Peter Montoya: The Power Of Community In Health

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Welcome To the Join Up Dots Podcast with Peter Montoya

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes

Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

If you like the show, we would be so grateful if would consider leaving the show a review in iTunes as well as Stitcher Radio.  A couple minutes of your time can help the show immensely!  Thank YOU!

Introducing Peter Montoya

Peter Montoya is a #1 Best-Selling Author of The Brand Called you and his newest book The 10 Secrets of Leadership Power.

He’s also a sought-after Keynote Speaker and Leadership Development Strategist with expertise in developing High-Performance Teams. 

But for over two decades our guest was the financial industry’s go-to guru on marketing & branding, now he’s the CEO of ThriveUnion.

How The Dots Joined Up For Peter

Post-college he became a travelling speaker and salesman, chalking up over 3000 presentations and living in over 22 major cities.

Peter went on to found a successful advertising agency and software platform, dedicated to financial service professionals.

He quickly became the industry guru, writing numerous books, including one of his best selling works “The Brand Called You”.

Peter is a truly fascinating and multi-faceted guy, with decades of experience in speaking to audiences about his business knowledge, inspirational journey, and human behavioural insight.

He now pursues his passion for empowerment and community building, shedding light on society’s growing loneliness epidemic through his visionary organization ThriveUnion.

So how how did he take this early life lessons and transform his life to where it is today?

And if he could give one big piece of advice to every listener of Join Up Dots what would it be?

Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Peter Montoya

Show Highlights

During the show we discussed such weight subjects with Peter Montoya such as:

Peter shares how he used to feel such negative emotions in his life, which he can see now did nothing more than hold him back,

We discuss why gratitude always comes before happiness (360 from what most people consider to be true) 

Peter reveals the stats that up to 25% of entrepreneurs might well be suffering from ADHD which can actually be an amazing superpower.

And lastly……………..

During the chat we found out that having wonderful relationships are the number one benefit to a long and healthy life.

How To Connect With Peter Montoya

Personal Website

Website

Facebook

Linkedin

Twitter

Peter is available for media interviews at  www.PeterMontoya.com or (949) 334-7070.

Return To The Top Of Peter Montoya

Interview Transcription For Peter Montoya Interview

David Ralph [0:01]
Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream, a dream to quit his job, support himself online and have a kickoff live. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt, until he found the magic ingredient and no struggles became a thing of the past. I of course, was that person. And now My dream is to make things happen for you. Welcome to Join Up Dots.

Intro [0:27]
When we’re young that we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be, but somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling in Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph.

David Ralph [0:52]
Yes, hello there. Good morning to you. Good morning to you and welcome to Join Up Dots. Thank you so much for joining us. As well, today’s guest is somebody that literally as as most guests, you can go in any direction. But this guy, you can really go in any direction. So I have no idea what kind of show we’re going to end up with. But I’m sure it’s going to be informative, motivational and inspirational to its core. Because for over two decades, our guest was the financial industry’s go to guru a marketing and branding, and now he’s the CEO of Thrive union. Now front of union is the company of human well being through intentional community building and research backed education. They are shaping a world in which people feel empowered to progress from meaningless isolation, to purpose for belonging in their search for a life well lived, one a personal fulfilment and a desire to impact humanity’s greater good by let reason be our guide, compassion, our inspiration and experience our teacher. Like most guests who appear on a Join Up Dots podcast, our guest hasn’t always been the go to guy go to go Our guest was a young man where were all young men but struggled through school with undiagnosed ADHD. He was admitted to and graduated from the University of California, Irvine in political science, and post college he became a travelling speaker and salesman choking up over 3000 presentations and living in over 22 major cities. He then went on to found a successful advertising agency and software platform dedicated to financial service professionals and he quickly become the industry guru writing numerous books including one of his best selling works, the brand called you. He’s a truly fascinating and multifaceted guy with decades of experience in speaking to audiences about the inspirational journey and human behavioural insight into how did he take his early life lessons and transform his life to where it is today. And if he could ever give one big piece of advice to every listener of Join Up Dots, what would it be? Well, let’s find out as we bring on to the show, to start Join Up Dots with the one and only Mr. Peter Montoya. Morning, Peter, how are you?

Peter Montoya [3:09]
Good morning, David. I’m excited to be here.

David Ralph [3:11]
Are you excited, Peter? Because you said you sound like nothing could excite you. You sound so calm? Or is it just that excitement is all around you? And you’ve managed to beat the peaks and troughs?

Peter Montoya [3:24]
That’s a great question. I really try to find that Zen place where you know, kind of excited and motivated, but yet still not easily nerved. So yeah, try to find that nice, perfect place,

David Ralph [3:35]
because he is the perfect place, especially on an entrepreneur show. Where as you build your own business, there’s going to be peaks, there’s going to be troughs, more often than not in the beginning. There’s a lot of troughs and people generally struggle with that ability to find that level playing ground, not only in their energy levels, but their sort of mental levels as well. Would you agree?

Peter Montoya [3:57]
Absolutely. So I think when I first started is an honour Or at the age of 28. I used to get really excited. You know, as I say excited, I mean, angry, aggravated. Most of the day, when I was driving a car to an appointment or I was sitting behind my desk, I would probably spend most of my day fairly accurate, agitated, and I used to think it was a motivational drive. But now I realised how incredibly negative a state that is and how bad it is for me both psychologically and emotionally and physically, that I really do everything I possibly can to remain calm most of the day. So sure, I still get upset. I have feelings like a human being, but I do my best not to amplify them or to ruminate and negativity for as long as possible.

David Ralph [4:45]
is escaping, isn’t it? Because people go for you know, are you happy? And I always think to myself, not really sure because it’s just like normal life. Yes, there are moments when you you know, yet the birth of your child or whatever, but generally Really all the emotions that people talk about I kind of the advanced levels aren’t by?

Peter Montoya [5:06]
Yeah, I think as I’ve gotten older and as I understand, understood better, the range of emotions, I think a lot of my emotions in some regards have become kind of muted. I don’t have especially all of the high negative emotions nearly as much as I used to. And they’re probably much more in a narrow band. Plus I, you know, now I am so grateful I spend so much time so incredibly grateful for everything that I have in my life, that and that gratuity actually rewires the brain. And it makes you much more calm much of the time.

David Ralph [5:40]
Now, when you are grateful. I’ve spoken to over 2000 people now and literally to a man and a woman. They say something along the lines of when I started to really focus in on gratitude. That was when my life changed. Why is it being being Peter Montoya, I’m sure you You’ve delved into this world of gratitude and understand why actually works.

Peter Montoya [6:05]
Yes, I have. You’re absolutely right. And you know, as a young man, I always kind of thought, you know, when I was so hell bent on success and achieving things. I always thought that when you know, I have the things I want to have when I have a house and a car, but I security and spouse, then I will be happy that and that’s what always I had thought. And the truth is, is that gratitude precedes happiness. So once you become grateful for the things that you want, it isn’t about having anything at all isn’t about having the house of the cars and the success that you want. Once you just, you know, be grateful, then you will be happy on a very regular basis. A very, very simple equation.

David Ralph [6:45]
It’s controller, isn’t it? You think most people think but yeah, Once I’m happy, I will be grateful for stuff but you’re saying right, you’ve got to spin it. 360

Peter Montoya [6:56]
absolutely gratuity grateful. As always comes First. So there are some wonderful, wonderful, daily gratitude questions. You want to hear my daily gratitude questions.

David Ralph [7:07]
I would love to because you’re a guest on the podcast, and we’ve got some time to feel so go for it, Peter.

Peter Montoya [7:13]
Good, a good answer. All right. So here are the I think there’s six questions. And after each one of these six questions, you have follow up with two questions. So the first question is, what are you most happy about right now? And you answer that, that after that question, you ask, what about that makes you feel happy? And then how does that make you feel? So the first question is, what are you most grateful? happy about right now? Then, what do you have? What about that makes you feel and how do you? How does that make you feel? Then you ask, what are you most excited about right now than those two follow up questions. What are you most enjoying right now than those two follow up questions. What are you most committed to, in this to follow questions? What are you most grateful about right now? To follow up, and then who do you love and who loves you? And each one of those, followed by the the follow up questions.

David Ralph [8:07]
Now Now, leading Dhruva it seemed to me that one of the things that I could see as a thought bubble going around my head, was that genuinely surface comes into this surface is when you actually start to feel better about yourself and you feel, you know, because most of us create a business and at the beginning is all Me, me, me, you just being underneath I need to get money I need to pay bills. And you don’t you don’t make the money because it’s just you’re trying to suck it into your world. But once you start feeling good about yourself, being grateful for what you’ve got, you provide a level of service that people respond to. Now we hear it talked about, you know, the law of attraction and all that kind of stuff, which for many people they go against. Some people go totally for it, but it is still an outward motion. We’ve got to get into that really brings it back to us.

Peter Montoya [9:05]
It really is. It is all about being providing a service to humanity and improving the state of humanity. And once you are doing that at a very, very sincere level, all your natural motivations kick in your job becomes joyful and so much easier. Once you’re really connected to that purpose they provided the manatee.

David Ralph [9:25]
Now take you back then to the angry Peter Montoya who used to drive around just being sort of bitter.

Unknown Speaker [9:31]
was life

David Ralph [9:32]
like that because he was inviting it into your world Where were you? Not providing the service not feeling as good in your own skin and actually getting the results but your attitude was kind of forming?

Peter Montoya [9:46]
Yeah, I think it’s a probably a pretty good description. My early business career was incredibly hectic of you know, every single day was a new challenge. I was always aggravated agitated, and it was gentle. Life was just really, really hard. I mean, gosh, it was so challenging, unbelievably difficult. Every single day. No, it was not a home in my own skin. I had a pretty good relationship with my former wife back then at the time, but yeah, life was challenging.

David Ralph [10:14]
And and why was it so challenging? You know, where where was the difference between you then? And you now just experience? You know, do we get to a point where, you know, we understand more about ourselves, or is it the case that we’ve made so many mistakes? We’re running out of new mistakes to make

Peter Montoya [10:34]
quite confident and always make new mistakes? Like, I like to think that’s true.

Yeah, so a little bit all that. So first of all, it’s kind of my modality and I have ADHD, which means everyone kind of confuses ADHD, and I think it’s somebody who has no focus. And actually it means either you have hyper focus or no focus, so ADHD, they think that upwards of 25 5% or 30% of all entrepreneurs have ADHD. So it’s a real superpower in some regards, because once an entrepreneur finds their kind of their service in the marketplace, gets passionate about it, they can work 12 hours a day, six days a week, because the hyperactivity is actually their energy, it gives them drive. So they’re able to focus for long periods of time delivering unbelievable amounts of output on a regular basis. But usually, you know, you’re fairly aggravated, as well when you have ADHD. So it’s taken me a long time for me to kind of understand me, I didn’t know that I had ADHD until I was in my 40s. And I was in my 20s when I started a business. So it’s taken me a long time to kind of build up my own natural adaptive management measures for dealing with that on a regular basis.

A pause there.

David Ralph [11:50]
It’s interesting when you say that, but up to 25% of entrepreneurs, might well be suffering, but we spin it into a positive but it’s a super Power. Because early in early doors, I was doing stupid hours. But I don’t think it was because I was huge, the passionate I was huge, the desperate. But you know, I had to make a difference in my life and my family’s life I had to bridge the gap from where I was financially comfortable in corporate land to suddenly not destitute, you know, and I don’t think I would have ever got to that point. But certainly a point where I felt that the hours that the quantity of hours brought about the biggest rewards so I had to push through.

Peter Montoya [12:34]
Yeah, I’ve been there to completely and totally, nearly desperate and nearly destitute. I’ve stood on the brink of financial a complete and total ruin at least two or three times in my career. There was a time in 2008 989 10, somewhere in there, where I was married, I had two small children. I was somehow still making payroll, but we were losing our house and there was a tent city Going up here in Orange County, California. And I was thinking, Okay, if we lose our house, that’s where we’re going. And it was that touching go for some years, some months there in years there 2008, nine and 10 after the Great, the great collapse,

David Ralph [13:14]
and then we’ll look at you because that does that that song batum ooze it by Janis Joplin. Me and Bobby McGee. This is for the youngsters, and I bet I think I’ve never heard of this song, but there’s a line in it. It always hits home to me, and its freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, right? And I always think to myself, would it be that bad that you end up living in a tent? Or would it be like a liberation would you finally go actually, all these debts but I’m servicing all these car loans, all these kind of things that we we saddled ourselves up for? Once it’s gone, and I’m waking up and I’m seeing the sunrise and I’m getting through the day. You know, the classic case of the suicide rate in America is shocking. The suicide rate in India is almost non existent. Because you know, they haven’t got that ability to, to compare and be battling against what other people want, what would you think would have been a liberation for you? Although, in your head, you’d think the lack of status and all the issues that would come from it would be a bad thing.

Peter Montoya [14:20]
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge would have been making sure that my young kids were okay, I would have worked for their safety. And that would be my primary concern. I think.

David Ralph [14:30]
Jumping into that young kids kind of time by day day would have brilliant, you know, but they like to go camping with their mom and dad, and if a dad was taking them constantly camping, it’d be a good memory in their head, wouldn’t it?

Peter Montoya [14:43]
I love to think so. And I can only imagine the stress my former wife would have put on me after losing everything.

that have been a little challenging

David Ralph [14:55]
with your company from a bunion. What is that all About really because it’s it’s a collection of videos. It’s a collection of inspiring content, but I couldn’t quite grasp the core of it. Is it a sort of charity? Is it a paid organisation? What is five union? Tell us about it?

Peter Montoya [15:17]
That’s a really good question. I’m gonna take one big step back before I dive into that. So Harvard University has been conducting the longest study of longevity, to figure out what makes people live longer, happier life with better brain function. They started back in the mid 1930s was studying over 400 young men, both from Harvard and South Boston, South Boston was kind of a rough and tumble town back in the day. And they wanted to look at men of every different backgrounds. So they had different wealth backgrounds, education backgrounds, and they basically studied every different facet of their life over 80 years. A lot of these young men went they went on to become bricklayers. They went to World War Two they died with World War Two they became lawyers, they had became alcoholics, they got married, they got divorced. And all along the way every single year, these researchers went out and asked a battery of questions, looking at their social, their social lives, their spouses, their work lives. They were you know, their health a drew blood. And after 80 years absolutely the exhaustive study, they figured out what is the number one biggest factor in determining living a longer happier healthier life with better brain function? What would you guess was that number one most important criteria David,

David Ralph [16:37]
what do you be purpose?

Peter Montoya [16:39]
purpose is number two. Oh, really? Good. Guess I thought

David Ralph [16:42]
I was going to be on there. Um, no. So beyond that won’t be number one and happiness would be too obvious. Would it be community?

Peter Montoya [16:52]
Yes, there you go. It is the quality of relationships is by far and away the number one predictor of Living a longer, happier life with better brain function. As this has been backed up in study after study after study. There’s another great book out there called Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. And he studied these five different populations around the planet where people regularly live to be over 100 years old and not living 100 years old, being decrepid laying around in bed but actually having active lives whether you’re taking care of great grandchildren or running businesses or chopping wood, absolutely amazing. And the thing that he found with most people number one, they had a community of people they saw every single day and then number two, they had a purpose. So yeah, community and purpose is absolutely vital to our psychological health.

David Ralph [17:46]
Now, the other day, I had to we got a family business, I’ve got a business I own away from Join Up Dots and I had a cover in there is a retail places and it’s a shop basically. And the clientele, I’ll be totally on Is our old guys miserable, depressed, and you basically know that as soon as they open the door, you say good morning and I go, Well, I’m still living or good morning or an event tell you about that heart attacks, or that they’re two seconds away from a stroke or whatever. And it’s, it’s a game we play what kind of miserable statement are going to make and acted on the fact that my dad, who is 82 now basically never says anything about being ill. And so he’s never real. And he basically is planning to live to 150 and I went up to him after morning of these guys coming in just moaning and groaning and tell telling me about, but I’m on 12 tablets on this and 15 tablets on this. And I gave my dad a big hug, which is rare now our family, my mom and dad don’t do hugs. And I said, I really appreciate you Dad, I suddenly realised that you embrace life. And he said to me, Well, that’s the only way to He said, You know, he said, I’m going to be the only one at my funeral because everybody else I know would have died already. And unfortunately, doesn’t that say a lot about spirit and longevity and health? When it’s all about looking at, you know, what can I do and not what I’ve missed out on?

Peter Montoya [19:20]
Couldn’t agree more misery is absolutely a mindset. So people who are miserable have determined to see it. We don’t see the world the way that it is we see the world the way that we are.

David Ralph [19:34]
So how do you then?

Peter Montoya [19:37]
Oh, good question. So you know, one of the major changes I’ve made in the last year or two since I learned about this study, what I was as a business owner was hyper individualistic. You know, my mantra was, if it is to be, it’s up to me, so I made everything that I happen that needed to happen to drive my business forward and keep my family together. I’ve always been a very, very personal guy always had lots and lots of friends. But they were all disparate friends, not desperate friends, but disparate. All of my friends were kind of siloed. And none of them knew each other. So the major change that I made in 2018, when I had a large exit selling my software business, is I really got serious about community. I was talking with a good friend of mine at the time named barcamp Paulo, who is a real a huge advocate, advocate for community and it was talking about kind of how I was feeling kind of, like I didn’t belong anywhere, and I was having a lot of contempt for myself. I was feeling a lot of shame and unworthiness. And he said, Yeah, what you’re missing is community. And I said, Yeah, sure, whatever community and that word had absolutely no meaning to me, in my mind, that about that same time I was. I’m now on my second wife. And I was with her parents, my parents in law, and they were meeting with the same group of friends They’ve had for 30 years. They have 15 couples. They’ve been in community with for 30 years and they’ve gone through all of major life’s major tribulations together, married, college kids, kids leaving the house, kids going to college kids coming home, they’ve been through all those things together, they had this amazing community. And finally, it dawned on me, I don’t have that most of my friends don’t have that. We’re all living these little isolated pockets. And that’s when it really dawned on me that I needed to have a community. And that’s what I built, which has been an incredible major change to me. When I was a business owner, you know, I’m largely, you know, either met with my friends to have fun to go out drinking in a pub on a Friday or Saturday night, but it was never intentional as part of my well being. And now I actually scheduled lunches, coffees and dinners with my friends during the course of the week as a matter of habit, because it’s so important, incredibly important to both me and to them.

David Ralph [21:53]
I think this is key because I’m very aware how isolated I am. It’s a strange I’ve got friends across the world in every country now through Join Up Dots, and 99% of them I’ve never met in person. And I think to myself, this is how life is moving on, you know. And it’s very, very easy to think that a relationship is a couple of sound bites on Facebook Messenger, you know, but it’s not as it is now actually sitting and talking to somebody. And the other night, I went out for a drink with a guy that I used to work with, maybe 10 years ago, and we keep in contact very sort of scarcely, and I sat there. And he said to me, you know, he said, I think this is the first conversation I’ve had for ages, but I haven’t looked at my phone once. Because we were just in that moment of talking and allowing the other person to talk not over talking them, because you get that over time where somebody wants to talk about themselves more than anybody else. And then it becomes almost at Find the gap situation. But it was a natural flow and we both came out of it feeling charged up and and energised and realising that a good relationship and nurtured relationship is one that puts energy back into you. And you come out feeling better and lighter because of it.

Peter Montoya [23:18]
But you hit on so many really important points on there. Let me see if I can get a feel three or four tangents to go down on. Let me pick up the first one. So the first one is a psychological substitutes. So there are a lot of things that we’re doing right now in our society that make us think that we’re getting what we need, when in fact, we’re not. So there is no substitute with it for a face to face meeting with another human being where you are actually seen, and you see them. You are in that empathetic state where you are seeking to understand and connect with that person and to experience their feelings more than your own just for a couple moments. We need to be having experiences like that probably multiple times a day. And I would say most people are not getting it once a week or even once a month. Psychological substitutes. Let me give you some examples of those. A psychological substitute might be an adult film, rather than an intimate relationship with a partner. A psychological substitute is like all of the social media where we think we’re seeing what’s going on with our friends. But we’re not actually connecting in a real in a real way. It could be a video conference call and not you know, I’m grateful to have this call with you here today. But unfortunately, it probably does not meet my real need to be seen and acknowledged at a very, very, very deep way. So we as a society have kind of bought into these psychological substitutes, rather than getting the real thing. We have traded community for convenience. We have created connection for convenience.

David Ralph [24:52]
Now, where do we go wrong been to a point that we can’t backtrack because you know, it Are we too far down that line of electronic relationships? Or, you know, is there anything that we can do to get back because I think most everybody at their core knows it’s a bad thing. The fact that you know, you’re not sitting by a campus fire at night, having a great story and really connecting personally is very, very rare. How do we do that? How do we backtrack?

Peter Montoya [25:23]
That’s a great question. And that’s exactly why I created thrive union, thrive union is intended to be a real world community. That’s not religious. That’s not political in any way that just connects people to value and understand the importance of community. So we have our first chapter here in Orange County, and we want to create more chapters around the world for people who want to live a real Purpose Driven Life, which means are more dedicated to being fulfilled, then moving only toward having achievement and financial success. So that’s what thrive union really is about. That’s kind of why I backed into the way that I did talking about the incredible need for human connection. Because you’re right, our technology is taking is 180 degrees million miles an hour in the wrong direction right now.

David Ralph [26:12]
Now with yourself, actually, I’m gonna hold this question. He’s Jim Carrey.

Jim Carrey [26:17]
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

David Ralph [26:43]
Now for I bunion and this this whole conversation, Peter, I can tell it inspires you, you know, you you become more energised as we’ve been chatting. There was a very sort of subdued version of you at the very beginning, but now it sounds like it’s tapped into your thing. Now, with the words of Jim Carrey, saying you might as well do the thing back to love. Have you found that love thing? Is this your legacy piece? Is this something that actually works easier because you’re not trying to gain from it?

Peter Montoya [27:17]
I think in a lot of ways, that’s very, very true that what really gets me up in the morning every single day is three things. Number one, I loved either transforming or being around people who are in constant transformation. There’s nothing better than seeing someone the light in someone’s eyes ignite when they actually have a transformational moment and they experience a new version of themselves. Secondly, I really get excited, seeing people connect. I love it, the light in their eyes. I started watching a video on YouTube last night there was a highlight of military families being united. And I got through about five minutes of 13 minutes I was crying too much because it makes me cry seeing all those families connect that really gets me going. And the third thing that really gets me excited is making sure that our species maintains I’m desperately concerned about the future of our species and a civilization. And so getting people united in harness working together to solve really big problems. gets me excited. Those are the three things that get me up in the morning.

David Ralph [28:22]
Now, how do people get part of the tribe? You know, because, you know, in in the world, there’s some great people, there’s some amazing people, but there’s always a few people that you perhaps wouldn’t actually want in your community. How do you separate the ones that you want to the ones that you don’t?

Peter Montoya [28:42]
Great question. So we have a number of values that thrive union and one of them is radical belonging. So we accept all people and if you come to one of our meetings, which we have here in Orange County, California, we have 50 people every every Sunday morning, and we have people from their early 20s up until their 80s we have That broad of an audience there every ethnic background you can possibly imagine there every religion and every political background, and yet we find commonality and celebrating our humanity, and also making sure that we’re keeping our species alive. So we have this one thing in common even though we’re incredibly diverse in our physical packaging out there. So we accept all people. So however this mean we accept all of their behaviours. So if people come into our meetings and they’re disruptive, or they do the wrong things, they can be at debate we asked the behaviour to stop and or we may have to ask somebody to leave it hasn’t happened yet. And usually what happens when people don’t feel like they belong is we’re loving and accepting to all people but they usually self select out. If they find they don’t, aren’t quite fitting in. So that has happened a number of time with people who were kind of like a square peg in a round hole.

David Ralph [29:54]
And what was me what’s makes us different from say a cult where people Going into it what makes you different?

Peter Montoya [30:03]
Oh, gosh. So first of all I made a long study of cults and cults are absolutely repulsive, repugnant, and one of the most evil things on the planet, we are absolutely positively not a cult. I’m glad that you raised the question because a lot of people were probably thinking it. So first of all, calls have an absolute belief system, which you have to adhere to, we don’t, we have a very, very open value set that we adhere to. That’s number one. Number two, cults usually beat people into submission, either physically or mentally. And basically try to get people to here to the a certain belief or a behaviour set. We don’t do that either. And also, cults usually exploit people financially we don’t do that either. So the number of Thrive units $50 per month here in the US, or pay what you can, so we have nothing in common with calls us up but thank you for asking the question though.

David Ralph [30:58]
Okay, so So let’s look at The actual content that you bring, because one of the things that you asked me to do was watch one of your videos. And so I went over to there. And I watched the profound power of sleep. And then I watched the transformative power purpose. And then there was another one I was as well, but there was about three or four, and that very well constructive five to six minute videos, cartoon based, and the one that I’m really into at the moment. So I want to sort of touch base with you on this is the power of sleep

Unknown Speaker [31:29]
because

David Ralph [31:30]
I lost the ability to want to sleep, because I felt that it was a badge of honour, not to sleep. And when I had, you know, I used to sleep just because I had to sleep. And then I had kids and sleep went out the window. And then I became a businessman and entrepreneur, and it was that kind of thing. Yeah, I only have to sleep three minutes a month and I can still function, but you actually come and now you know I am for 13 hours a day. Now. I don’t really Get that. But I don’t see as a waste of time I see it as absolute Rocket Power for everything I do.

Peter Montoya [32:09]
But a good degree more. Yes. So sleep is really important. A lot of us have a really hard time sleeping these days, we’re only sleeping five and a half to six and a half hours on average here in the United States as adults, and is really, really bad for us. We really should be sleeping between seven and nine hours a night somewhere in that band. And every once in a while someone says, Well, I don’t need that much sleep. My bodies require that much sleep. It is possible that you’re an outlier, but probably it’s probably not true. What’s fascinating to me is the following is that Americans used to sleep nine to 10 hours a night, every single night, up until the early 1900s. And do you know what changed the only 1900s that drew our sleep from nine hours a night to five and a half hours a night

David Ralph [32:55]
electricity,

Peter Montoya [32:56]
electricity the light bulb. So since we had a light bulb Eventually had screens and radios and things like that we had so many distractions that we stopped sleeping. I guaranteed any person who says I don’t need more than five and a half or six and a half hours of sleep. If we were to put them out in the forest with no electricity within a week, they’d be sleeping eight or nine hours a night. Once again, it is what their body naturally needs.

David Ralph [33:22]
I think this is interesting stuff because I know with all the the things to do, there’s always something to do in the evening. You can get on your laptop, you can watch a box on Netflix, you know, you can always do something. Now I literally Well, I do, I don’t look at a laptop or a device after six o’clock. So after six o’clock, I just maybe read a book or whatever. And I had my daughter’s friends round the other day, and they was in one room doing dancing. And I was kind of in the other room and I thought mice will go to bed I felt a bit tired here and I looked at the clock and it was just after Seven o’clock at night. And I went and centre, I’m going to bed now her mates but I was a freak. And I apparently when your dad goes to bed at this time, but I just look at it as if it’s nothing to do it in my body just into my body and I went off to sleep and I woke up at half past 10 I felt like I’ve been asleep all night. And then you have to sort of rally yourself to go back again. But it’s one of those things that I don’t think people grasp. You know, how much do you sleep and how important is it to you?

Peter Montoya [34:31]
I’m sleeping I’ve gotten myself back up to about eight hours at night I was sleeping five and a half and six hours a night, you know for the better part of 20 years. And and the stress and the anxiety kind of follows with it. My quality of life has gone through the roof when I regularly sleep about seven and a half to eight and a half hours a night. So that’s what I’m shooting for every night. I to go to bed early. I’m usually going to bed, around nine and then waking up around five Kind of my routine,

David Ralph [35:01]
which is good and one of the things you should always do is get up at the same time. Not fun to keep that. Yeah, keep it keep that routine. If you go to bed at the same time, you know, wake up, even if you have a really late night you go to a party or something still get back up at the same time each morning and then your sleep gets better.

Peter Montoya [35:19]
Everyone’s looking for a magic bullet when it comes to sleep. They want the perfect pill or the magic solution, the magic oil they can put on their face and automatically go to sleep and there really isn’t a magic pill to improve your sleep. In that video that you watched which is@youtube.com slash thrive union, we gave really practical steps that actually do work and having a regular regular schedule is one of those sleeping in a pitch dark room with complete and total blackness is another one. staying off screens making sure none of that awful blue light gets into your system after six o’clock in the afternoon. Evening is a phenomenal idea. So those are in also not taking naps, sleeping in a cooler. Room on a firm bed. All of those will help create the maximum sleep capacity for you.

David Ralph [36:06]
And also sleep on your own. I know most of us don’t because we’ve got partners and stuff. But certainly when my wife goes away and I sleep on my own, I have an amazing night skip. You know, it’s almost disappointing when she comes back. And she gets in on the other side because, yeah, I suppose you know, when you’re a kid, you always sleep on your own, don’t you, you get put into a bed and you sleep like the dead or numerous reasons. I suppose you’ve got no responsibilities. So if something goes wrong in the house is not your problem. You hopefully sort of worn out by being a kid running around and stuff. It actually takes me to a question here. Knowing now how kids operate compared to when I was a kid. I was always out on my bike always running around always and chasing. And now certainly my son literally comes back from school lays on his bed with these sort of 40 inch TV playing these games. They don’t seem to have that burn up of energy. Do you think that has an effect on sleep as well? are we creating a new generation of kids that are used to going to sleep with with, you know, blue light in their eyes all the time?

Peter Montoya [37:15]
What Mike My son has every device to I’ve got a 13 year old son and he’s got a switch, an Xbox, a laptop, a regular computer and now an iPhone. When I was a kid, I only had one toy It was called outside. Yeah, that was the only toy that I had as a kid and myself and my four brothers were forced to be out of the house until you know well after dark back in the house, and you’re right, we were completely and totally exhausted. Yes, I think I’ve done an incredible disservice to my son and allowing him to get so addicted to technology, and he’s gonna pay really bad Pat price for unfortunately. Number one is a really bad habit. And number two, he’s not nearly as competence. Unfortunately, in the material world, he’s really good at getting things done online, but basic things like cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry, you know, pumping a bike tire. He’s not nearly as good as those things because I haven’t forced it upon him. And the third price he’s going to pay is also with friendships. Almost everyone, we’ve kind of been talking earlier today about living a longer, happier, healthier life. It’s having those friendships is a very, very direct correlation between having good early friends in your, in your adolescence, and having good friends later in life. So yeah, I really think I’ve done a disservice to my son in the way that I’m raising him.

David Ralph [38:39]
But we all do the same. You know, I can’t get my kids to do anything really. And unless you pay them, you know, I talked about this on the show all the time. But I just before this podcast episode, I record at the back of the garden, and I went back to my house because my kids are broken up from school today, and they’re there already. And I said to him, why don’t you cook dinner for Mum, when when She comes back, you know, so she doesn’t have to do it. And all I got was, oh, I don’t know what to cook. Oh, she won’t like it. I said she’d be happy with beans on toast. If it means that, you know, she doesn’t have to do it and you’ve made the effort. There is a generational change to pressing a button and just making a pop up just doing this, you know, the bare minimum, isn’t it?

Peter Montoya [39:23]
Mm hmm. I think you’re absolutely right. And having the same fight with my 13 year old son over here, too. And it really concerns me.

David Ralph [39:29]
Well, it doesn’t concern me about your son. But um, it does concern me that we’re running out of time on this podcast episode. So let’s listen to some words that formed the whole format of the show here, Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs [39:40]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards. 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust and Something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.

David Ralph [40:16]
powerful words

Peter Montoya [40:18]
Yeah, those words speak directly to me. I don’t logically believe in predestination. I don’t think it’s true however subconsciously, I do. And as a kid and and young man, I always believed that I was going to be a very successful and they were most of my career. So 14 of my 20 business 2014 years of my 20 business years as a business person, I was flat broke and upwards and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in debt. But I always persevered forward, kept taking one step in front of the other, to whatever I believe my destination was at the time, and that perseverance and that belief that I would eventually end up there worked out for me

David Ralph [41:00]
Now is a big day in your life when you look back, but everything became good was Was it your mindset? Was it a situational shift shift?

Peter Montoya [41:12]
For me, it was a radical change in my business strategy. I was working at an advertising agency, and which I could I had to kill every single month in order to eat. So every single month, I was responsible for generating between 200 and $400,000 in new sales, and I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t have enough money to either pay my employees or put food in my children’s mouth. And I was running that business model for 10 years. And it was really, it was killing me. So I made a major shift. And I wanted a recurring revenue business. So I started a software company, which was based on a subscription model. And that took three or four years to get up and going, but once that model had velocity, and I had enough subscribers, that really changed my life, and that was a hard lesson for me to learn that I did not want to be at an eat to kill business.

David Ralph [41:59]
Well, just before Go on the Sermon on the mic that sends you back in time to have a one on one. Give me some reasons why people should flock to thrive Union for the people that have been listening to the show. How do they How do they get into it and really gain the most from it.

Peter Montoya [42:16]
So first of all, go to our free life school which is on on YouTube to go to youtube.com slash thrive union or YouTube and search for thrive and you’ll find our channel subscribe to it. And every single week we publish a new video that gives an insight on how to live life. A life school more or less is everything you need to learn about living life that you did not learn in school. Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn about relationships, responsibility, integrity, we kind of learn by trial and error. And so we do everything we can to distil it into really simple concepts that people can understand and then implement to make their lives better. So that’s the first place they should go, whether no matter where they are in the world, and we’re gonna be using that channel to open up in launch new chapters as we grow

David Ralph [43:02]
and and what will people get from it.

Peter Montoya [43:06]
They will get insights very unique insights into how to live their life better. It’s like having your own little personal life coach without the expense as just popping into your feed once a month, once a week, giving you a couple of new ideas on live life,

David Ralph [43:22]
right stuff and the more ideas you get the it just spins off in different directions, doesn’t it? Once you become open minded and interested, I think that’s when life really shows you what it can offer.

Peter Montoya [43:35]
You’re absolutely right. I call that being woke when you start to become aware of your own subconscious thoughts, and the behaviours that creates and the results that you’re getting. So you want to change your thoughts, which changes your decision and your behaviours, which will change your results. And until you change your thoughts, nothing else will change for you.

David Ralph [43:54]
Well, this is the part of the show that we’ve been leading up to and it’s the part that we call the Sermon on the mic when we send you back in time. To have a one on one with your younger self. And if you could go back in time and speak to the young Peter, what agent? What advice would you give him? Well, I’m going to play the music and when it fades, you’re going to speak to him. It’s a sermon on the MC.

Unknown Speaker [44:19]
We go with the best

Peter Montoya [44:38]
young 18 year old Peter, here’s what you need to do. First of all, you need to shut up and you need to listen a lot more often. I know you’re headstrong. I know you think that you know at all, but you really don’t. You’re an arrogant little Putz. So get lots of advice. find lots of older advisors and mentors. Ask them lots of questions. Get their insight They live by it. That’s number one. Number two, maximise your education. You got a decent undergraduate degree, but you could have gone to the best universities in the world. You should have gotten all A’s and all B’s in your undergraduate, and then gone on and gotten a postgraduate degree, either in law or in business or in economics or in communications, and in something and use that as a springboard into your professional career. You had the intelligence for it, you had the access to it, you just didn’t have the discipline. Oh, by the way, you have ADHD. It isn’t highly diagnosed back in the late 80s and early 90s. But go see a doctor who knows what that is, and get the medication in the queue. So you can actually be in class, actually focus study and get the grades you need to actually launch your professional career.

David Ralph [45:51]
Oh, I thought you were still gonna keep on going. Right? I was I was listening to every word. So Peter, what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you?

Peter Montoya [46:00]
Please visit youtube.com slash thrive union and or our website which is thrive union.org thriving in.org

David Ralph [46:08]
where I have over links on the show notes as always to make it as easy as possible for you, Peter, thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots and please come back again when you’ve got more dots to join up because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our past is the best way to build our futures. Peter, thank you so much.

Peter Montoya [46:29]
David, thank you

David Ralph [46:32]
Mr. Peter Montayo of Friday of union so are you inspired to go and get free content, learn about the power of sleep strengthening your mind and body, your belief detection system there’s loads of content on there and they’re very watchable videos as a little cartoons and stuff. Totally free thrive union and is the life school is like a life coach without the painting which is which is always good. The trouble is if you Get if you don’t value it, that’s that’s a difficult thing. You’ve really got to put your heart and soul into these to make sure that you get value. And you don’t just sign up for them and don’t use them. Until next time. Thank you so much for everybody. Thank you so much for Peter and you know, just just come back again next time be waiting for you see by

Outro [47:22]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you or wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.