Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of the C&S podcast.
Our guest today is Armin Kadiwala.
He is a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, and a father.
So often it seems that in order to win in something, we have to lose at something else.
To win at our career, we must sacrifice personal time.
To raise a family, we let our health take a backseat.
Armin decided to defy this narrative, taking an unconventional path to succeed in all areas
of life.
Today, we will discuss how Armin overcame his father's early death, why he chose to
take an unconventional path, how he handles failure, how the stories you tell yourself
control you, how he manages to be a high performer while being there for his family, what his
daily routine for success looks like, and much more.
If you are enjoying these episodes, I'd ask you to do a small favor for me.
This show can only grow from word of mouth, so please share it with someone who you think
would find it valuable.
A friend, family member, or coworker, or even on your feed.
Thanks for listening.
You know, when you ask about who I am, I always think about just my foundation and faith first.
So I'm a man of God.
I'm a husband to my wife, Jamila.
I'm a father to my two boys, Nico and Dominic.
I'm a business owner.
I'm a friend.
I'm a member of my community that I care deeply about.
I'm a person that has a lot of energy about life, and I feel blessed every day that I get
to wake up and that I get to get after it.
Yeah.
I like having to find yourself first by not your job, not your career, but your husband.
Your father.
Yeah.
Community member.
Making sure to help a lot of people around you out.
That's something I really appreciate about you.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
You're always trying to help people.
Well, it's cool.
We got to meet that way, right, through that opportunity when I heard you speak in, and
I was super impressed by you not letting your past define who you are, but just seeing
that there are people that care deeply about you and that you knew what was then possible.
For you to take that was super impressive to me.
We met through a community engagement as well, which was fantastic.
I wanted to break into a little bit about how you ended up where you are.
Sure.
I know you talked about your father's passing a little bit, and how that was a turning point
in your life.
Yeah.
Before then, you were studying business.
You were not really sure what you wanted out of life.
Yeah.
How did that impact you?
Yeah.
I feel like every day you wake up and you have an opportunity to make a decision, but life
is really about a series of choices.
When my father passed away, I was just starting to become a man.
I was a young kid, and that really rocked my world, because you're thinking, okay,
I had all this time with this guy.
I'm going to get all this wisdom from him.
He's going to help me really step into this next phase in my life.
Cool.
You're doing the motions a little bit of your kid.
Then all of a sudden, one day, you moved from a kid to being a man in a moment.
I realized that, okay, I got to make some decisions now on what my life to look like.
Here's the thing.
It's maybe similar to what you would attest to.
I was super blessed to be surrounded by people that cared deeply about our family and about
my brother and myself.
They're willing to tell us the truth.
A lot of people go in this world, and they're afraid to say what really needs to be said.
Proverbs 27.6, it's really about that your true friends will tell you the truth.
He had some people really talk to us openly about, hey, look, you have a choice to make
in your life right now.
Your dad was creating this legacy, and he believed deeply in these things.
You have a choice to make.
You can complain about him passing away and what you don't have, or you can make a decision
to say, am I going to continue to carry that torch?
For me, it was like, it just struck me.
I said, what does my last name mean?
Not literally, but what does it mean?
What does it stand for?
That has now decades later turned into, every day I think about that.
Now I think about it in a different context, because I think about it as to my kids.
It just changed me in that moment.
I would be lying to you if I said I wasn't angry.
I was angry.
My why?
You go through all those motions in your head.
Why would this happen to us?
Why would it happen to him?
He never did anything to anybody.
He just loved people.
I quickly figured out it's not about why or why not.
It's just a matter of, God needed him at that moment.
I've realized that now over time.
I didn't understand that at that moment.
Now I get it.
It's not for me to really understand as much as me to say, okay, what are we going to do
with that?
I made a choice and I make a choice every single day to say, well, how am I going to
lead my life in honor of that legacy that started.
Now I'm a steward of that torch.
How would you define that torch?
When you think about when they came to this country, it was in the 60s.
They wanted opportunity, not again just for themselves, but for their future family.
Their whole vision was how do we come and then how do we bring others and then how do
we create this foundation so that our family can continue to grow here.
It was always a foundation of family.
I think one of the things that's really important to my wife and I as part of that torch is
how do we make sure that the foundation of faith and family are the bedrock to who we
are.
Everything is really built around those things and then it comes from that.
How do you continue to pursue excellence?
That was something that was really important to him, to never be okay with okay, to never
just be satisfied.
It's different than to not be appreciative in gratitude, but also to say how can you
continue to improve every single day.
That's a lot of just who I am.
It's interesting, a lot of times you have those things inside of you and you need people
around you to see the gifts inside of you to help you bring those gifts about.
He started helping me see that and then I've been blessed again with so many people around
me that have helped me see what's possible in myself.
My first reaction to hearing that your dad passed away when you were 19 is that I didn't
really start getting close to my dad until I was 19.
I would have never had that period of time where it's like, okay, my dad is starting
to pass down wisdom and knowledge.
Before then, I just went in one ear out the other.
You tell me, oh, you have to learn to work hard and I'd be like, I want to stay in bed.
Until I was 19, I understood.
I was like, oh, I see what my dad's been doing.
I see how he's been teaching me things, helping me along the way.
I love that.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, you lost that bit of it and you had to learn from your dad with him being
gone and see what did he do back then that I've seen.
Yes.
What are the pieces that I can pick up?
Exactly.
That's really cool.
Yeah.
You also mentioned that you had the right people around you that were willing to tell
you the right things or the hard things.
First off, who were the right people, what was different about them and what were they
willing to tell you that other people wouldn't?
Well, first, I want to start with my mother.
So imagine you're married to the love of your life and all of a sudden that person's not
in your life anymore, but you're responsible for your kids.
Yeah.
Right?
And so no matter what, it doesn't matter what the circumstances are, your responsibility
hadn't changed.
It just became more paramount.
Now it's all on you.
And so I'd start first with my mother saying, all right, I got this.
And she put us on her back and said, we're going to be good as a family because she realized
that and she taught us that.
So that was the first thing.
But beyond that, my mother was always giving to community and she taught us that.
She taught us that because we've been blessed, it's important that we don't keep those blessings,
but we share them with others and we help others see what's possible.
And so we were just super focused.
She taught us how to connect with people, how to talk to people, how to question, how
to have interactions with people, almost to a point of annoyance.
I was like, please, I do not want to go to another party when I'm a kid.
I don't want to be a part of this or a part of that.
I don't want to learn those things.
It just became almost like too much.
But in retrospect, I look back and I'm like, man, thank God that she taught us those things
because she taught us how to communicate, how to interact, how to love on others, how to
share with others, how to be a great member of the community.
And because of those things, we were surrounded by people that cared deeply about us and we're
willing to be there when we most needed them, which is really how you know your true friends
and the ones that aren't.
But that's how it started.
And then if I may, I'll go into career.
Being with the right organization is so important because mentor, I believe deeply in mentorship
and I believe that people, everyone has a gift.
Like if you think about the way you're made, every day you should be seeking out saying
that what is the gift that I've been blessed with that I need to be using in this world?
Right?
And you need people to help you see those gifts.
And so being in part of the right organization where there's opportunity for mentorship,
for guidance, for challenge, for showing you what's possible, not doing it for you, but
encouraging you by creating disciplines and accountability, that's all good, right?
By allowing you to get knocked on your rear end and have to get back up, but having a
culture that welcomes that that says that's the gift.
I always say the struggle is the gift.
And I've realized that over time that being a part of those environments has helped cultivate,
you know, seeing things inside of me and have cultivated them into reality.
Because I didn't know.
I was like, I'm just an average kid.
I always thought of myself that way.
I'm like, average, I'm going to get a J-O-B.
I'm just average.
And I don't know if I was okay with that, but that's just how I had that mentality.
And what I've realized is, no, that's not about that.
And it's not about me being better than you or anybody.
It was always in about, well, how do I become better than who I was yesterday?
And if I just have that mentality every single day, then what's really possible, right?
And it's not about me ever being, I think that people, you know, people having accomplishments
in life, they show you what's possible.
But too many people get caught up and go, I want to be like that person.
And I've learned that it's not about me wanting to be like that person.
It's saying that, hey, I love that that person has done that.
Let's celebrate that.
And now I know that not only is that possible, but what about, what's next?
And how do we start aiming for that?
So that's really what I've been taught in life and now how I live my life.
Yeah.
They're showing you the path that's available forward, right?
If you have people around you who all the paths you see are run-of-the-mill, are not
unconventional, then that's the only things you think are possible.
Yeah.
You've never seen anything else.
Totally.
And so you see someone go an unconventional route.
You might not follow the exact same path.
But you will see that an unconventional path is possible.
It's possible to make it through that.
And you mentioned that the struggle is the way through.
That's like the thing that makes us stronger, makes us better.
One of my friends sent me a quote yesterday, which was like, the cave that you fear to
enter holds the exact treasure that you desire.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And that just reminded me of that because so often it's like the thing that we want
is just right behind some layer of fear, layer of insecurity, layer of a limiting belief.
It's like, and the only way to get to where you want is to enter into that.
Yeah.
I mean, you're right.
It's the standard that we hold ourselves to.
It's really important every single day because we've got to expect a lot from ourselves.
And if I may, you know, I think about the world that we're in today.
So often it's about, I think, stealing pain.
It's about soothing the pain.
It's about making sure that we feather the fall.
We don't want to get hurt because our emotions are too sensitive.
And what is that really preparing us for?
You know, have you heard of the saying where hard times make strong men, strong men make
good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times?
Yeah.
And I feel like right now we have a lot of weakness and we have to create synthetic struggle
oftentimes, but we can't avoid struggle and struggle is not bad.
I think that a lot of times we think, oh, geez, it's more of a pain or it's too hard
or whatever.
I'm like, no, that's good.
Like, hard is good because you learn from hard.
You learn how to, like you can theoretically read about, you know, people that have struggled
in their life and go, yeah, one day, you know, if I'm in that position, I would totally do
that.
It's like, really?
Yeah.
Maybe, maybe not.
But if you're not prepared for it, then how do you know?
So, yeah, if you don't have struggling in your life created, you know, go study something
that's really difficult.
We'll get a job that's like totally out of the realm of what you would normally do and
see if you can do it.
Right?
Go commit to running a marathon and you know, if the furthest you've ever run is a mile.
Right?
You can do it if you want.
So how do you create, how do you live a life like that?
And you have to set high standards for that.
But I'm like, man, if you're blessed with one life, one shot, and today was your last
day.
Well, how would you ever not just leave it all out there?
Yeah, put it all out on the court.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
I read this, this guy, like, you know, there's all these people that always send these messages
out.
One of them that I read every day, it always starts with today is the most important day
of your life.
That's impactful.
I know.
And I read that every day.
I'm like, that's awesome.
Like, that's like a glass of water in the face.
It totally is.
Yeah.
You wake up and you're like, oh, I'm going to go through the motions.
I'll go to work.
I'll do what I need to do.
But if it's the most important day of your life, what would you do?
What would you do differently?
Well, and so if you approach it every day like that, I just think that you would think totally
differently.
But so many people are just doing the motions and they're going, man, one day when I get
here, or one day when I get this, or one day when I'm in this position, then I will.
Yeah.
And I'm like, no, you got to do that now.
Yeah.
I'm like, 100%.
I was just thinking about the, oh, I'll do this when?
Yeah.
Because I think this actually happens really often, maybe like guys in regards to dating.
It happens a lot.
I've seen it so many times.
It's like, you might have a friend and they're like, you know, I'm not really looking for
something right now until like this happens.
So I get a better job or until I get to a new city or until I like get in the gym.
Yeah.
And it's like, no, life is today.
Yeah.
So nothing's going to change by you like moving to a new city.
Yeah.
The problems follow you.
Yeah.
Right.
And you're right.
I mean, it's a, have you heard of this, um, this comparison of, of cows and buffaloes
in a storm?
No, I've never heard this one.
So cows, it's storm, let's say in Colorado, right?
We've got the front range and the mountains and the storms come from the west going east,
right over the mountains.
And they always, they almost always flow that way.
So you see the clouds run over the mountains.
You know, the storm is coming.
The cows tend to run away from the storm.
Okay.
Right.
And that seems like the naturally, the, the smart thing to do, I'm going to run away
from it.
Well, what are you doing?
The rain starts catching you and then you elongate the storm.
Yeah.
And you keep trying to run away from it, but it's catching up.
And it keeps coming after you.
Whereas the buffaloes go, storms come and they run into it and they close the gap.
Right.
And they meet the storm head on.
They go, let's go.
Right.
And then they get through it and then they become stronger and better for it.
Yeah.
So I think I use that as a metaphor for my life.
I'm like, if the storm is there, if the challenge is there, just, just lean into it.
Yeah.
Right.
And go, all right, don't be afraid of it.
Right.
And courage is not the absence of fear is acting in light of it.
Yep.
So just have courage and go, okay, cool.
I can be scared.
That's okay.
Yeah.
But I sure as heck, I'm not going to learn anything unless I do something.
So easier said than done, but, but courage is a habit.
Courage is a habit.
It's something that can't be faked.
Can't be faked.
No, because everyone feels fear.
The only difference between the courageous person and the non courageous one is acting
in face of the fear.
Totally.
Can't be faked.
Impossible.
Love that.
And it's amazing that knowing that at your age right now is going to serve you so well
in your life.
Hope so, man.
I promise.
I hope so.
I promise.
I was curious about, you mentioned that the thing that plagued you was you always felt
average.
And something that I found in my life is that a lot of times I'll overcome a problem or
an insecurity and it comes back in a sneakier way.
Does that ever come back for you?
You know, I love what you're saying.
You know, we're not infallible to feelings and emotions getting the better of us.
None of us are.
In fact, I don't think that life is about avoiding those things.
I think it's about closing the gap, right?
So we get knocked down every day, you know, name it.
There's stuff that's happened today.
Some of it's a little bit more of a knockdown than others and some of it's like little minor
things.
But what I've learned is that the most successful people in this world are not the ones that
stay knocked down.
They're the ones that get back up quick and they get going again.
They keep taking action and moving forward.
And so what you got to teach yourself is not about avoiding the fall, but about creating
the habit of saying how can I get up and get going quickly?
And the only way that you can do that is one, I think it's important that you change your
physiology.
So if you like, let's say you're sitting at a desk and you get a bad phone call, right?
Somebody was agreeing to do something with you, let's say in your business and then they
change your mind.
Okay, that could be, that could be hard, right?
What do you need to do about it?
Like cry about it?
Nobody cares.
So stand up, go outside, maybe take a deep breath, fresh air, come back in and go, okay,
all right, what are two things that I can do, two positives that I can get, two actions
that I can take to now negate the one negative.
So I'm still plus one.
So I've created this habit of saying if I get a no, I'm going to go find two yeses,
relentless forward momentum, right?
Two steps forward, one step back, but I'm still positive.
You will not defeat me.
You just can't because I will always go get one more win than the one that you took away.
And so I'm still plus one.
And I just have this in my head.
I'm like, you will not, you will not win.
Nothing you do will take me down.
You can come at me all you want, but I'm always going to keep fighting.
And what I think a lot of people do in this life is they get the no and they sit in it.
I like, oh my gosh, what does this mean?
And then they start getting into story.
See, I'm not good enough.
I can't do this.
Yeah.
Look at the guys or the gals down the hall.
She's always getting the deal and I'm not.
Maybe I should just change my job.
Maybe I should change my career.
I knew I was never going to be good as this.
Those people that are doing really well, they're the ones that had the best market or the best
ideas or the best language or the best suits or the best haircut or whatever.
And I don't have those things.
Yeah.
I don't have something you don't have.
And I'm not worthy.
Yeah.
They always have something better than me.
And then you get into the story that you're telling yourself and then you go, you know
what, I got an idea.
I'm going to go home.
I'm going to sleep this off.
Then I'll come back tomorrow.
I'll be prepared.
I'll be energized.
But then I come back tomorrow and I'm like, man, I'm still feeling like garbage.
I wonder why.
And then they start thinking about that again.
And you start reinforcing that garbage story that you said in your head about how you're
not good enough.
And you get stuck in this pattern.
And that pattern keeps feeding on itself.
And then you manifest that into your reality.
And I think that's what happens to so many people in life.
They're poor storytellers.
You know, everything happens twice, once in your head and once in reality.
And so how do you tell yourself a good story?
You make it a habit of finding success.
So that's what I've learned.
Yeah.
And so when you end up having those moments where you say a negative story about yourself,
your brain starts looking for evidence to validate the story.
So it's like, oh, I'm not good enough.
Now you go outside and you're looking for evidence that you're not good enough and you'll find
it.
You'll find evidence for any story your brain creates about yourself.
The only thing you can do is create a different story.
And then it starts looking for evidence of that.
Oh, I am successful.
Okay.
Every day you walk out, what is the evidence that you are successful?
And then you just find it.
And in the same way that the negative loop, snowballs, so can the positive loop.
And so it's remembering every day what is the story I'm telling about myself.
So how do you go about doing that for yourself though?
So for myself, I often get caught in those thought loops, the negative ones.
And then I look for evidence for the contrary.
That's how I do it.
So I'll be like, oh, my life sucks.
So whatever is going on in my head that day, like I'm not good enough.
I'm doing this podcast.
Nobody's going to listen.
And so I look for evidence to the contrary.
After I released the first episode, I got a ton of kind messages from friends and family
that were like, oh, I love your podcast.
Like I had a great time listening to it.
And some of them even took the time to write a longer message, like reacting to it.
This is what I took away from it.
This is what I learned.
And that was just like, oh, this is evidence.
It's evidence to the contrary.
Maybe I am making something good.
Maybe it's not true that I'm not good enough.
And so looking for those small pieces of evidence could be as simple as someone just like smiling
at you through the day.
Yeah.
Like, oh, nobody likes me.
Someone smiles at you.
You're like, oh, maybe people do like me.
And so that's my strategy for it is find evidence in the outside world that the negative story
I'm telling myself is not true.
I love it though.
You find evidence, which is reality.
And the reality is it doesn't support your BS story.
Yeah, exactly.
And so with imposter syndrome, one of my favorite, I think, I forget where the quote's from,
but it's like, at a certain point, you have enough evidence in the real world to prove
that you're not an imposter.
And it becomes more about your addiction to feeling like an imposter than actually being
an imposter.
So you almost want to be an imposter because it actually feeds who you think you are.
Yeah.
Exactly.
It's feeding that loop of insecurity.
Yeah.
And whatever trauma might be coming from that, it's feeding into that.
But at a certain point, you have enough evidence.
The only choice is to not feel like an imposter anymore.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, it's interesting too.
It's hard to do that on your own.
So how have you developed relationships and how do you choose who you want in your life
and who you don't want in your life?
That's a great question.
For me, it's always been listen to advice from people that are where you want to be.
Yeah.
Right.
And so you can get advice from anyone, like the person next door to you, your neighbor,
some person on the street.
But not all advice is equal.
Not all people's opinions about your life are equal.
That's good.
And so it's the people that know you and that are where you want to be that you should listen
to.
And that's how I've been trying to lead my life.
Even this podcast is part of that larger philosophy is, okay, I want to talk to you.
I want to talk to people who are where I want to be.
Yeah.
How do I do that?
Yeah.
And how do I share that with the world as well?
So.
That's great.
Find people that I think will be interesting, will be able to share some learnings with
me and then follow my curiosity.
Terrific.
Yeah.
I had a question for you.
First off, I want to know what your daily routine looks like because I know you're chasing
challenge often, you're making sure that you're not getting comfortable, you're also raising
a family.
What does that daily routine look like?
So I think, again, when I talk about discipline being a habit, I'm very disciplined in my
mornings in my warm-up to the day.
So I have two different wake-up times to pay in the workout regimen that's going on in
the morning.
Four or four or 45 a.m.
But the routine that follows is exactly the same.
I get up, I get my gym clothes on, I grab my cup of coffee, I sit in my office, I pull
out my journal, I write down three areas of my life, out of six that I have in my vision
statement, three areas in particular that I want to focus on that day.
And then what I want to do in those three areas so that I look back at the end of the
day and say, I had success in those areas.
So what do I want to accomplish in those three areas?
And then I focus on what I'm grateful for that morning.
Where do I have gratitude in my life?
And let me express that by thinking about it and by writing it and seeing it.
And then I read my vision statement every day.
And my vision statement is in the present tense, I am these things in these areas.
And then I pray my morning prayer.
And right now I happen to be reading the Bible.
So I read a couple of verses of the Bible.
And then I look at my calendar.
That takes about 45 minutes.
By that point, I'm already winning because I'm living the person that I know I am to
be.
And I'm living from a position of abundance, of gratitude, of appreciation for the blessings
that are in my life.
It doesn't matter what comes after, right?
Because I'm in a position of seeing whatever comes at me as an opportunity, right?
Too many people get up and what are they, what's the first thing they do?
Scroll on their phone.
Yeah, exactly.
So how's the news been these days?
I mean, what's positive anymore?
Yeah, the news is all bad news.
The world's ending, right?
Or they look at their emails and I'm like, man, you're going to leave your life up to
getting a good email to make sure that your day is going to go well?
Give me a break.
I don't want to start my day that way.
I'd rather be in control of whatever's between here and here, between my ears, right?
And make sure that I have that centered.
You know, your brain's a machine.
It's a muscle.
How are you building that muscle every day?
So that's my daily morning routine.
And then I work out and then I get dressed and then I go about my way.
But get dressed in the spiffy suits, dude.
Every day always looking fire.
Well, you know, I mean, all of us are putting on our superhero suits every day.
This happens to be mine because of the line of work I do.
But you know, you got to put on something that's going to help you reinforce who you
are and make sure that it's reinforcing that million dollar mentality, right?
That I feel like a million bucks.
I'm a winner.
I got this.
Let's go.
Right.
And I think the way that you take care of yourself and we get into this later, but how
do you fuel your body?
Yeah.
You know, I'm super sensitive to what I put inside of my body.
Thank God my wife is like one of the most healthy, healthiest people I've ever met in
my life.
She's and I are super healthy.
We're very cognizant about the fuel that we put into our body to make sure that we can
be everything that we've been talking about and optimize that, right?
Your whole health starts with your bio.
And so anyway, so eating healthy is really important.
And at the end of the day, I'm in a similar state, right?
Where I want to make sure that I am not connected to the things that happen today, determining
whether or not I had a good day or not.
You know, I almost don't like it when people are like, how was your day?
Did you have a good day?
Like, it doesn't matter.
Like good day is a choice, you know, but I want to reflect on, Hey, what were our blessings
for today?
And let me make sure that I'm feeling, you know, closure to today and energized about
tomorrow and then go to bed and let's get up and let's get fighting again.
And seems like you're, you have a pretty tight schedule, pretty disciplined.
How do you manage to balance yourself as a high performer with also raising your kids,
taking care of your wife and making sure that you're not leaving that on the sidelines?
Yeah.
So, but first of all, I think my wife and I take care of each other.
But we, you know, when you have faith and then you have a relationship with your wife
and then your kids, nothing else really matters.
And so those things are foundational.
As far as time and I think the word of intentionality is critical.
Making sure that your life has the most important things on the calendar first is really important.
So those things that are on your calendar need to be aligned with your values.
It's really important to have a family dinner every night.
So that's priority.
It's important that we're engaged in our kids' lives.
So that's a priority.
For instance, I coached football for my younger son's football team.
Right.
It takes a lot of my time, but it's on the calendar and I built my life around it.
Right.
So make sure that I'm not giving up on making sure that my business is still continuing to
grow, for instance.
I'm not going to do that to the detriment of my business.
So what else does it give?
I'll give up something of myself personally so I can spend time helping young men learn
about life through football and spend time with my younger son.
Right.
But I think life is about prioritizing and intentionality.
And too many people, you know, they put time.
They say that time is the most important thing.
There's a lot of people who have time with people, but they're not really there with
that person.
So, like, my kids don't care if I'm sitting with them for half an hour, but I'm on my
phone scrolling, but we haven't been on the same couch.
That's not really time.
Yeah, it's not.
I also have five minutes of us just having true engagement right about life, then 30
minutes when I'm not paying attention.
So you have to be really sensitive.
And I've worked on this.
I'm not perfect at it, but we tend to put my phone down and away so that we're there
with the people that we love and that we're super intentional with our time.
But prioritizing those things is really important.
And then, you know, I would say that paradise is not a destination.
It's a perspective.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, you can choose to live a blessed life if you actually see it that way.
But I feel like that every single day, and I want to make sure that I'm intentional about
living in that space with people I love every day.
Yeah.
Again, I am not perfect at it, right?
But I'm constantly working for it.
But it's really about just how I see life through the lens that I see life.
Yeah.
Right?
But it's really about making sure that your priorities are straight.
And my priority is not more of everything.
It's about deeper relationships and about prioritizing those.
They think a lot of people are in a seesaw of life and they talk about life and maybe
in seasons.
Mm-hmm.
And they get a great idea and they say, I'm going to be totally all in on that.
But they don't create an environment of discipline to help them continue to be successful.
And then you revert back to perhaps your bad habits because you haven't created new ones.
Yeah.
So I think some people have great intent.
Hey, I want to be more engaged with my kids or my, I'm going to do a date night once a
month, right?
And then life happens and you fall back into the groove.
Mm-hmm.
So I think a lot of this is people have good intention, but then they don't create an environment
of discipline where success is inevitable consistently.
Yeah.
Right?
So if you're all in and committed to that, well, how are you going to make sure that your
environment is supportive of that?
So if you want to create a habit, there's a lot of people that say, you know, you got
to do it for 21 days or 60 days or 30 days.
I don't really know the number.
But I do know that if you're going to be all in on something, you got to be consistently
doing it.
And I like to think about it in terms of just checking in with myself, saying, hey, am I
still consistently doing it?
If I'm not, what needs to change in my environment to help be supportive for me to consistently
do that?
The reason I'm saying that as a foundation is I think people generally want to be a good
husband or father or friend or coworker or business owner or whatever it might be.
They want to be inherently good.
It's not that they don't.
But then life gets going for all of us and we let life control how we then operate.
And it can't be that way.
Right?
I know plenty of people who are busy.
Bad excuse.
It's not a good excuse, right?
I mean, how many people do you know they're busy?
How many people have you done this podcast with?
You're like, oh my gosh, that guy's got a lot going on.
Yeah, a lot of them.
All of them probably actually.
Yeah.
That's why scheduling them is so hard.
Yeah, sorry about that.
So I think that's part of it.
And then have you studied Matthew 25?
No.
It's the story about the master who has the three servants and he gives each of them a
certain amount of talents, right?
Money.
And he goes away and then he comes back and he wants to know what people did with those
talents.
Essentially it's a metaphor for God has blessed you with certain talents.
What are you going to do with them?
Are you going to multiply them?
Or are you going to sit on them and hide?
Yeah.
Are you going to be afraid to use your talents?
Yeah.
And the moral of the story was the one that got the five talents doubled them and the
one that had the two talents doubled them and the one that had the one talent buried
it.
Yeah.
And then they came back and the master awarded the guy who buried that one talent to the
one that had the most.
Many was proud of them.
But the whole story is ultimately how are you taking what you've been blessed with and
building upon that?
So when I think about balancing my life, I hate that by the way.
I don't even know what that means.
Work-life balance.
So I appreciate the question, but I think what the way I think about it, and I think
this is what you're asking me as well, is how do you make sure that you're operating
with your highest level of standard and expectation, the way that God has blessed you with these
talents so that you really are being the best version of yourself in all these areas?
And when I think about it in that way that I've been blessed with it, I don't feel like
any people call it problems, but any opportunity that's sitting in front of you is not big
enough for us to just step into it and go, hey, let's go figure it out.
And whether that's by myself or I surround myself with people that are championing me
to help me, they're my success team around me, to help me, whatever it is that's in front
of me, let's go get it done.
And so I look at it like you got one shot in life.
And if you've been blessed with these gifts, what are you doing to make sure that you're
living to that standard and what it does is it shows others what's possible and they start
seeing it in themselves and then they go do it and then that multiplies in such a positive
way.
And what does that look like tactically, right?
Because I mean, I mean, personally, I struggle with balancing.
It's all a balancing act, right?
Like I have work, my personal projects, I have this podcast.
Yeah.
I have my girlfriend, I have my family, I have my friends and there's like all these circles
that I want to be great at.
I want to have great relationships with my friends, my family, my girlfriend, etc.
And so a lot of times I find it difficult to really dial in on one thing without losing
a little bit on the other thing.
And so how do we take this mentality of I'm going to be great at all of these things and
then still live that right?
Like in theory, it sounds great.
How do we actually do that in practice?
Well, one, I think you have to have a vision for what you want.
What are your objectives?
And then you have to be able to see what success looks like.
You have to be able to see it and define it.
Yeah.
Otherwise you'll never know you when you got there.
And success, I think, is ongoing.
Yeah.
Right?
It's who you are.
You know, people write like a vision statement, but they write it in the post tense and I
write it in the present.
So I am versus one day I will be.
Right?
And so I think that it's important that you recognize who are you in all those areas
of life.
How are you showing up?
A vision statement needs to be now where your feet are at.
So what I tell people is like, okay, let's identify all those areas of life that are
really important to you, that are priorities to you.
And what are your objectives in each of those areas?
And how do you define success in each of those areas?
And then write an I am statement.
I am filling the blank a great son to my family.
And this is how it shows up every single day.
I am a great business owner.
And these are the things that I do to make sure that I'm moving towards, you know, X.
Yeah.
I am a great boyfriend because I do these things with my girlfriend.
Yeah.
And it's things that she might need, right?
For her to feel connected to you.
But I always think about it in that sense.
In fact, I read it to myself.
I think I mentioned that earlier.
I read that statement to myself every morning.
What's your vision statement?
It's very long.
I can't even memorize it, but it does focus on six areas of my life.
And I write specifically about how I want to show up in those six areas of my life.
It's one of them is like my career and my purpose.
And I read it to myself.
What is it my career and purpose that I'm doing today?
One of it is my family and freedom.
My faith, my health and my fitness, my financial freedom, and then my community engagement.
So I write specific I am statements in those six areas.
And that's how I measure success.
How am I showing up in those areas every day?
By the way, I'm not really like hitting it every day.
I make a lot of mistakes.
But I know what I'm aspiring for and I know what I'm out of line, out of alignment, excuse
me, with who I know to be.
And I got to pull myself back in.
But I think a lot of people, you know, they keep going through life without any intent
of who they want to be.
So they never know where they're going.
Because they don't even know.
And so nothing they ever do will create long term satisfaction.
Everything's about feelings and emotions.
What made me feel good right now at the moment?
Who cares?
You know, are you living your life so you can feel good?
I hope not.
I know, but a lot of people do.
And I get it.
I totally get it.
I know the whole world is built around how can we make you feel a certain way?
Because it's emotional.
And emotions good.
But I think we're misaligned because we think we can buy joy.
We can buy happiness.
And all those areas that you just said, like how do I balance all those things out?
You can't buy all those things that you just mentioned.
They don't care about stuff as much, right?
Mostly.
They care about, hey, are you being the best version of what I need you to be to me?
Right?
Yeah.
In our life.
Sometimes it's a lot less about what you can do for, like buy them.
And it's a lot more about how you can serve them in the way that they need to be served.
Yeah.
How you can support them.
Yeah.
How you can listen to them.
Yeah.
How you can give of yourself for them.
Totally.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
I think that in, I mean, you mentioned something about having something that you're striving
for, right?
Like in the statements, there's like a bar that you're reaching for.
And I think maybe myself and other people like me often struggle with the bar is always
moving, right?
So it's like you're trying to balance all these areas of life, but you don't have a set
bar for what success is.
So that means you can never win.
Because you could always do better there.
You could always do better there.
Maybe I could have been a better boyfriend.
Maybe I could have been a better business owner.
Maybe I could have been a better podcaster.
But ultimately, if we can dilineate what those things are that means success to you,
what is the actual bar?
Then we can actually feel good when we reach it, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
I love how you said that.
I think, well, what do you want me to comment specifically on that?
I think my question there would be how are you, or I guess how are you defining your
goals?
How do you make these achievable?
How do you make these things that are measurable that you know you succeeded so you don't have
to sit there and flagellate yourself for not being at the very top of the top when, obviously,
you can't be the best of the best at everything.
Yeah.
Great.
So one, I think it's important that achievers tend to not celebrate success.
They tend to move on to the next thing.
And I've had to teach myself to say pause, reflect.
What did it take to accomplish whatever it is that we were working towards, moving from
A to B?
And in that reflection, you learn a lot.
What do we do well?
What didn't work?
Yeah.
That was part of our strategy that we don't want to keep doing or we need to refine.
And what do we want to start doing that we learn that, hey, maybe this will actually
be helpful the next time, the next go?
I think it's important to celebrate your successes, to take pause and to do that in a way that
honors the work that you did, to reward yourself for it.
And then that cycle becomes a habit.
Too many people move the goalposts and I believe the actual other direction.
They don't keep moving them up.
They move them down.
And before they've even gotten to the finish line, they move the finish line closer to
them.
They're like, look, I made it.
I'm like, well, you move the finish line.
This was a marathon, not a half marathon.
You can't ride 13 miles and still feel good about it.
I mean, I guess you could, but if you originally said I'm doing 26, you can't run 13 and say,
look, I did 13 and it's still good.
Yeah, it's like signing up for the 26 and then stopping at 13.
And then you tell everyone you did a half.
Exactly.
You sign up for the half in the first place and go kill it instead of signing up for the
marathon and they're not doing it and say, oh, I still ran 13.
What?
Like you got an F. Yeah.
That's a 50%.
Sorry.
So, but I think a lot of people move the goalposts in that direction.
They give up before they've actually run through the tape.
And so look, you have to define, you have to define clearly what it is that your objective
is.
And then you have to define clearly when you know that you've crossed that line of success.
And it's not about feelings.
I think too many people put down like, once I feel this way, well, heck, I can wake up
tomorrow and feel a certain way.
I can buy that happiness for a moment's fleeting.
But what are you actually doing to say, here's the number, the goal, whatever it is, here's
the thing I want to accomplish.
I'm going to move towards that.
Once I get there, that's when I know that I've hit that thing.
But here's the thing.
Here's the, this is the magic of it.
It's not even about the number or the thing that you get or the line that you cross.
It's not that.
And that's what a lot of people think it is.
They go, once I hit that number or once I get that thing, then I'm successful.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And they, they, they feel like once they've arrived, they'll change.
Yeah.
They're going to look at the mirror in the morning and go, see?
Yeah.
Now I made it.
Yeah.
Super disappointing.
Right.
Because then you're going to look at yourself going, I thought things were going to be different.
Yeah.
And they're not.
What they, what they feel, they realize is that the journey that you're taking, the,
the, the falls, the knockdowns, the pain, the struggle, the adversity that you face,
but then you kept moving forward.
Yeah.
And I was saying, right?
Two steps forward, one step back.
I'm going to go find two yeses for every no.
But the person that you become through that, that journey towards hitting whatever that
goal was, that's the gift.
Yeah.
Nobody can take that gift away.
That's what I love about life.
And that's what I've realized.
I was, I was one of those people.
By the way, I think most people are like that.
Most people I've coached and mentored, they're like, wait, once I hit this thing that I've
got it, I'm like, probably not.
Yeah.
But I'll finally be happy once I'm a millionaire.
Exactly.
Once I have my family.
Yeah.
Once, like whatever it may be, right?
Everyone has an idea in their head of once I arrive, I'll be happy.
And they arrive and it's the same exact thing as the same, as the day before they feel exactly
the same.
Totally.
Exactly the same.
And it's like, if you can't, if you, if you fail to see that, that joy is in the moment,
like right now, you and me, we're hanging, right?
I love this.
This is great.
I love watching where you were and where you are, where you're going.
It's awesome to see.
I can share these things because of all the struggle in adversity that I've had in my life
that's been a gift.
It's been a gift.
And that's where we can have this conversation.
So I pray that it's helpful to the next generation, right?
When they hear this, they go, all right, I'm going to lean into this thing.
I'm, whatever it is that's in front of them, but you got to be clear with what you want
and you got to keep going and you got to go to the bell.
You got to run through the tape, whatever you want, whatever metaphor you want.
And like, you got to go.
Yeah, you get, you just do not give up ever.
And even if you run through the tape and you don't make it, we don't hit every goal, right?
Yeah.
And that, that extra push that you gave at the end, that, that focus and intentionality
you had saying, I'm going all the way, no matter what, that's the gift.
Whether you hit the number or not.
And I'm not saying that it's okay not to hit the number.
It's not okay.
Yeah.
You say you're going to do something, you should do it.
And if you didn't do it, you better, you damn well better reflect on it and go, what
am I going to do better next time?
But the person that you become by pushing yourself, that's where you're going to reflect
going, you know what?
I did these things.
I forgot to do these things where I didn't know or now I know and I'm going to do them
next time.
But if you didn't push, you never know.
And then you just get, you let yourself off the hook and you go, well, I ran the half
marathon.
Yeah.
It's all good.
Yeah.
So 13 miles.
I can still whatever, eat whatever I want today.
Yeah.
And it's like, how, what are you going to do?
I mean, you hit the goal.
You hit the number.
Yeah.
I mean, definitely.
I think that you're talking about there, about not achieving the goal and still leaving it
out all on the field.
Right?
Right.
And the part that I really like about that is that regardless of whatever we do, we're
going to die and we're going to have unfinished goals.
And the one question that will come back is, did I give it my all?
Yeah.
You know, if I use up the entire tank, then I leave it on empty.
And that's what's going to give you that fulfillment, that confidence, that happiness
that you actually went out and gave it your all, even if you didn't make it.
Yeah.
You did all of it.
Like with your marathon example, much different if the guy signs up for 26 miles, stops at
13 versus signs up for 26 miles, passes out at 13, gave it his all.
Great.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And talk to me about how you think about external goals versus internal goals, right?
With like a 26 mile marathon, it's I'm going to run 26 miles versus, oh, I'm going to do
something that I would know I did internally, right?
Like you can have a goal that you can only control externally or a goal that's set to
be internal.
Give me an example of an internal.
I'll give you an example with even this podcast, right?
I'm going to get to a million subscribers versus I'm going to post 800 episodes.
I can control one of those things.
I can control the other.
So on the external one, which I think is what most people tend to do, the difference, so
that one, you're just setting a number out there, right?
The internal number though, the non-controlables, what I've done is I said, all right, what
can I control to help the internal goal that I have of reaching a million subscribers?
They both still come down to activity.
You still have to do activity, right?
You still need to promote.
So how are you going to go out and promote to get the subscribers?
Either way, it's all about activity, activity, activity, no matter what.
And when I say activity, I'm talking about taking action.
I think though that when I look at internals, I'm like, okay, I still need to set out an
activity commitment that I'm going to make.
And if it's not, I got to test it along the way.
And if it's not putting me on the path, I got to do something different, whether it's
more activity or different activity or better activity.
But that's how I think about it.
So you have the external goal that you're aiming for.
You break it down to what pushes that external goal forward.
And then you test it, take that activity, did it move it forward?
And if it does, keep doing it.
If it doesn't, throw it out, try a new one.
Okay.
But also, I don't know if I've ever just rested on, well, I just do it this way.
Because in fact, I think you could argue, most people that know me would say, he probably
tries to refine it almost too much.
You know what I mean?
Like right when somebody gets a hang of it, they're like, did you just change it again?
Yeah.
But yeah, I think this way it works better.
Maximizing.
Yeah.
And so I'm always trying to optimize.
I would say actually optimizing how I say something.
If I could be saying it with one less word or more articulately, or if I changed my breath
or my tone, or the approach of the visuals that I added.
I mean, any of those things, I'm always testing.
I'm always testing.
But one thing that I think is universal, no matter what I'm doing, I do it with conviction.
And conviction comes through experience and activity.
So that's why I bring it back down to, you know, a lot of people ask in our line of work,
a lot of lines of work, you know, whether you're in real estate or mortgages or you're
a business owner or sales professional, pharma, whatever, investments, insurance, it doesn't
matter.
There's always the language that all of those industries have, you know, the best of the
best have language.
And so people always want to know, hey, how do you say what you say?
Like it's not the words that I use.
It's how I say it.
You know, you can say the same words that I say, but I'm going to win.
Why?
When I say win, I'm going to get them to work with me.
And the reason is because I have a deep conviction around it.
I know how to say it.
And they believe me because I say it authentically.
And that comes with belief.
And belief, as I think I talked about this earlier, but most people feel like they have
to believe first before they act.
And life doesn't work that way.
So the reason I believe so much is because I've taken a lot of actions.
And you knew it worked.
Now it's worked.
Now you know it's going to work.
So you have that conviction.
It didn't come first.
You had to prove that it worked.
They had to believe that other people were telling me the truth that, you know, hey,
trust me, Armin, if you just keep doing this, it's going to work.
I'm like, tell me the story again, please.
Because I don't believe it right now.
I don't believe it right now.
It sucks.
What do I do?
There's a lot of those nights.
And that would be the place where the mentorship comes along, right?
Absolutely.
They've had the story.
They have conviction.
And they're reeling that conviction into you and telling you, no, this is the story.
It works.
Trust the process.
Continue on until you have your own story.
And that's when the mentee becomes a peer with the mentor is they've learned the same
story.
Still well said.
Yeah.
I know that you've talked about your partner, your wife, and how she has a huge impact on
your success as both a father, as a business owner, and as a person.
Talk to me about finding the right partner, finding a good partner.
I pinch myself for who I get to be married to and in our lives.
I met my wife twice.
Sounds ridiculous.
But the first time I met her, it was at a social gathering.
And I was in this building phase.
I was the guy that was talking about earlier where he'd tell me the story again.
Super shy, quiet, and certainly wouldn't have walked in to talk to a woman as beautiful
as her and just the way that she was attractive, just from her smile and the way that she just
moved around.
And I was like, oh my gosh, I got to know what this is.
But I just, like this person's totally out of my league.
But we had conversed a couple of times because friends had introduced us and we were at social
gatherings.
Enough that I remembered her from when I met her the second time.
And so the first time I met her was in 2002 in Denver.
And then she moved away.
And I'd seen her maybe a handful of times at parties and social gatherings.
And one night I'm out.
She's out at a club, separate places.
We run into each other on a street corner at 1.15 in the morning in downtown Denver.
And she walks past me and I walk this way and I stop.
And she stops, backs to each other.
I turn around and I'm staring at her.
I'm like, how do I know that girl?
And then it hit me, but then I forgot her name.
And she's staring at me and I'm like, oh, remember her name, please God.
Remember you?
Exactly.
And as she always is in life, she runs up to me and I had that look on my face and she
said, Armin, it's Jamila.
And I said, oh my gosh, it's so good to see you.
What are you doing here?
I haven't seen you for years.
And that moment in time changed everything.
It was like the world stopped.
And there was two of us having a conversation, even though there was thousands of people
around us, thousands.
And I'm just looking at her.
She's looking at me.
What was interesting is the next day before she flew back to where she was living at that
time, which was Houston, Texas, she and I went and we both separately went to the
Broncos game and then we went and had drinks afterwards with our friends while our friends
were all interviewing me.
Like, what are your intentions?
I know.
I was like, everybody's sitting on that side of the table and it was me over here.
But it was different.
I was like super confident in who I was at that time.
Where I was in the first time she met me.
So that's what I'm saying.
I met her twice because she met me once as the quiet, shy kid.
And then she met me once as, oh, he's a man.
And we then went and got a drink afterwards and we were just, we just, I don't necessarily
recommend this to everybody, but I went straight in.
I'm like, let's go.
What are your values?
What do you believe in?
What's your faith?
Tell me about your family.
How many kids do you want on our first date?
That's crazy.
It's bananas.
But it was, it was a boost like out of this world.
What was her reaction to that?
She was like this many, that many, this, that.
What about you?
How about this?
I'm like, oh my God, this is actually happening.
We were married 363 days later.
Oh, it was September 17th of 2005.
I'm sorry, six.
We got engaged February 3rd of 2007.
Got married September 15th of 2007.
I know it was crazy, but our values to answer your question were so aligned that it was
easy.
Yeah.
It just made sense.
And when your values are aligned with your partner in life, it's just, it's just, it's
just, you become one and you can overcome anything, right?
Because you can always come back to your values.
That doesn't mean that you don't have nuances to how you approach life and how you see things.
Of course, your personalities are different, but your values and your principles are aligned.
It's the same thing I talk to my kids all the time.
I'm like, you don't want to marry somebody just like you.
That's not what values and principles are.
But your values and principles are foundational to how you think and how you operate and how
you see the world and how you make decisions.
If you can share values, at least you can approach how you do things in life in a similar
fashion, the same foundation.
And you could challenge each other, but you always know that you're going to end up in
a beautiful spot.
It doesn't mean that you can't argue about something.
You can argue.
But you're still going to love each other, right?
You're not going to give up on each other.
And so that's how we operate in our lives.
We talk all the time.
I don't remember a day that's gone by that we haven't taken a walk somewhere.
We have family dinner all the time.
We prioritize that.
We just hang out and just chat.
We have date nights every night, it feels like.
I swear.
It's the coolest thing.
How long have you been married?
So we got married September 15th of 2007.
So 17 years.
Still having date nights.
A lot of people lose it, it feels like.
Well, they do because look, you know, life happens.
You're busy, busy.
Everybody's busy, which is an excuse for not really focused on and being intentional, but
what's really most important in our life.
I get it.
Everybody's busy.
I get it.
Yeah, totally.
We live in a culture of busyness.
Yeah.
And we get a lot of significance for busyness.
Yeah.
And that's where I'm, you know, all this conversation ultimately has been check in with your business
and as your business align with actually what you should be doing.
And if it's not, then you just move.
You just move the paper around the desk.
Yeah.
So you can feel like I did something today.
That reminds me of this really funny story of, you know, Diogenes, the philosopher.
Yes.
And I think there was one point where something was going on in the city.
There was maybe a natural disaster that everyone was scared of.
And so they all start running around the city, panicking, and it's all in disarray.
And so Diogenes starts pushing a rock up a mountain and then letting it go down.
And he keeps doing that.
And everyone's like, what are you doing?
It's like, this is how useful you're all being right now.
I'm going to steal that story.
That's a great story.
That's funny.
And so I think that that goes back to that busyness, right?
It's like, people are panicking.
There's something going on.
And it's like, are you doing anything to support that natural disaster or to make minimize
the effects or to actually drive something forward?
We can all just run around and panic and busy.
And you'll get a claim for it because everyone's like, call this guy so busy.
He must be doing important things, right?
And busyness is this heuristic that we've used as a indicator of success or is on the
path to success.
But everyone's busy.
Everyone's trying to look busy.
Absolutely.
And it bleeds into everything in our life.
But when we sit there and we talk, I mean, my wife has made me a better person.
I mean, she's amazing.
She's anything she does, she's like totally all in and committed and she's great at it.
And she's had a lot of success in her life and at the highest levels and whatever she's
done.
I mean, she's amazing.
And it makes me want to be a better person.
It makes me want to serve her and my kids.
But I also tell you this, this is like, this is biblical.
When you bring kids in this world, now it really gets real.
And the first introduction to God is for your kids is watching you and your spouse.
And so because that's who's teaching the kids.
So if you're not good, what does that do for your kids?
And beyond biblical.
How does that percolate into all areas of their life?
The foundation and example that you set for your kids and your marriage, it's not by accident
that sometimes when there's divorces, the kids get divorced.
Or when there's trouble in the family, the kids are not well adjusted.
I know that I'm saying this as a blanket statement.
I know sometimes people get into the wrong marriage.
I get it.
I totally get it.
I don't get it.
It's tough, right?
But I'm just sharing this with you.
In my own perspective, as I've been blessed to be married to the right person, but I had
also spent a lot of time thinking about people that I had dated in the past or experiences
that I had and what I appreciated and what I didn't appreciate.
And so I knew when she walked into my life and we talked about all those things, all
those questions were not accidental.
They were on my mind because they were important to me as to who I wanted to build a life with.
And so when all of that hard stuff, the foundational stuff was bedrock.
I'm like, cool, we can handle anything.
Bring it on.
We got it.
And now we can teach our kids that.
So that's the importance of having a great marriage, man.
And I wish that for you as well, you know, whatever it might be.
That's lucky enough, blessed enough to be married to you.
Yeah.
I'd like to comment first off on how crazy the story is of how you guys met, which is
a random encounter while she's living somewhere else and it's someone that you knew before.
And I have a few questions about that.
Yeah.
Which, one, a lot of people can get married quickly sometimes.
Yeah.
A lot of times it doesn't work out well.
So that's one thing that I'm curious about.
And then two, what was the experience like for you being this shy guy who's not super
confident and you meet this woman who you think is attractive?
And at that point in time, you weren't really the guy that had all those qualities of being
a man.
And then the second interaction, you did have all those qualities.
How were those two dilineated?
What was that experience like?
Yeah.
So, okay.
On the first question, so forgive me, the first part was?
The first part is, did you have any doubts about kind of getting married so quickly?
Because a lot of people will marry quickly.
And the time from when we met to...
Yeah.
I had dated enough girls and she had dated enough guys at that time.
We had an understanding of what we both had appreciated and what we wanted in a relationship
with the spouse.
Yeah.
So I think that that was healthy enough for us to understand that.
Again, that's what we needed.
Yeah.
Am I saying this?
What everybody needs?
Some people know, it's the first time they ever met somebody that said, some people are
serial daters and they can say, there's nobody's ever perfect enough.
And I think that's also a problem.
We were just so aligned in our principles and values that everything else just fell
into place.
Yeah.
So, I wasn't afraid.
It just made sense to me.
And I just thought, well, this is part of my journey of life and like, why would we not
move forward?
Yeah.
You know, it just didn't even cross my mind.
And if I know if you asked Jamila, she would say the same thing because we talked about
this.
The second thing, how do I delineate between being a shy, quiet kid?
Yeah.
You had two experiences with the same girl.
Well, so what's interesting is the business I'm in, as we've sort of been talking about
throughout this whole conversation, it'll knock you in your teeth.
They'll see what you're made of.
Yeah.
I owe it somewhat to the business as well for creating this space for me to get knocked
down and have to keep fighting and get back up and saying, I'm never giving up and I'm
going to continue to move forward.
And I'm going to continue to embrace the hell that I feel like I'm in right now that I know
that I'm in because I'm not going to give up.
And that experience put me in a position to where when I saw her again, I had a different
level of confidence in all aspects of my being, both internally and externally.
And so would you draw that change inside of you mostly to getting knocked down in business
and seeing what you were made of?
Yeah.
I mean, it was a huge part of it.
A huge part of it.
Is there anything else that changed between that period of time and the other period of
time?
I became a student of life as well.
I was committed to my growth and learning every day.
I was reading a ton.
I was listening to anything that I could get my hands on that could better me.
Littlest.
You know, podcasts weren't really anything then, but a lot of these speakers would come
in with their CDs.
You don't even know what I'm talking about.
I do.
My dad had some of those.
Yeah.
All right.
So all those old school speakers, anytime I'd be driving, I'd have a CD in the car listening
to somebody, whether it was whoever it might have been or it was industry.
I was listening all the time saying, how can I better myself?
How can I grow?
I got to be all in and committed to this.
And little did I know that that was preparing me for a relationship with my wife.
That was not why I was doing it.
I was doing it because I wanted to be better in business.
I didn't realize that it was helping me be better as a person in life.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's like, I was talking to my kids about this.
I said, and it goes back to the talents, you know, and Matthew 25.
When you're given something, you should always, I think you should always say, I'm going to
make the best out of this.
If you're given a broom and there's a mess, I'm going to clean this up better than anybody's
ever cleaned this mess up ever.
They're going to want to eat food off this floor.
It's ridiculous, right?
Yeah.
But why not do your absolute like strive for excellence in everything that you do?
Why not?
And the difference between, between, hey, it's good enough and excellence is not as much
as people think, but the experience that people on the other end receive means the world to
them.
And again, that you become like going just that extra, that extra step.
It changes everything.
And it's really about the habit of doing that with everything that you do.
You know, you get invited to something, right hand written note to thank them for that experience.
When was the last time you got a hand written note?
Maybe like, I think this year.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I mean, what was it like when you got that?
I mean, getting a hand written note is a great experience.
Like you feel like the person cares.
Yeah.
Right.
Time to acknowledge you.
Like as opposed to a text or a voicemail.
Yeah.
Like, oh, this is so cool.
Like this person actually cares, right?
Also nice, by the way.
Thank you for acknowledging me, but way beyond.
Yeah.
I mean, when was the last time you said thank you?
I said, or I guess I gave a handwritten letter probably like two-ish months ago.
Yeah.
And what did that, how did that experience, what did that mean to you and what did it
mean to them?
To me, it meant a lot.
I got a lot out of writing the letter and sharing a lot of things in a written with pen
and paper format.
Yeah.
And to the person who received it, it also meant a ton to them.
And so, yeah, to your point, that extra little bit has a massive impact.
It's great.
I mean, I think if you could write, start with a thank you a week.
Yeah.
Or a note to a week.
Just acknowledge somebody.
It could really change your perception of how you see the world and people's perception
of how they see the world.
Yeah.
Two very positive things can happen from that.
Yeah, definitely.
You have two young boys, right?
Yeah.
Talk to me about...
I don't know where we got off from the thank yous, by the way.
I don't even know what I was going over there with that.
Go the extra mile.
That's what it was.
Do a handwritten note and that has outsized returns compared to saying thank you over
a text over a phone call.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And I want to touch on your raising two young boys and kind of a weird...
Masculinity is kind of falling apart.
That's not a lot of masculine role models.
And at least in recent years, you have masculine gurus or whatever you want to call them, Andrew
Tate, all these guys online kind of preying on the lack of masculine role models.
And my question to you would be, how are you teaching your boys masculinity in this environment?
How are you raising them to be men?
It's probably one of the most important jobs that I have in my life right now is that my
16 year old is...
He just started driving less than a month ago.
He's got a lot more autonomy and freedom.
He only has a couple of years left in our house before he's going to go off to university
or whatever he's going to do.
And then it's like, oh my gosh, think about it in that way.
It's a lot of weight.
And it's not like you have forever.
Now, of course, you're going to keep teaching him beyond that, but he's going to be off
on his own and having to make decisions on his own.
He's already doing it right now.
And my almost 14 year old to be 14 in a couple of days, same thing.
Everything in my opinion, I mean, it's all at the dinner table.
The conversations that we have at the dinner table, they emanate into all of our day.
So we spend a lot of time just talking about, well, first off, every time we have dinner,
we always pray.
And then we talk about what we're grateful for.
I think it's important that my boys understand that you have to have gratitude in the moment
right now and that you have to be appreciative and grateful for all the blessings that you
have in your life right now.
And you have to lead people into seeing that because I want my kids, when they have kids,
to remind their kids of what it means to be a grateful human being because of the blessings
that they have, no matter what.
I don't care what you have, where you are, it's not a money thing.
It's just, there's always an opportunity to be grateful, always.
My wife, how I treat my wife and honor her, I do that because she deserves that and that's
how you're supposed to treat a woman.
But I know my boys are watching.
I know they watch how I treat my wife and how I speak to her and how I communicate.
I think that chivalry, as much as our society wants to kill chivalry because somehow that's
bad.
I'm like, man, my boys better open the door for women.
They better make sure that they walk them to the door, whatever that door might be.
They better have the right manners of please and thank you.
Yesterday, we went to an event.
Boys wanted to leave before us.
They went out and thanked the hosts and hostess.
I'm like, I don't need to tell you that, you need to go do that.
You need to be a wolf in this world, not a sheep.
Do not be a follower.
People are always going to be, look, human nature is this way.
There are people that are predators.
When I say predators, I mean that in the most aggressive sense and also just kids are, they
have good intent, but they're dumb.
They just do dumb things.
They don't necessarily mean it in a bad malicious way oftentimes, but they do dumb things.
You got to be able to step up for people and make sure that you protect others when they
might not be able to protect themselves at that moment.
Because people are going to come after people all the time and you have to be able to step
across the grain and step into whatever that is as uncomfortable or as hard as that might
may be because it's not the popular thing to do, but it's the right thing to do.
You need to speak up when others are not willing to.
You need to also be vulnerable.
I'm vulnerable in front of my kids all the time because I don't want them to think that
masculinity is not about being vulnerable or sharing your feelings.
It's so far from the truth.
I want my kids to know that, hey, dad has tough stuff that he's dealing with all the
time.
It's not about avoiding the tough stuff.
It's about saying, what am I going to do next?
I talked to them very openly about it.
They hear some really hard things that I was dealing with today, but here's how I thought
about them and here's what I did.
I want them to know that it's not about having less problems, about having higher quality
problems, and then having being equipped and building the muscle to know, okay, here's
what I'm going to do.
It's about taking care of your family.
In our house, the way our house works, I'm the primary income earner, and Jamila has
been a stay-at-home mom and has raised our kids and has done everything.
For us, it's about how we've chosen to live our life and we've been blessed enough to
be able to do that.
We are very much a partnership in raising our boys.
My boys know that I got it and they're good because I want them to know that no matter
what the hell is going on in my life, they need to know that they are secure and they're
taken care of and that I want them to do the same thing for their family.
Don't bring your shit home.
And vomit all over your family about all the disaster that happened in your day, especially
in my business.
It's really easy to come home and go, you would not believe this, this, and this happened.
Bring all your stress home.
That is not manhood.
Park your car wherever you park it in your garage, your side of your house, whatever.
Take some deep breaths.
Walk inside and say, what am I going to do to be the best husband and father to my family?
To my boys, I'm like, I'm good.
To my boys, I want them to know, no matter what's going on, dad's like stoic.
He tells us he's got stuff going on, but at the end of the day, he's like, I got this.
Let's keep going for it.
I have the discipline to do that.
But that, I know it's a lot of stuff, but being a man, it's not as hard as people think.
It's just not.
But you have to be intentional about it.
And I know the world is trying to change that in ways that I don't think are serving boys
becoming men.
But I also think too, I just finished coaching my son's football team.
And I got 21 kids, boys, 13 year olds.
And I started almost every coaching, whatever I said, this is my expectation and my standard.
And I love you all.
And I'm going to coach you to this.
And if you're not, if you're not there, we're to keep going towards there.
I'm not always going to tell you what you want to hear.
I'm not going to be playing nice with you all the time or just telling you that you
did a good job when you didn't.
But when you earn it, I'll be the first to be loving on you and giving you a hug and
graduating you and cheering you on.
That I think is really important in life.
I do not want to put a cushion and a pillow down for these kids to fall in and go, I know
it didn't hurt too much.
It's okay to be hurt.
It's okay to go hard.
It's okay to fight.
Right?
The person that you become, and we got to teach these kids this right now, that ultimately
is going to help, it's going to help you feel and know that, hey, I'm strong inside.
I can do this.
Yeah.
Right?
Watch any movie about the hero, the hero's journey.
They got to go through some hell to get to the other side.
And our boys need to do this and understand right now that they can go through these little
microcosms of difficulty in their lives to come out strong on the other end, because
that's going to translate in everything they do in their life.
I'll take a breath so you can comment.
I mean, that was a lot.
That's all great.
I think that there's a lot of values in there that are a bit more old school than modern
values.
And I think they're not necessarily palatable to a lot of people.
Yeah.
But I get it.
And along with that, part of the being masculine part is saying those things, even when they're
not as palatable.
Yeah.
Right?
And my question following that would be that you had your dad pass out young or pass away
young.
Did he instill all of these lessons in you?
Or did you go and learn them out on your own?
I was pretty fortunate to have a pretty awesome dad for 19 years of my life.
And I learned a lot from him.
But I was just coming around the corner of understanding how life works when he passed
away.
So I've had to lean into learning a lot from, there are so many resources, but just from
life as well, reading, watching others that I respect, building relationships with mentors
in my life, watching how men that were ahead of me that I looked up to and I said, this
guy's got it going on.
What is he doing that I need to pick up on?
And just being open to that.
Being hard on coaches to just help me with not necessarily masculinity, but just how do
I go about my life and be committed to something?
And so I've learned a lot along the way as well.
Being married will teach you a lot too.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, I didn't know everything about being a man when I got married, but that's okay.
You're not supposed to.
You're supposed to know enough to get married and then you got to grow together.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, it sucked losing a dad that early.
It definitely was even harder on my brother.
Yeah.
It was 16 at the time.
But look, I mean, the way that I learned to understand was one, it wasn't, it's not,
when I say understand, to accept.
It wasn't my place to ask God why.
Like, why would you do that to somebody that was that great?
And I learned that that wasn't the proper question to ask.
It was, all right, what am I going to do now to make sure that I continue to honor the
legacy that my dad had started, which is what I think about every day.
And he had set the tone for how he treated people.
Everybody loved him.
He was a lovable guy.
He was a really good guy.
And the way he treated my mom and their marriage and their relationship.
And I have taken what he had set as a foundation for me and said, how can I, I know what he
would want me to do, take it and make it better for my kids.
And so that's, that's my perspective.
Like we're just stewards man in life.
I'm just, I'm here for a bit, you know, then I'm going to be God and whatever I do for
the people that I get to spend time with, hopefully that makes a positive impact and it uses the
talents that I've been blessed with.
Yeah.
Passing the torch and multiplying them.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just, it's not my torch.
I just happen to be holding it right now.
Yeah.
A lot of us get tied to thinking that the torch is ours.
Yeah.
As we come near the end of the podcast, we have a closing tradition.
Yeah.
As, as you know, the podcast is called a carrots and sticks.
Yeah.
And every time we have a guest on, we ask them.
We ask them to make a carrot, which is a two week challenge, which pushes the guest to
live courageously and then a stick, which is the accountability portion of the challenge,
which the guest also sets as their incentive to live fearlessly.
I was not, I was not told about these things.
So let's think through this.
Yeah.
I mean, all the time you want.
All right.
So, so my carrot is I'm going to do this thing courageously for two weeks.
You don't have to do it for two weeks.
It's in action that faces a fear or that pushes you to live courageously.
Okay.
Within two weeks.
All right.
And then the, sorry, that's the carrot.
Okay.
And then the stick.
And the stick is what you have to do if you don't do it.
Your incentive to do the stick.
It's so funny.
I used to coach all of our new advisors with, often times like, Hey, what do you respond
both well to, you know, and some people were stick somewhere carrots.
This is a good question.
So, you know, in our business coming up on your end, we want to have a great start to
the, the first quarter.
And so it's getting easy to be distracted and say, okay, I'm just going to run to the
end, but not really present, put ourselves in a great position for Q one.
So my commitment between now and ultimately, it's almost like Thanksgiving, right?
When we're doing this.
So let's say the next two weeks, what I will do.
So we have in our world points of contact, which means that I'm reaching out either via
email, phone, text to clients.
And typically I'm doing 30 a week.
I will do a hundred in the next two weeks, which is a lot, especially with the days that
I have here.
But that will help me reach out and connect with people that I need to, to position ourselves,
to either be introduced to the right people that we need to or be connected to the right
ones as we move into Q one.
Yeah.
Love it.
All right.
And if I don't do it, because I know I got to be honest with this in the stick situation.
By the way, I just made a commitment this morning to do 30, which is already a stretch.
So now I got to go revise that with my team with a hundred, with a hundred over two, which
is great.
I love it.
If I don't do it and see, look, here's the thing, I'm going to do it, but I'll entertain
you on this.
Yeah.
I will.
And the stick, does it need to go to something bad or can it?
Can it be something good that I just have to write it, write a check for?
It could be something good.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Because I don't want to give to like one political party that I don't appreciate.
Yeah.
That's because that's like it's helping somebody that I don't want to help.
I will.
But I got to think about a good stick on this.
Something that's going to, that I've looked up going, there's no freaking way that I'm
doing this.
Yeah.
All right.
Here, here.
This is, this is a stick for me because this is hard to do.
But if, if I, so I box in the mornings and I box twice a week and it's, it's hard.
It's a hard workout.
It's like an hour and a half workout on average.
And I do it twice a week because it's, it's a lot.
Yeah.
I'll do that for two weeks straight, five days a week.
I know I have to get up at four in the morning to do this.
So that would be really not something that I want to do as much as I love it.
I need to rest in between, but that would be a pain in my ass and I'll do that.
Yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
Perfect.
All right.
Well, thank you for coming on.
Yeah.
Where can people find you if you want to be found?
Where can people find me?
You can, you can just Google my name, Armin Cadiwala and a lot of stuff will pop up in
there.
I'm on a number of boards.
So depending on what you want to read about me, you can connect with me on one of the
boards that I'm on.
Or you can find us at anthologycapitalsolutions.com.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much.
Thanks for this time.
This was great.
Yeah, this was a great time.
You're like the next Joe Rogan, man.
Hopefully.
You're really good at this.
Oh, thank you, man.
I really appreciate it.
I mean, I'm impressed, man.
Now we got to get you to a studio with like curtains and cool American flight behind you
and some mics.
That would be really cool, right?
Yeah.
Thank you.