Joe Quattrone 00:33
Welcome to the FUZEE’-ish podcast. I’m your host Joey Q and with me are JMG and Kary Youman as always stuff got the boys back together. We’ve got a really interesting episode to date, man. Well, don’t don’t change the podcast dials. You want to watch this show? Okay, gentlemen, we’ve got an interesting guest for today’s show. Die, man, well, super interesting guy. He’s been all over the world. He’s a coach that gets into, you know, coaching people and their health journey and stuff like that. What do you think our listeners are going to take away from this conversation we had with die today?

Kary Youman 01:15
I mean, I feel like at the end of the day, guys just have incredible energy. I think they’re just going to realize again, that regardless of where you are on the journey, you gotta start somewhere. And I feel like dying again, I mean, he was down. He found his way out. I think the listeners are gonna be really inspired by the star. Yeah, man,

JM Guthrie 01:33
What a profound amount of energy. And I learned that I die as well. As for David didn’t know that until the end of the interview. But um, yeah, I agree, Carrie, I think that just starting somewhere. But also, I think the thing that really resonated for me is the fact that all the changes that he’s made in his life have helped others to implement on their own. You know, they all start with making that decision for themselves, which centers back to a lot of what we talked about on this show. I also really loved the 2% podcast that he’s about to push out. It sounds really similar to a lot of the things that we think about here. And so just exciting to hear the world starting to change and the directions that we’re all so interested in.

Joe Quattrone 02:12
But listeners, I know many of you have sat in your beds late at night, and you’ve opened up Zillow, and you’ve cheated on your zip code. And you’ve thought to yourself, I wonder what my life would look like, If I lived somewhere else, and you punch in somewhere else. And you so I did that. That’s how it went up in Tennessee, right? And I cheated on LA and I bought up in Tennessee, but died and his wife decided to actually move across the world. They didn’t do it using Zillow, but I think you’ll find that his story, his trajectory, is his story about making their way back to North America and how they’re helping people is very interesting. And I love the dynamic between die and his wife and how she supported him throughout their journey. I think it’s a very, very keen insight into the way functional relationships can work and she gave him the adequate amount of space for him to open up and be vulnerable in the right ways. And I think that’s so clutch. So, ladies, gentlemen, do a solid for your spouse and listen to this episode. I don’t think you’ll regret it. Diamond well is a super dad dating his wife with a lead by example way of living in contagious personality, who is on a mission to positively impact 1 million role models around the globe to lead a functionally fit life through education, encouragement, and community. He is an award winning digital thought leader and author, distinguished Toastmaster and keynote speaker, former partner and chief operating officer of a multimillion dollar retail company. And a sought after lifestyle mentor and executive performance coach dai knows the struggle of the juggle, and keeping his health and happiness a priority. He models his work based on the five F’s fitness, family, faith, finances, with an overarching roof of fun, built on a rock solid foundation of health nuggets of wisdom and inspiration to take action to be your best self are guaranteed when you connect with die. So let’s dive right into it. Let’s do a little bit more of a linear format here so we can kind of, you know, give the listeners a little bit of a journey here. I do want to dwell a little bit on when you decided to quit drinking alcohol. But sure, let’s rewind back, you know, I guess what is it like in 20-25 years and talk about like, the formative years of becoming the dead man and it started us on that journey. What was going on in the earlier parts of your life like you know, getting into your career, meeting your wife, all that kind of stuff. We’ll start there. And then we’ll dive into some of those topics. So start from that point.

Dai Manuel 04:45
Cool. Well, thanks, Joy. You know, just just to give a little bit of context as well, you know, when you think about how we all learn or inform a lot of belief systems, right? It’s often through modeling and mentorship, right? I think we either modeled other people that we assume associate with we hang out with we watched, whether it’s a mentor or coach or, you know, we’re very good at watching what to do and then trying to do it ourselves but also with there’s that that modeling aspect of just I don’t know, try and try again. Right and and when I think back to at age nine, my parents separated and divorced, which sort of put me on a bit of a tailspin because I’m dating myself now as a kid of the 80s. Right. So right around that time, it was the early 80s, when my parents separated, divorced, there weren’t any resources plus, I mean, we didn’t have an internet. And there weren’t a lot of other parents that were separated, like in my class of 30 kids, there’s only one other classmate of mine that didn’t have his original parents together. So there was a lot of stigmatization around that. And so those are some of those earlier formative years. Because the next five years after that I was self medicating and what I mean by that I was eating a lot of unhealthy foods, playing video games, watching movies, very inactive. And by 15, I was morbidly obese. At which point, I just, you know, one day woke up, and I won’t go into the whole details, but I just came to a moment where it was hurting me more not to change, and I was finally ready to start doing something. And, you know, it took me six years to get to my heaviest, but it took me under two years to release that weight in order to develop a new healthy lifestyle. That’s what kick started me into coaching and mentorship, but also fitness, you know, because going through that physical transformation myself, obviously, people were watching, observing that change, and being friends of my parents coming to our house, and, you know, hear me at 17 years old, like, what you want to talk to me, you know, like, really, I have something of value to offer. And, you know, and they were very complimentary. And, and that’s sort of what kicked me into my 20s working as a personal trainer as a coach.

Joe Quattrone 06:45
I actually wanted to share that in common so I was 300 pounds at age 18 and 100 160 pounds by 21. And n j m actually has an interesting story he’ll get into not nearly as kind of severe but you know, weight loss was key to his journey with coming to sobriety coming to Mito and kicking in the bottle. So yeah, please continue. But I just want to let you know you’re good to hear. Thank you. I didn’t turn out to be a fitness coach. But

JM Guthrie 07:15
Neither of our jobs are chiseled as is either, so we gotta keep going. Yeah, exactly. It’s

Dai Manuel 07:21
my mom’s jaw line. Here and my dad.

JM Guthrie 07:25
Yeah, jealous. I’m jealous of both men. Well.

Dai Manuel 07:31
Listen, you know, in my 20s, I moved from Ontario, Toronto to Vancouver because I also wanted to escape. You know, I was 18. I graduated high school and was like, peace. I know. Because I found growing up in a small town, there were a lot of, well, let’s just say a lot of my social network, they still always associated me as that obese kid. Even like, a lot of the girls that were my age, like it just, it was funny, but I just wasn’t readily accepted. And, you know, I was always in the friendzone. And I was like, You know what, I want to reinvent myself, I want to be somebody who I believe I want to be, you know, and unfortunately, I wasn’t really well formed around that concept of what my values were because I didn’t really understand where I was at. I mean, my main motivation for losing the weight was I wanted a girlfriend, okay, sure. Want me? Right? We all want that. We want that attention, that validation, that little bit of an ego boost, right? That idea that we have somebody that wants us romantically?

JM Guthrie 08:29
Yeah, we got needs, man. We gotta do it. Yeah,

Dai Manuel 08:34
man, then I got into training, I got into training and I realized very quickly that holy crap, this is really hard to sustain not only a healthy lifestyle, but to, I mean, hours for dollars is really problematic, right. And I figured that out pretty quick. In my early 20s. I was like, Man, I don’t know how I’m going to have a lifestyle here. Because it’s taken me you know, about 14 to 15 hours a day to only build for six to seven hours. Because, you know, as a trainer, we sort of have to work when our clients are able to work. So it’s early morning, maybe a nooner. And then after work in the evening, it was very challenging. And,

JM Guthrie 09:09
but then I feel like a noob though.

Dai Manuel 09:18
It’s very Canadian. In my early 20s, I happened into a fitness equipment store. And this is a little funny side note. I went in to buy a heavy bag, you know, from this national fitness chain here. And it’s sort of similar to, you know, Dick’s Sporting Goods you have down south, they’re so similar to that, but it’s more specialty, just fitness. And so they have this great fitness equipment retailer. I went in to buy a heavy bag. The manager started talking to me and could tell that some of them were young. I was excited. She could tell that I was very passionate about fitness and talking about it. She was like, Hey, have you ever thought about working in places like this? And I’m like, No, tell me about it. She goes well, here’s the deal. And she went on to explain that. Yeah. And I had to basically ask her what it’s like, so you’re telling me if I help people buy the right product to give them the best results, and really support them with that, and the more people I help, the more money you’re gonna pay me? And she’s like, Yeah, like, Okay, well, can I start tomorrow? It was my first taste of performance base pay. And I realized there was no income cap, and I just excelled at it. Within 18 months, I was making as much as a junior lawyer, you know, as a new teacher. So I was like, I’m not going to finish my degree, I’m because I was thinking of being a lawyer or a teacher, you know, once I got my degree, and I was like, Well, I don’t want to do that. Now I want to stay in shape. And I think I can actually do really well doing this. And fast forward a few years later, I had an opportunity to form a joint venture partnership and found our own company, branching off from that national chain. And that was 17 years of my professional life. But, and I think this is the crux of where our conversations are really going to get interesting. I’d love to hear your journeys as well if time permits, but in my late teens, they’re around 17. I remember starting to get more social. As I developed this new healthy lifestyle, I started getting invited to parties, and I’m sure Joey and JM you have similar experiences with weight loss, you know, like, because your confidence starts to go up, right and your confidence, you start to go be more outgoing. Maybe you start to have more engaging conversations. Either way, I started getting invited to parties. But I was very introverted, very shy. And as such, I remember the day being given my first beer, and my second, and then eventually a third. And I remember by that third drink, I was like, talking to everybody. I mean, there’s some girls there. Oh, what can you do so seriously, seriously that like, I mean, I know, it’s such a cliche, right? They talked about the liquid courage, but it was instantaneous. And what was super interesting was, I was getting so much validation. And I was starving for that. Like, I know that that was really problematic. For me, I was always concerned about what people thought about me, because I wasn’t used to being so negative. And seeing the snickering in the halls, you know, the bullies picking on me like it just so this is very new. And I started getting invited to more social events, because people like the version of me when I was drinking. So very quickly, I started to realize that, wow, this is great. I’m becoming more social, I’m dating some girls, I have my first girlfriend, I’m like, wow, this is awesome. And I associated a lot of that success with alcohol. And I started to believe that people preferred hanging out with the drinking version of me than the sober version. That set in motion, 15 years of me and drinking being very good bedside friends, you know. And it was challenging, because at the same time in scaling my, you know, my first real business with a business partner, you know, we’re growing our chain of retail stores, to eight stores, b2b enterprise, e commerce across Ghana, so is an omni channel business in a retail space. And it was great, I learned a lot. But at the same time, I had this other lifestyle. And I was meeting my wife starting to have my kids in my mid 20s. So when my drinking was at its peak, you know, by my early 30s, that’s when the wheels on the bus started falling off. I couldn’t balance things any longer. Is

Joe Quattrone 13:20
Is that the time when you decided to stop drinking in your early 30s? Or was it much later?

Dai Manuel 13:25
Early? 30s? Yeah, around 30 to 32. So it’s about 14 years ago now. And it was largely due to my TEDx talk, sort of talks about the story of what happened. So I will give you sort of just a quick overview of it. I and it really, the point is my wife sat me down to talk about what life was going to look like co parenting our kids. She wasn’t willing to have me in the house anymore. And this is after us being together for 10 years. Well, it wasn’t what I wanted. I mean, I love my wife, I love our life. You know, I love my kids. Both of them were under the age of six at the time, my daughter’s and it was so far off the radar. For me, it was and I mean, and to say I was surprised I was but not true. Not really like I mean, there comes a point where I knew that straw would break that camel’s back, you know, and surely it did in that conversation. While we’re both sobbing across this table. You know, she asked me a very specific question. And I’m curious to know if you guys have had a similar realization when someone’s asked you the right question at the right time, right? Under the right circumstances and because everything can change in an instant. And my wife looked me in the eyes and said, guy you being the type of man that you would want to marry your daughter’s profound. It was like instant as I was, I mean, very triggered, to be honest with you guys. Like I was so triggered at the time, because that was rather bombastic. I was also extremely hungover at this moment when she was sharing this with me. And I got a bit on the back. Yeah, like I started backpedaling a bit, you know, trying to defend myself and all of a sudden I realized, what am I defending here? Hmm. You know, I really tried to see it from her perspective. And I realized I was I was the example to my kids at that moment of what a man is, what a father is, what a husband is, What a son is a brother, like a business owner, a community leader like, and if that’s what I’m showing is that and I know that daughters especially, and I don’t know how much you guys have gone into this, but I know that daughters often look for, you know, we set the template, right for what kind of men they’re, they end up looking for later on. And I realized that I didn’t want that template to be what they ended up with. Gotcha.

Joe Quattrone 15:38
So you see, at that point, you had reached a place in which you needed to make a change. Was making the change similar at all to how you were able to transform your body and get into health back in the day, or was it a completely different change?

Dai Manuel 15:53
You know, I love that you asked that because it was very similar. When I look back to the experience, you know, at 15, I remember getting into the shower one day, and I used to always turn the water on extra hot before I’d hop out of the shower, creating a lot of condensation. Because this would cover the mirror with condensation, like it would be completely fogged over. So when I got out of the shower and was talented off as that morbidly obese team, even if I looked in the mirror, I wouldn’t have to look at my reflection, wow. Like that was my hack, like I avoided. I mean, there’s so few photos of me back then I think there’s two, two photos I have to put in like one of them ended up in my book, it’s on my website, because a lot of people are like, they meet me that like, yeah, right. And I got to dig out with the one photo, right? And because I avoided that I avoided social sentience. I mean, I isolated myself a lot, and alcohol brought me out of that. But what created other problems,

JM Guthrie 16:44
one thing they use. So one thing we keep coming back to is it’s clear, you had the determination and had proven with the weight loss, that you had the ability as a human to, to really sort of focus on this thing to get better. What do you say to the majority of the people listening to this, who probably end up in a similar scenario as the one you just talked about with your wife where she says that, and they don’t have it. And so even though they have this profound statement, and really this, you have got to change, they don’t have it in them to make the change. And I’m dealing with something personally right now with a family member who has been sat down like that a number of times, and he’s going to lose his battle with this terrible addiction. Those are the people we’re really trying to get to. What do we share with those folks that aren’t necessarily able to just capture it as quickly as I think even the group on this call have?

Dai Manuel 17:40
It’s such a wonderful question, Jim. And, you know, I think back to some of the things I’ve had to work through, and it’s not been easy, and I think that’s the thing about change, most of our relationship with change is not necessarily a positive one. And when you think about all the changes that come our way, I often equate it to you remembering Raiders of Lost Ark 1982 movie, right, Harrison Ford. I mean, the first five minutes are gonna be epic, right? It’s very, very monumental. You see him there with his golden idol. And he’s rushing into this cave system, and he triggers a booby trap. And you have this massive boulder, like 10 times the size barreling down at him. And he’s just trying to run that. Well, this is a wonderful metaphor for change, and how most of us experience it changes the boulder, or Indiana, and that gold idol is whatever we’ve been working towards, in our lives, you know, those big goals, those big ambitions, those milestone moments that we chase, and we hold on to it with your life because we don’t want to lose it. You know, when life feels good, we want to stay good. But we know based on what Buddha said, like 22,020 300 years ago, there’s only one thing we know for certain. nothing is permanent, you know, the universe itself is impermanent. So this idea of change, if we accept it, and we accept that things don’t say as they are, I think we can start to be more positive in our involvement with change, but it doesn’t make it any easier. But I can honestly say it’s always worth it. Once you’ve reached the other side. And I tried to remind people of that because hope is such a powerful tool. You know, it’s an emotion, it’s a position perspective. But more than that, it’s that inner confidence and belief that something is possible. And

JM Guthrie 19:20
is that we’re like the fight so we always talk about having a mantra, it’s something to tie back. I love the Raiders of the server the five F’s came from to be able to help people to sort of grasp those things in something more tangible and something more, obviously, in some ways. Motivational as well. I mean, is that a fair assessment? I think

Dai Manuel 19:42
so. A lot of the times you know when you think about our own perspective on ourselves like that self perspective. When we’re not feeling good like our health like if our health our body especially isn’t feeling good if we can deal with a lot of aches and pains, a lot of extra inflammation because alcohol creates a lot of inflammation, especially in our joints plus retain water, which doesn’t help things, you know, so we feel a little bit heavier, maybe our joints in our movement is somewhat cramped, our sleeping patterns are going to be also depressed, you know, plus, our emotional regulation is all out of whack. You know, like, this is all I’m not an expert on alcohol. But I know you can go out there and you can learn all this stuff. You know, you guys speak to this stuff regularly and talk to people about this stuff all the time, you know, like, just, but alcohol itself is very hard on our bodies. That’s why we get drunk because our bodies can’t process it quickly enough. So it creates this sort of overload in our body. And we get this sort of inebriated state and it’s hard. And so when we’re in that state not feeling good about ourselves, it’s really hard to believe that anything else is possible. And so for me, every time I’ve had a serious change in my life, I’ve just refocused on the feeling in my body, that awareness that because I know when I’m feeling good in my body, I start to look at the world differently. You know, real quick, though,

Joe Quattrone 20:57
when you were so you mentioned the analogy of steaming up the bathroom and getting on the mirror. And I know at first your experience with alcohol was a social elixir that got you involved in a more fun and interesting way. But eventually, after 10 or so years of drinking? Did the alcohol also become the fog? Right? Like when you were going to the bottle? Was it because you were trying to mask the fact that you had this underlying issue and that it took some of the pain away in some regard? Like you didn’t like who you’d become almost Yeah.

Dai Manuel 21:33
Well, I think I was disappointed because I never really crossed the chasm. And what I mean by that is, you know, we grow up with certain ideals, or maybe a vision or a belief of who we’re, you know, growing into or evolving into, you know, we all did, I mean, as kids, as teenagers, we have these visions of what life’s gonna be like when we grow up, right? Maybe what kind of work, what kind of partners, you know, what kind of things we’ll be doing in our lives. But sometimes, I actually would say, probably most of the time, we don’t ask ourselves, well, what are the beliefs that allowed us to become that individual? What are the values that we make non negotiable in our lives? That would be there to support that version of me? And I know, I just ignored all that. You know, I was very focused on professional development, personal development, forget that, like, what’s that, you know, go in, like, What are you talking about? Right? Like I was very, just, again, you have to recognize the people I was hanging out with at the time. This is their belief system too, you know, so I was just doing what all the other guys are doing, that I was hanging out with and associated with drinking was normal. Talking about our wives when you’re drinking and complaining about them. That was also normalized. You know, skipping out on work, or turning my phone off and telling my wife Oh, I’m sorry, I’m home late, babe. It’s three in the morning. Oh, yeah, I know, I’m supposed to be home at 11. But my phone died, this is just an excuse, right? And that, again, was normalized. And for myself, you know, with that change, I knew I could change. But it didn’t hurt bad enough. You know, like, I think Les Brown has got a wonderful story. He talks about this dog. And this dog is sitting on a nail on a porch. And a young man comes up to this older man that’s sitting beside his dog on this porch because the dog is incessantly crying, and moaning and groaning on this young guy being a dog lovers like looking at the old guy like, dude, what’s wrong with your dog, man, every time I walked by your house, he’s out here, and he’s just crying all day long. The old man looks and he goes, Oh, don’t worry about it. He’s just sitting on a nail. The young guys looking at the dog and looking at the old guy and like, Huh, why doesn’t he just get off and move. And then the old guy looks at and he says, Boy, maybe it just doesn’t hurt bad enough. You know, and that’s always stuck with me, because how many of us deal with that little ache or that normalized pain point, but it’s become so normal? Like, it just doesn’t hurt bad enough to want to make a change, you know, to get off the nail,

Joe Quattrone 24:01
you know, and it’s so true, especially with dogs because dogs would never leave their own or even if there’s a male stuck to

Kary Youman 24:09
speak, speak of pain, die. I’m just curious. You know, there’s, there’s a quote that’s like, you know, pain pushes us until our vision pulls us and you talked about alcohol sort of being like liquid courage, you know, kind of feeling like Hancock in the sense where you kind of feel like a superhero once you got the booze in your system. And I’m just wondering for you, like when did your vision for what you’re creating today really start to formulate? Because I’m sure it wasn’t just overnight, but how did you sort of go from Hey, I kind of need this to exist to this is actually slowing me down. Let me move over into this frequency like what was that process like for you? Well,

Dai Manuel 24:44
I had to first of all eliminate alcohol for a period of time, you know, like, you just have to take that away entirely like that. You have to abstain, because I realized because I tried in the past, you know, limiting or reducing intake and never worked. Okay, never worked and worked for a very, very short period of time. But sure enough, yeah, it was just, it was just, I wasn’t fully committed to it. And I would be very good at giving myself excuses. But I also had a mentor of mine say die because I started sharing these excuses, right as he was trying to support me. And he says, you’ve used that excuse a few times now. You know, it’s not an excuse, if you use it. One of them is just a habit. I was like, Oh, you’re a dick. Like, but he was right. You know, he was absolutely correct. And, I started to look at just my habits. And once I gave up the alcohol, and I got my wife to support me, I just wanted her to have that support around the house, you know, and also like going out, and is there a certain things, I realized I had to abstain from like going out to the pub with my buddies to watch UFC because it was just too much associated there. Plus, even when I started socializing, all of them kept drinking. I wasn’t two rounds in. I was like, fun. Yeah, I can’t connect with anybody here. They’re not connected with me. And I started to realize, wow, it was I part of these conversations before, like, whoa, like, here’s the answer to your question, Jim was I also realized, I didn’t have the resources or the understanding of how to move past this and start to realize the actual day to day things that I can be doing to start to realize the vision of what I always wanted to be, which was a great father, a great man. And you have to qualify that and quantify it, right? Like, you have to spend some time looking inside of yourself, and also looking at other examples of great human beings, great men, and figuring out what are the characteristics that make them great? What do we find value? Because once you get the clarity of that, you can actually start to create a plan or a map to get there. But here’s the thing. Six weeks into this journey, without the alcohol, I was like, Whoa, I can’t do this. Like, that’s honestly what I thought I was like, I can’t do IT mean, maybe I should just quit giving up already. But I remember that I made the commitment to my wife on my daughter’s that day where I said I was gonna go one year without drinking. That’s all I said, I was just like, willing to make a one year commitment. I know, there’s people listening to this, like, you sound like an alcoholic, but one year is not going to help you. And I was like, No, I felt really confident I could cut it for a year, I have things under control. But the first six weeks, I realized that alcohol has become such an integral crutch in my life, and how IT functioned that by removing the crutch, I couldn’t walk right. You know, metaphorically speaking, it was like I was really challenged to just function and connect. And so I found support through a psychologist, as well as a therapist. And the therapist was a couple’s counselor for my wife, and I’d work on our communication skills, and so we could better connect. But also the psychologist was wonderful, because he really helped me figure out what I truly value? But also, what was the thing that kept bringing me back to drinking? Like, why do I want to constantly go to that place and be a fun guy who dies, the drinking version of me. It all tied back to my childhood. And I hate bringing that up. Because it sounds like a cliche. We hear this all the time, you know about all those things that happen in our adult life because of stuff that happened. This is a kid and I used to really fight that and rebel against that concept. But after I actually spent some time on it I started to realize there’s a lot of validation and truth to that. So

Joe Quattrone 28:18
real quick, yeah, I said six weeks, that’s about 4842 days. Yeah, just out of curiosity, because we’ve had a guest on before that wrote a book about habit change. And he says that about 66 days is about how much time you need to change a habit. So you’re about 14 days away from that at that point. Yeah. Did you see a change two weeks later? Like just trying to piece these things together? In my mind? Well,

Dai Manuel 28:41
I’ll tell you, not hugely, but when I started to have someone to talk to openly about this, because I gotta be honest, guys, I was very challenged to have serious deep conversations, like very open emotional conversations. My dad was very stoic, very introverted. He’s also a workaholic. And so, you know, I can remember, maybe I can count on two hands, how many times does my dad say he loves me? No, but to be fair, his parents, maybe I’ve said it twice to him in his lifetime, you know, so it was sort of perpetuated. But because of that lack of example, of how to connect as a man, I found vulnerability, very hard, very challenging. I could do it in the business sense of conversations, but when it came to personal, you know, I’ve been with my wife for 10 years at that point, and we hadn’t had a real vulnerable conversation in that time, because I wasn’t willing to go there. And here I was, you know, six weeks in at this sort of Crux point where I was like, considering quitting, you know, going back to drinking or continuing to move forward, but my wife and I were sitting on the couch and she’s looking at me, she’s like, What’s going on man? And, I could just feel these emotions bubbling up. And I was trying to suppress them because I was really good at suppressing them. And I think that’s also what alcohol allowed me to do. It allowed me to ignore that, move past it, have some fun, burn off some steam. So whatever those emotions were, I can just suppress them, press them down again. And it was this constant, sort of press them down, or they’re starting to come up, drink some more, or you can press them down again. And here, I was sober, looking at my wife, about to cry. And I just felt this urge to just tell her everything I was feeling. And it was verbal diarrhea, like I just brought it up all over my wife, okay, for like, 4045 minutes. And she’s, you know, my wife was such a kind listener and generous listener. She put her hand on my lap, I remember vividly, you know, she’s looking at me, she’s like, just just nodding. And the act of listening, like, just wonderful, was exactly what I needed in that moment, to be heard and acknowledged. And she didn’t say anything. And I got to the end of it. I was just like, she looks at me, she goes, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, you know, he’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this. And I’m looking at it. I’m like, Thanks, babe. And then she follows up with this and this is no joke. I think you should talk to somebody. Couple, and then the woman I was like, I just talked to you, what are you talking about? And

JM Guthrie 31:18
all that?

Dai Manuel 31:20
Do you need to talk to a professional? Right? Talk to somebody? And I had such a huge stigma. I don’t think you guys will watch the Sopranos. Sure. Yeah, sure. Remember, you know, Tony Soprano’s approach to mental health. And there’s a whole sort of approach to mental health, especially when you start seeing the psychologist, right? Like psychiatrists. Just that’s how I felt about psychology and psychologists, right? Like,

JM Guthrie 31:42
a lot of F that from him. Yes, yes, we

Dai Manuel 31:45
get back. And, but I said, you know, what, I? Okay, I will, because I wanted to change, you know, but I had no idea how to do it. Like to sustain it, I should say, and, and that’s what I found that helps. And also, for anybody listening or watching this right now, and I don’t know if you guys have similar experience with these types of mental health professionals, but it wasn’t a forever thing. I went all in for six months. And I think this is the piece that I’ve learned through change is that when you make a decision to change, and you follow it up with decisive action, it’s going to happen. Yeah, you know, it’s gonna happen, it just does, it can’t help but not happen, you know, like, it won’t not like it will because you’re doing the things that you’ve always identified, you need to do to start to see the change. And now you’re actually taking action with that. So I went all in just like I went all in at 15. With my fitness change, I changed my nutrition, I changed my fitness, you know, and I just was consistent and frequent with that. And sure enough, two years later, I was a healthy fit guy. Yeah, my mental health wasn’t improved, but my physical health was awesome. You know, and, and same now at 32. Going all in with the inner work, the personal development, to get the clarity and the confidence. So I knew what actions to take, as well as stop procrastinating putting off the changes that I wanted to make.

JM Guthrie 33:05
Yeah, I mean, I love this because it centers around everything we talk about on this show. And the reality is, you can’t lose weight, you can’t quit drinking, you can’t become a better man and father a better spouse, for your wife, unless you’re ready to make that commitment for yourself. And we all find our ways to do that differently. But obviously, your TED talk around vulnerability in 2021 was tip of the spear stuff. I mean, a lot of people are talking about that today and 2023. But you were talking about this two years ago. Congratulations, that’s amazing you stepped out in this idea of masculinity way before a lot of other people felt comfortable. And that’s a big deal, right? And so our ability as humans, to understand that for ourselves, and we talked about this all the time, well, it might sound selfish, that we have to talk to someone else for ourselves to get it right. The reality is nothing’s going to change unless we commit to it as ourselves. And that’s where this whole idea of me totally for us as calm is that you can’t have a different relationship with alcohol. You can’t have better connectedness with your kids or your wife or your colleagues or your friends and community like on this show. Unless you’re feeling good about who you are, in your heart about yourself and about all the decisions that we’re making. Right. And so I just love this story. I think it’s so many so many parallels to all the things we talked about. There’s a song right now I’m sure you guys have heard with the Darius record just laid a verse on it by I think DAX it’s called to be a man and the end of Darius Rucker’s verse which I cried the first time I heard it. It says there’s so much screaming on the inside but won’t even let it out. So there’s so many men out there that feel the way that you did die in that moment and you ultimately gave it all to your wife in those 45 minutes that are just keeping it in. Right We all have those stories and all have those experiences. And what we’re trying to create on this show is a community and a fellowship of people that want to let you be vulnerable, whether you’re men or women, or to your point that it’s a human thing. And ultimately, putting it out there, putting yourself in a position that you’re a bit vulnerable. And maybe you don’t sound like the man that you’re supposed to because of the stillness of your dad. That’s okay, we’re here for you. So I really appreciate that story, man,

Joe Quattrone 35:28
jam. Let me talk to the audience real quick, you’re listening to the fuzzy ish podcast, the kind of sober show, we’re here with di Manuel, go to Fuzzy ish podcast.com to check out all of our episodes, including this one. And Mrs. Manuel just dropped the dime of the year, you should probably see a psychologist, if you need to see a psychologist, you just got to talk to somebody if you need to. So, let’s pivot a little bit because I want to start getting into the Wonder lust phase of the manual clan. And I know that that topic is going to hit home to care for Mr. Human up here. So describe to us how you wound up in Bali? And why did you come back to North America?

Dai Manuel 36:08
Yeah, well, it wasn’t my first choice. But I did come back. And well, let’s put it this way. When you go through that drastic period, it’s like, here’s the thing. When I said no more to alcohol, I created so much space to say yes to a bunch of other things I wanted to do. You know, because you don’t realize how much energy goes into the drinking, especially the recovery. Okay, like, I was finding that, you know, usually I’d lose a couple days after an all nighter, right? Like, I just would lose 48 to 72 hours, I was very unproductive, felt really low, my fitness would falter, like just everything was sort of falling apart. And I’d have to reset, and then you know, go for a couple of days, and then again, fall. And so it was this sort of two steps forward, two steps back. So I really didn’t feel like I was advancing at all, which is hard. But then the cool part was, as soon as I created the habit of No more drinking, you know, because I went through that first year, at the end of the year I looked at my wife and was like, You know what, I had so much change this one year? What if I kept going? Yeah, let’s like, Oh, I love it. I don’t know exactly. And so I kept going, you know, even to this day, still going. And what happened was I realized going through those changes, that I started to get really clear on the things that I wanted to do with my life. And this is scary. And I want full disclosure on this. Because when you go through this process, and I’m sure you guys have similar stories, you go through this, you gain a lot of the clarity, because a lot of the brain fog starts to go away. Right, a lot of those feelings start to get more clear. Plus, we start to see what’s possible with these clear eyes, you know, and I realized the path that I was on at that moment, you know, scaling a company. And for 17 years, you know, it wasn’t like I was thinking, I honestly thought this is it. You know, I was the CEO and I was being groomed to be the CEO. My business partner is 20 years my senior so he was already thinking like I’m getting ready to retire. His kids are almost done with University at that point. And he’s thinking, Oh, I’m gonna give you the keys. And you can run this thing for a while, you know, and, and I honestly thought that’s what I wanted for so many years. And then all of a sudden, I got sobriety . I got all these changes in that year. And I realized, holy crap, I don’t want his life anymore. Because I realized that’s what I was attracted to all his success being 20 years, my senior, I saw all the things that he had done. And I envisioned that that was gonna be my life too. And I started realizing I don’t want his life, I want my own. And I came to a realization that the career I was in, and this path was not going to get me there. And so that’s scary, right? Because now it’s like, oh, geez, I’ve got my family to think about, you know, we’ve got a life here in Vancouver, we’ve got, you know, my two kids are in school, and my wife’s got her career, you know, like, things are really stable. And for everybody out there looking in, you know, the thinking life is great for us. And meanwhile, we are feeling like things are missing. There were things that we wanted to do. My wife is one of the major travelers, but she always did. And I was the one that got her in her early 20s to give up travel to stay with me, you know, because I had a career and I wasn’t willing to leave. She was willing to stay. And meanwhile, she came back from travel, she was always going away for a year and then she’d come back for some time to save some money. And then she’d go traveling again. And so we sort of had this on and off relationship for about 18 months. And then she eventually came back and off we went to have this life together. But I always promised because she said right from the beginning I’d love to have as my kids get older. I’d like to be a traveling family for a period of time. I kinda remember that but not really but she remembered it and she reminded me of it and she told me a podcast frequently. You know she’d sent me Oh, give us a listen. There’s a guy here that was, you know, running his own company. And then he and his family left and other digital nomads and I’m like, Yeah Like, she was dripping on me. And now all of a sudden I got to a place and I was like I keep saying no, no, no, we can’t. We can’t, we can’t. And I started thinking, Well, why not? Why not? You know, that feels more aligned with who I’m becoming now. Because I started doing a lot of things online. Also, at the same time, I started building communities online, but I had no intention to monetize what I was doing online, because I was getting so much fulfillment from it. Plus, I had my existing company that was paying me very well. So there was no need to do anything online, other than just give stuff away and help people. And I loved it, it made me feel so good. So all of a sudden, you know, I had a friend of mine and digital marketing started looking at my platform, and he’s like, Dude, are you making any money with this? And I’m like, Dude, you can make money with this? And he’s like, Yeah. And I’m like, Well, how, and, and then I was turned on to Gary Vaynerchuk book, you know, crush it. First Edition, you know, I’m gonna read it on a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. And when I came back, everything changed for me, you know, from that book, and we started putting in motion this plan, that within 20 months, I would exit out, you know, or like, leave. Originally I was thinking of leaving just for one year, but then we finally got there. I was like, No, I’m gone forever. I’m not coming back to this. My wife a month after I quit my gig, she quit hers. Two months after that, we pulled the kids out of school, you know, it’s like, late fall at that point. And everyone is like, what are you guys doing? You know, like, we started giving her stuff away, we basically threw a bunch of stuff in stores that had those emotional, you know, value. And then we packed up the SUV. And at the same time, I’d been writing a book during that final 18 months at fitness down, you know, that was my former company. And right at the same time that the book was being released and published, that’s when we decided to go south and start our road trip as a family. We had no itinerary. No idea of where we were gonna go, what we were going to do, but I mean, it was like winter in Vancouver, it’s wet, snowy and cold. We were like, we want the sun. So we just started going south. But we just went south, we ended up in California, spent a bunch of months traveling around the US, and then Canada and the summer again. And we were just experiencing life. And I was starting to figure out how to make money online. At the same time, we didn’t have a lot of savings. So I want people to know, it’s not like we had an ordinary amount of money. I also exited the company, not at a good time. But I didn’t care that I was done. You know, I was done. I don’t want to be here anymore. So I was like, I’ll just cut my losses and let it be, we’ll move it on. My dad was sick, very sick, he had pancreatitis, and then it eventually evolved and progressed into pancreatic cancer. And we knew that it was just a matter of time. And that’s why predominantly, for the first couple of years, we stayed in North America and in our travels, he got sick, we went back to Ontario, just outside of Toronto, and we lived there for six months during his entire life. And again, you know what the universe helps in certain ways. As much as we were uncertain of the path we were on, had I not exited out of that company, my old role and my wife left and pulled the kid at school would not have had that flexibility to take six months to spend with my dad at that end of life. So you know, there’s always that silver lining at times. And I’m very regretful about that. But after my dad passed, like, within four weeks, my wife and I were looking at each other just like we’ve talked about going overseas. What are we doing here? Do we want to go? And we’re like, sure what, why don’t my wife have always spoken positively about Indonesia and Southeast Asia. And also, I’m Costa living a quality of life. Whether there’s like Check, check, check, check, right? And it’s like, you do the pros and cons, right? Like, you know, the old pros and cons. You know, like, I had all pros, there’s like no cons. And, and so we decided, let’s go to Bali for three months. We’ll have that as a home base. We rented a place on Airbnb sight unseen. So as soon as we got there, and we went to that villa, we loved it. We were having a good time. We got to the end of three months, and we’re like, get ready to move back to Vancouver. And we’re like, why are we going back? You know, and my wife looked at me, she goes, I don’t know. And we don’t really need to and I’m like, why don’t we stay here for a bit. So we did come back for two months just to tie up some loose ends. Then we went back to Bali. And two and a bit years later, you know, because my kids we always said if you want to finish high school in Vancouver, we will honor that. Sure enough, they played the card. And so we came back. My daughter had a couple of years left and my youngest daughter had to finish out four years. And you know now they’re both off at university. We’re newly empty nesters. And now we’re like, Oh, where are we gonna go next? But that was really the arc there of how we came into travel. But how we ended up in Southeast Asia and I gotta tell you, like, if you have an opportunity to go to Southeast Asia and you haven’t been, you know, put it on the list. It’s a wonderful place and there’s so many great communities of people to connect with there and they. And I had no idea of any of that before I started traveling. But as soon as you start, if you’re open to connecting with, like either nomadic and other people that are into this lifestyle, there’s so many of them out there. It’s ridiculous. I had no idea until it was part of it, you

Joe Quattrone 45:13
know, real quick question on the culture of that, like, being somebody that’s, in your case, very traditionally sober. How was it like going into these different countries? Like, are there other people that are pursuing wellness, like you were and kind of kicking those habits? Like, how did you find your tribe? Yeah,

Dai Manuel 45:33
Bali was really interesting, because also, for those that don’t know, Indonesia, is largely Muslim. And because of that, I mean, they don’t drink. Yeah, and alcohol is heavily taxed heavily, you know, like yellow tail wine from Australia, right? Like the, I don’t know, they’re like, what, six or seven bucks a bottle kind of thing. It would be 60 bucks in Bali. Wow. Okay, just gets you 10x The alcohol so if you’re a drinker, you can drink the Bintang, which is like their version of Corona. Right? Nice and cheap. It’s like, I don’t know. Do you guys know, British humor? Like, have you ever heard of Monty Python? Yeah. Well, not not to put, uh, you know, to dish any digs here towards, you know, us, you know, nice Americans. But I gotta tell you, there was an old joke by Monty Python where they would say, you know, drinking American draft is like making love in a canoe. It’s effing close to water. Soy bintang Corona, they’re all similar, right? And so being a non drink over there was really easy, because a lot of people were adapting to that lifestyle. You know, a lot of people are very health orientated. They’re in Bali. I mean, you can’t help it’s very healthy living, very low stress. I mean, I had a little bit of a bad habit. It was a massage massage habit. I was doing like, for a week. But I mean, you know, the $8 a massage, it was like, yeah, it’s not gonna break the bank. It’s all good. It’s the one of the things I missed the most, you know, a couple gym memberships. You know, like, there’s great yoga, who’s surfing. I mean, it’s just a wonderful lifestyle. But because of that lifestyle, you tend to meet a lot of cool little groups of people. And the easiest way to do that is look for the co working spaces initially, right? Because the co working spaces is the hub where everybody meets. Yeah, and there’s tons all the time there’s free events. Doesn’t matter what country we go to, once you find the one of my favorites was the dojo. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, it closed and never reopened. But it was a wonderful co-working space. They had events every day, a couple events. So they were great mixers, and they were free to attend. So that’s what I started with. Also, I found Toastmasters. They were running Toastmasters, there were two clubs in Bali. By the time I left, there were four clubs, one of which I helped start. And I got roped into being the president of one club in particular, and, and but I loved it, you know, because it was another way for me to connect with other people, and then eventually started a men’s group as well. Because I’m the kind of guy who if I can’t find a community, I’m just going to build one. Right? And I’m not afraid to do that. I’ve done that a lot. And it’s fun, right? So that’s, I don’t know if that answered your question. But it’s a great place to go of course. And

Joe Quattrone 48:19
Fast forwarding to now, knowing that we’re gonna have to wrap up in a little bit, what’s going on in your life right now? What do you want to kind of school our audience on like, what’s, what’s going on and die manuals life? Well,

Dai Manuel 48:32
I’m taking a page out of your guy’s book, I’m finally about to launch a podcast. Finally,

Joe Quattrone 48:38
Finally, I expect an invite in my email address. So one of these days each of you

Dai Manuel 48:43
are getting one, each of you are getting one up, I will, I will want to interview each of you individually. Because I’m not doing a panel yet. But I know each of your stories are just amazing. So look forward to that. But I’m finally doing that, you know, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for five years, but just haven’t made it a priority based on other projects. But now being an empty nester, I have the time and I have the space. And I’m excited about it. You know, I’m also launching a new community, a new website. So there’s all these new things coming out. And again, I’m just feeling excited to get back into creation mode, I feel that I lost a lot of steam during COVID full full admitted to that, you know, I I saw my business 60% of my forecasted revenue in that first year drop, like just gone, because I couldn’t, in my right mind charged my clients to continue to work with him when they were then looking down the barrel of a gun and seeing their revenues also fall off, you know. And so, it took a little while to come back from that, you know, it took about eight months to rebuild and get back to where I was and, and but I’m now in that place where I’m ready to get back to creating, connecting and just really trying to build something of value for people. So that’s what’s going on for me right now. So thanks for asking Joey Yeah, so

JM Guthrie 50:00
What’s the premise of the podcast? Let’s start, what’s the stage you’re gonna take with these five years, kick off?

Dai Manuel 50:09
Well, it’s called the 2% solution. a book I wrote a number of years ago, it’s called the Whole Life Fitness manifesto. And it’s all about teaching people how to use 2% of every 24 hours. I know you’re all doing the math right now in your head, it’s 30 minutes a day, by the way. So I find it’s easier for me to get people to commit to doing 2% of their day to dedicate to their own self development. And what I mean by that it’s 15 minutes of movement of purpose. Five minutes of mindful meditation, immediately followed up with 10 minutes of intense or intentional personal development. So this is where we listen to great podcasts like yours. We listen to an audible book, we talk to a mentor, but we spend 10 minutes really focusing on putting positive inputs in because I can honestly say, for anybody out there that’s frustrated with lack of progress in their life, you got to look at what are the inputs, because the inputs influenced the outputs. I mean, this is science 101, right, the scientific method, you got to gauge the inputs, the gauge the outputs, and, and so the 2% solution is just that I’m interviewing people to share that that crux moment in their life, where they realize that consistent little habit that they’ve been doing so frequently, has created massive shift for them in their life.

JM Guthrie 51:17
To segue to the product in practice, man, I mean, it could be

Kary Youman 51:20
the more we do that, before we do that I’m dying to share some incredible stuff. Really cool to have you here. But I want to just go back just a bit. You talked about that moment when your wife sort of sat you down, and just asked you if you’re being the type of man that you would want your daughter to be with. And as you’ve been talking, you’ve been speaking a lot about just examples of good men or just that community to sort of take on this new role of being sober living this Mito lifestyle. So one of the pillars of me is fellowship. Again, you talked about creating this new community. And this isn’t fellowship from necessarily a religious view. It’s more from just a communal space. But I’m just curious about you. You talked about developing this new community, but along the way, where have you found that has been a big part of what you’ve done? Because it sounds like you haven’t done it? So well? Can you speak a little bit about

Dai Manuel 52:12
that? Yeah, I’ll give credit always to where credit’s due and the people that I’ve been able to connect with and associate with, but also just really become friends, you know, it’s been so essential to my development, as a human as a man, you know, like getting around other great men that I feel are doing things that are in alignment to my values. I know, by being associated with them, good things are gonna happen, because it’s instant accountability. But it’s also just easy. It’s easy, right? Because we’re, we’re normalizing certain habits, and they’re good habits. So we’re not gonna, we’re not normalizing. The other stuff is we’re really focused on the positive, but it’s nice to always have these other examples. But you know, this fellowship comment that you made, I think, is so critical, because if people, especially men, you know, men that are struggling, that are listening to this, watching this, women got it figured out, I mean, women, they can connect and talk about anything. Us, man, that’s so much, right. Like, it’s not exactly a role model, but I think it’s gonna change and it is changing because of platforms, like, builds, you know, you’re normalizing the conversation, you’re reducing the stigmatization, you’re making it more acceptable to talk about this stuff. But still having a community where you can have those vulnerable conversations in a safe space. You know, where you know, what is shared there is going to stay there. That was instrumental in the last five years of my life, you know, like, in me getting to where I am now, especially mentally, physically and emotionally, and spiritually, because you start to develop these really deep relationships, because you start to realize when you start opening up about things that you’re challenged by, and there’s other three other men on the other side of that table, looking back at it putting up their hands like, me, too. You start to realize, like, Why did I take 20 years to talk about this problem? Right here? I thought no one would understand me because I was alone with this issue. And there are three guys, right because people got this exact same challenge or and maybe they’ve worked their way through it already. And so there’s that mentorship, opportunity to learn from others. You know, that’s when we started mentorship meetups. You know, it was just this idea of bringing men together to meet up very specifically to connect in a vulnerable way, but also a respectful way. And I think that’s essential. You know, it’s been essential for my life. And I think anybody that’s had a similar experience would also agree to that.

JM Guthrie 54:32
Have you ever read the book from strength to strength? You know, Cinder read Arthur Brooks. So it’s basically about the second it’s about having a positive second half of life which, you know, at least all of us are close to if not already in, and it’s got it at one point it talks about seven things to you know, do your best to have a happy well life and ad and the seven things you had probably, obviously answered no smoke gang good relationship with alcohol, healthy body weight exercise, exercise your mind to coping mechanism of conflict. And then the seventh is relationships and strong ones and not just your spouse. And then he goes on to say, even though it’s number seven, the strength of relationships is actually the most important. In fact, the men in particular that have the best relationships at 50 end up having the most happy and well life at 80. And I think, man, you just you parallel that pretty closely and I’m a huge subscriber even before listening to you say that, but maybe a good audible,

Joe Quattrone 55:42
let’s

55:43
transition. I mentioned that. I gotta

Dai Manuel 55:47
say, if you guys are familiar with Dan Butner, Dr. Dan. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So the blue zones? If you look at the power nine, right, like, yeah, it echoes and lines up with everything you just said. And now here’s people in those five pockets living to be 100 plus, and they’re not just like waiting to die, right. Like they’re, they’re actors. They’re getting after it. Yeah, yeah, they’re getting after their loved one or living independently still. Right. Like, yeah, if we look at that, I think that’s also just a wonderful example, that will confirm what you just said, you know, because it’s like proven, you know, there’s some great documentation to support. But it’s all basic stuff. It’s not stuff that costs money. You know, it’s all stuff that’s accessible.

Joe Quattrone 56:27
Yeah, we’re getting some really good products and practices here. So we got two more segments, segments to get through before we let you go on your way with products and practices. And we’ve got a new segment. So bringing it back to your methodology that you’re trying to espouse and trying to get people to follow into. Some people might be sitting back and thinking, Well, yeah, but I don’t have enough time to even 30 minutes, even 10 minutes to practice something different. I would argue, just because I could go into like a 30 minute rant all alone on how much negative news we’re consuming every day. So real quick to our listeners out there, you do have time. I know you’re listening to the daily, you’re listening to all these podcasts, and nothing against our fellow podcasters out there that are doing a fantastic job. But you could take 10 minutes away from the toxic sludge that is the American political news still out there. To consume something positive, you can come in, I’ll go first since I’ve got some ready made stuff here on my face. And I won’t get into the religious stuff, guys. I know you guys think I’m just gonna pull the Bible out. But I’m not. My buddy Jason Donnelly, just published Cold Feet, which talks about how he froze his midlife crisis off. He lost a lot of weight by moving to Denmark and doing cold plunges all the time. So there’s a lot of ways you can pivot your habits just slightly to, you know, make yourself not forget about the lifestyle that you used to live. But put yourself in a more of a positive habit mentality to go along with the fitness and the eating right, and stuff like that. So die. From your perspective, what are some of those things that you do to you know, when you’re going through that 30 minute journey, and then you’re down to the 10 minutes to do something positive for yourself, consume something positive that you’re consuming.

Dai Manuel 58:17
I like Audible books, because there’s one thing I love to do as far as I like to get into my own body, and I love walking. You know, it’s one thing that’s one of the things why I love Vancouver, it is a very pedestrian friendly city. Let’s put it that way. There’s lots of beautiful places to walk. And so I’ll throw on my headset, you know, and I’ll put on an audible book and I’ll walk right now. I’m really listening to the Way of the Superior Man by David Data, a great book, a wonderful resource for those that are looking for something. It’s really interesting. I know, my wife, when she first saw the title, she was like, What’s chauvinistic piece of crap does this, like, that’s not what it means take a look at this, just read the first time she’s read the first time say, Oh, this is nice. I like this, you know, so wonderful resource. And then on top of that, it’s just connecting with certain guys that I know, will call me out. You know, like, I have low days, and I’m part of this men’s group, there’s only like five of us in it. And we have a WhatsApp feed. And we meet every two weeks for a face to face over zoom or whatnot. But during those two weeks before, where we meet, if we ever have a challenge or a low day, we have certain keywords that we’ll post in the WhatsApp group, which will signal that we’re having a low moment. And that’s where the other four guys will come to support us through that, because we all know there’s going to be the highs and lows and just life. And so it’s nice knowing that you have that support network. And just even a quick two minute check in with those guys is enough. It’s enough for me to just feel I’m not alone. I’m gonna be okay, gonna get through this. And I’ve got these guys that I can rely on if I need help, you know, and that’s, that’s one of the little things those are two little hats. bits that are instrumental to me just regulating a little bit more effectively, you know, cool.

Joe Quattrone 1:00:05
Carrie JM, do you have examples that you want to bring to the table this week?

Kary Youman 1:00:09
I mean, I think for me, I love what you just shared . I just finished reading a book that I read a while back called The 5am Club by Robin Sharma. It’s a really good book, you haven’t heard of it. But essentially, it just talks about sort of the power of the morning, especially the early mornings, my wife and son are traveling now. So they’re not here. But generally, when they’re here, it’s you know, pretty much on everyone’s up, it’s hard to get stuff done. So just finishing that and just recalling, for me getting up a little bit earlier so that I can, you know, meditate on exercise and journal. I just feel like having that as a foundation really just sort of, I don’t know everything else that happens in the day. It’s like, like you said, like, you’re gonna have your highs and lows. But I think for me, it’s not panicking when things get crazy, just still being able to walk into it with the breath. Also, just knowing that I have some great people around me. Yeah, just keep me grounded. That’s been really helpful for me. Powerful, powerful. Yeah.

JM Guthrie 1:01:02
Now the same. I think that book from strength to strength just got done. I’m an audible guy, too. I like to do it while I’m moving my body versus reading the words. I sometimes have it in both formats at the same time. So definitely still all about that. Also just had some challenging stuff happening personally with with one of my family members in kind of around this topic and have been able to connect to a few people that kind of give it to me real I like the way that you said that because especially as you get to a certain point in your life, and even a certain success in business or in your professional life, people don’t necessarily give it to you straight. And it’s important. And I hold both Joe and Carrie to this esteemed bill, they’ll give it to me straight when necessary. And then I have a couple buddies who have known me my whole life, who want in particular after our my bachelor party basically said, Dude, I don’t even want to be in your wedding after how you acted, which is such an, you know, sort of an important part of our story on this show that we’ve never even really talked about, I was just such an idiot with alcohol. But I talked to him this week about this other thing. And he just lost his grandmother too. And it’s so interesting how quickly you can reconnect with people that have been that fiber of your life through trial and tribulation, but also success. And it’s just such a reminder of how important relationships are both the good ones and the bad ones, but also just keeping those solid. One of the things you said in your TEDx about leaving the conversation feeling better than when I arrived. And man, I think that’s such a powerful thing. And I feel the same about today’s conversation. So thanks a lot.

Joe Quattrone 1:02:39
It’s so funny. And I’ll leave the audience with a quick little anecdote. There’s no author that I want to cite here or anything like that. But I’ve been talking to my wife a lot lately, because I’ve been seeing this both pop up and you know, scientific conversations as well as spiritual conversations. The fact that your brain can’t respond to anxiety and gratitude at the same time, it’s one or the other. It’s binary. So if you want to flush out anxiety and stress, you just think about the things you’re grateful for. Right? So because your brain doesn’t have space to do both of those activities. So that’s something to keep in mind. There’s a reason why gratitude journals are a thing. And it’s it sounds like all of us are kind of connecting on his right even in tough times. We still have so much stuff to be grateful for. Something I’m grateful for is going on the internet and seeing examples of celebrities that are talking about their sobriety dates, anniversaries,

Kary Youman 1:03:34
so hopefully I can see you guys face if you’re not watching this, make sure you turn on the visual so you can see it. So

Joe Quattrone 1:03:41
BuzzFeed, well, they published an article based on Jessica Simpson’s Instagram post recently, so I’m bringing it to Jessica Simpson. So I don’t know if you guys have seen this article recently. If not, go check it out on Buzzfeed right now we’re talking. She posted a picture of herself from six years ago when she quit drinking alcohol. Like seriously you can not recognize who that person is from the old days like Nick and Jessica days on trashy reality TV and stuff like that. But now she looks much more like your former self in fact she probably looks better than she’s ever looked in her life she’s six years sober so kudos to Jessica Simpson that’s around the how much time I’ve been off of alcohol but just knowing that a lot of us here if with the exception of Carrie the chiseled Greek got over there in the right hand corner of my I have battled weight issues and in appearance issues. What do you have to say to those people that you know are posting some of these before and after photos of their sobriety journey with being alcohol free and how it’s really transformed their appearance? I mean, obviously you did this for a living. But what can you offer to the audience like that, to me that’s incredible. Like I just look at her and she looks so healthy and it’s like Amazing.

Dai Manuel 1:05:01
Well, I think it’s so yeah, this is a, I’m trying to be sensitive to this and why I’m bringing this up. And we’re, we’re more than just who we are physically right. And I think we’re all in agreement to that. And I want people to recognize that the well-being and health is the benefit of making the change the byproduct it is, and that is just, but it’s not the reason why we do it. You know, because I honestly feel the reason why we want to do it should be so much more than just the physical. Sure, you know, it has to be tied into everything that makes us up, you know, our DNA, those values, like it’s aligning with values, when you align with your values. It’s amazing how effortless things can feel at times, you know, you hear about people, they talk about flow states or being in the zone, right? Like, when we’re feeling good, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, it’s incredible how we can sort of just navigate the challenges in life because our natural resiliency is just more present. It’s activated, right, like, and the funny thing is, resiliency is in all of our DNA as human beings. I mean, there’s like almost a billion of us on this planet. And it’s not by accident. I mean, and we’re living in some pretty harsh conditions in certain parts, but yet people are thriving. Right, and, and so I think sometimes it’s just remembering that we’re already we have this ability to handle hard things and to do hard stuff, and to do different things and having that confidence that, Hey, it’s okay, just get started. But the cool thing is, you aren’t going to gain a lot of health benefits by making that change, you are going to look better your skin is going to clear up especially, that’s one of the first things that happens, you know, especially if you’re drinking lots of water to flush the system. At the same time, when you’re detoxing and coming off alcohol. Got a replaceable lot of water, you know, add a little bit of lemon in there even. And it’ll be Amazing that how quickly your physical appearance will start to change. Plus, you flush all that inflammation. So instantly, I know I have clients, you know, I’ll get them within 30 days, they’ve lost as much as 20 pounds, and they’re like, Well, I’ve lost 40 pounds. I’m like, Hey, most of that was water, just so you know. And it’s because we’re so inflamed right from alcohol. That’s what it does, we’ve retained a ton of fluids. So instantly, within 30 days of just saying no to alcohol, I guarantee whoever you are, you’re going to feel better. When you start feeling better, you’re going to think differently. When you start thinking differently. You’re just gonna start living life differently. Well, I

Joe Quattrone 1:07:27
I don’t think it’s all about vanity. She did mention in the article that you didn’t mention in the article that one of the main reasons she quit drinking was because it came to a crescendo when she couldn’t get her kids dressed for Halloween. And that made her feel worse than her physical appearance. So similar to a lot of us, you know, which when you look in the mirror and you decide D Is this the person that you Is this the parent you want to be? Is this the dad is the mom, is this the brothers, the sister. Those moments transcend the bad photo, right? And there’s no. So kudos to Jessica and her journey. Jessica, if you’re listening, I don’t I doubt you’re listening. But if you’re listening, you want to come on the show. You want to talk about it when you’re when the reality is you can’t you can’t

Dai Manuel 1:08:08
Let’s make sure we tag the heck out of her on all four of our accounts. Right? Well, we’ll get her on your show for sure and

JM Guthrie 1:08:13
visualize how we’re feeling in our hearts. Right. But the proof is in those pictures that you look at Macaulay Culkin from addicted to now the Jessica Simpson example. It sounds like the diamond I certainly know The JMG example from the nap.

Joe Quattrone 1:08:28
Like I don’t think he’s completely quit drinking but he’s like kind of he’s gone on a little duty said he

JM Guthrie 1:08:32
has water in his red cup at the CMAS water just to keep the brand he had. He had his solo cup, but he had sparkling water and it’s so good on your posts. Good on you, Austin Post Malone, man, everybody’s out here doing better.

Joe Quattrone 1:08:44
Cool, well die. It’s been a pleasure having you. We really appreciate you. And is there a website or an Instagram handle or TikTok handle you want to point anybody to? Well, I’m

Dai Manuel 1:08:54
I’m still trying to figure out TikTok So Instagram is probably better. It’s just my name. You know if you can spell my name right, you’ll find me as gist Dai, which is a Welsh name for David, by the way. And then my last name is Manuel so diamond, well, you’ll find me. I am on all the social networks with the same handle. So it is pretty easy to find even my website’s diamond oil.com. It’s like, if you can spell my name, right? You’re gonna find me and I always say reach out to me. But I always apologize in advance personally, because I’m Canadian. But secondly, because I’m a one man army. I mean, I have people that work on my team, but I handle all the communications myself personally for you. I’m a stickler for that stuff. So I just asked give me a bit of grace. If I don’t respond right away. I will get back to you. But it might be a couple of days. That’s all

Kary Youman 1:09:36
I’ll just say you may need to hire an assistant because if you’re able to help people lose 20 pounds in 30 days, great and water. Yeah.

Dai Manuel 1:09:44
Well walking and drinking water. But you’d be surprised if you’re quite overweight and you’ve been drinking a lot for a while. Everyone can experience a similar sort of weight loss, maybe not 20 pounds and the gentleman that I was working with, he wasn’t the height 200 So just so you know. So we’re not Talking like he was losing, you know, 30% of his body weight. It was a smaller segment. So, full disclosure, full disclosure.

Joe Quattrone 1:10:08
Well, thanks so much for coming on. But thanks for coming. Oh, dude. Thank you.

Dai Manuel 1:10:15
I appreciate that. Yeah, email gives you guys a link. But most importantly, thank you all for just creating this platform, creating and capturing these conversations. I know if I could go back 14 years ago to that crux moment when my wife asked me that question. My journey would have been very different. Had I had access to a resource like this. God bless you. Thank you. No, thank you.