Growing up in a cult shaped Manny Wolfe's perspective on life and resilience, a theme we explore deeply in this episode.

Manny shares his journey from the confines of a restrictive environment to becoming a celebrated consultant and thought leader. He emphasizes that while trauma can be a catalyst for destruction, it can also lead to profound personal growth and artistic expression.

We dive into the importance of recognizing our struggles, not just as sources of pain, but as stepping stones to greater understanding and connection with others.

Ultimately, this conversation is about embracing our warrior spirit and the shared human experience of rising from adversity to find beauty and purpose in life.

Takeaways:

• The journey of recovery and self-discovery often involves facing uncomfortable truths about one's upbringing.
• Understanding trauma is essential, as it influences how individuals navigate their lives and relationships.
• Creating meaningful conversations is an art form that has become increasingly valuable in a superficial social media world.
• The process of personal growth requires resilience; getting back up after setbacks is vital for long-term success.
• Art and creativity often stem from pain, illustrating how struggles can lead to profound insights and expressions.

Links referenced in this episode:

• www.besitosbeauty.com

You can connect with Manny on FB: facebook.com/therealmannywolfe

or

FB Group: facebook.com/groups/theclientcreationmethod

Book: The Tao of the Unbreakable Man - available on Amazon

A Warrior’s Spirit can be found on all the major platforms at lnk.bio/daryl_praxis33 as well as on ROKU via the ProsperaTV Network app. Be sure to like or subscribe so you never miss an episode!

The music in this video is copyrighted and used with permission from Raquel & The Joshua 1:8 project © 2025 All Rights Reserved. All rights to the music are owned by Raquel & The Joshua 1:8 project © 2025 All Rights Reserved. You can contact Raquel at https://YourGPSForSuccess.Net

Coming up.

Did you grow up in a big family?

Small family?

Siblings?

I grew up in a cult.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So a pretty.

A pretty big family.

I don't want people to just bask in their pain.

I want people to see the arc of getting through it and the other side, that in spite of where you are, there's something that can come of it.

And A Warrior Spirit provides a platform for independent voices, professionals, and thought leaders to share their insights, experiences, and perspectives.

The views and opinions expressed by hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Praxis 33 or its affiliates.

Content shared within this program is intended for informational, educational, and inspirational purposes only.

While the host and some guests may be professionals or subject matter experts, the information presented is general in nature and should not replace personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding your individual circumstances.

By viewing this program, you acknowledge that any decisions or actions taken based on the content are your own responsibility.

Walked through fire with shadows on my heels Scars turned to stories that taught me to feel lost in the silence found in the flame now wear my battle cry without shame this isn't the end it's where I begin A soul that remembers the fire within welcome back

to another episode of A Warrior Spirit, brought to you by Praxis33.

I'm your host, Darrell Snow.

Let's dive in.

One of the things I really enjoy about doing A Warrior Spirit is that I get to meet some really, really cool individuals.

And today I have the pleasure of introducing you to a man that I've met through some mutual friends, but he's just a great guy.

Manny Wolf is a consultant and a content creator.

His company, Speaker Realm, guarantees that speakers who use his program will get on paid stages as well as TEDx.

But beyond that, Manny is a thought leader who tends to ask the deeper questions in order to have more meaningful conversations.

And, Manny, I appreciate you and welcome to the show.

Thanks, man.

It's good to be here.

I know you're hailing us from California today.

Is that where you grew up or where was little Manny running around?

I'm a true California boy.

Born and bra.

Born and raised.

Been here all my life.

Yeah, so, so true OG True, true

OG which, you know, they're kind of like Arizonans or unicorns.

Hard to find.

Everyone usually moves in or moves out.

What.

What part of the the Golden State did you grow up in?

I was actually born in San Francisco.

Oh, 49er.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I was born in San Francisco and then moved all around the Central Valley.

Up to Central Valley and Northern California is sort of this unclear boundary as to where one starts and the other stops.

So I always just consider myself Northern Californian.

But some people who are fussy will say the Bay Area is central.

I don't know, whatever.

And now I'm in Southern California.

Yeah.

Did you grow up in a big family?

Small family, Siblings?

I grew up in a cult.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So a pretty, a pretty big family

that tends to be a huge family Now.

It's funny because a friend of mine and someone that I've known for a little over a year, she actually was raised in a cult as well.

She, she was born into it and her family actually gave her over to the leader of the cult when she turned 18.

So, you know, were you born into it or did your family when you were younger move into it?

I was born into it.

I was actually the first, the first kid born into it.

And yeah, I guess my mom had, had moved there with my dad about a year and a half before I came along.

And then of course, my mom kicked my dad to the curb and so born into that cult and didn't have a lot of experience or time with my father until much, much later.

And how old were you when you were no longer a member of the cult?

Yeah, that's it.

So there are two different.

Broadly speaking, there are two different types of cults.

Now some people will say religious and non religious and some people will say like sex cults and non sex cults.

But really it's more like if they're, if they're militantly structured, super, super tight structure or if they're sort of more loose structure.

And ours was more loose structure.

So it wasn't a thing where, like in the movies, leaving the cult is this big process where the people come in the van and they're dressed in dark clothes and they kidnap you away from the cult and they have to reprogram you.

Ours was much more sort of loosey goosey than that.

And so I, I left.

I suppose technically I left the, the cult when I left home, which was about 17.

And then I came back home and, and I didn't even know it was a cult until, gosh, I was probably about 41 when I learned it was a cult.

I always just called us a commune.

And it's, it's funny to look back on it because I had a lot of those earmarks of like, you might call it like Stockholm syndrome.

Right.

I didn't realize how damaging the environment was until, until I went through A real sort of really, really gritty process of learning about why I kept doing all these same crazy things over and over again, you know, in spite of seeing that they were crazy and in spite of not wanting to do those kind of things and live that way anymore.

And so through that process of trying to figure out why, I kept having these sort of, like, automatic behaviors that were clearly self destructive.

One of the things I learned was that the environment I grew up in was a cult.

That actually was really helpful to put a lot of things into perspective, because prior to that, I was kind of just like going through life going, boy, there must be something wrong with me, you know, I mean, I had this, this great childhood, which it didn't.

And so why am I still such a.

Such a lunatic?

And, you know.

Yeah, and I chuckled at that because the, the other girl that I talked to, like, it was the, you know, van with the people coming to collect you on her exit.

Like, she really feared for her.

She really feared for her safety for a very long period of time.

And, you know, when you have this aha moment, because people don't know what they don't know.

Like, I grew up in a very abusive household.

My mom was very abusive.

But you think everybody grows up that way.

So you go, well, shit, everyone doesn't get beat with a bullwhip.

Like, that just isn't the norm.

So when you have this aha moment of, oh, crap, that wasn't really a normal childhood.

And it shaped my abnormal 20s and my abnormal 30s.

Because you said you were 40.

How does that affect you at 40?

Going, wait a minute, that wasn't normal.

Like, what does that epiphany do for you?

Well, so context really snapped a lot of things into place, Right.

That I didn't have answers for previously.

But it also, it also made me realize there was a lot more going on under the surface with me.

So it was kind of like realizing that there was a ton more work to do while at the same time realizing that it's like realizing I was more messed up than I thought while realizing I wasn't as messed up as I thought.

Yeah, that's a dichotomy that we all can, like, realize.

It's like, man, I'm really screwed up, but based on what I came through, I'm really not that screwed up.

It kind of makes sense.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was kind of like that.

It was, you know, I mean, I had it.

It was a strange moment.

It was a strange moment.

It really was.

And I mean, still to this day.

So I've figured out that for me, I don't think it's worth.

Especially not at this stage of my life, I don't think it's worth trying to heal.

Now, let me be very specific in what I mean here.

Especially if anyone's listening to this who is in a healing process, I've done a lot of healing, so that's.

First and foremost.

I don't act out.

I don't fly off the handle.

I don't do the things I used to do.

And just to give you one.

One potent but.

But offhand example of how wound up I was and how, like, remember those.

Those evil Knievel motorcycles that you'd wind up.

You remember what happens if you wind them up too much?

They take off from the launcher and they just sort of flip.

Yeah.

They get about a foot in front of you, and then, like, they just lose it.

Yeah, yeah.

They didn't go where they were supposed to, and then you'd flip because they weren't.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a great analogy.

For me as a kid, I was too wound up.

I couldn't control myself.

I just had all this energy inside me that I now realize was what we would today call trauma.

And just to give a quick example, this energy would build up so much that I went through a period where I would sprint through traffic as a child.

I would just sprint across the road.

And I didn't understand it at the time.

I thought it was funny.

I thought I was showing off.

I thought this.

I thought that.

But what I realized later is I needed something that was such an adrenaline hit that it would relieve the sort of tightening inside of me.

And so I did.

I did stuff like that, which is, you know, I don't recommend that.

As a rule.

Running in traffic is not recommended.

Duly noted.

The disclaimer on the front that, you know, take.

Take the advice.

Don't.

Don't run through traffic.

Now, did it cause you to act out in ways that got you in trouble with the law and.

Yeah.

So you were arrested a lot?

I was arrested very few times.

Especially considered compared to how many times I was almost arrested and how many times I should have been arrested.

I had an uncanny knack for being charming.

And, like, really.

I mean, my friends would look at me after I talked all of us out of getting arrested on two dozen.

Two dozen occasions, and they're like, what?

Like, how do you do that?

I don't know.

I don't know how I do it.

I just do it.

But I got caught red handed doing so many things.

Just.

That just was.

No, no way.

It was not illegal.

I knew all the cops in the neighborhood by name, you know, it was.

Yeah.

So I did a lot of, I did a lot of not going to jail when I should have, and then I did some going to jail too.

Did it lead you into the drugs and alcohol aspect?

I know the other way around it was the drugs and alcohol that led me into the, the going to, you know, confronting the, the confronting law enforcement, I would say.

I. I still remember the first time I got high.

I still remember the first time I drank wine.

I drank wine and got a buzz for the first time when I was 10 and I ate something like 25 hashish crackers at a family party.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

When I was like 11 and barely crawled back up to my room and sat there as my legs just spinning like helicopter blades, I was like, I don't know what this is.

And I thought I didn't like it, but then I went right back to it again as soon as I could.

So.

Yeah, it's weird how we do that though.

Like, we know that it's bad for us, but we're so addicted to the dysphoria that we just go back and do it in.

And I'm like, you, I didn't do.

My brother was the drug doer in our house.

I just did the alcohol.

But I remember looking back so many times where I don't know how I made it home or, you know, one time I woke up in a ditch, physically, not in my car, just in a ditch.

Another time I woke up in my driveway wondering how my car got in the driveway.

And I look back at how many times I should have died or could have killed somebody else in the process.

And it's, you know, a true miracle that, that I survived any of that.

And I'm wondering how long did that process last for you to where you were like, eh, in spite of the high, it's not a good idea anymore.

I got sober at 28.

Well, right before 28, like, like a month before my birthday.

And it's funny because at the time I thought I was like, God, my whole life is gone.

I've wasted my whole life.

So I got, I got sober right before 28 and that was that.

It really came down to.

I got to a place where I was, I was making plans with one person to hunt down and shoot another person and just something snapped inside me.

Something just gave way and I was like, I'm not doing this.

I don't, I don't know what happens next, but it's not that.

And so I told the guy.

There's a long story there.

Basically, I got out of jail.

When I went into jail, I was homeless and I was dealing drugs.

And so I had lots of friends, and I had my, my meager belongings stashed at about three friends houses.

And it was like a total of like five small boxes full of stuff, you know, and, and I thought that, that it was a pretty cool life to be able to pop into one friend's house and change clothes and then pop over to another friend's house and, you know, grab whatever, and, and it was just.

The ways we can dilute ourselves are wild.

They're wild.

I realize now that's actually a survival mechanism, but at the time, I just, you know, I just didn't get that there was anything wrong with it.

So I go to jail, I get out of jail, and I, I.

It's late.

It's probably two in the morning, but all my friends are.

Are meth.

Meth heads.

It doesn't matter what time it is.

I go and knock on one guy's door, and he answers the door, and he looks at me like he saw a ghost, slams the door in my face.

Go to another guy's house, same thing.

This happens three or four times.

And now at this point, I'm starting to get really, really frustrated, really angry.

And so I don't know if I called them or if I just happened to cross them, but I got two big friends of mine, went to the first guy's house again and knocked on the door.

And when he opened it, I kicked it in.

It kicked his door in.

And me and two big guys came in.

And I just said, I need some answers.

Somebody needs to tell me what the hell's going on here.

So it turned out that even though I was busted on some tiny little possession charge, I made the front page of the paper.

And it was like if, if I had, if I had known at that point in my life that, you know, you could, you could probably sue a newspaper for that kind of, like, behavior.

They positioned me as this drug kingpin.

I'm a skinny little homeless kid, and they positioned me as this drug kingpin that they, that they finally arrested after.

It was just this completely fabricated story.

Well, the problem was that all of my friends and all of their parents saw it.

So it was like everybody saw this thing.

And so all my friends assumed I'd be in jail for years.

You Know, they're, they just, that's what they thought.

So when I showed up being, being meth heads, everybody thought I had like, it's, it's so funny to look back on it because we were so small time, but you, you have this way of building up your own self importance, you know, when you're on drugs.

And everybody thought I was like a rat and like, like these guys that are spending, you know, $20 a day on drugs are somehow like who the, who the.

Who the DEA are looking for.

Right?

Yeah.

That's who they're spending their time on.

The 20.

The 20.

The 20 ouncers.

The, the, the self importance.

I think that crosses over in a lot of our life, regardless of the drugs or not.

You know, sometimes there's a point in our life where we, we think we're more important to other people than we are, which is why we spend so much time on other people's opinion of us.

Like I'm so important that your opinion of me matters so much.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Or that you even have an opinion of me.

Yeah.

And I've learned a long time ago that your opinion of me or what you think of me is none of my business.

And what I think is not always right.

So I shouldn't like, I should be very careful with what I believe my own thoughts because there's room for error in there.

Quite, quite a bit of room for error.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, addiction and, and the kind of trauma that, that, and I hate that word, it's been co.

Opted.

You know, everything now is trauma.

Everything now is, is the most extreme version of what it could possibly ever be.

If we disagree, you're a narcissist and you're gaslighting me.

No, we just disagree, you know.

Yeah.

I hate labels.

Labels, Right.

Sometimes.

You know, and you know, just because I, you call me an.

Doesn't mean you're wrong.

Sometimes I am an.

I don't need to label it.

Right.

Sometimes it is me.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, and so what I, the behavior of addiction and the behavior of people who actually kind of went through real more like textbook trauma.

It's just a more extreme end of the, of the spectrum of stuff we all have to figure out.

We all deal with, you know, over inflated self importance confusion about, you know, things like, like your place in your family and how your parents raised you.

Those things are endemic.

I actually, I actually have a, A theory that, and I hate to.

No, I don't hate to say it.

I just think it's going to be taken wrong.

I think trauma is part of the, part of the process.

I do.

I don't think.

I mean, I've been dealing with people for 45 years and I still shake my head.

And when I got my degree in psychology, one of the things that struck me was 3,000 years later and we're still asking the same fucking question, what am I doing here?

And what's my purpose?

And in.

Through all of that, I have yet to experience, whether it's something I've read, seen, or experienced in person.

I have yet to experience one person who's gotten out of life without something happening to them.

Right, exactly.

I've never met someone who goes from zero to death unscathed in any way.

La la la la la.

No.

Well, that was, that was the observation that led me to this idea that, that I think trauma is part of the human experience.

There are some interesting.

There are some interesting dimensions to that argument because trauma is responsible for great art.

Sorry, it is.

You know, we never would have had nirvana without trauma.

And you know, in hindsight, what great art, that was good.

God, you know, I go back and I listen to that stuff.

I'm like, oh, I hate to be cliche, but I feel his pain.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, but you can see that, whether it be in music, comedy, movies, art, you know, if you, if you.

Van Gogh, that guy was tormented.

Like, if you go to, if you go to actually study art as a form, it is, it is the good art has some level of sadness and pain through it, and that's what they're carrying, you know, through their, through their form.

And that's what I, that's what I said about, you know, this show, Warrior Spirits.

You know, it's not about the fight, it's how we rise from it.

But what I don't ever want is this show to become trauma porn.

I don't want people to just bask in their pain.

I want people to see the arc of getting through it in the other side, that in spite of where you are, there's something that can come of it.

And I may not relate to.

Like, I had the UN Security general from Iraq on.

Okay, well, I'm never going to relate to the UN security general from Iraq, but I am going to relate to the trauma that he got through or the pain that he went through in order to create who he is to be there.

So you're.

And I, pain might be different, and the people who are watching this, their pain might be different, but we can relate to what it took to get through it, to become something better from it.

Right, Right.

Yeah.

An oversimplified but effective way of thinking of it is trauma gives us something to move away from towards something better.

Yes.

Right.

And what are human beings if not life forms that seek better?

Like, that's it seems to me, that's what we do.

Right.

I've given a lot of thought to this, by the way.

Yeah.

No, you haven't.

You sound like someone who's just never, you know, had a moment to think.

I am going to.

I am going to take a quick commercial break and then we're going to come back and we're going to touch on those thoughts because I think they're valuable and it's why I was thrilled to have you on this show today.

So we'll be right back.

Standing tall and proud in a world full of colors Let your voice be loud but see the beauty where the fire, the light and power unstoppable ready to ignite.

Grab your shades, it's time for the glow.

Confidence in color.

Let the whole world know.

Besitos beauty because it's your time to shine.

For more information, visit www.besitosbeauty.com welcome back to the show.

Today we're with Manny Wolf.

And Manny is a consultant and content creator.

But in my opinion, he's a deep thought thinker who elicits great conversation.

And we were talking about how trauma and pain affect great art.

And I think in today's society, and you might disagree with me, I think good conversation is an art form these days.

I think it's always been an art form.

I think it's been one we've lost.

I think we appreciate it more when we see it now because there seems to be.

In my more conspiratorial days, I'd call it a concerted effort.

But in my less conspiratorial days, I would just call it a trend toward more superficiality.

You know, certainly social media thus far has perpetuated more superficial surface level interactions.

Anonymity during interactions is not necessarily something I think adds more value than it takes.

Here's my thing on.

On this stuff, though, the jury is out.

Because as a species, we are very new to this idea of instant global communication.

So I like to think we're in our sort of like, juvenile, our adolescence with it.

Right.

And I think that that mirrors the way a lot of people behave.

Our Beavis and Butthead days.

Yeah, the Beavis and Butthead days.

Like, there are a lot of people who get this, like, totally Cheap synthetic dopamine kick from being a holes and whatever.

Whatever.

Like, if that's the, if that's your high point of your day, you know, when I'm at my most magnanimous, I'm like, I'll take the hit just so.

Because if that's the high point of your day, you're not a happy person.

Yeah.

You know, like, oh, you really got a burn on me there on a comment on a post on social media.

But I think that, you know, then we have the emergence of things like long form podcasts and then now suddenly it's like, oh, maybe we do still have an appetite for good, meaningful conversation.

And so I agree with you, that conversation is a very, very, it's an art form and B, I think it's kind of coming, it's coming back a little.

But there was a period there, right.

Especially as the, as the, the idealized social media channels were focusing on shorter and shorter interactions.

I think that, I think that there was a fair argument to be made that like, oh, are we losing this?

You know, are we losing this important thing?

Yeah, well, it bled over.

I mean, there's two points to that.

First off, you know, it's coming back because Netflix just spent billions of dollars to add podcasting to their shows, to which they wouldn't have done if the long form podcast wasn't still coming back and something people were paying attention to.

And I think the pandemic kind of swung that when people had to go back into themselves and, and couldn't be with other people.

So they had to find these longer ways to, to satisfy their day.

But the other part of what you were saying, the 30 second sound bites, the short reels, the clips that became our news cycle as well.

And that's where it kind of got lost because people refused to go any deeper than that 30 seconds they heard on that sound bite.

And that was their sudden opinion.

Like they didn't do their own research.

They didn't think for themselves.

That was what they got.

And you know, the Stephen Colbert's and the, and the John Daly's of the world were not supposed to be our news organizations.

Right, Right.

Yeah, news flash, guys.

Yeah.

They're comedians and they're paid to satire.

That's like saying Saturday Night Live was.

I mean, yes, it's a reflection of our social society, but they're paid.

You have to have, you have to have a certain, a certain amount of discernment to understand how and why even.

Right.

You can't abandon discernment.

You can't you know, like, I mean, Colbert is a great example to me because when he was first starting out, I thought his ironic conservative guy was so genius.

It was so like, like you could tell he cared about it.

That's my feeling now.

Now he feels like a shill for one point of view.

He feels like a paid company man.

You know, it feels like Jim Henson has his hand up his ass making him say whatever.

And I think that's where it goes back to.

We believe everything we think.

Like he started believing his own hype.

And people do that all the time.

Now you are a consultant and you are paid to help people speak and get on stages.

So how does the kingpin of the Bay Area go from.

Go from, you know, busting outdoors to, to, you know, busting out stages.

Like how does.

Right, right.

How does that transition happen?

Well, there's actually a pretty straight line.

And so it goes like this.

I met my now ex wife and I had developed a habit of showing off for girls I was interested in by casually tossing out these God awful stories from my life.

And it worked.

It was a great way to impress girls.

And she just happened to be different than most of the girls I had met.

And so rather than being impressed and giggling and you know, oh my God, you're so brave and all that stuff, which is the response I was used to eliciting, I told her one of these horrible stories and she just stopped cold.

And she had tears in her eyes and she said, you have to write a book.

You have to write your life story.

You have to.

And she was just like emotional about it.

She wouldn't even let me talk.

She's like, no, no, you just, you have to do this.

And I was like, okay, okay.

And I literally went home that night and started writing.

And so I wrote the.

The Tao of the Unbreakable Man.

It's on Amazon for your perusing and pleasure.

And then I didn't know what to do with it.

I was sort of a man from, you know, my mindset was from the 80s and 90s where I thought you just sent out manuscripts to publishers and funny story, full circle.

It turns out you can do that.

But I didn't.

So anyway, I, I realized at that moment in time that that wasn't how things were working.

And so through some just random, like I went to Penguin's website and I was able to book a 15 minute call with a VP of publishing.

It's this weirdest thing.

And this guy gets on the call with me and he says, so what's your story?

And I tell him it's a great story.

It's a great story.

He's like, how big is your audience?

And I was like, my girlfriend now,

my ex, zero me and the man in the mirror.

Exactly.

So short story is he said, you gotta, you gotta grow an audience.

You gotta build an audience.

That's how you do it today.

I said, okay, how would I do that?

He said, podcast.

So I joined a podcast community.

I paid somebody for their podcast training program, I set up a podcast, I launched the podcast, which was meant to be sort of an extension of the stuff in the book.

And I deliberately tried to write the book like, like, I kept Jonathan Livingston Siegel symbolically in mind where I didn't want to spoon feed you lessons, I wanted them to be baked in the stories and, and I wanted you to sort of want to have to work to find the lesson.

That was what I hope to achieve with the style of writing.

Many people have told me since that I succeeded, which is a beautiful thing.

But the podcast was meant to sort of be an extension of that, where I would talk to people and I would find out they're sort of like you, like, what were your struggles?

What did you go through to get.

And what my thinking was at the time was I want to paint a picture of how even though our circumstances are different, we're really all the same in this one really important way, which is that while our details are different, the fact that we struggle is universal.

So this is this big high minded thing, right?

I put the podcast out there and people start sending me messages going, can you teach me how to sound like you do?

What?

But, you know, I saw an opportunity and it had happened that prior to writing the book, I had studied singing with about four different singing coaches.

I had done public speaking, I had done acting.

So I had these three different perspectives from which I could actually teach people how to sound better.

So I quickly threw together a program.

I took all the complicated stuff that I learned from singing and acting, primarily about voice projection and about, you know, what, what is and isn't sort of charismatic and attractive.

And I put it into this very simple program and just started going into Facebook groups and saying, you know, thanks for, thanks for adding me.

I'm so glad to be here.

I'd like to give everybody who wants it a gift.

I'll give you a free vocal training.

And that was how I got clients in the beginning.

But the thing is, is that mostly speakers were attracted to this.

90% of the people who signed up for these free trainings were speakers, and they loved it.

Some of them went on to ask me for other things.

So I developed body language again, drawing from acting and public speaking and performance, too.

Musical performance.

Like it.

There are definitely things you learn from hundreds of hours of performing on stage about what does and doesn't look good physically.

So I put together body language, vocal tonality, and storytelling.

And it was perfect because I had just published and released and launched this book, so nobody was going to argue that I didn't know how to tell a story.

And so I get speakers coming through.

They'd go through it.

They'd love it.

It was great.

Same question every time.

How do I get more bookings?

I love your training.

I feel so confident.

How do I get on stage?

And so at a certain point, I just sat down and figured it out.

And the.

And the reality is, life trained you for that role.

That's how you got out of jail.

Sometimes you're acting in your tonality ability like you innately had it, and now you're able, because you live through it, able to teach others.

There are some elements here that I want to run through real quick with you.

This is your guaranteed stage placement now, the speaker realm.

This is your current iteration of your program.

And talk a little bit about this for a minute.

Yeah, sure.

So the first thing to know is that technically, it's not a program.

Technically, it's a service that you can turn over to us.

We'll do all the work.

One of the things that I sort of arrived at from spending enough time in this intersection of coaching, marketing, and speaking is that everybody has a training program for you and even the best ones.

And I'm friends with some of the guys and girls who have the best ones.

They have terribly low completion rates, and I realized that they're low because people don't want to do the work they don't want to do.

It's just human nature.

And so what we do, wherever possible, is we do the work for you.

Specifically when it comes to pitching you to events, pitching you to conferences, pitching you to corporate, you know, getting you into the conversations with the people who will hire you.

We don't show you our process.

We don't show you our system.

We don't teach you our blueprint.

We just do the work for you.

We do it all for you, full stop.

So that's.

That's really what you see there.

I like your selections.

You pick some ones that I.

That I really like.

I'll.

I'll.

I'll show you a few more here in a minute.

But you really are the lazy man's pathway to these events.

Because a lot of people, and look, I'm no different.

A lot of people, we have our speeches, we have our talks.

We have the things that we can impact people with.

What we don't have is the skill set necessarily or the drive necessarily to do the legwork to show others that we have that, like, we can pitch them and we know that we can impact for them.

But rarely do we want to do the work to make those phone calls and spend our day getting on those stages and doing all that.

If I could do my little hot take on that, which is half sales pitch, half sort of like, insight, it would be this.

The kind of person that feels called to speak on stage is, is, is antithetic to the kind of person that likes to sit down and do fussy little detail work, repetitive tasks.

I finally figured that out.

You know what I mean?

It's like, it's just not who we are.

Yeah, we don't like that kind of stuff.

And the solopreneurs like, like me, we have to become good at those.

So part of our day we hate it, and part of the day we love it because we're actually getting to do what we have to do.

So I think what you do is bring value to a lot of those people.

But in your, in your process, you know, you also, you know, you have the, the one sheet, which is a very important role for speakers to, you know, to do that legwork if they, if they need to or want to.

So that's, you know, vital.

But one of the things that I, you know, and you're a very private person online as far as, you know, your, your life goes.

So a lot of what is, is seen is, is delved around the business and, and some of your.

I called you a thought leader because you ask provoking questions to get conversations started.

But what I like also about you, you've embraced AI and not many of us have done that yet, but you've done it pretty well.

Like, I, I love.

I'm going to run through a few of your AI photos here with the jet.

Yeah.

You know, the playoff of your, your name with the wolf.

But then, you know, the fact that you can get AI to give you the right number of fingers and toes in and of itself is, Is a great concept because, you know, no small feet at all, pun intended.

But, you know, sitting here pensively looking in front of the clock, you know, then, then I love this one with the.

With the briefcase with the, you know, high executive office with, you know, the.

The wolf lettering behind you.

Then, then we have you, you know, in your pensive state with your.

With your.

Your hands folded.

And again with the.

With the wolves.

And then my favorite.

With Godzilla and the car.

Like, how does your brain.

Go ahead.

I was gonna say an AI avatar of my girlfriend.

I was gonna ask is she the real deal in your life or is she.

Is she also the.

She's the real deal.

Yeah.

And she looks that good.

Penelope Cruz.

She looks that good, but she looks a little less like Penelope Cruz.

And if I.

Who does she looks like someone famous.

And I. I still struggle to.

To pinpoint it, but not quite as Penelope Cruz as that in.

And.

And I.

And I'll have to say, you know, you do not look like Godzilla.

And Lord knows, you know, you said you're a skinny guy.

That's a buff.

Buff version of.

Of Godzilla right there.

So.

Yeah.

So how do you.

How do you.

How do you embrace A.I.

so?

Well, because you use it effectively in your marketing and you use it effectively to get conversations started.

So how do you do that?

So philosophically, I don't want to put anything out that feels like more schlock for schlock's sake.

Right.

So there's a.

There's a discernment about.

Okay, what am I trying to say?

And I think that that's always been a question underneath everything I do all the time is what am I actually trying to say?

That may be a subject for another conversation because it's a deep one.

I'm currently writing a trilogy and it's fiction, but I don't ever want it to feel thrilled, throwaway or light.

So every time I write a scene it's like, okay, what am I trying to say underneath this again?

Another conversation, perhaps.

So with the.

With the AI images, what I want to do is most of the time they need to be the image equivalent of like writing a scene that has a deeper metaphorical layer to it rather than just a one dimensional superficial thing.

So with the office.

The office images, it's.

It's just constantly projecting and reinforcing an image of high standards.

Right.

An image of quality.

An image of exclusive exclusivity, I suppose.

Success and.

Yeah, and success.

Right.

So one of the things that.

That you learn if you study marketing and advertising, which I did, I got.

I got.

I was fortunate to actually study it underneath the retired VP of marketing for Tower Records.

And, and he was brilliant.

He just un.

He was a genius when it came to this stuff.

He was like Don Draper level.

And one of the things he, he talked about a lot was repetition.

Why are logos important?

Why does a brand matter?

Right.

What is a brand if somebody doesn't see it all the time?

So I know that if I keep putting the same sort of emotional tone out there with the images, that it'll have an effect.

And so that's a lot of what drives the choices I make.

Sometimes I like it to be more light hearted, sometimes it's more serious.

But even the Godzilla of me and my girlfriend, you know, like, I drive that car.

That's, that's the car I drive.

Mine is white, but it's the same car.

I'm a huge fan of Volvo's and I'm a huge fan of Godzilla because I'm a nerd.

And, you know, so that image was.

I've seen that theme in your, in your work.

Godzilla.

Right.

So how does a.

How does a kid from the Bay Area doing drugs, getting in trouble with the law.

How does he get to the point where he's now a successful content creator, entrepreneur, speaker?

You're kind of a speaker agent, even if that's not the label, but it gives the idea of what you do.

How does a person go from that to this?

Oh, it's easy.

You just buy my course.

No, no, no.

Bypass the drugs.

No, but how did you, how did you go from that life to this life?

Because you're living a pretty good life now.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, by, by any reasonable standard, It's, it's hard to.

It's hard to say it in some sort of cut and dry way.

There were some things that, that I attribute my ability to go from there to here, too.

One of them was at the moment that I got sober, I took sobriety very seriously.

Very seriously.

A lot of people, I say that because a lot of people who come into sobriety programs sort of, they, they, they say things like, well, I'm just stuck on this God part, or I'm just stuck on this, or I'm just stuck on that.

And I was like, I don't care what I have to do.

I just got done finding a way to not hunt down and shoot someone.

I don't care what I have to do to stay out of that life.

Right.

And so that was like, I really came at it with aggression.

And I believe that's important.

Maybe not aggression, but full commitment.

So then I started to, like, learn the spiritual tools of the AA community.

And, and I gotta Say, I'm not here to plug aa, but those are profound, man.

They are profound.

And so even as I got to the point where I felt like I didn't have a lot in common with the community anymore, I. I felt like I had more digging to do, right?

To me, it seemed like most of the people in the community sort of hit a level.

They were okay there.

They stopped kind of searching, they stopped seeking, whatever, no judgment.

I knew I had more shit to uncover.

So that'd be another thing, is I went aggressively again after understanding how I could have been so unhinged when I was younger.

And we didn't even talk about the violence.

We didn't even talk about the crime.

Trust me, it was there.

And we didn't even talk about the way that I treated women before I got sober.

And that was a big one for me.

The day I got sober, first thing I wanted to figure out was, why do I treat women like this?

This isn't even how I want to treat them.

So there were these things that my experience in the sort of official framework of the 12 steps, weren't addressing, not at my speed, that I wanted it.

So I went, you know, metaphorically, I went out into the desert alone.

And I did it for a long time.

I mean, years.

You know, my journey from there to here was gruesome, was brutal.

It was lonely, it was dark.

And it was just a test of will you fall or will you keep going?

I can't stress that enough.

Like, so maybe that's it, right?

To get from something like.

Like that to something like this.

Above all else, you must have the ability to get back up again.

You must.

And, I mean, I figured out a long time ago, before the term psychologically unemployable was trendy, I think I was psychologically unemployable.

I had to figure out how to make a living on my own terms.

And now it's one of those things where I'd actually like to say, if you look at me now, it's, like, one thing, but what it took to get here was something that I don't think a lot of people have.

I just don't think they have it in them, you know?

And that's why.

Right.

They don't want to go through the process, you know?

And that's why I never have anything bad to say about people who want to do the nine to five.

I used to.

I used to, right.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, like, we think we're so much better.

No, no, I don't Think that's it.

If you, if your risk threshold is, is within what I would call normal constraints, I'm not judging you.

My risk threshold is apparently through the roof.

It takes a lot of ability to get punched in the face.

It really does.

And just keep coming, you know.

I mean, I hope that's a suitable answer.

Well, it's your answer and it's the answer that got you to where you are.

But I think it's, in my experience, it's universal.

We haven't touched on it, and I would love to be able to have you back for a second, deeper one, because this time does go by fast.

But, you know, I think people who've gone through what you and I have gone through or what many people have gone through have either had suicidal thoughts or suicidal attempts.

And stepping back from the ledge and bringing ourselves back to this side of, of the, of the lifeline is an internal thrust that says, you know what?

This may seem like the way out, but this is a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

Or a permanent solution to a temporary problem, I should say.

Temporary problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, you have to be able to find something in you that gets you back up.

Now, for me, it was my connection to God and my faith.

Was that similar for you?

Yes.

And I do think this comes from.

I'll just say God with a capital G. I am not a practicing Christian.

Not that that even matters, I feel.

But, but see, there's, there's.

There's one thing that I've had even through the hardest parts is I've been able to see just the, the heartbreaking, tragic beauty of life.

You know, I, I, it's so beautiful.

It's so beautiful.

And I don't want to leave it any, not, not a second before I have to.

Yeah, there's a, there's an old country song.

Everyone wants to go to heaven.

Just not today.

Yeah, you know, but I mean, you know, just, just simple things like being kind to a stranger.

And again, I'm not being glib here.

This is the kind of stuff that has pulled me through the darkest moments of my life.

Feeling the breeze like there's so much beauty here.

And Saint God, I was given eyes to see it, because I do.

I see it everywhere.

And, and I suppose there's part of me that is, is and always will be an artist, you know, and when I see that kind of thing, it's like I feel some days like I'm the, the, the physical center of humanity, and other days I feel like I'm Nowhere even.

Like, it's not even part of me, but I can always see the beauty.

I think that's why I love nature so much, whether it be mountains, ocean, sky, whatever, you know, And I had the fortune to drive from coast to coast when I was in my early 20s, you know, before cell phones and when you had to have a Rand McNally map, you know.

No, none of that crap.

But there's so much beauty everywhere you look, and if you just look for it, you find something to find joy in you just.

Some days you got to look a little harder, but if you look, it's there.

Yeah.

So what do you want your legacy to be, Manny?

Yeah, I think about that a lot, actually.

At this point in my life, more than anything else, I want to be able to make a literary contribution to.

To.

I would like to be part of America's contribution to the literary canon of the world.

And.

And so I've written, you know, my memoir.

I am almost finished with.

I guess you could call it, like, the.

The.

The Highly Dubious Autobiography of My Father's Life or Biography of My Father's Life, because I didn't know him very well.

And then I'm working on a trilogy now called.

The first one is Apocalypse, Inc.

The second one is Outland, and the third one is Opus.

And it is really meant to be a fictional gonzo, over the top, over elbows, telling of this moment in time and how crazy everything has been, and offering some hope, of course, but.

But really.

Really taking on everything that we've lived through as a species in the last 10 years.

And I do it partly because I need to make sense of it all.

And I realize that all the things that have happened are too big to sort of, like, cleanly articulate.

And so what I've found is that.

And I've never written fiction before this, but using fiction to, like, using lies to tell the truth has been super therapeutic for me.

It's helped me clear, clarify my thoughts, organize things, and really get to the heart of some of the stuff about humanity that we're all sort of seeing, whether we acknowledge it or not.

And, you know, right now, humanity is kind of caught with its pants down a little bit.

Yeah, we're still trying to decide if we want to remain human.

Yeah, that's one of.

That's.

But that's only one of many pieces, right?

We're seeing.

We're seeing systems being revealed, like.

Like, institutions failing, all this crazy stuff.

And.

And I. I tried so hard to, like, articulate it in clean, short Concise sort of messages, and I couldn't do it.

And then one day I was.

I. I got in the habit of writing little poems to my girlfriend every day.

And one day I.

It just came out.

It's like.

Poem started with.

She said her name was.

And I'm quoting her here, tipsy, sober.

And I was like, what the hell does that mean?

And I kid you not, from there, this whole book spilled out of me.

I wrote.

I wrote an entire book in four months, 246 pages, and.

And now I'm on the second one.

So I sort of like, took me 50 something years to realize that.

That creatively, I think I'm a writer above all else.

But that, to me, is someone who is cathartically healing through their art process.

Absolutely, man.

Absolutely.

No doubt about it.

There is so much like.

There's catharsis.

There's this feeling that this is the highest, cleanest, most sophisticated expression of my creativity ever in my life.

Like, nothing else even comes close.

There's this feeling like I finally found the medium and I've been looking for it all my life.

Music, art, speaking, acting, you know, and.

And it turns out that writing satisfies everything, and it's effortless compared to the others.

So.

So that's what.

That's what I want, man.

So the last question I'm going to ask you, and I would love to have you back on for a second because this time flew way too much.

But it's a question I ask all my guests.

What does a warrior spirit mean to Manny Wolf?

I think a warrior spirit is.

It's an.

Well, there's a lot of pieces to it.

Like, I consider myself to be a warrior in a very real way, which is that I am capable of tremendous destruction.

And I have it.

I have it under wraps.

I trained in martial arts.

I've been in hundreds of fist fights.

So I feel like I'm, you know, at least legitimately an ex warrior.

I'm much older now.

I got a bad knee, so I wouldn't be able to do what I used to do.

But I think a real warrior versus a fighter, there's a deeper spiritual side to it, and there's something about an unrelenting need for truth, right?

Need for congruency, need for alignment, need for deeper awareness.

I think those things, in a way that doesn't necessarily run the risk of getting punched in the face, are as hard to pursue as physical courage is.

So, like, to me, yeah, I'd say a warrior's spirit is the subset of humanity that keeps us moving.

I really do think that, you know, I've noticed that it's a very small group, small percentage of humanity that keeps us moving forward into what I think is going to be really, frankly, a glorious destiny.

And it's the warrior.

It's the warriors that do it.

I look forward to walking that path with you as a fellow warrior.

Warrior.

So I want to thank you for your time.

We will have, you know, some of that book information in your other thing because I wasn't able to pull it from from where I was looking, but we'll have it in the show notes.

But I just appreciate you and thank you for joining me.

It's been a pleasure.

And if you'd like to get in touch with Manny, you can do so on his Facebook page or his Facebook group.

And as always, thank you for joining us on this edition of A Warrior Spirit.

We're now on all the major platforms as well as on roku via the ProsperITV app and at breakthroughradio.net so be sure to like or subscribe to catch all the episodes.

As always, the journey is sacred.

The warrior is you.

So remember to be inspired, be empowered, and embrace the spirit of the warrior within.

It's not just about the fight fight,

it's how we rise from it.