and it's the exact same
book.
It's not on audio, becauseaudio books, or like listening
to podcasts, allow you tomultitask, and the point of
putting critical tasks togetherin your life is to actually
carve time and to have thediscipline to do it during that
(50:32):
carved time.
And you have until midnight.
So you get your critical tasksdone every single day until
midnight.
And I tell you something whenpeople put critical tasks
together and we give you theparameters for this right and
you actually do this, you learnwhat is positive in your life
versus what is not so positivein your life.
(50:53):
So if you're making time forcritical tasks, it means you're
saying no to some of the otherthings that you have been doing
or have been engaging in thatmay not have been so great for
you.
You also learn how to say no topeople, which is extremely hard
for people to do.
It's an extremely hard thing.
A lot of guilt gets associatedwith having to tell somebody no,
even if it's like I'm sorry, Ican't go to dinner tonight.
(51:15):
People say yes more often thanthey want to.
Yeah, they don't know how totell people no, but where's your
focus?
If your focus is on vitaminsand supplements and getting good
sleep and exercising and eatingone word, foods like then your
focus isn't everywhere else.
So, again, critically dependenton your ability to inhibit or
(51:36):
ignore distracting information.
So you learn how to not bedistracted in a world that's
full of distraction.
And when you can cut through allof that chaos and you can cut
through all of that nonsense,right, you start to see more
clearly.
And you start to see otherpeople who are like oh my gosh,
I can't believe I used toassociate with that person.
(51:57):
They're so toxic.
Or that person just loves togossip and drama Like all these.
Like I can't believe I used toassociate with that person.
They're so toxic, or thatperson just loves to gossip and
drama Like all these, like Ican't believe I was part of any
of that stuff.
You begin to level up, youbegin to believe in yourself,
you begin to chase ambition in awhole different way.
You begin to stop caring aboutwhat everybody else thinks
because you're reaping all ofthese really good benefits.
(52:18):
So if it's one piece of advicethat I could leave for the
audience today, it's that youneed to go chase the boring, all
the boring stuff that peopleare like.
But you're in bed at nineo'clock on Fridays and Saturday.
Yeah, it's boring and it'sawesome.
It's so awesome.
It's awesome to wake up andfeel refreshed, right.
(52:40):
It's awesome to be able to bespiritually awake at church on
Sunday morning.
It's awesome to be present withmy children, to be able to look
them in the eye and not feel socognitively taxed Like your
brain is going to look forreasons to give you, you know,
excuses to.
I don't want to say cut corners,but look for an easier path,
(53:01):
because it doesn't want to becognitively taxed.
You have only so much brainglycogen, right?
The brain does not storeglycogen the way the rest of the
body does, because you'reconstantly utilizing it, right.
So it tries to store as much aspossible so that if it needs to
be used for something major, ithas access to it.
(53:22):
And so it tries to give youreasons throughout the day to be
like no, no, no, don't work outno complex strategic thinking
for you today.
Let's just take it easy, right,let's just take it easy.
No, you can't.
You have to force yourdiscipline until it becomes
trained discipline.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Wow yeah.
And for folks to see the otherside of themselves and look back
on themselves, that must be ahuge transformation for them.
And during this whole interviewyou've gone back to the
connection between mind and bodyand physical fitness related to
your brain health.
I also noticed too and I haveto touch on this because it's a
(53:59):
passion of mine I noticed you'vebeen in doing some Brazilian
jiu-jitsu, right.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yes.
I can't believe it's taken thislong to get into this most
awesome community.
Oh my gosh, I'm having the timeof my life and I tell you I
haven't been training that longmaybe Six months around.
At this time I feel so muchmore empowered than I have ever
(54:29):
felt in my entire life.
I feel on top of the world.
I have a trainer who Is a blackbelt and it's not from one of
the studios who just is like ifyou've been here this long, then
we're going to award you withthe next level.
Or you do X, y and Z and yousort of do it okay and we're
going to award you with the nextlevel.
(54:50):
These are people who have beenin this discipline for over a
decade, two decades, right.
These.
These are people who havetrained under other schools of
thought and have come to thisand they're like we were trained
wrong and we didn't even knowit.
Yep, so I have a privatetrainer and then I have another
(55:11):
one who works with me in like agroup setting.
But I train three times a weekand I'm like I feel like this
little secret weapon, likenobody sees coming right.
I just I feel, I feel like Ican handle my body and I feel
like I can handle.
I feel like I can detect asituation before it happens, so
(55:36):
that I can remove myself fromthe environment, and that's
really the majority of what I'mlearning from jujitsu is to be
ultra aware of my surroundingsso that I can detect if
something might happen and, ifso, I can remove myself before
something does.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, it's weird.
It's weird because I just gavea course on situational
awareness and, just based off mylaw enforcement background and
military background, um, Ithought it was pulling from.
I thought that I was pullingfrom that, but there's a lot of
things that I learned inBrazilian, brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
(56:13):
things that I don't think about,that I naturally do to try to
avoid situations.
And um, back when I startedtraining in 2008, it was still
black magic for a lot of the lawenforcement community and I
remember one time during a classI mentioned to the entire class
, I said hey, you know, if youencounter someone that has like
(56:33):
cauliflower ear and it's allknotted up, like you know, they
have a wrestling background.
And I got laughed at and I'mlike you guys are stupid.
Like, at the end of the day,now we know in in 2025, like
that is a thing, like you haveto have telltale signs.
It's not just about the, thetight t shirt that somebody's
wearing, but if you look, if youlook at the person and you see
(56:54):
that they have a knotted up earand, like you know that they
have wrestling, judo or jujitsuin their background and you need
to be aware of who youradversary might be, and that and
I've always told that it justcracks me up now that I look
back 2008 and how I got laughedat by some.
Uh, it was a prison warden, aformer prison warden that and
I'm like, look, if you don'tknow, like today's mma, so many
(57:16):
folks out there are soinfatuated with it, they're
playing it on Xbox, they'retraining it in a gym and they're
watching it on TV.
So it's, it's interesting thatyou found it and I'm glad that
you did, and it's it's a realpassion of mine, uh, to to do
that Kind of, as I show I'mheaded to this evening.
I'm going to go to open massand um nice.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
And just one thing, really quick too, that that ties
in with ambitious AF is that Itake a real harsh stance against
women's self-defense classes.
I think the majority of them doa very, very large disservice
to women because they are, orthey teach a hyper-reliance on a
weapon, for example, or likemace, for example.
And you know, and I can tellyou from a neurobiology
(58:03):
standpoint, if you have not beenin a situation where your
adrenaline is pumpingimmediately, and if you even
have that mace pulled out andsomeone knocks it out of your
hand, what then?
Right, stop being so dependentand reliant on anything other
than two hands and two feetright In your brain.
Speaker 1 (58:22):
I just yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:23):
Be careful who you train under ladies.
Speaker 1 (58:25):
I just got skewered on Instagram because I was
watching a reel and it this ladywas showing a move of what
happens when someone grabs yourponytail and my whole point was
that, look, that's great thatyou watch an Instagram reel, but
here's the thing If I grab yourponytail and you do that to me,
I'm gonna slam you on theground and it's it's.
It's, that's just the realityof it.
(58:47):
All folks think that they cantake the, the self-defense thing
or watch it on tv or watch iton their phone, and then they're
gonna do it under stress andanxiety.
That's not realistic at all.
So you gotta to train.
You got to know what it's liketo have a sore neck.
You got to know what it's liketo have your limbs bent and
different.
You got to know what it's liketo be smashed.
(59:07):
That's the only way to getbetter, not watch Instagram
reels.
And I got skewered by all thesereplies because on this
Instagram account, I know whatI'm talking about at the end of
the day, so I think a lot offolks and also your central
nervous system is going torespond and go back to what it
knows best.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
And if it doesn't know anything, that's exactly
when you can freeze up.
That's a very dangeroussituation to be in if there is
an imminent threat.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
I train men and women .
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Train, train often.
Speaker 1 (59:42):
Yeah, I've trained men and women in law enforcement
, so it's like these people onInstagram aren't going to tell
me how it is and what it smellslike.
That's for sure, right, erin?
This has been such an awesomeconversation.
Thank you for having me.
I have so much more to ask you,but before we log off here, I
just want to ask how can ourlisteners out there cultivate
(01:00:10):
ambition while also ensuringtheir mental well-being?
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
So if you do cultivate your ambition, you are
ensuring your mental well outinto the world in a way in which
you actually want to.
So if you really want to dothat, give yourself permission
to do so.
Give yourself permission to gobe ambitious.
Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
You know I this whole conversation has been all about
that tie between physical andmental health.
Right and everything.
Or brain health, I should say,not mental health but, brain
health and I think it's a greatmessage.
I love how you focus on gettingfolks to execute and take
action.
Yeah, and for folks out there,a store.
(01:00:55):
Down to the bottom of thepodcast description you can find
Aaron's social media.
As far as like Instagram.
What else are you on?
You're on TikTok, no.
Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I'm on LinkedIn.
That's where you'll find meprimarily.
Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
LinkedIn and Instagram.
Okay, I'll make sure that thoselinks are down there at the
bottom.
If you're listening to this ona podcast, scroll down to the
show notes If you're watchingthis on YouTube.
Thank you for joining us.
And you can find those down inthe description as well If you
want to click on those links andfollow.
Aaron, it's been fantastictalking to you today.
I hope I get anotheropportunity to interview you
(01:01:31):
down the stretch.
Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Absolutely, absolutely Just name the time of
day.
Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
All right, sounds like a plan.
And for everyone else out there, as always, I want you to stay
tuned, stay focused and staymotivated.
Warriors fall out.
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