The Ronan Levy Podcast

Mike Brcic is an entrepreneur, adventurer, writer, and family man in Toronto with a penchant for world travel.

After selling his company Sacred Rides in 2019 (the AirBNB of adventure mountain biking)

He went into a deep existential search for meaning and a journey to find new practices that would raise his consciousness and self awareness.

Today he runs Wayfinders, where he works with impact-driven entrepreneurs through courses, workshops, consulting, and of course, travel adventures.

In this podcast we talk all about connection. Connection to the self, the planet, other human beings, and the great mystery that is life.

This podcast is brought to you by Cizzle Brands, a company that I helped start whose mission is to elevate the game in health and wellness by replacing all of the unhealthy sugary and fattening foods in our cupboards with healthy nutritious alternatives.

Our first product is Cwench Hydration which has been formulated to be the world’s healthiest and best made hydration drink.

For a 20% off coupon code visit CwenchHydration.com and enter LEVY20 at checkout.

I can't help but love it when some people f*ck with authority, especially when they are on the right side of history. Prof. David Nutt is one of those people.

David is currently the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences. He is also the Chair of DrugScience (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD)) and President of the European Brain Council.

But he's probably best known for up-ending everything we were taught about drugs in high school after he authored a study published in the Lancet that showed, through a multi-criteria analysis, that things like cannabis, psilocybin and LSD weren't nearly as harmful to people as was our then (and still, frankly) vice, alcohol.

And we should all be grateful he did because in many ways that was a pivotal moment for the psychedelic renaissance and the start of a healthy reexamination of psychoactive compounds in our society.

His recent book, Psychedelics: The Revolutionary Drugs That Could Change Your Life - a Guide From the Expert, was published in June 2023 and is now available for pre-order in Canada and the US. You can get your copy here.

Hello everyone and welcome BACK to the Non-Ordinary Podcast, my sometimes serious sometimes not so serious podcast exploring the most interesting questions in life.

First non-ordinary episode landing tomorrow!

As 2023 has been a year of profound changes, ups and downs and lots of confusion and uncertainty for me, I couldn't think of a better episode to send this year off with than this one with Ben "Doc" Askins.

Give a listen and you'll understand why.

Ben "Doc" Askins is a no-one. But he is also Banksy’s erudite elder brother, a Deadpool wannabe, and the Shadow of the world’s most interesting man.

When artificial intelligence has a fever dream, it dreams of being Doc.

But if you actually care about qualifications, here is what you need to know about Ben. He has degrees in Outdoor Education, Intercultural Studies, Physician Assistant Studies, and Divinity. He has nearly two decades of experience practicing and teaching wilderness, tactical, and expeditionary medicine in the military. In civilian life, he is a Psychiatric Physician Assistant with an evidence-focused and integrative approach to mental health that includes extensive experience providing ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, medicine management, and spiritual direction. He is certified with the Multidisciplinary Association on Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. Ben is a member of the Wilderness Medical Society, a National Outdoor Leadership school alum, a veteran of the Global War on Terrorism, and has completed postgraduate training in Neuropsychiatry and Genomics.

I won't even attempt to put together show notes on this one because it would be a failed pursuit. But it was an awesome conversation.

If you're not nauseated by the end of this conversation, check out Ben's work here.

Every once in a while, life provides a sliding door moment. One of those pivotal moments in life for which there was a before and there is an after.

This conversation with Alex Charfen is one of those moments for me, as it helped me find a level of self-acceptance that I've never found before.

Here is a little bit about Alex...

He was never meant to be the Co-founder & CEO of a multi-million dollar company. As a kid, Alex had a tough time learning, fitting in, and following other people’s rules. His entrepreneurial journey started early on by selling things at school, and he went on to run a window washing service in high school and a financial consulting firm in college. In his twenties, Alex became a Fortune 500 consultant, working with some of the most successful people in the world. In his early thirties, he met his wife, Cadey, and sold his consulting business. Unable to stay out of the entrepreneurial world, Alex and Cadey started buying and selling houses and became one of the largest real estate companies in Florida in less than a year. Following the Economic Crisis of 2007, Alex and Cadey lost everything and went bankrupt. Rising from the ashes, they built an information product called the Certified Distressed Property Expert (CDPE) designation. Through their designation, Alex and Cadey worked with the majority of major lenders and real estate brokerages in the United States to help our country recover from the mortgage crisis. As a result, they helped pull forward the recovery of the foreclosure crisis by five to seven years, sold over $70 million, were featured on the Inc. list of fastest-growing companies in the country three years in a row, and won many other awards.

Alex went on to create the Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT), helping tens of thousands of entrepreneurs with six-, seven-, and eight-figure businesses to grow and scale. Today, Alex has created multiple multimillion-dollar companies, learned a lot along the way, and is teaching entrepreneurs how they can do the same. Sharing his journey with others led Alex to write for publications such as Success, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine, and his story has also garnered attention from major media outlets like MSNBC, CNBC, FOX News, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and Investor’s Business Daily. As a result of his mentorship and success, Alex is now known as the go-to person for helping entrepreneurs ascend the Billionaire Code and understand how to plan strategically. Throughout all of this, Charfen’s mission is to empower entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business and make their greatest contribution.

If you want to learn more about Alex and his incredible work with Simple Operations, visit www.charfen.com.

Key Moments:

03:00 - Alex's tumultuous childhood in Mexico City

10:40 - Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer make Alex even weirder

14:01 - adversity as a precursor for massive success

15:26 - a basic definition of The Entrepreneurial Personality Type

16:06 - Ronan's tumultuous childhood

17:44 - entrepreneurs are information seekers

20:00 - how entrepreneurs are often persecuted by the system and then want to fix the system for everyone

22:00 - momentum as a key determinant in an entrepreneur's happiness

23:26 - what's wrong with me?

27:10 - changing the entrepreneurial scoreboard

32:44 - the three elements of momentum

38:19 - Alex's own brush with insolvency

45:49 - Alex's phoenix rising from the ashes, and near collapse

56:27 - stillness in momentum

1:00:24 - a new definition of success

1:05:44 - some thoughts on Bill Gates