It something that truly inspires me are folks that are trendsetters, people who are born with a raw talent or a gift or a certain skill set that maybe falls outside of society's normal parameters. And instead of conforming and changing their gift and trying to get better at something else to please somebody that they don't even care about, they go off and they do their own thing. They exercise the skill set, gift, raw talent that they've been given. And they get so good at it that they force the attention of the public, the critics, the world. And my next guest did just that. He is possibly the most prolific surfer in the entire world. And in the beginning, the surfing community wouldn't give him the time of day. They wouldn't sponsor him because he refused to conform to the judges point system or anything else that the community was trying to make him do. Instead, he pursued his dreams and he became so good at what he does that he forced the attention of the entire world to look at his talent. Ladies and gentlemen, that exact mindset is partly how I built this podcast, is by setting trends and not looking at competition and not worrying what everybody else thinks.

And so for me, this next episode is truly inspirational. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my friend, my business partner, and the most prolific surfer in the entire world, laird Hamilton, to the Sean Ryan Show. If you get anything out of this.

Please head over to Apple podcast and.

Spotify, leave us a review. Patreon, thank you for all the love. It's because of you guys that this show even exists. And everybody else, thank you for all the support. We love all of you. Cheers from the Sean Ryan Show team and much love to you all. Enjoy the show. Laird Hamilton, welcome to the show, man.

Sean, thank you.

This has been you drugged me inland.

You drugged me inland.

That's right. You don't come inland much, do you?

Only for you and a few other and a few other brief moments. But, yeah, inland. I'm far from the ocean. I'm like, I wonder how long it'll take me to get to water. We got a lot of creeks here. We got a lot of creeks temporarily. Yeah.

Have you ever been to Tennessee?

I have not.

Well, welcome.

Thank you.

It's a good time of year to be here in color in the but. So let me give you a quick introduction here, even though you don't really need one, but american, big wave surfer, founder of Laird, superfood pioneer in action, water sports, fitness, health and nutrition, innovator of stand up paddleboarding and hydrophoral boarding, successfully surfed Jaws. The wave size for those that don't know of Jaws, from what I understand, is 30 to 80ft.

That works.

That's insane. Am I accurate on that?

Yeah.

Where is that wave?

It's on Maui.

Is it?

Yeah. Ironically, it's at the base of the largest dormant volcano in the world. No kidding. I don't know if there's a relationship, but yeah, it's a special wave on the tip of Maui that when we were young, was unserfed. People paddled out to it just to see it, but we were the first ones to actually ride it and make it a wave to be ridden. And kind of we actually brought it. I say we brought its destruction, but we brought the popularity to the spot, which now has made it busy.

Oh, man. You're quite the adrenaline junkie. I think we have a lot in common here, but I can't wait to dive into that stunt double for James Bond in the opening film Die Another Day, filmed at Jaws, regarded by surf historians as the all time best of the best at big wave surfing. That's quite the compliment and probably the most important. Husband, 26 years. You're a father of three daughters. You're an author, producer, fitness and nutrition expert. And as I'd mentioned before, adrenaline junkie.

I don't know the problem with that term. It's a little bit of a write off, but yes, I'll take it. I'll take part of it.

When did your addiction to adrenaline start?

Like little kid, my dad said that when I was young, like six, seven, I'd go to a cliff where adults were kind of apprehensive and just jump off. I mean, I think I was naturally. The truth is a piece of it had to start because there was stories of my real father left while my mom was pregnant and my mom went to San Francisco to have me, but she had boyfriends, boyfriend, boyfriends when I was young. And I think they were pushing her around or something. And I would attack them when I was very young, like they said, like a three year old, just come and attack the leg. I don't know if that part of my development in being that way could have started from that, like that. I needed to be courageous, forced into courage. I think I have a stepdad who is a great champion surfer. And he always said that big wave riders were born and not made, that you were born with that mechanism, that you had it in you. And then it was just a matter of if you were exposed to the situation, to develop it. But I had a certain predisposition to doing things courageously, fearlessly.

Like, I would always just jump off high stuff and wanted to go fast in vehicles and just always wanted to be on that edge of destruction, I think I would call it that's.

Interesting. I wasn't expecting that. We are going to dive into that and peel those layers back about your childhood and I think that's going to help a lot of people. But before we get too deep, everybody on the show always gets a gift.

Okay.

You got any guesses?

I'm hoping it's something that I really like.

All right, well, maybe you've heard of this company. I don't know.

Okay. It's called superfoods. I recognize the name.

So yeah, open that up.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm excited to see what we got.

I love these products. I'm hoping that you like them, too.

Okay. I like it. I like the cup. I love the greens. But here we go. Performance mushroom. That's my favorite. My favorite. Is that your favorite, too? Yeah, because of the there's some things that taste better and there's some things but it's going to be hard to beat the value of what this has. And I don't know. First of all, you know what? Chaga is the king of all the mushrooms. That's the apex and the benefits that that mushroom itself has on the body. The list is too long. And they say they found spores of Chaga. Spores in the stratosphere.

Interesting.

I don't know what they'd be doing in the stratosphere, but most of it's found grown within the Arctic Circle and stuff, and it's the only mushroom that actually grows symbiotically with the tree. It's not feeding off of it. So normally mushrooms and stuff are feeding off of it. And of course is this a sign sleep and recover?

Yeah, I just started taking that, and I love that stuff. That stuff is amazing. You know what I really like about the products is that they're the cleanest products you can get. And I like that everything is sourced. Not everything, but everything as much as possible seems to be sourced here in the US. And the only time ingredients are sourced outside of the US. Is if they are higher quality ingredients. And you guys are just doing it right?

Well, if we had more coconut trees in mean we're trying to grow coconuts in Hawaii, but the volume that you mean the truth is that I know the I mean, first of all, you and I were working together, which I'm very honored know, I feel like I have a theory that I told Gabby one time. It's called the honey line, which is when you find a bee, you follow another bee, and then eventually you get to where all the bees are, and you get to where the honey is. If you follow a wasp, you get to the wasp nest. But the honey line just talks about how that you can get pulled together. And so there's a reason why you and I have been pulled together. I'm not completely aware of all of the means of the things that happen. There's a reason why you have been chosen to do what you're doing, given what you've done and what you're doing now. And I feel a similar experience of that in my life. Like, there's certain things that you just kind of you're led to, and you like to say it's because you're so smart.

Everybody oh, yeah, it's because I'm so smart and talent. No, you're not. That smart, so don't give yourself that much credit. Yeah, because then pride comes, and what do they say? Great pride precedeth the great fall. So hold back a little bit. But this stuff is I mean, we work hard. We fight to keep the quality of the ingredients and to make it simple, just to make it not be so complicated. I think, in a way, nature provides us we just need to understand better what's in nature. For us. We've lost a lot of that skill.

We have.

We've lost that skill. But you intuitively sense when you eat good things that are good for you, your body, before you know it, you're like, oh, you know what? I need that stuff. And it's not on the negative side, is, hey, I eat a bunch of sugar, I need more sugar. I eat a bunch of garbage, I need more garbage. So you have both, but you have a mechanism that tells you when it's good, and so we're just trying to do that. The truth is that I make this up for me. That's what I'm doing. I need to make a company so they can ship it to me.

Well, I love this stuff.

Well, thank you. I appreciate this. It'll come in handy. Yeah.

But before we move on, I wanted to thank you for allowing me to be a part of it. I'm honored to be part of your venture. And the products are amazing. I'm always looking for the best quality.

And you're it, and you also have, I think, a responsibility, but you also have an opportunity to really help people. You have people that are listening and watching and learning, and I feel the same way. If you're in a position that you can have influence of any kind, you have a responsibility, and you see that people don't always take that responsibility correctly. You have an influence, you have responsibility, and then what do you do with it? And so I think that for me, I feel like sometimes it's no choice. It's like you have no choice to conduct yourself a certain way, to do a certain thing. And if parenting doesn't teach you that, you can avoid it until you get to become a parent, and then all of a sudden, it's unavoidable because it's in your house, in your bed, it's every day. So if it's outside, sometimes you can kind of pretend to ignore it. But when it moves into the house, that's a reminder.

Man, I got to tell you, that is so refreshing to hear you say that, because there's so many people that don't that don't take the responsibility of the influence that they have seriously. And I take that extremely seriously with any products that I am endorsing. And I also take it very seriously with the interviews. I mean, I've had interviews that I will not release because I don't know if everything in there is factual. And there have been other interviews that I've done where I'm not sure if it's factual, but it's not going to affect somebody's decision making process. And so they can take that information, they can believe it, they cannot believe it. But at the end of the day, it's not going to affect anybody's decision making. But when you get into medical stuff and endorsements and just information, whether you're digging into corruption or it's medical advice or whatever on here, it all has to check out because if it's going to influence somebody's decision and I'm influencing them to make the wrong decision for a paycheck, then I couldn't live with myself. And so it's just great to hear that because you don't hear that very often.

I appreciate that because of the nature of my work. My career has been something where I've had to survive with sponsors and getting people to support you and sometimes to get people to support you is something as obscure as riding giant waves or some innovation. I think the key is the sincerity. I think that at the end that people can smell it, they can sense it and sometimes it's almost it's an invisible thing, but they're like, oh, I don't know what it is, but I lean to this. I think your sincerity and that's creating the movement that you have, is that genuine. And again, back to that obligation, back to that responsibility. It's like you see it all the time, especially in sports or in entertainment. You see people have be of influence and then they're just looking for the dough. They're looking for the money at the cost of and that stuff comes and goes, but the effects don't. And your integrity. Exactly, your integrity, it's hard to get that back.

A lot of people don't. But before we start, I wanted to bring up the Maui Wildfires. I mean you grew up in Hawaii. You spend a lot of time there still. It's been a tremendous part of your life, obviously within the surfing community, your childhood, everything. Did those fires affect you?

Well, I mean, I knew people that were in them that died and I have friends that have been dealing with the aftermath of dealing with the know. I've been in big fires. I was in a Malibu fire that was the largest fire that hit. But we didn't have the death. I wasn't in the Lahaina fire, but the death that happened in that fire. And for people, the exposure to the death and then all the friends and family and the destructiveness of that when you're looking for people's bodies that just vanished like they vaporized and then there's that. The questions aren't answered. You don't have I mean I think that the level of pain, the hurt that that fire created. I mean, okay, houses, buildings, cool. You can rebuild, make new things. But people and kids and just that stuff, those are different animals. That's a different kind of thing that you personally unless you've experienced it, can't even begin to understand. And so I have a lot of friends over there that have been dealing with the aftermath of that and then just trying to the upheaval of the community. And I think when people lose their dwellings and lose their homes and lose their foundations, especially if they've never moved and never it's the only house they've ever had, and then it's gone.

And then all of a sudden your family's gone. I don't think there are words for that stuff.

Yeah, I mean, the amount of displaced families and the loss and just the tragedy, their life course has completely changed. No matter what trajectory they were on now, it's a completely different trajectory. And it would be man, I feel like, you know, they didn't I wish the government would have stepped in and sent some more aid. We send aid all over the world, except to ourselves anyways, without getting hard.

To believe, actually hard to believe.

It is hard to believe.

And when I heard I mean, we heard things like $700, like they were going to give somebody it's almost worse than giving nothing. It's like $700. Have you ever been to Hawai? It's the most expensive place in the world to live. You can barely get a hotel room for a night for $700. It'll be interesting to see what kind of and this is a long term thing, right? It's like the aftermath of the mental going through that fire, how that comes out in the year to two, to three, to four, and then the rebuild. Now already people, they've lost some of the momentum of the support because now it's out of sight and we have so many things going on in the world that are distracting us that we're not even thinking about it. And meanwhile, it could be five years before somebody even gets to see a house that they had that burned to the ground. That every single possession that they have that they still probably owe a mortgage to. Hey, you owe this mortgage, but you don't even have a house. You don't have a car, you don't have an income, you don't have a job.

The only fortune that you have is that the community in Hawaii is so strong when it comes down to it. And I've experienced some other hurricanes and floods and stuff, and the way the community pulls together and the way that they take care of each other there. It's awe inspiring when you see that. It gives you hope for the human being that you see in the essence of what's made us great as the greatness of humans. I mean, you definitely can see the lack of greatness when you look around, but when you see the way the community pulled together and what they did and the way they responded, by the time the so called disaster relief group gets in and unloads their planes, everybody's already clothed and fed and housed pretty much.

What a great example in the face of tragedy for the rest of the world to see.

Every time I get a little discouraged, especially with all that's been going on and going on, I manage to just I keep running into a smiling face somebody, somewhere, and it continues to because you can be I mean, if you spend any time on that device and you're not going the right direction, you can be pretty discouraged. Given everything that's happened and is happening and could happen, all that stuff that your brain runs. I am encouraged that there's good people and there's a lot more of us than people realize, a lot more you have a lot more brothers and sisters than you realize. They're there and they're maybe just a little more quiet, but it's something that that quietness but also speaks to that endurance. The guy that runs far doesn't run real fast, but he's just steady. So it's that steady that I have hopes for is just that reliability and that steadiness.

When I first started this whole podcasting thing, an online store was about as far from my mind as you can get. And now most of you already know this, but I'm selling Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears online. We actually have an entire merch collection that's coming soon. And let me tell you, it is so easy because I'm using a platform that is extremely user friendly, and that's Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. What I really like about Shopify is it prompts you all the things that you want to do with your web store, like connect your social media accounts, write blog posts, just have a blog in general. Shopify actually prompts you to do this. You want people to leave reviews under your items. You can do that on Shopify. It's very simple. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the Internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average, compared to the other leading commerce platforms. Shopify is a global force for millions of entrepreneurs in over 175 countries and power 10% of all ecommerce platforms here in the United States. You can sign up right now for one dollars a month@shopify.com. Sean, that's all lowercase.

Go to shopify.com. Sean now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in, that's Shopify.com. Sean, are you traveling this holiday season? Well, Pure Talk has you covered because they've just added international roaming in over 30 countries. That's right. Whether you're making calls from the Vatican or on a beach in the Bahamas, you're covered from the steps of Buckingham Palace or your villa in Santorini you can dial away. And here's the best part there's no rate increase. Pure Talk still saves the average family almost $1,000 a year, with plans starting just at $20 a month. And they put you on America's most dependable 5g network. So the coverage is second to none. Stop dragging your feet. Switch to Pure Talk, a veteran owned wireless company with simply the best US customer service team. Now with international roaming in over 30 countries go to Puretalk.com Ryan to make the switch and you'll save an additional 50% off your first month. That's Puretalk.com Ryan to start savings on wireless now there's a lot more good people in the world than it seems, than the media makes it seem, than social media makes it seem. It seems like everybody's divided but really I think we're all a lot closer together than what's being projected through media.

They got to keep us at each other's throats so we keep us distracted because if we're all together it might be a little too big a force.

Unfortunately for them it seems like people are starting to come together slowly but surely. But anyways let's move into you. So I want to cover your childhood, get into your surfing career and then get into some biohacking stuff because I am just fascinated with that and I know you're an expert on it, but reason I want to dig into your childhood and they just got a small glimpse. But there's a lot of kids throughout the world who are struggling and I know you had a tough upbringing and to see where you've come in life and from where you've come is it's inspiring. A lot of people can relate to that and I don't think I know it's going to bring a lot of hope to kids out there who aren't in the greatest situation and that's why I like to cover this. So let's go right into know where were you born?

I was born in San Francisco. My mother was from Southern California and fell in love with her high school sweetheart. They were the Z's in the class. I think it was still you have homeroom and they was in her last name was Zyric and his last name was Zerfus so they were like two z's. But my mom got pregnant very at 2019 or 20 years old and it was obviously the early sixty s. And my blood father wanted to be a merchant marine and so he just kind of split from her and that forced her to kind of have to figure out how to deal know, having me and being on her own. And she went to Francisco. I think there was an opportunity. There was some study they were doing at the University of San Francisco around pregnancy, and they had some weird vacuum they put on the stomach for the last trimester of the pregnancy, and then in return, she would get free, be able to kind of have me for free at the hospital. And I think she was working until the very last up there. She would work on the fairgrounds and whatever she could do to survive.

And then I was born in San Francisco. She had some friends and I don't know if it was a boyfriend or a friend of hers. The 60s were happening, and I think it was Vietnam. And there was a lot of stuff going on. And it was a little bit of, like, the hippies and the rebel against the structure of eight to five and do the thing and just like, the whole kind of so Hawaii was for Southern California's or people that were surfing because there was a surf culture that started that was kind of out of rebellion. So Hawai represented this paradise like coconut trees and rainbows and this place to escape the rat know because they considered what was going on the rat race. And so she took me as a baby. I was, like, a couple months old and then took me to Hawai. And I got exposed to I think we moved to Lahaina. Actually, the place that burned down. And so I lived in Lahaina. Which was a defunct whale whaling town, I should say. They said capital, but it was the whaling hub of Hawaii for a long time. And then eventually it kind of disappeared.

There was only a couple little stores there. Year two years old, I got exposed to my mom's boyfriend used to push me onto little waves. I think when I was two or three years old I fell on urchins and had both butt cheeks. So impaled I couldn't sit down for a long time but they would just push me on waves. And my mom said I could probably swim before I could walk. I used to crawl to the pool and just go in the pool. No swim. So I swam, like, at a crazy young age. And my mom's friends were surf filmmakers and surfers because she was around Gidget. And there was, like, the famous surfing Hollywood surfing movies. And so she knew the actual Gidget and some of these other girls that were surfers linda Benson and some famous girl surfers were her friends. She surfed when she was in high school. But when she got pregnant and started to work and she had to take care of, obviously, of me. And then so I got brought to Hawaii as an infant. And I wasn't born in Hawaii, which kind of worked against me even though I'd been there since I was in my diapers.

It didn't matter. Like, I, you know, three months, six months a year old. But when you're not born there, that sets the precedent already. You're not born there, and then you're the wrong color. So then all of a sudden you're not born there. And you look like maybe a descendant of Captain Cook or something. So that's not a great scenario. Sets you up for the grind. It sets you up for the tension. And so that's kind of the beginning, right? So the beginning is that and then we moved to another island. So we went from being on Maui to moving to Oahu, which is the main island where, like, Pearl Harbor is and the majority of the population it's the state capital. And we happened to move and I don't know if when I was like, three or four, we moved to what is at the time was considered the most dangerous beach in the world, really, called the Bonsai Pipeline. And it's a world famous beach. It's where surfers at the time from all over the world would come to, you know, to challenge. Like, it was a challenge place. Like, it was you you think you're a good surfer, you come and surf Pipeline, and Pipeline was a was the most dangerous is one of the one of the most dangerous beaches in the world for absolutely.

And so I kind of began my and some of this is I'm putting the other pieces from my mom's and from my mom's since passed, but from just what I know, because obviously, when you're a little that young, you're not remembering. But but I'm remembering. We lived at a house and so then my mom we lived at a house that was right at this beach. And so all the surfers that would go to this wave to challenge would walk through our yard. And so I was a young male watching all these handsome, studly young guys come to know Hawaii. First of all, one of Know premier places to surf in the world, surfing is from Hawaii. It's a Polynesian sport developed by the Hawaiians that were some of the greatest navigators in the so if not the greatest navigators in the world. Before longitude and latitude, they were sailing all around the world by the stars and stuff. They had some crazy techniques that they learned about being able to navigate the ocean. That's where surfing comes out of, that culture. Right? And that's the culture of Hawaii. So the ocean is all it's all about the ocean.

It's all about your skill in the ocean, your ability to fish and be in giant waves and sail and dive. And, I mean, that's what you do when you're there because not only is it transportation, but it's subsidence. It's everything makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And so I'm at that beach, craziest beach in the world. All the studliest guys are walking through my front yard. I'm watching them. I want to be like that when I grow up. I see a guy at the beach that I think was what my dad should look like. I don't have a dad. I need a dad. So I'm like, that guy looks like it'd be good dad. And I think maybe I get credit for it. But I think my mom and him already knew each other. But I introduced him. I think he knew my mom. So he kind of befriended me at the beach, knowing that he might take me home. I'm not sure which one. But I introduced him to my mom, and he ended up marrying my. Mom. And so that ended up becoming my father that I didn't have. And that was the beginning of I mean, that was the beginning of a step.

Having a father was about five years old, so at five years old so.

Five years old, you met this what's his name?

Bill Hamilton.

Bill Hamilton. You met Bill?

Yes.

At five years old on the beach and said, I want you to be my dad. I want to introduce you to my mother.

Yes, sir.

Do you remember this?

I mean, I remember it because I've told it so many times, but, yeah, I remember him. I used to get rescued a lot. I would get sucked out to sea in the current because I would play at the beach and the waves would come and take me and then suck me out, and then the lifeguards would have to rescue me, and then he would rescue me. So I was rescued constantly. And I just remember having him rescue me and then holding on to him and having him pull me in. And then eventually he took me on waves and I would ride his back. And that was probably before I was five. But when he married my mom, when I was five, maybe the year before or something like that. So that was the kind of the foundation of my water. And then he set up at one point, I was getting taken out so often that the lifeguards would go to my house and tell my mom, hey, Laird is out to sea again. And we've rescued him twice today, and we can't keep rescued. Can you just keep him? My mom would be, no, no, Laird's in his room.

He's napping. And then they'd be like, no, he's not. He's out there right now. And then she'd look, and I would have crawled out my window onto, like, a limb of a banyan tree and climbed and went and went and got out in the ocean.

You were inseparable at five beyond.

I think I contributed to my mom's early passing just because of between my brother and I and maybe a couple of the men she raced. But I think that we were for my mom, she was like, thank God you made it to twelve. And then it was like, oh, my God, it's a miracle you made it to 14. Then it was like, oh, my, you made it to 16. Because I think I just was like, it was just every day, every time, which stitch, which injury, which just that's kind of what the toy was wound up.

Let's backtrack a little bit before Bill. And you had mentioned at the beginning about we were talking about addiction to adrenaline, and you think that maybe that started at a extremely young age. So let's talk about what the home life was like pre Bill.

Well, there's some stories of me attacking, like, one of my mom's boyfriends or somebody she was going out with was like, slapping her around or did something to her, and I would attack them. Like, I'd be like, two, three, two year old little tiny man attack. Like, I would just attack the leg and get pushed away. But I think my courage, my ability to not be scared and go at stuff, I would go at an adult. As a little child, it wasn't like I was going to go protect my mom. And I think I had that in me. That was in me. That was in me when I was 3234, whatever that was in me. And again, I don't know if that came along with that fearless kind of little daredevil like, I'm going to jump off the I mean, I just always had something, some jump off speed, take the wagon down the hill, hit the jump with the bike into the trees, and I mean, I just always just had that stuff. But I definitely was like, I'd put my down. Like, the stories were that I just put my head down and I would just charge them.

I would charge adults as a little kid.

I don't think it's a coincidence. I mean, there's all kinds of studies that show how personalities and personality traits are developed. They start developing immediately, probably inside, and you were forced to learn how to overcome fear at a very young age out of necessity.

I think that's attack the adult because he's hurting your mom.

Are you close with your mom? Were you close with your mother?

Yeah, crazy close. Yeah. I mean, my mom, I did weird stuff. I would undo the stuff in my crib and get out. Like, she'd have to keep me in a crib when I was young, and I would figure out how to undo and I'd be down the street. She said it was like I just think for her, it was just I mean, she was already I don't know, I think it was just like, here's your new wild animal, raise it. But we know the development, right? We know that foundation stuff is I mean, by the time you're four, it's probably pretty cemented in at least that stuff. So I had that. And then when Bill came along, he would say, oh, yeah, I took you up to Wymail Falls like some big 50 foot whatever. And he said, six years old, you just get back and run and jump off. And they'd be like and the guys were all freaking out. So I already had that kind of disposition. I had that thing in me that I think served me well. But I think it's also how do you constructively vent that, too, because you can just put that in any genre.

You can put that kind of radical charge, do anything into any category, and where do you yeah, yeah.

How was life after Bill came in to the family?

Initially? I mean, first of all, Bill was young, younger than my mom. The fact that he took on me either meant my mom was really beautiful, but he was willing to take that on. I think that was a big responsibility.

He was 17 at the time, correct?

Yeah, something like that when he first started. And then my brother came, and also my mom wanted different things than Bill. I think bill wanted to just surf and hang out, and my mom was like, hey, I need a house. I'm not going to get food stamps, I'm not going to live on the dole. I'm not going to just live, and I'm not going to do that. And I think that's when their things started to bill was more like a big brother, was like a big brother. And then my brother came along, and I think that for me, that was more difficult, because all of a sudden my brother was the real son and I wasn't the real son. So that kind of created which had its pros and cons. When things were good, it was like, well, I'm not related, so I kind of have a disclaimer. But then when they were bad, then I'm not related. So I had both sides of it, like I said, him being young, and then my mom being young, and just the difficulty of all of it, and people wanting different things and earning a living in Hawaii, it wasn't a lot of choice.

It wasn't like there was all these opportunities. So we moved from that beach on Oahu to the garden island, which is Kauai, and we moved into a remote valley, which was probably the only house that we could rent for $100 a month or something. And the house that we moved into from there, when I was six, I would think, and my brother was just coming, or my brother had already come out, and so I was six or six, like first grade or something like that. Starting school had been moved a bunch of times by tidal waves, and it was on the hill. It was like the highest house in the area, and it was just a bare tin roof with screen windows, and I think we had an outhouse in cold water for a while. I used to have to go on the roof and try to tar it when I got older, tar the holes if it rained real hard. At one point, I think it was a big thing. We got some kind of crappy TV with antennas, and we put tinfoil on them, and you couldn't hear if the rain came, you couldn't hear the TV, no matter how much you turned it up.

But the valley we moved into was full of just a bunch of different well, there was Hawaiian families, there was Japanese families, there was all different, but we were pretty much the only white family. There might have been one or two other white. Really? Yeah. And then we were in the middle kind of the house that we rented from the old man that lived there was a Hawaiian Chinese guy, and he had all these it was like, in the middle of a compound. You're like a little bit of a you're in the compound, but you're the only whites in the in the compound. And we're remote. Like, we're we're down a little dirt road, down another dirt road, down another dirt road, like kind of like in the so back in the jungle. In the jungle and the law of the law, we're in the law of the jungle, there is the law is the jungle.

I mean, from what I understand I don't know if it's still like this, but from what I understand, Hawaii is very the people of Hawaii are very that would that be the correct.

There'S a there's a unique thing going on, which is there are a lot of different cultures, right? So you have Filipinos, you have Japanese, you have Chinese, you have Portuguese, and then you have Hawaiians, and then you have combinations of all those, and then you have Caucasians right within that. Also, you have an interesting thing, which and I never I mean, I learned it from growing up in it, but I always could wonder how could somebody have so much hate for me that I never did anything to make them hate? And they never had anything really done to them that make them hate. But it was perpetuated hate. Like, it was passed down. Like, you realized you saw a guy that had a lot of hate, and you're like, oh, my God, I met the dad. The dad has even more hate generational. Yeah, some of that hatred or that envy or some of that stuff was passed down, just like kindness and beauty and that's passed down, too, right? Some of the stuff was passed down, and I also saw experienced that some people or even cultures were taking on the suppression or the things that happened to another culture.

It wasn't even theirs, but they inherited it. So you could have a migrant worker that moved to someplace that took on the burdens of the native people because either they got part of it, you could be 1% Hawaiian and 99% something one other Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese mixture, but you would take on that you were a Hawaiian that had been suppressed kind of thing, but you weren't really. So there was all that all and everything in between. So then I lived in that environment, which just infused me right into an opportunity to be like we lived next to a pig farm. We fished like, I learned how to fish and dive with the Hawaiians and farm and kill pigs and clean and cook pigs in the ground and dry fish, and that thing I saw culturally, like, for me, what the school I.

Went to, was that out of necessity, or was that you immersed.

Well, it was out of necessity with my desire to immerse, okay, so it wasn't that we couldn't eat and we had to do the thing, but that's what was happening. That's where you were. You were in a place that this is what was going on. You live next to a pig farm and you look over there and there's pigs and all the boys are over there. You're like, hey, let me go see what's going on over there. And all of a sudden you're in it and you're learning about it and you're doing all that. So oh, hey, they're fishing, I'm going to go down there and help. And you just become immersed in the environment as part of survival. Part of it is like that's what you're doing. So I had that thing which was beyond and I wouldn't change one of things that ever happened to me, not one single moment, because it would make it that I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't have the family I have. I could say, hey, I wish I wouldn't have done that. But at the end of the day, not at the cost of not arriving here today.

So I wouldn't change it. Even though during it, it's not fun and it wasn't great. And I didn't love mean. There's so many lessons and so many things that made me different. Like I would go to California coming from that environment and giant I had some of the biggest Hawaiian friends ever that were my protectors. So like at high school, if I got in a fight, the guy would just come and make sure it was like even ODS and stuff and just stuff that I had some beautiful like the lessons, the relationships, the food, the things I learned how to know. Gabby would always ask me, well, how do you know how to fix that and do that? I go, well, because there was no fix it guy. Like if you had a broken bike, you learned how to fix the bike. If you had a thing, you fixed the thing, you fixed the electric, you fixed the coming, you fix whatever, otherwise you don't have it, so you learn how to fix it. And so there's stuff that I would never change and that's what's made me so different in my approach and how I look at things, what I've done.

Because I wasn't raised in Southern California and I wasn't playing football at homecoming and I didn't have any of that stuff. I had quite the contrary. Like you didn't go to homecoming and you couldn't really have a girlfriend because the brothers wouldn't let you be with them even if they liked you and you liked them. That was a no no. So we had all that stuff that in a mean and I had bill the lessons I learned from him about being a man about facing up when you're I mean things know unfortunately sometimes as a know the lessons you learn of how not to be sometimes are greater than how to be like, I could look and be like, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't respect that. I'm not going to be that guy. I'm going to be this guy, right? So sometimes those are more impactful, I think, because the negative stuff has more power over us, because we want to avoid it where the positive stuff has less power. Because it seems like if we've already done it, we already know how. We don't need to remember because we're not trying to avoid, you know, it's like good news, bad news, bad news travels a lot quicker and you tell a lot more people for a reason.

But standing up for mean, there's a bunch of things. But Bill was crazy. He was a crazy guy. I'll give you an example. One time I was surfing and I had a situation with a local guy, and he was going to do something to me. I was a younger kid and he was an adult. And so I told Bill and Bill was out, and then he went over and told the guy, hey, and then they surrounded him with a group of guys surrounded Bill, and Bill was like, well, who's the first guy that's going to drown? Which one of you? Because I might drown, but I'm going to drown somebody first, maybe two, maybe three of you. And they looked at him and they went, okay, he's serious. Like Hamilton's serious. And they just would part and go away. And so in a know, it's interesting, the crazy dog is the one people fear. You can be not even that vicious, not even that big and strong, but you just look, you go, oh, that's a crazy dog. You better stay away from him because you don't know what he's going to do. You just don't know what he's going to do, right?

So I think that saved us a little bit. And he wasn't acting. He was for real. And so I think that also I looked at that kind of little bit of that craziness, having that temper and having that kind of in controllability. I felt that that was a little bit of a weakness in my mind. And so I think I used that as something because we all do have tempers and have a thing. But I came to realize that that was something, that was something that was a vulnerability and that if actually you could keep yourself really centered and be, the more chaotic they got and the more radical stuff got, the more you were able to center and be aware and be, the better and more effective you were. And that ended up helping me. That's helped me throughout my whole life, especially in heavy situations, no matter what they are, didn't matter what it was. I'm just not good. And Gabby always laughs she says you're just terrible in the day to day. Like, the day to day menani. I'm just, oh, here we go again. It's just like the like, if it's all a wreck know everything's on purpose.

Yeah. I feel like, hey, I got a real purpose. There's a reason for me to be here. The rest of the time, I'm just like, Here we go. What are we doing?

That's home for you. Chaos is home. Yeah.

And it started in the ocean. It was on land. It was everywhere. And I have to seek it out. I have to be careful, because sometimes you ask for it, and then you get it in a way. Like, I was at one few years ago, I was like, oh, I need some chaos. And then it was like, all of a sudden, you're in a giant fire. I'm like, well, maybe not this chaos. And then you're like, hey, I need some chaos, and there's a huge hurricane. You're like, oh, maybe not that chaos. It's like, I need more controlled chaos, like, in the bottom of my swimming pool with a dumbbell or in a giant wave where I have a little more experience.

It's interesting how humans will recreate where they're comfortable. And if you're comfortable in stress and chaos and everything feels like it's falling apart, you will recreate that exact scenario over and over throughout your life, because that's where you feel at home. And I can relate to that.

Yeah. So now I try to do that with real, like, let the environment do it, have it be controlled. Like, whether it's in maybe it's chaotic a little bit, and you're super hot, super cold. Got to hold my breath. I'm underwater. Like that. So there's some stress stuff that we can do kind of in in a little bit of a controlled environment that makes it more constructive and less destructive. And then also have it be something that the positive can come out of it. Because a lot of times, those chaotic situations, the aftermath is there's damage everywhere, and let's try to avoid that. So it's like, you go through that, but the ocean is a provider of that situation. It's ready and available and willing at any moment. You want to go get yourself into something a little bit, grabby it's there. She's just ready and willing, and he's ready and willing for you anytime. That's my upbringing. My high school was crazy. There used to be a thing called Kill Howley Day. That was the last day of school. So it was like, they kill white people pretty much. It was, Kill Howley is a white guy, so Kill Howley Day was last day of school.

They're like, oh, do you have Kill Holiday at my school? I go, yeah, I go there and kill know. But the reason why the last day of school was that was Kill Holiday was because you couldn't get suspended because it was already summer. But my school was really a giant school. We had a bunch of kids, like 2500 kids. I think at one point it might have been third or fourth in the nation for crime and violence. We had, like, a crazy east delay. The Bronx. And then my school had knife and shoot and just crazy 40 kids in a class and then 7th through twelveTH altogether. Some cranial. And then I had to ride a bus for like 2 hours to get there. It was just a disaster. So I was just like this schooling thing, this sucks. I ended up eventually having my mom sign me out. My mom signed me out of school because I just wasn't going to go. And I went to work. So I went. In 11th grade, she was like, because she was a single parent at the time, she was able to somehow get me and there was nothing good about it.

So did Bill stick around?

No, my mom and dad, they parted ways probably when I was twelve, something like that. Twelve or 13. I'm sorry, I was a little older than that, but by then they were kind of off and on and I had already like by the time I was 16, I was already kind of out the door. I had opportunities to go and try to just go be somewhere else, and my brother didn't. He was there. But then they were broken apart and later my mom had a really nice guy for the last about 18 years of her life before she passed away. But she ended up starting a helicopter company, was a first tour company in the state and then built a house. And my mom was an animal.

She pulled out of it.

My mom was an animal, like her work ethic. And my mom read the book The Wall. That a book she read. My mom would read a novel, like just a big thick book in a weekend, like she'd start on Friday and just read like profuse reader, just a smart lady. And one of the things that she did for me as a young boy was develop my imagination. So my mom used to read me, and I think that's probably why I started, other than I had some educational issues. But with reading, they messed me up. One of the programs definitely messed me up. But then my mom would read to me and so I really had no reason to read, but she read me like The Lord of the Rings, the entire trilogy when I was really young. She read me dune. She read know jonathan Livingston. She read me all these crazy books growing up that really kind of opened my imagination, which I think had a really profound effect on me later on, just in my creativity and all of that.

Are you and Bill still close?

I try know be close to him but I don't think he really wants to be close. I think part of his upbringing and his thing about intimacy, I think it's hard for him to and maybe I'm a reminder I have daughters that he's getting older. And maybe I think part of his thing, he still wants to be a young, handsome, surf guy. And I don't know if that comes from not being fulfilled maybe as not getting everything out of it that he wanted or could have or I'm not sure. I just know he has granddaughters. And what you realize is that it's your responsibility to develop the relationship. If you want a relationship with your granddaughters, then you got to have a relationship. You got to make the effort, put the time. Yeah. When I was 21, I found my real dad, and I found him. Really?

Hold on. What triggered that? I mean, obviously you want to meet your real dad, but why at 21? What happened?

I think at that point I was in California. I had some connections that might have known where he was or something like that. I was just interested in meeting my biological father. Just wanted to have that. I just had the curiosity. It was like a weird thing inside, like curiosity. And so I found him.

Were you worried? Was there any fear in finding and meeting your biological father?

Maybe a little bit. I think it's unknown. I think the unknown, like, how are you going to respond? Like, hey, where were you? How come you didn't do anything? Why you didn't help mom, all those things. I think I feel like I was curious to meet him. I wanted to know why he didn't participate, wasn't interested if he wasn't he like, maybe he was, but my mom was, like, in Hawaii and didn't make it so he could and you just don't know. It's a domestic, right? And you so you don't but I wanted to meet him. I wanted to look at him and see him and kind of answer maybe some of all those questions that you have when you have somebody kind of that you're related to, that's your father birth that your blood related to. And I went and met him at a cafe and sat down and had a breakfast with him.

How'd you find him?

I threw some people that knew it, that knew, like, somebody that my mom one of my mom's friends that had word. And then I called, and I'm like, okay, well, where is he? And then, oh, we heard he's here. Call so and so. And I just, you know, detective. I just did my detective thing, and eventually I got him, and I'm like, hey, it's Laird.

You called him?

Yeah.

What was the initial conversation like?

Part of it I just block out. Right. So some of it was like, there's a block out. I think he was a little bit like, hey, how are you doing? Or something like that. How awkward is it going to be pretty much it's going to be awkward. Like, no matter what, it's going to be like, hey, where were you? How come you didn't go? Well, hey, how's it going? It's like, hey, I'm 21 years old. I'm a man already. You haven't even seen me for ever. Maybe saw things of me or whatever, but the truth is that once I sat with him and had eight and spent some time, I realized that we didn't have any experiences, that we had nothing. Like, we didn't go to the park, we didn't go to a movie, so we had no experience. We had some similar, first of all, visual traits, like look like each other, probably some behavioral stuff. Like, some of the issues that I've had to deal with were probably a gift from him, but that really kind of made it like, oh, no, I'm good. I'm okay. Like, cool, okay, you're good. I answered that question.

I went, I found, I saw, I talked, and I went, and I wasn't ready at that time to go, hey, I want to establish a relationship with you and try to develop a thing. I'm going like that, and you're over here. That almost made that good. I was good with that. And in a way, kind of harsh, I guess, but more like it was like an answered it was like a door that I looked behind and went, okay, cool. And then just shut the door and I'm good. And so later on, did any of.

The questions get answered, like why he had left?

I think one of the things that came out of it was that maybe he wanted to go. So my mom just went and cut tie. Like, she's like, oh, you're not going to participate. Boom. So it wasn't like because I was always like, well, how come he didn't send a thing? Or did he send a card or didn't try to support you or didn't thing like that? And I'm like, maybe even if he had tried, maybe again, it's a domestic is between a man and a woman. I think there's that, which is like, maybe it wasn't just straight up, like, he just didn't care and didn't go, like, didn't participate. So part of it was that, but the other part was maybe he was incapable of it, but I realized that we just had nothing in common other than maybe a couple propensity to have a bar fight or something. We just didn't have anything. And so I was good with that. I was okay. In the conversation that we had, there were things that I could relate to, like, I was relating to traits that I was like, oh, I have potential to have that traitor.

That traitor. I see some of my thing in him, some of the things that I have from him. I could see it other than not just physical, but because emotional things are downloaded. I mean. They say we have 14 generations of trauma on our DNA. You can download a trait, an emotion. There's no doubt that that stuff, it's not just physical. People always, oh, you look like each other. Yeah, you download the information. I don't think we can even measure it. I was good. I was good with it. I answered, and probably not really that great of me, but later on, a few years later, I guess he was trying to reach out to me on his deathbed or whatever, and I was like, yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay, bye. But I didn't have any urge to go there and be there, and I didn't feel like that kind of obligation, and it made me realize how that's why adoption works, right? That's why adoption drill. Because when you take and you cherish and you love and you experience, that's the connection that you build through time, through investment, you don't just get because you're related.

You don't just get it. You don't get it. You have to earn it. You earn this thing you earned bill, I think with Bill, I love just him, and our values are so different. I'm focused on my wife, my daughters, my work, my thing. I just feel like and my brother and him, they now have a civil relationship, and I have a civil relationship with them, and I realize that maybe that's just all that we can do at the end, all we can have is that that's the highest level that we can get. We can't get to anything beyond just, like, a civil understanding. Know, my I have a great friend, Mr. Wildman, and I've had more than one in my life. Men that were my mentors, but that I looked up to, like father or grandfather or those kind of men that represent and you don't need to be. But he always used to say, if you want fair, you go to the fairgrounds. It's not fair. There's nothing fair about any of this stuff. It's not fair. This doesn't but yeah, you want a relationship with your daughter, you better have a relationship with your daughter.

You want a relationship with your son? You want a relationship with your put the time in.

This is a very interesting conversation that I didn't plan on digging into. But when you met your father, your biological father, did you sense any guilt or regret by him? By him?

I don't know if he had that.

Capacity, but he did reach out to you on his deathbed.

Yeah, he did. On his deathbed. Now you want to now that you're going to die? Yeah.

You're going to put this on me.

Now that you're going to die? I appreciate it. That was the next time you heard from him.

You met him at a coffee shop and didn't talk to him again until, hey, I'm dying.

Yeah.

What did he say to you on his deathbed? I mean, abandoned you as a kid, met you once at a coffee shop at age 21. How much time had passed between that.

And probably another 1012 years? Something like that. Some decent time over a decade later.

And the next phone call is, hey, I'm dying.

Yeah.

How did that conversation go?

Short. Not a lot to talk about. Not like, hey, sorry about that. Have a good well, maybe I'll see you there. In a way, I guess there's a harshness to that, but that was just the reality of it. The reality of it was that there just wasn't I didn't I didn't have a huge thing about it.

Like an emotional connection.

No, because I didn't but because I because there because there was no I have friends that I have deep you know, that I mourn there. It was almost like barring a phone call, a breakfast that was about the extent of the relationship. I mean, there's not a lot there two minutes. And I don't know if part of it was it may be because my mom was a little bit estrained from her family and so our family was always the immediate family. And even now we don't really have grandparents, barely. Gabby and I both have our relationship is pretty much don't it's not like we had all of the associated guilt that gets developed with a lot of the hey, weren't thing and this and know, having like, hey, you weren't here and you gotta be like that and all your parents passed away and that's what you do. And we didn't have a lot of that built in. I mean, I didn't just given that I had barely even we lived in Hawaii. It was my mom and I had some relatives. I had grandparents that were bill's things that I wasn't even related to because it was bill's.

And my mom's. I saw my grandmother and she was meaner than a rattlesnake. But minimal contact because we didn't live where they were. We were away from them. So I think some of it was that I think the piece of it was that we didn't have all that inner family see Grandma on the week. Grandparents have barely in the structure of mom and dad. So I think that also kind of didn't make me have a huge I've had dogs that I've mourned more. And that's the truth. That might be harsh, but that's just the reality of just the level of the depth of the relationship was something that was just we didn't have it wasn't like, hey, remember the time we did the thing and all these we didn't have that. Sometimes that stuff is invisible, but it's the bond that we build through the layers of experiences that we have with each other. The things that we do, the Christmas, the movie, the scary thing, the injuries. Hey, I took you to the I mean, I remember one time I broke my leg and I had ditched school every I think I ditched school every day for a whole quarter.

I had some crazy thing. So I had dinner on Sunday night and I'm just using this an example of developing experiences together and relationship. So Sunday night we had dinner and Bill and my mom aren't together, but Bill has to give me the hey, you better go to school thing. So I get the hey, you better go to school. But he lives in another house with another person down in prom on Sunday. Okay, I'm going to go to go to school. Then the next day I'm in the bus and the waves are beyond good. Like it's as good as it gets. And I'm like I just go like that. The bus stops. I get off the bus. I go straight, I go out. I get run over. A guy runs me over. And I'm probably 16, 1516. Compound my leg. Break my break, compound my leg. I got to walk across the reef. I got thing. I finally get to the car. My friend takes me and drives me to my dad's house. So this is at 09:00 a.m.. On Monday morning after the Sunday night talk about going to school. My dad goes get in the car and I swear he hit every pothole for the hour and a half ride to the hospital that he could find.

He would just turn off the road to hit bumps. But him and I have that. We have that to talk about. Like we have that experience that we had and all the ones that we had over our relationship, all the times, all the things that we had over that process. We have that no matter what. So we have that bond even if we just hey, how are you going? How are you going? We still have this thing that we built with all of these experiences, right? And so when you don't have that, there's none of that. Zero. Not a lot to talk about and actually not a lot to feel more importantly because this is an invisible thing and so you don't even feel it. You're like you look, you go, I have no feeling towards that. I just don't have any.

The reason I want to dive into this so much is and don't quote my statistics here, but it's not mine either. If I remember correctly, I believe it's damn near 25% of the US population is fatherless. They don't have a male role model in the family dynamic. You see it today. It's created this situation where there aren't a lot of positive male role models to begin with in the country.

Yes, sir.

In the world. I believe at this point, even the ones that do have homes, there's a lot of deadbeat dads out there. I talk about this all the time. But you go to the store, you see kids that have male teenage kids with zero self confidence. They can't look in the eye, they look at their shoes. They don't know how to communicate. All of these things are because there's no male figure to look up to, and it's becoming more and more scarce as time goes on. So another thing that I want to ask you about is Bill. Did he fill a role in your life that you looked up to?

Definitely a male, definitely a man.

It doesn't sound like it was.

When you're wrong, you put your head down and you take your punishment like a man. When you're wrong and when you're right, you lift your chin up and you go to the death. So there's some values that he had as a male. Now, I had other fortunate males as well. Like, I was fortunate to be around. I was also in a time when there was more of these male figures that I respected and I looked up to and other families like that we were near, that I was like, that dad is like that guy. And I would say a lot of it is I have tried to become the father that maybe I thought I wanted, or maybe the thought or what I think of what a father should be or whatever that is right. And it doesn't mean it's right or wrong. It doesn't mean that I didn't have a dad, but it just means I've been trying to be the dad through either dads that I looked at that I thought, well, that's a good father, or I like that about that guy as a dad. And I like this part about this guy as a dad, and I like that part about that guy, and I try to amalgamize those and put those all together into one thing and be that.

But Bill, there were things, of course, that I didn't respect that ways that he was that I ended up using as things of how to be. So I did that, too. Like, I went like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to do that. That doesn't work out well. I watch. I go, oh, don't do that. Most of the time, we need to learn from our own mistakes. It is cool if you can look and go, yeah, that doesn't work out well. Let's try to learn from that and not actually have to go through it. Some of it I've had to go through, but some of it I haven't. So I had that. But there were things that Bill taught me that for sure were masculine traits, male traits, respectable traits, and that was a bigger one, was just being a man and facing stuff. Hey, you did something wrong. Got to go to the house, knock on the door, go tell the guy, hey, yeah, it's me. I did it. Or face it. I think consequences simple. And by the way, we make it complicated. Some of the stuff is very simple. Let's not complicate it.

Like honor, respect, these values that make us men. I go, It's not tricky. Don't try to make it all elaborate. I believe that when you're trying to make things too elaborate, you're disguising imperfection. When things are perfect, it's just a square. It can be perfect. And a perfect square is esthetically pleasing, right? And you have to decorate it when it's not square and perfect. So I think, for me, that there are some male traits that Bill gave me that I obviously was blessed to get and that Bill was put into my life for a reason, to get those, there's no doubt. And I would only thank him for that. Some of the processes that I had to go through, I didn't love it, but that doesn't mean that I haven't benefited from that. And I had some other great male role models as well, in my life that I was able to cherry pick through.

How did you find those masculinity roles? How did you find the male role models? Because there are millions of kids looking for that today.

It's not easy. Part of it. I think the best way to describe it is that because people talk about looking for the truth, right? We talk all the time. We're saying we're looking for the truth. How do you know it's the truth? I go look a bit. It's like being a hunter. If you're a hunter, you know and understand the behavior and the characteristics of the animal, you just do you know where the animal goes? You know where the tracks look like, you know the call. You know all the stuff. And the more you do that, the better you get at it. And the better you get at it's. Like being good fishermen, you start to just understand everything, right? So if you're looking for the truth, you start identifying the truth and looking for the truth. You get better at the truth. Pretty soon, you can just see the truth everywhere. You're like, oh, there's the truth over there. There's truth over there. That's not the truth. That's not the truth. There's an elk. That's an elk. It's like you start to be able to identify that stuff. So I think if there's things that you respect and traits, you look for those men, all of a sudden, you be surprised, hey, I really like but you have to have those other values, right?

You have to be able to know, like, I'm looking for a man that has a certain kind of respect and the people that has discipline, okay? I respected men. I always respected men with discipline. I go, look, and then all of a sudden, you look around, that man has a lot of discipline. You look at that, well, there's another one. And then you try to gravitate towards those guys that have those traits, say, oh, he's got honor, okay? Honor, discipline, okay? Yeah, he's got those values. You'll find them. They're there. First you have to know what you're looking for. You have to be able to go, hey, I'm looking for somebody that has those foundational things. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? I don't know. Do you learn it? I had men that I respected that people would be like, well, how can you be with that guy? Or how do you I go, well, you don't know him, first of all. Like, I know him. And also, maybe they're not capable of seeing the thing in him. The thing that I can see, that I can see the loyalty, the honor, those values that at the end are the foundational values of what you have done and what you do in your world.

Same in my world, those are the same things. Those aren't different. It's not like a good man is a good man. Honorable, loyalty, truth. I mean, that doesn't change. It's not like it's one over here and something different over there now. It's the same stuff. Let's get the big book and open up and read down the thing and look for the thing. It's like it's right there. It's in writing everywhere. It's all there for you to see. It's just sometimes it's not the easiest to actually do. That's where the work comes in.

Yeah. Would you say would you say you came from a broken home?

Oh, yeah. When I look at it, when I look at what I think about that, I go, Actually, it seems like in my life, when I look around, it's more rare to have what I have with my daughters and my wife right now. That a solid couple that are together with the kids, with the thing, which is what we consider I don't know what the word is, but like a whole family or family unit not broken. But I go, well, that's more rare because you can say, well, 25% of the population or whatever the percentage is only has single parent. I go, yeah, but then you probably have another however many more that have ones that are, like abuse. Broken within it. Broken within it. So what's the difference if it's broken out of it or broken in? It's all broken. And when you get down to how many real whole families, like family units, real whole family units are there, that's the most rare one. Like, at the end of the day, everybody who acts like that's the normal, and these other ones are I go, no, it's more rare to see that. And I don't know, maybe has it always been like that?

Maybe it's always been like that. I don't know if it's that's where you're striving to that you're trying to astrive to that.

I don't think it's always been like that. I mean, if you look at the World War II generation, they call it the greatest generation of all time. Yeah, you don't see a lot of that.

Yeah, but it might not have been complete publicized well, also, it couldn't have been complete. The relationship itself between the male and the female might not have been totally optimum. True. So they might have stayed together and not got divorced and doing the thing and doing all this stuff. But at the end of the day, it might have been like and also it was a different time, too. I mean, we've gotten ourselves in a time where it's almost like we both to survive, you almost have to be mutual breadwinners. You got to be mutual work. Like, there's everything you got to be working a lot more. Like, I think the provider taking care relationship, obviously, that dynamic has changed. I mean, maybe that's when we're in the optimum, because I think it's like with Gabby and I, it takes a special guy that can handle a woman that has her act together. Most guys can't handle that. Most guys. You get a woman that's really got her. She's self sufficient.

It can be intimidating for a lot of men.

Totally. They're like, too much for me. I need one that's more dependent because that makes me feel as a provider. But that just really speaks more to your insecurity than it does to their you just have to be more like, hey, cool, but I'm still the guy, and I still do all the things I need to do. I don't even have to be the breadwinner. I can lift a heavy beam or fix the toilet or whatever it is. I think a big piece of if the turmoil has to do partly with that, right? It has to do with the dynamics of that we're not in our optimum positions that it's not just so clear, like provision, subsidence, like, we're not able to work so evenly together in our proper roles. I think there's some role stuff that definitely is influencing the dynamic. Again, having a mom, that the way my mom was, put me in a whole nother level with my relationship, in my relationship, and being able to deal with having a woman that is strong and not strong, because women have their strength no matter what. But it's just in that, hey, I don't need you.

I can provide for myself. And you're kind of like, oh, what do you mean you don't need me? You got to need me. If you don't need me, then who am I? So we have all that stuff that we have to work out, which is our job. It's our job to figure out. Gabby and I talk about I go, I'll go figure out how to be happy, and then I'll come back happy, and then you go figure out how to be happy, and then you come back, but not if you behave like this. Then I'll be happy and oh, no, if you behave like that, I'll be happy. It's like, that doesn't work. You can't put that on each other.

We talked a little bit about generational trauma and generational curses and stuff. Did your mom what was her upbringing like? Was it similar?

Yeah.

So you were the one to break the generational trauma?

I think so.

That is extremely rare. That doesn't happen very often. And listening to your upgrading, I mean, statistically, you never should have made it out of that neighborhood in Hawaii. Now you've got an entire legacy. You're obviously a very successful entrepreneur. Your surfing career is legendary. You have what appears on the outside to be a very nourishing family life with your daughters at breakfast. And on the way here, you were talking about fatherhood and what it's like to raise daughters, because I have one on the way. That is amazing. There's a very small percentage of the population that breaks generational trauma, and you've done it. And I don't know if you know how you've done it, but I'm going to ask, how did you do it? Nobody does this. And it's important because you can see the trajectory of families, and it's not headed in a good direction. So how can people break that curse?

And I can only kind of try to guess at the things that help me. There's no doubt that faith is a big animal, like faith and God is.

A piece of are you a Christian man?

Oh, yeah, I have been for a long time. Yeah, of course.

Cool. Well, I'll let you finish this, then we'll dive into some of that.

Well, like I said, having faith and that power that you get or the power that gets given to you or whatever way we want to cut that, I think that's important. Listen, I think some of it's chance, some of it's by chance. But then if you believe in predestined and you believe that it's been written before, that somewhere in it, I think my destiny, or should I say my life, it's been laid before me. I'm just walking on the path that's been written. And so some of it's that some of it I'm just going through the process. I mean, discipline, faith, fortune. I think I'm lucky to I probably shouldn't be here more than once. I could imagine you can probably relate to that. I know I shouldn't. I think I definitely more than once, more than twice. There's a list, a long list, and so I think that there's but having faith and believing, it's like I tell Gabby, sometimes when things are tight, I go, you know, it's been okay. It is okay. It's going to be okay. I think that that's a big piece of it. And you have to want to.

You really have to want to. I always meet guys because they talk to me about quitting drinking and stuff, and I go, but do you want to? I go, because if you don't want to, no one can do anything for you. There's just nothing. And you can't say, yeah, I want to. No, but do you want to? Do you want to? Because there's a big difference between, yeah, I want to, and yeah, I want to. How much do you want to? Because if you want to really want to, then you can. But if you kind of want to, good luck. That'll never happen. It'll never happen. And I would connect it to that. I would connect it to really wanting to have this family. That what's important to me. Like, my daughters spending time with them, being Daddy Uber, being the Uber, and driving to the school and making that being a priority. It's just like the thing around your health, like, taking care of this. If you don't take care of this, then this thing doesn't work. And if you're wondering why you're struggling, it's like, well, you got to make the motor run, man.

You got to take care of the motor, because the motor has all the impact on the on the on the you know, on this, on all the on all the keyboards, the chemistry. I think all of that, right? All those pieces. I think I've been fortunate that all the spokes, man, I just tighten I went, oh, yeah, I got to just tighten that spoke, because I always look at it like a wheel, and you look at it like the spokes. Any loose spoke, man, that thing there's just a little bump in it. Where is it? Where is it happening? Where is it happening? Are you looking at some crap on the Internet? Are you drinking something over here? Are you doing that? Where is it happening? And there's no perfection. That's nonexistent. Everything in nature, every cell, every snowflake, every grain of sand is different. The shape is different. It's the perfect imperfect. But where are the areas that you can that you because that's your only fighting chance.

What's creating the drag?

It's your only fighting chance. It's your only fighting chance. Only fighting chance is just reduce the thing, reduce all anything that could be contributing to make it more difficult to know. I love drinking, right? And I didn't drink until, well, when I was a kid. I was at a party when I was a little kid, and in Hawaii, it was just coolers, were open drink. When I drank so much beer one night as, like, a little kid and vomited, my mom and I were vomiting the whole night. And then I didn't drink at all ever, until I was, like, 18, like, the smell of beer or 16, like, 17, the smell was just like it made me have a flashback. And then I started drinking beer culturally, like, hanging out with the boys. It's the thing. And then I started drinking wine and stopped drinking beer. Fattening. And I had a couple of French things because I spent a lot of time in France. I was sponsored by a French company for about 20 years, and so one of my French habits was nice red wine, whatever. My mom was an alcoholic. I always talk about alcoholics, like surfing.

Everybody's a surfer and everybody's an alcoholic. Is this whether you drink or you surf? But we're all naturally alcoholics and surfers. What do you mean? I go, there's not a person alive that wouldn't love standing on a board and riding away. There's just nobody. I don't care if you're from Russia in the middle of Siberia or it doesn't matter. Just like being alcoholic. There's no human that doesn't like to drink, that wouldn't like the feeling of drinking. That's what it's designed to do. I mean, that's what it mom and coming from my mom having it and I'm not good with alcohol. I think I can jump over the building and I'm just always doing nothing ever good came out of anything. Drinking, right. All the worst things I've ever done, it says it right on the bottle. Impairs judgment and motor skill. But that was a discipline thing, right? That was a thing. At a certain point, my mom said something to me that really stuck with me. That really was one of the contributing things that helped me a lot, which was, if you can't be true to yourself, you can't be true to anyone else.

And I would drink and then not drink and be like, and then drink and be like, oh, I can stop anytime. And then I'd stop for a couple of weeks, then start again. So I'd always had that emotional roller coaster of I got control of it, but I don't have control of it, and then I have the guilt associated with it, and I drink and wake up at five and train like an animal and justify my drinking, because then I could be like, hey, cool, man. I'm handling it. I'm doing my work. I can drink and train every day. And a lot of it was guilt training because I'm training because I'm trying to make up for the fact that I feel shady inside, that I don't have the discipline to do that. It was contributing to hurting my relationship with Gabby, who I love, and that's the last thing I would want. And it was starting to like, the girls were going to start being exposed to it. They're really young. My middle one was young, and so I'm like, you know what? I just don't want them. A bunch of reasons, right. But it was a discipline thing, and so I wanted to prove to myself that I had the discipline and I didn't have AA.

I didn't have any reinforcement, no help, no nothing. Just cold turkey. Boom, start, done, finished. 16 years and I have no desire, no interest. And what I really came to learn about it was that really it was a sugar addiction.

You're coming up on 16 years, something like that.

1617. Yeah.

Congratulations. I'm almost two years in love it. Wish I would have done this a long time.

Me too. Absolutely.

Did you have a specific what was it that triggered it? I read into some of your story. I was planning on covering this later in the interview. I know that Gabby, I believe, said that you turn into Larry.

Larry, yeah.

What are some of the things that were.

Firewater for me? I don't know if I got some kind of wild native, something blood or something, but it would definitely like I just wasn't a good I would go and drive cars fast and jump off crate and you just do radical stuff. I always thought I go, I can leap buildings in a single bound. That's what it does to me. It turns on that part of my brain of just like a wild animal, I turn into a wild animal, which I'm already, I think naturally a little already going that direction. I don't need any support, I don't need any boost, I don't need anything. No enhancement, no enhancement. Nothing good is coming out of it. I think one night I came back and I always want to prove that I could handle so it's like, oh yeah, I can drink three bottles of wine and drive my truck home and something and I think I banged a pole and didn't set the airbags, but that sheared the pole off. And then it was like the next day the pole was hanging. I came to the bottom of the hill and I looked at the pole and I thought, okay, got lucky on that one.

I probably was going four, but I had a giant truck with a huge bumper and just whatever. Again, being looked after, being fortunate, getting away. It's interesting because we talk about especially in surfing, right, and you see people can doing certain things and you're kind of like the angels are busy protecting them, so you better have your because there's none available for you because they're busy. Because when you watch the way the humans are conducting themselves, every angel available is busy. So if you have the fortitude to be able to keep your stuff and be aware and keep yourself good, you better do that. So I think there was a culmination of a bunch of incidences, behavior, relationship stuff, health, whatever, just all those things over time it was just like, okay, I'm good and I'm good to the point where I'm going to be good and not just dabble good. But that's why I said the question really is do you want to? Really want to? Because people go, yeah, they want to, but they kind of say it out of the side of their face, yeah, I want to stop it.

So there wasn't necessarily a specific incident or an ultimatum or anything like that. Interesting. What triggered mine was we had spoken about this, but I did a psychedelic therapy for traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress and I never thought I had steps. There was a time when I would wake up, and it was vodka, mini bottles all day long. And then at nighttime, I would just crack open a fifth and down a fifth or two. And then I got away from that, and I got into wine, and it was two, three bottles a night. Then I did this therapy, and when I came out of it, it was like my body had an epiphany that was the shit's poison. Quit doing it. And I have not had another drop since.

Amazing.

So there wasn't any specific?

No. Well, the potential that was going to ruin my relationship, and it was getting to the point where it was going to be like at any minute, it was going to be gabby would walk out or I would hurt myself. Something, just something. I felt like there was that critical mass, like enough things had happened, and there was an accumulation that I was at this position where it was gonna just be one straw that broke the camel's back. It was piled up and it was ready. I didn't know which one it was going to be, and I think that was it. I think that the thought of the relationship or something bad happening with me or one of my kids or just something I just was like, okay, I don't have any kind of control over this. It's out of control.

How long was that going on? For?

Years. Ebb and flow. But it was ramping up. It was definitely ramping up. And I think it was connected to obviously it's always connected to something that you're suppressing. Maybe the responsibility of actually being a dad and being a husband and just facing sobriety or whatever it is. Who knows? But somewhere something was getting suppressed. Something was getting held down. So I went into it, and I just, like I said, stopped. And then I started just getting crazy sugar stuff. And I realized that it was also and I have a thing with sugar about it being having some sort of it's a sugar addiction. It's the highest level. When you look at alcohol and you think about what is liquid sugar, it just goes right in your bloodstream. The absorption is and then having a mom, that that was an alcoholic. Being around people, watching. As soon as I stopped and I started watching people's transformation, I was like, whoa. Wow. It's amazing. And when you're doing it, you don't even know. You don't even realize that you're just what you turn into. Whoa. I can't imagine what because I could see people doing it that I thought, they don't even turn into anything.

And I know I'm turning into something. It must be just crazy. I go, wow, that was a transformation. And they don't even transform. Imagine what I was doing for the beginning. I would be like I'd wake up and had a dream that I had a sip of something, and I'd be all freaked out and mad about it and everything, but it became a real challenge. Like, I made it a real discipline thing. And what I also did was I just took a Pellegrino bottle and removed the wine bottle and put the Pellegrino bottle. Every time I want to drink, I just drink the Pellegrino. Are you serious?

Yeah, that's what I do. I'm not shitting you. That's exactly what I do.

No, of course, because a big piece.

Makes you feel like you have something.

Well, it's a ritual, because part of it is just the whole symbolic thing. There's a symbolic process to the thing. Open the bottle, get the thing, pour the thing, drink. There's a whole ritual to it, which I think helps you deal with the soil. Yeah, I just did a replacement, and like I said, 15. And now I'm like, yeah, it's not.

Even in my don't even think about it.

Not even close.

No effort to stay off zero. How fast did it take? Or I guess maybe it wasn't fast. How much time had passed before you saw improvement by giving up the bottle in your life, family?

Pretty immediately. Pretty immediately. Already you're getting benefits right away, you're getting little pieces of hope. You just get a little hope. Then you hold on to that hope, and then you get a little another little hope. Pretty soon you start piling up here, and then, yeah, I felt like it happened pretty quickly. A lot of it was just the benefits of respecting yourself, the benefits of your discipline. Okay, yeah, I did two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months, three months, four months. Pretty soon now it's not even part of the thing, and I only bring it up because it's like, oh, we're talking about or something. But definitely for the first couple of years, you're counting them. The reward is that, like my mom said, you respect yourself. You're like, okay, I have control over this thing that I always said I did, but I never did. But now I do, and that feels pretty amazing, and you start to build off of that, but you got to use those little moments of those little pieces, whatever they become, and then all of a sudden, it's like the girls are never around it. We don't drink at our house.

They never see it. So it's not just socially acceptable. Like, it is everywhere. It's just so abundant everywhere you go, you see it everywhere. You're like, just everywhere. It's all okay. And it's like it's not like how.

Long did it take you to realize how fast did you see improvement with your relationship within the family, with Gabby, with your daughters, with people that are close to you? Did you see improvement by putting the bottle down immediately?

I saw incremental improvement as I went. I just would see it incrementally, like you're seeing it within a month or within a couple of weeks already. Within a month. I mean, part of it is all of a sudden, all this time you get you don't realize how much time how much time to go get the bottle, open the bottle, drink the bottle, lift the thing. This is time you start to realize, wow, there's a lot of it's. Like when you do fast, when you fast, you realize how much time you spend eating and thinking about food and getting the food and making the food. And so drinking is the same way. All of a sudden, in the evening, you're not distracted, you're not drinking. I think one of the things I noticed, or should I say a difficult part of the process, was my kind of loss of friends, like a loss of friends. Like, I had a group of friends that, oh, I don't know where we're going with this, that I lost all of a sudden. I just but our common thing was that we were all hanging together, drinking, and that all of a sudden, it was like and then I'm a reminder to them that they're drinking, so then they don't want to be around me, and then they're telling you, hey, you used to be fun.

You used to be so great. You were so awesome when you were drunk, and I was like, or when you were drinking or whatever it was, and I'm like, was I? And if you think I was because of that, then obviously you don't have my back, first of all. Or maybe you're saying that because you're still drinking and I'm not. So I'm like a mirror to you that you don't like, oh, yeah, I don't want to you were so much better when you were drinking. You mean you think you're better when you're drinking or something? So there was that transition that I had that was a little and even once in a while, I'm like, how come it's weird that I don't have the relationship with those guys that I had such a long term relationship with. But the foundation of it was having cocktails in the afternoon, you know what I mean? And I was pretty like, my drinking was drink till it's dinner, eat, go to sleep. But I would train all day. So that first couple of glasses was really effective. Like, you're depleted your body's, hungry, and you drink a glass, and you're just instantaneously buzzed.

Go till dinner, then eat dinner and go to sleep. Because I think it's been my blessing, but I've always sleeping. Sleeping is a big I don't I don't like to compromise at any cost, pretty much, unless you really get wound up and then you're going to know in the moonlight and see how far you can jump your BMW in the pineapple fields or something.

How far did it go?

They go fast. You'd be surprised. It's amazing, actually. Good suspension.

Right on. Well, there let's take a quick break, okay? And when we come back, I'd like to pick up on how Faith played a role in your family dynamic.

Yes, sir.

Perfect.

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Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Larry, we're back from the break. We're going to talk about how Faith or how Faith has helped you with your family dynamic. And so I'll open it up on this. I'll let you process what I just said and think about it while I'm talking, but I'm relatively new to Christianity and kind of grew up Catholic. The minute I left home, I never looked back. And maybe stepped into church two or three times since then, since 18 to 40. And then recently I just got back into it, just looking for some truth with everything going on in the world. And I have a Bible study with just a very few families at my house, and one of the families is my friend Tod. He's a pastor, and he had a great way of explaining things. He says the Word, the Bible, Christianity, whatever you want to call it, it's like a plumb line.

And so a plumb line is how you tell if something's straight. And he says the word is a perfect reference to let you know if you're steering too far off course. And then you come back, check yourself, get into it a little bit, and then start veering off back to the plumb line so you don't get too crooked. That was, for me, a really good explanation on what it is, how to use it. I'll turn it over to you here.

So my mom was raised strict Catholic, so like, nuns with rulers and slapped the hand. She didn't push anything on us as kids. Like, we weren't we weren't like there was no church because she had had such a kind of a ruler edge beating drove her out of it. Yeah. And she felt that it was something for us to discover on our own. It was up to us that we would discover it. And my first Saturation, or intimate know, when you grow up on Kauai and when you grow up in the ocean, you're a little how would I say it's? Too elaborate, too amazing. Creation is too amazing to avoid not believing in something. I just think that you just can't get away from being in those worlds. The beauty of nature and the power of nature and all those scariness of nature and just all the things that are in it make you it's impossible, unless you're blind or just not observing, to not be at least open to that. There is a grand architect. There's a plan. So I think I already had that foundation, right? Being raised in such a beautiful place and such a scary ocean and such creatures and big creatures in the ocean and just all the things that happen.

And then I got born again. I became a born again Christian and started to read the Bible.

Was there anything that triggered that specifically?

I think it was searching that I was looking. It might have been a girl. Could have been a girl. A girl. That was something about her. And then I threw her and a couple of friends. There was just a curiosity I just had an interest in. I had an innate draw to it, like you do to fear. Like, maybe I tell people people like scary movies because they're missing fear in their life, because normally we were scared a lot, and we have, like, a you know, like, you have a space in your stomach for dessert. No matter how much you eat, you know, you have a space. You need fear in your body. Well, there's a space for belief and the Lord in your body. All of us have it, and it's just what are you filling it with? Or is it empty? So I had that space that I was looking for, that empty space that I needed to put some answers to, to put some understanding to.

How old are you at this point?

Probably 18, 1919, 1819. Okay, like, early right then, like, 1819, may 20. Just in that range. I'd been around Seven day Adventist. I'd been around other kinds of I know some friends are Mormons. I mean, I've been around some different things, but got into it, like, got into the Bible and started to really like the teachings. The Parables, they just rang in my heart. They were truth. It was truth. Truth rang in me. I was like, that's truth, that's truth, that's truth, that's truth, that's truth. Really felt attracted to that kind of learning, that learning. The Parables are such a way to it just fit in. It's the way my brain works. That's why they're like that. That's why they teach in parables, because it's just the easiest way we learn. It's how we understand. And then the tools just like a toolcase. It's like tools for your life, like tools. I would see the rewards of that, right? So I would see the rewards of walking when I was using the plumb line. I would see the rewards of when I was on the line, and I would see the lack of rewards or the side effects of not being on the line for a long time.

I was like, well, I spent a lot of time reading the Bible, and it was like, the only book I ever had. I think I might have read it twice. Read it, like, read the thing and read it and read it. I tell people, I go, there's only one book even worth reading, and that's this book right here. And so, yeah, that was Gabby Has faith as well. I think that's absolutely. I mean, your values are connected to your faith. Your faith is what I mean. If you don't have similar values, which is your similar faith, it's hard to make anything work in a relationship, I think, for sure, but I just know in my own personal life that those tools I said this before I go. If you just looked at the commandments and you said, okay, I'm just going to look at these commandments, and I'm going to try to walk and do these things right there. It's in your best interest. It's in your best interest. You will have a better life. Let's not say where we go, what we do. We just go immediate, let's go. Present Day we're in it right now.

We do it. We use these parables. We learn from these lessons. The more you do it and the more you walk the line, the better your life going to be. It just is. It just will be. And I've spent time participating in a lot of church, in church stuff. I felt at times the hypocrisy that was in it, which drove me away from that structure of it. And I think what I've really tried to do in my own personal life is just live by it. Like, never mind professing, conduct, conduct, it's about the conduct. It's about at the end of the day, you can profess all you want, but don't go repent on Sunday and then live like crap all week long. It's like, live like you don't need to repent. Live all week long, so you don't have to go repent on Sunday. But yeah, the teachings. Well, first of all, my favorite passage of the whole book and will always be is One Corinthians 13, just because of the definition of love, hope, faith, belief in love. Love is the greatest, right? So that doesn't matter. If you had you could have the faith to move a mountain, but you didn't have love.

You'd be nothing. And so all this stuff that love is the king, and it's also not easy to do, right? These are challenges put before us. It's a little bit like looking at the ideal family or looking at a whole family and saying, hey, I want to have a whole family. Well, you're striving towards that, right? So I look at that book as a manual for life. That's a manual for life. And the truth is in it, right? And the truth is in a lot of places again, we spoke about being a hunter, but the truth is in a lot of places. But the truth is all over that book. Like, you want to see truth. You open those things, you're like, truth, truth, truth. And is that your plumb line? Is that your tool that you can use to help you in everything? I don't know. I don't see where there's ever judge not that you not be judged. There's just no end to the parables, to the teachings that it just rang in my heart, and I think that I know that that's been and it's.

An ongoing thing, it appears to me, and I'm not through it all, so appears to me it's a roadmap on how to live.

Yes, sir.

And no matter whether you believe in it or whether you don't, it will make you a better person.

No doubt, without a doubt. That's what I'm saying. For me, I go, even you don't need to believe in it. But will it make your life a better life? Yes. Like you said, it's the roadmap to have a better life. Like when you're here, it's trying to allow you to miss a lot of hazards. It's showing you, okay, here's the hazards. Now, if you just go like this and you go like that and you go like that, you're going to miss the hazards. You're going to miss the hazards. I don't know in which situation that can be bad. I don't know in which situation that you wouldn't want to do that. For me, I would never understand when you wouldn't want to miss the hazards or why wouldn't you want to live in a way that would allow you to avoid some suffering and heartache and the plagues and the curses and all the stuff that it's trying to help you avoid? Why wouldn't you want to seem like I mean, some of it's unavoidable. There are certain things that you just can't avoid. It's like certain situations you just cannot avoid. So when you can avoid things, probably a good idea to avoid, like, I'm all about avoiding, let's avoid.

Because sometimes you're not going to avoid, and you're going to be just like, here I am, and now deal with it. Yeah.

Thank you for diving into that. I appreciate that. Let's dive in. You've had a successful marriage 26 years?

Yes, sir.

You've been with Gabby. How did you guys meet?

We met on a TV show.

What TV show?

It was called The Extremist, and it was a show that she was hosting, and she would interview people that were doing all kinds of different radical things. It used to be called MTV Sports, and it turned into The Extremist, where she would interview a skydiver and then go skydiving. Then she'd interview a shark diver and go shark diving, and she would interview a drag racer and ride drive dragsters, and she did about 60 or 70 shows, and I was one of the shows at the end. She had already and I was already married at the time, actually, and I wasn't in a very good place in my relationship. And so the last thing I was ever looking for was to be with anyone else. That was the furthest thing from my mind, especially given my and part of the reason why I was married to begin with had to do with my faith that I was not wanting to live in sin. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to get married to do the right. It was some of those beliefs that I was living by. And so I was like, okay. And then I was in a position that wasn't great.

When I meet her, the last thing I'm even thinking about is I'm just like, oh, here we go. We got some bimbo pretty girl that's going to ask me some stupid questions. Great. And I was just focused on riding giant waves and trying not to die and then dealing with a crazy person that I was trying not to live with. And so and so she, you know, so she she we had an interview, and and I describe it like a love at first conversation, because after the conversation we had, I think I was hit by a giant love bolt. Like a lightning bolt hit me, and I was just like I don't even know what happened. I was just completely broadsided, and I ended up living with Yabby eight days later, and then we've been together since.

So you guys hit it off immediately?

Yes, sir.

It sounds like you thought she was a pretty yeah. And from what I understand, she actually thought the same about you initially.

Probably.

So what was the conversation? What was the interview? What hit you?

Just her intelligence, just the way her mind was working and what she was just her sincerity, her curiosity, her real. She was smart, and I had a smart mom, so I know what smart is. It doesn't take me long to know what smart is. And she was smart. I'm like, this is a very smart person. And again, it was out of our hands. It was one of those things that you're going along down a road and all of a sudden it's just a hard right, and you just didn't even have the wheel. The wheel just was like, okay, now I'm going down this other road. And it wasn't just so uncomplicated to be together. I mean, I moved to California and then she was coming back with me, and I was dealing having being married and trying know, work that out, and I had a a if there was any opportunity to have it be kind of not convenient at any second, we would have had been justified. Oh, yeah, we can't do that because that's just not going to happen. But we didn't have any of that.

It was a complicated relationship. Divine divine could have been compromised very.

Easily at any second. At any second. And opportunities along the way too, that we work at. Listen, I'm so blessed that she can put up with me. I'm hard to put up with. My I barely live with myself, and she can somehow survive it. And I'm thankful that she just doesn't respond to every single thing I do and say, because if she did, I'd be alone.

So you guys meet, you do a TV interview, eight days later.

Yeah, I take her surfing. I took her surfing. That was probably the part that really sent it over the edge, because we were surfing together, and that was kind of intimate, which it wasn't meant to be intimate. It wasn't like I was like, the last thing in my brain. And Gabby's the kind of woman, if there was any and as I know her, there the fact that if I had any little weird, like if I was at all like, hey, babe, where are you going? What are you doing? If there was just a scent of that, which I don't have, I don't. Know how she understood me as maybe as better than I understand me. Like, maybe she knew things about me that I didn't know about myself. Maybe in some ways I have a feeling like I don't know about my loyalty, but my desire to have a family and be together and all that kind of stuff. I think she saw that stuff. I think only like a woman can that I think their ability to know us in a way is far beyond our capacity. We know us for our kind of our more immediate things, but we don't really know ourselves like they do.

I think it's in the interest of the species we need to survive. They need to know that, you know, what what we in when things are, you know, optimum, when people are clear and thinking. But we we were in some ways I was like, you know, it was it was like a I was I was in a trance. Like, I was in a and her friends are like, what do you mean? What? It made sense, and it didn't make sense, but it was definitely when she tells the story about her friends that said, oh, you're doing a story on that guy? And they're like, oh, Mrs. Hamilton, and she's like, oh, be other there was all these things that went on, external influences.

Eight days to move in together and you left.

I was living in a warehouse on my property next to my house. I wasn't really?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. But yes, eight days later, I was married and I moved.

What was that, comrade? Whose idea was it?

What was this? The only way to be together.

Really? So it was mutual. It was just I'm coming out and I'm moving in.

Yeah.

And that was it.

That's it.

How long did you guys date before you got married?

A couple of years. Because that's how long it took to get out of the other one.

Right on.

And she was awesome from the beginning with my daughter. She just took her in, no problem. Made her loved on her and made her part of the family really? Instantly. Oh, yeah. Instant in a way that you would make you be like, yeah, that's right. That's why I'm with her kind of thing acted in a way that you were like, oh, yeah, that's why.

Do you think your oldest daughter felt any type of resentment, or were you leaving and going?

If she did, it was probably connected more to outside influences than it was her own personal experience, so maybe it could have been some programming.

So it did not affect your relationship with your daughter in a negative way? No, that's great.

But she was also very young. She was a baby, so for her, she didn't even know. She really never knew it. She only was more like I said, if there was anything that influenced is my oldest daughter's relationship with Gabby is amazing. Like, they have an amazing almost so amazing that it can be confusing because society would be like, that's your such and such, and that's your you know what I mean? Like, society puts stuff on us, but left to our own thing, we would only go by experiences. And again, the amount of time and the amount of love and the amount of effort that was put into that relationship has created something that you just can't all the social pressures and constructs in the world can't erase that stuff. So back to that. It's back to the time and the effort put in the amount of love and the amount of amount of nurture. Even when there is at times that some outside influences, when you get into the thing, it still has that core that you built. You built that. You put the time in it's. Like, that stuff can handle some pretty good rocks.

It can handle some shaking. When you put that, again, the time and the effort into the love.

Man, what a great example. Great example of a dad, great example of a husband. Great example of changing the trajectory of your lineage, breaking the generational trauma. I mean, you're just a really good example for people to look at. Thank you.

Well, I think it's ongoing. If I get to be, it's only I'm getting to be. I'm just getting to be. And again, I'm back to responsibility, back to that. I mean, listen, what does the Good Book say? Let he without sin cast the first stone. Look around. No one can throw anything. So at the end of the day, we're all in the same boat. The thing is, we always look over and we think, oh, yeah, it's better over there. And then you get over there and we have a saying, it's all grass. You get across the fence, you're over there, you're like, oh, here we are again, back in the grass, cutting the grass. It's like, it's the same grass. It's like, no, it's better over there. And you go over there and you're like, oh, no, I'm back in the grass. We think it's so much better, but everything has its I mean, my friend has a saying we're all in the same boat. We're on Earth. We're humans. It's like, even in my upbringing, when somebody says to me, they, you know, Where are you from? And I go, Earth. Earth. I'm a human from Earth.

And then if you're something different, then we have a long conversation. Then we should sit down and talk. If you're not from Earth and you're not a human, we need to really like, I can't wait to hear about this story, but other than that, let's get past that stuff because we're so caught up in I'm here and I'm this and I'm from here and I'm that, and this is just all division stuff. This just all keeps us all away. When you really dig down. I think we all really want the same thing. Like, we want peace, we want happiness, we want thing. That's what we want. Okay, there's a few people that are maybe a little bit chemically off and they ought to maybe work out and eat some good food and get some sleep, but we really want the same things when we're of sound mind and spirit. I have to clarify that because obviously there's some demonic forces in the planet. So when you're possessed, that's a different story. I'm just saying but there's the majority of us who are we're people. We want basically the same things. And I like to get by that because I think because of my upbringing and I think the separate hey, where are you from?

Oh, I'm from over here. I mean, we used to have crazy stuff. Like, if you were from the other side of the island, you were from someplace else or what side are you? I'm from the west side. Are you from the west side? What are you doing over here? This is the north side. I'm from the east side. Oh, you're on the east side. What about the west side? On the south side, you have the south side, the east side, west side, and you're all, like, acting like you're from a different place, and it's an island this big. You're like, no, you're from the same island, and the Earth's a little bit like the same same thing, like people from the Earth. And then you get belief in there, too, and that just really again, man's, another one of man's constructs. At least a good book has got the wisdom of the truth, right? Because the truth isn't different lately. You hear people talk about truth being like there's different truths. No, there's no different truths. There's one truth. If there's differentiation, then these aren't the truth. The truth is only one truth. It's like gravity.

You fall, you land. Like east, west, south, north, okay. Truth. The moon, the sun, truth, okay. Love, truth. Okay. Peace, truth. Okay. Loyalty, truth. Okay. These are truths. There's not a different kind of loyalty. There's not like, one loyalty here, and then this is another doster and loyalty over here. No, there's one kind of loyalty, and there's a certain thing that makes that what it is. There's one kind of love. There's a certain thing that makes that what it is. All the words in such a I don't know, I think we're playing with definitions and stuff, and that leads us that's just confusion again. It's back to creating complication to disguise imperfection.

Yeah, divide and conquer.

Well, and accountability, too. Getting people to actually have to do the work. You got to do the work. People got to do the and listen, I've been fortunate to be able to ride a surfboard. What a crazy blessing that is. How is that even possible?

So I want to move into your surfing career. Before I do, I got two pieces of advice I'd like to get from you for the audience. One is, what advice do you have for men to be a good husband?

For a man to be? Respect your wife.

Respect your wife.

That's the first thing. They did a study on relationships, and they said that one of the few things, probably the only single thing that was consistent amongst successful relationships was that the man respected the woman. I think that that because if you respect your wife and it's ongoing, it's not like you just respect her and then you don't have to respect her. It's probably an ongoing thing. I think that that sets you up for success in your relationship. And I'm sorry. Say I'm sorry. You're right. And I'm sorry.

Hey, it works. 26 years.

Yeah. That's the only advice I have. You're right. And I'm sorry. And respect her. But I think that's our for us, I think that's our challenge is to have respect and then also just and be patient. And I'm not always great at it, but you need to have women are moving at a different gear than we are. They're moving at a different speed. Their clock is different, their timing is different, their whole thing is different. And for us, the way we are, we have a certain kind of movement, and there is a different movement. They're just moving at a different thing. And I'm learning that I'm still continuing every day to kind of try to acclimate myself to that different speed, that different movement they just move at. I make a joke and I'm like, is it man time or woman time? There's two different clocks. Like, I got my clock and then I got her clock. And is it like, where do the clocks move? And they're not the same. Like, 12:00 on the man clock, could be 1245 on the woman clock. You don't know.

Two different algorithms.

That's right.

Second piece of advice, you got three daughters you're very close with. You guys have a beautiful family dynamic.

Yes, sir.

Fatherhood.

Yeah. It's an evolving thing. If somebody said to me, being a dad, I said, really? I feel like being a good father, is that you're like a post in the middle of the house, and you're just holding up the roof, and you're holding onto the beam of the ceiling of the roof. And every once in a while, they come in and they kind of touch the post to feel if it's there and if it's steady. And so you're just like this post that holds everything up. When you look at the parable of that, like, how what that represents for your girls, like, that you're just solid and you're a post. I am all about first of all, take advantage of the time because it's going to go like this. It's going to be gone. And so you just better get you're not going to be able to make it up. You're not going to be able to go back and be there and take them to school or every time you get or whatever opportunity you get to be with them milk it because it goes beyond fast. Like, they just go before you know it, they're adults and they're out the door, and you're like, goodbye.

And you don't get to go back. You don't get to go back and say, hey, wait a second, can we do those things that we got to do along the way? But they're going to learn courage from you. Your job is to make them courageous, like, to make your girls courageous and to give them self confidence. That's part of what we do and part of that post, and is that reliability, that makes them secure. It's interesting because I've watched my daughters have a security when they'll go out, and they'll be able to go out and stay at a friend's house or go out when they're even young, and never would they need to come home, really or anything. They had a certain because they knew home was there, they knew home was safe, they knew home was solid and they could rely on it. And so I think that there's something but being that rock, it says, be a rock, be a rock, be stable, solid there. And then take advantage, take advantage of it because they're going to be adults, and then you're not going to go back and say, hey, can we redo that stuff?

And yeah, it's the best.

I will personally take that advice.

It's the best.

Thank you.

It's the best.

I am definitely realizing how fast it all goes.

It's a blink of the eye and it just seems accelerate even more. It ramps up and before you know it, they're just, like, looking at you in the eye, and then they're a thing, and then they're in a car and then they're driving. And then my oldest daughter has a whole life, and we get to talk to her all the time and see her, but still they're gone and you don't get to go back and you'll make it all up.

Yeah. Is it exciting watching them when they leave?

Yeah.

Watching them grow as humans and adults?

Well, you know what they say, if you do a really good job, they leave easily. So that's the reward, right? You do a great job and then they just walk out the door. You're like, but you did a good job. If they have a hard time leaving, it means maybe and they're all so different, too. Each one has a different it's crazy how they can be so different from two of the same people. Just each one comes out just completely different. But it is interesting to see the people that they're going to be like when you watch. I'm like, wow, it's going to be an interesting show. This is a crazy show right now. You get to see them kind of evolve and you go through the thing. I don't think I've ever felt more vulnerable in my life. I don't think. I've never in my life I don't care what situation I've been in, hanging from a cliff. I just never felt the vulnerability that I have with the girls. Just because you have no participation, you have to just watch. I think that's one of the lessons in the process is that that vulnerability.

You don't know what vulnerability is until you have a child. And then when you have a daughter, when mom puts them in the car and then they drive out the driveway, you're just going because there they go. And the world faith is in their hands, and you have nothing. But at the same time, I think that's what brings us that thing. We get that joy from it because of that. Because we get that vulnerability.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So let's move into surfing.

Yes, sir.

First time on a surfboard.

Young baby. Throw them on the shore. Break. Throw them on the board. Urchins in the butt. Like super young, super young. Just go on the board. And then had a board made for me when I was, like, an actual board. That was my first surfboard, which was in those days. Part of it is my age when I was a child, there was no such thing as a boogie board. There was no foam boards. There was no porch for kids. I mean, the group of kids that were surfing were few and far between. You could probably count all the kids that were surfing in the world. My age, during my generation, it was just like a nonexistent thing. So a lot of it was like pieces of surfboards. Like, you'd get a broken piece and that would be your surfboard or some reject thing that was some guy made high on acid or something crazy, and, like, here's this weird thing, but doesn't work. But that would be your first board. And so I actually got a board made for me when I was a child, and Bill Hamilton made me a board. He shaped and made boards.

One of the incidents of the many that I was in was I saw him shaping. He was shaping in the house that we lived in downstairs. And then I went after he was gone, and I took a hand saw, which I saw him use, but I took it on these ones that were completely finished. They had been hand sanded. And I sawed big chunks out of the boards, which you can imagine provoked him in some sort of way, which was probably not good. Yeah, it's that bad combination of good temper and misbehavior. Not a good mixture, but yeah. So I had board made from him and then just started I was just possessed to surf, and I was obnoxious. There's stories when I would run around, because I think I was so proud to get a dad that I used to go and bang into people and go, you know who my dad is? I had that in me because I didn't have a dad. So when I got a dad that was a surfer and Bill was a great surfer in his day, he was known as a style master. So he had one of the most beautiful styles in surfing and was very well known in surfing and was in movies.

So it was like, I got my hero. Be my dad. And I would go and brag and my dad's Bill Hamilton, blah, blah, blah, and all this stuff, then be like, Come on, get away, punk. That kind of stuff. But, yeah. So I just started surfing as a little rat and then just used to be there's all these stories of me just being obnoxious and yelling and out in the lineup and jockeying. And there's a lot of pecking order in surfing. Surfing has a very big pecking order. There's a whole hierarchy. There's a whole structure within a lineup that's pretty normal, especially like, in Hawaii and in other surf locations. But most every great wave in the world has a whole pecking order, a structure of who gets the waves, who has priority, and then everybody down, down. Then you have the guys that are the worst at the bottom. They get all the leftovers. And so there's a whole, like, almost a predatorial structure. So as a young surfer in Hawaii growing up, you're having to kind of deal with that and try to work your way up through that into the hierarchy.

Okay.

Which is an interesting process.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Next on The Sean Ryan Show.

Everything I am and have is some indirect part of the ocean, and so I owe it my life.

You talk about some near death experiences. Can we go into some of those?

I was in Oregon in this white salmon river, and we were doing there was a river rafting trip. They stopped before this giant waterfall. They pulled the raft in. They made us walk around. And I said to the guy, well, can't we go off that thing? He goes, well, we don't go off that thing. And I go, well, what if I want to go off that thing? He goes, Well, I can't stop you. So I swam out into the river, and I swam right into the heart of it. And as I was going off, I was going off head first because I thought I was going to go like that, right? And I heard the guy yell feet first from the shore. So I kind of rolled over and turned around and went feet first. And I went over the waterfall, and I landed underwater on a big stone with the waterfall holding me down, just holding me like that. And I was sitting there, and I was like, can't move. And I tried to I couldn't press, and I was just and I'm sitting there, and I just got a vision of a skeleton with a life preserver on it.

And I ended up, after not being able to move at all, I end up moving my leg. And when I moved my leg, it spun me out from the stone, spit me out of the back of the thing, and my friend was already swimming from the side below in the pool to come out to the because I hadn't come up.

You're quite the adrenaline junkie. I think we have a lot in common here's.