SPEAKER_00 1:17

I'm so grateful for this moment. I was in an Uber with my boy Olivier, who's also an actor out in Canada, and we were on our way to Lu Kali. We're talking about women, the whole car ride. As we arrive at Lu Kali, the driver turns around and he's like, hey guys, one thing before you get out of the car.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Hello, and welcome to Acting Smarter Now, people. For those of you who are interested in getting prepared, becoming professional, getting booked, and becoming unstoppable, you are in the right place. Today, my guest is none other than Mr. Ben Michael Brown. He is an actor, musician, he's a life coach, helping people with sobriety, particularly men. And it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ben Michael Brown. I want to know if you could just take us back to the beginning of your acting career. What is it that pulled you toward acting? And was music already part of your life then, or did uh music come after you started acting?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

I started making music when I was 28, and I made music completely on a whim. I was not an I had never taken an acting class or even thought about acting at that point of my life. And one night, a buddy of mine got drunk until the wee hours of the morning, and he ended up crashing on my couch. And the next morning we both woke up, hung over, and he said to me, I had had this brand new Apple desktop computer. And he said, Had you ever, he said, Ben, have you ever made a beat on Garage Band? It's like this app that you can make music on on your or that comes for free on your computer. And I was like, I nah, I don't even know what Garage Band is. So we went in my kitchen and we made a beat, and I got so into it that I just decided to not go to work that day, and we just spent the day working on this song. And we ended up doing a recording of the song with zero equipment just by rapping into the computer. So the song you can imagine sounded terrible. Like the sound quality was awful. But we played it at a party for a bunch of friends like a week later, and everyone went nuts. They were getting calls the next day, like, I can't stop singing your song, I can't stop singing your song. So I decided to invest. I spent like $1,500 in music equipment, turned my kitchen into a little at-home music studio. This is when I was living up in Washington Heights at the time, and we started making music. We performed at a bunch of venues in New York City, had a blast, but there was often friction between he and I just because we had incredible chemistry as artists when we got into the studio, but I found him to be very unreliable. He would cancel on our studio sessions a lot, and I started to find myself feeling like this was what I wanted to do with my life. I was ready to drop being a real estate agent, and I was like, I'm just gonna become a rapper, and that's just gonna be it. Me and you were we're gonna be famous rappers, and that's just what's gonna happen. And four years later, when I was 32 years old, he and I broke up and I was really, really bummed out. Like I had a period of a few months where I would call it a depression because I was not as enthusiastic about making music by myself as I was about doing it with him. He and I had had so much fun working together when we were in the studio together, and I just didn't like sitting for hours writing alone, and the whole thing it just felt very lonely. So one night I was having a conversation with a friend of mine at a restaurant that I was working in at the time, and I was talking to her about how bummed I felt about the missing the music, and she goes, You should become an actor. And I was like, Why do you say that? And she was like, I don't know. You you look like an actor, you kind of you kind of act like an actor, you have like an actor's vibe. You should just go take an acting class. And I didn't really think too much about it, I just listened. So the very next day, I started Googling acting classes, and I took this acting class in Tribeca at Scott Freeman Studio, and I had this teacher who's actually a Broadway actress and a TV actress. Her name is Maria Dizia. She she was on Orange is the New Black. She's been in a she's worked, she works all the time. She's a phenomenal actress, and she was teaching this class. And I remember the very first time that I got up, we had we had this exercise where we had to put on clothes as if we were getting ready for a night out on the town, and be so we were pretending that we were by ourselves in our apartment and that we were getting ready to go out. And that was the whole exercise. And it was just for people who were, it was all intro, it was new, new actors. And I remember doing it and being so self-conscious about what the room was gonna think about me, just the way I was moving, the way the clothes that I was putting on. I had so many thoughts about what they were gonna be thinking about me. And in that moment, I was able to recognize that there was such a big difference between how comfortable I felt getting ready for a night out on the town at home by myself, versus how uncomfortable I felt pretending to do it in front of all these people. And I think there's something about me where I've always just been someone, if something happens in my life where I see that I'm not good at it or it's hard, then I just want to do it again. I'm like, okay, well, if I'm so scared and I want and I want these people all to think something about me, then that just means that I need to get more comfortable doing this in front of people, which means I need to just keep coming back so that I can keep doing it, so that I can become comfortable and get free. And that was it. I was I was hooked literally from the very first acting class that I'd ever taken. And that was in, you know, I was I'm 46 now, so I was 30, I was 33, I think, at the time. So I've been taking acting class, I've been studying and work, you know, as an actor for 13 years. And um, the last thing I'll share about it is that I I also realize now looking back, you know, I was bullied as a kid, and I had ADHD, and I struggled academically, and I had all these sorts of you know, things that always made me feel other than than people and and wanting to fit in. And I think that as a youngster, there was a part of me that did not feel seen and did not feel heard. Acting, standing on that stage, even though I was so nervous, I was also like, I have a room full of people that are all watching me, that are all listening to me, seeing me, hearing me, and I want more of that. I just want more eyes, I want more ears. And so I think there was just some low self-esteem stuff that was actually the impetus for me to begin acting and to keep going with it.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

I think your story is very common as far as um not feeling seen, not feeling heard, wanting that validation on stage. I think that's why most of us get into acting. So once you started getting into it, who is the teacher that really affected you?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I can't give you just one.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Okay, give me, give me who they are.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Because they all affected me at different stages in different ways, and I wouldn't have gotten to the next one had I not had the experience that I had with like the first one, Maria Dizia, was was incredible because I remember uh I I worked with her for two months straight, and at the end of the two months, I had been working on Fool for Love. And I was playing, I was doing the brother scene, and I was playing, I'm blanking on the brother's name, the the more aggressive one, the angry, drunk, aggressive one. Um I'm blanking on his name at the moment, but I was playing, I was playing him, and Maria came over to me after the last day of class, and she was about to go on maternity leave because she was about to have a baby, and she said to me, Ben, I was hesitant to come over and say this to you because I don't want you to, I was worried about how it might land, but I want you to know you could be working on television right now. You are a very you have incredible instincts, and this is definitely something that you should pursue. And I had been acting for two months only with her, and it really did hearing that from her really motivated me to keep going. She was instrumental, even I mean, she was a great teacher, but also in in pulling me to the side and saying that to me. Then I got into a two-year acting conservatory training with Terry Knickerbacher, who was a Meisner, it was a Meisner program. And Terry was a force in so many ways. He was strict and he held us to a very high standard. And he used to say things like, Don't make my money problems your money problems. Like he didn't want to hear about if you had some problem and did lost a job and couldn't pay your acting bill. You know, like he's like, That's your issue. Don't make your issue my issue. You know, he would show up to class on time every single, every single day. He would, he would, he had it, he had so much reverence for these playwrights, and he would talk about them like he was talking about gods when he would talk about Tennessee Williams or Eugene O'Neill or Augustine or August Wilson. And being around someone who had so much of a love, it was the first time where I started to realize like, okay, this is a real, true, dedicated art form. And the teachers and the people that are really, there are people that are that treat this like it's their religion. I don't think I had recognized that. I I well, I mean maybe I had an idea of it, but I had never actually seen it until I started working with Terry. And that whole two-year program, I mean, there was voice, there was movement, there was, you know, and I got to work on all these plays, Stephen Adley Gerges and Tennessee Williams, and and all these different, you know. So so Terry was a was a huge teacher in my life, taught me a bunch. And then, I mean, I'll I'll speed through the next ones because we could literally spend the entire session of Well, give me two more.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Just give me two more that really impact because all teachers impact us, but there's some that just leave an indelible mark in us.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yes, yes. Okay, so I would say Larry Moss. Man, Larry, Larry had so much fun, and he would stand on the stage and also like Terry had had the reverence for the actors, but there was, but Terry was very serious. You know, Terry would laugh every once in a while, but with Larry, there was this playful, almost clown-like energy that he would bring and he would jump. I remember one time I was working on a on a on a scene, and I had this habit of like continuing to put my hands to my sides like this when I was talking, and he just stopped me and jumped on the stage and started imitating me, walking around the stage. Like, and there was a part of me that that was kind of insulted by it, but there was also this part of me where I was like, We're we're all here, you know, messing up and trying things and and we're learning. And he he he brought so much levity into the room and and also made me recognize and and and also in his classes, I saw some of the best acting I had ever seen. Like the students that signed up to work in Larry's workshops were like it was some of the best acting I've ever seen in my life. TV, movies, all of it came in those rooms. And the last one, my most recent teacher who I've worked with for the last several years, is Tony Greco. And Tony Greco is a method acting teacher, and Tony is man, Tony is a force, he is hysterical, and what Tony has made me understand more than any acting teacher ever has is that everything is part of it. There isn't like there would be moments where I would do like a preparation for a scene, and I would be out on the floor in the in front of class, and I'd be working. I remember one time in particular, working on three sisters, and and I was sitting with my scene partner, and we were on a blanket, and she was like playing the drums, and I was doing some other weird thing, and then all of a sudden I like took a breath and then I started performing and said the first line. And Tony was like, What the? What the can I curse? Sometimes I can't. All right, all right. I didn't know if I could curse. Tony was like, What the fuck? Ben, he was like, What what what is this breath that you do? Like you're sitting on the blanket, you guys are having this experience, she's playing the drum, you're having your moment of whatever you're doing, and then you take this breath and then it like begins the scene. The scene had already begun. He's like, You think in your brain that just because this moment that you're not having isn't written inside the play, it's not in text, it's not in the stage directions, then that means that it's not part, but it's part of your experience. And right now you are playing this character. So why would you remove this experience that you're having and just like hit the action button like you're playing director and actor at the same time? So I would say that Tony, the gift that he gave me more than anything else, was remembering that while these characters are real, there are there they are simply on the page. And it is me who gets to turn them into flesh and to three-dimensionalize them, which means that I get to bring all of these ideas and interest and thoughts and things and parts of me into it, and I don't have to stay so strict about just what is written on the page.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Hey Hector, are you tired of being tired of being tired of being tired? Your pictures aren't working, you're not getting into auditions, your agents aren't calling you back, or worse off, you can't even get an agent. Well, if that sounds like you, if it sounds like you are at your wit's end, that you just feel like all is lost, you don't know what to do, come and join us at the Acting Smarter Circle, where we are a community of actors who help other actors. And I am your guide and your coach to help you with a plan, strategy, and your branding. So if you are interested and you're tired of being tired and ready for change, come and join us at actingsmartercircle.com. We're waiting for you now. A note like that transforms your acting.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

It really does.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

We don't know until we know. And that's what acting class is for, is to take you through so that you can connect all the dots, right? You're learning, you're growing, and then it's like, ooh, that's a ha uh aha moment. How do I get? Oh, I didn't know I could do that. I didn't know once I get on stage, that's it. You know, I'm here, I'm there. I love that. And I first of all, I gotta go back to Larry Moss because I love Larry Moss. How exciting that you got to work with him before he stopped doing live classes. Yeah. Because now it's all on Zoom. Um, I was fortunate to sit in on his class before COVID. And and I just recently audited a class he did, and he still has the spark and the passion and the love, not only for the profession, but for the actor. He wants to see you win. Yes. I love that. I love teachers who are not cookie cutters, but they want to see you win to bring the best out of you. So I love that. I I'm so happy that you have been able to study with great teachers, including Larry Moss. I just interviewed Katie, who works with him.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Oh, Katie, that's my girl.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, I've known Katie, oh my God, maybe 20 years now, and she's a force. So yeah, they're they're amazing people. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

I I love Katie. I love Katie too. I've I've hung out with when I lived in LA, I've hung out with Katie a bunch. One of the most memorable quotes that I've ever heard about acting came from Larry Moss. And he said, your life problems are your acting problems. And and I remembered hearing that and then having him, he's like, if you struggle with intimacy in your real life, you're going to struggle with intimacy as an actor. If you struggle, and he said, sometimes you might not be ready for a particular role, and you might actually have to spend a few months in therapy before you actually start taking on the role because you've not you might not have enough access to yourself to be able to go play that part. And I just I've learned, yeah, Larry's Larry's my guy. I miss him.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Oh, he's amazing. And so I want to get to the big part, your sobriety and how that connects with your acting. First of all, when did you realize that, hey, I've got a problem?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

You want me to tell you the exact moment?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Well, around the time I think we I think we have that epiphany of there's something wrong here.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Yep, yep. I'll tell you the I'll tell you the moment. So it happened when I was 38 years old. So I had been acting for about four and a half years at that point. And I am very confident that that realis this realization would have happened a lot later had it not been for acting. Because acting forced me to really dig way, way deeper than I had ever dug in my in my and be way more introspective than I had ever been before in my life. My father moved to the Bronx when I was 16 years old, and that was when I grew up in a predominantly white suburb uh in a town called Hastings. And when my dad moved to the Bronx and I was surrounded by Puerto Ricans, all of a sudden, I was like, oh shit. Like I wanted to hit on every single attractive woman that I saw walking down the street. I was I was fascinated by Latin women. Um, white women, when I was younger, they just didn't really do it for me. And and I didn't I just thought that maybe I was just not really ready or that interested, and you know, or or I was just too shy. But as soon as I moved, my dad moved into the Bronx, everything changed. I tell that story just to say that when I was 16, it really began me approaching women in public. You know, I would I would stop women in the street or on the train and be like, hey, my name is Ben. I think you're really pretty. Just wanted to know if, you know, you want to get lunch with me or something. Like, can I get your number? And I became addicted to it. Like I was doing it all the time, multiple times a day. And figure I started doing that when I was 16. I recognized that I had a problem when I was 38. So that was 22 years of that behavior. And one day I'm walking down the street in Soho, and I'm on my way to go meet a real estate client because I d I do real estate as well. And this really attractive woman walks past me the opposite direction of the way I was walking. And I'm immediately hit with this moment of do I go beyond time for my client that I know is gonna be waiting for me in front of a building, or do I make my client wait and be late and go run to go talk to this woman? I couldn't stop myself from going to talk to the woman. Now, things like that had probably happened fifty to a hundred times before and I never thought twice about it. But for some reason on this particular day, as I was speeding up to catch up to this woman, I had this thought that was there's a problem here. There's something that is off. And I went and talked to her. I don't even remember what happened. I ended up being late for the client. And then about two weeks after that, I was Xeroxing or I was doing something at the print printer, the printer uh in my office in Soho. And I was and the printer's right by the window. And it's on the second floor. Looks over onto like Spring and Broadway. And I see this beautiful woman walking down the street through the window on the second floor. I run down the stairs to catch up to her. Run down the subway. Catch her before she's go as she's going through the turnstile. End up getting her phone number. And I'm walking up the stairs after getting her phone number. Second time, I'm having this thought there's a problem here. And the third and final, like really, I'm so grateful for this moment. I was in an Uber with my boy Olivier, who's also an actor out in Canada, but we he was in New York at the time. And we were on our way to Lu Kali, which is my favorite sit-down pizza restaurant in Brooklyn. And we're talking about women, the whole car ride. He's talking about girls that he's interested in or girls that he's dating. I'm I'm doing the same. And we, as we arrive at Lu Kali, the driver, who was a black man probably in his mid-50s, turns around and he's like, hey guys, one thing before you get out of the car. I hate to have been eavesdropping, but you know, I we're in the same car. I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. And I just want to let you know that sex addiction ruined my life. I lost my wife. I lost the ability to see my kids. I lost an incredible job. And it wasn't until I found a relationship with God that I started to be able to get my life back together. And he held up this book, and I just remember the book said something about Jesus on it. And I immediately was like, all right, you know, the I I saw the book and I was like, whatever. But I had already had those couple moments prior, and there was something that really impacted me about that what that man said and the way that he had said it. So those were the three moments, and then there was a final straw, which was I ended up getting dumped by an actress months later that I was dating, who I was starting to fall in love with. And the day after she dumped me, we were we were dating for about a month, and it was clear that it started to become clear that my feelings for her were a lot stronger than hers were for me, and that was why she ended it. She was like, I'm I can just tell that you really are into this and I'm into it, but not into it the way you're into it. Like I was like, I want this to be my wife, and all this, and she was not where where she was at, which was a really hard pill for me to swallow because I was used to other relationships where I was kind of the one that was being chased, and this was the f you know, the first time where I was really getting my heart broken. And the very next day, randomly after I got dumped, I got a text message from a woman that I had hooked up with like months and months prior. And she was like, Hey Ben, do you want to hang out? And I knew that I shouldn't say yes. I knew that I should not say yes to go hang out with this woman literally the day after getting dumped. Like I was like, this would be a horrible thing to do. Sit in the pain, feel it. You know, you don't need to go jump into another woman's arms right away, but I couldn't say no. And we ended up having sex. I I didn't want to have sex. I was like, literally, there was a voice in the back of my mind the whole time, like, you can still cancel this, you can still cancel this, didn't cancel it. You know, we started hooking up. I was like voice in my head saying, Ben, you can stop this, you can stop this. Anyway, go through it, the whole thing, it was terrible. It was terrible for her, it was terrible for me. And the very next day, I walked into my very first 12-step meeting for sex addiction. And that was it. I I completely I became a daily meeting maker. I would go to meetings every single day. I would raise my hand and I'd share at every single meeting. I four months after being in the uh two months after being in the program, I quit drugs and alcohol. That was on April 20th, 2019. I started the program February of 2019. So by then I and then at that point, like I was I became abstinent. I stopped masturbating, I stopped dating, I stopped talking to women, flirting with women, doing drugs, drinking, like I went cold turkey on everything. And needless to say, it was an insane shock to my system. It was extremely hard. But that began my my sobriety journey.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

And what has the transformation from doing that done for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Oh my god. Where to begin?

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Um begin when you had to go cold turkey to start doing a whole different life, right? Because now you're doing a whole different life from what you're accustomed to.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yes, yes. Well, one of the things I've come to realize over time is that doing hard things, doing things that are challenging, facing, facing myself and facing the hard things and working my way through them and finding all the necessary tools and building all the necessary skills in order to get to get through them is how I truly meet myself. That is how the the meeting of me, that's how I really get to meet me. So I met God and I met myself through the process of sobriety. And I had no relationship with God before I got sober. And I remember going into a meeting, and I was just, I had started to put the drugs down and the booze, and and and I was, you know, I was off all the other sexual and romantic stuff. And I was just in a meeting, and I was like, oh my God, this is so hard. I'm just angry all the time, and I'm anxious all the time. And I was just come having one of my shares about how just hard it was and how miserable I was. And this guy, I'll never forget him, really sweet guy, gay guy. He comes over to me at the and he had he had a lot of sobriety. He had been in the program for a while, and he came over to me after the meeting, and he he was like, Let me get this straight. You're quitting cocaine, weed, booze, hitting on girls in the street, masturbating, flirting, sex, and dating all at the same time. And I was like, Yeah, and he goes, Oh, honey, this is going to be painful for a long time. So get used to it. And I remember when he shared that with me, it was like something lifted. All of a sudden, I felt I didn't feel so unique, like, but in a good way. It was like, oh, okay, this is how it's supposed to feel. This is going to be hard. Other people have done this before, and and um, and it made me feel like I'm gonna get through it. I'm gonna get through it. So I really, really dedicated myself to making a meeting every single day, raising my hand at every single meeting, staying off of what we call in the program bottom lines. Bottom lines are like the things that you're not supposed to be doing, and simultaneously, and this is the most important part, substituting the bottom lines with what we call top lines. So you so you can't just remove something and expect to be happy and okay with that. You have to remove it and you have to replace it. So it's like, okay, well, if you're not gonna, you know, do cocaine and booze and you know, go out clubbing until four o'clock in the morning and you know, hit on four girls a day and you know, flirt and masturbate and watch porn and have sex, if you're not gonna do all of those things that you've been relying on for such a long period of time and have built this dependency toward on what are you gonna start to build to take its place? So I created this list of top line behaviors, and I wrote them on a piece of paper and I left it face up on my desk so that I could, so that I it was there for me to see all the time. And it would be like jump down and do 20 push-ups, call a fellow, call a friend, hit a meeting, say a prayer, meditate, journal, do 20 jumping jacks, whatever, right? Like I just had this long list. Go to a yoga class, go to the gym, dance, throw on your favorite song and dance in your living room. And in the beginning, when I would have these moments of wanting to what I refer to as hitting the easy button, or or I I always I connect it to one of my least favorite inventions in the history of the world is CDs. I fucking hate CDs, I hate them. I think I think CDs ruined, ruined us. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

They're the devil! They're the devil!

SPEAKER_00 34:30

CDs are the goddamn devil, I swear to god. Because all because all of a sudden you could just, if you didn't like it in the first five seconds, you just hit a button and it was over. And you never like my favorite album of all time is Wu Tang Clan's first album, Enter the Wu Tang 36 Chambers. I have it, I have the record framed on my wall. It's my favorite album ever. The first when I when it came out in 1993, I was 13 years old, CDs were not around in 1993. There was only cassettes.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

So when when cassettes were the thing, you weren't really gonna sit there and I have to stop you because CDs were already coming in. I was in the record business, so I remember, oh yeah, CDs were were already coming in. Uh they were starting to phase out uh cassettes.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

In 93?

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Well, I was not listening to CDs. I was refusing.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Well, I was in the record business and I was in radio, so so I was there when we went from vinyl to carts that were like big old cassettes that they would put in the the um tracks. In the the yeah, like A-tracks. They weren't eight-tracks, but they were like A-tracks. So we would we would get the records and put them on the A-track to keep the record longer because on vinyl, after so many plays, it wears out or it skips, or you have all kinds of trouble. But in the 80s, the early 80s was when cassette came in, and then the CDs started to phase that out. So, okay, go ahead. I it's just I'm uh I'm uh that's part of my history. So go ahead. Got it. Well then you hated CDs, got it.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Well, then it was me that was just refusing to make the switch because I don't think I got my first CD until like 1999 or 2000. Like I I literally refused. And with a cassette, like the my my example of Wu Tang, I had to, I didn't like that album the first three times I listened to it. It literally wasn't until the fourth time that I heard that album that I was like, wait a minute, this is actually kind of dope. And then by the fifth time and the sixth time, I was like, oh, okay, no, now I'm obsessed. Now this is actually the greatest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. And it's still to this day my favorite album of all time. CDs robbed us of that because if you didn't like it within the first few seconds, you just hit the button, right? And you were on to the next thing. So I believe that porn addiction, sex addiction, social media addiction, booze, all of it. It's kind of like hitting the skip button. There is a process that we don't want to face. There is something hard that we don't want to experience. We don't want to experience the feeling of boredom. We don't want to experience the feeling of anxiety, we don't want to experience the feeling of not enoughness, of low self-esteem, of not feeling attractive, of not feeling this enough, that enough, whatever enough. So rather than find a way, find healthy coping mechanisms, new tools, new skills, really meet by and really meeting yourself and going through that process, that process of figuring that like whatever that is, figuring all that out. We're like, no, no, no, no, no. I just I want out, I want out of this thing, so I'm gonna hit the button. I'm gonna hit this button, right? So the sobriety prop journey was where all of a sudden they were like, nah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta stay in it. You gotta feel that that feeling of not enoughness. You gotta feel that feeling of boredom, you gotta feel that feeling of complete overwhelm and lack of clarity and not knowing where your life is gonna end up, and not knowing where your life is gonna take you, and does God exist? And do you have and what it do your is your relationship, is God hearing you? Is God not hearing? Like all those questions, all those things that are wearing on you. You know, does my partner love me? Do they not love me? Are they like whatever it is? And you gotta find a way to sit in the feeling, to experience the feeling, to breathe right into the feeling, and to make a conscious choice, not a compulsive reaction. We have a saying in program that came from um my friend Hal's sponsor, Lonnie, Lonnie, rest in peace, where he says, our entire recovery is a slow move from compulsive reaction to conscious choice. I'm gonna say that again because I think everyone really needs to, because I don't even think this is just about recovery. I think this is about growth. You could substitute the word recovery and just insert the word growth. Our entire growth is a slow move from compulsive reaction to conscious choice. Every single time I get on the elevator in New York City, what is the very first thing that I see the other person that gets on the elevator do? They pull their phone out and they stick their face in it. The other day, I the other day I said to a guy, he was like, we got it was just the two of us. We get on the elevator, he pulls his phone out, he looks into it, I said, Hey man, and he looks up like Yeah. And I was like, I was like, I was you ever I said, you ever notice that when two people get on an elevator together that don't know each other, one or both usually immediately grab their cell phone and take a look at it. I had no idea how he was gonna respond. And he just goes, dude, you're so right. And and we both had like a little laugh about it, you know? And it's just another example. We can find examples if you actually start paying attention to all of the moments during the day where you have an option to either choose compulsive reaction or conscious choice, you might have a thousand by the time you're done with breakfast. So I would say that I started to learn that. I started to really learn that. And my friend Hal also has an incredible saying, which is we as addicts believe that uncomfortable feelings will kill us. So to avoid those feelings, we go and take actions that actually might. And I learned through breath work, through meditation, through going to meetings every day, through going getting on calls with other addicts, through getting sponsees and actually helping other people that my feelings weren't gonna kill me. That actually feeling my feelings was the way to my salvation. That actually being able to face them, and it was facing my feelings and being willing to face my feelings, where all of a sudden my conscious contact with God started to happen. I now realized that God was guiding me the entire time. I just wasn't aware of it, which is why I say conscious contact. God was making contact with me. I just had no awareness of it. And now, um, seven and a half years later, if I had to if I had to take that entire long story that I just told you and simplify it, the most important thing that sobriety has given me is a relationship with my higher power.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

If you're enjoying this channel, I need you to do me a great favor. Yes, I do. I need you to subscribe to the channel. So if you can, just click the subscription button because it helps us to give you more great content. How's that? You hit the subscription button, I give you more great content. Deal, deal. Well, I'm gonna bring it back to acting because everything you said could translate into acting, going from the unconscious to being conscious. As an actor, we work towards being present in the scene. You know, we need to be present so that we can have an authentic relationship with the person we are talking to. That we, you know, a lot of times actors get into their, I'm gonna do it this way, and then I want you to do this, and it's not authentic, it's not alive, it's not real, it's it's a staged kind of dance, but there's no authenticity to it. And it is uncomfortable. You talk about the elevator, getting in the elevator and being with a stranger. If you're not comfortable with yourself, how are you going to be comfortable with somebody else? Whether you have an addiction or not, a lot of people are very uncomfortable in a strange space. That could be the elevator, it could be walking down the street. I had a situation a few months ago with a neighbor of mine. Nice guy, I always say hi to him. Well, we ended up walking, we were walking together. Not we weren't together, but we were keeping pace kind of together. And I could see he was getting very nervous because he didn't want to be nice to me. We had said hello and now he's ready to go. And so, me being me, I'm I'm I'm moving so I can keep up with him just to fuck with him. Like, I just want you to know that there's nothing wrong with us walking together. But but it's that thing of as an actor, how do you get yourself in a state where you are here, you're present now, and you talked about breath work, you talked about meditating. And because we're so, especially the young people, because I'm I'm a little older than you, I'm 66, and so we didn't have social media, we didn't have any of that stuff. We had three uh TV channels and AM and FM radio. That's all we had. Um, and so you have to interact with people. You know, you have to learn there, you know. I think we have so much uh noise that it it keeps us from getting to know people or getting to interact with people. You know, uh on the bus, uh growing up in New York City, you get on the bus, you get on the train, if you know something happens, you're gonna turn to the person next to you and say, Did you see what happened? Yeah, there's there's stuff going on, but now because we have headsets, we have all this stuff, we have our phone, we don't acknowledge what's going on. We just stay in our little bubble and do whatever that you talking about breath work, meditation, God bringing yourself to a place where you're present, understanding I'm uncomfortable. You know, why do we medicate? Why do we do what we do? It's because we are uncomfortable instead of going, I got this feeling right now. But what I love in 12 step, it says feelings are not facts. Um, a friend of mine uh who um uh I love his acronym, his acronym for fear. He says, fuck everything and run. And so it is that thing of not running, but staying present and go, oh, okay, that's what's going on. Okay, this is not uh comfortable for me, but I'm gonna stay here and deal with it. It sounds like you had such a shakeup of everything because you're in acting, it's already shaking you up. It's it's causing you to deal with stuff you may not really wanna deal with, or all of a sudden it opens up things that you go, oh my god. I didn't know about that. Do I really have to go there? You sometimes you're working on pieces that take you to the dark side. And if you don't know how to deroll from that character and deroll from that scene, meaning you went into this really dark space. Now you've got to come out. How do you come out and not get all damaged? Because that is something that we're not taught in acting class. We're taught how to go in, but I was never in an acting class that they taught you, okay, when you go in that scene and it's going to be really rough, here's a rope. So I so we can pull you back out. You're not taught that. And if you don't have those skills, I've seen a lot of actors go to drugs, go to alcohol, go to other addictive things, not to deal with what is going on inside of them. So what brought you to, I said all that to say, what brought you to at this time meditation and prayer and just breath work? What made you go? I think I need some breath work. I think I need some meditation. I think I need some young therapy. Because you also went into therapy. What was the catalyst? Like, okay, I'm in these 12-step programs, but what was that thing of going the extra, the the extra? Because I I have been in the in 12-step programs and I've seen people just stay in those rooms and never get that extra to get the full recovery. They're they're comfortable in that environment that then becomes toxic to me. To me, it feels like, wait a minute, I we're here so we could get better, not here so we can uh substitute one addiction for another addiction.

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Well, to be clear, I had started meditating and doing breath work before I got into 12-step recovery. And I had started therapy before I had gotten into 12-step recovery, which when I think about that, you know, I got sober at, I got into the program and I got sob sober at 39 years old. Had I not had all of those years of therapy and breath work and meditation, actually, meditation I began I started meditating in 2018. I star I got sober in 2019. So it doesn't that doesn't surprise me that that happened because the process of meditation in the beginning for me and I would feel kind of what we were talking about before about the easy button, you know, wanting out, right? I would I would it was the first time that I was actually sitting for in the beginning, I think I was doing two minutes. It was either doing two or five minutes, and I would just sit and breathe and try to f you know, stay like follow the breath in and follow the breath out, and my mind would wander and I would come back, and then I would feel agitated, but I would keep staying with the breath and I would feel all these different things that would happen, and I would stay with the breath. So it was almost like I was learning a new tool to once again remember that I can feel something and not necessarily have to act on it. I can feel the desire to want to stop the meditation, I could feel the desire to want to scratch the itch that's all of a sudden happening on my scalp. And I can choose to just keep breathing, follow my breath, and stay exactly still in that meditation for the five minutes or the two minutes that I've committed to doing it. So I was training myself on being present, I was training myself on sitting in the experience, feeling it, learning that it wasn't gonna kill me. So I think for me, I've always been, I don't want to say an overachiever because it's I don't think it's an overachiever, but I've always been someone who's like when I get a taste of something, and then I see like, oh, I want I want all of it. Like if I if I like my morning routine, my morning routine, I've had to calm it down a little bit, but my morning routine at times has been an hour and a half long because it consists of journaling, prayer, meditation, chanting, dancing in my living room. So it's like all these different things that I do because I find value in each one, right? Like it's good for me to it's good for me to journal because I'm able to get all the crazy kind of bouncing around thoughts that I have in the morning down on a piece of paper. It's great for me to meditate because I get grounded and I get present. It's great for me to chant because I because the chanting actually brings um what I get through journaling on the page. I almost feel like the chanting gets me that vocally. Like I'm able to connect my voice and express vocally to kind of get whatever craziness and energy that's out so that I can start to feel like I'm more and more aligned. I throw on a a reggaeton or a reggae song or an Afro beat song and dance in my living room because that starts to bring fun and levity into my body. And prayer is me talking to God. So they all have a different reason why they and then I and then if I hit a 12-step meeting, now I'm getting to be empathetic, I'm getting to listen, I'm getting to connect to other people's stories, I'm then getting to share my own. And you take all of those things, that is a great morning. That's a great morning for me if I'm able to do all of those things in a morning. But you know, it takes a lot of time to get all that done. And I I don't always have the schedule where, like, in order for me to make that happen, I would probably have to wake up at five o'clock in the morning and I wake up about six. That that that extra hour I would probably need, and I just waking up at five is just too hard for me.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

So Anthony Robbins talks about what you're talking about, is giving yourself that hour of power first thing when you get up to start your day right, because now you are intentional instead of having the day uh kick your butt, right? It it's that either you either you wake up to a fiver alarm, fire alarm going off, right? There's all these things that are pulling at you, or you intentionally said, no, I'm gonna set the tone for my day. I'm gonna journal, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna meditate, and I'm gonna dance. I love that. And you were talking, I'm thinking of the artist's way. Is that something that you did?

SPEAKER_00 53:29

I never did, I never read The Artist Way, but I know about the morning pages, part of it, and I did the morning pages for years. I just I heard about re write three pages every day, and I just started doing that. So I would write, I wrote three pages every day. Yeah, the dumping. I did that for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

I think it's crucial for actors to be able to dump first thing when you wake up so anxiety and all that stuff is not yelling at you, that you can start to have clarity of what you're gonna do. Um, want to talk about how journaling has helped you as an artist.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

Journaling has done a couple things for me. Number one, journaling made me realize that I'm a really good writer, and I don't think I had any idea or any desire to write. But there was something I got into journaling. Journaling started to become fun for me because I think I had always associated writing with schoolwork, and I hated school, I hated it, so I I never wanted to do anything that felt like an assignment or a project, you know. But when I started to get up and just grab the book and be like, man, I'm so anxious right now. This is so annoying. I don't like feeling this way. I wish I didn't feel this way. I don't even know what to write right now. I wish I knew what to write right now. Maybe I'll just look out the window. Maybe I'll look out the window and pretend that I'm looking at an elephant climbing up the side of a building, and the elephant's wearing a tutu, and the elephant's carrying a boombox and listening to LL Cool J. You know, whatever, right? Like, and then I would just write all of that down. And and after a while, I was like, I started to find uh a fun, a levity with writing that I never had before. So I was changing my relationship to it, and simultaneously what I was doing. I say this for addicts, but I think this goes for addicts, artists, I think this goes for everybody. It's why I love the book The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. We have to recognize on a certain level, at a certain point, that we are not our brain. Period. We are consciousness, and that's it. We have a brain and the brain does what the brain does. The brain thinks, the brain figures certain things out, the brain worries about stuff, the brain gets you know, likes things, doesn't like like the brain does a lot of stuff, but we are not the brain. So when I would write all of those things down, all of those incessant pinball-like thoughts that I was having in the morning, and I would look at them on the page, it was like I was able to get some distance between myself and the thoughts. Before the journaling, it was as if I couldn't separate myself. Not it wasn't as if I couldn't. I couldn't separate myself from my thoughts. I thought my thoughts were me. So as I'm sitting there having these bouncing around thoughts, all of a sudden the thought takes me this way, then it takes me that way, then it takes me this way. It's as if I was a dog on a leash and the thoughts were my master, just pulling me in different directions.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

You just hit on something that is so huge. That is the thing that gets us human beings. I'm talking about artists, I'm talking about everybody, gets us in trouble, is the thoughts. In the Bible, it talks about pulling down vain imaginations. Your brain is talking to you, right? You got that little critic in your head that's always talking to you, always saying stuff. And if you indulge it, it's gonna take you into a dark alley and get you beaten up. That's how I don't go in the dark alley, people. Please don't go in the dark alley. There's another scripture in the Bible that says, as a man thinketh, so is he. And one of the things that I learned, because you you're talking about God, and and the Bible is huge for me. And that because for me, it is a manual, not a religious book, but a manual, something to follow. And that one of the things I had to start learning was taking every vain imagination and pulling it down. That's not true. I'm not gonna hold on to that. I'm gonna speak what is true. That's not true. My feelings are not facts, they're just feelings, and I'm not gonna let it mess up my whole day. And as artists, we have to learn how to take the day, how to be intentional with the day, how to take ownership of our purpose, of our mission, our destiny, and not allow those thoughts, those lies to speak to us in a way that debilitates us. In listening to your story, what I love is how you have discovered your artist at a later point in your life. Like you had this artistic side of you, but it really didn't come to light until you were in your 30s with the music and then the acting, and then finding your mission, your your what I like to call your ministry, which is to coach other men, to help people with their sobriety. Because for me, that is part of your ministry, right? You're bringing people to their rightful self. I believe that we were all created for something incredible, that none of us are mistakes, no matter how we got here. We were created for times such as this. When I was a little girl, my mother would always say, I should have aborted you when I had the chance. And as a little kid, I would say to her, but it wasn't your uh ability to do so because God said, I'm supposed to be here. And so, and I didn't grow up, I didn't grow up in um a church. We went to Catholic school because that was the law in Spanish Harlem. But it wasn't like I was like, ah yes. No, my mother, my mother was a prostitute, my father was a pimp, uh, my childhood was very dark. But I knew God aside from Catholic school, I had a sense of who God was as a little kid, and I knew that God was always taking care of me. And I knew from the time I was little that I was put here for something important, that I was not an accident, like my mother said. I was not, you know, mistake. You know, uh, nothing she said to me, and I knew that it wasn't, she was just speaking out of her pain and her anger. But there was something that God had instilled in me to say, I created you for a time such as this, even when I did not know the Bible, because we went to Catholic school and we never opened up a Bible, and and I got to go live with Amish people for a year as a kid. I don't know if you remember Fresh Air Fund. So I my mother would ship us out to go away to whatever. And so I lived with Amish people for summer. And I always had these ideas in my head from Catholic school, like, why do I have to talk to uh a saint if I if if I just want to talk to God? And I would tell the nuns, listen, if I want to talk to God, I'm not talking to the secretary, I'm gonna go talk to God. I wasn't disrespectful, but I was always questioning authority and living with Amish people. I remember sitting, if you know anything about Amish people, they raise up barns. And uh in the barn is where they have church. One of the barns is where they have church. And so they have like this big cross, and it's just an empty cross. And I remember sitting next to the girl, the Amish girl that I was staying with, and I said, Where's Jesus? And she said, He came off the cross, and that was all I needed to know. After that, all bets were off. I went back to Catholic school and I wouldn't go to confession and I would say, look, Jesus ain't on that cross no more. I'm not gonna be talking to anybody. But what I knew at that at that age, and as a little kid in darkness, was that God was always with me. And and I was in a lot of scary situations as a little kid, uh, incredibly dark situations, but I had God. So you in your 30s are discovering your higher power. How is that coming from somebody who has always had God, even in the darkness of times, I had God, not religion, but God. God spoke to me, He speaks to me every day of my life. How is it for you? Because I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:03

First, I just want to say thank you for sharing that story. I didn't I didn't know that about you. And hearing, you know, you share about your mom saying, I should have aborted you when I had the chance when you were a little kid, and for you to be able to sh share that story with a big smile on your face is is is just you know, it's it's one thing that artists we we we have the ability to do that. It's like we because we use we use our pain often and these stories in a lot of our work. You know, we we draw on them for for experience that at a certain point, like I could tell you my father had seven suicide attempts, and I can say it without like falling apart. You know, I don't it's like I've done my work on that. I've not I'm not you know, I'm I'm not I'm not tormented by that anymore, you know, and and he might ultimately kill himself, you know what I mean? Like that might happen, and I'm not saying that I wouldn't shed a tear about it, but um anyway, I I just want to say I appreciate you sharing that because I you're such a remarkable force and you have so much energy and you're so you have such a confidence and a and a and an empathy and such a clear spiritual self. And it's it's so cool to hear that story about how you had such a strong relationship with God even from that young age.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

Well, I don't know where it came from. I I can't tell you it it you know, it didn't come from a church, it didn't come from somebody, you know, it it just was. I always from the time I was three years old, I could hear God's voice. From the time I was three, I was very hyper-aware because of everything that was going on in my house. And I was, and I also had the discernment to see spirits. That's a whole nother story, but I had the discernment to see spirits, and I had the discernment to see my mother's brokenness as a little kid. I have six other siblings. There's seven of us. You know, every sibling has a different story of the parents. I was able to see my mother's hurt and her brokenness. So for me, it was always finding shelter with other adults who were adults. My mother had my mother started having kids at a very early age, and she was a kid because her mother had her when she was 13. So there was no, there was no role model for her. So I didn't take it personal, but I am going back to you, I am just curious how you started, first of all, searching for God and being able to start to listen to how God speaks to you. Because I think for everybody it's different.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

Well, one of the acronyms, one of my favorite acronyms in 12-step recovery that I that I heard in 12-step recovery is the God, the God acronym, G-O-D, Gift of Desperation. You know, we we a lot of us find God because we're desperate for God. We're not we're we're not gonna make it without Him. And we've tried all the other things, they didn't work. They got us into a into a really screwed-up situation and they got us into a 12-step program. So now we're sitting around like, all right, well, what what am I gonna do now? How am I gonna get through this? And in the beginning, for me, it was just seeing these men and women, because I was going to co-ed meetings, both co-ed meetings. I went I I always went to more men's meetings just because I'm a straight guy who has sex addiction problems, and I was like, if I was in a meeting and all of a sudden I looked over and there was an attractive woman and she's talking about her sex addiction, I was like, this is too fucking triggering. I gotta get out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:58

It's distracting.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

It's distracting. It's distracting. I'm over here trying to be sober now. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't need to be listening to that. So, so I would go. I feel you go ahead. You know what I'm saying? Like, I gotta know my limitations. Yes, don't go in that dark alley. Don't go in that dark alley, don't go in that dark alley. So there were these men though, and women, as I said, that would be like, yo, just go pray. Like when I was struggling in the beginning, they would tell me to go pray. And I'd be like, All right, like, to who? To what? You know, and they'd be like, Don't worry about it. Like, don't even worry about it. Just every morning when you get out of bed, hit your knees, say whatever the hell you want to say, and then every night before bed, do it again. Like, pretend they were like, You're an actor, pretend that God exists. Just pretend. And I'd be like, All right, fine. So I because I wanted what they had, I clearly saw them as people who were living a life that I wanted to have. I was like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be obedient and I'm just gonna do what they tell me to do. So, you know, I would get down on my knees in the morning when I first got into recovery, and I would say, uh, dear God, uh I don't know if you exist or if you don't exist, but there's guys in the program and they seem to really have their shit together, and they told me that I should be getting on my knees and talking to you. So yeah, can you maybe help me have a good day? Thanks. And that would be it. Right? Like I I would really just say what was ever on my mind. And I kept doing it and I kept doing it. And then I can't tell you when, but at a certain point, I started to feel like I was no longer alone.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:01

Hey, actor, where are you going to be in 90 days from now? Is it going to be with that same old headshot that is not getting you anywhere? That same old story that it's everybody else's fault while you're not booking? Or even worse, depression, because nothing is happening for your career. Well, let me help you. Because in 90 days from now, you can have a whole new set of pictures that are built on your brand. You can have a list of agents that actually would fit what it is that you sell and a plan to have a more prosperous career. Listen, I cannot book you, but I can make you bookable. So if you are ready, willing, and excited to change your circumstances, come and join us at ActingSmarterCircle.com, sign up and get started. We're a weekly community that helps actors get in gear and get the career that they deserve. I know that feeling. I know that feeling when you can sense the presence of a higher power, when you can sense something, that energy that's in the room that is good. Because I've also been in the room where the energy is not good. Well, as a little kid, I could see demons. So up until I was 16, I could visually see demons. And then at 16, something happened. I couldn't see them anymore. I can see like a shadow. And I can, but I can feel them. I can feel them blocks away. I can feel when I'm getting ready to go into enemy territory. I got into the record business when I was 13 years old. I there was a radio station in New York, uh, WBLS, and when I was 13, it was just starting. And there was a dish jockey by the name of Frankie Crocker. And so I would listen to Frankie every day. And I would either be in the summertime, I would be on my fire escape listening to Frankie. And back then, the phenomenon was that all of a sudden WBLS started being played everywhere. So from four to eight, you could hear Frankie on everybody's radio station. It was early on. Uh FM was just coming into, uh we were just getting FM. So we were going from AM to FM. And so I would listen to Frankie, and I remember sitting there and I'm going, he needs to meet me. So I took myself, I looked in the phone book, found out where the station was, took myself down to the radio station to meet Frankie Crocker. So I ended up staying there for five years and um uh working there. I started out as a gopher before they had the word intern. I would go for this, gopher that. And but I learned a trade. I learned about music, I learned to program radio. I mean, I I learned everything that there was uh to learn. I got at that time, you had to have a license to be uh to operate the boards. I I took the license, I had the license. I was 16 at that point, maybe 17, and it gave me a career. But as a kid at the station, when artists would come in, I could tell who was good and who wasn't. And I mean spiritually, who had demons on them and who had the light to them. And when I came to Los Angeles, I worked at uh Casablanca Records, and it was most of it was disco music, and so I had to go to a lot of discos, and there were some discos that were so dark and so demonic. I remember going back to the office saying, I'm not going back to that place again. I'm not going, and I was like 18 years old, I wasn't supposed to be in there anyway, because in Los Angeles, you're not allowed to go into clubs under 21 when I got to go in because of my job. I was like, I'm not going there no more. I was like, and I know they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like I'm not going there. But the the thing that I have learned with artists and God is that when you surrender to your higher power, however way you want to call it, and you just trust God that you're able to be present in your work. We're going back to that being present, because you let go of ego, you let go of your way of doing it, and you just show up and say, okay, God, what do you want? I've learned my lines, I'm ready, whatever they they throw at me, I'm ready. Um, because I'm present. What are you giving me? You know, because sometimes as actors, we are, we have planned out the scene in a certain way. But then you get a scene partner who's doing something completely different, and you have to get with that program. You can't go, well, that's not how I want to do it. So, in your sobriety, you talked about Larry Moss, you talked about the gifts you got from uh Tony Greco, you you talked about how do you now approach your art that you're walking in a certain sobriety.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:42

Well, it brings me back to the quote from Larry Moss: your life problems are your acting problems. If I only have say this much capacity, because that's the way I've been walking around, is I've been I've been hitting all these easy buttons, you know, drinking and sex and all the using all these different things, I'm only gonna have this amount of access to myself because I never put myself in the situation where I had to dig deeper, where I had to develop a relationship with God, where I had to any of that. Like it was just it was just no, just keep keep keep finding the easy button. But once I got sober and went through that whole process and continue some stuff, it's a it's a lifelong process that I'm still going through now, I get to meet myself in more and more interesting and different and nuanced ways. And all these interesting people that come into my life at just the right time when they're supposed to come into my life, reflect these things back to me either directly by saying something to me or just something that I pick up just in the relationship, where all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm now, I'm now getting to learn something new. I'm getting, I'm, I'm, I'm expanding on this idea of who I am. I'm learning more about myself. I'm learning more about what I'm capable of. I'm learning more about my sensitivities. I'm I'm my ideas of the things that excite me and the things that I'm curious about are becoming more uh expansive. Through that process, I now read a play or a script, and it's like 99 times out of a hundred, I feel like I understand who the character is because I've because I've allowed all these different aspects of self to actually form. I've allowed myself to feel all of the feelings, to experience all of the things. I haven't made them wrong or decided this is who Ben is supposed to be or not who Ben is supposed to be. So if I'm reading, like if before I before I got sober, I would have been like, I'm Stanley Kowalski. You know, like I'm I'm like the kind of like I'm like the tough guy. I wear like, you know, I wear wife beater, and I'm, you know, and I and I tell my woman, you know, how she's gotta be, and I go to the bowling alley and I hang out with the boys and I drink beer. Like that's a perfect character for me, right? But take the play Shining City, where the main character is a closeted gay Irishman who was a who was a member of the clergy, who then become becomes a uh a therapist and has a seven-month-old baby with a woman, and then she's she's but she believes that he's closeted gay, and he's very, very like scared and walks on eggshells around her. I would I read that, you know, when I was like, how could how a hell am I gonna play? I understand him now. Like I've been through enough and faced enough within myself that I no longer read characters and say to myself, oh, I don't get that person at all. Because I can find, I can draw on something that I've experienced that I've gone through that can apply to that character. And it just makes me feel like a way, a way more versatile actor because I'm actually interested in more different more people. I have a beautiful range of friends. I have friends that are in their mid-20s, I have friends that are in their 80s. I have friends that are sober, I have friends that are not. I have friends that are liberals, I have friends that voted for Trump. I don't, I I'm curious about people. You know, I'm I'm curious about them. You know, I I'm and that curiosity for them could not have happened if I didn't open the door for curiosity for myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

And how does that talking about people, how does that translate for you working one-on-one with clients regarding sobriety? How how has that manifested for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

Well, it's manifested for me because when I'm working with an individual, each individual's story, what they've come from, is going to dictate how I choose to work with that individual. For example, I might work with someone who is more socially or romantically anorexic, which means that they haven't been on a date in a very long time and they're afraid of actually being, you know, emotionally, romantically, or you know, physically or all of the above intimate with another person. So because of the fear of it, they avoid it altogether. Now, if I'm working with an individual like that, and we're coming up with a plan, a 90-day plan of how we're going to start to structure their life so that they're going to be able to start to break through certain things and move in their life the way that they actually dream of, they get to live their dream life. We have to start to figure out a plan incrementally, little by little. What is your personalized plan going to look like? So I'm very curious about what are what are your current problems? Where did you come from? What is your story? What is your day looking like right now? What is your lifestyle? So that we can start to implement a plan. If I'm talking to someone who can't stop having random sex, meeting women and having random sex in bars, and can't hold down a relationship with someone, my plan for them is going to be very different than it was for the guy who I was just talking about before. And if I'm talking to a guy who can't stop watching porn and is addicted to porn, or a guy who's actually having a relationship with an AI girlfriend, and that's the way he's getting off, then I'm gonna have a very different plan for him. So my curiosity about each individual, and ultimately, one of the things that I've realized is that regardless of how great a teacher or a coach may be, regardless of how good someone might be at coming up with a plan that is going to help you in your life, if someone is struggling and they are coming to you for help, the very first thing that they need to feel is seen and heard and safe. And safe. So I first need to make sure that the person feels safe with me. And my curiosity in that individual is often what helps that to happen. Because I am genuinely curious. I am genuinely curious. I want to know about them. I want to know what they what their childhood was like, what their life was like, and what they currently struggle with, so that we can get all of that on the on the table and we can talk about what do they and start to incrementally figure out well, what is your dream? Because a lot of people aren't clear on that. They can tell you what their problems are, but they have no idea what they actually want. And once we can start to get some clarity on what you actually want, then we can start to work backwards and implement a plan little by little to start making that dream a reality.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:23

Okay, so you help people one-on-one, but you also have this wonderful podcast called The Shift with Ben Brown. What made you decide to start doing this podcast to help people with addiction?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:39

As I said, I got into recovery in 2019, and one of the things that I realized very early on was that I had a gift for speaking. And the way I realized that was that after 90 days of being in the program, you can get asked to what's called qualify. And qualifying means that you are you've been asked to be the lead speaker of a meeting. So the meeting might be an hour long, and you're asked to speak for 15 minutes at the top of the meeting. And then after you speak for those 15 minutes, they open up the floor and everyone else gets to share for three. And very often, their three-minute shares will sometimes be like, Oh, I'm having a really rough day, but very often it'll be because you said something that impacted them that they want to talk about. So from the very, very first time I ever qualified, and I had never sat in a room with 50 people and spoke for 15 minutes with every single one of them looking at me, I knew I had something. I knew that I had an impact on the people in the room. I could tell that every single one of them were completely focused and riveted by the things that I was saying. And I didn't, and it wasn't some sort of an ego thing of like, oh, I'm good at this. It was like, huh. Okay, I wasn't, I didn't know that that was like a thing I had, a skill that I had. So years go by and I qualify tons and tons and tons of times. And then I start working with sponsees. I start working with guys and actually helping them on their sobriety journey. So not only was I starting to realize how much of an impact, positive impact I was having on people when I was speaking at meetings, I was noticing how much of a positive impact I was having on these other men and their lives that I was working with one-on-one. I was seeing how their lives were changing after months of us working together. So one day I was on a phone on the phone with a homegirl of mine who actually lives in, well, she lived in LA at the time, and she was in this like dead end relationship with this guy that kind of kept screwing her around and coming back to her and then dumping her and then going back, and she couldn't like stop taking him back. And I we had this long chat for about an hour, and when we were done on the call, she said to me, Ben, you need a podcast. She was like, I remember almost exactly what she said. She said, You give incredible advice, you have an amazing voice, and I just really think you'd be able to help a lot of people. And she said, Me and my girl were gonna start a podcast, and we ended up not doing it. So I have all this podcast equipment. I'm just gonna send it to you. So she sent me this box, and the box sat in my living room for about a year. And finally, one day, I opened the box, and I was now it was just sitting in my living room open. So I was looking at this microphone because this is actually this was in that box, and I uh got asked to be the lead speaker at a 12-step meeting that was on over Zoom, and there were about 300 people on this meeting. And the meeting was worldwide. There were people all over the world in this meeting, men and women. At the end of the meeting, I put my number in the chat. I said, if you know, if anyone wants to outreach, we call it outreach. If anyone wants to outreach, here's my number. The meeting ended, and I I left my phone in the kitchen, and when I walked to the phone, my phone, I had 40 new text messages from people that were in that meeting and from all over the world. Just like, thank you so much. I want what you have. Your words, your words help me so much. I so relate to your story. Can you be my sponsor? And I looked at the phone and I looked at the box in my living room, and I said, I'm starting a podcast. And that was it. That was the moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

I love that. I love that. And how did you find um morning meetup?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:10

The way I found morning media was on Instagram. Oh, I think you know, Instagram, you know, they're good. Like they listen, you know, they got all the all those all those robots out there listening to you. So all of a sudden it was like I started having you know talking about podcasting. The next thing you know, my Instagram feed is getting flooded with this podcast, you know, thing and that podcast thing. And and David Shands came up on my on my podcast. And then all of a sudden I saw a thing for Podcast Summit. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna book this thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go book this flight, go out to Atlanta and go be a part of this thing. And uh I went out there and you know, the rest is history. I've just continued to my podcast comes out every single week, and and yeah, it's it's going it's going amazing and it's helping a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:03

I love it. So for those of you who are watching or listening, Ben's uh podcast is called The Shift with Ben Brown, and it is amazing. And if you have some kind of situation uh that you are addicted to something, I recommend you listen to his podcast because it is fire and it truly is a ministry. And just for transparency, Ben and I are in the same groups. We're part of a social proof circle as well as my seven figure podcast. And for those of you who are thinking about a podcast, starting one, my seven figure podcasts would be an extraordinary group for you to join because it really helps you. I mean, I I was doing my podcast for 10 years, or I should say my YouTube channel for about 10 years, and then I found my seven figure podcast, and it just changed everything for me. Um, and and I did it, was doing it for a long time, but it gave me focus, clarity, it gave me direction. Um, we do it every Friday morning, and uh the people who run it, David Chanz, CJ, um they really and Carl, they really give us information to move our podcast further. So for any of you that are watching that you think, I want to have a podcast, go for it, do it. And I just want to say something to you, Ben, because in listening to your story, you have, you really are inspiring for a lot of artists out there who think it's too late. It's too late for me to start a career. You started with music in your 30s, with acting in your 30s, discovering your other creative outlets like speaking and writing in your 30s. So I want everybody out there who thinks it's too late, it it's never too late. It's never, never, never, never, never too late. And you are a prime example of somebody who not only discovered it but jumped in in it and you're in it to win it. And I am such a fan. I'm a fan of watching you grow, develop, share, and and just have a heart for people. You know, you just have a heart for people, and you are you're committed to helping whoever shows up. So I I want to say thank you. I could speak to you all day. We'll have to do this again. We will Yes, yes. We can talk about a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:53

Well, I want to say, I want to first of all thank you for that, just all of those kind words. Like, really, it means a ton. I think you are uh you are a light, you are a light, you absolutely are a beautiful human being, and and so receiving all of that from you is is extra special. Um and I also just want to say one last thing, just as if I was to give actors out there any any piece of advice that one one thing that I'll say is there is nothing in this world that excites me more than the journey of sobriety and breaking free from addictions and and then once you put the disease, the drugs, the booze, the s whatever it is down, then actually that's part one. Part one is getting rid of the chemical. Part two is then finding living the dream. Like what is the expansion? What is the dream life, and how do we go and live that? Right. And that's what I do with my with my with the people that I work with. What I would say to every actor, I was I have a manager, you know, I audition, I go out for roles, I book, you know, gigs here and there for sure, but I I definitely had not, I had not blown up, right? I hadn't gotten my big series regular role or starring role in a feature film or even big supporting role in a feature film. Hadn't had any of that. Yet. Yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right. I'm that's why I say had it, hadn't, hadn't, right? And then in 2025, I had been working on this short film called Holla James that was about it was it was somewhat autobiographical about an addict hitting bottom. And it was this incredible story that I just loved, that I wrote and starred myself in, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:49

Went and raised I love that. I love that. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:52

Yeah, I went and raised the money. The the budget for the film was $100,000. I hired a producer. She's like, Ben, to make this film, you're gonna need a hundred grand. I went out and I raised a hundred grand. The the film ended up costing $117,000, and I went seventeen thousand dollars into my savings to make this film. The film is gonna be at its very first film festival this October 16th in Brooklyn. We just submitted to South by Southwest yesterday, submitted to Sundance like a couple weeks ago, and I will tell you that the process of going out and raising the money, writing the film, starring in the film, I now feel like I say, like before I found myself as an actor, just like, when is the door gonna open for me? When is the door gonna open for me? I'm building my own doors. I am no longer waiting for no longer waiting for doors to open for me. I got me and God and all the people that I know and the people that I love and people that believe in me and people that I believe in. We're going, we're making shit happen. And the thing that I can tell you right now, I am not worried about an audition right now. As I stand here before you, it's like they'll come when they come. But in the meantime, I now made a film that I know was fire. Like the film was so good, and it was the first film I ever made. So I know myself, I'm like, I'm just gonna keep doing this, I'm just gonna keep creating. And when you take that upon yourself as an actor to go and create your own work, you take you, you like, you take your power back. You, you, you all of a sudden you feel so it's such an empowering feeling to do it. So I would just say to anybody that is kind of feeling themselves, you know, sitting around, waiting for their phone to ring, go make something.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:44

I listen, you're talking to the one who makes. I've been making stuff since I came to Hollywood. I I have about seven projects under my belt as a producer, uh, from uh doing acting showcases for myself and friends, uh doing stand-up, putting stand-up uh shows together, having two stand-up comedy groups, uh, one that had a CD, which you hate CDs. Um The Hot and Spicy Mamitas. We we were very spicy mamitas. You like Latinas, you love this. From uh Making the Five Heartbeat to Why We Laugh. Uh those are two big um uh documentaries that I co-produced to Plain for Love, Romantic Comedy, and some web series, uh Diary of a Single Mom, Lost Americans. I'm a big believer that you do not wait. You you produce your own stuff. And I was part of Hollywood Shuffle back in the day. We did everything. If you know the story of Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend took his uh credit cards and financed his own movies. What you don't hear all the time is that it took two years for him to do it. It you know, he had a schedule of 18 days, but it was 18 days over a two-year period. And so I come from that school of you don't wait, you do. What can you do for yourself? And today, unlike when I started in the 70s, you have it all in your hands. This phone can make a movie, and and now it's even better because you can do verticals, you can take one-minute stories and just put them up on the internet on the internet and start going. So there's no excuse for you, actor, not to be creating your own stuff, not to sit and wait for somebody to rescue you because nobody's going to rescue you. That's that's a lie. They're not going to rescue you. So I am so grateful that you brought that up. I didn't know about your short. So I I'm so grateful that you shared that with us. And if if you, Actor, need help, please reach out to Ben Brown. His information is in the description below. And if you just want to be part of an acting group that helps you execute your business, come join us at Acting Smarter Circle, where we meet every Monday night. And my goal is to make you the star you want to be. So come and join us because we got a lot to help you with, and we will not leave you stranded if you're willing to do the work. And this is for everybody who's listening. The first thing is you got to be willing to do your work. And you can't just show up and wait and want everybody to take care of you. You have to come to the table and be ready to do your work. So, thank you for joining us, Ben. Thank you for joining us. Don't go anywhere. We have another fantastic interview coming right up right now.