Ep 24. Success and Overcoming Challenges with Tony Peniche

Get ready for an incredibly inspiring episode of the "Quantum Leap Your Business & Life" podcast! Today, we have the passionate and remarkable Tony Peniche as our guest. Tony's journey has been nothing short of extraordinary, filled with one quantum leap after another, and tremendous success in all his endeavors, driven by his unwavering passion.

In this captivating interview, Tony shares his invaluable insights on creating, launching, and managing multiple companies with a fiery passion that sets him apart. He has a unique approach to marketing orthodontists, infusing his strategies with enthusiasm and creative energy. Prepare to be amazed as Tony reveals his secrets to overcoming challenges such as ADHD, beating depression, and conquering his battle with drinking, all fueled by his passion for personal growth and transformation.

This conversation is a true testament to the power of resilience, determination, and unbridled passion. Tony's story will undoubtedly leave you feeling inspired and motivated to make quantum leaps in your own life and business, fueled by your own passion. Don't miss out on this extraordinary episode!

Follow Tony Here: Instagram

Transcript:

[00:01:10] I am so excited to have Tony Paniche here. I met him, I feel like a decade ago. Yeah. It's been a while. Yeah. We were working on a startup called human, not Hollywood, and he was our fashion expert liaison. I have been watching his journey, I guess you would say, as we all do with each other on social media.

[00:01:36] And I'm like, Oh my God, he's crushing it, I need to get them on the podcast. I feel like everything you commit to starts. I mean, it's basically a success. Except for maybe human, not Hollywood, but

[00:01:46] Tony Peniche: yeah, that one, that one didn't quite work out. It was fun. That was a fun experience. It was. But yeah, I mean, it seems like everything I do, I, I don't do things unless I'm passionate about it.

[00:01:56] And if I'm passionate about it, then I'm not afraid to smash through [00:02:00] walls or do whatever I have to do to make it work. So yeah, that's kind of my, kind of my attitude.

[00:02:05] Bethany: So I think we need to fill people in on the leaps that I am aware of because I have not connected with him in a decade are, I don't know if you won, but you were in a show, the fashion show, we did the human Hollywood thing, and then there was real estate, essentially.

[00:02:23] I don't know if that's still a thing. Yeah, that

[00:02:25] Tony Peniche: was NXT industries, a coworking space for creatives.

[00:02:29] Bethany: And now, oh, and then there's photography along the way. And now there's marketing.

[00:02:35] Tony Peniche: Yeah, after, after the photography came the whiskey company Whiskey Elements. And then, and then after that was the, the bacon company where we did bison bacon and lamb bacon.

[00:02:47] And now I'm doing, now I'm doing marketing and branded consulting. Oh, yeah, the

[00:02:51] Bethany: whiskey. I don't I didn't know about the bacon, but the whiskey you launched that on what the the Kickstarter.

[00:02:58] Tony Peniche: Yeah. Yeah. [00:03:00] On that one, to be honest, like we were fully funded on that one. Like after, after we got the patents funding came pretty easy, but we knew that we could engineer like a viral marketing campaign by leveraging Kickstarter and trying to manipulate the algorithm.

[00:03:14] And it worked and it went viral. And so it definitely got us a lot of free press which was nice. Amazing.

[00:03:22] Bethany: I mean, honestly, that I feel like is the key. I know an inventor and he's launched so many things through Kickstarter, but he basically had full commitments before he ever went live.

[00:03:32] Cuz it Yeah, it's a marketing thing.

[00:03:34] Tony Peniche: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:03:35] Bethany: So, okay. So how do you take marketing that to what

[00:03:40] Tony Peniche: you're doing now? Yeah, so because of my experience in fashion photography brand development with N X T, And time and oak and animal and then also product development. I basically had to wear all the hats and learn all these different skills.

[00:03:57] And so with the [00:04:00] orthodontic industry everyone kind of copies each other. And. There's not a ton of, of marketing and branding innovation in that industry. And so when I stepped in I basically came into the family business for a six months for six months to help out. And then I was going to move on to move to build the next project.

[00:04:18] But literally after like eight weeks, I fell in love with it. I realized that I could add a lot of value to these clients. I'm bringing a fresh perspective and a lot of skillsets to kind of keep everything in check. And yeah, I fell in love with it. So I've been doing it for four years now and I really enjoy it.

[00:04:34] Not only the consulting side, but also the lecturing side. I never thought I'd be somebody on stage lecturing. It was never really my. My jam. But when you're, when you're talking about things that you develop through your marketing strategies and mm-hmm. Your branding systems it's like talking about your child.

[00:04:52] And so I can talk about my babies all day long and doesn't matter if it's for five people or for 500 you know, I enjoy talking about that. [00:05:00] Don't ask me to talk about anything else on stage.

[00:05:01] Bethany: I'm curious if you were saying or the orthodontic that they're all kind of copying each other.

[00:05:05] How are you supporting them in being unique or different

[00:05:09] Tony Peniche: or? Yeah. So, so for an example, like they will, they'll all use the same web developers and SEO companies. And I've learned that if the name of their company has the word ortho or dental in it, May not be the best idea because that, that company is exclusively working with the orthodontics and after a while, your stuff becomes repetitive.

[00:05:30] And you kind of stop innovating. And so I prefer to recommend companies that are also, you know, involved in orthodontics, but also involved in food and beverage or entertainment or fashion or technology. So they're a little bit more diverse. So if a really cool innovation happens over in this industry, you can bring it into this one.

[00:05:48] Oh, my goodness. You need to know what you're not pigeonholed. I got lost. Yeah. So I

[00:05:53] Bethany: basically bring orthodontic company to the food and beverage or tech or whatever.

[00:05:58] Tony Peniche: Yeah. So, so, [00:06:00] so if you're gonna, if you're gonna refer a vendor, right? If it's for a bracket, if it's for a bracket or for wires, it makes sense to go with a company that is just 100% on board with orthodontics.

[00:06:11] That's, you know, their industry they're committed to. But when it comes to marketing and branding specifically, it's better to work with a company that's more diverse, that has their, their hands in multiple industries. So that way when innovations happen in other industries, they're aware of it, and then they can bring it to you.

[00:06:27] But if you're only looking in the orthodontic pool, then you're just limited to whatever's happening. and things can become stagnant pretty quick. If they're just only working on one industry at a time. Yeah. So that's, that's one of the things that I'm helping my clients with is kind of giving them that type of fresh perspective and encouraging them that it's okay to reach outside of our little niche industry and look for opportunities.

[00:06:50] To stand out when it comes to your brand and your marketing strategy, you do need to do something different. And so, for example, like, we have a client right now, we're totally redoing their [00:07:00] brands.

[00:07:00] Like, if you were to look at their logo and their website, it looks like every other worth it on us. Right. But we hired a third party company. to help rebrand them. And we're pulling a lot of inspiration from snowboarding companies and mountain biking companies. And it looks totally fresh and unique and edgy.

[00:07:18] And it does not look like your traditional dental office. It looks more of like an extreme sports kind of brand. And so they're really going to stand out amongst their competitors in their area.

[00:07:29] Bethany: Got it. So this is more like the aesthetics of the brand versus marketing and because I was thinking you meant,

[00:07:35] Tony Peniche: well, that's just one piece.

[00:07:36] That's just one piece of it. I mean, like another piece would be like, we can find a rewards program that maybe Nordstrom's is doing or rewards program that some sort of beverage company is doing and we can take those ideas and bring them into orthodontics and now do a rewards program for their patients or for their referring, you know, the dental offices that refer them patients.

[00:07:57] You know, what kind of rewards program can we give them? Yeah. [00:08:00] Again, rather than just copying what everyone else is doing within the niche, you know, reach outside the niche and look for opportunities elsewhere.

[00:08:07] Bethany: Got it. And what you're saying, I think is, it could be, if you have a physical therapy office, I mean, it's, it would support anyone really.

[00:08:15] All the offices. Yeah. Yeah. So that's cool. Okay. So let's talk about, I'm curious about, I mean, obviously you went to support or jumping in the family business for, I think you said eight weeks or something like that, but curious how with all these different leaps that you've made, because we're all about the quantum leap here.

[00:08:33] How did you leap, fall in, end up, like, let's say, the co working space. Let's

[00:08:39] Tony Peniche: start there. So with the co working space, like, how did I get it going?

[00:08:45] Bethany: Or... Yeah, like, how did that come about? I'm curious about,

[00:08:49] Tony Peniche: because... Yeah, so, so... So the honest truth is with that one, that one kind of built organically. There was some strategy, but in the beginning it was [00:09:00] just, I was trying to take over this very large studio that I couldn't afford.

[00:09:03] And so I brought in a couple of my friends that were pretty talented and had them share the space and share the costs with me. And then we realized we had a ton of extra room. So we started inviting other talented creatives in the area to rent a desk. and become part of it. And then it from there, it just kind of grew.

[00:09:20] People wanted to be in and around other creatives that were kind of moving and shaking. You know, not everybody really, especially creatives, not everybody wants to work from home all the time. You know, since you want to bounce ideas off of people, you want to collaborate, you want to go grab a beer with them.

[00:09:36] And so and so when people started seeing that we had this really cool collection of creatives and entrepreneurs in there more and more people wanted to come in. And so I started interviewing them, making sure that their personalities and their industry that they were in matched up make sure that their, their portfolio was high quality.

[00:09:55] So that way everyone can kind of leverage each other. So one so one [00:10:00] person business can behave a lot like a 10 person business. You know, an example of that would be Portland gear. I think a lot of people in the Portland area know Portland gear, you know, the P hats and all that. That was one of the businesses that came out of NXT.

[00:10:13] Marcus was collaborating with a bunch of people in there as he put that together. And who knows if that would have been possible outside of that environment. So I think in that sense, it was about curating Personalities and skill sets. I think that was kind of the secret sauce there. Also,

[00:10:31] Bethany: basically you just had the vision of having the space.

[00:10:34] Yeah. And then the business aspect of it happened secondary. So I find that really fascinating. So it was more about like, I want the space. I want to leave, want to be working out of here. My friends want to work out of here. Let's make it happen. And then boom, you have a

[00:10:49] Tony Peniche: business. Yeah, it's like I want it.

[00:10:52] I can't afford it. I'm going to find a way to make it happen. So yeah,

[00:10:56] Bethany: I think that's, that's amazing. Okay. Then the next. How [00:11:00] did you end up in the next one? Was that the

[00:11:01] Tony Peniche: whiskey? Yeah, the next major business was the whiskey business. That one was pretty fun. I was in the liquor store. By the way, just for the record, I've kind of always been an inventor.

[00:11:12] I filed for my first patents when I was 16. And so I got to learn that process really early on. But anyways, with the whiskey one I was in the liquor store. I was. Looking at the top shelf whiskey didn't want to pay that price and was really wondering what was the difference between top shelf whiskey and well whiskey and I started kind of, you know, going through that movie in my head of everything that I've seen and I'm like, wait a minute, if you put spirits like whiskey or vodka, if you put that in a glass bottle and leave it there for 10 years, it tastes exactly the same.

[00:11:43] So it's not age and unlike wine, wine and beer will continue to age in the glass bottle, but spirits won't. And I mean, it's basically a preservative. And, and then I realized like, okay, so get this color and flavor and maturity from the interaction with the wood, but barrels are not designed to [00:12:00] allow the liquid to flow through it.

[00:12:01] They're just designed to be watertight receptacles. And so if we want the liquid to penetrate into the wood more efficiently, you know, I, I, I thought that if we could notch open against the grain and take advantage of the capillaries, because would match would have something called xylem, which are little capillaries and that's how trees get water from the roots up to the leaves.

[00:12:23] And so if we can cut that open and use lasers, we can keep those capillaries dilated versus a saw. If you use a saw, it'd be like pinching a straw at the top and bottom. But a laser, there's no friction there, so it keeps it dilated. And so anyways, we figured out, we figured out that method, started testing it and the idea was you could take this whiskey element that's made out of white oak, just like whiskey normally is, and it's cured, so all the sugars in it are caramelized and you put that inside of like a bottle of Jack Daniels or some sort of well whiskey.

[00:12:52] And wait 24 hours and it's going to barrel age it eight years in 24 hours. So then when you taste it the next day, it's going to be super smooth, no burn in the back of the [00:13:00] throat, lots of flavor and smells, and you can even take it to a sommelier and blow their minds or take it to a lab and have it chemically tested and blow the lab technicians minds.

[00:13:09] And so that was the idea there is like that anybody can take a 5. Whiskey element, put it in a 20 bottle of whiskey, and then the next day have the equivalent of like a 200 bottle. That one was really fun. That one was just like, I was like,

[00:13:22] Bethany: Oh, I'm just curious about doing this for myself again.

[00:13:25] Tony Peniche: Yeah.

[00:13:26] Yeah. So it was

[00:13:27] Bethany: like very self focused. Like I want to win here. How can I fix this situation? And then next thing you know, you have a business.

[00:13:35] Tony Peniche: Yeah, I knew what I knew what I wanted. It kind of it all made sense started. Actually, I'm not gonna actually file for the patents before I even tested it. It just made sense in my head.

[00:13:44] I just kind of like, like, no, this will work. This this makes sense. That's a

[00:13:47] Bethany: leap. You had a leap of

[00:13:48] Tony Peniche: faith there. Yeah, definitely did. And then we tested it. Luckily, it worked. I remember the first version. It took like five days for it to work. Yeah. Cause we weren't using Lasers yet. We were using drills.

[00:13:59] [00:14:00] And yeah, within five days we were able to transform moonshine into bourbon and then another version of moonshine into scotch in just less than a week. And then once we used the lasers, then we could do everything in about 24 hours.

[00:14:13] Bethany: Wow. And what did you sell that company

[00:14:16] Tony Peniche: or? Yeah, I basically sold all but a handful of shares.

[00:14:20] In that situation, the, the board Basically, like bought out all the founders. Once it was established and going pretty well the board basically wanted to get rid of all the creative people and just focus on selling what was working and, and we wanted to do these secondary products and move into, to other areas And they just wanted to focus on this one product and they were like, you guys have too many ideas, get out of the way, we're just going to make money.

[00:14:45] And so they kind of bought out, bought out everybody all the founders and all the creatives. And now it's just basically run by finance people, which is pretty lame. And not a whole lot of innovation that's happened in the last four years. So I'm kind of bummed out about [00:15:00] that, but I kept a handful of shares just so they have to.

[00:15:03] They can't just completely forget about me. They still have to acknowledge me every time they do something. Oh my

[00:15:08] Bethany: gosh, that's not, I mean, you, I do hear that a lot, how the boards, you know, start making all the decisions. But I love, yeah, I'm just, I'm, am I missing something? This, I mean, to me, it sounds like you're basically focusing on the self, like being a child embracing like your inner child of like, I want that.

[00:15:30] How can I make it happen? I want the candy. I want the lollipop, the whatever. And you make it happen.

[00:15:37] Tony Peniche: Yeah, I mean, we were me and my siblings, we were basically raised like this, you know, a really dumb example, really dumb example is I remember Christmas morning, I think I was like 16. And mom said, you know, go, go to the, go to Fred Meyer and go get some milk.

[00:15:52] And I'm like, okay. And so I go to Fred Meyer, Fred Meyer was closed, of course. And so I came home and she's like, where is it? And I'm like, I'm like, oh, [00:16:00] they were closed. And she goes, well, did you check the gas station? Did you check another store? You know, like, and I'm like, no. And she's like, it wasn't about just going to Fred Meyer.

[00:16:09] You know, there was a task and you need to find a way to make it work and make it happen. And that's a simple example, but that's how we were, that's how we were raised. It's like, find a way, make it work, make it happen. Use your brain, use your brain. My mom says that a lot. Use your brain.

[00:16:26] Bethany: Okay, mom. Okay.

[00:16:27] Yeah. So let's talk about that patent. You said 16, you filed a patent. Yeah. So what was that for? And how, I mean, obviously you, it sounds like you had support, which is huge.

[00:16:38] Tony Peniche: Yeah. So that one that one never, we've never actually launched that one, but that one was a a DJ device. So think of like two, I think of like the plastic case for like a CD now put two of those together.

[00:16:49] So it's about that thickness. The idea was you would open it up and then there'd be two touchscreen turntables. For a dj, and then in, in between those little circles were the [00:17:00] LCDs and then you could mix and record the music on the device itself. And this was like 2003, something like that.

[00:17:10] So the technology, the technology wasn't quite there yet. You know, all the touchscreens and everything else, and so we. We got to prototype phase. We got the patents done. But as far as the engineering goes, the technology wasn't quite there yet. And I personally didn't know how to code at 16.

[00:17:26] So yeah, I think we got like nine months into it and realized that we just had to shelf the idea for a while. And then we just forgot about it, to be honest. I actually totally forgot about it until more recently. I, I found the prototype in my storage unit and I'm like, Oh, this was so cool. That is

[00:17:40] Bethany: so cool.

[00:17:41] So were you doing it with friends?

[00:17:44] Tony Peniche: I was doing it with a buddy. Yeah. Yeah. And then You know, my mom saw how excited I was. And so she helped me, you know, with the with the patent lawyers and all that.

[00:17:52] Bethany: Oh, so she, okay. That's what, that was my next question is like the support system. So she, she was basically, I feel [00:18:00] like, because I'm all about like seeing how we were raised and how that supports where we are now too.

[00:18:05] I find I'm so curious about that. So seeing that she basically had faith in you and your abilities and supported you, I think is. Yeah.

[00:18:13] Tony Peniche: Yeah. Like, if we were passionate or excited about something, she wanted to do whatever she could to allow us to experience it whether we're going to, but the other thing though is that if we start, if any of us started anything, we had to finish it, you know?

[00:18:26] So if I started a new sport like soccer, right, I couldn't just quit in the middle of the season. I had to finish it. I didn't like it anymore. Exactly. Yeah. That's not allowed on our family. You got to finish what you start, find a way to make it work. Okay.

[00:18:40] Bethany: Yeah. Good. That's funny. Awesome. Well, how about some struggles cause I'm sure it wasn't all easy peasy or was

[00:18:50] Tony Peniche: it?

[00:18:51] No, I mean, everything is hard, but my attitude is, I don't, I don't really acknowledge the pain or the struggle very much in my own head. I just [00:19:00] kind of focus on the opportunity and as long as there's like even just a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, I'm still chasing it. And I'm kind of ignoring all the, all the darkness.

[00:19:08] It's kind of allowed me to always have a smile on my face and be pretty positive. Even when there's hurdles or struggles I seem to always have a good attitude about it. And I think part, you know, business partners and investors, I think they, they, they recognize that. And so that's, Probably one reason why I've always been so supported by either, either family or investors or partners.

[00:19:31] You know, when I have a, when I'm passionate about something and I'm running towards it people tend to want to, you know, want to jump on the bandwagon and get involved. Cause they're like, well, like let's get involved in this thing. Cause whatever happens, we know Tony's not stopping. So, you know, yeah.

[00:19:44] Bethany: And he was all night. I remember that he would definitely go all night if needed. I'd be like, I, I gotta go to bed. Bye. So yeah. So do things really keep you up at night then when you have stuff, are you pretty good at just like, like I'll handle this tomorrow or it will get handled [00:20:00] or, you know,

[00:20:01] Tony Peniche: in the past, I always kept a notepad and pen next to my bed.

[00:20:04] Now I just grabbed my phone and I read it in the note section. If I have an idea. I don't trust myself in a lot of areas and so I use certain, certain systems and strategies to make sure I don't forget things. I do have ADD and I am dyslexic and so I have to work around that. And so one of them is patterns and so I, like, Yeah, just patterns.

[00:20:24] I mean, even a little one, like just writing on my hand, like I just did it today, like one of the things that is really important to me right now, one of the themes that I was thinking about last night in bed and I want to make sure to forget it, so I wrote it on my hand was the idea, the idea of momentum.

[00:20:36] Momentum is, I don't think, discussed enough, and I don't think it's, it's valued enough. Creating momentum is incredibly difficult, and once you have momentum, you have to do everything in your power to keep it going, keep that ball rolling. A simple example would be I am helping Manage an artist right now.

[00:20:55] He's a singer and he basically got screwed over by a record [00:21:00] label. With that Kesha situation a few years ago that, you know, the general public is pretty, I think, pretty aware of Kesha getting molested.

[00:21:09] In pop culture, like a lot of people like know about Kesha and what happened a few years ago with her, with her agent.

[00:21:15] And what people don't know is that there was a huge fallout. Everybody that was on that roster, not just Kesha, everyone else, the other like hundred artists that were on that label, they all got dropped. They all got shelved. And some of them were like, just on the apex of becoming mainstream and becoming incredibly successful.

[00:21:34] And now they're tending bars, you know, or, or cleaning houses. And it sucks because You know, one of the artists, you know, like, like I'm managing right now he, he was opening for Gavin DeGraw doing a national tour of Philip Phillips and Gavin DeGraw. He was collaborating with Meghan Trainor and a few other big artists.

[00:21:54] I mean, he was like on the verge of, of, of breaking through. And then when that whole thing happened, he basically got shelved and [00:22:00] now he's having to start over and it really, really sucks. So I had this, and he's been struggling for the last few years to like, you know, Kind of come back. So I had this idea while I was driving in the car just randomly.

[00:22:10] I'm like, you know, be cool. If we did like a Netflix documentary, we can call it the fallout. And we would, you know, the documentary would follow this artist, but then maybe like five other artists as well. But my artist would be the primary, of course. We'd have to get Kesha on board as well. And just talk about like how the, how the.

[00:22:29] How record labels work and and how sometimes, you know, bad things happen to one person, and then it affects hundreds of other people, especially these artists. And it's not talked about. I think a lot of you aren't aware of it. And so I thought it was a really cool idea for a documentary. So we set up a meeting with this guy in L.

[00:22:48] A. who He owns several TV shows already, several reality shows that are already on Netflix. He owns the production company, he is the investor, he is the final decision maker. And it's basically like a slam dunk, right? So [00:23:00] we got on the phone with him, he's on board, he's a hundred, like he's excited. And so really within like one week, I went from idea to schedule a meeting to this is basically green light.

[00:23:10] We just have to make it happen. We have momentum now. Right. And. And all my artists had to do was put together the one pager to explain kind of the whole backstory in one page. It's not hard to do. You just have to sit down and do it. That was three weeks ago. He's killing the momentum, the excitement and the enthusiasm and momentum that like I just built for him.

[00:23:31] He hasn't written that one page and he lost the momentum. And I see that actually happening all the time where people have an idea. They might have a spark for a moment and like a little hint of momentum and then they just let it die and then it dies forever. And so yeah, you can't, if you want to make something happen, you can't just like dabble at it and put it on the shelf and then dabble at it and put it on the shelf and expect it, expect success to just fall into your lap.

[00:23:54] Like, you get that giant snowball rolling, you got to keep it moving. I had a

[00:23:58] Bethany: conversation with [00:24:00] somebody today and we were talking about giving birth, like you can't just give up halfway through giving birth.

[00:24:05] Tony Peniche: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Gotta keep

[00:24:07] Bethany: going until you got

[00:24:09] Tony Peniche: your baby. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:11] Bethany: Yeah, so. And trust that the baby is coming, you know,

[00:24:17] Tony Peniche: So yeah, momentum is one of those things.

[00:24:18] It's one of the, and also like, obviously, like I said, writing on my hand and putting sticky notes everywhere and using my phone reminders and stuff like that. It's kind of how I work around my ADD and dyslexia. What are the,

[00:24:28] Bethany: like this project, this project or a to do

[00:24:31] Tony Peniche: list or. Yeah, some of them are to do lists, some of them are just reminders, like, don't forget the flowers, you know, that you got for your date.

[00:24:38] All the, all these little things, like, like, I just learned, like, just don't trust myself. Don't trust myself, like put on, use bandaids or use tricks to make sure that you're gonna be successful and not forget anything. Yeah, I haven't

[00:24:50] Bethany: heard of that. I'm like, this is intense. I mean like easy, but like Yeah.

[00:24:54] Yeah. But you've, you've come up with your program that works.

[00:24:58] Tony Peniche: My little workarounds. [00:25:00] Did you take it? No, I, I had to figure that out myself, like in high school. And once I did like, Everything changed. You know, I went from like D's and F's all the time and couldn't figure out why because everyone was like he's smart.

[00:25:14] We don't know why he's failing. And then once I started like putting together my own little systems all of a sudden I was a 4. 0 student. I just had, I just had to find these little workarounds that worked for me. Very good.

[00:25:25] Bethany: Yeah, that's awesome. I'm very brilliant. I would say that you had the drive to do that because I don't know that yeah.

[00:25:32] A lot of people do. I think that they give that responsibility to somebody else.

[00:25:36] Tony Peniche: Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like I said, my mom is always about, you know, no excuses, like show me results, no excuses, make it happen. It's awesome. My mom is pretty badass. I'm not going to lie. She's, she's like a full on like Oprah story.

[00:25:49] Oh, I think

[00:25:49] Bethany: I met her once. I believe. At some event or something very, yeah. Oh, well, your whole family or your sister.

[00:25:58] Tony Peniche: Yeah. Yeah. Miss [00:26:00] Miss Teen USA. And yeah. Yeah, she's like, yeah, my, my, yeah, my whole family kind of has this attitude and it's like set a goal and just do whatever it takes. Get it, get it.

[00:26:11] All

[00:26:11] Bethany: right. Well was there anything else you wanted to share on anything? Yeah.

[00:26:18] Tony Peniche: One thing that I'm realizing now that you're not aware because only a handful of people are aware. So when you asked me to do this interview, I thought that somehow you found out.

[00:26:27] I don't know when this is airing.

[00:26:28] So, you know, I own the whiskey company and it sort of led me in a bad direction. And what people don't, yeah, a lot of people don't know like the little details, but There's a couple things happening simultaneously.

[00:26:41] I'm not sure exactly where to start, but we'll just say this. So, yeah, I had like success after success after success with these different businesses, and it was really fun and awesome. And then life punched me straight in the face with really bad timing. And so it was like November... You know, COVID [00:27:00] happened in March of 2020.

[00:27:02] So four months before that in November, my dad has a stroke and is basically bedridden for the rest of his life. Now he's paralyzed on the left side of his body. Right. Then a month, a month later my wife of only 18 months at that point is going to LA. Like every weekend and doing drugs and cheating and then on January 1st of 2020, she leaves Just to go permanently party down in LA, I guess So that sucked then my my best friend my cat that I've had for like 12 years He dies and then kovat happens, right and I was already starting to struggle with drinking a bit and so I kind of went into like a heavy depression with all that, you know, those bad dominoes falling at the same time.

[00:27:49] And then as I was going into that depression and drinking more, COVID happened. And so I was able to kind of hide through COVID. Like they're like quarantine and stay away from each other. And I'm like, perfect. I [00:28:00] don't want to be around anyone anyways. I want to hide. And so anyways, kept drinking.

[00:28:04] And basically from that point until July of last year, I gained 40 pounds. I was. Very chunky. I can show you some before and after photos. It's pretty wild. And then, yeah, I kind of got sick of it. And then I put together a plan. I said, like, look, I'm doing all this public speaking. I need to look the part on stage.

[00:28:23] I can't be gaining all this weight. I can't be tired and hung over all the time. You know, when you're, when you're, when you're speaking, people, people need to look up to you and not just on the information that you're giving, but also like, you know, your fitness you need, you need to look like you have it, you got your shit together.

[00:28:40] Yeah. Polished. And then you have your shit together. Yeah. And, and so anyways I put together a plan. I rented a I didn't want to go to rehab or anything like that. And I didn't want to see a therapist. I don't know why. I'm just stubborn. So I put together a plan. I rented a house in Santa Cruz for, for the whole month of July for 30 days.

[00:28:55] I drove down there. The Airbnb was empty, so it was great. So I went out and bought all the groceries and ate really [00:29:00] healthy and basically for 30 days straight, just didn't drink. Worked out twice a day, ate super healthy. I still work, just work remote, but I didn't want to be around friends and family and everything else.

[00:29:09] I didn't want any distractions or any influence. And yeah, basically just like kind of self rehabbed myself for a month. And since then, so this, this coming 4th of July, so basically next Tuesday will be one year sober from alcohol. And it's had a huge effect on my happiness and my health and my career.

[00:29:29] And it's just really fun that I put together that plan, executed it, and it worked. Now I am going to say, I still microdose mushrooms, and I still take edibles, and I still do all of that. It's just, you know, if you want to get a buzz, you know, there's a lot of options. And for some reason, everybody goes to alcohol specifically.

[00:29:47] But it's not the only option. And microdosing mushrooms specifically, for anyone that doesn't know this, whatever your, if you've never microdosed mushrooms before, You don't know, you probably have the wrong perspective. It's not like you're hallucinating a little bit, you know, [00:30:00] it's not at

[00:30:01] Bethany: all. When I've done it, I can't

[00:30:02] Tony Peniche: even tell.

[00:30:03] Yeah. Microdosing mushrooms. If you're doing it in the right dose and mine are professionally done. I have like professional chocolate bars done and it's all dosed out perfectly. And so if I take like one little piece of chocolate, it's the equivalent of like two or three cocktails. So it's like a little bit of buzz you feel in your body.

[00:30:18] But you're not hallucinating anything else. You can still drive, you can still function just fine. It's like having like two or three cocktails. And so that's been kind of my replacement and it's much easier. Once you're off of alcohol, it's much easier to, you know, if you're just like, I don't want to do edibles anymore.

[00:30:32] I don't want to do mushrooms anymore. Then that's really easy to quit that. Alcohol is the hard one. But then the other piece is, you know, to not, I don't trust myself as kind of a theme here because I don't trust myself. One of the systems I put in place is there are no, there are no special occasions.

[00:30:48] So everybody always wants to say like, oh, but it's my birthday, or it's, we're going to Vegas, or this thing is happening, and there's always some sort of special occasion to have like that one drink, and I just decided, I'm like, no, there are no special [00:31:00] occasions, like, I'm not going to have a single drop, because I don't trust myself, I don't, I don't want to go down that, that hole again, and.

[00:31:06] Get fat and depressed and and hide again. So yeah, well, first of all,

[00:31:11] Bethany: congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. And also I'm curious. I I'm impressed again because you took it on yourself and accomplished it. It sounds like on your own. My first thought is, was there like like a breaking point or what they call a dark night of the soul, which really is to me is a dark night of the ego.

[00:31:31] It has nothing to do with the soul. So light or, and, oh yeah, yeah. And then my other question was like, what were you doing for 30 days? Like, were you bored or were you like just watching healthy things? Were you listening to podcasts?

[00:31:41] Tony Peniche: Yeah. So to answer the first question it was constantly dark, to be honest, but there was no like, face plant, dark moment.

[00:31:47] It was just like, I looked really gross in the mirror. I didn't even recognize myself anymore. And, but the, but the, the spark, the big turning point moment was actually I met somebody, I, I was teaching a, a marketing and branding course, it's called the [00:32:00] Master Marketing Academy that I teach here three times a year.

[00:32:03] And a girl came from Indiana, and she was a student, she was 30 years old and it was just kind of like, love at first sight, it was like all these like sparks, and like everyone in the room could feel it, but I'm like, I'm not going to flirt with her, I'm not going to get cancelled, you know and by the end of the, by the end of day two, everybody was just egging us on, they were like, there's clearly magic here, like, you guys need to go on a date, and we looked at each other, and we're like, alright, let's go on a date, and so we did, and I couldn't believe that this beautiful girl, like this fat, you know, hungover guy.

[00:32:36] And I don't know, just something like snapped in me and it just changed. I'm like, I don't want to be this anymore. Like, I don't like this. Like this, this has gone far enough. And so like right after meeting her is when I started putting together that plan. And then three months later, I went down to Santa Cruz and did that 30 days.

[00:32:51] And then for the second part of your question I had every minute of every day planned out. I, I know that, I knew that downtime Would be my [00:33:00] downfall. So I didn't want to have any free time to like think or second guess. And so it was you know, wake up at 6 a. m. stretch have coffee. I think I was watching the show alone or naked and afraid like every day.

[00:33:13] Like I got through all the seasons. Outdoorsy adventure stuff. We watched like maybe 30 minutes of that then go straight to the gym, work out for 30 minutes, heavy weights in the morning come back. And if you're doing heavy weights, like 30 minutes is plenty. Really you're just trying to get your heart rate up and get that hormonal response where you start to sweat a little bit.

[00:33:32] And then yeah, come back, have breakfast, work all day long. Cause I work remote during my lunch break, I would stretch and work on core and then lay out in the backyard and, and absorb some sun. Go back to work. Lunch was really, really small. Breakfast was really small. And there was no carbs, by the way, I was doing the barbecue diet where basically if you can't cook it on a barbecue, you can't eat it.

[00:33:54] So it basically just means you're eating vegetables and meat. That's it. There's no carbs anywhere in there. And [00:34:00] then, yeah, in the evening, I would go back to the gym. I would do about 45 minutes of cardio. Come straight home, take my edible. So once you take the edible. It was mostly like CBN and a little bit of THC.

[00:34:12] CBN is kind of like CBD, but it makes you feel heavy. So it actually kind of mimics being drunk more than, than high, which is kind of nice for someone who's trying to wean off of alcohol. So yeah, I would take that, but that gives me 45 minutes before it kicks in. So 45 minutes, I have to cook now. So I cook really quickly, put on a movie.

[00:34:30] Oh, this is a key thing. Actually, this is really simple, but it's actually kind of a big thing. One of my strategies was every single night at seven o'clock, I would start a movie, not a show because a show you're just going to like watch another episode, right? There's no closure on a show with a movie.

[00:34:46] There's an ending and you have closure. And now I can go, I'm ready for bed. And so by like nine 30, 10, I would go to bed and start the process over again the next day. And I also planned out all my weekends. If you go on Airbnb, you can select something called [00:35:00] experiences. And so I booked experiences for, for every weekend that I was down there.

[00:35:06] So I did like a, like a wilderness survival course. I did a wild edibles course. I hiked the Redwood forest, went spearfishing. I did all kinds of fun stuff. Just so I wouldn't have any downtime to second guess or get depressed or. You know, yeah, I just needed every minute of every day booked and I knew that after like 21 days to 30 days that I would form these new healthy habits that way when I come back, come back home and I'm around my friends again, I can just kind of maintain that course.

[00:35:35] But for the first 21 days, you're kind of like struggling and second guessing and wanting to go into that back, go back to that old habit. But after that, you're, you have these new healthy habits in place. So it's pretty easy after that and then no special occasions. Like none, no special

[00:35:49] Bethany: occasions.

[00:35:50] Nope. I have so many special occasions. I'm always like, I'm 97% gluten-free. So. Yeah. Right.

[00:35:58] Okay. I totally [00:36:00] have three keys for you, but I wanna hear yous your three keys to quantum leaping. You've been very inspirational and so I'm excited for people to hear this. But curious what yours are first, and then I'm gonna share what I think mine are for you, or I know mine are for

[00:36:15] Tony Peniche: you. Okay.

[00:36:17] One of them because it's written on my hand is going to be momentum. You know, quantum leaping. Once you have a little spark and just a tiny bit of momentum, do not let it die. Do not let it drop. Keep that enthusiasm, get everyone around you riled up and keep moving it forward. Yeah, momentum. Don't trust yourself.

[00:36:33] I don't know. I think maybe it's on the ego gets in the way. And so people will trust themselves too much. Like, I'm not going to forget that. Or, you know, of course I got this, like, no, just don't trust yourself, like put in systems to work around your potential downfalls and potential weaknesses. And I would say the other one is.

[00:36:52] Something about passion and enthusiasm. That's probably been like one of my secret weapons is I'm not [00:37:00] afraid to let my passions and enthusiasm shine. And it really, and it really seems to be contagious. And so if I'm excited about something, I don't care how obnoxious I am when I'm talking about it and, and hyping it up that works and people want to get on board with that because that's, Yeah, I don't know.

[00:37:17] Maybe it's a cynical world or something like that. And then, and then when they see someone with passion and enthusiasm it's, it's kind of addicting and people want to be a part of that energy. Totally.

[00:37:30] Bethany: Yep. Well, mine are very aligned. I probably like your words better. I have like interest and curiosity.

[00:37:35] So once your interest is peak, like you're curious and you just dig, like, do you research things? I don't

[00:37:41] Tony Peniche: research things. It depends what it is. I mean, like with the whiskey one, I probably like, I don't know how much I slept over the course of like two weeks, but like I put in. Yeah. A lot of hours on research.

[00:37:53] It's, you know, two weeks doesn't sound like that long, but I didn't do anything else. I was just like on Google going down rabbit [00:38:00] holes and reading articles and like figuring out the science for two weeks straight.

[00:38:03] Bethany: Commitment. You have a commitment with your curiosity.

[00:38:06] And then like you were saying the spark, I w I would say love, like even for your health kick, it was like that spark of like love or potential love. Right. And you're like, It just shifted. I feel like the whole

[00:38:18] Tony Peniche: vibe. Yeah.

[00:38:20] I think it's a fair statement. Yeah.

[00:38:23] Bethany: Amazing. Well, thank you. I'm so glad I got the hit to reach out to you and invite you on. So

[00:38:30] Tony Peniche: good. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.

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