[00:00:27] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Dave Albin. Dave. How you doing, buddy?
[00:00:34] Dave: Hey, man. Hey, Jay. Thanks for having me, man.
[00:00:36] Jay: You got it. You're CEO and founder of Firewalk Productions But let's take it back to the beginning Where did you grow up and did that have any impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life?
[00:00:47] Dave: Sure. Absolutely. It sure did. I was born to a single mom, in Hollywood, California, at Queen of Angels Hospital. And, two months before I was born, my biological father, who was a pilot in Korea, he hurt his head somehow. We don't really know what happened. All we know is that they had to put a plate in his head to save his life.
Well, Jay had also took his life because two months before I was born, he had been talking about the pain and not whether, you know, whether he could take it anymore. and he turned to mom one day and said, Hey, I'm going to the grocery store. And we never saw or heard from him again. So mom was left with two other sons from a different man, and now me.
And she was living with my grandmother and another cousin in a one bedroom apartment in Hollywood.
So it was pretty intense, obviously for them. I'm young. I don't know what's going on, right? I'm a newborn. Well when I was five She couldn't make ends meet She was working as a server at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood And she decided to put me up for adoption and her sister my aunt and uncle adopted me Bob and Pat Albin And so off I went to Long Beach, California My dad was a career military highly decorated in World War two I like to say that my parents, and was part of, you know, the generation that literally saved the world,
right?
Because my dad's in Germany, or excuse me, in Europe, fighting the Germans and the Nazis. And my best friend, same age, his dad's in Pearl Harbor fighting the Japanese. And our mothers were home taking care of everything.
My mother was known as Rosie the Riveter. Right. she built airplanes, man. She worked for McDonnell Douglas.
So this, at this point, she's working at the Roosevelt Hotel as a server. So again, she can't afford me. So, she adopts me. Her sister adopted me. And now I'm in Long Beach. And when I got there, man, it was a beautiful thing. I had a wonderful life. we went camping. we did a, we had a lot of activities. I was close to the beach.
I, you know, grew up, I could ride my bike to the beach. and again, everything was great. Well, when they adopted me though, they swore off alcohol. Well, when I was 11, the first day of summer, 1964, they sat me down that morning and said, David, we need to tell you something. And with tears in her eyes, my mom put her hand on my hand and she looked at me and she said, David, what we need to tell you is, we are not your parents.
Well, what the hell does that mean at 11 years old, right? how do you process that? You really don't.
so I already had an entrepreneurial spirit at that point at around 11, years old, I started making money. I lived across the street from a golf course. I had a stingray bicycle. I would ride my bike over there right around the outside of the golf course and I knew a couple places where if a right handed golfer had a slice He'd hit it over the fence almost every time and so we'd go over there.
We'd find the golf balls We'd take them home. We'd clean them We'd go get boxes out of the trash at the golf course That the golf balls came in and we'd go back to the parking lot and sell them So, so that was going on. Well, my mother also, Pat, who's raising me, she grew beautiful flowers in the backyard.
She had this big L shaped garden. And man, she grew some of the prettiest flowers you ever saw. Well, she would cut them, arrange them. In fact, when she cut them, check this out. She would cut them at an angle. Not at the bottom, but at an angle to open up the surface area. And then she'd put, she'd arrange them in beautiful colors.
And then she would, Put a little bit of seven up in the water
and it would cause that flower to last twice as long I don't know if it's the sugar. I'm guessing it was the sugar
[00:04:22] Jay: right,
[00:04:23] Dave: So I started selling those on a street corner So I started negotiating and I started learning how to deal with adults.
That's for sure And so that's kind of my entrepreneurial spirit. I you know, and then I had a paper route So I started doing that and when you become a paper boy, man, you have to handle everything
Right, you gotta go pick up your papers, fold them, put them on your bike, take them to your route, deliver them, pick up the money, deliver, you know, everything, turn the money into your den mother, all those things, so, you know, it was a business.
So, yeah, I had the entrepreneurial spirit going on, that's for sure. and then shortly after they told me I was adopted, They both started drinking. Now, I don't know, there was a lot going on. My dad's military, he had been working in the Pentagon. We're coming out of the Bay of Pigs, right? We had all the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 60s, right?
My dad, also, Kennedy had just been assassinated in November of 63. So dad had a lot on him. And, again, man, they both started drinking, right? Shortly after, you know, they told me this. And, man, did my life take a hard right turn. Everything changed. Everything went from unbelievably perfect to a kind of a nightmare.
Bob Albin was a mean human man when he drank. He was not a nice guy. And, so we started dealing that. I think my mom drank just to try to keep up with him. Well, that's when my life turned, man. and shortly after that, man, you know, you go into junior high school. I started drinking. they went to the store one day and I knew where the booze was.
They hit it in plain sight and I went over there and I opened it up and there's the cabinet and I had a big old bottle, half gallon of brandy and I poured it in a coffee cup and Jay, I drank it and I, to this day, I don't think I ever had a chance. I mean, and what I mean by that is that I was an alcoholic on the spot.
I felt like, you know, Superman when I, when alcohol goes into my body, man, everything changes and shifts.
[00:06:19] Jay: mm
[00:06:20] Dave: And so alcohol led to drugs. And by the time I was a junior in high school, like the very first month of my junior year, they brought me in the office and said, Alvin, you're out. We are done with you, man.
And so I went and got a job. I went and got a good job. I got a job in a grocery store. And back then you could become a retail clerk, which was part of this Teamsters union. And, so within a short amount of time, I was about a year, I was making eight bucks an hour. By the time I would have graduated as a senior, I was already making eight bucks an hour.
Went out and bought a, you know, a beautiful Mach 1 Mustang, moved out of my house, was, you know, living in Belmont Shore, California, a beautiful place. And so that's kind of how, you know, things kind of moved along as far as, my life there. And then, you know, I got married, and then I got married again, and then I got married again.
And by the time I got into my third marriage, you know, I was grossly addicted to heroin, cocaine, alcohol, Smoking cigarettes. My life was a car wreck and a train wreck and a plane crash all rolled into one. And I woke up on June 8th of 1988, Jay, and I said, that's it, man. I'm done. I can't do this anymore.
We're not going to do this anymore. And thank God I was married to a woman who had three kids. I was their stepdad because I was getting ready to put a bullet in my head.
Literally locked and loaded in my mouth, ready to pull the trigger. And I go, dude, you can't do that. You're going to, I was living in the basement at that time.
They, you know, they wanted to stay away from me. The family was living upstairs. And I remember thinking, man, if you pull that trigger, you're going to kill those kids too, man. you're going to be dead and they have to live with your shit.
And I remember going, man, you can't do that, man. Just don't do that.
And so I struggled with it for a while. And then the next thing I know, I've got a thought in my head. And the thought was, call Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, you know what's interesting about that? I don't, I didn't even know who AA was. I had no references. I didn't know anybody, never been to a meeting, nothing.
And yet there's the thought in my head. So I did. I called AA and I got this lady on the phone and I owe her my life, and I affectionately nicknamed her Madge, and the reason I did is because she talk like this. She, I think she smoked probably two packs of non. Non filter palm oil cigarettes a
[00:08:42] Jay: Oh, yeah.
[00:08:43] Dave: that was her so man there.
I was day one a They gave me a big book that in fact, there's similar behind me here if you can see it That's the first edition, but they gave me a third edition and they everybody signed It was a men's group and they put it in the book when you opened It said before you take that first drink call one of them And they wrote their first name and their telephone numbers.
And so I went home that night and I didn't take a drink. Next morning I got a call from somebody in AA that I met, exchanged numbers with, and he lived right around the corner. He called me and said, Hey Dave, I'm going to come get you, take you to breakfast, take you to a meeting. And so this is what was happening.
These perfect strangers just loved me and were taking care of me and were loving me when I couldn't love myself, if that makes sense.
[00:09:24] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:09:25] Dave: And so two days turned into a week and a week turned into a month and after a month They gave me a medallion
[00:09:32] Jay: Oh,
[00:09:32] Dave: it said 30 days
Then I got one at two months three months six months nine months in one year and here's what's here's where the like the personal development industry and my entrepreneurial You know, afterlife or afterburners really kicked in.
I had insomnia and I couldn't sleep, so I was up late at night all the time. So I'm up late one night and there he is. This is in 1988. Mr. Motivation himself, Mr. Gunther Ranker, Mr. You know, a young Tony Robbins selling personal Powers a 30 day program. And so he said a couple things. I didn't like him to be honest in the beginning.
I was like, what a pompous ass, man. Y'all motivated, you know, and I'm not motivated. I'm miserable,
[00:10:14] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:10:14] Dave: but he said two things, Jay, that really got me. One, he said, we'll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. And that hit me like a brick because that's why I drank and used drugs. I was either trying to, you know, avoid pain or I was trying to gain pleasure with the drugs and the alcohol.
And then obviously one day it all went away, right? You can't do it either.
[00:10:35] Jay: Right.
[00:10:36] Dave: and then the other thing he said was the driving forces in our life from where we make decisions, we do it out of inspiration or desperation. And I don't know about, I don't know man, but something about that just got me going.
I broke out my American Express card and I bought the program and they sent it to me in a big box. And it came on these little white things called cassette tapes.
[00:11:02] Jay: Oh, yeah. I remember
[00:11:03] Dave: Right? Yeah. Some of your
[00:11:06] Jay: No, they will definitely, they have no idea. They'll have no idea you used to stick a pencil in
[00:11:11] Dave: yeah, right,
[00:11:11] Jay: them back up and yeah,
[00:11:12] Dave: you had to rewind, you know, Creedence Clearwater, or Three Dog Night, or Jimi Hendrix, or whatever it was, right?
So, Yeah, so I went through the program, and I did what the man told me to do, and it worked. Well, I ended up loaning that program to a buddy of mine in AA, who had read his book, and we got to talking one day, and I said, yeah, man, use it as long as you go through it, promise me. Well, that was in like 88, 89 as well.
Well, seven years later, my phone rings and it's my buddy that I loaned the date program to. And he said, hey man, did you know that Tony Robbins is coming to town? I said, I didn't have a clue. And he goes, come on, man. You gotta go with me. You got me into this. I said, I'll go with you. Yeah, I'd love to see Tony.
He goes, great. Let me call you back. I'll make the arrangements. Well, he calls me back an hour later and he goes, done. We pick up the tickets at Will Call. And here's what they told us to do. Number one, hydrate, drink a lot of water. Number two, bring snacks to the event because we're going to spend a ton of time in the room.
Boy, was that an understatement. and then he said, bring a good attitude and be ready to play full out. And I said, Dan, how much was the ticket? He said 695. I went, 700? He goes, yeah, he goes, you can pay me back. I go, yeah, no, I can pay you, but Yeah, don't you worry. I'll play full out. 700 bucks.
And he's getting ready to hang up the phone.
He goes, Oh wait! I forgot to tell you the most important part. We're going to be doing a fire walk. And I remember thinking, oh hell no. You're out of your mind. I'm not going to be doing any fire walk. Now this is what's going on in my head, right? I'm not saying anything to Dan. and you know what's interesting about that too, Jay?
I didn't know what a fire walk was. What the hell is a fire walk? I didn't even know what it meant. But I was making a decision. I said no. Because fear had been running my life for a good portion of it.
[00:12:54] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:12:55] Dave: Well, you get to the event, right? And Tony takes the stage at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Well, the next thing I know, it's after midnight.
10 hours. In a room. Tony Robbins. Remember the part about the snacks? It all made sense then. I'd have starved to death.
[00:13:11] Jay: Right.
[00:13:12] Dave: All of a sudden, Tony goes, Take your shoes off. And I remember thinking, oh no. I see where you're going with this, pal. I'm not, No way. I'm not taking my shoes off. Well. I'm in a room with 3, 500 people and guess what they're doing.
They're all taking their shoes off. So now Davey boy here has got a dilemma because if I don't take my shoes off, he's going to take us out into this big parking lot for this firewalk experience. And if I don't take my shoes off, everybody's going to know I'm a coward. So I'm like, well, don't do that, man.
Just take your shoes off. And then when you get out there, just go hide in the back. No one is going to know.
So that's my strategy. Well, it gets worse. Because just before he gets you to go out there, he gets 3, 500 people chanting and clapping. Literally. Yes. Yes. Yes. and as you're walking out into this giant parking lot, it gets worse again.
He's got African drummers. And so it's dun, And everybody's clapping and chanting and I'm thinking, I'm going out there, I'm going, Oh man, what a dog and pony show this is. Well, I'm sticking with my plan. I'm going to go hide in the back. Now, when you get out there logistically, here's how they set this up.
they build a pit over the corner, this giant fire pit. It's literally 30 feet wide, 70 feet long. And they stoke it with wood all day, cords and cords of wood. And so at the end of the night, 10 hours later, it renders this beautiful, giant, blue flame. stack of coals. Well, to walk 3, 500 people, what they do is they take wheelbarrows over to that pit and they load them into the wheelbarrows.
And then they bring a wheelbarrow in and they stage it in between two lanes of sod of grass. What we what they call what we call a fire lane, which is three ft wide, about 18 ft long. And they take a flathead shovel and they sprinkle those coals over the top of the grass. And that's what you walk on.
Well, I'm having none of it. I'm in the back. Everybody's chanting. Everybody's clapping. The drums are going off. People are starting to firewalk. They're in the celebration aim. They're screaming. They're yelling. They're clapping. I mean, again, man, it is unlike anything I've ever seen or witnessed in my entire life, you know, other than a Tony Robbins seminar.
And so here's what Tony knows. Tony did his research. Why did he bring firewalking into his seminars? Because he knows what happened. It's one of the most powerful experiences any human will ever go through. It's been around for a thousand years. You do your research, it's been used by cultures everywhere.
So he doesn't want you to miss out on that. So he knows there's a bunch of people like me. He knows we're hiding out in the back. So he trains people to come find you. And sure enough, I'm hiding out in the back and here comes this guy and he makes eye contact with me. And Tony Mastrada, when you make eye contact, don't take your eyes off of him.
And they got, he got like 20 feet from me. And he kind of looks at me really funny, you know, like a dog when it hears a strange noise. And he looks at me and he goes, are you okay? And of course I'm not okay, but what do I say? I lie. Oh, yeah, I'm good, man. No problem. Nothing to see here, pal. Move along. You know, like, leave me alone.
Right? And he goes, Oh, good. He said, Hey, are you going to walk tonight? And I'm like, absolutely not. And he goes, Hey, that's fine. No worries, man. We don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. And I thought, wow, okay, I like this guy. He's going to get me out of here. And then he asked me a question that changed my life forever.
Forever. One stranger. Literally, I don't know who this guy is to this day, Jay, and without him, I'm not here on your podcast today. I can tell you that. And the question he asked me was, well, wouldn't you at least like to watch? And I'm like, yeah, sure. Let's do that. Let's go watch these people burn their feet off.
Should be entertaining. And he goes, well, then fine, just get in line and eventually you'll get, you'll be able to get up where you can see. Cause I've got 3, 500 people standing in front of me. I can't see anything. I can hear it. Again, they're chanting, they're clapping, they're celebrating. The drums are going off.
So all that's going on. So I get in line and I'm just kind of cruising along, walking along and all of a sudden this guy comes up to me and he whispers in my ear and he goes, he knows when you're ready. When he says go, you go. And pew, this guy just disappeared into the night. And I'm like, what the hell was that?
Who was that? what, why did they do that? And so now I get to a point, again, I can't see in front of me, got hundreds of people in front of me, but I can see it in angle, right? And I, and they're doing it. I can see them. And they're walking on fire, man. Every race, every creed, every color, every age. And now I'm completely mesmerized.
I am in a trance. I can't take my eyes off it. It's like driving by a car accident, right? Don't look at it. We're not supposed to look at it. And what do we do? We stare at it.
Well, I'm staring at this and all of a sudden I'm staring, I'm walking along, I'm walking and boom, guess where I am? I'm at the front of the line.
[00:18:19] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:18:20] Dave: And so I'm staring down at this lane, right? Three feet wide, 18 feet long. The coals are on top of the grass. They're glowing bright red. There's a wheelbarrow there. I could feel all the heat coming off and I'm staring into the abyss. My heart is beating so hard, it feels like it's going to jump out of my chest.
And as I'm staring down, there's a trainer standing there and all of a sudden the trainer goes, eyes up. Oh shit, that's right. Eyes up. Well, when you're in the room with Robbins, For 10 hours, what's he teach you to do? Keep your eyes up. Focus on the end. Don't stare at what you fear. It's not the way you want to go through life.
Look at the end result. Look at the outcome that you're trying to get here. And so now my eyes are up and he goes, squeeze your fist and say yes, and I went yes. And he went, STRONGER! And I went, YES! Well, he could tell. He knew. I was not in a peak state. I was leaving a lot on the table. And so he screamed at me.
I mean, like, in my face, right? Fight or flight. And he's like, STRONGER! And I threw my hands in the air, Jay, and I screamed as loud as I could, and he goes, GO! GO! GO! POO! I took off. Well, here's the first thing I learned about firewalking. When you take the first step, oh, you'll take the second, third, fourth, and fifth.
So they got a couple people at the end who lock arms and they stop you and they're like, Stop! Wipe your feet and celebrate! And as I'm wiping my feet, it dawns on me, I burnt myself really bad. And I look at my foot, it's dirty, but there's no burns. Look at my other foot, oh, it's the one that's burnt.
Nope, nope, it's dirty too, but there's no burns. So now there I am. I'm in the celebration and I'm jumping up and down. I don't even know how to describe the feeling when you walk on fire like that. It's exhilarating. You think you can do anything at that point? You know, I'm looking around going, where's Everest?
Let's go. Let's go take on that. Right? Well, here's where it gets super, super interesting. The next day, this is a four day event. This was day one, the night of now we're coming into day two and there's 3, 500 people standing in the foyer, getting ready to go into the venue. And I'd never seen a witness to anything like it.
Humanistically, people had leveled up at such a high level because the night before was kind of like a near death experience that we all experienced and we celebrated it, right? We're all feeling the same thing the next morning. We're feeling exhilaration. Our self worth, our self confidence, our self belief in about ourselves had been raised.
And Tony knows that. I mean, he knew that's why he's doing the firewalk experience. People are laughing, they're hugging, they're talking. I mean, again, they're communicating unlike anything I've ever seen. And so I'm like, what the hell happened? Is this because of the firewalk? Did we drink the Kool Aid last night?
And the answer is, yep, sure did. Well, later in the event, I met one of Tony's trainers, a really super guy by the name of Ted Macy. Sweet guy, love him to death to this day. Him and his wife, Mary are both trainers for Tony. And so I'm talking to him and I'm talking about the environment and how much cool it must be to be around this all the time.
And he goes, yo, yeah, man, he goes, if you can get yourself in this environment, get here. and he goes, in a matter of fact, you see all those people over there with the black shirts and the pink writing on the back? Yeah. He goes, they're volunteers, man. They're just like you. They came to an event and they decided they wanted to volunteer and come back.
He said, so when you get home, call Robbins Research, tell them you want a volunteer crew application. And they'll send it to you, fill it out. Maybe you'll get lucky. And I did, I filled it out. I sent it back. And like seven weeks later, I got a letter in the mail. It said, Dave Albin, congratulations. You've been selected to crew with the Anthony Robbins companies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
And my foot was in the door, man. That was it. and then because of my application, you know, they see what.
So they literally put me on Tony's security detail, helping take care of Tony celebrities, because I lived on a farm, I had farming skills, right? I knew how to use a log splitter, I knew how to use tools, I knew how to drive a tractor, and so they put me on the fire building team. That was in 80, excuse me, 90, 96.
and then from there, I crewed like five or six times and you got to pay your way. Right. You're going to spend a couple grand just to go to a Tony Robbins seminar. You got to pay your airfare, your hotel, all your food, your travel expenses, all of that. Well, once they hire you as a subcontractor, they pay for all that.
And then, you know, they give you a little couple hundred bucks salary, if you will. Well, so that was all going down in the 90s, 95, 96. And, the next thing I know in 2003, Tony brought me into the office and they offered me the captain's position, which meant that I would take over all of Tony's firewalks globally.
And at first I was like, well, guys, I can't do that. I homeschool my kids and they're like, oh, okay, well, let's see, how do we resolve that? Well, would it make a difference if we paid for your family to travel with us? Would that help? Well, yeah, of course it would. And it did. So I accepted the position.
That's 2003. 2005, we set a world record. We went to London. We firewalked 12, 300 people. Now when I say the world record, I want full disclosure here. Guinness Book was not there. you know, so it's not documented in a world record Guinness book, but it's still the largest firewalk that's ever been done on the planet.
The only thing that comes anywhere close to it is another Tony Robbins seminar. And so that was in 05. Well, in 2014, my life took another turn and that's when Google called me. and they're like, are you the Dave Albin does the firewalks for Tony Robbins? Yeah. What can I do for you? Well, if you're not under any contractual obligation or non compete, we'd like to talk to you about hiring you for a gig.
We have 448 executives here in Mountain View corporate headquarters. Okay. Well, as I got to talking to them, I said, you know, they wanted to do it in a graduation. They were going to graduate, have lunch and then do the event. And I said, well, if we're going to do it during the day, I can't do a firewalk.
It's a safety issue. No way. what I could do, though, instead, is we could do a glasswalk. They're like, a glasswalk? What's that? Tell us about that. And so I did. And so we ended up doing a glasswalk in 2014, and then we did one the following year in 2015. And that's when Firewalk Productions was born, man, 2014.
Once I realized there was a huge marketplace for a paradigm shift corporate team building experience like the firewalk or the glass walks or some of the other experiences that we offer, I knew, man, I was all in. So the company started and the next thing I know, Jay, after Google, I was at NASA. And from NASA, I went to Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, REMAX, Heineken, YMCA, the EO organization.
I mean, it just took off organically. It was an unbelievable ride, that's for sure.
[00:25:27] Jay: That's probably the craziest collection of stories I've heard on this podcast. did you ever get to meet Tony Robbins?
[00:25:37] Dave: Oh, yeah, Tony and I are good friends.
[00:25:39] Jay: Alright,
[00:25:39] Dave: Oh, yeah, I worked directly with him. I was part of his security detail as
[00:25:42] Jay: I had to ask.
[00:25:43] Dave: right, of course, yeah, no, yeah.
Tony was wonderful to my family, man. He treated my kids like gold. He treated me like gold. you know, we're good friends. I got pictures up there.
There's a picture right there. That picture back there is me standing, right there, by his Bentley, and we're in Palm Springs at Date with Destiny. So, yes, I got to know Tony Robbins really well.
[00:26:04] Jay: What do you think, what, there's so many Self help guys.
I mean in some sort of, you know, brief way Can you describe why he has been so successful? Because there's a million clones and there's people who are also very successful and then you know people quote them all the time But like why is he the gold standard?
did he get in early in the 80s when it kind of before it all took off and got popular like what? What was it?
[00:26:28] Dave: I think there's a lot of reasons. yes, the timing was right. he read a thousand books on personal development. He learned about NLP. neuro linguistic programming from, from Bandler and Milton Erickson and some of the gurus back in those days, Gay Hendricks, who wrote the book, you know, The Big Leap.
So he took a little bit of everybody and kind of created his own style. he was real, you know, he was, he's a big guy, right? He's 6'7 His senior year, because he had a tumor on his pituitary gland, he grew a year, excuse me, he grew one foot in one year. He calls it his personal growth spurt. so again, you know, he came and he attacked the psychology, his psychology world.
He basically told therapists, look, you're working with people for years and you can't, and you don't cure them. Bring them to me and I'll cure them in one hour. So he challenged them, and he said, fine, Mr. Therapist, come to my seminar, bring me your worst patient, and I'll cure him in one hour. And he did. So he made pretty bold statements, and he ended up doing it.
And, you know, Tony grew up kind of like me. He had a lot of turmoil in his family. his mom had been married several times. He had some very profound experiences growing up when he was young. and he went to go see Jim Rohn. And when he went to go see Jim Rohn, I think that's what lit him up like a Christmas tree.
In fact, he went to Jim Rohn and said, because he couldn't afford to go to Jim's seminar, and he literally somehow got his way to Jim and said, Hey, you know, Mr. Rohn, you know, my name's Tony Robbins, and I'm going to become famous, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that, and I want to work for you, and, you know, let me come to your seminar.
And basically Jim said, I'm not your banker. If you want to come to my seminar, you'll figure out a way. Have a nice day, kid. So, Jim gave him a huge gift right there, and so Tony figured out a way. In fact, he went into a bank, to borrow the money from a woman, you know, she was a loan person in the bank, and he went in, he filled out the paperwork, she's interviewing him, and he tells his story at a seminar, so I'm not, you know, giving back information or something he wouldn't want disclosed.
he filled out all the paperwork and she looks at the address and she goes, That's a vacant lot five blocks up the street and he goes, yeah, well, I'm kind of living there in my car And she's like, you know Tony they're not gonna give you this loan You know, they're just not gonna do that it doesn't meet the criteria and but because he was so enthusiastic and so encouraging and You know she could tell she Personally loaned him the money Well years later after he made it big He would bring her to his seminars and he would set her in the front row and he would tell that story that makes me emotional to this day, man.
And he would tell a story about this amazing woman and then he would point to her and have her stand up and the crowd would go crazy. And so he helped her a lot, you know, with her life. you know, after that. And so that, that's who he is at his heart. He started his foundation, when he was young.
It was the Thanksgiving holiday and, they had no money, they had no Thanksgiving, nothing. And his mom and dad were in the kitchen fighting like crazy like they normally did. And there was a knock at the door. And Tony went to the door and he opened up, he said it was this giant man standing there with this huge basket.
And it had a turkey and stuffing and a, you know, the pumpkin pies and all the fixings. Right. And he's like, is your mom or dad home? And Tony looked at that like, Oh my God, we're going to have a Thanksgiving dinner. They're going to find out about this. I'm going to be able to go tell them they're fighting right now.
It's going to, they'll stop fighting and everything's going to be okay. Well, Tony went running in to get his dad to tell him, dad, come look, cook. But this is a stepfather and so Tony's dad comes to the door. Well, Tony's dad didn't share the enthusiasm. He kind of looked at the guy like, who the hell are you?
And he's like, hello, sir. You know, my name is John and you know, we understand that maybe, you know, you're going through a tough time. One of your, one of your friends, asked me to drop this off. So, and there's a note here from a friend. And Tony's dad goes, we don't take charity, get out. and Tony's dad went to go slam the door.
Well, this guy's a big guy. He stuck his foot in the door and stopped it. and he said, sir, come on, think of your family. It's okay. We all go through hard times. It's going to be all right. And so Tony's dad took the basket and, you know, went into the kitchen, threw it on the kitchen table. And like 15 minutes later, he left and, you know, he never communicated with that stepfather ever again.
But here's the takeaway. For Tony, it was stranger's care. He watched the whole process. He heard what the guy said, that it was a note from a friend, that a stranger cared, and so that inspired him. And he started his foundation, which now feeds millions and millions of people every single year at the Thanksgiving holiday.
[00:31:41] Jay: Well, I, look, I don't think there's any doubt that Tony Robbins is, historically important. But I also think Dave Albin is historically important, so I want to talk a little bit about your firewalking company specifically. So it's a very interesting business and you went through kind of I'm sure, you know, that growth pattern you were talking about. Talk to me about it today. Are you guys, I mean, I'm sure you have a team under you and stuff. Are you out there? Like, what is your role at the company today? What has it turned into? Are you still doing kind of business development stuff? Is it just like the business runs itself and you're off kind of, you know, spreading the word?
Is it, what, Firewalk Productions today?
[00:32:26] Dave: Almost everything, every job, every client that I have right now has come in organically. So they found me through some means. and so when a client comes to me, typically, it's one of three reasons, Jay. One, the company's kicking butt, and they want to take it to the next level. And so I've done their research and they went, okay, this is Tony Robbins, fire guy, let's hire him.
He'll personally design something for us. This will be freaking awesome. the other client, is where, you know, the company's doing okay there. It's mediocre and you know, they need help. They need to pick up the momentum and go, or the company's in a complete meltdown. Everything's falling through the crack, you know, it's a shit show.
And they bring me in to create that experience to try to put everything back together. So what I do with a client like that who come in, they just write me a check and my team comes in and we do everything. So I combine the board break process experience with the firewalk. And thanks for saying what you said about, you know, the Dave Albin part of this, you know, versus Tony Robbins, because I did take the firewalk to a whole nother level, and I did that in a lot of different ways.
And one of those ways is that board break experience. So what we do with that is that it's a martial arts thing, right? They break a board with their bare hand, and any dojo, any martial artist. You know, knows about it. However, most people have no experience with it because the only way you're going to break a board is to join some type of martial arts studio, right?
So I have them write something on front of the board they want to move towards. And then I have something, write something on the back of the board they need to move away from. And then I have them write anybody's name on that board that they're in conflict with. So in other words of forgiveness or reconciliation as part of that relationship, it ends tonight.
Stop carrying that baggage around with you. And then to create the rite of passage, an ancestral side of this, I have them write anybody's name on the board that they've lost. And that changes everything, man. so we take them through the experience, they break the board. We take them outside. we firewalk them.
We circle them back. They throw their boards into the fire. And then, you know, we capture that on video and we capture it, you know, with photographs. The other thing that we do there is kind of a proprietary thing that I've developed. And I call it the heart hug, the ho'oponopono heart hug. And what that basically does is that we hug, normally People hug, you know, right to right.
I have them hug the opposite way, this way, so that my heart is on top of their heart. I have them close their eyes and I have them take three deep diaphragmic cleansing breaths. And I have them hold their breath through the process. And when they go in or come out of that second breath, their hearts calibrate.
So they start beating at the same time. And so that when you're hugging somebody and your heart starts beating at the same time that connects you more powerfully humanistically than anything else on earth. And so I take the whole team through that process, you know, I'll say, all right, that was really great.
Let's do it again. So I can see how the team is getting along. How they're dropping all their barriers and letting all that nonsense go about mask wearing and vaccines and political Arguments and all of that. I got to get them back to humanistic Getting along where they work together as a team and they care about each other And so that board break and that firewalk and that hug We'll do exactly that.
So that way, you know, that next Monday when they all show up at work, you've got a completely different group of human beings.
[00:35:59] Jay: What did you do during the pandemic?
[00:36:00] Dave: I was able to do some stuff. I mean, I had several gigs on the books that shut down. nobody canceled a hundred percent. Because when somebody hires me, they want it, right?
They're like a, they're like a kid with a new bicycle. They can't wait to take a ride on it. so we just had to work all that out. But some states, we were good. I did some stuff here in North Carolina. I did stuff in Georgia. I did stuff in Tennessee. We did some stuff in Florida.
[00:36:25] Jay: The further south you went, it was probably the better, the easier it was to get around that
[00:36:30] Dave: Couldn't go anywhere out west,
[00:36:31] Jay: Right.
Yeah. Probably not too far north. Yeah.
[00:36:35] Dave: I mean, it really depended on the political status. I mean, I hate to say that, but that's what did. Some of the states shut down completely. I wasn't going to go anywhere north of the Mason Dixon line, I can tell you that.
[00:36:45] Jay: Yeah. Pennsylvania probably would not have been a
[00:36:47] Dave: No, in Jersey, in New York, in Connecticut, in Massachusetts, all that.
Nope, didn't go anywhere near that. But down here we were cool. South Carolina was cool. Georgia was cool. Tennessee was cool. Florida, you know. And they were like, come on!
[00:37:00] Jay: anything goes in Florida, man. That's not even, that's
not even America. that's a wild west down there.
well very cool, man. I, we could, I could talk to you for probably another year. But let's wrap it here. I have one more question
for you.
[00:37:12] Dave: of course.
[00:37:14] Jay: Non business related.
[00:37:15] Dave: Okay,
[00:37:17] Jay: If you could, and this is an interesting question for somebody who's done so much.
If you could do anything on planet Earth, and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:37:26] Dave: get more deeply immersed in helping work with kids, first responders, and vets. And it's interesting you ask that because that last part, the veterans part, just happened. I did a podcast a couple of months ago, and it turns out that there's a huge veteran community. Well, they've got a gala coming up in South Florida with 400 Marines.
And so I already know the suicide rate is really high. You know, the number that's floating around out there is 22 a day. Well, that's not true. That's only if they leave a note. If they don't leave a note, the number's up closer to 40.
[00:38:08] Jay: Hmm,
[00:38:09] Dave: So why are these vets committing suicide? Because they're getting ripped away from community.
They're losing purpose. And so when they started talking to me about a firewalk, For these Marines that night when I went to bed after we, you know, kind of put it together, I went, Hey, Alvin, this is going to be the biggest firewall of that you've ever done.
there's more going on here than anything you've ever done, because now we're talking about saving lives.
And once I got that into my head, I thought, well, then we need to name this firewall, you know, correctly. And so we came up with the do no harm firewall.
So what these Marines are going to do is they're going to raise their, they're going to raise their hand and take an oath. And so I'm going to have them promise to do no harm.
I'm also going to have them promise to recruit their fellow men and women veterans to bring them into this community. And then they're going to be able to get necklaces. we're going to give them little containers like this of coals so they can look at it every day. And we're going to create a community of firewalking vets.
And, you know, at this point, Jay, if I can save one vet's life, it's worth it.
So, yeah, it's interesting you ask that question, and yet, here it is. it just appeared, and it just showed itself.
[00:39:27] Jay: that's cool, man.
That's a, and thank you for your service. And,
[00:39:31] Dave: you.
[00:39:31] Jay: this was great, man. This was incredibly inspirational. I wasn't planning on being inspired today, but this was very inspirational, just for me.
and, would love to try firewalking sometime. And now I know a guy, I never knew a guy.
Who is a fire walking, machine, like yourself. So I love your story, man. Have you written a book yet?
[00:39:51] Dave: No.
[00:39:52] Jay: Did Kim get you to write a book? I think I saw it. Were you on her podcast?
Kim's a
[00:39:55] Dave: well, yeah, and, there's been a couple
[00:39:57] Jay: I'm sure somebody is going to try, man. That's a great story. I'm not a book guy, but I mean, it sounds like you've got, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit you up.
[00:40:05] Dave: Yeah. I'm sure that's probably going to happen. one of the podcasting host, Jeff Smith, if you know, he is pretty well known, especially over in Europe. He went, dude, you're writing a book and if I have to come and drag you away from everything you're doing and lock you in a room somewhere, I'm going to get a book out of you.
So yeah, it's coming.
[00:40:23] Jay: Alright, well I'll read it. I promise I'll read it if you
write it. It's a very cool, story.
Well, alright brother. Dave, it was fantastic meeting you. Where can people find you, if they want to talk to you directly or, Firewalk Productions?
[00:40:34] Dave: just go to our website. It's firewalkadventures. com. All one word, firewalkadventures with an S dot com. Everything's there.
[00:40:43] Jay: Beautiful. Alright man, you're an awesome human being. It was great talking to you,
Dave. And, have a good rest of your week, brother. Thank you, man.
I'll see ya.
[00:40:50] Dave: I'm out. Take care, everyone.