Show Transcript

0:01:18 - (Kevin Lowe): I've said it before, and I'll say it again, is that I believe in all of my heart that what happens in this life is happening for us, even if at the time it feels like the world is falling apart, like the world is not in our favor, but instead fighting against us. I'm here to change that mindset. I'm here to help flip the script on life, because I believe that in this life, everything is working out for our good, even if that seems so far from the truth.

0:01:52 - (Kevin Lowe): My name is Kevin Lowe. I'm the host of Grit, Grace, & Inspiration. And today I am bringing you a powerful interview with a man named Dave Albin. Today is episode number 215, and I got to ask you, are you ready for this? Are you ready for a guy's story that includes none other than Tony Robbins? Yes. Mr. Tony Robbins indeed is a part of Dave Albin's story, a big part of his story. You're going to get to hear all about it.

0:02:27 - (Kevin Lowe): But the story that's so powerful is what happens before Tony Robbins, because as I said at the beginning, is that I believe everything is working out for our good, even if it takes us down some really bad paths in life. This life, it's full of choices, it's full of decisions. And all of those choices we make, they lead to a result, either a good result or bad. It's then up to us to figure out what we want to do with it.

0:03:00 - (Kevin Lowe): It's up to us to continue to move forward. And I believe that inside all of us is a desire to not merely survive, but to thrive in life. But it's up to us to tap into that hidden desire to thrive in spite of it all. For Dave Albin. He was at the lowest of lows, suffering from alcoholism, from drug addiction, contemplating suicide. And yet there was a voice in the back of his head that told him no, that reminded him of what he was about to do.

0:03:37 - (Kevin Lowe): And thank God he didn't. What happened next? Well, what happened next was a series of events that weren't easy, but they would lead Dave Albin to where he is today. Somewhere I don't think the guy ever could have imagined because his story is incredible. As I said, it includes the infamous Tony Robbins, it includes a late night infomercial, it includes walking on fire and, well, that walking on fire.

0:04:09 - (Kevin Lowe): That's going to be a pivotal point in Dave Albin's story because, well, that's going to set forth where he even is today. If you are ready to be inspired, if you are ready to be empowered to walk on fire yourself, then just listen up because this interview is about to do it for you. As a reminder, if you love this podcast and want to take it to the next level, I encourage you to sign up for our email list.

0:04:40 - (Kevin Lowe): You can find a link to sign up inside of today's Show Notes or you can head on over to the website that is WW dot gritgraceinspiration.com Davealvin. Again, link is in the Show Notes to sign up. Or like I said, head over to the website and you can sign up there. The reason I encourage it as well, because I dive a little bit deeper each week inside of the newsletter. I provide a LinkedIn article where I dive deep into the story of the guest, provide a little commentary on my life and just being there to be a midweek boost to help you get through the day.

0:05:25 - (Kevin Lowe): So check it out. And hey, most of all, you need to turn up the volume. The interview is about to begin. Grab your popcorn, get your snack, turn up the volume and get ready. Here is my interview with Dave Alvin.

0:05:45 - (Dave Albin): So when I had my first drink at eleven years old, I don't think I had a chance, Kevin. I mean, I didn't. I was an alcoholic on the spot. If you look at the behavior of alcoholics, I started showing that behavior early on. So it was the saying, one's too many and a thousand is not enough. That was my attitude. When I heard that. I went, yep, that's me. It's been me ever since I took that first drink. And all I was trying to do when I took that first drink is figure out what happened to my adoptive parents.

0:06:16 - (Dave Albin): Because when they adopted me at five years old, they stopped drinking. My mother literally the first day of summer and set me down and said, david, we need to tell you something. And what they went on to tell me was, we're not your parents. Well, what does that mean? How does eleven year old kid even process that? And so they went on to tell me that they were my aunt and my uncle, and that my biological mother was actually who I referred to as my Aunt Dean.

0:06:43 - (Dave Albin): And I remember saying, well, I don't even like reason. And there's a very important reason. And that is she was always touching me around me. She wanted to touch. I was, I figured that part out. But shortly after they told me this, literally within days, maybe a week or so, they both started drinking again. And so that's when everything that was wonderful, my life, took a hard turn. And they turned into I don't know how to say it.

0:07:15 - (Dave Albin): They were wonderful people, but they weren't wonderful when they were drinking, let's put it that way. And so what ensued from there was I'm like, what happened to these people when they drink this stuff? They turn into this. So I was curious. And they left one morning, went to the store back in the could leave your kids home. Nobody said a word, of course. Right. It was like, call the neighbor across the street. Like, call Joanne. Hey, Joanne, this is Pat. I'm going to be leaving David at home. Bob and I are going grocery shopping. If he needs anything, can he come over there? And they're like, oh, of course, just send David over if he needs you know neighbors did that for the kids all the time.

0:07:54 - (Dave Albin): And so that's what happened. So as soon as they left, man, I went over to the cabinet where the booze was, and I pulled out a bottle of brandy, a half gallon of it, big bottle. And I poured about half of a coffee cup full and I downed it. And it tasted horrible. But the feeling I got was like it was like pouring rocket fuel inside of me. And again, as I said, Kevin, I was stick a fork in me, man. I was done right there.

0:08:23 - (Dave Albin): And it just led right. So it got worse and worse and worse. And as I was going into junior high school and high school, by the time I became a junior in high school, they kicked me out. I was already messing with hard drugs and hanging around the wrong people. Peer group is everything, right? We are who we spend time with, that's for sure. And that led to me asking for help on June eigth of 1988. Which is coming up in a couple of days, right?

0:08:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:08:56 - (Dave Albin): Six days from now. I'll have 35 years.

0:09:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:09:01 - (Dave Albin): Well, 35 years. So when I got sober and I got into AA, I had insomnia and I was up late at night all the time, Kevin. My sleep patterns were all over the place. Well, I was up late one night and early 1980 or late 1988, and there he was, the man himself, Mr. Gunther anchor the infomercial king, if you will. There's Tony Robbins, and he's selling a program called Personal Power. I was listening to him, and I really to be candid, I couldn't stand him. I didn't like him. And the reason I didn't like him is because he was so motivated.

0:09:37 - (Dave Albin): I was miserable, and so I'm not really tracking with him, but he said a couple of things that got me, and it got me to thinking really hard, and one of them was, we'll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. And I went, Whoa. Okay, well, that tells a story in and of itself, because that's why I drank. For the most part. I drank to either avoid pain or try to gain pleasure. And then, of course, one day, that just disappears.

0:10:03 - (Dave Albin): You're not even looking for that anymore. You're just drinking because you're maintenance drinking, trying to stop from shaking and coming apart at the seams. Another thing you said that really got me is said there's two driving forces in our life. We make decisions either based on inspiration or desperation. And I thought, Well, I'm pretty desperate, so maybe I ought to look into more of what this guy's teaching. So I bought his program.

0:10:30 - (Dave Albin): They sent it to me. It's a 30 day program. It's called personal power. And to date this, it came on these little white things called cassette, right? Your audience is probably not even going to know what those things are. You can go to the Smithsonian. You can see what they are.

0:10:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Exactly.

0:10:50 - (Dave Albin): So anyway, I plugged them in. Kevin and I did what the man taught me to do, and it worked. And so there it was, right? The personal development industry and AA had just collided in my life, and it was a perfect combination, because over here, on one hand, I'm working AA, and I'm doing everything these guys are telling me. I'm going to meetings. I got a sponsor. I'm working the steps. I got into service work.

0:11:15 - (Dave Albin): I was all in 100%. And then I was also over here doing the thing in the personal development industry. And what happened from there was that program, that 30 day program, Personal Power. I loaned it to a friend of mine in AA, because he came to me and he said, dude, what are you doing? What's going on? You started your own business. You're working out. This is stuff outside of AA. It I'm just curious. And I go, well, there's this guy named Tony Robbins and blah, blah, blah. He goes, really? Yeah.

0:11:45 - (Dave Albin): And so I told him I went through this program, and I said, hey, I finished it. If you want to borrow it, I'll be happy to lend it to you. And he said, yeah, that'd be great. I'd love it. And he did. He did the same thing he went through it. He loved it. And then seven years later, from 1988 to 1995, he called me on the phone one day and said, hey, did you know that Tony Robbins is coming to town? And I said no. I had no idea. And he goes, Come on, man. Dude, we've got to go.

0:12:13 - (Dave Albin): Let's go see this. Dude, you got me into this, so come on. And I said, well, when is it? And we looked at the dates, and I go, yeah, you know what? I'm actually available. He goes, oh, fantastic. He goes, look, man, I'll go make the arrangements. I'll call you back. Well, heck, he calls me back an hour later, and he said, okay, it's done. We pick up the tickets at will call. And here's what they told us to do. Number one, drink a lot of water for the days leading up. You want to be really hydrated when you get there.

0:12:40 - (Dave Albin): Number two, bring snacks. And the reason for that is you're going to be spending a lot of time in the room. Okay? And then he said, and bring a good attitude and be ready to play full out. I said, all right, Dan, so how much was the ticket? He said, $700. I went, what? $700 and you want me to play full out? Don't worry, I will. What is that today? I don't know. $7,000. Right? There's a lot of money back then.

0:13:12 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:13:12 - (Dave Albin): And so just as he's getting ready to get off the phone, he goes, oh, wait, by the way, I forgot to tell you, we're going to be doing a fire walk. And I remember thinking, and I'm not saying anything, but I'm going, well, maybe you are, but I'm sure not. That's not going to happen. I'm going to tell you right now. And you know what's interesting about that decision kevin made it right there on the spot, not doing it. And I didn't even know what a firewalk was.

0:13:42 - (Dave Albin): I don't know. I don't have any references for this. I've never seen it. I never heard it. No. But I know one thing I'm not doing know I want to see Tony. That part I get. I'm willing to go, but we'll leave the firewalk for the crazies because I'm.

0:13:56 - (Kevin Lowe): Not doing we dave, hold on 1 second before we get to this. Discovering the firewalk thing. Back up for me a little bit, though, because what led you, though, to even decide to stop drinking and get help from AA?

0:14:15 - (Dave Albin): Because that morning on June eigth, when I woke up, I said, that's it. I'm done. I'm out. And I was in so much pain, kevin excruciating pain. Emotionally, physically, spiritually. It's nasty. That's all I can tell you. And I wish it on no one, ever. But you can't even explain it because it was years of just drinking and drugging yourself into oblivion. And so emotionally, you're a car wreck. You're a train wreck and a plane crash all rolled into one.

0:14:46 - (Dave Albin): So what I decided to do and by the way, I was married to a woman, had three kids. They were my step kids, and this was my third marriage. And I married this woman because, number one, she was a bartender. She was a real sweet lady. I loved her to death, and she had three kids. And I thought, wow, if I marry her, then guess what? I'll get my alcoholism and my drug addiction under control because I need to be a good dad for these three kids.

0:15:08 - (Dave Albin): Well, when I woke up on June eigth again, I was done. It was over. So I'm living in the basement. They're living upstairs. So I went and loaded my pistol, and I thought that, you know what? This is going to be real easy. The pain is going to go away right now. I wasn't wrestling with, oh, my gosh, I'm going to go to heaven or hell or any of that. I wasn't thinking about destroying other people's lives because I was going to put a bullet in my head.

0:15:33 - (Dave Albin): And then it did dawn on me, said, well, wait a minute here, pal. Hold on a second. You pull that trigger, these kids are going to suffer, and they don't deserve that. You're killing them, too. You can't do that to them. Man, what a scene. The cops are going to come, and the morgues are going to come, and the papers are going to write articles, and it's going to permeate throughout the school, and those kids are going to be devastated.

0:15:57 - (Dave Albin): And I remember thinking, no, you can't do that. Suck it up, pal. Find a better way. Find something else to help you. And I was even thinking about, well, I won't do it in the house. I'll go out in the woods, and I'm like, no, but they still got to deal with it. And then all of a sudden, the thought popped in my head, call Alcoholics and Anonymous. And you know what, Kevin? I didn't know who the hell AA was at that moment.

0:16:19 - (Dave Albin): I had no idea. I didn't know anyone in AA. I'd never been to AA. I knew nothing about it. And yet, there it was. How did that thought jump into my head? And to this day, other know, divine intervention, if you yeah. As providence would have it, I called AA that morning, and I got a wonderful lady on the phone, and I've nicknamed her over the years, Mad. And the reason I did is because she talked like this.

0:16:48 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:16:49 - (Dave Albin): And so I think she was probably smoking a two to three packs of Palm, all non filters a day, right?

0:16:57 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:16:58 - (Dave Albin): And, bro, she was vicious. She was in my face. Are you sure you want to get sober? Because the bottom line was, it was her responsibility to decide whether she would send somebody over to my house to come get me. So she needed to make sure that she took me through the process. And apparently I must have given her enough information that she sent a man to come get me.

0:17:22 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:17:25 - (Dave Albin): He took me to an AA meeting that day. It was a house on five acres, and it was in Fairfax, Virginia, place called the Stepping Stones Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, wonderful place, all men. And I went to a 1230, a 430, a 630, and an 830 meeting that day. And the guys took a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and all the ones that were in the meeting signed it and they put their phone number in there. Then they also gave me a Living Sober book and gave me the same thing.

0:17:53 - (Dave Albin): They signed it and put their telephone numbers in there. I have both of those books to this day. They're very cherished in my life.

0:18:00 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:18:02 - (Dave Albin): And I went home and I had enough AA where I didn't take a drink that night.

0:18:06 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:18:07 - (Dave Albin): Well, at 08:00 in the morning, my phone rings and it's John from AA. And he's like, hey, good morning, Dave, how you doing? And I'm like, how do you think I'm doing? I want to kill somebody. And I might start with, Man, I'm not feeling good at all. I want to drink so bad because I'm shaking. I'm coming apart at the seams. And he goes, yeah, you're going to be fine. I'm going to come get you. We'll go to breakfast, and I'm going to take you to a meeting.

0:18:37 - (Dave Albin): Well, that's AA for you. That's what they do. And I'd never been around anything like that where people cared about me at that level. Here's a stranger. This guy doesn't know me. He knew where I lived because he heard me talking in the meeting, and he comes and gets me and rescues me, man, and that's AA.

0:18:56 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:18:57 - (Dave Albin): So one day turned into two.

0:18:59 - (Kevin Lowe): Right.

0:19:00 - (Dave Albin): And then a week, and then I got a month. And when I got a month, they gave me a medallion, little coin, okay. Said 30 days of continuous sobriety, had the AA emblem on the back, and it said, to thy own self be true. And a month turned into two, they gave me another one. Turned into three, they gave me another one. Six months came along, they gave me another one. Nine months came along, they gave me another one. And then I got the big one, man. The one year of continuous sobriety, they gave that.

0:19:29 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:19:31 - (Dave Albin): Right?

0:19:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. How old were you at that point?

0:19:35 - (Dave Albin): I was 33, and I'll be 69 this month in June.

0:19:41 - (Kevin Lowe): I mean, Dave, that was a long time, though. I mean, you started took that first drink at eleven. That was a long time of living a life to then finally realize I've got to do something and praise the Lord that you didn't take your life, that you called AA. And I think that is such a powerful, powerful example of what AA can do. For somebody to take a man who has been drinking basically his whole life and help you stop, that's amazing.

0:20:25 - (Dave Albin): Well, what's interesting about that, too, Kevin, is I'm one of the only ones that made it out of my my many of my family members died of alcoholism. I have one surviving relative, my cousin Dee Dee, and she really never drank. She was older than I was, six years older than and, you know, we talk and communicate all the time, and she's super, super proud of yeah. She lost her mother. Her mother, my aunt Joe, was an up and coming star in Hollywood.

0:20:55 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay.

0:20:56 - (Dave Albin): She played in the grapes of wrath. And so, anyway, but she succumbed to alcoholism. She died of cirrhosis of the liver. She died in the same hospital I was born in, which was Queen of angels hospital in Hollywood, California.

0:21:09 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay.

0:21:10 - (Dave Albin): And I remember seeing her on one of her last days alive, and it was oh, my God. It was you know, your liver starts rotting from the inside out, and you're jaundice, and this yellowish reddish color was just oh, it was horrible. It was so frightening. And you'd think the physical was bad. Well, what was even worse was the smell, because the smell is the body rotting. It's cirrhosis of the liver. I'll never forget it. It's a horrible, horrible smell. Now, that had absolutely no effect on me. Really?

0:21:43 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:21:43 - (Dave Albin): Once I got to my first drink there, it wasn't that long after my aunt Joe died that I took my first drink. I think my aunt Joe died when I was around eight, and three years later, I'm taking my first drink. Right. So how crazy is that? Yeah, but that's alcoholism, and that's why in AA, we say it's cunning, baffling, and powerful.

0:22:04 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah.

0:22:04 - (Dave Albin): And it is. And it serves no purpose.

0:22:07 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:22:08 - (Dave Albin): None. There's no good reason to drink on this planet, unfortunately. There's other things out there that are just as life threatening. Tobacco and vaping now and all this stuff. It's crazy. But alcoholism, man, it takes a lot of people out, that's for sure.

0:22:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Absolutely.

0:22:33 - (Dave Albin): And so that's kind of like this is something I talk about in my seminars, and that is the two most powerful times in your life. Most important moments in your life, I believe, is the moment you were born and the moment you figure out why. Right. So, for me, I got into AA, man, total immersion. And I love something that I learned there early on. It's in the preamble, and it says, when anyone, anywhere reaches out, I want the hand of AA. To be there, and for that, I am responsible.

0:23:03 - (Dave Albin): And I took that very seriously, because when somebody walks in the door of AA, their life's on the line, period. And so I loved being a gatekeeper, and I loved the responsibility of it and telling them, hey, where are you from? This kind of thing. I gave them what we like to call the package deal. You don't drink one day at a time. If you think you're going to drink, you got to call somebody, get a sponsor, work the steps and help others.

0:23:38 - (Dave Albin): And if you do that, let me tell you what's going to happen. Your life's going to become magnificent. And so there's what's called the promises in AA, and I won't go into all that here, but I'll just say that they came true in my life, and they typically will always come true if we're willing to work for it. That's all we got. Because here's what I saw when I got there. The men were happy, joyous and free, and I wanted it.

0:24:01 - (Dave Albin): And they said, cool, then just do what we do, sport. Right. That's all you got to do, man. Just hang out and do what we do. And it's a beautiful thing.

0:24:14 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Truly. Truly, truly. Now, when you told us that in the sleepless nights, when you found Tony Robbins on TV, was that during that first year or yes.

0:24:27 - (Dave Albin): Yeah, that was shortly after I got sober in June, and I think I bought that program October of the same year.

0:24:35 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay.

0:24:36 - (Dave Albin): Insomnia and I was up late.

0:24:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Thank you, Insomnia.

0:24:40 - (Dave Albin): Right?

0:24:42 - (Kevin Lowe): Thank you, Insomnia, because that led the way. Now I think it's time we get back to Tony Robbins event. You've just spent $700. Your buddy's telling you you're firewalking. You're like, what the heck are you talking about? You're prepared for something that, to be quite honest, sounds very scary when they talk about hydrating, bringing snacks. I don't know that it sounds like something that I would want to pay $700 for, right.

0:25:12 - (Kevin Lowe): But yet you find yourself there with your buddy, and you're doing it.

0:25:15 - (Dave Albin): Well, we showed up, but there was no inkling of me doing it. Not at that point. It's still a hard note when Tony took the stage at 02:00 in the afternoon, and you're there, and there was 3500 people at this event.

0:25:32 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow.

0:25:34 - (Dave Albin): Well, the next thing we know, Kevin, it's after midnight.

0:25:38 - (Kevin Lowe): Oh, wow.

0:25:39 - (Dave Albin): We had been in a room with this guy for 10 hours, and all of a sudden, Tony goes, Take your shoes off. I'm like, oh, no, pal. I ain't falling for that. I am not taking my shoes off. Well, as I look around me, everybody's taking their shoes off. I'm like, oh, come on, people? Really? Can we just get on the same page here? What are you doing? So now I'm wrestling with that, because if I don't take my shoes off, guess what all these people are going to think.

0:26:16 - (Dave Albin): Look at Dave. He's a coward. He's got his shoes on. He's not going to firewalk tonight. I'm like, okay, fine. Well, I can play this game, right? I can play this game. I'll take my shoes off, fine, but I'm not firewalking. I'll just go hide in the back yeah, I know how to play this. Okay, this is going to be easy. So as he's got everybody walking out into this giant parking lot, he gets them to start chanting.

0:26:40 - (Dave Albin): And so now they're clapping their hands and they're chanting. It's like yes. And it's super intense when you got 3500 people. And as soon as you get outside into this giant parking lot, he's got African drummers. Oh, really? Tony sizzley. You have to create an ambiance like that. It's like it's so everybody's chanting, yes, yes. And they're clapping, and you're like, oh, I've never seen witnessed anything like this in my life.

0:27:14 - (Dave Albin): And so when you get out there, tony's got a big fire that's been burning all day over in the corner of the parking lot. And it's every bit of 30ft wide and 60, 70ft long. And they just stoke it with wood all day. And at the end of the night, it renders, and you have this giant pile of coals. And they're gorgeous, beautiful blue flame. Unbelievable. Well, with 3500 people, here's what they do. They would load those coals from that pit into a wheelbarrow, and then a wheelbarrow they'd put a wheelbarrow in between two lanes of sod of grass, what they call a fire lane. Fire lane is 3ft wide, 18ft long.

0:28:01 - (Dave Albin): And then what they would do, Kevin, is they'd just take a flathead shovel, and they'd sprinkle those coals on top of the grass. And that's what you walked on. Okay, well, I'm not interested. I'm hiding out in the and that's so that's my plan. Well, here's the thing. Tony knows. He studied this. This is why he brought firewalking to America, because he knows it's a very, very profound experience. It's a rite of passage.

0:28:26 - (Dave Albin): It's probably one of the most powerful experience any human can undergo. It's just that simple. It's a paradigm shift, and he knows it. And he knows it's going to change people's lives big time. So he wants to do everything he can to get everybody across those coals. And he knows there's going to be people hiding out of the back. He trains people to come go get them. So I'm back there hiding out, and all of a sudden, here comes this guy.

0:28:56 - (Dave Albin): He looks at me, and he makes eye contact with me. And now he won't take his eyes off. Well, Robbins trains him, look, when you make eye contact with those people, don't take your eyes off them. Oh, come on. Here we go again. And so now he gets probably he's walking towards me, and he gets about 20ft away from me, and he kind of bends down. He looks at me, who live a puzzle look on his face, and he's like, Are you okay?

0:29:22 - (Dave Albin): And when we're not okay, what do we say? Oh, I'm fine. I'm good. Everything's good here. No worries. And all of a sudden, this guy asked me a question. Here's one stranger. Kevin, I have no. Idea who this guy is? To this day, I wish I did, because I wouldn't be here on the Gritt Grayson Inspiration podcast with you if I wasn't, right? But he says, well, because, you know, am I fine? No, I'm not fine at all. And he said, well, are you going to walk tonight?

0:29:53 - (Dave Albin): And I said, absolutely not. And he goes, hey, man, that's cool. It's okay. We don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. And I thought, okay, I like this guy. That's what I want to hear. Get me out of here. And then here he goes. Here's the question. One question, one stranger changed my life forever. And that was he said, well, wouldn't you at least like to watch? And I thought, yeah, that should be entertaining. Let's go watch these people burn their feet off.

0:30:25 - (Dave Albin): Right? Okay. I'll do that. And he said, well, listen, man, you can't see anything from back here. I was 100 yards away from where they were doing it. I can hear them. Yeah, the big fire going out there. People are chanting. Yes. And they're screaming, and they're yelling with exhilaration, and, oh, my gosh, right? It's a real dog and pony show.

0:30:43 - (Kevin Lowe): But he's right.

0:30:43 - (Dave Albin): He goes, you can't see anything from back here, so just get in line, and eventually, you'll get up there close enough, you'll be able to see it. Yeah, right. You're laughing. You got it. You get it, right? Okay. He tricked me.

0:30:57 - (Kevin Lowe): Yes.

0:30:58 - (Dave Albin): But you know what? In his defense, he's telling the truth, too. Yeah, right, because you can't I had to get up there closer. I couldn't see it. And so I'm kind of standing there, and I'm kind of walking along and walking along like cattle going to slaughter. And all of a sudden, this guy comes up, and he whispers in my ear, and he goes he knows when you're ready. When he says go, you go. And pew. He took off.

0:31:25 - (Dave Albin): Just disappeared into the night. And I'm like, what was that? Who was that? I mean, really, what is going on here? And all of a sudden, I get to a point now I still can't see in front of me, but I can see at an okay. And they're doing it, Kevin. Every race, creed and color, every age, boom. They're doing I'm watching them. They are walking on hot coals. And I'm thinking, Why are you doing this? What's wrong with you?

0:31:53 - (Dave Albin): Metaphorically? What's happening here? Why would people do this? And so I'm, like, in a trance. I'm staring at these people. It's like driving by a car accident. You can't take your eyes off it, right? It's like you can't help but stare at it. And I'm staring. I'm staring. I'm staring. All of a sudden, boom. Guess where I am. I'm at the front of the line, and I'm looking down at the coals on that lane, on that three foot wide lane and 18ft long and they're glowing bright red and there's a wheelbarrow there and you can feel the heat coming off. And I'm staring into the abyss.

0:32:33 - (Dave Albin): My heart is pounding. So, I mean, I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. I am out of my mind with fear at that moment. And as I'm staring into the abyss, there there's a trainer standing there. And all of a sudden the trainer goes, Eyes up. I'm like, oh, shoot. I pull my eyes up. Well, I'm a slow learner, obviously, because when I was in the room with Tony for 10 hours, guess what he teaches you to do?

0:33:00 - (Dave Albin): Keep your eyes up. Don't stare at what you fear. Look to the celebration end. That's where the reward is, right? So now my eyes are up and the trainer goes, squeeze your fist and say yes. And I went, yes. And he went stronger. And I went, yes. Well, he could tell I wasn't in a peak state. I was close, but I was leaving a lot on the table. Well, then he screamed at me and he screamed at me really loud, like in my face, stronger.

0:33:33 - (Dave Albin): And now I'm kind of ticked off. So I threw my hands in the air and I screamed at the top of my lungs, yes. And the trainer goes go. I took off. Well, here's the first thing I learned about firewalking. When you take the first step, oh, you'll take the second, 3rd, fourth and fifth 100% you will not stop along the way. I guarantee you. Well, Tony positions two people at the end of the fire lane and they interlock their hands and their arms and they stop you and they're like, Stop. Wipe your feet and celebrate.

0:34:09 - (Dave Albin): So I'm wiping my feet and I'm celebrating and I turn around and I look and the coals are bright red. And I'm thinking, I'm not doing this. And then all of a sudden, I feel it and I can feel I burnt myself really bad. Super bad. And I lift up my right foot and I look at it and it's dirty, but there's no burns. Oh, it's my other foot. I look at it, it's dirty, but there's no burns. And so I just walked on coals that were 1000 degrees and I was successful at it.

0:34:47 - (Dave Albin): But here's what's