From Prison to Freedom after Trauma | with Eric Karnezis

Michael: What's up on broken nation side to be back with you with another episode. Actually, I'm gonna redo that in your intro. I'm going to do this a little differently today.

Eric Karnezis, welcome to the podcast, my friend. How are you today?

Eric: I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. I was mentioning before we started recording, but I wanted to make sure I get it on tape. How much I admire your work and enjoy your podcast and I'm honored to be here and just thank you very much You have all my gratitude. So let's go.

Michael: Reciprocated man. Appreciate you know, thank you for that one of the things that is really interesting about getting to do this show is that I get to spend a lot of time diving into the minds of people who sit across from me and Sometimes that journey is really fun and sometimes that journey is a little bit dark and it's a little bit dark because it puts me in this place of recognizing and appreciating the suffering that certain individuals have that leads them to this moment. And while I have gratitude for that and I get to sit across from someone like you, it's just, my heart goes out to that child version of you and the journey that they had to go through because like sees, like soul sees soul. If you were to describe childhood in one word, what would it be?

Eric: One word? I, that's a really good question. Scared.

Michael: What does that mean?

Eric: I think I've been battling a darkness my whole life. And when I was younger, I had less understanding of what that darkness was and how I was going to overcome it. And, through different things in my life from small things like being bullied in elementary school to bigger things like houses burning down or creepy babysitters. So there's just things in my life where I've battled boogeymen and all these things where at a young age I was afraid. Plain and simple. And so I remember being afraid. And now not cowering. I was never cowering. Even when the bullies were bullying me, I remember confronting them. I've been in plenty of fights before my parents went to prison and after when I was on the streets. That's just how life was growing up. But Being scared was a strong enough part of my childhood where when you asked me that question off guard, that's the word that popped in my head.

Michael: Yeah. I get it, been there. That's one of the things that people don't really truly understand about the chaos of childhood for a lot of people, is that when you're young, in some sense it's like the norm, and you're sitting in this experience and you're looking at it and you're like I guess life is just chaotic all the time. And I know a little bit more about your background in this thing that we share in common, which is incredibly unfortunate is like being homeless as kids, sleeping in places that you don't know if you're safe, like living a life where you have to do what it takes to survive. I know at a very young age, your parents ended up going to prison. What was that like?

Eric: That was a very sad time for me. I was, I remember younger before that happened, excuse me, when I went to camp for the first time and I really just was homesick and I wanted to go home. And that whole week I was like miserable at camp. I was there doing the things, but I was miserable and then when I finally got picked up to go home, I remember being so happy. And then you fast forward to my parents going to prison and I'm catapulted out into this cold world. And all I wanted was to go home, like that experience I had at camp, only there was no home to go back to. And that hollowness and that homesickness followed me for 20 years probably. And I use the word homesickness because I attribute it to that feeling I had at camp. But what it really was just depression.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. It's, I remember being young and people would ask me like, do you miss being at home? Because I would be at stranger's house between eight to 12. We lived with probably 30 different families. Like I was over here. My brother was over here. My sister was over here. We were, we hardly ever saw each other. If we did, it was like at my grandma's house or she would take one of us for the weekend. It was always just so chaotic. I never had a home. And then people would ask me like, do you miss home? And I was like, I can't miss something I've never really had, and I think that's a big part of the conversation that Led me down this path of being nomadic and traveling and trying to find myself in the world but when you're young like you don't know any different you don't know better Growing up and having to be in these places about unknownness about, fear and being scared. What was it like to navigate that as a kid? Because I think like people would look at you now and they'd go, man, Eric, he's figured out this business, millions of dollars, cool cars, big house, awesome Harley motorcycle. And then you go, man, this guy has really figured out life. But I think people fail to remember it we all start as children. How did you what were the mechanisms for coping? What was the experience in childhood for just navigating the world?

Eric: That's a good question. So first of all, your childhood sounds horrible bouncing from house to house, and I couldn't even imagine what that was like. I was grateful enough or lucky enough to have at least a solid, single mother household, but solid enough for, the first portion of my childhood to where I had this stability feeling. Something to miss and I couldn't even imagine what you must have gone through. Can you repeat the question? Yeah, I was so busy thinking about you, I forgot.

Michael: Yeah, no worries. Just trying to understand like how you navigate all that unknown, all that fear like how does a child, like be able to walk the earth in those circumstances?

Eric: Yeah, there was a transition. It took a, there's many different levels of how I navigated and it started off just being really sad and, listening to a repeating song on a Walkman that made me think of my parents and looking up at the moon and crying and thinking that my parents are looking at the moon at the same time I was. And there was like, this real sad almost broken version of myself that moped around the streets, staring at my feet and was afraid to look up at the world and just felt really victimized by the world. And then obviously you start getting really cold at night and you can't cry or something yourself into warmth. And you're starting to get really hungry and you can't cry food into your stomach. And so you start learning, okay, I have to make things happen. I have to do something with my life. And so then the crying almost turns into anger and frustration. And so now I'm navigating life super angry and super frustrated, and I'm literally triggered at everything. Because when you're young, you're supposed to be taken care of. So it's easy to blame other people. So I navigated very triggered and I would steal from any store. I didn't think about it as a small business. I never thought even like the idea of a business owner and profits and return on investment. None of that was in my mind. As far as I knew, all the stores were owned by the same government that ruined my life. And so I was just stealing food. just blindly victimizing people in my wake, right? Didn't even understand what I was doing, but I was, 12 years old. I don't have this concept. My brain's not fully developed yet. Then the anger is where you find your strength or where I found my strength. And so the anger lasted longer than almost all the rest. The depression outlasted all of it, but the anger was really that what I thought that, that fire inside you that just gets you through it and pushes you to the next journey and the next one and you're fearless and you're invincible and you've got that. I attributed that fire to anger and aggression. Now circling forward 20 years, I realized that was actually love and peace that was giving me that fire, but I thought it was anger and aggression. And so I navigated. And I was very selfish in a way because I had to be, that's how you take care of yourself. If I was hungry, I had to go get food. If I was cold, I needed to find warmth. If I had to break a window to get into a garage to sleep, that's what I had to do to get warm. And it was about me, not who had to fix the broken window. And who had to recoup their losses on profitability at their store. So if that kind of sums up what my seventh and eighth grade was like,

Michael: Yeah, but you don't know what you don't know. And I look back at those moments of breaking into houses, stealing cars, running from the cops, getting shot at stealing food, selling drugs, Hundreds of fights just had to do what I had to do. Now, some of this is like nature versus nurture. I heard you say that your father was Tupac, growing up and being a kid. And for me it was Jay Z and I would sit here and I would like consume ad nauseam, these men's content. And I didn't realize like the role that it would actually play in my life because when you're hearing songs like girls, and money over bitches and these, and you're like, okay, cool. That sets you up with this foundation of chasing. And when I was young, I always felt like if I can go and get rich. Then I will have a better life solving for lack of parents, lack of stability, lack of love, lack of nourishing, lack of nurturing. And when I was young, it just seemed to make sense when you look back at that in this experience of man, I'm finding fatherhood in this music. What did that set you up for failure? Did it like give you certain things? What was that like for you?

Eric: Yeah, I think so. Understanding that no human being is perfect. And my father especially isn't perfect and I love him for it. And him being a repeat criminal, he was in prison my whole life, always selling drugs. He's very in that lifestyle. He raised me with prison rules about snitching and minding my own business. And he, whenever he was out of prison, he treated me like I was in prison with him. And so you have to it, I don't think that having rap music as my idols was necessarily a bad thing. I was very confused as a kid. I think a young boy needs a man to Help him figure out his thoughts as he's coming into manhood. We have, women get a lot of talk about all these hormones and things because they have their monthly cycles and they up and down. But men also are full of hormones and we also have cycles and we're up and down. And so understanding that as a kid we're going through, we're feeling things for the first time. We're getting chemicals in our brain that we don't know how to control. Testosterone is making us angry and we have all this stuff happening and a father would be really helpful at teaching us what all that feeling means and understanding that our strength is for healing, not hurting. But I'd sometimes just want to punch things. And which is the opposite of what our strength is for as men. And Someone like Tupac was helpful because he was talking to me. And the way he rapped and the things he talked about were things I felt. I felt like I needed to keep my head up. I feel like I needed to protect my essence and remember, because my mom always told me I was beautiful. She told me I was smart. She told me I could have anything I wanted. And the foster system was the exact opposite of that. And the streets were the opposite of that. And so then I'm like, okay, fuck, how can I maintain? My mom says I'm so special, but the whole world says I'm a piece of shit. So what is it? And then someone like Tupac comes along and he's true to himself. He doesn't in a way, he does have radio edits, but he doesn't censor himself. He was very controversial and he stood for what he believed in. And I think that he was a really amazing role model for that side of things. Now there's also the gangster side and I'm from a neighborhood and we did set trip We were gangsters and you know banging little Gang bangers stuff like blue rags claiming folk and stuff like that. Just stuff from the 80s. And, one of our foster homes was O. G. Poppy, who was a founder of the Crips in Compton. And, got in trouble, went to prison, and hid out on the East Coast to retire from that life. But, he brought us in with that same conversation and those same rules as well. And so we had, like, all of this stuff around us where the rap music wasn't the worst part. The streets were the worst part. And finding strength in that music really helped me. And if you are confused about how to be a man, if, and you have a man who can help talk to you, then I think that it's. It's powerful in any way you take it.

Michael: Yeah. I was tremendously confused as how to be a man, and I look back now at this healing journey and so much of the beginning of it was, I was around the wrong guys, no father. Never met him abusive stepdad. I'm in the streets like my best friend's brother as a kid when he got out of prison We were like, oh, this is the greatest thing never happened. Cuz like he was like 19 when we're 12, and he was the measure right even though he had gone to prison and he'd been locked up for a couple of years, like we were like, oh, yeah, he's out. This is Awesome. The very first night this dude gets out, we ended up going and still in a car getting high and then God knows what else happened. Cause we were like, so ripped, I don't even really remember. And we're 12, I'm like, but this is like what it's supposed to be. And then it transformed into suddenly that becomes the new normal. And it was drugs and theft and running the streets and getting kicked out of high school. It's so funny, guys. I shared with someone the other day this, luckily that I have it, this picture of my report card, my freshman year of high school with a 0. 6 GPA 0. 6. And to me, I was like, what do I need education for? Cause these streets are teaching me everything I need to know, which I think is one of the biggest lies ever. And I was wondering, you said that, the streets and the foster care system taught you the opposite. And so I'm wondering like, what did it teach you? Cause I don't think those conversations had enough and I don't think people really understand what it's like.

Eric: Yeah. It taught me two things. It taught me in a way, fuck the world and do your own thing. And which is one of my biggest strengths today is that I do my own thing, but it taught me that I was worthless. It taught me that I didn't deserve anything, that I was definitely a second class citizen, and it taught me that the world was cold and that I was alone. It really, it was really a lonely, heartbreaking, lost experience. No one in the foster system cared, at least in, in the ghettos of Virginia, the foster system is, it's the same, in the eighties and nineties, I'm not. I'm not in touch with those neighborhoods anymore. I've evolved out of them. And but when I was in them, it was really big, to have as many kids as you could have. We'd have a woman in a one bedroom apartment with five kids because of the welfare checks and the baby daddy would be outside polishing the rims on his Lexus. And it was like, it's clear that they're having a bunch of kids to get all this welfare money to put rims on their cars and put custom stereos in their cars. And they're living in these tenements instead of using the money to take care of themselves. And it's the same with the foster system. The foster system is just how many kids can I get in my house, how many paychecks can I get, and then how small can I spend on these little shits, so that I can take care of myself. And we weren't allowed to drink the milk in the fridge in one house, like we were drinking water and eating grapefruits, and that was it. And so we were starving to death in that house, and they'd wake us up with spray bottles like we were feral cats. And just the weirdest thing, when I say us, I'm talking about my twin brother and I. And then we've just had a long journey of really hateful foster care. We had the predator molester, and we had the starvation. Another person made us commit crimes to pay rent, would give us a shopping list to go to Walmart and steal the shopping list. And then if ever we were like bothering that foster parent, she would scream at us and yell us and call us thieves and ghetto hoodlums because we would steal, but we were stealing because she was making us to pay her, she was very bipolar. It was as an adult looking back, that particular woman actually just had some mental problems and she really shouldn't have been a foster parent. She was definitely bipolar and all over the place, but we were going through these experiences and we're being treated like nothing. And all we have is just a memory of once being something and trying to hang on to that. And the more, and that's another problem is the more we're trying to hang on to the past, it was making the present moment even harder. And that's when we decided to run away to after all that and end up just homeless.

Michael: Yeah. There, I hear that on a go. No wonder you hate the world. And I feel that and I was never in foster care, but I was around foster homes quite frequently and we saw some of the horrendous things that can happen to kids there. And look, I'll say this for context. I'm not going to talk about it here. And there are, I've said over the years, there are certain things I will never bring to the light of day. And some of those things I witnessed in foster care homes and that, that stuff I have reserved for therapy, for journaling, for coaching, for my own healing, because it was so fucking dark. I just don't think it helps anybody. And so my heart goes out to. Everyone who's ever experienced that because it's when you are in the wrong homes, which obviously sounds like you got frequency of, there's no doubt that children are looked at as checks. And I saw that vividly in firsthand I guess you'd call it secondhand. I never lived in the homes, but I was in them enough. It was never in the system, but my stepfather's mother was a foster care parent and I have said this publicly, she's arguably one of the worst human beings I've ever known. But then I think to myself, God damn, how bad was her life? Because this is hurt people, at the end of the day, but you did something really interesting at such a young age and you chose homelessness, you chose to leave, you chose to get away. For me, it wasn't a choice at eight years old getting bounced around like that. I had no idea. I thought it was just like my life. It thought it was normal to sleep and spend the night in a van, but you chose it because you realized that you wanted something more. But here you are now in this position where I would have to imagine there's this really interesting juxtaposition and internal argument that you're having where on hand it's like, you could be warm tonight. And suffer or you could be cold tonight and be free. How did you guys get to that point?

Eric: The, it took some months of really suffering and just understanding that it was never going to get better because we went from one foster house to the other. And it was just always a nightmare. And it was, the most exciting that we felt was when we were out walking by ourselves out of the foster homes. And it was also not something that we planned. It was, we were at our last foster house. It was really terrible. And we had just gone through so much and the emotional side, I think was the worst part. Okay, you can starve me. You can wake me up with spray bottles, and you can try to molest me, all the weird shit that people do, like you're all predators and you all suck and fuck you all. That was my mindset back then. And none of that really matters to me as much as what mattered was how good I felt when I was outside in the sunshine with my brother doing our things. So we're in this house and it's like the straw that broke the camel's back. It. I can't, it was so insignificant. I don't remember the trigger. I just remember that I came into the foster home after being outside and immediately was just confronted and yelled at and belittled. And it was condescending talk and it was just, I could feel like hatred and anger bubbling up. Tears were coming out of my eyes. I wasn't like weeping. And I wasn't red faced or anything, but I was just getting this like emotional uproar. And I remember that just the, like a knee jerk reaction. The only thing I could do was just turn and run. And so I just turned and I just ran out the door and Anthony ran out beside me. And the two of us just ran as fast as we could, as far as we could, for as long as we could. And just never looked back. Yeah. And we ran, CPS obviously comes after you. They kidnap children all the time and there's all kinds of stuff I'd like to talk about for that on another time. But they came for us for about six months. They'd come skidding around the corner like DEA agents and try to box us in. And we would hop fences and get away. And after about six months, they just stopped coming. They just gave up, and that's at that moment, we were finally warred to the court. We were finally free. And it wasn't easy. We were, freezing cold at night and shivering and wetting the rain and having to break into garages to escape it and eating candy bars and raw hot dogs. It was rough, but yeah, we chose it for sure. It was better than foster care.

Michael: Yeah. And that's the same thought I have about living with my grandmother. She took, she had taken one of my little brothers. I had been living in an abandoned house by myself for about six weeks in the blistering hot summer of Indiana, stealing food from the big lots on the corner of 30th and Georgetown, mainly candy, ‘cause I was like 11 and I didn't know. And I was one night, she comes by the house and she's like, where's your mom? And I say, I haven't seen my mom in weeks, I'm literally, there's no water. There's no electricity, the house smells disgusting, it's scorching hot. And she's like, all right, you're coming with me, ‘cause she already had one of my little brothers. And so I go stay with her, and I really didn't want to be there. My I'm biracial black and white. My grandma's an old racist white lady from a town in Tennessee, you never heard of. So imagine the person who's supposed to love you and help you calling you all these horrible racial epitaphs with a copy of mine comp Hitler's autobiography on the kitchen table, my uncle's in the Aryan brotherhood, like the whole thing. She'd give me white boy haircuts with the chili bowl, imagine this hair, getting those haircut. And you're like, okay, wait a second. This is better, this is the alternative to being on the street. And sometimes it is that, and while it was reversed for us, it was still the same thing. This suffering is better than that suffering. And my mom would disappear for weeks at a time. No one knew where she was. My stepdad had taken my baby brother and he was like an over the road trucker. Never talked to that guy. And I remember people would ask me like, are you talking to your mom? Where is she? What's going on? Where's your stepdad? I have no idea. And so it was like really just in the streets, just doing whatever it took to survive. And so I'm curious, were you in communication with your parents at all? Did they know what was happening?

Eric: We weren't, but I would, I do want to say you're making me feel almost blessed to have this foster system that was a nightmare, because for you to have war within your own family, like your own grandma, I couldn't imagine what that must have been like for you, and what you must have been going through I'm sure emotionally we've dealt with a lot of similarities but that's wow. I've always been able to have this idea of like my perfect mom and dad. And if they weren't in prison, how they'd be for me. And my grandfather was pretty amazing for me, and so I just, my heart goes out to the young you that, that I'm sure that you're hugging right now and you've healed, but my heart goes out to him and that's crazy. But as far as my parents go I was in touch with my dad, never. But he was shipped off to prison a few months before the DEA raided our house and I lost my mom. So he was he got locked up in August and he would call the house once a week, we would chat. Before my mom got locked up, he'd call the house once a week and we would chat and then he was off. And then they came in and raided the house and took my mom. And at that point, we didn't talk to our dad again for many years. My mom, for the first few weeks, we would go visit her. My grandfather would come and take us to go visit her. We were squatting in the house similar to you, and my grandfather would come by and check on us. He'd bring us old expired food and stuff like that, that was his thing. He shopped at flea markets and stuff. He showed up one night with a garbage bag full of expired crackers or something. And so we would, like squat there and do our thing. And we had our grandfather, so we were happy and he'd take us to visit our mom. So we were in touch the first six weeks. But then he died. He came over and died in the front yard. And that's like a whole other tragic story. Just how much more can you lose as a kid? We have this one guy we're hanging on to. And he passes away in the front yard in front of us. And it was one of the, one of the worst experiences of my life was losing him. But at that point, we lost contact with our mother as well. And from then on, it was just a memory. Looking at the moon, remembering things she'd say, listening to a song, and, hanging on to it. And then, that living in the past and that's how you get these codependencies and this depression and this anxiety and all the things that you battle as a young adult are all coming from not letting go of the past and hanging on to something. And, we were just set up for this anxiety from the start. And it was, looking back, it's. I wish I was me then it would have been so easy.

Michael: No shit. If I was me then I'd be a fricking billionaire right now. But it's not, and I think about this a lot. I used to be in conflict with people who would say what I'm about to say. And then I realized there must be truth to it, and that is that we choose this journey. As spiritual beings and that we choose this journey as spiritual beings, because when we do it, a lot says the ability to use our gift to help other people, but we'll get to that in a moment. But one of the things that I think about is you're in this moment of childhood and it feels like the world is against you. How do you find the courage to just keep going right for me? It felt what else am I going to do? I don't, there is no other option than just to go forward, but there was something in me, Eric, and it's hard to explain. And I don't want it to come off the wrong way, but I fucking knew I was going to be amazing, like I just knew I was going to be great. I knew I was going to have fortune and fame and success and all those things. And I had them and I lost them and then I had them again. And then I lost them and then I had them again. But it was like, as a kid, I was like, I know. I know there's something different. There was one time I went to this guy's house, right? Cause we never knew where we were going to land. I had no fucking idea. Every night was different. If we got three nights in the same house, it was like a godsend. And I ended up at this guy's house. And this dude is from my recollection of being like, 10 years old at the time, this dude was loaded and he had a BMW in the garage and he had actually had three cars in the garage and he had a garage and he had bedrooms and he had heat and he had water and he had electricity and he had a frigerator full of food. And he was like the nicest dude ever. And it was just me, I don't even know where my little brothers were. This is how bad it was. And it was just me, and he was super cool. Not a single negative thing happened in that experience. But I remember being like sitting in his living room and he had a big screen TV. Now this is the nineties, and so this thing had to weigh like a thousand pounds and it's that giant gray box, and we were watching TV and I just remember being like, I'm going to have this one day. That was seeded also within the thought of a couple of years earlier being like, when I'm an adult, my life will be different. And so I just kept thinking about it constantly, man. People thought I was selling drugs and shit because I was a bad kid. I was just trying to get, that was it. Like I wasn't and that's true for a lot of people. Why are we still we're trying to get out? Nobody told us there was another option. And so I just kept thinking as a kid one day, one day, one day, one day, and I positioned that obviously it's come to pass in many ways, but it was my daydreaming. It was me being like and I would have teachers be like, you're a loser. I literally had teachers be like, you're a loser. You're never going to do anything because all you do is dream. And I was like, but look at me now, bitch. And so I'm wondering, like, how did you just keep going? Was it something like that you were holding on to? Was it this idea of a better life that would put you through? Because like me, you didn't graduate high school. You were in tons of fights, you were set up for failure, you were a homeless kid. You like our stories could not be more similar. How in the world did you persevere?

Eric: Yeah there's a lot to that. I persevered in two ways, simultaneously. And, maybe this is how it's done or maybe because I'm a gym, neither two different sides, but I will say on the positive side. There was three years that my dad got out of prison before he went back to prison. There was like this three year window and he became this nationwide, amazing drug dealer. He bought a mansion and filled it with all these things, and in that three year period.

Michael: So he was a good entrepreneur?

Eric: He was a good entrepreneur. Yeah, but he would. He would pick us up and he would have like Rob reports and DuPont registries around. And so I would flip through the DuPont registry and I'd look at Lamborghinis.

Michael: What is that?

Eric: A DuPont registry is like where you can buy expensive cars that are used. Used expensive cars. So if you want a Lamborghini Diablo from the 90s or something, you could go to the DuPont registry and find one for 900, 000 or something. It's just.

Michael: Oh, not bad.

Eric: Yeah. So no, no big deal. And then the Rob report is like. where you, it's like a catalog for shopping for the rich and famous, where you can look at what yacht you want to buy, which air airplane you want, if you want to golf stream or whatever. And so it's like this, nice watches. I don't even think they have Rolexes in the Rob report. It's like nice things.

Michael: Like APS.

Eric: Yeah. He would have these magazines and we'd meet Anthony would flip through them and we would talk about, Oh, I'm going to have this car and I'm, we were just…

Michael: Doing what kids do.

Eric: And then you fast forward to homelessness. And, I remember you don't choose the things you're going to remember, as you're going through life, you're not like, this is going to be. And, they say that the things that you really do remember are the things that your higher self is looking back on. And then you're remembering it because your higher self was watching you through that. I say, in this moment, me and Anthony are shit faced drunk, we're in 7th grade. We were stealing alcohol instead of food. We transitioned from candy bars to 40s.

Michael: And so reasonable.

Eric: Now we're stomping around. We're shit faced drunk. We had walked around all night long. It's 3 o'clock in the morning and we're in a grass field. And we're like, this isn't as good a place as any. And so we lay down and we just lay back to back and we start falling asleep in this grass field. And I remember that night in particular, because I was thinking about how soft the grass was and how comfortable it was on my face. And I was daydreaming about which Lamborghini I was going to own. And I like felt myself driving around in this Lamborghini and I felt this like wealth in this energy of abundance. And it was like just this, but it was just me daydreaming and trying to escape my reality. I just wanted to go someplace else, and so I just was going someplace else and I was rocking myself to sleep essentially. And, now that I know how the universe works I was obviously vision boarding and manifesting a future for myself that, unexpectedly was doing that, just trying to escape. It was more like escapism, but it was manifestation. So that's one way, the other way I got out of it was I really owned it, I really was like, I was like, okay, if I'm a piece of shit, I'm a piece of shit. And so I was the tough guy, and I was the gangster, and I was unbreakable, and you couldn't shake me emotionally. I put walls up, and it's funny that you talk about drug dealing because, I sold drugs from middle school through college. That's how I paid for my whole life till I got my first job, and never once did I ever consider myself a drug dealer? And I knew drug dealers and I was like, oh, that's a drug dealer. That motherfucker's a drug dealer like there were some people that were just grimy and street and they were drug dealers, and that was never me even though I was doing, even in high school, we did quarter million dollar drug deals, ecstasy, and we had people come over and put a brick of cocaine on the table, and we'd all sit there with our driver's licenses and like sniff cocaine off my glass table and count out ecstasy pills and empty backpacks full of hundred dollar bills, and we were doing these things. That drug dealers do, but never identified as a drug dealer. If you asked me what I was, I'd be like, Oh, I'm a student. So it was so self identity, I think young entrepreneur society, right? But it's definitely self identity is important. So by vision boarding my future and by identifying as something other than what I was, at the time,

Michael: I think helped, I remember the first time I got caught at school selling drugs. I had been pretty successful at it and it was a moment where I let someone else do something that got me in trouble. And luckily, call it fate, call it God, call it dumb luck. I have no idea, I didn't get caught with anything on me. So instead of going to jail, I just got expelled and which is weird. And then they had to let me back into school because they couldn't prove it, which is this whole other thing we won't get into right now. But I remember distinctly having a similar thought where it's I'm not a drug dealer. I'm just trying to survive. That's it, this is all I want. And there's something to that has also driven me this moment, I would daydream as a kid. About being a rock star, that's all I ever wanted is like fame and fortune and girls and cool cars and cool clothes and tattoos and all that stuff. And then it's be careful what you wish for, right? Because what I've come to realize now, we're 30 years removed from those daydreams. It's like I get to be of service and I get to help and I get to create change in the world and I have amazing health, wealth and relationships. And so much of that has come through healing because when I, and you know this, I'm not, I know your background, having failed multiple businesses, like another thing we have in common is like borrowing money from people in our lives to pay our rent. Not having enough, having like my girlfriend who I lived with would give me a check so we could pay our freaking rent, we lived together. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because, we have this really misaligned understanding of manhood in childhood, and it's not what I think being a man is. I think it's really a victim hood mode and a survival mode. And then you become an adult and you're like what does it mean to be a man? I had Tupac, I had Jay Z, I had the streets, I had all these things. And then I don't think it really starts to transpire as you figuring out, cause you said, you've got to know who you are. I don't think that happens until you get hit in the face with a baseball bat. And so I'm wondering, like, where did the transition start for you from, all right, here I am, this student entrepreneur, drug dealer into actually, I've got to go a different path.

Eric: I got the message before I listened to it, for sure. My senior year in high school, I made it all the way to senior year somehow, because my clientele was in the classroom, right? So obviously I'm going to go to school every day cause that's how I sell the most of my stuff. And so I end up my senior year going to jail for armed robbery and so now, and I've been drunk and on drugs since middle school and the drugs only got worse through high school, obviously. And, it's the acid and the ecstasy and the cocaine and the cigarettes and just everything. And then always alcohol and always opiates. I've been I was an opiate addict for 25 years. I wouldn't, I guess addict's the wrong word, but I was an avid opiate user. I chased the dragon for 25 years, but I think that was the first time in my life when I was sitting in a jail cell that I was, that I got sober. It was the first time I was seeing things clearly. It was the first time I was realizing, because at this moment, we were all in jail, all five of us, my mom, my dad, my older brother, my twin brother, and my son. And I'm like, okay, so this is what happens to the Karnezis' family. We're all just going to be sitting in cages for the rest of eternity, and I was facing 10 years. And so I was, it's when you're in a jail cell and you're facing 10 years, it, the jail cell seems a lot smaller. It's a lot more depressing, there was guys that would come in with DUIs that were doing 10 days, and they'd be all chipper and talkative and wouldn't get to know everybody, and it would make my blood boil, and this is how fights would break out, because of these little happy go lucky people coming in, when there's people that are facing real problems. Through that process, I got in trouble in jail. Me and my twin brother, we court was delayed a week. So we switched wristbands and switch cells. He was like, check out my house and I'll tell you. Yeah, I know. And we were co defendants, so we were separated and we would only see each other at court. And so just real quickly, like whispering behind the cops, we're like switching wristbands and we actually got away.

Michael: How do I know which brother I'm talking to right now?

Eric: We got all the tattoos But it was it was really fun because we got away with it but then I was trying to get my GED in jail and a kid a guy from my Classroom inadvertently snitched on me because he was he thought it was so cool And he brought it up in front of the teacher and the teacher just obviously snitched and so now they put me in And first I was in the hole for a week, which was a nightmare, but, and that was like my first time ever feeling suicidal. It was, that's how bad the hole was, is it was the first time in my life I actually was like, Oh my God, am I going to kill myself? Is this how it ends for me? And luckily it didn't. I persevered, but they put me in a place called TSEP, which in the County jail is where all the death row inmates are. So I spent my last I did about six months in death row and learned a lot from these guys. And, one of my biggest mentors who really taught me how to understand myself and really come to terms with who I am. He was so brilliant and the way he spoke, he was so articulate, I didn't know who he was, I looked him up later. He's dead now, obviously 'cause of death row, but yeah he took an ax. And killed his entire family, killed his kids, his wife, and his in laws, and his grandparents, like everybody, killed the whole household in some spit of rage. Craziest dude in the world, but you wouldn't know it! How soft spoken and gentle and wise he was, wise beyond his years. And so I had no idea who I was talking to until I got out and looked him up. But at the time he was very pivotal for me.

Michael: So that's wild.

Eric: No, I know. It's crazy to think about.

Michael: And this is a movie shit, by the way.

Eric: It's so funny. And I think about these people all the time. Man, some of the most brilliant and loving going through this foster system, and all these people, and all this loneliness, and hatred, and people looking down on me. The only people showing me love were these death row inmates. And my brother went through the same thing in his tier. He was on death row with a bunch of guys that were taking care of him, too. And this was the moment when I was like, okay, I'm never coming back. I don't want to be a generational curse of prison and jail. I have to do better, this is the first time in my life I'm reading books. I was reading a book a day, which at the time for me, it was very impressive because I'm like this drug addict, junkie, drug dealing, I wasn't reading books, I wasn't doing homework in school. Now I'm reading a book a day. So I'm finally sober, finally getting knowledge, and finally understating that the world is bigger than what I thought it was, and so I knew when I got out of jail, I had to figure out my life. And so I got out of jail, got my GED. It's the first thing I did was I enrolled in adult education and got my GED and then applied to college, got denied immediately, went to the college campus and Approached the President of admissions and asked him to meet with me. He wouldn't meet with me. It's in a long story short, it took like a whole week, I finally give him my whole pity story about how my life has been and what I've been through. And I just need help and I need to get through college and I won't let you down. And he pushed a few buttons on the keyboard and was like, you start in the fall. And that's how I got into college was by just some amazing. And these are the angels in your life. Like he doesn't even know who I am. Probably doesn't remember my name and I don't even remember his name. But he was an angel sent from heaven that like Catapulted me into Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to get an education where I still sold cocaine the whole time because I you know was still transitioning, but So that's what the eye opening moment was going to prison finding these people that were helping me See a bigger life and then an angel appears and catapults me into the education system.

Michael: I'm going to say this and hopefully a non, what is not going to come off as nonchalant. And I teach this to my clients all the time, like the piece comes in the pause being in the hole is what you needed. And that's such a crazy fucking thought, dude, where you're like this dude, this is what you need. This is what you need. You talked about you, you got the message, but you didn't read it. It's you got time now, nothing but it. And that's why I think you see so often these people who have to go through the suffering of the isolation of prison and that loneliness. And you often hear them say it's going to change their life forever, and I applaud that. And my peace and my pause came in a multitude of times. And generally, it was because everyone walked away from me, there was no one left. I had done all the asshole things. I had taken advantage of all the people. I had cheated on all the girls. For my own little brother to tell me, never talk to me again, you're not my brother. That was a moment. That was, and I shared this with him recently, like that was for me that nail in the coffin of dude, you've got to take a look because like even losing the million dollars, whatever, who gives a shit, losing a girlfriend, whatever, who cares, but losing my little brother, like that was the thing and it forced me into some really intensive, not only reconciliation, but acknowledgement. I had to, for the first time in my life at 26, take inventory, like you did this. And we live in a society in which people play the victim so incredibly well. And you have the right to I don't take that away from people, dudes like me and you, we deserve to whatever we want. And we want to have a horrible life and we want to burn it down. No one can fault us for that. But Eric, the thing I always come to, it's man, If you can destroy your life, imagine what you could do if you put that same energy into your life. And that was the flip of the switch for me. It was like looking at it and going, You know what? You can have more, you don't deserve more. No one owes you understanding. In fact, no one even cares, that's how dark it is. If you really think about it, like you and I sharing the story, we go, Oh man, that's so crazy. It's so great that you made it out and we'll walk away from here and we'll go back to our lives. But the truth is, and you know this as well as I do, those people who are willing to raise their standards on a daily basis will be set free.

And you talked about reading, it's funny cause I heard you mention a book that changed. You're like, I have it sitting next to me here. It's Eckhart Tolle is a new earth. Let me tell you something insane about this book, if you look at this book, it looks seemingly brand new, I have a theory about this particular copy of this particular book. So when I was 20 years old, my roommate's girlfriend knocks on my bedroom door one night. And she's Hey, can I talk to you for a second? And I'm like, Stella, I'm like, yeah, whatever. What do you want? I was on my own at that point. I was working a job, working at a fast food restaurant, being a manager, but man, I was going hard on the drugs and alcohol, hard on the girls, hard on everything. And she goes, Hey I want to give you this book. And I'm like, okay, and she gives me a copy of this book. And Eric, the second she walks out of the room, I throw it in the trash can. How dare you want to give me a book and fast forward, I'm deep on this healing journey, been doing the work, speaking on stages, I already written my first book, so on and so forth. I go into a goodwill. And in the middle of Denver I don't know, just a random Goodwill. Cause I was like, I'm just going to go to Goodwill. It's a weird thing that I do sometimes, and I walk in and on the bookshelf is this book brand new unbroken spine having never been touched before. And I thought to myself, this is the book I threw in the trash. This is the copy of the book. Now, logically you go, probably not, but realistically you go that makes a lot of sense. This book changed your life, sir. Tell me about that.

Eric: So it's funny. The universe is a magical place. So I'm going to have to say that probably is the book you threw in the trash, right? I agree. There's no coincidences in this universe. Everything's designed. But yeah, that book, wow, so the first time. So I'm going through, everything I had ever gone through in my life I thought money would solve. And so now I'm like making all this money, I bought this huge house and got this fancy car. And the women, every night, just you bring a new girl over. Friends would bring girls over to show off their new girlfriend and she'd end up in my room. And it was like, I was just living this Chaos. Yeah, which for me was amazing because I was so depressed in high school, like I was the most popular kid in five high schools because me and Anthony were the only ones with our own apartment. We have seniors from every high school in town coming by to hang out with their girlfriends and we had this big house and then all the drugs that we were supplying, like we were super popular. I was so depressed and so insecure and lost that I was single for almost all of high school. I couldn't, girls had huge crushes on me. I couldn't I didn't have enough self I don't know what the term is that I'm looking for, but there was something preventing me from being able to accept the love of another, right? And so all these people, and so I was very depressed, very dark, very lonely. I'm finally making money and I have all these things. I'm like, oh, this is the answer. And now I'm like all these girls in and I'm having fun and it's exciting. And I am, waking up in the morning, and I can't get out of bed. I'm so depressed, and I'm like, hiding, ‘cause there's this window of time. Anybody who suffers from depression knows this window. There's this twilight right as you're waking up in the morning, before you're fully awake. Where there's even if it's only for 30 seconds, where the anxiety's gone, the depression's gone. You're like in this little twilight of happiness. And so I would lay in bed under the covers and try to hang on to that feeling because I would be afraid to face the day and afraid to get out because I was realizing that, Money wasn't solving anything. All it was doing was surrounding me with things that I didn't already have, but it wasn't filling my cup in a way. And so I was still empty, I was still depressed, I was still homesick. Still living in the past, all these things. And so I finally start panicking. It's because now I realize, Oh shit. Money's not the solution, so then what is it? And that's the first time I ever stepped outside of myself and looked back at me, and when I looked into myself for the very first time, it was an abyss. It was so deep and so dark and so gone. And just, I could see that everything I was searching for was somewhere in that darkness and I had no idea what to do. And so I was having panic attacks. I was shortness of breath. Anxiety was so strong that I couldn't control it. I was having all these violent thoughts and just things were happening. And so I stumbled across this book and I was, I was literally in a panic and so I find this book and I'm just like, I needed an answer and I needed something to get me out of what I was going through. And I'm in a total crisis mode, and so I was like, in order for this book to work, I need to just make everything in this book happen in my life, one chapter at a time. And so there was like 30 chapters in the book. I took a whole month to read it. I'd read one chapter in the morning and I would force that chapter into my life. And so the first chapter was like a meditation, I did. The second chapter was something else that I'd made happen. Another chapter was about a tree and how we're just here to grow. And so I Brought that into my life. I sat under a tree and thought about me as the tree. I just did what the book said, and it started putting words to things that I had felt, I got so much of my self importance from my pain. And it's amazing how you can have pride for being a piece of shit, but it's I took pride in my nothingness. I took pride in being ghetto. I took pride in my parents being in prison, because that's all I had. And so I was, like, spiraling into this thing that this book calls the pain body. And that we are extremely addicted to our pain body and we want to feel that pain. We want to relive it. We want to hang on to it. That's why we have a good time. And as soon as the good times over, we let it go. But if someone dies, Lord knows you'll cry for months about it because you're so addicted to your pain body when really it's the opposite. When someone dies, you should cry for a day, let it go. And you should, when you have a good time, you should remember that joy and that freedom and that smile. And you should hang on to that for months at a time. So the book just put so many words to feelings that I didn't know. I never had a mentor. I never had anybody to help me out with stuff like that. And that book single handedly changed my life. From the moment that I picked that book up and read the first chapter, the anxiety left my chest. And it's never come back. I've never had anxiety since.

Michael: It's amazing.

Eric: Yeah.

Michael: It's that's so apropos to the idea of like when the students ready, the master appears and, but you gotta be willing, man. It's funny, ‘cause like on the table is also the first book and the second book that I've written and people reach out to me and they'll be like, thank you. This changed my life. And I'm like, yeah, but you were ready, and that, that holds true for me. Like when I read the alchemist for the first time, which is a book I talk about with frequency. Like it changed my life forever because it was the first time where I was like, wait a second, maybe there's more to this whole thing than I thought. Maybe this is all about this journey of learning, maybe even through all the suffering and the hurt that there's something more here. And I see it take place in a lot of different ways. I see the lives change of my clients. I see the lives change of the people who see me on stage. My brothers, like it's unbelievable what my family has done with their lives, but most importantly me because dude, I can go look in the mirror right now, and I'm like, good. I'm good. It doesn't mean I'm where I want to be. Let's be very clear about that, but what it means is I get to show up every single day living into the fullest version of who I am. And what's so difficult about that is like on paper, it sounds easy in this podcast. It sounds like, Oh, he read a book, he sat in front of a tree, his fucking life is better. What people don't understand is that we choose our suffering. Like we choose our suffering, healing is still suffering. That might be an odd way to phrase it, but I look at that and I call it suffering because suffering means to be in discomfort. The drugs, the girls, the money, the clothes, the cars, the chaos. If that's your norm, peace is only achieved through suffering because you must step into the discomfort. You're in the home studio right now and I hope there's abundance of peace that you feel being in here because I've created that, so much. But dude, it took walking through hell to get here. And so I'm wondering in the process that you've gone, looking at all that suffering, being where you are today what were, what was your chosen suffering? What was the path that you decided to walk down to be who you are today?

Eric: That's a good question. I'll say just to clear up the Eckhart Tolle conversation I read that book in 2005. That's when my journey started. And so it's been what, 19 years. And every day I'm still on this journey still reaching, still learning, still growing, still battling demons.

It's by no means a simple fix, but after 19 years, looking back, I can see that was the catapult. And there was ups and downs the whole way. And there's still ups and downs, but. So to anybody who's going through something right now and wants to second guess or short circuit sort of our message, just understand that it's a journey and it has to start somewhere and where you start is perfect for you. And it's important though, that you start and that you hang in there. And so I think my path of suffering, it helped me, it really just helped me to stay focused and work my way out in a way. And so that, cause we go through these, I transitioned then like a butterfly transitions, from the worm or whatever. And I'm doing it again now. And so there's, we do this multiple times. To get me out of that whole chaotic, unworthy victim mentality lifestyle that I was living with the drugs and all that and unhappiness and the depression, to get out of that required deep introspection and hard work. That's really what it was. And so I could, I'd wake up in the morning and I'd go straight to the office and I'd work 14 hours a day just trying to make well. And just trying to focus on something, have phone calls. I've always been in sales, I'll be in a cubicle, make that the truth. So I'm just like on the phone all day long, closing deals, doing as much as I can do. And just really trying to build a business and build an empire and build some wealth. And then I come home at night. And I'm reading books and I'm taking my dogs for a walk and I'm finding peace and I'm finding quiet and that's my whole life. And then somewhere in those hours, I will randomly meet a girl and I'll let her into my life for either a few months or a few years, depending on the girl. All my relationships are very similar. They're either four months long or four years long. It's just this weird maybe that's my lucky number, but and women come and go and they helped me a lot. And I've been healed by every woman I've ever dated, I've loved dearly and I've healed from them. They've given me something that I've taken that I have to this day. Some of them hate my guts and those are the ones who really love me, and then some of them still love me. And those are the ones who probably never loved me. And so it's this weird concept, but there's been a beautiful ebb and flow of women helping me with that divine feminine energy, helping me heal. Hugging me when I needed it, rubbing my back, just really taking me on this journey as I'm reading more and more books, and I've said this before, and so I don't want to sound repetitive, but the book isn't the answer, like I read healing anger from the Dalai Lama and I was still like pissed off all the time, and I've read like the power and now Eckhart Tolle's other book. And I still have moments where I'm living in the past or I'm living 10 years in the future and I'm not even I'm not really Indulging in the power of now, so it's not like the book has everything you need You also have to take time to manifest these realities into your life And you also have to be graceful with yourself, like I used to judge myself if I made a mistake I'm like, oh my god, Eric, you're a piece of shit, you fucking idiot and like how could I can't believe I would talk to myself like that, like to call myself an idiot And so it's and now, and so that's where the grace comes in. Now, when I make a mistake, I just breathe in, I'm like, Eric, you're everything. That's perfect, you're what you need to be right now for this process, let's keep going. And that's how we move on. And so that was the first step was the hard work, staying focused 14 hours a day, reading when I can and women helping me out. Then this next step is, Outreach. This is why I wrote my book. This is why I'm starting a podcast. This is why I'm here with you now is because and you've been a great example. I've been loving listening to your podcast and seeing what you're doing. I'm glad that we found each other truly from the bottom of my heart, because what you're doing is exactly what I want to do. And you're leading by example, and you're a pioneer here doing this, and I'm just gonna try to come in behind you and make the wake bigger, and that's my journey now, is impact and outreach. How can we have more impact? The money's there, the businesses are there. Now it's okay, there's a million foster homes out there that are not doing good right now. How can we help?

Michael: The constant evolution, I look at even what I'm building now and we're working on launching the unbroken men part of the company specifically for guys. Cause you know, Eric, it just hit me so incredibly hard recently where I was like. I have been in the position of call it just because I'm a hustler, right? Being born into what we were born in, we've had to guys like us have always had to find a way. And I have found a way I've been on billboards in times square. I've been on television shows, I've traveled the world and back again, passports full of stamps from dating lawyers and super models to the most incredible women in the world to sitting and having dinner with like guys like Tom Bilyeu and David Meltzer and Anthony trucks to being on stages with guys like fucking Jordan Peterson. And that gets all these crazy things that have happened over the course of my life because of the thing that I have in me that I'm so driven that I'm not going to let anyone stop me. And I was sitting and thinking about closing this company down last summer, I was exhausted. Just completely unmotivated. Eight years of grinding, constant travel, 200 days a year on the road, and I took a pause. And then went down to South America for four months did an ayahuasca journey, connected with some friends, spent some time alone, just with me. And it hit me so incredibly hard where I was like, Oh, the evolution is to guide men. It's to teach them how to heal. They teach them to be able to sit down and have a vulnerable conversation like this in front of another man and not feel shame and guilt and show them how to apply grace and have the health wealth in relationships that they can have. And it's that is chosen suffering. You know how much easier it would be for me to just keep doing what I'm doing, right? It's easy, I've been doing it for eight years. There's no challenge in it. I'm in this place right now where I have not felt this motivated in probably three years where I'm putting in the 14 hour days where I'm super focused on the business, where I'm doing whatever it takes to help these guys and the most important part about it is just because it fills me up because I think about the damage I've caused to men over my life. The fights, the drugs, the theft, the pain, like again, thinking about coming full circle, you don't think about the impact of the small business owner, the guy who owns the shop, who has a wife and three kids who can barely afford health insurance. And I go in there and I still the 400 VCR or whatever, right? If you don't know what a VCR is, Google it. All right, but that's what the thing is. You rewind it, you look at that and I go, karma is real, energy is real. There is something to be said about this idea of clearing that energy through your actions, your effort and your intentions. And one of the things that I know that you're a very big proponent of is energy. Is reciprocity, is pulling things into the universe, is stepping away from the negative self talk. What role has all of that truly played in your life?

Eric: That's been the most life changing and the most healing part of my entire life. Has been focusing on the reciprocity and focusing on positive self talk. And in the beginning it's a little bit more difficult in the beginning. Because you have this habit of not being positive all the time, and I just started saying control alt delete on anything that was negative in my mind and I'd rephrase it. So if I made a mistake in business and I'd be like, Oh man, I got fucked up. I'd control alt delete, what an amazing learning experience this is. Let's move on from here.

Michael: The reframe.

Eric: Yeah. And so it started by reframing a lot. Now, I don't reframe much. There's a whole lot of positivity going on up here and I guess that I can and it turns you into a, cause you're a magnet for anything that you're radiating. So when you're moping around and you're feeling like shit, you're radiating or you're magnetizing shit to you. Yep. And when you're being hateful, you're bringing hate to you, which, and I can see it so clearly, like I have it all figured out now because I was big hate a long time ago. And I was always in fist fights and always had hatred around me, even arguing with girlfriends. And then there was a time when I was just like big business energy and I was getting contracts and people wanted to do business. And I'm like juggling all these opportunities. It's which is it going to be? And now I'm big reciprocity. Now it's okay the universe has given a lot to me. It's time for me to give back and it's a, you create a blockage. Also, I was never good at receiving and because I'm the guy that gives I'm the giver now, right? So that's how I identified is I'm the giver. I'm paying for dinner for sure. I'm paying for dinner and I'm doing whatever I got to do to be the one giving and I take care of everything and I would never want to receive. The way reciprocity works is you're blocking the flow of that energy. And so you have to receive also, you can't just give, and think that, Oh, I'm going to give back to the universe and the universe is going to give to me. If you're not receiving, then you're telling the universe not to give you anything. So learning to receive was big for me. Learning to give was big for me. And then putting them together has been such a huge transition for me and a big step for me in the right direction of, Just the sun shines brighter now and my life is just so much more peaceful now and things go the way I want them to go now always. And everything that that maybe doesn't is just something that I was supposed to learn.

Michael: Yeah. I asked myself on a daily basis who can help me and who can I help? Yes. Because that is reciprocity. Because I can assure you when I was the, I got it all figured out guy. My life was a disaster, when I was the I know what to do guy, my life was a disaster. I'm the first one to pick up the phone and call for help. Literally, I'll give you a great example of this. I got, I'm in the dating space right now, trying to figure out that phase of my life. I've done well in my health and my wealth. And so now relationship becomes a priority. And I was getting ready to go on this date. It was the last second thing on a Friday night in Las Vegas. There's no reservations. And so what did I do? I picked up the phone. I called a friend who's a general manager of a very nice restaurant in town. I said, Hey, I need some help. Do you think you can make this happen for me? And wouldn't, it. The answer was yes. And I was able to get a reservation in this very hard place to get a reservation for on a Friday night. And what I'm thinking about, and the reason why I bring this up is because it's not just that it's in business texting back and forth with my best friend yesterday, amazing entrepreneur sitting down with you. I need amazing guests to sit on this show. You need an amazing show to be on and share this story. We, as these spiritual energetic beings, we attract who we are. And if you are a person who asks for help, you will attract people who are willing to help you and who you can help. The problem is we grow up and we believe that our value comes in serving others. Always forever and constantly and putting ourselves on the back burner. That learns that leads to burnout that leads to crash and burns that leads to unfulfilling relationships that leads to not having the wealth that's truly wealth and not just money, which, is a very big difference. What has been the hardest thing that you've learned about asking for help?

Eric: So first that's very, that was very well said, that was a great. Explanation of reciprocity. So thanks for putting that out into the universe. The biggest challenge for me for asking for help was having to dig myself out of my own hole of my whole life. So being on my own in middle school and high school and college and just this whole journey of, if I want it, I have to get it. And so I'm the one getting it. I started my own business. I'm making my own wealth. I'm buying my own homes, like everything. I don't get paychecks. I'm not getting W2. Every single thing in my life I've ever gotten, I've gotten on my own, and I've earned it and I've built it and I've grinded for it and I've cried for it and I've done it all. And you have this lone soldier mentality, and when you're the one who's doing all the providing how can you ask anybody for anything? And like my first lesson in this was when I finally was trying to take my business to the next level, we had hit a glass ceiling and there was just like, we were like growing and losing at the same time and we weren't going anywhere for four or five months and I just needed a mentor and I was like too afraid to ask for one. And there was this guy, that I did his I own a financial company doing credit card processing. And so I did the credit card processing for the local Lamborghini dealership. And I would go talk to this guy because he was super relatable and super easy to talk to and he was always at the dealership but he never worked because he owned the place and he had sales like he was just there because he liked being around nice cars or something don't blame him yeah he's retired now but and so I would just be like I'd be driving around so frustrated and so confused and just needing help but I couldn't And I didn't have the courage or the grit to just pick up the phone and say, can you please help me with this problem because I'm the one that's in charge and how can I possibly not know the answer? And but I would know that he was there at the shop and so I'd cruise by a super frustrated and I'd show up and I'd sit down on the couch with a cup of coffee and I was just like beat around the bush questions, like I never will. I never will. was like, will you be my mentor? Will you help me? Or Hey, I have a problem with businesses. I would just shoot the shit with them and sneak my confusion in there. Yeah. And he would drop the most brilliant bombs on me. And this was for several years I would, whenever I had a funk, I'd sneak up on this guy, very wealthy Jewish guy from a good family raised right and built a great business. And so he just knew all the answers. So Easily and eloquently and so I was just like pick his brain and I go and I every whatever I learned from him I'd strategize and that's it started that way, finally I got the courage to tell him like hey you were pivotal in my success and I'd never had someone that I could talk to and I never had anybody to come to And whether you knew it or not You were my mentor and I appreciate you for that and I finally told him that I think like a year ago so that's how hard it was for me to get into that You Now very simple. I have a mentor right now and I'm, that I can, I'll ask anything anytime. And I'm not afraid to ask and in any aspect of my life and family issues, relationship issues, or business issues I have. and an openness to ask and a willingness to receive what you have to say. And I, it doesn't make me less of a man because I'm not standing on my own two feet. Like we're all here together. Even the trees in the forest, they're standing by themselves above ground, but underneath the ground, they're all holding hands and locked in together. And so that's how we are as a human species is We're sitting in these two chairs right now, but we're still together, energetically linked up, leaning on each other and growing together. And so understanding that was huge for me and thank God I figured it out. It only took me 40 years, but yeah,

Michael: I get it. One of the things obviously that you're doing with that same energy and reciprocation is in your efforts in your energy to have this really open, difficult conversation about. not only foster care, but growing up in that system, the energy you're putting forth to change it, but also this new book. And so I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about that.

Eric: Yeah, the book had to be written.

Michael: And what's it called?

Eric: It's called golden scissors. And so it's a three part series. It's the series is called tales of resilience. It's book one, book two, and book three. So book one is launching in March. Book one is golden scissors. And this was the most painful book I've ever had to write. It was, I cried on every page, my keyboard is rusty from it. Like it was a very, like you think you're healed and then you start reliving these moments and you find these little triggers, it's even just recently my book editor called me and she was like, I'm confused about this one thing here. Can you talk to me about that? And I broke down in tears. And I was like, Oh my God, you found a trigger, like I didn't even know that was there. Thank you for bringing that up, totally just unexpectedly. I still had some unresolved emotions about a certain issue about my grandma. So we got around that, but so this book is the first, it's the first nine months I was homeless or maybe. More like a year and a half. It's from the time that my house got raided by the DEA until Anthony and I started trying to hitchhike to California. And so there's this time where we were in all these crazy foster homes and then we were homeless on the streets and we were dealing with the emotions for the first time. And it goes through a day in the life of these homeless middle schoolers and what they went through emotionally. And it really is a story There's learning in that story, but it's not a self help book, right? It's just a story that you can learn from by reading it. And then book two is another story about what it was like to be in high school and in jail. And then book three sort of becomes the self-help because book three is more my journey of when I finally looked into the abyss and what that experience was like and the things I did to get out of it. But the whole thing together is going to be a very powerful volume. But this first book is the one, the most painful of it all. This is when I was young, I was confused, I was scared, I was crying, I was adjusting to the streets. And, we were in gunfights, we were doing drugs, we were drunk on alcohol, stealing, there was so much going on, stolen cars, you'll probably read it and just laugh at all your own memories. You might, oh shit, me too, brother, but it's, but there's a lot of people out there that don't have. Don't have a view into this world, and most importantly, I wanted to highlight what the foster system was like and really holding that system accountable for what it really is because it really is garbage. And the social workers were just nine to five, if you needed them before 9am or after 5pm, they weren't there for you. And they, and when they would come by to check on the house, you had to go to your room and they would only talk to the foster parents. They never asked you for your own feedback, what you were going through. And the, it really highlights the problem with the foster system. And then it highlights how to deal with emotions and how to deal with depression and how to overcome it. Because even at a young age, and even before we really came out of it, you can see us growing. Through this process, and you can see us becoming more independent and more self-sustaining. You can see us crying less, managing our emotions better, becoming more independent, understanding that we're just, these are the cards we were dealt. Let's deal with them. Let's not pity ourselves to death. And so there is tremendous growth in this first volume. And then it goes on to the next two volumes, but it's a beautiful story. I don't think anybody who reads it is gonna dislike it I think it's a page turner, obviously you're asking the guy that wrote it.

Michael: If you don't believe in yourself who will?

Eric: Exactly. So I feel like anybody who picks up. That book is not gonna be able to put it down until the very last page.

Michael: I hope so.

Eric: And I'm going to send you a copy. It's I'll be getting some prints in the next few weeks. And then, like I said, it launches March 15th.

Michael: So I'm looking forward to it, man. And congratulations. As someone who's written multiple books two of them on the table, one of them that has not yet seen the light of day in the other room. I know the amount of energy the amount of tears, the amount of frustration, the amount of redoing and all the effort that it takes to actually to do that. So first congratulations. That's probably the most resilient act any man can do is sit down and write a book. And of course guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Look up Eric's episode where we'll have the link for that and more in the show notes before I ask you my last question, my friend. Where can everyone find you?

Eric: Honestly, find me on Instagram. It's Eric_Karnezis. And it's as good as an email or a text message. I don't post a lot on there, I'll be posting more as I start this book launch journey and I start this podcast journey, those are messages I check. I use social media actually to be social, so the messages I check I email back and forth to people, that's how I stay in touch with old friends. It's just a. a place I go to connect. So find me on there for anything that you might want to talk about or need for me. And then but that's really it. I have a website, Eric Karnezis and stuff like that. But really social media is probably the easiest place.

Michael: Amazing. And again, guys, thinkunbrokenpodcast.com to grab that link. First, before I ask you my last question, just want to extend to you gratitude love, support, and let you know that as someone else who has went from homeless to hero I see your energy and I thank you for being here. My hope is that people who are listening to this can recognize that they didn't have to have a background like us to have and become the hero of their story. That all lies in a decision and a choice to be that person. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Eric: What does it mean to me to be unbroken? That's a beautiful question. I think it's important to understand that, that life breaks you, right? So to be unbroken is not to be invincible. I think to be unbroken is to heal. And to overcome things that are hurting you. And so that's taking life with grace. It's taking judgment out. I think the most important thing of an unbroken person is forgiveness. There's so much people who have hurt us and so much pain that we've endured and given to ourselves that forgiving those people, forgiving ourselves, And just forgiving the world for being an imperfect place is a really huge step into being an unbroken person. And so when you tell me you're unbroken, it means that you handle your obstacles with grace. It means that you forgive every part of your life. And it reminds me of a quote because you had mentioned Suffering earlier, and obviously, the first thing I think of is DMX. And so this DMX quote's been in my mind for the last half hour, and then you are asking about being unbroken, and he says, in a really sad song that I don't listen to that much because I believe in manifestation, and I don't want to hear too much negativity in my life, but I will say, he says in the beginning of the song that to live is to suffer, And to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. And I've always thought that was a beautiful phrase. And okay, he was a very powerful figure, a broken man, unfortunately with drugs and stuff, but a powerful figure. And I think that also has to do with an unbroken person is finding meaning in your suffering.

Michael: Brilliantly said, my friend, thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening and watching. Please remember to share this episode because when you do, you're helping other transform their trauma into triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and to become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.