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Kreatures Of Habit Podcast
Michael Chernow's Journey with Addiction, Recovery, and Redemption | Kreatures of Habit x Rich Roll
02:43:43
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- [00:00]
Michael Chernow
Hey, everybody.
- [00:01]
Rich Roll
Welcome back to the Creatures of Habit podcast. This week is a little bit of a special week where we are going to be playing or resharing an episode of the Ritual podcast where I was a guest late in 2024. I felt like this was a really great way to kick off the year. This podcast, I really sort of went deep on my story story and I wanted to share it with you guys. I haven't done this much on the podcast where I've shared podcasts that I've been a guest on. And so I thought for the beginning of 2026, this would be a way to get you guys a little bit more. To get a little bit more intimate with you all on my story and hopefully inspire some motivation, Inspiration, hope, and just knowing that people change. People can change. People change. I'm a changed human being. I just am. And I'm grateful that I was able to share that story on the Rich Roll podcast, which is, you know, was a massive milestone in my, in my career. So here we go. Sit back, relax and enjoy. This is a bit of a long one, but I hope you, I hope it strikes a chord for you all. Right, here it is. An entrepreneur straight out of New York City, Michael Chernow was cracking. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked over there and I said, I hate you. Like, legit I hate you.
- [01:49]
Michael Chernow
Anyone can change anytime, but it comes with a catch. The only time you get to change is right now.
- [01:58]
Rich Roll
Not only is there like a way out of this life that you feel like you're locked into, but the other side is like, so much better.
- [02:06]
Michael Chernow
Michael Chernow is here today to share tales and powerful, potentially life altering takeaways from the front lines of sobriety. Resilience, life transformation and redemption.
- [02:20]
Rich Roll
Discipline, structure and patience are just essential for accomplishing anything great.
- [02:26]
Michael Chernow
This guy is just this living testament to the idea that anyone has the ability to transform yourself one day at a time.
- [02:37]
Rich Roll
It's never too late. You're never too far gone. You can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow. Or not. Or not.
- [02:57]
Michael Chernow
Awesome to finally meet you. I'm so excited to get into your story. I've been looking forward to this for a while, but I have a confession to make up front and this will give you a lens into just what an alcoholic I am. So over the years, I have been hit up by so many people trying to get us together. Gary, Vee, Lance, everybody's like, you gotta meet Chernow, you gotta meet Chernow. And there's something in my brain that just says, well, if these people are telling me I have to meet this guy, or if this guy is, like, so keen to meet me, like, it had the opposite effect, Michael. It shut me down. Yeah. It made me think, like, I need to move in the other direction, and that's my character defect. Like, I don't know what that's all about. For some reason, I had, like, this resistance, but it's contempt prior to investigation. Right. And when Lance was hitting me up and then he was sharing, you know, what you guys kind of did together, I was like, what is. What is the matter with me? Like, this guy's awesome. Like, it's all on me, dude. So I owe you an apology and also, you know, kind of an amends. Like, I think what you're doing is dope. I think your message is super powerful. I think you're an incredible ambassador of what you're trying to share, and I'm excited to kind of hear all about it with you.
- [04:12]
Rich Roll
Wow, dude. Thank you, man. You know, you're one of these guys where I. I've been a fan for a long time, and I've been listening for a long time, and I think the thing that we have in common. Well, we have a few things in common, actually, but being in the world of recovery and having a platform to be able to say, hey, like, not only is there, like, a way out of this life that you feel like you're locked into, but the other side is, like, so much better. And here's an example of what that could be. You know, I think that's a powerful thing. So that connection that I just knew that I had with you was something that I really wanted to. I really wanted to just be able to come here and connect on that. And then also, like, you know, you've made an impact on, like, so many people's lives, whether you know it or not. And I know for guys like us, it's kind of hard to hear that, but you have. You have.
- [05:09]
Michael Chernow
Thank you. I'm trying to get better at just taking stuff like that in, but I appreciate that, man. That means a lot to me. And I know that you probably, as I do, think a lot about how to bring voice to the recovery aspect of our lived experience and how to contextualize it. I know personally that had I known what I know now about what recovery is when I was struggling to get sober or resisting going into the program and raising my hand and asking for help and receiving help, that maybe I would have come in a little bit earlier. And I think that occasionally pushes up against the tradition of anonymity and what you're kind of permitted to share publicly and what you're sort of chastised for sharing publicly. Do you think about that at all? Like, I just think I'm just sharing my personal experience. I would never reveal the identity of anybody or talk about details that would be transgressive in any kind of way. But I feel really strongly about sharing this message of recovery because it's revolutionized my life, changed everything about my life. It gave me the life that I have today. And I know that, you know, you feel the same.
- [06:26]
Rich Roll
I think it's a controversial question in regards to where we came from. Right. For me, there's no controversy. Every single time I share about my recovery, I get a plethora of DMs from people asking if I can give them a couple of minutes to chat. You know, I remember early on in my career, probably not early on, I'd say after I opened up my second restaurant concept, I had an opportunity to do a pretty sizable Wall Street Journal piece, and they wanted to talk to me about restaurants in New York and my life story of how I kind of navigated the streets of New York City into the restaurant guy. And I spoke to my sponsor, which, for people that don't know what that means in recovery talk, that's basically the mentor. I called my mentor, who's super successful guy, dude, who I love and respect. And I said, hey, you know, what are your thoughts on me sharing about my real recovery story, not just the sober community, you know, just being really real about what hap. You know, what it's like for me. And he was like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. You cannot do that. You cannot do that. Not only should you not do that, because you're a business person and you don't need other people knowing the ins and outs of your personal life, because this is a business focusing. And that really turned me off. And I decided from that moment on that this is a huge part of my life. Without that change In August of 2004, for me, I have zero. Truly. I believe that. I mean, the chances of me being alive now with, like, all the fentanyl and all the stuff that's in the market today are slim to none, based on how I was tracking. I have no problem talking about my journey. And I actually feel like, you know, the literature that we are accustomed to was written, you know, a hundred years ago, essentially, and times were very different. And now 100,000 plus people are dying every year in the United States of America from overdoses. And that's probably a small number in comparison to what actually is happening. But hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of alcohol and drug abuse. It's a real epidemic. I feel like if I don't share about the success of coming through that I'm not doing what I know I have to do, which is be of service.
- [09:02]
Michael Chernow
So, yeah, I'm on the same page. I appreciate that. I think that there's just an astonishing number of people out there who are suffering. And despite our sense of understanding that, you know, help is available, or there are these meetings and these places that you can go based on the DMs and the emails that I get, there's still a lot of people who are like, what do I do? And I'll always take the time to respond to those DMs because that's my primary purpose, right? And even though people have heard my story or I talk about, you know, I talk about recovery constantly, the questions will still be the same, like, here's my thing, like, what would be your advice? The advice is always the same, right? Like, well, I share my experience. I'm not giving advice. That's the other thing that we learn. I'm not here to judge you or to tell you how to live your life. I'm here to tell you, like, here's what worked for me. And if you're interested in that, like, I can hold your hand and walk you through it.
- [10:01]
Rich Roll
The other thing that I would just add to it is the success rate of people getting sober. And staying sober is small, right? However, as a human being, and I don't know if we're born with this predisposition to extreme ways of life, right. I would imagine that there's some level of. I don't know if it's in my genes or it's in my DNA, you know, But. But I am an extreme human. Everything I do, for the most part, if I don't do it, if I don't like it, I'm not going to do it. If I like it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go hard, right?
- [10:33]
Michael Chernow
To your benefit and to your detriment. This is a superpower and it's also your Achilles heel.
- [10:39]
Rich Roll
But what I learned about, once I made a decision to change my life and get sober, I then can apply that ability to commit and discipline towards that commitment to every other area in my life. And that is a humbling power to understand about yourself that if you can do that. Like, I just finished listening to your book and I'm listening to the book and it was so wonderful for me to just know that I'm not alone in this crazy, extreme way of thinking. And I have other friends that are also sober and not sober that are also pretty hardcore extremists in things that they want to pursue. But I know for sure that if I want to do something and I say it out loud, I'm going to fucking do it. That was given to me from the ability to get sober and stay sober.
- [11:35]
Michael Chernow
Did you go through that experience of being told or chastised for being an extremist and being told time and time again that you need to find more balance? Like yesterday, I just know, yeah, it's like, okay, it was a long journey for me to kind of just own that aspect of who I was instead of feeling bad about it or trying to change my fundamental wiring and instead just embrace it and try to channel it in positive directions with some self awareness. I mean, obviously you don't want to be, be so out of, out of balance that or so single minded that you're losing sight of the other things in your life that are important or perhaps more important than the thing you're focused on in the moment. But once you kind of own it and allow yourself to indulge in it and you direct it with some conscious awareness, it is a superpower and I'm grateful for it.
- [12:30]
Rich Roll
It is what has given me the, the confidence and the courage to walk the path that I've walked since I've gotten sober. There's just no doubt. And I think also it's what's helped me be a great husband, father and leader. The ability to do what I say I'm gonna do. You know, I've gotten better at this over, over the years, but if I don't think I'm gonna do it, I typically won't say it. So if I'm contemplating something that happens to be hard and challenging, which I do all the time, right? Like I'm like, oh man, I'm gonna climb Everest. But like, if I'm thinking about something, I choose not to actually speak it, I'll write about it, I'll journal about it until I'm ready or not to just go. But typically the first person I'll tell is my wife. And once I do it, once I tell my wife, you know, she is not an extreme human and she rolls her eyes at everything that I tell her. I'm going to do. That's extreme. But if I tell her it's happening no matter what, then it happens.
- [13:40]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. That's incredible. And the results, you know, demonstrate that you've had some tremendous successes. You're onto a new venture. We're going to talk about that. But let's add some color here. Like, let's take it back a little bit. I mean, your story is very cinematic. You know, it's part bourdain burnt. It's got a little light dusting of Requiem for a Dream, a little trainspotting in there, and also some Karate Kid on top of it. Right. Like, in the screenplay of your life. Like, let's verbalize the screenplay. You know, Opening scene is like your nadir, your lowest moment. Like, interior, apartment, dawn. Like, where's the bottom here?
- [14:26]
Rich Roll
So the bottom here is August 1st. Hot New York City summer. I had been up for probably 48 hours. I knew I had work for whatever reason, throughout the whole time, I've sustained a legitimate job while I was really. While I was, you know, in the depths of my addiction.
- [14:48]
Michael Chernow
And did that help to maintain the denial and just empower you to keep going?
- [14:53]
Rich Roll
Tethered me to life.
- [14:54]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. That sense of, like, I can do it all. I can party all the time. I can show up for work. I can do all this stuff.
- [15:00]
Rich Roll
Yeah. And it was in the restaurant business, so it's. You know, I mean, I was definitely like a. I used to take it further than. But I also worked in an environment that was, like, somewhat. Okay. It was a Monday, and I had been up for days, and the two guys that I was with kind of called it quits. And I remember very clearly being in my apartment, not wanting to stop what I had in my pocket and in the booze that I had. And for whatever reason, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I stopped, and I looked over there and I said, I hate you. Like, legit. I hate you, and you should die. Like, you should just do it. You've been playing around with the idea for so long. You should just. You should do it, you know? And two weeks prior, I had overdosed on heroin. And I could not. I just couldn't figure out how to stop. I wanted to stop desperately. I did. I really did. I remember walking from that apartment that I overdosed in. I was walking west on 13th street, and I was like, that's it, man. No more. Done. How have you let yourself go get to this place? And that night, I was back at it. And so, for Those two weeks, I kind of had made a commitment in the opposite direction and said, all right, dude, well, you're not going to figure out how to end this in a positive way. You might as well push as hard as you can till it's over, you know, like, till you're dead, basically, because you almost died. Can't figure it out. You're so close. I really wanted to end it that morning, but I didn't. I blacked out. And I came to 16 hours later. I'd slept through work for the umpteenth time. My boss, I called my boss and I said, I'm so sorry, man. He's like, mikey, that's it. Sorry. Like, I love you, you're a great person, but you're dying. Everybody knows around you you're dying. I'm not gonna allow that to happen on my watch. You're done. You're fired. And, man, I loved my job. I really did. I loved where I worked. And I said, frank, please, please give me another shot, man. Please, I will get sober. And he said, there's no chance you're bartending or running, you know, bar managing this restaurant in your condition. There's no chance. But if you show up at the restaurant at 8 o' clock in the morning for the next 30 days, I'll consider giving you your job back, but you have to get sober. And I said, whatever. Whatever you want me to do. So I began that journey. And that was like kind of like a kick in the ass that I needed. I don't know what really was different that day than, you know, all the other times that I had slept through work and wanted to kill myself and, you know, felt like my life was useless or hopeless. But I made a phone call to an old friend who was kind of like an older sister to me when I was running around the streets, you know, without a home. I knew that she was. Was dating a sober guy, and I think she was sober at the time as well. And I said, I'm done. I need help. I'm desperate. I need help. And so she introduced me to this guy Marcus, who showed up.
- [18:35]
Michael Chernow
He's the Juice Press guy, right? Yeah, the co founder of Juice Press.
- [18:40]
Rich Roll
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He showed up for me. And at that time in my life, I had no idea. I didn't know much about sobriety, you know, but I did know that a lot of people meet in church basements. And I knew. I knew that my life was basically over. I was gonna be a boring human. I probably wasn't gonna Hook up with another attractive girl ever again because I'm sober.
- [19:05]
Michael Chernow
You'll be alive, but everything's gonna be a shade of gray.
- [19:08]
Rich Roll
Yeah, everything's gonna be bleak. I'm gonna hang out in libraries, you know, and this was. This is what I knew. And then I met Marcus and he was covered in tattoos, just like, you know, total badass, and listened to me for the first time ever. I really felt like when I talked to him, it was the first time anybody had ever listened to me.
- [19:32]
Michael Chernow
Was that one of the first times you were open and honest about what you were actually doing and took the mask off?
- [19:39]
Rich Roll
You know, I think that there were probably a lot of. A lot of times, you know, 36 hours into a run where I'd be sitting with somebody in some weird, cracked out environment telling them about my life and how I was gonna change and how I knew I had a problem. But I think sober, kind of sober, that was the first time that I got real.
- [20:08]
Michael Chernow
What's interesting and what I kind of want to explore a little bit more deeply here is the utter, the sheer powerlessness that the addict or the alcoholic faces. You had just talked about how you have this superpower. When you say you're going to do something, you do it. It's happening. It's already happened. When you direct that laser beam in a certain direction, it's like game over before it even starts. And yet with this problem with heroin, with drugs, that laser beam was completely ineffective. You said, I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore. And then within the same day you were doing it. And I think that that is very difficult for people who are not addicts or alcoholics or don't really understand the true nature and power of addiction to wrap around their brains, right? Like, just stop, you're going to kill yourself. You've got to cut this out. And you, who are so strong willed, you have this incredible self will, this, you know, well honed discipline, it still eluded your ability to do it yourself. And I even noticed it when you were talking to Lance. Like, Lance is trying really hard to understand this disease of addiction. And there were moments in that conversation where you could hear his bafflement because he doesn't suffer from it. And so that's why there's something really magical and mystical and powerful about one addict talking to another. So when you sit down across from Marcus, who's sober, there's an energy there where you feel understood because this person has lived it himself and gets it. And you don't have to explain the confusing, complex emotions that are part of that experience.
- [21:56]
Rich Roll
Something that I realized a handful of years ago is that addicts and alcoholics are incredibly disciplined to the drugs and the alcohol. Like, as disciplined and as committed as I am to living a well life today. Crafty as well, insanely resourceful. Will do anything, right? Like, anything. You know, like when I listen to your book and you broke that pedal and you were like, I'm done. And then somebody shows up with a fucking pedal for you, you got back on the bike and you finished the thing, right? And similarly, in the world of addiction, you know, when you're in it and you're active, you're in it hard, and something happens like an overdose, and you're like, I'm done. And then someone shows up with a. With another opportunity, and you're like, oh, let's go.
- [23:02]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. And with that, all the shame and the guilt, which butts up against that sense of being superhuman. Like, I can work at the restaurant for 48 hours straight and party and do, you know, like, that idea. Like, I'm more capable than the average person and I'm the worst person ever. Because I can't solve this fundamental problem.
- [23:26]
Rich Roll
I've been away from it for a while now. And when I think about how catastrophic just a typical day in my life was then compared to where I live today, if I go back and think about just like a standard day for me, then I would consider that today catastrophic. Like what I used to live, like, and exhausting. Just terrible, right? Like, from the moment I opened my eyes, which was typically 4 o' clock in the afternoon, to the minute I closed my eyes, which could be 48 hours later, the order of events that I would walk through. I can't even believe that I lived a life like that. I think that is very, very difficult for someone who has never experienced it to understand that in those days, I did not have any ownership of my life. My life had complete ownership of me. And so I just followed my life around or really kind of dragged me around. And today I am absolutely 100% driving the ship.
- [24:41]
Michael Chernow
The other wrinkle here is emerging out of this childhood that was rife with chaos and abuse. Like, it was a rough situation for you as a kid growing up in New York City.
- [24:56]
Rich Roll
It was.
- [24:57]
Michael Chernow
And for you to be this committed family guy in a healthy relationship and being a dad and all of that, like, obviously sobriety is fundamental to that, but there's a lot of other, like, mental health work that has to go into healing that trauma and kind of transcending, you know, the pattern that could have been generationally like passed down. So talk a little bit about that, like growing up.
- [25:23]
Rich Roll
I grew up in a small one bedroom apartment. My father was an electrician and a lighting designer and my mother was a secretary in a dentist's office. And my father was a hoarder and mentally ill. So my sister and I shared a bedroom. We were at each other's throats. We were very close in age and I wanted to escape from as early as I could remember, my father was very, very aggressive, very, very abusive. And when he wasn't abusing, he was neglecting. And my mom, she's just a loving, caring person, but she was also caught in the crossfire of abuse from my dad. My dad is no longer here and I want to make sure that we get to it. I want to share a story, a real sort of groundbreaking story that's happened to me recently and some breathwork stuff that I've done. But I wanted to escape from as early as I can remember. And that meant sleeping at as many friends houses as I could from kindergarten on. That also led me to being sexually abused by a sports coach and a Cub Scout leader because I really just wanted out. I wanted out and any opportunity, anytime someone would say, hey, you know, come hang out with me, I did because it just wasn't safe at home for me mentally, physically and now I know spiritually. But yeah, my dad was abusive. I do believe some people were meant to be parents and some people weren't. And my father was certainly not meant to be a parent. He, I know loved me, I believe it for sure. However, I don't think he had the capacity to get past his own mental illness and struggles to share that love. And that's why I think today I'm unashamed to say that I put my well being before everything else in my life because I watched someone who didn't ever. And that person, my father could not get past his own shit to be able to tell me, my sister, my mother, that he loved us. He loved us because I don't even know if he knew because he was so caught up in his own shit because he never took care of himself. So I today make myself the priority in my life and I really do. I make sure that I take care of myself so that I could show up as a father, husband and a great one and also a business person. But you know, I would sleep out as many friends houses as I could. And I remember, you know, this Is like a clear memory of mine at this kid Ross Delafield's house when I was. I think it was probably first grade. And he lived on 79th street between First and York. And I was at his house. I don't think it was the first time I was there, but he was like a good friend of mine. And his. His father, Danny Delafield was like my ideal dad. I was like, man, I want this guy to be my dad. And I remember saying to myself, sitting down at dinner with his family, which my family never ever did. I mean, maybe two times in my life did we ever sit down at a table and have dinner in our apartment.
- [28:40]
Michael Chernow
Wow.
- [28:41]
Rich Roll
And I said, man, I've got to get these parents to love me. I got to get them to like me. Like, it's like that's what I gotta do so that they can. They'll invite me to sleep over here, you know, like, this was like out of survival. This is what I was thinking at that age, you know, and that's how I kind of literally all through elementary school, I gotta get their parents to like me. I gotta figure out a way to get them to like me. And I got really good at that. Super good at getting people to like me.
- [29:11]
Michael Chernow
Being the chameleon.
- [29:12]
Rich Roll
Being the chameleon.
- [29:13]
Michael Chernow
People pleasing chameleon. Who do you need me to be right now so I can make sure that my needs are gonna get met? Totally.
- [29:20]
Rich Roll
Yeah. And so, you know, sleeping over at friends houses led to, you know, getting into a lot of trouble early on. And, you know, at 12 years old, I got put into pain Whitney mental institution because I attempted suicide. But really it was a cry for help. You know, they evaluated me. I remember my mother was hysterical. But that's when the child services got involved in our family. And, you know, it was illegal for two kids of opposite sex to share such close quarters in a bedroom. So I had to say that I slept on the couch in our living room. And anytime my father and I would get into an altercation, it was no longer like just arguing at that age, you know, it was now, you know, like full blown battles. I got to a point where I was now fighting back. I wasn't just like taking it on the chin, literally. I was fighting back and cops would show up. And so finally I was, you know, at 13 years old, I totally succumbed to addiction. I, at that point, by the end of my freshman year in high school, I was proud too. Like, very proud. Like I had found it, you know, I was like, this is me. I'M excited. Like, this is it.
- [30:34]
Michael Chernow
I'm gonna be the drug guy. Was it alcohol first or what was the introduction?
- [30:38]
Rich Roll
It was actually cigarettes first in sixth grade cigarettes and then marijuana the summer between sixth and seventh grade. And then a friend of mine went to this, like, super, like, small private school while I was still in public school. She went to this super small private school for, like, troubled kids. And that's when party drugs kind of came into my life.
- [31:03]
Michael Chernow
And you grew up on the Upper east side, like, on like 1st and 87th or something like that. So for people that don't know, despite the fact that you're in a one bedroom apartment, it's a prosperous neighborhood. You go a couple blocks over and it's penthouses and, you know, like a lot of wealth. So I imagine. And everybody in New York City is kind of living together. Right. Like, you're bumping into those type of.
- [31:26]
Rich Roll
Kids 100%, and they have all the best drugs.
- [31:28]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. And they're ready to buy whatever you're going to sell, probably. But it's not surprising. Like, you're this kid who's in a very challenging situation without any tools, without any guidance, has all of these emotions coming up as puberty, you know, starts to progress. Right. What are you supposed to do with that? And when drugs and alcohol enter the picture, like, they're the solution, like they're the cure to alcoholism and to addiction. And it's important to understand that they serve a purpose and they work. They ultimately, you know, stop working and then they destroy your life. But there is a period of time where this is the medication that you've been looking for your whole life that allows you to finally, like, you know, exhale a little bit. Saved my life and feel okay in your own body.
- [32:17]
Rich Roll
Yeah, they saved my life. At that time, at that point in my life, I really do believe that they saved my life. And I don't say that so that people can go out and think, oh, gosh, that's what's gonna do it for me. Because ultimately they almost killed me as well, made me miserable and took everything, every ounce of self confidence and self worth from me, from every cell in my body at the end. But at that time in my life, it was. I had found what I was looking for. I needed an escape, an ultimate escape that I had complete control over. You know, I can control everything. I can control the good feelings, the bad feelings, the insecurities, the fear, all of it. I had complete control. And that felt like I had figured it out. You know, at that early age. And honestly it was a lot of fun. I mean, you know, eventually the child services got deep involved. I was 15. They had, you know, threatened to put me in foster care or told my mother that, you know, she'd have to take me out of the house because my father and I were fighting too much, you know, physically. I just kind of packed a bag and I said, mom, I'm out. You know.
- [33:30]
Michael Chernow
At 15.
- [33:30]
Rich Roll
At 15.
- [33:31]
Michael Chernow
Wow.
- [33:32]
Rich Roll
And I was out. I just left and I didn't go back. I moved into NYU dorm with this girl that I had met.
- [33:43]
Michael Chernow
Uh huh.
- [33:44]
Rich Roll
And college.
- [33:45]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. This is the other thing. Like you're a hustler and you're a super handsome guy and you know, wild and free on the streets of New York City. You're gonna find a way.
- [33:56]
Rich Roll
I always landed on my feet.
- [33:59]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [34:00]
Rich Roll
And I landed on my feet in some really amazing places, like lofts in soho.
- [34:07]
Michael Chernow
Sure.
- [34:08]
Rich Roll
Those first few years when I got out of my parents house for real and I was working in restaurants and then ultimately in nightclubs, I felt free. I did. And that's not sugarcoating it, that's being the truth. It was so scary for me as a kid. So scary for me. I didn't even realize, even though I've done so much work on myself, the 12 steps and therapies on and off for years and years, you know, I didn't know how scary it was for me as a kid until I had this experience with breathwork that just opened a lot up for me recently.
- [34:48]
Michael Chernow
So do you want to footnote that for now or.
- [34:50]
Rich Roll
I want to footnote it. I want to footnote it. I'm out in the street, I'm working in restaurants and selling a lot of drugs, you know, running the streets, going to nightclubs, traveling up and down the east coast, going to parties and selling all sorts of drugs and making money and stayed in high school somehow, you know. I stayed in high school.
- [35:09]
Michael Chernow
You still showed up for school?
- [35:11]
Rich Roll
I still showed up for school.
- [35:11]
Michael Chernow
I just assumed like school was done.
- [35:13]
Rich Roll
With when you moved out. So. It's funny, I mean, I did go to school, but I didn't go to school. Like I would show up and then I just like barely went to class and I don't know, again, like those moments as a young kid having to look at my friend's parents and make them like me. I did the same thing with all of my teachers.
- [35:31]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [35:31]
Rich Roll
You know, like all of them. And I made sure that I just established a relationship with all of my teachers in school. So that when I didn't show up, I could come back in and be like, you know, I've got a pretty fucked up situation at home. You know, I was just like a master manipulator, master. Even though I'm a good person, I just figured out how to do that in a lot of areas in my life.
- [36:00]
Michael Chernow
That also serves you well as a business person, as an entrepreneur, and I would imagine in the work that you've done. And maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Like, having to undo that must have felt like a threat to another superpower, which is your people skills and how to kind of gather people together around a particular goal that you're self interested in. Right.
- [36:25]
Rich Roll
Well, you know, it's a thin line.
- [36:27]
Michael Chernow
What's authentic and what is a manipulation?
- [36:30]
Rich Roll
Totally. And I think because of me understanding pretty early on that I had this superpower of connecting with people, and even though it was a forced thing as a young person, it was a way for me to escape my home, I do believe that is inherently what I'm here to do, is connect with people. If someone were to ask me, so what is your superpower? I would say it's the ability to connect with people at scale in an authentic way. And I think at that age I was just learning about that, about myself. And then once I kind of figured it out that I could do this, when the drugs and alcohol became part of my life now, I knew I could use it as a weapon, you know, and then once I gave up the drugs and alcohol, I realized that it didn't have to be a weapon anymore. It is who I am interrupting this episode to share with you that Creatures of Habit finally launched our protein bar. It's called the Daily Bar. It's made with 20 grams of plant based protein, 3 grams of creatine. Yes, you heard that right. It also has 3 grams of creatine. It is incredibly tasty and clean as a whistle. All clean ingredients. Take this opportunity. Hop over to creaturesofabit.com that's creaturesofhabhabit.com with a K and use code K O H P O D20 at checkout for 20% off your first order. Back to the pod.
- [38:15]
Michael Chernow
So where do the restaurants enter the picture? Like you get your first job as a dishwasher or something like that. Like, how do you enter that world?
- [38:23]
Rich Roll
I get a job as a delivery boy in a vegan restaurant on the Upper east side called the Candle Cafe. Just still there.
- [38:29]
Michael Chernow
I know that place. I know Benet. Do you know Binet who was the hostess there for a while. She's not there anymore. Anyway, I've eaten there many times.
- [38:38]
Rich Roll
Bart and his wife, the owners.
- [38:41]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, still there.
- [38:43]
Rich Roll
Joy and Bart.
- [38:43]
Michael Chernow
Did it close or.
- [38:45]
Rich Roll
I think they're still there.
- [38:46]
Michael Chernow
Are they still there?
- [38:46]
Rich Roll
They're still there. I was illegally 12 years old when I got a job there, and I was on Rollerblades, and this is when rollerblades were cool. Just have to throw that out there. I was delivering videos, VHS videos for couch potato video. And my buddy Daniel, who is my original, you know, is my partner in the meatball shop who I'm staying with now, was actually. He's a year older than me. He was answering phones in the delivery department of this restaurant and said, hey, man, you should come deliver food for us as well. So I was delivering videos. Ended up, you know, getting the job at Candle Cafe, delivering food for them. About six months after that, I. I also picked up a weed delivery opportunity. So I was delivering videos, food and weed, and it kind of all worked out together. You know, like, anybody who was ordering videos, I'd, like, sort of suss them out and be like, can I interest you in anything else?
- [39:40]
Michael Chernow
It's sort of the weed version of gaydar. Like, you know, is this a potential customer here? Yeah.
- [39:46]
Rich Roll
In the restaurant business, it's called reading your customer read the table.
- [39:50]
Michael Chernow
Right.
- [39:50]
Rich Roll
So I did that, ultimately got a job in the kitchen as a dishwasher, and then a prep cook, and then they put me on the floor, and. And that began my journey in the world of restaurants. And I stayed working in restaurants my whole life until very recently when I launched Creatures of Habit. But I learned that the restaurant made me feel like I could be myself for the first time. I was like, in this place where, for whatever reason, my insecurities kind of dissipated in the restaurants.
- [40:20]
Michael Chernow
Interesting. I wonder if that has something to do with just the chaos of that world. And it has a very unique energy. Right. That can make you feel alive if you're somebody who's well suited to that. All the people and there's moving pieces, and everything's happening really quickly. And you do have to be able to interact with people and communicate with them to get anything done. It's exciting.
- [40:45]
Rich Roll
Well, it's also, like, you don't spend too much time with any one person. So, you know, it was like a bunch of mini conversations that I was having. You know, you're in and out.
- [40:56]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. There's no risk to me. Yeah.
- [40:58]
Rich Roll
You know, like, I was like, let me help you here. Let Me help you over here. And then I'd find some, you know. But I loved it. I loved it, I loved it. And I felt like that was, you know, this is where I was gonna hang my hat for a while. And so I worked in restaurants all through high school, got a job in a nightclub, worked at one of, you know, New York City's sort of coolest nightclubs in the 90s life. Oh yeah, it's an amazing, it was an amazing place I had, I mean.
- [41:23]
Michael Chernow
I was the youngest, I'm sure you saw a lot go down there.
- [41:26]
Rich Roll
I was the youngest. I got a job there when I was 16. I was the youngest person by a long shot that worked at the club and everybody loved that. Everybody loved the cute 16 year old boy, you know, that like all of them, everyone loved it. And I took, you know, absolute advantage of that and it was a lot of fun.
- [41:45]
Michael Chernow
It's so crazy. That would never happen now.
- [41:47]
Rich Roll
Oh, no way.
- [41:49]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [41:50]
Rich Roll
No way. If somebody saw a 16 year old kid running around the nightclub with a big, you know, it was a bar back. So I'm like running through the club with a huge bucket of ice on my shoulder, you know, they'd call the cops, man, they'd be like, what? What's happening here?
- [42:04]
Michael Chernow
Was that Madonna era.
- [42:06]
Rich Roll
Yeah, it was like 90 light.
- [42:07]
Michael Chernow
Like all of that was happening around that time, right?
- [42:09]
Rich Roll
No, D Light was a little earlier. D light was probably like 93, 94, this was like 96. But I was going to like the rock sea and limelight and the tunnel in 1993 and 94 when I was 13 and 14 years old. You hear about like the New York City crazy club kid kids, you know, the movie kids. Like I lived that life.
- [42:30]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [42:31]
Rich Roll
And that was, you know, a big part of I believe today, my success going through that. And I say this all the time because I believe it to be true. You have to go through what you go through to get to where you're at. Right. I've been asked also a bunch like, do you regret any of this stuff? Because it got really ugly. There's no doubt. I mean, I was selling a lot of drugs, doing a lot of drugs. You know, I got, you know, held up at gunpoint, pistol whip, duct tape thrown into my bathtub, robbed. You know, I remember there was a, towards the end I got violent because I was angry and I didn't care anymore. And I'm not a violent person. But the anger and the lack of self confidence and self respect that I had just made my fuse. So Short, that I thought everybody was thinking about me, hated me, you know, that self centered fear. And so if somebody did something that I didn't like, I could be laughing with you one minute and you said something to me that I didn't like, I would punch you right in the face. And I didn't think twice about it.
- [43:42]
Michael Chernow
Like a goodfellas moment, like a Joe Pesci sort of switch.
- [43:47]
Rich Roll
Not even like that. Like I'd be laughing with you and then you'd say something to me and I'd just be like, bop. You know, and people kind of were like, who is this crazy dude? I don't even want to be near this guy anymore. Towards the end, I got 86 from every single bar, you know, east of Allen, west of Essex, south of Houston and north of Canal. Like I literally did that whole square. I managed to get 86 from everywhere. And so the last two years were really bad. But I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't know if I'd want to go through it again, but I wouldn't change any of it. Because I really do believe that every moment of it has made me the guy I am today. And I can honestly say, looking at you today, that I love my life. I fucking love my life. I'm so blessed and grateful for my life. And if you took a snapshot of my household, 13 years old, to just a typical Saturday in my household today with my family, you would never, ever, ever say this person has any chance living this life. No way. Zero chance. And I'm not talking about material shit. I'm talking about, like this human being going through what he went through here. The picture that's painted does not end here. It ends like this kid in jail or dead. What was going through my mind and the experiences that I was having in those days?
- [45:23]
Michael Chernow
What do you make of that? What do you want people to understand about that and how it applies to their own lives?
- [45:30]
Rich Roll
Very simple. You can allow your past to predict your present or future. You certainly can, all day long. You can be a fucking victim and you can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow or not or not. And I've chose to not allow what happened in my past, to dictate what I do, think, say, or how I conduct in my life today. I just don't.
- [46:00]
Michael Chernow
But also to own your past and to not deny it, to accept it for what it was and to, you know, honor yourself, having had to endure it right we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. And your life is a miracle. And that miracle is built upon sobriety and discipline, but also, you know, staying in it until the miracle happens. It's a spiritual program. Right. So the letting go, the, you know, release of that self will or holding on to that sense of who you were at that time and allowing other people in and making yourself available for. For something new and something beyond your ability to control as somebody who needed to control their life. That's like the gears upon which that change is constructed.
- [46:54]
Rich Roll
Yeah. I also think that. And it's no news. Lots and lots of successful people that have done extraordinary things, have deep traumas and adversity, you know, it's just. It's not news.
- [47:12]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. It's the engine of resilience. If you survive it and you're able to, you know, learn from those experiences. And it's the dilemma of every successful person who's emerged out of their version of your experience to then have kids, you know, and you wouldn't wish, you know, any of those experiences on your children. You're creating this better life for them. But it's a life that lacks, you know, the type of challenges that you had to face to become who you are.
- [47:40]
Rich Roll
I guess the other piece of what the message is and what I believe I'm here to do today. Anyone can change at any time. It's never too late. You're never too far gone. You might think you are. You might not believe that with every ounce of. Of life in you, that it's too late, it's too far gone.
- [48:05]
Michael Chernow
I'm too old.
- [48:06]
Rich Roll
I'm on skid row. There's no way. It's just. I gotta throw in the towel and it's just not true. It's just not true. You know, something that I did in October with Creatures of Habit. So October is Alcohol and Substance Abuse Awareness Month. And in October, I partnered with Goruck and a foundation called Release Recovery.
- [48:29]
Michael Chernow
Sure.
- [48:30]
Rich Roll
And I worked on this for a long time. I worked on it for about a year and a half. But I had a custom Creatures of Habit Goruck weight vest made. And when I got sober, running was a huge part of my life. Running became, you know, just a big part of my life. And I used to do this run in the city that I kind of coined the triple bypass. But I lived in Williamsburg, and I would run over the Williamsburg Bridge, down to the Brooklyn Bridge, over the Brooklyn Bridge, back over the Manhattan Bridge, back up to the Williamsburg and back Home. I said, you know, that run was so monumental for me. I remember, like, probably, like, the first. Within the first year of sobriety. Fitness was a huge part of my. I don't know if I'd be sitting here today if I wasn't introduced to fitness right away, but I remember, like, it was yesterday. The Williamsburg Bridge, when you're going down towards Manhattan from Brooklyn, far on the Manhattan side, there's these orange metal, like, sort of rafters.
- [49:37]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, exactly what you're talking about.
- [49:40]
Rich Roll
Yeah. And I was running over that bridge, and the sky was just the perfect blue. It was just the perfect blue. And I'm running over that bridge, and I'm looking up, and these, like, red rafters are sort of contrasting against the perfect blue. And I just said to myself, I can't fucking believe that this is what I'm doing right now. I am so lucky. How did I get here? How was I able to go from where I was to where I am now? And I remember kind of just like, putting my arms out and being like, oh, my God, thank you. Thank you. I'm alive. Not only am I alive, but I'm living. And so when I was thinking about what to do, I wanted to do something that was going to make an impact, not, like, donate money to some charity. I wanted to be able to say, okay, man, I'm going to get in there. I'm going to try to help save lives in the world of this thing that I know, you know so well. So I designed this Goruck weight vest, and I said, all right, Goruck. We're going to invite as many people as we can to raise money, and we're going to do the walk. We're gonna ruck the run that I did, you know, for the first many years in sobriety, four or five days a week. And so, sure enough, we got the weight vest made. You know, we raised $75,000. 100 people showed up, flew in from all, you know, all over the country to do this thing. And we all. October 14th last year. Yeah.
- [51:17]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. Wow.
- [51:18]
Rich Roll
And we all rucked. And it was so, like, powerful for me to know that all these people were rucking this run, that I did that when I was really in the early days of doing this. And because of these people coming together to do this, there's a good chance that we can, like, literally save lives, because that money is going towards getting people who are ready and willing to change that don't have the cash to get into treatment. We're paying the whole way. We're just gonna pay for their whole entire.
- [51:49]
Michael Chernow
Basically underwriting their treatment. Right. I mean, release does incredible work. Zach Clark is the name of the guy who founded that. He's really made a huge impact in the sober universe and the work that he's doing and that way in which he's helping people.
- [52:04]
Rich Roll
Really good friend of mine.
- [52:05]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, yeah, he's cool. And a runner. Big runner, right?
- [52:08]
Rich Roll
Yep.
- [52:08]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, yeah. Do you know Dan Churchill then, too, as well? He's coming in here next week.
- [52:12]
Rich Roll
Oh, yeah.
- [52:12]
Michael Chernow
Dan's a good friend, and I know that those guys are buddies. Was he part of that ruck? Did he do the ruck?
- [52:17]
Rich Roll
He didn't do the ruck. I know that he wanted to do the ruck, but he wasn't able to make the ruck. I think he was. I don't remember. He was traveling somewhere.
- [52:23]
Michael Chernow
I love that story. But I want to drill down a little bit more on this notion of empowering people to understand that it's never too late and that you can always change. And I think something to underscore or highlight here is within that reality. We can all change. All we have is today. Everybody's got one day. You can't do anything about tomorrow. You can't do anything about yesterday. Just what are we doing right now? What gets lost is the patience and the time window. When you Google you, or if you Google me, it makes it look like these transformations took place relatively quickly. And it wasn't the case for me. It wasn't the case for you. So I want to go. And this kind of plays into the fitness aspect of your story. Early days, when you met Marcus, you're in the program, you get introduced to fitness and martial arts, but there's that period of time, at least for me. I'm curious if this was your experience. All you're doing is what you can control that day, which is basically, I'm going to wake up, I'm going to go to a meeting. I don't know what my life is right now. I'm in this weird purgatory state where I can't see my way forward. I know I can't go back to what I was doing before, but I barely know what I'm going to be doing today other than I'm going to feed myself. I'm going to try to hit the pillow without taking a drink or a drug. I'm going to talk to people in the program and maybe take care of myself in the gym or something like that. And it's a great time. It's sort of like your version of that is very much a montage in this movie, in this screenplay of like doing, you know, doing kickboxing and going to meetings and stuff. But when you're in it, you don't know if that's ever gonna end. You might think, well, this is my life now. It's never gonna change. Right.
- [54:24]
Rich Roll
If you told me when I got sober, if you told me that my life would be what it is today, then I would have zero. Like, I wouldn't trust you 100%. I wouldn't trust you.
- [54:38]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, I wouldn't trust you. I mean, I look around, I'm like, what is happening? What is happening right now, Michael? How is this even real?
- [54:46]
Rich Roll
Right? Totally.
- [54:48]
Michael Chernow
But if you knew, like, do you understand? And it's not because I planned it. I mean, you're very directed all of that, sort of. You know, I can be a lot of discipline too. But I can promise you that what's happening right here, right now was not the result of some plan that I hatched for myself.
- [55:05]
Rich Roll
Totally. Yeah, I'll tell the story. Cause I think it's a good story and I think it'll help sort of, you know, paint a picture of a few things that happened later on. But anyway, I reached out to Karen and that's the woman who had, you know, sort of introduced me to Marcus. She's the woman that took me in. When I was younger, I was working at life, she was bartending, I was bartender. She kind of was like an older sister type. And when I knew, I. When Frank said, you gotta get sober, you gotta show up at the restaurant in the morning. She was the next person I called, called her. She called Marcus. Marcus showed up and listened to me for the first time. He basically said, you're gonna go to this meeting and then after this meeting, you're gonna come down to this Muay Thai kickboxing gym and meet me there. I had never heard of Muay Thai before. Right. Like, the only thing that I know about kickboxing is like the terrible fights I'd had in the street had nothing to do with kickboxing. But I knew that there was some sort of physical component to it.
- [56:13]
Michael Chernow
Did you play sports as a kid?
- [56:15]
Rich Roll
I did, I did. So when I was young, I like fell in love with roller hockey and then ultimately ice hockey. But it was short lived, you know, because things got ugly pretty, pretty quickly for me. 12, 13 years old, that's when I stopped. But I just listened to what Marcus had to say. So I went to a Meeting that morning. I went to the Muay Thai gym right after that meeting, and I met him down there. And there was another guy there, Gavin, who's also a very good friend of mine. And these guys are both sober Muay Thai guys. And they basically said, look, dude, here's the deal. You're young, you're 23, you've got unbelievable life ahead of you. You don't think so? We know, because they'd already been sober for, like, 10 years. They were like, you don't think so, but we know so. So you can either listen to what we have to say and do what we have to say to the T or not. And if you listen to what we have to say, they weren't playing, you know, they weren't bullshitting with these or suggestions. They weren't doing that. They were like, this is what you gotta fucking do. This is it. If you listen to this and you do these things, you will have a life beyond your wildest dreams, period. We guarantee. And I'm like, I mean, these guys look cool. They look tough. I'm like, okay, fuck it.
- [57:37]
Michael Chernow
And you needed guidance and some strong male role models for you.
- [57:41]
Rich Roll
I hated authority. I hated authority. And I still struggle with male authority. Still at that time, I don't know what. Outside of the fact that I thought they were cool. I don't know what propelled me to want to literally listen to every word that they said and hold onto those words like it was the last thing I did. But basically they wrote a plan for me. And the plan was this. Wake up as early as you can. Get out of bed, brush your teeth, wash your face, put on your contact lenses. That, for me, in those days, was like a massive ask. That was like a big ask, right? Like, brush my teeth. I mean, I don't even know, like, did I ever brush. I don't know, you know, wash my face. Never happens. Never. Never happened. I never washed my face outside of being in the shower, you know, take a piss. You know, we do that. So brush my teeth, wash my face, take a piss, and then drop down on my knees and pray. And I was like, huh? Like what? They were like, don't ask questions. Just drop down on your knees and ask God for help, because you need help and you have no idea how to ask for it. So if you ask for help in the morning, on your knees, the chances of you asking for help later on in the day will just be greater. We don't give a shit if you believe in God. We don't care what you talk to or who you pray to, just do it. And I was like, okay. So they said, get on your knees and pray. Put on a pair of sneakers and go out for a walk or a run. That could be a walk around the block. That could be a run around the block. That could be nine miles. That could be whatever you want it to be. Just get out and move your body right away. Right away. And I said, okay. And then they said, as soon as you get back, make a bowl of oatmeal. A big, huge bowl of oatmeal. Add whatever you want to it. But we're telling you to eat oatmeal because it's cheap, it's relatively healthy, it's inexpensive. And we need you to start putting healthy shit into your body. Right? As soon as you're done with that oatmeal, go to this meeting at 10am get your hand up and say who you are and what you are. And who you are is Michael Chernow, and what you are is an alcoholic. And I was like, okay. And then they said, right after that meeting, come down to the Muay Thai gym and we're gonna kick your fucking ass. And we're gonna teach you how to be at that time, you know, could be controversial to say today, but we're gonna teach you how to be a man. And we're gonna teach you about integrity. We're gonna teach you about honesty. We're gonna teach you how to get back up. Which honestly, in my opinion, is probably the greatest lesson I've learned to date. The only thing I think we have to do perfectly in life is get back up. And I learned that there with those guys. Cause they really did knock me down physically all the time, constantly. I got my ass handed to me every single day in the rings of Muay Thai. And the one thing I prided myself on was always getting back up. And then they said, right after we're done training, we're going to train here for two, two and a half hours. You're going to eat chicken and broccoli, you're going to take a nap, and you're going to go to work. You're going to eat chicken and broccoli as early as you can for dinner. And you're going to go to bed as early as you can. And that's just going to be a rinse and replete. And before you go to bed, you're going to drop down on your knees and you're just going to say thanks. And that's it. That's all you got to do. And I was like, I mean, it's. You know, I just did it. I did it.
- [61:06]
Michael Chernow
What a gift, though, to have these guys invested in you and giving you direction when you. When you needed it and to almost be this safety net, like, just do these things. And you can always come by the gym. We're here, we're going to tell you what's what. And to have a sense of what you needed to do every hour of the day. You went back into the bars and the restaurants. You were working there.
- [61:30]
Rich Roll
Oh, I agree.
- [61:30]
Michael Chernow
Were you behind the bar, like, being sober, serving up the drinks?
- [61:33]
Rich Roll
Frank gave me my job back relatively quickly. Right.
- [61:38]
Michael Chernow
Frank's the name of the. It's a pretty fancy restaurant. Right.
- [61:41]
Rich Roll
It's not. I mean, it's a very, very popular restaurant. It's this New York City, like, iconic restaurant, super small Italian restaurant called Frank on Second Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Street. Been there now probably close to 30 years. And Frank is like a surrogate dad to me. He was part of the cohort of humans that helped save my life. I owe him, you know, I don't know what I owe him, but he was an angel in my life for sure. And so that program that I was given that daily structure is very close to how I live my life today.
- [62:21]
Michael Chernow
You know, nothing's changed, but everything has changed, you know? Yeah, yeah.
- [62:27]
Rich Roll
It's very close.
- [62:28]
Michael Chernow
Consistency. This is the thing.
- [62:31]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [62:32]
Michael Chernow
Right. You got sober young, so you're 43 now. It's 20 years ago.
- [62:38]
Rich Roll
Yeah. So this August will be 20 years sober.
- [62:41]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. The same principles still apply.
- [62:44]
Rich Roll
100%.
- [62:45]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. It's that thing, though, where you're like, am I ever going to get behind the velvet rope and get the. The next level of tools here? It's like, no, it's the same shit, man. Get up, wash your face, brush your teeth. Right.
- [62:59]
Rich Roll
Take a. You know, I mean, my morning routine has certainly grown. Yeah. But it all. It starts that way every day. It starts that way every day. Discipline and structure are essential. I think there's the three things, and you'll probably agree, I think discipline, structure, and patience are just essential for accomplishing anything. Great. It's just if you don't have those three things, very difficult, very difficult to, like, put numbers up on the board in any area of your life. I'm not talking about just business and stature. I'm talking about in any area of your life. With the absence of structure, discipline, and patience, there's no staying power.
- [63:48]
Michael Chernow
I think those all need to be Broadly defined and construed as well. Because I think there's a sort of culture around discipline that understands it only in the context of doing hard things physically. Who's going to carry the boats or the idea of getting out of your comfort zone? Of course, we all have to do that. We have to apply discipline and welcome hard things into our life. But at some point, especially with consistency and over time, like for you to go to the gym and do a hard workout that requires discipline, but also, you've been doing this for a long time. It's actually not that hard. Right. Like, it's what you prefer to do.
- [64:28]
Rich Roll
I love to do it.
- [64:29]
Michael Chernow
And so the discipline has to come in in those other areas of your life that you are still turning a blind eye to that need redress.
- [64:36]
Rich Roll
Right.
- [64:37]
Michael Chernow
And I think that gets missed in the kind of emotional and mental growth aspect of what it means to be disciplined and committed to your constant evolution.
- [64:47]
Rich Roll
Anybody who subscribes to something that would require discipline understands that there's a period of time traditionally is not a short period of time. Typically, it's a long period of time. But that discipline is ultimately going to equate to freedom at a certain point. Right. And I do think that anything that requires discipline is also deeply engulfed in fear. You know, deeply engulfed in fear.
- [65:17]
Michael Chernow
Just.
- [65:17]
Rich Roll
There's just like a cloud of fear when you're like, okay, I need discipline to do this. It's typically like, I'm scared, and I don't know if I can do it, but I'm gonna take the risk. And so it's like, you know, discipline propels courage and growth for me. And I get a lot of shit from people today, three, four years ago, walking through my morning routine, which is ultimately how I pour the foundation every single day, which is my structure. I don't care what you think. I don't care how silly you think it is. I don't care if you roll your eyes and say, get to fucking work, dude. For me, I need it. It makes me feel really good to do it. So I have a pretty intense morning structure. And it really, truly does set me up for success, and it allows me to face the day with wins. So I really do believe in structure. Hardcore, hardcore structure. And structure for me is basically understanding that I have a list of things to do in order to take the next step. And, you know, I kind of like correlate it to. If you were building a home, you got the dirt, you bought the dirt, you bought the property, you bought the land, you're Building a home. No one's going to say, all right, man, let's go get some wood, let's go get some nails, and let's go build on that dirt. No one's going to tell you to do that. If they want to build something successful, they're going to say, all right, well, we're going to bring in the dozer and the backhoe, we're going to excavate, and we're going to put underpinnings, and we're going to pour a ton of concrete in there so that when the wind comes and the storms come, that house is not going to fall because it's going to be sitting on top of solid rock concrete, you know, and that is literally how I think about my day.
- [67:18]
Michael Chernow
If you watch a house under construction for the longest time, it doesn't look like anything's happening. There's bulldozers, like, pushing dirt around, right? And then at some point, they pour the concrete for the foundation. That, like, takes the longest amount of time. And if you're just driving by and noticing it, you're like, are they ever going to build that house? Nothing's happening. The framing then goes up quickly, but only because all the time and energy went into building the foundation correctly. And I think that, you know, applies obviously to. To life. Like, nothing's happening until suddenly it is. Because the whole time, every day, you've been chipping away, building that foundation so that it's rock solid. And that's the result of discipline and patience and, you know, welcoming challenge into your life and learning from losses and failures and everything that gets packed into that.
- [68:08]
Rich Roll
I also think that you said it earlier yesterday is long gone. Tomorrow, not guaranteed every day. Like, the way I think about life today is my life. Like, what happens in life happens now. Doesn't happen yesterday. It's already happened. It doesn't happen tomorrow. Like, what happens in our lives truly happens right now. And I learned that from the power of now, really, where I kind of heard him say, whatever happens, happens right now. It happens right now. You could be present for it or not. And so that building of the structure that pouring the foundation for me every morning is really like, if I want to live my life this way, I know I'm not a unique person, but I do know that I require a certain amount of structure and discipline in order to live the life I want to live. And the cool thing about the decisions that I've made over the last 20 years is that I know that I have the ability to do this shit all the time. It makes me a better person. It makes me a better father. And at the end of the day, really, all I care about is being happy with my wife and kids. That is, like, I really. I love my friends. I love, you know, business. I love the fitness, you know, endeavors. But really, I want to have the best fucking life with my wife and kids. I really do.
- [70:02]
Michael Chernow
How old are your kids?
- [70:03]
Rich Roll
Nine and six. Yeah.
- [70:05]
Michael Chernow
You had a scare, right?
- [70:07]
Rich Roll
Well, I've got two sons, so. So my first son, his name is Dakota. Yeah, Dakota is an amazing child. But when he was born, he had. His eyes weren't tracking. So, like, you know, they always say, like, hey, you know, the eyes should be tracking, make sure everything is healthy. And when he was born, like, I noticed that that was, like, something weird. So we went pediatrician. After the first month, he would, like, turn his head, and his eyes would kind of stay there, and then they would, like, kind of slowly come over. And so I said to the pediatrician, hey, this is happening. Like, what should we do? And she was like, oh, you know, some kids just take a little bit more time to develop. And, you know, it didn't change after 8 weeks, 9 weeks, 10 weeks. I was like, hey, this isn't changing. Like, what should we do? We should see a specialist. And they referred us to this optometrist or ophthalmologist, whichever it was. That woman said, you know, I don't really know. Let me. I think. I think you should go see a pediatric neurologist. And that, of course, is like, oh, gosh, a neurologist. You know, that's a little scary. So we went to the pediatric neurologist, and he just did not have great bedside manner and was, like, very kind of didn't make it, like, super comfortable for us, which is what it is. But ultimately did an MRI and found that his cerebellum was shaped differently by a couple of millimeters. And so they said, okay, well, we want to run a massive gene study on him. And the two of you. And now Donna and I are scared because they didn't really allude to any potential of what this could be, but they were like, we want to run a gene study. And so that gene study took three or four months. They took our blood at the same time altogether. And then they called us into the office. He was about six or seven months old. And they were like, we've got some stuff to talk to you about. And Donna and I were like, okay. And they said, there's two genes, mutated genes that we identified in his gene study. One of them is from you, Michael. One of them is from you, Donna. The good news is the two genes are not identical, Meaning, you know, you have two sets of genes. If there's a mutation on a specific gene and another mutation on this particular gene, it's very, very easy to identify exactly what it is. But the two different mutated genes have only been recorded less than a dozen times in history. The two different mutated genes that he has. And so they said there's two things. One, there's a good chance he'll never walk. And Donna and I were like, what? Wow. And they were like, you know, he has a very low muscle tone potential disorder, and there's a good chance that he won't walk. And I'm at that point, like, devastated. And then they follow that up by saying, and out of the 12 or so recorded situations like this that we have, 30% of the children developed a terminal brain cancer. So he's going to need to get an MRI every six months until he's eight years old. And I mean, you know, talk about.
- [73:51]
Michael Chernow
Like, that's as heavy as it gets, man.
- [73:54]
Rich Roll
Yeah.
- [73:55]
Michael Chernow
Wow.
- [73:55]
Rich Roll
I didn't know what to make of that. Donna and I were just completely gutted. The gene doctor and the neurologist. I can't imagine what it would have to be like to tell a set of parents that. Right. You know, they're very poker faced. There was, like, very little, like, emotion from them because I can only imagine that that's something that they have to do relatively often. And it's just not, you know, talking about somebody's like, never do that. Yeah. So I'm grateful that I have tools. You know, that was like a very, very, very difficult time. And I just kind of went into this mode where I was like, no. Like, I'm not. That's not gonna be the case with my son. No way. It's just not gonna happen. Can't let it. I'm not gonna let it happen. I'm gonna fight this one. Just like I fought my addiction. Just like I fought in the ring of Muay Thai, Just like I fought for that first marathon I ran. Just like, you know, I was like, I know how to fight. I know how to fight. I'm gonna fucking fight. And we did. We got immediate early intervention. And we had a guy show up at our apartment three days a week. And I prayed my ass off. And Dakota is. He's fucking amazing.
- [75:46]
Michael Chernow
He's doing good.
- [75:47]
Rich Roll
He plays, he does karate, he plays soccer. He jumps off, he fucking. I was on the phone on the way over here today and he was telling me how he fell off his four wheeler. He's totally awesome.
- [76:02]
Michael Chernow
So when he took his first steps, that must have been a big thing.
- [76:08]
Rich Roll
Didn't happen until he was 2 years and 2 months old. I had an unwavering belief that this kid was gonna be okay.
- [76:19]
Michael Chernow
Where does that come from?
- [76:24]
Rich Roll
I don't wanna sound too woo woo, but I have to because I can't tell you what it comes from outside of the fact that I pray every day and I've developed a relationship with a power greater than myself that I fucking believe takes care of me legit. I do. And I don't know what it is at all. I don't care, I don't question it, I don't analyze it. But I do know that I have a relationship that when shit goes down and when shit's not going down, I believe I can connect to and get through whatever I've got to get through. I mean, I'm sorry for getting emotional, but it's just like when I think about the kid, you know, he's. I mean I love that human. And watching my son, you know, watching him get like his, watching him getting his like karate belt promotion last week in there with all the rest of the kids and he's got a balance issue, you know, he'll probably have it until he gets old enough to realize that it's happening and then he's gonna wanna take action. But I can't tell you why. I had that unwavering belief that he was gonna be okay. And now it doesn't mean that I wasn't scared and I didn't have fear, but it does mean that I was able to fucking charged through it with courage. And that is what I think this like sobriety thing is.
- [78:09]
Michael Chernow
When you got emotional a moment ago, what was coming up for you?
- [78:16]
Rich Roll
I think it is. You asked me what, what is it? And I think in combination with me thinking about my son and how he's okay and knowing that I have a relationship with God, I'm the luckiest guy sitting on the planet. Is that like truly what it felt like for me? Like, I believe that I am one of the luckiest guys. And I know that I've put a lot of work into my life over the last 20 years, but man.
- [78:57]
Michael Chernow
I think that there are people who have great lives, people that have overcome things to live really beautiful lives, people who are innately grateful, like have the self awareness to recognize that and other people who have a very determined, dedicated practice of cultivating gratitude so that they can be in contact with that which allows you to feel grounded and understand what's really important. My sense is that you're somebody who, I don't know if you're innately grateful, but you certainly cultivate gratitude. Like, making sure that you're connecting with gratitude and in touch with how good your life is is a very conscious practice on your part.
- [79:44]
Rich Roll
I mean, the first part of my day, every single day, the first thing I do, call it corny, is upon waking, I flip back my eye mask, I open up my eyes. If I'm in my bedroom, which is, you know, where I like to be, I look up at the ceiling fan, I smile from ear to ear like shit eating grin, and I go right into gratitude. Immediately. First thing, immediate, first 30 seconds of my day, all the shit that I'm grateful for. And I do that because, well, I really do it because I met somebody who told me that that's something that they do and it's been very helpful.
- [80:29]
Michael Chernow
I appreciate the honesty. Look, you know, making a gratitude list, these are, these are program things. Also. We're taught this early and often this.
- [80:37]
Rich Roll
Like, first way, like wake up with this sort of smile and gratitude, that very specific practice. Yeah, yeah. This woman, Dana Cowan, who was the chief editor at Food and wine magazine for 25 years, she told me that that's what she does. And that was probably in 20, 18, 19. And I was like, really? She smiles like big old smile first thing in the morning. I'm gonna try that. And I started doing that and I do it every single day and it's uncomfortable. But I also was told from early on that, you know, as an alcoholic, I wake up with untreated alcoholism and anxiety every day. So like, what can I do first thing in the morning to say, like, f you anxiety. Let me give the. Let me tell you how I want to live my life. And that's what I do. And so, yes, gratitude is. I am beyond grateful for my life.
- [81:37]
Michael Chernow
How do you deal with the conflict or the tension between self will and surrender and letting go? Because you're somebody who's like, we're going to fight this. This is what we're going to do. This is not happening. I'm going to make sure that control instinct of, you know, being at the helm, being, you know, in charge of the command center versus the letting go and the surrender and the allowing and the acceptance and all the kind of fucking, you know, recovery parlance that's part of, you know, what it means to be this spiritual being in connection with something that, you know, we can't fully understand, that is in control in ways that we are not.
- [82:16]
Rich Roll
I think it's a great question. And I think the hard part is understanding when to turn one on and off. And for me, and I've had to learn the hard way, of course, many, many, many, many, many, many times, specifically with my wife, because I am a fixer. I like to want to fix things. You know, I've had to learn, like, hey, with Donna, she does not want you to come fix her shit. Don't, like, try to fix everything. Just tell her you love her. Tell her you love her. And that's been an amazing practice for me. I think when it came to Koda, I felt that I just needed to take immediate action. And. I've learned, and this is sort of where the patience comes in. I've learned that just because I take action doesn't mean I'm gonna get what I want. And typically, anything that's noteworthy takes time. And so with that, I had to, like, push it into sixth gear because I was immediately in fear. And I'm like, you know, what do I know about fear today? Like, if I run from fear, if I brush it under the rug, if I don't deal with it, it's not going anywhere. It's just not going anywhere. I gotta get into it, you know. And so now I've kind of committed to this. Like, the fear is there. I look for it and I run at it as fast as I can. And I know that that's not the greatest way to be with everything in my life. It's just not. But I am sort of like inclined to want to do that.
- [84:08]
Michael Chernow
Where does the fear show up for you these days?
- [84:13]
Rich Roll
I think in a number of different ways. Business. I get fear around business. You know, I'm a startup entrepreneur. I've built three companies over the last 15 years. And so, you know, three different companies in 15 years. It's a five year clips. Right. Basically. And so in the startup, you know, it takes a kind of person to be able to navigate and power through how stressful it is to build a business and raise money and, you know, weather the storms and, you know.
- [84:51]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, and lots of high highs and low lows.
- [84:55]
Rich Roll
Yeah. You know, like, I think about it like you're an endurance athlete, one of the best in the world. Right. You spend so much time, so much time training for an endurance race. So much time, way more time training than you do on the race and way more time racing than you do finishing the race. In the world of building businesses, you're training for the race, you're running the race. And when you get crossing the finish line is so short lived. So short lived. I'm looking up at the mountain all the time. I'm always looking up. I'm like, man, there's that summit up there. We'll get there. And then you summit every once in a while and you look to your left and you look to your right and you're like, high five, man. All right, man, let's go get that next mountain.
- [85:51]
Michael Chernow
I think the difference though is that in the entrepreneurship startup world or just business in general, you're racing every day. Like you, you don't get to like train and then show up and do the race and be evaluated. Then you're being evaluated every single day. Like every day has its own training, racing, and finish line, right. That the world is judging you by. And that's basically becomes instrumental in whether you're gonna get to live to see another day to train, race, and finish.
- [86:21]
Rich Roll
Well, I think the cool thing about being an entrepreneur is every day really is training day. It's training day because there's so many things that come up that are a first, like all the time you're like, oh my God, like, how do I. That hasn't happened before. What do I do now? And you're literally training for you. I mean, I hear what you're saying about running the race every single day. And yes, like, you're on the track and you're hitting it hard, but there's so many things like when you're on race day, you've kind of prepared for the course. You kind of know what you're up against. You know, where the hills are, you know, where it could get, you know, the terrain can get rocky.
- [87:07]
Michael Chernow
But you're saying it's more like the Barkley marathons, where they don't tell you what the course is or what time you're going to start, and you have to figure it out every day.
- [87:16]
Rich Roll
So you're training on the course, right?
- [87:17]
Michael Chernow
And then you learn all this stuff and then the next day the course is completely different and there is no map for it.
- [87:22]
Rich Roll
I mean, there's definitely some, you know, similarity, obviously, and there's, there's definitely a lot of, a lot of things that you're able to get better and better and better at. But I mean, every single day I look across my, my business partner and I'm like, my gosh, man. Like, does this ever end?
- [87:43]
Michael Chernow
Well, the interesting thing is that, I mean, we're like, over an hour and a half into this, and we haven't even talked about, like, your whole. All the restaurants that, you know. So you had this incredible success with Meatball Shop. You repair your life. You did a lot of kickboxing. You did all that shit, right? Like, life comes together. You're in a position to now step into the restaurant world in a new way as an owner, and you open up this place, Meatball Shop. I mean, it's a long story, but, like, it becomes this massive sensation. Super successful. How many of them? Ultimately, there were five of them. Six of them.
- [88:19]
Rich Roll
Six of them.
- [88:19]
Michael Chernow
Six of them, yeah. So right out of the gate, like, your first true entrepreneurial venture is this massive win. Does that lead you to believe that, like, you just have the touch and that this is how it's going to go every single time? I mean, there's a lot of peril packed into that story, too. And, you know.
- [88:40]
Rich Roll
You know, you asked me about, like, where does fear show up in my life? And I had to stop and think about it for a minute because there's fear, like, all throughout. But the one bizarre thing for me is that, like, people would ask me before going into business in a meatball shop, they'd be like, oh, my gosh, like, aren't you scared? And I look at them and be like, I'm not. Like, I'm not. Like, for whatever reason, there was something that did not allow that fear to impact and. Or penetrate my. My desire to want to do it.
- [89:13]
Michael Chernow
Because you were keeping the fear in abeyance or because you just felt like, no, I actually know this is going to work.
- [89:20]
Rich Roll
The latter, yeah, to a fault. I have a level of optimism in my life that has carried all the things that I've done. Actually, I believe every Sunday morning that the New York Giants will win the fucking football game. I do, man.
- [89:41]
Michael Chernow
Good luck with that.
- [89:42]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I know. You know, like, I just have a level of optimism that I think is. I just. There was not a doubt in my mind. Similar with Dakota. There just was not a doubt in my mind. Even though I was scared, there was a level of optimism that I had that I was just like, no, this is gonna work.
- [90:01]
Michael Chernow
Do you work on that, or do you just think that's bred in you?
- [90:04]
Rich Roll
I think it's bred in me. Honestly, I do. And you know the story of Meatball Shop. Daniel and I, we were standing in the back of the restaurant, little Restaurant on Stanton street between orchard and Allen. 2010, Lower east side. Lower east side. Coming out of a depression. Depression, kind of a depression coming out of a recession. And we had paper up on the windows. Our publicist at the time was very adamant about you cannot show anybody the inside of this restaurant. New York magazine had the exclusive. You know, there's like a whole thing, you know, in restaurant press. And I said, I remember standing next to Dan, and I was like, dude, we are gonna kill it. This is gonna be awesome. Like, I was so ready. You know, both of us had spent our lives working in restaurants, so, like, I was ready for the war. I just was, like, fired up for it. Daniel was like, no shot. No one's out there. This is gonna end terribly. And like, that's. You know, the two of us are that way. Sure enough, pulled the paper off the windows, looked outside, over 200 people online to eat. Pulled them all in front of the restaurant. I was like, guys, this is insane. You gotta come out in front of the restaurant. Took a picture. Daily News, you know, wrote a piece on using the picture and, you know, just absolute mayhem in the best way from there on.
- [91:34]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, yeah, it's wild.
- [91:36]
Rich Roll
I mean, we were cooking meatballs. Just no clue that this was gonna happen. No dream, you know, but just. Who would have thought that a restaurant, little restaurant. But within six months, we were on Good Morning America. Within eight months, we were on the Today show. Within the first year, we were on Jay Leno, Chelsea Handler, Jimmy Fallon, you know, crazy craziness, craziness. People were like, who are these guys, right?
- [92:05]
Michael Chernow
You become this media figure and you being kind of the face of the whole thing ends up causing some issues with Daniel and your partnership, right?
- [92:15]
Rich Roll
Yeah, yeah. I felt very comfortable on camera. I enjoyed it. I felt like I just felt very comfortable there. And the media also enjoyed me, you know, And I think that became a problem for Dan and I because, I mean, I could see why that would be a problem. You know, he didn't love it as much as I did, and he wasn't as comfortable as I was, although he's good.
- [92:45]
Michael Chernow
But the public impression that this was all you and it wasn't an even handed partnership between the two of you. Even if he's not comfortable and doesn't want to do all the press that you seem to enjoy probably grated on him.
- [92:59]
Rich Roll
I actually don't know if it was perceived that way. I mean, I really don't. I don't know if it was perceived that it was all me. And I think that it was the meatball guys, but I think when they would call for the media, it would start with me. And I think there became tension there around that. And in a partnership, whoever's listening, the millions of people that are listening, I'm sure there's lots of people that are in partnerships here. Whether it's a marriage or a business partnership, whatever. Once one person feels like the other person is not doing enough and that trust breaks right there, I'm bringing more to the table. It's the beginning of the end. And that's kind of what happened. And we built this amazing thing in New York and we opened up a bunch of restaurants and it was just people were, you know, and it's still open, still there, 14 years later, and still considered one of the greatest restaurants in New York. You know, people are like, you say meatball shop and people are like, ah, I love that restaurant. You know, it used to be, oh, that's my favorite restaurant in New York. Anywhere I'd be, anywhere I'd go, you know, if I say meatball shop, you know, people's heads turn and then it be kind of sort of like evolved from, oh, that's my favorite restaurant in New York, to every time my family comes in, I take them to the meatball shop. Anytime my friends come into New York, that's where we take them. And that for me actually meant far more than that's my favorite restaurant. Because, you know, your favorite restaurant changes over time.
- [94:33]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, things go in and out of vogue pretty quickly. Right. It's. It's sort of the difference between a book that hits the New York Times bestseller list and then is kind of gone a little bit shortly thereafter, and the perennial bestseller, like, do you want to be a New York institution or do you want the flash and the glam of like being the super hip place that is unsustainable for almost every nightclub or restaurant or bar?
- [94:59]
Rich Roll
Yeah. So we became nr, like meatball shop is a New York institution. However, it was tough. It was tough to sustain the partnership. And we had a huge opportunity, huge opportunity, financial opportunity. And I couldn't convince my partner Dan that it was the right opportunity. He thought it was worth more money.
- [95:26]
Michael Chernow
Than basically a private equity firm came in, wanted to buy it at a.
- [95:31]
Rich Roll
Massive valuation, massive, unheard of, 20 something X valuation of EBITDA, of earnings. And I was like, dude. And we were already fighting at that point, but I was like, dude, this is it. You put in 20 grand, I put in 20 grand. Each of us put in 40. We raised 350. We paid those investors back a bunch over already. And then we have this financial partner who's given us money to scale the thing. I was like, dude, we. You and I are gonna put millions of dollars in our bank account. We're 30. I'm 31. You're 33. 32. 33. Like, this is it. Let's go now. Couldn't convince him. Worth more money. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this can't be. And we were already at each other's throat. We were thinking about where to take the business out of market. I knew that the media was what really helped propel this business and put us on the map. So I was like, man, we gotta go to la. Like, if we go to LA and we open up in la, we're just gonna get smashed up onto the billboards again because the media is gonna love it. We'll do all the LA local stuff. We'll have all the celebs come into the restaurant. Like, it'll be like this. It'll be the resurgence of the New York city thing in 2010, just in 2015. And, you know, he wanted to open up in. Which operationally makes more sense. Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island. You know, we had a meeting with Ron Shaikh, who's the founder of Au Bon Pen and now Panera Bread. And he met with us at one of our restaurants, and we were talking to him, and there's two things that he said in that meeting that I'll never forget. One was, you know, once we opened up the restaurant, there were so many knockoffs of the meatball shop globally. I mean, there was, like, tons and tons people opening up meatball restaurants in the way.
- [97:24]
Michael Chernow
Kind of everybody did that to Dave Chang, too, with Momfuku.
- [97:27]
Rich Roll
Exactly.
- [97:28]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. All the ramen shops and all that kind of stuff.
- [97:30]
Rich Roll
So I remember saying to Ron, like, what do we do with all the competition? Like, all the people that are knocking us off? And he looked at me, deep eye contact, and he said, are you fucking kidding me? And I was like, I'm asking you. He said, the second you spend thinking about what other people are doing is the second you're not spending thinking about what you're doing. Who. Who gives a shit what they do? All you should care about is what's going on in front of you. And I was like, great piece of advice. That helped. And then he said, and this is why, I think kind of stuck in Daniel's mind. You know, he basically took out, like, the back of our menu. He Had a marker. We had these markers where you check things off on the restaurant. And he went boom. And slammed the marker down on the thing. And he was like, if this pen were to bleed right now, you need to grow concentrically. Like, the angle would come out of this pen. So you don't grow here, you don't grow there. You grow here, here, here, here, here, here, here, so you can scale it responsibly, operationally. And I think that's kind of stuck in Daniel's mind. And for me, I was like, yeah, fuck that idea. Like, I wanted to go where the media was. And so we couldn't agree on that. Couldn't agree on the. And I ended up selling a bunch of my equity in 2014 to the partners. And I thought that I had what it took to do it again. So that's when I went out and put a lot of my own money and then raised a little bit of money to open up my second restaurant concert with Seymour's. Seymour's Sustainable Seafood. And I did it on Broom and Mulberry Street. And then I replayed the tape and did the exact same thing, six of.
- [99:12]
Michael Chernow
Them total, and then ultimately exited. Right? Yeah, that's how it worked. I mean, two successes like that in a row is crazy when you think about how volatile the restaurant world is. I mean, everybody will tell you, don't go into the restaurant business. It's terrible investment. Almost every restaurant fails. Setting aside, you know, kind of pandemic issues that afflicted the industry at large, how do you account for your success in the light of, you know, the statistics that would say, like, almost all of these things fail. Like, what did you do differently? Or what was the secret that allowed you to transcend those odds?
- [99:53]
Rich Roll
Culture. That's it. Culture. I believe that I'm like a real culture cowboy in the world of restaurants. I put culture first.
- [100:05]
Michael Chernow
What does that mean?
- [100:06]
Rich Roll
That means that I don't care. I'm going to get assassinated for this. But I could give a shit about a P and L. Like, I don't care what a profit and loss statement looks like. My number one priority in a world, in a restaurant, that the success of a restaurant is how somebody feels when they walk out the door. That is the success of a restaurant. It's not about what the P and L says. If that person, like, you've got to think about it, right? Like, you're in the world of creating an environment that you're feeding someone, you're creating an environment that somebody is ultimately going to walk into. And if you do your job right, it's going to love every second they're in that space. That is the success of a restaurant.
- [100:53]
Michael Chernow
And if you have that success, the P and L ultimately hopefully works itself out. Right? But if you don't have that, it doesn't matter what the P L is. Doesn't matter. How did you learn that? Is that just all the years working in these places?
- [101:05]
Rich Roll
I think. I think. I think really what it boiled down to for me was I understood a few things about people working in restaurants. I remember clearly I was bartending, and there was this. This guy Dominic, who was just a true character, older than me, also alcoholic. I mean, I remember when I first started working at this restaurant, he was. We would bartend together. And he taught me this lesson that was so powerful. He goes. He goes, watch this. And we played crazy music in this restaurant. I played whatever the hell I wanted. I would play fucking Megadeth, Biggie Smalls, Billie Holiday. Yeah, I played whatever I wanted. Didn't matter. And Frank was like, go for it. We were bartending and I don't know, there was probably some, you know, loud, crazy music on. And this older couple walked into the restaurant, and this place is packed, you know, Older couple walks into the restaurant and they're just like. And he goes, look at those two. And he's like, watch this. And he grabbed the ipod. Cause that's back in the day when ipods were there. And he put on Frank Sinatra. And he goes, look at them. And as soon as the music came on, both of them went. Totally changed the environment, Totally changed their whole entire experience in that moment. It went from crazy, chaotic music to the music that they understood, the music that they. That made them feel good. And I was like, wow, you can really change someone's experience like that. Just like that. And that is going to be the difference between that couple. You don't know who they are. You have no idea who they are. That person, those two could be neighbors with Barack Obama and leave the restaurant and say, we went into this restaurant and they were playing crazy music. And then all of a sudden they just turned on Frank Sinatra and the whole entire environment changed. And we sat down and we had the best food ever. And the service was awesome. I can't wait to go back there. I'm going to tell everyone I know. And that is the success.
- [103:16]
Michael Chernow
It is a service industry. But really appreciating the fact that it's all about service being the distinguishing, determining factor of success, I think is really powerful. And I can't help but think about the bear. Did you watch the Bear? Of course you watched the bear, Right? So in season two, when the lights go on for Richie, who's struggling and trying to figure out how he fits into the world and how he can find meaning and purpose in his life, which eludes him until he's stodging at that fancy restaurant. I think the episode, is it called Forks, where the guy that he's reporting to starts to tell him about his sobriety story, and Richie starts to realize that it's all about service. And Richie has always been the hospitality guy. Even when he's all fucked up and yelling at people, he's the guy who's making the people feel comfortable when they come in. And he's the one who really appreciates and honors the customers. And when he's able to, like, do the math and put that equation together and he returns to the bear for that, like, culminating scene, and he can and Mary, like, his understanding of how to serve people with an appreciation for the art of cuisine and what the restaurant was trying to achieve, it's like the lights go on. It's like this magical moment in that show.
- [104:47]
Rich Roll
The other thing that I'd like to add to it. Yes, yes.
- [104:51]
Michael Chernow
I mean, was that your experience when you saw that or as an insider, is it impossible for you to watch a show like that without.
- [104:58]
Rich Roll
You know, the funny thing about that show is it evokes real emotion, for sure. For someone like me that has experienced that, the number one thing that people say when they watch that show is, oh, my God, it made me so stressed out. It just made me feel so much stress. And that's true. You know, it is a very stressful environment. There are certain people that were born to do it, you know, like, thrive in it. I thrive there. I thrive. I'm the guy when there's the disgruntled guest, the same disgruntled guest that comes in. I'm the guy that they send to the table because I love it. I'm just like, man, let me get this guy. Right?
- [105:44]
Michael Chernow
I mean, that's Richie energy. Right?
- [105:47]
Rich Roll
So the thing that I will say, though, is when I say culture, internal culture at the company, for me, it's not about. I am so against the customer's always right. And I, quite frankly, put very little thought into the guest of the restaurants. I put all of my thought and energy into the team because I know, you know, think about it this way. Professional baseball team, football team, basketball team. The coach of that team is not sitting around the locker room saying, all right, guys, we gotta make sure those fans are happy.
- [106:31]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
- [106:32]
Rich Roll
You know, how do I create these human beings? How do I make them feel supported? How do I make them feel confident? How do I make them feel excited and motivated and fired up to attack in the best possible way? Because it is, you know, like, if you turn the lights on on a Friday night and you're not in attack mode, you're on your heels and you're playing defense, absolute disaster happens. You know, it's just. You can. I could walk into a restaurant, and I know immediately they're on defense and they're fucked. They're in the weeds deep. You know, Like, I was down in Florida at my sister's in February, and they were like. My sister was like, well, we gotta take you to this great Mexican restaurant. Big, beautiful, great restaurant. And it was a holiday weekend. It was like President's Day or whatever it was. And we walked into the restaurant, and they were packed, slammed. And I looked at my sister and I was like, this isn't going to be a great experience. And she was like, why? I was like, because they staffed for a Monday night, but it happens to be a holiday. And I just knew it from the second I walked in. It was just like, you see people. When anybody's walking, like a walk run.
- [107:48]
Michael Chernow
That looks like they're important, something's way off, right?
- [107:52]
Rich Roll
So you know, the culture. And I'm reading this amazing book from this guy, Marcus Collins, right now called for the Culture, and he's so good. It pertains a little bit more to the business that I'm in now because it's a little bit more of a marketing book. But culture is everything. People want to be part of culture. People travel. When people travel, you go to Italy, whether you think so or not, you're like, oh, I want the food. I want to go experience the people I want to go experience. I want to hear the music, I want to see the art, and I want to see the architecture. And the culture is what defines a group of people. And so if your culture is rich and awesome, when people walk into your restaurant, they're gonna feel that. They're gonna feel it, and they're gonna want to be a part of it. And they're gonna tell their friends, they're gonna tell their friends, and there is no better form of marketing, period, than.
- [108:49]
Michael Chernow
Word of mouth, period. How do you translate that into what is a very different business that you're running today that isn't about creating a public space for people to come in. As much as it is a product that, you know you're shipping, you know, it's a D2C sort of thing, for the most part, right?
- [109:08]
Rich Roll
It is 100% D2C.
- [109:10]
Michael Chernow
So walk me through creatures of habit and how this came about and what you're trying to achieve here.
- [109:15]
Rich Roll
Well, I gotta rewind back to that plan that was given to me almost 20 years ago. And Marcus and Gavin sort of agreed on this plan to deliver to me and said, hey, you know, you're gonna wake up, you're gonna take a piss, brush your teeth, wash your face, hit your knees, put on your running shoes, go for a walk, and you're gonna have a bowl of oatmeal. And I sold equity at Seymour's in 2019. The pandemic hit in 2020. My career as I knew it was kind of over in terms of brick and mortar business, restaurant.
- [109:53]
Michael Chernow
Were you still living in the city all the time?
- [109:55]
Rich Roll
I was still living in the city. And I said, oh, my gosh. Like, I felt obviously I was grateful that I had sold equity before the pandemic. Also a little guilty. But I was like, what the hell am I gonna do? I am a restaurant guy. I know restaurant well. I know in real life, you know, before the pandemic, IRL wasn't even a thing, right? Like, now I'm like, oh, in real life, like, I know this hand to hand combat, man. Me and you, I can sit here and talk to you forever, right? That's how I am in the restaurants. I, like, touch every single table. That's my sweet spot. And I was like, what the hell am I gonna do? Donna and I had decided, as my wife, we had decided that we were gonna pack up a bag. We had bought a house about two hours, a little over two hours out of the city in 2012. And we said, hey, this is pretty bad down here. You know, the kids aren't in school. Let's go upstate and we'll see what happens. So we moved into our house upstate, so grateful that that was the decision that we made. And that bag just got bigger and bigger. And then finally a year in, we were like, okay, sell the place in Brooklyn. We're upstate. But those first three months were really stressful for me because I was like, man, I'm going to have to figure out my new path forward. I hired an executive coach who is a wonderful human being. She basically helped me to see that restaurant was a medium for me. And I'm A creative entrepreneur, a creative human being. I can build culture and business and environments, products, service, whatever. Like it doesn't matter the medium. I can do what I do.
- [111:52]
Michael Chernow
Was that a breakthrough to realize that it wasn't about restaurants, it was about being this creative person who was always iterating on that creativity or sharing these ideas that you were coming up with 100%. You didn't have the awareness of that prior to her. Yeah, that's interesting.
- [112:10]
Rich Roll
Yeah, I did not. Yeah, she was slowly just sort of giving me the confidence that I was looking for. And my creative process for the last many years has been silent running. So I like to go out and take a pen and pad, you know, a little piece of small pad and a pencil and I'll go out intentionally on 5 to 7 mile long runs with the intention of, let's figure this shit out, man. Let's figure it out. And you know, I don't have my phone with me. I'm not listening to music or podcasts. I'm just like, I'm literally trying to dig. And originally I was gonna open up a restaurant called Creatures of Habit. That was sort of like my next plan. So Creatures of Habit was already in the mix, but when the pandemic hit and there was no, like way forward there, I was like, I want to use this Creatures of Habit thing because it felt like it was a wellness restaurant. And the idea of Creatures of Habit was going to be, I'm going to open up this wellness restaurant and the restaurant is going to. The trajectory of scaling this business was going to be through consumer packaged goods. I was going to make products inside the restaurant that we use on the. We would use as sauces, we would use as breakfast items, whatever. And we would have a little retail area in the restaurant and then whatever people were grabbing or buying or taking home with them, we would then invest money in and grow it in consumer goods. And so I had that idea already that that was gonna kind of be like what the future was, but nowhere near it. I had no idea what I was gonna package up. But I knew Creatures of Habit was the name. Cause I am just an absolute creature of habit. I just am. I mean, I find something I like, I stick to it, you know, for real. I was out on a run and I was thinking about what the hell I was gonna do. And I was like, it came to.
- [114:08]
Michael Chernow
Me, just get rid of the restaurant part, go right to the product part.
- [114:12]
Rich Roll
Well, cut through. I knew that was the case, but I just didn't know. I knew that I was gonna draw a line through the restaurant. I had a feeling that I was gonna still be in food. And most likely it was gonna be consumer goods, which is what I'm in. When anybody hears CPG, that means consumer packaged goods. When anybody hears DTC or D2C, it's direct to consumer. I said, what the hell am I gonna sell? You know, like, I know how to sell an environment. I know how to sell a service oriented experience. I just don't know how I'm gonna be able to sell my magic in a fucking product.
- [114:57]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, but you're a storyteller. You're a born marketer too.
- [115:00]
Rich Roll
Well, what happened was I was on this run and it came to me all like on one run. And I said, my oatmeal, it's been eating this stuff every single day for. At that point it was 2019. So whatever it is, 15 years, I mean, I've been. And I've added stuff to it over time, but I've really, I got it down to a science. And it takes me 20 to 30 minutes to make every morning. And I love it and I crave it and it's. I love it. And in that concoction is. Well, at that point, glyphosate wasn't even a conversation, but it was. Now, you know, it's gluten and glyphosate free oats. I always added 30 grams of plant based protein to it. Chia seeds, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, and pink Himalayan salt. So the way I would do it would be I take the oats, half a cup of oats, 2 cups of water, like 8 twists of pink and mulane salt shaker, tablespoon of chia seeds, teaspoon of flax seeds, and like a handful of pumpkin seeds. And I would cook the oats with the chia and the flax low and slow. Like make it, you know, let them really, really cook and soak. Then I'd steam it once, it was like steamed and was the right consistency. I'd add my protein powder to it and I'd stir it. And then once I felt like that was right, I put my pumpkin seeds in and the pumpkin seeds would stay crunchy and crispy. And that was my morning. And then on the side, I always had my omega 3 fatty acids, probiotic digestive enzymes and vitamin D3. And that was sort of like my supplement stack for years. And I was on that run and I said, holy shit, man, if I can figure out a way to get all that into a pouch I not only am gonna be able to sell a habit that I've stuck to for so long that has literally kick started my day with nutrition that I feel really strong about that I stand behind 100%. It's a full meal. It's not a snack. If I could sell that, not only will I be able to give somebody something to potentially change their life because it was a catalyst in changing mine, but I could tell my story. And honestly, the only reason why I'm sitting here today is because I launched Creatures of Habit. And that's the truth. Creatures of Habit has given me an opportunity to tell my story, and the restaurants didn't give me that opportunity. They allowed me to tell the restaurant story. The stars have aligned for me in this idea and this mission of being of service and being able to tell my story. And so I came home, I said, donna, I'm starting an oatmeal business. She's like, oh, my God, what are you doing now? And I said, no, I'm doing it. And I put a quarter million bucks into a bank account that night. And I began the process and spent a year working on the formula. Pitched it to Gary Vee eventually, once I felt like I had it and I created this cool line of apparel to go with it, Gary was like, this is Kith meets Quaker.
- [117:53]
Michael Chernow
Let's go. Kith meets Quaker. Did he put money in?
- [117:56]
Rich Roll
First check in.
- [117:57]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, first check in to mention that guy. Well, what I think it is, yes. It gives you this opportunity and this reason to tell your story, right? Because it's so ingrained and integrated authentically into who you are. It's basically, you know, the wax and wax on, wax off, right? Like, this is the thing, you know, this was this tool, this piece that goes all the way back to those early days and is still a part of your life, which speaks to the, like, what persistence and consistency can render with even the simplest habit.
- [118:32]
Rich Roll
Over time, I needed something to sink my teeth into, pun intended. At that time in my life, I needed a win. Every day, in the morning, I needed it. And now what I've learned about these habits and fitness and nutrition and ultimately, now, mindset's a big part of my life. But what I've learned, for someone like me, and I would imagine also someone like you, the ability to control wins is powerful. And I don't mean winning the race. I mean these small little wins that I can stack up that make me feel accomplished and eating healthy. For me, major, massive win.
- [119:19]
Michael Chernow
It's an esteemable act.
- [119:22]
Rich Roll
Major, massive Win. There's no surprise that when your life, even though you were sober for almost a decade, when your life really changed, it was on the back of making a food based decision. Right. Like you started, we are what we eat. Literally. And those guys gave me that gift early on where they were like, what you put into your body is ultimately gonna dictate what you do. It will. And I believe that. I know what I put into my body generally dictates how I feel and the actions I take. One of the most intimate relationships human beings have is with food. It goes into our body literally and metabolizes and then either gives us energy or kills us. There's no more intimate relationship human beings have. And so we take that for granted. Right. I know that the food that I put into my body is either going to give me energy, make me feel good, or take energy away from me and ultimately kill me. And I choose the better. You know, I choose the better. And so that's where it started.
- [120:50]
Michael Chernow
And you know, that's beautiful, man. When did you start it? When did this. 2020. 2019.
- [120:55]
Rich Roll
ID 82020 launched the business in August of 2021. And you know, we've been in business about two and a half years and it's going really well. You know, we launched with, with Meal one, which is the product I just said it's an overnight oats, 30 grams of protein, plant based.
- [121:17]
Michael Chernow
And then you got the, you got the nightcap, which is the evening nightcap.
- [121:21]
Rich Roll
Is the way to wind down. Yeah, it's like a cup of hot chocolate about an hour and a half before bed. Tastes really good and really great ingredients, you know, so.
- [121:32]
Michael Chernow
But it's a lifestyle brand. I mean, you have a podcast by the same name, you got the merch and the apparel line and all that kind of stuff. I can tell you can see the seeds of a bigger idea that's still in gestation right now that is probably swirling in your brain. Yeah. He looks at me with a shit eating grin. Right.
- [121:53]
Rich Roll
I mean, it boils down to commitment and consistency, breeding confidence, breeding courage daily. Anybody can do whatever the fuck they want. Anybody can do anything they want to do. I really do believe that I should be sitting here because I have done the stuff I kind of hate. When people are like, I should be dead or I shouldn't be here. I should be here. When somebody tells me I did a great job today, I'm like, thank you. I believe you. Not 100% of the time, but I never believed people before when they told me I Did a good job. Now I do. So I do believe that we all have the ability to do. And I'm not gonna say what we say we are gonna do because a lot of people say shit. But to do what we want to do, every human being on the planet wants, all of us want, we all want, everybody wants. There's not a single human being on the planet that doesn't want. But there's only a way to get from want to have one way. You know, and I've said this before, I really believe the only way to get from want to have is to do only one way. No one is coming for you. No one's gonna give it to you.
- [123:09]
Michael Chernow
So what's the difference between those who take action on the to do and those that don't? Because yes, everybody aspires to a better life. Everybody has dreams and ambitions or ideas around things they would like to accomplish or achieve. And there's also things we have to overcome or confront or transcend in order to evolve and grow. And some people sign up for that journey and they walk the path and they make the changes and they build a better life for themselves. Other people say they're going to do it and for whatever reason they can't, or they struggle or they meet enough obstacles where they retreat. And then other people are like, no, thank you. So what are the key differentiators between those archetypes? And you coach people, so I'm sure you're. It's self selecting because anybody who shows up for you probably has some willingness to put in the work. But you find out quickly who's really committed and who isn't.
- [124:17]
Rich Roll
I want to sort of answer that question in two ways. One, with a story that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in the Tipping Point. And it resonates a lot with me. So I bring it up from time to time because it's about New York City when I was a kid. I was born in 1980 in New York City. I was on the trains a lot as a young kid. And I grew up in Manhattan, so I was in the thick of it. And the trains in New York City were just scariest place on earth. Very scary. They were covered in graffiti. Not a lot of order and just scary. And a police commissioner came in to New York City and crime and murder was through the roof at the end of the 80s and into the early 90s like number one in the country. And by 1992 or 1993, that crime and murder had diminished by 50 to 75%. And you would Think, like, what the hell happened? Like, how did that happen? And when you peel back the onion and understand the story that Malcolm Gladwell tells, it's very similar. To answer the question that you asked me, that guy came in and said, we're gonna clean the trains. We're just going to clean the trains. And people were like, what? They're fucking. People are getting murdered by the hundreds. You're going to clean the trains? And the guy says, yep, we're going to clean the trains and we're going to make sure that there's no graffiti on the train. And then once we get the trains sorted out, we're going to start arresting people for jumping the turnstiles. And people were, like, flabbergasted. It's a crack epidemic. People are dying. You're gonna clean the trains and you're gonna arrest fairhoppers. This is what the guy did. And within two years, murder rate was down 50%. And so ultimately, it's the small wins. From my experience and from what I've seen and from what I know about myself, the small wins and the commitment to the small wins are the distinguishing elements to taking the risk and having the courage to go.
- [126:33]
Michael Chernow
And we can all find a way to build small wins into our day, no matter who we are.
- [126:38]
Rich Roll
I mean, it's defined who you are as a human being right now, right?
- [126:42]
Michael Chernow
100%. I also think it speaks to that idea of how you do anything is how you do everything. And if you care enough to strip the graffiti off the trains, that sets in motion, like a domino effect, then. Now what do we care about? Now what do we care about? If you. If you brush your teeth in the morning, if you wash your face, if you eat your oatmeal, all of those things seemingly in and of themselves feel meaningless, but they're actually the most important things.
- [127:11]
Rich Roll
They begin to paint the picture, you know, like, the Mona Lisa didn't just show up, right? Like, how many times was that thing? How long did it. You know? Like, it takes time. It takes consistency. Ultimately, that consistency is going to evolve into more and more confidence. And confidence is what breeds courage. And so I think the do part of the want plus do equals have comes with starting your day winning. And it doesn't mean that every day is going to be awesome, you know, that is. I mean, it's not like there's many days do it anyway.
- [127:56]
Michael Chernow
I mean, also, it's. You have to have some level of willingness to entertain, change, and weather some discomfort. I mean, for me, it all goes back to what I learned day one in the program. Like, just don't just get through the next hour. Like, that's all you have to do. Like, if your head hits the pillow and you didn't take a drink, which sounds to a normal person insane and ridiculous, like, there's your huge win. Like, that's a major victory for the day. And you just start stringing those together and then it slowly. To the same analogy of the restaurateur who said you have to expand outward organically from the middle. Like, what's the next little habit that you can chip away at? And it builds day by day upon that. And I think, particularly in this Internet era of, like, biohacking and how to expedite a quick result with everything, everyone's looking at these finish lines and thinking about how they can get there quickly. And it's really not about that at all. It's about how are you becoming a better master of yourself in the tiny little things that all of us have to contend with every single day.
- [129:09]
Rich Roll
It's so hard building a business. Like, it's so hard getting people to believe in something, in an idea that you have having the audacity to, like, come up with an idea and think that you're gonna make millions of people wanna fucking move for it.
- [129:28]
Michael Chernow
You know, I'm selling oatmeal, and I'm telling you, if you eat this every day, you're gonna change your life.
- [129:33]
Rich Roll
Yeah, right.
- [129:34]
Michael Chernow
That's pretty fucking audacious.
- [129:36]
Rich Roll
Audacious, big time. And not only saying that, but having people believe in you to give you hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars to do it. Right. It's very hard. And I think a mix of my belief in the power greater than myself, looking at my past and understanding that I have been consistent and having an unwavering sense of optimism and staying humble throughout that process and not giving a fuck about the money. I don't. I've never been motivated by it. And I'm not saying that to wear it on my sleeve. I'm saying that that's just the truth. I have not been motivated by the money, you know, And I can tell you the last year has been so hard, so, so hard raising money for this business, for raising money for any business, but, you know, so hard. In my podcast, my business partner and I, every month we drop an episode called Creatures of Habit. What's really happening? Because I said to Jonathan, hey, dude, I want to completely rip the doors open on this thing. I want to bring the community along on this journey. Fully transparent the whole way through. I want them to know when we're struggling. I want them to know when we're crushing it. So every month we have an episode that sort of recaps the month prior.
- [131:14]
Michael Chernow
That's sort of a way of recreating the restaurant and creating an experience that is, yeah, to your point of bringing people in. But the transparency and the honesty with that is what breeds trust also and loyalty to building.
- [131:29]
Rich Roll
You know, you would ask, like, how you know the difference between, you know, being in the restaurant and now having this business in the digital landscape. And I have figured out ways to break that wall down. You know, I write an email every single Thursday from my email address to 38,000 people and share with them my life. And really what I'm doing is I'm writing my book and I'm sharing this weekly passage with the community. And so many people write back, and I am so happy to respond to them. And it takes a lot of time. I believe it's one of the most important things I can do as the founder of the company. Because I've never gotten a fucking email from a founder before. And then written back, and then they reply back to me like, hey, it's Chernow. You know, like, that's me doing being the guy in the restaurant, touching you on the shoulder and asking you how your meal is. If you've ordered from us over 24 times. Caroline on my team, who's like a godsend, she's been with us from the beginning. She does so much. She'll go in and she'll take down because we have access to people's phone numbers. And so if you have over 24 orders from us, she'll send me a bunch of numbers. And I ruck every day from 4 to 5:30, just like what I do. And I have a list of phone numbers and I'll just randomly call someone from the list. And I'm like, hey, this Chernow. Thank you. I just wanted to say what's up? Thank you. What are we doing good? Like, what are we doing bad? How can I be better? You know? Thank you. And like, that little touch, you know? So I'm figuring out ways to really sort of just like blur the line of digital and being able to like.
- [133:33]
Michael Chernow
Touch people, you know, you gotta tell me about the breath work and the healing with your dad.
- [133:41]
Rich Roll
So I was at an event that you were at called Running Man. Yeah, I went down there. I got invited to it. I don't know, Jesse. I know Devin. I had no idea what to expect. Running has not been a big part of my life like it was in years past. But I was like, man, I'm getting invited this thing. I'm going, fuck it. In the middle of nowhere, Georgia. I was like, all right, this will be cool. I'm not a big event. Go guy Love going like, you know. You know, it was kind of explained to me. It's, it's, it was like, it's the Burning man for fitness. And I was like, oh, great.
- [134:23]
Michael Chernow
In the middle of nowhere, Georgia. Like, you mean it? Like, it is not close to the Atlanta airport.
- [134:28]
Rich Roll
No. Yeah, this is like. Anyway, I get there, I'm like, this is pretty cool. It was cold as hell when I got there. And we, we went down, we set up our stuff, and then this guy Sean, who I went down there with, was like, hey, do you want to do some breath work? My friend Mike Gazo is doing breath work at this tent over here. And this is like an hour and a half after we got in. And I was like, oh, yeah, I love breath work. I'm doing Wim Hof and box breathing and listening to Huberman about the double inhale, long exhale, I do it all. I'm like, totally. So we walk over to this thing and we're a little bit late. They had already kind of started the breathwork session. And Mike walks over to the side of the tent and says, hey, you know, have you done breath work before? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've done breath work. He goes, okay, well then, you know, just come on in and lie down and just take my, you know, take my lead. So I go in, I lie down, and he explains to me that it's going to be about a 25, 30 minute long journey. I had never done breathwork like that. I'd never done like a long extended thing outside of Wim Hof where you do, you know, whatever, three to five rounds. And anyway, he goes, it's a double inhale, you know, all mouth breathing. You breathe into your stomach, into your chest, out your mouth. It's just an easy flow, just non stop, just flow like that. So I'm on the ground, I'm doing it, got an eye mask on, I'm breathing. About 10 minutes in, I start. This physical sensation was overwhelming, scary. My hands started to curl in, my arms started to feel pressure and kind of numb and my chest started to feel a little, like, uncomfortable. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm having a heart attack. Like, this is not good, you know, I'm having a heart attack. This is fucking scary. And I kind of like jump up and I'm looking around to see if anybody else is experiencing this and no one is. He sees me, he beelines over to me, he grabs me and he rubs my chest and he's like, dude, relax, relax. This is normal. You're having a physical. This is a somatic thing. You're having a physical experience. Just do me a favor, don't look too deep into it. This happens. Just breathe. He goes, do you have family? People that you love? You know? And I was like, yeah, of course. I'm married. I have two kids. I love them more than anything on the planet. And he goes, just think about them. And I want you to breathe deeper into it. I'm like, okay. Scared as hell, but I'm like, I'm just gonna listen to this guy. I mean, he would tell me if I was dying, you know?
- [137:17]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [137:18]
Rich Roll
And so I start breathing deeper into it and I'm thinking about my wife and kids and Rich. Within two minutes, I felt this again. This is gonna sound woo woo to the person listening that has no experience with this kind of thing. But I felt a sense of love like I had never felt love before. Like, I felt so much love from my wife and my kids to me and from me back to them in this breath work. Totally unexpected. I just lost it. The emotional release that I got, but in a. In a happy, joyous way was beyond anything I can remember to date. Feeling it was so potent.
- [138:13]
Michael Chernow
Wow.
- [138:14]
Rich Roll
And literally I'm in this thing and I'm lying down and I'm feeling like almost like I'm floating and I'm like, oh my God, this is insane. I'm thinking about my wife and children and I'm like, the love was so real. And the way I can just kind of describe it is like I kind of felt like somebody had like walked over, like, had a big fluffy blanket that they waved over me and just let drop on me. And it just felt so good, this blanket of like, love. And even when I say it, it sounds, you know, far out, but it's what I experienced and it was unbelievable. And I had an outer body experience in that moment. I was just like, oh my God. My body was buzzing, buzzing like, like I felt that. And the music stopped and everybody started getting up and I was frozen. I was stuck. My hands were stuck like this. My arms felt super heavy. My mouth was like kind of stuffed up.
- [139:15]
Michael Chernow
You get that tet knee where your fingers.
- [139:17]
Rich Roll
Yeah, 100% no one had told me. No one had warned me about that.
- [139:23]
Michael Chernow
So it's like. It was an aggressive kind of holotropic.
- [139:26]
Rich Roll
It was a holotropic experience that he calls the Rebirth breath. Yeah. So finally, I was like. You know, I'd been on the floor for probably about 35 minutes at that point. I felt. I was crying. I was. You know, I felt so light. And I, like, kind of rolled over to my side and was able to, like, get myself up. And I walked over to him. He knew that I had just, like, a very intense experience. And he was like, congratulations. And I was like, dude, I'm embarrassed, like, of how intense that was. I don't know. Like, I don't know what to say. I'm so grateful for that experience. And he was like, you don't have to say much, dude. He just, like, gave me a big hug, and he was like, go enjoy your day. And the rest of that day, man, I. You know, the sun was shining. I was. I was in the sauna in the Cold Plunge, meeting people. I felt like I was on drugs, like, I did. And also, I will say that that event, for me, I didn't see the sign that said, check your asshole at the door, but, like, there was not a single asshole at that event. Everybody that I met was just cool and down to connect. And I was like, wow. Like that. And it could be that I just had that experience and something shifted for me there.
- [140:55]
Michael Chernow
Probably a little of both. I mean, talk about culture. Like, Jesse, I don't know Devin as well, but, like, Jesse certainly understands how to create a certain kind of culture. And it's not a surprise that everybody there was super high vibe and positive.
- [141:10]
Rich Roll
I mean, it was just such a great event. Anyway, I went back to breathwork the next day, and, you know, Mike said, I don't know if you're gonna have the same experience, man. You know, like, that was intense and wonderful. But he was like, now you know that the physical component could potentially happen. I'm just gonna ask you to not allow it to derail whatever experience you have. Just go with it and understand that it's possible that you were fine yesterday. You didn't die. You're all good. If you have the experience, just blow through it. And within five minutes of the breath, I dropped right into that same experience, and I felt really emotional. And a mantra showed up in my head, and it just said, you got everything you need. You got everything you need. You got everything you need. And for 20 minutes, that was the mantra. I was crying and emotional and I felt this release again. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, this is like some. This is some deep therapy that I've needed. This is finding cracks in my psyche that I've needed to see, I've wanted to see. And so I had that experience again. And, like, I would never imagine myself talking like this about something like that before going through it. I said to Mike after the experience, I was like, dude, we gotta. He lives here in la. I'm actually funny enough right after this, I'm going to do breathwork with him and do sauna and cold plunge because he lives 20 minutes away at his house. So we've been meeting every two weeks virtually. And the first two breathwork sessions that I had were wonderful. The remainder of them were painful, deeply painful. And I don't know why that shift happened, but I think, you know, we set an intention before everyone. And honestly, I didn't think that it was going to work virtually, you know, like, the first time we did it, I, like, set up a yoga mat on the floor of my office. You know, I dimmed the lights and tried to make it as comfortable as possible, like, in terms of just, like, feeling safe and comfortable, but it wasn't like being in person with the music and everything, however, as effective. And the first one that we did.
- [143:55]
Michael Chernow
Virtually.
- [143:58]
Rich Roll
Was so sad. I felt so sad. He said, let's set an intention. And I said, man, I just want to continue to dig. I want to continue to dig. I want to continue to learn more. This is a powerful practice for me, I think. Let me just be open to whatever shows up. And as soon as we started going, I kind of went right back into that physical kind of experience. And then I just got really sad. Like, super duper sad. Not feeling happy emotions, like, really sad emotions. And the thought that went through my mind was, everything I've done to date is in an effort to get my father's approval and love.
- [144:45]
Michael Chernow
There it is.
- [144:46]
Rich Roll
Everything I've done, from the drugs to the fitness to the business to the family. I want my dad to tell me he loves me and I want a pat on the back from him, no one else. And it sucks because he's fucking dead and I can't have it. And that just crushed me in that moment. Really, really. Like, I felt my chest sink and the tears and the emotion that came out of that was just really, really, like.
- [145:24]
Michael Chernow
Guttural.
- [145:26]
Rich Roll
That's how I can describe it. You know, I was like. I felt like, ugh. Mike saw, I guess in the. He was like, set your computer up on the side. I want to be able to see you from the side. He obviously saw that I was going through it hard in there. He holds the space. I didn't know what that meant until I started doing breath work. But I think he was able to see that, like, he has control over. Obviously, there's music that I listen to when we do it. He has control over the music. And he explained to me that he has heartstring music and he has deep, penetrating music. And I think he saw that I was kind of going through it and he put on some music that kind of changed the course of this thing for me. But the vision that I had here was I saw myself breathing. Not in my office, but, like, in somewhere. The vision that I had was of me on the floor breathing. And I was kind of, like, down next to myself, looking up this way. And my father walked into the room within, like, five minutes left in the breath work. My father walked. He opened up the door. He walked into the room. He was young. He had facial hair. He looked healthy. And he walked into the room and walked right over to me and kneeled down next to me and put his hand through my hair and said right up into my ear, I love you. And that was crazy for me.
- [147:00]
Michael Chernow
Had he said that to you in real life?
- [147:04]
Rich Roll
Not that I remember. And obviously I lost it, right? Like, in that moment, I felt the emotions went from pain to, like, insane relief. Like, whoa.
- [147:22]
Michael Chernow
But it was real. Like, the experience of that felt. It wasn't like you were imagining it.
- [147:27]
Rich Roll
It happened.
- [147:28]
Michael Chernow
It felt visceral. Yeah, it happened.
- [147:30]
Rich Roll
It happened for me, full on. I felt him. I smelled him. He was next to my head. I felt his hand in my hair. Like.
- [147:43]
Michael Chernow
Make of it what you want.
- [147:44]
Rich Roll
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't know what to say.
- [147:46]
Michael Chernow
I mean, that's. That's some fucking crazy shit. Beautiful in so many ways. I mean, thank you for sharing that story. I don't have quite as dramatic a story about holotropic breathing, but similar. You know, the first time that I did it must have been 2000. I was new in my relationship with my wife, and we did it together, and it was absolutely euphoric, like, all the feelings of love. And I think it brought us closer together. And it was just. It was an unreal experience. I'd never had any kind of experience like that. And at this point, I was only like, a year and a half sober. Like, I was still very much in early sobriety. And then maybe A year later, I did it again and just went into a spiral of darkness. It was the complete opposite experience. Like, after it happened, I had to get away from people, and I locked myself in a bedroom for, like, 18 hours straight. Like, I couldn't be around people, and it was scary. And I thought, well, maybe that's an aberration. So two or three months later, I tried again, same thing. But I was too early in my emotional, mental health, sobriety journey to be in a place where I could contend with whatever was bringing that up. Right. And I've done a lot of work since. And for that reason, I didn't do holotropic breathing for a very long time.
- [149:27]
Rich Roll
Have you reconnected with it at all?
- [149:29]
Michael Chernow
And I did it, like, a year and a half ago, maybe. My wife, when we do our retreats, we do these retreats in Italy, and she takes people through this experience, and she made this brilliant decision on our last retreat to do it on the first day. Like, all these people arrive from all over the place. Nobody knows each other. And normally she would host that experience on day three or four or something like that. She's like, no, let's do it right away, you know, and then. And so you do it. And there's lots of people that are monitoring and helping. Like, you know, it's not like a. It's a. It's well organized, but everybody has their version of that experience. And then everybody gets an opportunity to share whatever they feel like they want to share about what happened. And it's every flavor under the sun of experiences, from the absolutely psychedelic to the traumatic to the beautiful and joyous and lovely. But then everybody doing that, like, without even really knowing any of these people, like, suddenly the group is, like, together. Yeah. Connected. So I did it the last time we had our retreat, and I had a much better experience. I haven't had anything that tactile or specific, but powerful in a more general way. I mean, certainly the idea that, like, breath is so powerful is there's.
- [150:58]
Rich Roll
There's another. The next virtual experience I had after that crazy experience when I sort of sat up after that, my father telling me he loved me. I told. I told Michael about the vision, and he was like, you know, you can believe that it was a manifestation or a vision, or you can believe that that happened. It's up to you how to interpret that. But do with it what you will.
- [151:29]
Michael Chernow
Right? That's wild, man. And he's here. Like, he's in the area.
- [151:34]
Rich Roll
He's 20 minutes away.
- [151:35]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, I Think I need to meet this guy.
- [151:38]
Rich Roll
I'm hook you up. The next one was equally as important for me going forward and understanding. And I say it's like a therapy because I've done so much therapy over the years, so much in and out, and nothing has highlighted these things for me in the way that this has with the breath. So we're in the breath and Michael said, you know, what would you like your intention to be today? And we were kind of in this, like we had stepped into the trauma zone already. So I was like, all right, well, let me just continue to, you know, uncover what's going on here. I said, you know, there's a number of areas that I still really struggle in my life. One happens to be in being in presence and focus. You know, I meditate for so long and I still can't fucking. You know, like I could be sitting at the dinner table with my wife and kids. And it's not all the time, but more than I'd like it to be. I'm just physically there, but mentally checked out. It's hard for me to transition my business. And you know, I said, I really want to just like understand why I have a hard time focusing when I want to on being present in the moment. And he was like, great intention. Let's figure out what it is or try to anyway. And so we're in the work and things start to sort of happen for me, you know, like almost psychedelically. And I have this like vision of like a. Like a Japanimation chaotic scene, you know, like lights and it's dark and there's like a city in the background. And there's like this little character at the bottom of this crazy chaotic scene. And I'm getting like kind of closer and closer to this character. And I see it's a kid. And the kid has got his shoulders sort of like, he's like leaned back like this. His shoulders are like in his ears and he's trembling and scared like that, you know, like really out of like a Japanimation film. And I'm like, what the fuck is this? You know, in my head, and I'm getting closer and closer to it and I find and I see that that kid is me. The kid that I'm looking at that's scared, stuck in this crazy scene is me as like a six year old kid. And I was like, what? Like, what is this? And I realized that that is me as a child scared to death of his life. Not of his life today, but of his life then. And I didn't realize that. How scared I was then. Like, I was scared. Really, really scared. And, you know, you hear about, oh, yeah, like, trauma as a kid. You know, there's. Everybody has stuff, but. And you can talk about it and even come to terms with it. Of course, like, I've come to terms with it, but I had never seen or have been exposed to how scared I was at.
- [154:53]
Michael Chernow
And what does that do for you? Does it just allow you to have a lot more compassion for that kid?
- [155:00]
Rich Roll
Honestly, how does that inform you? I didn't know what to do. Yeah, I was sad because I'm like, can I help this kid? Like, in that breath work, I'm like, what can I do to fix this problem? You know, actually. And when I came out of it, I was like, this is what happened, Michael. And he was like, that's your inner child, Michael. And I was like, okay. Like, what do I do? You know, like, how do I. He's like, look, you know, inner child stuff comes up a lot in breathwork. There's a few things, a few ways that we can approach this together, or you can approach it yourself. But realistically, what ultimately has to happen is you need to figure out a way to heal that kid and make that kid feel safe, because that kid is what's standing in your way. That kid wants your attention all the time. He is stuck in fear, and he wants you to comfort him. He wants your attention all the time. And he wants the attention of other people. And he doesn't know what that attention is supposed to be like, because the attention that he got from those days was out of anger. And I'm, like, listening to this guy tell me this shit, and I'm like, between my father, the approval that I want from my father, and the love that I have for my father, and now seeing me as this young, scared, terrified kid, he's telling me, you need to start doing things that are going to make that kid happy and make that kid feel safe and comfortable. So I said, well, I've got two kids. What if I, you know, like, what would I have wanted as a young kid? Ultimately? My father's love. I would have loved my father to take me out, I don't know, anywhere, and hung out with me and, like, connected with me. And I asked myself an honest question. Do you spend time with your kids alone? You know, and the truth is, no. We are a family, and we love. We spend a lot of time together, and we go out on. You know, we do every weekend. We're all together, all the time. But I don't spend time with my kids alone, one on one, bonding with my sons. And so I said in that moment to Mike, my commitment to this process now of understanding that this is something I need to do to fix some, you know, potentially rehabilitate some shit. I'm gonna commit to spending alone time with my sons, whether it's one on one or whether it's just me and both of them, that's what I'm gonna do. And that was in the beginning of the year. And then organically, my wife got her real estate license and she started doing real estate upstate where we live. And that requires her to work on the weekends. And so I've been given my sons.
- [157:55]
Michael Chernow
So you're just full dad.
- [157:56]
Rich Roll
Full dad on the weekends.
- [157:58]
Michael Chernow
The one on one thing is qualitatively different than all the other experiences, though, for sure. And it's hard. It's hard when you have multiple kids, and it's hard when you want to do stuff as a family, to carve out and to do it delicately if you have multiple kids, because that has to be sort of spread out evenly, of course. But it's. It's the most special when you can just get that completely focused one on one time.
- [158:26]
Rich Roll
That is the latest and greatest work on my.
- [158:30]
Michael Chernow
You're paying it forward in your kids. It's not about looking inward and trying to, like, heal the inner child as much as it is how you're showing up in the world now to be the dad that you wish that you had, who is meeting the needs that weren't met.
- [158:48]
Rich Roll
My inner child is showing me how to be a better dad.
- [158:53]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [158:53]
Rich Roll
Period. And it came through the breath. That's the truth.
- [158:58]
Michael Chernow
Yeah.
- [158:59]
Rich Roll
You know what I mean?
- [159:00]
Michael Chernow
Yeah. That's wild, man. That's cool. That's really cool.
- [159:03]
Rich Roll
So that's where I'm at.
- [159:06]
Michael Chernow
We gotta end this. We gotta wrap it up. But I want to end it with give the person who's out there struggling, who can't see their way forward, who might be in. In that place that you were in when you came into the program, broken, alone, feeling incapable of being able to put your life on a better trajectory, that sense of powerlessness and the lack of self esteem. What do you tell that person?
- [159:35]
Rich Roll
Whether it's alcohol and drugs or hardship in life, you know, say it's alcohol and drugs. The greatest piece of advice I can give is ask for as much help as humanly possible in life. Don't be ashamed of it. Don't be afraid of it. You absolutely need it. We all do. When I learned that asking for help was, like, one of the greatest things life has to offer, it became a requirement for me in everything I do. And so if you're struggling and you don't think there's a way out, I'm here to tell you, and I'm sitting across from a guy that can also tell you the same exact thing. There's absolutely a way out. And it begins with asking for help. And there's nothing to be ashamed of. And 9 out of 10 people are not going to do it. Not going to just throw their pride to the side and ask for help. Because no matter what you think or say, no matter how bad the drug and the alcohol has their grips around you, it is not the way to live. I don't care what you say or think. It's just not. My best friend of all time is on skid row, has been there for four years. And every time I get to talk to him, which is not often, he tells me that he's living a better life. And when he's down and out and in jail or on, you know, knocking on death's door, he calls me, crying. There's nothing I can do for him. So if you're listening to this, I'm here to tell you, I promise you that where you and I sit on the other side of, we're the same people. The same. You and I are the same person. We've just given up the shackles of addiction and through alcohol and drugs, and all you gotta do is ask for help. That's it. If you're not dealing with alcohol and drugs and you're dealing with life and you feel like you're stuck and you feel lost and you feel directionless, the only piece of advice I can give you is. Is two things. One, ask for help, and two, find a form of fitness to connect to and make your priority. There's a documentary that Jonah Hill did about his therapist.
- [162:14]
Michael Chernow
He was in here last week. Oh, Phil Studs.
- [162:17]
Rich Roll
So in that documentary, this Dr. Stutts essentially says, when you're lost, anyone, go back to yourself. And that starts with fitness and movement. It starts with movement, attached to movement. That's my story.
- [162:40]
Michael Chernow
It's a powerful one, man. I think that's a great way to end it. That was incredible, man. Thank you.
- [162:47]
Rich Roll
Thank you.
- [162:48]
Michael Chernow
It was really special to spend a couple hours with you, very moved by your story and I think your ability to tell it and to offer hope and a lifeline and a sense of possibility for people is a great public service. Man, you are a change agent.
- [163:08]
Rich Roll
Thank you, man.
- [163:08]
Michael Chernow
Yeah, we didn't even talk about fitness at all. Can you believe that?
- [163:14]
Rich Roll
Yeah, well, it's. We talked a lot about it, but we didn't talk about it.
- [163:19]
Michael Chernow
Right. So you're gonna have to come back. We'll do a little bit more.
- [163:22]
Rich Roll
Awesome.
- [163:22]
Michael Chernow
All right. Thanks, man. I appreciate it very much.
- [163:25]
Rich Roll
Stoked.
- [163:26]
Michael Chernow
Cheers. Pe.