David Brower: Hi, this is David Brower with Your 20 Minute Podcast. Our special guest today is Nicholas Upchurch from Miami Beach, Florida. How are you, Nicholas?
Nicholas U.: Good, David. How are you?
David Brower: I’m very well, very well. Thank you. It looks like you’ve got a great background in digital marketing. The companies which you’ve owned have generated millions of dollars in sales within a very short period of time and, although you were able to build a business that was very successful, you travel 33 countries, you played football in front of 110,000 fans. Is that American football or the other kind?
Nicholas U.: Yes, sir. Yeah, at the big house, University of Michigan.
David Brower: There you go. That is the big house. Good for you. Now, after all that great success, through an interesting turn of events and exploring the difficult parts of life that we all encounter from time to time, your focus has kind of changed now. Tell us about that.
Nicholas U.: Sure. We have a website, believe.love, and our podcast, believeitunes.com. Basically, I went to Peru. I had an Ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahuasca is a plant medicine that Tim Ferris talks about, the Four-Hour Work Week guy. He has a big podcast himself. He talks about Ayahuasca and it’s a plant medicine which can really open up some doors. People with PTSD, a lot of former soldiers, go down. People processing really tough things in life, even sometimes women that were, to be honest, raped and things like that, really, really, tough things. People will go to Peru and they will have these ceremonies and really try to connect with something because they’re maybe desperate. I, to be honest, was one of those people. My brother died when I was very young. We all have things happen. For me, that was what I would say is a blessing now. At first, it seemed like a curse. When I was very young, it seemed …
David Brower: Sure.
Nicholas U.: I think sometimes when we talk about business or just life, there are reasons why we don’t actually do the steps we need to do. Of course, everybody, there are a lot of great info products out there and David has great information and I try to as well, but what are the reasons we actually don’t do what we need to do? I actually have been one of those people, too. I think a lot of that is deeper and it’s very difficult to want to even look at some of this stuff inside of ourselves.
Nicholas U.: That’s basically something Ayahuasca, it’s just one way, prayer. Actually, they use Ayahuasca legally at Christian churches in New Mexico and Oregon. It went to the Supreme Court and they got approved. Brazilian Christian churches use Ayahuasca. Sting, the singer, Sting, wrote 60 pages on Ayahuasca in his autobiography, and he’s a laid-back guy. He said it was the Godhead. He said it connected him to God. What I picked up was that God is everything, all of us, and we are all part of God, but everybody has their own experiences.
Nicholas U.: I think looking at the tough things and really getting into things and maybe helping people with that as well can help us actually take action, be aware, pay attention to details and actually do the steps we need to do to succeed, whatever that means to whoever is listening.
David Brower: Oftentimes we find success in different ways. We define success in different ways. It appears to me that you were and still are in some way, I’m sure, an extremely driven young man, playing college football, all the success you had. I don’t pretend to know why that is. I’m curious whether you think it’s about the passing of your brother, but you sure had a ton of drive going on there for a long time. Now it appears your drive has turned more inward. Is that fair?
Nicholas U.: Thank you. Yeah, I did feel like I was eight or nine and avenging him or something. I was 55 pounds of fury when I was eight or nine. Somehow – and I’m about maybe 5′ 8″, 170 – and I broke my back when I was 15. I was in a back brace for six months. Then I played nose tackle at 155 pounds, which was based on quickness, but that’s a position where 300-pound guys play in college. In college, I then became a wide receiver, which was the fast people position. That was overcoming some odds.
Nicholas U.: Part of my company, it’s called Love!, actually I formed it out of necessity. Honestly, I had so much anger and things like that, that it was a great gift, the anger. Sometimes to look at the tough things in anybody’s life, whoever is listening to this, as a gift, can be so hard. That anger, if it weren’t for that anger, I wouldn’t have looked into anything that actually we’re probably on this planet to do. We’re not here to just make money, necessarily, and die, in my opinion.
Nicholas U.: We could be, and it can be a noble thing to take care of our families, our people and ourselves, and we all have to pay bills. That’s the bottom line. I’m totally about that, but those tough things that keep occurring – we all have, sometimes, patterns that come up – those could be the things that maybe something is showing you, hey, we’ve got to look at that. If it weren’t for that anger, I wouldn’t have gotten on this path of also trying to harmonize the world and all the tough things in the world, including the spirituality crowd. That’s kind of the focus now.
David Brower: How did you get opened up to all this? Obviously, you’ve had great success. You had some life-changing moments, obviously, in Peru. Was that the turning point for you?
Nicholas U.: It opened things up, but I still did a lot of dumb things after that. We can have these deeply implanted patterns but, what I would say is there have been studies on consciousness, like the University of South Hampton in the U.K., and doctors studied 2,000 people. They found that consciousness, people are aware of things three minutes after their heart and brain stop functioning, which should be impossible.
David Brower: Wow.
Nicholas U.: To be honest, what I’ve gotten is that we’re energetic beings in a human body right now. I’ve been in the human body doing dumb things, meaning if a certain trigger comes up of something, you get angry because somebody’s late. I had this experience in Peru. I started doing Kundalini Yoga a few years before. Kundalini Yoga helped me a lot. Meditating, not until I was 27 or 28 did I start meditating a little bit. It’s been a cycle. It hasn’t been like something happened and I became perfect. For anybody out there, you don’t just have to figure everything out and then you’re perfect. There’s going to be maybe, like the stock market, up and down and then, hopefully, you keep harmonizing things. It can be in a circular, spiral pattern. It doesn’t have to be a straight linear path to perfection.
Nicholas U.: There’s been a lot of things have contributed to it. Again, even people who like prayer, Christianity, people who are into the faith of Islam, all of it can be good. That can be what the world is doing and, without the winter, we wouldn’t know what summer is. What I would say is, all these tough things in the world, we can harmonize them. I think we do that with love and not hating what we think we should hate. If we can try to love what we think we should hate, over time these things can kind of harmonize. If it weren’t for those bad things, we would have no reference point to see what the good things are, so we can hopefully try to be thankful of those things more, even though I have to do the same thing even now, because it can be tough when something’s irritating.
David Brower: Absolutely, and I like your analogy, we wouldn’t know what summer was without winter. That makes perfect sense to me. It also feels like, to coin an old phrase, this has got to be a marathon, not a sprint.
Nicholas U.: I could think about that a little bit [better 00:08:01]. Even with you right now, I have to take a breath, and I think as long we can just become aware of, hey, when do I act funny? I know I act funny from various things. Just starting to be aware of that, people can notice things about themselves. When you do that, for yourself and for others, you’ll start to notice, what can I do in my business? What are the competitors doing, which, hopefully our competitors can become our joint venture partners, but what’s their upsell? How much are they charging for their upsells? How are they getting their customers? How much does it cost to get a customer? How can they scale up? How could I offer a product that’s a little bit different or better?
Nicholas U.: It all actually goes together, but being happy and healthy, like you said, and thinking of things as maybe a longer term. In fact, so many people have done past life regressions. Dr. Brian Weiss from Yale, he’s the head of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, which is also in New York. It’s a big hospital, the head of psychiatry, he’s done thousands of past life regressions, where you’ll have a six-year-old that will say they were a British soldier in 1512. They’ll go back, they’ll see that soldier actually existed, and the six-year-old knows the wife, everybody. They’ve done this thousands of times. When we’re saying it’s a marathon, it actually could stretch over lifetimes. It could, I’m not saying I know everything. For me, that’s what I’ve gotten.
David Brower: It is. I love stories like that and especially when it’s thousands and not four or five. It has to get your attention, even to the most cynical of persons, I would hope.
Nicholas U.: Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. Ian Stevenson, studied this for, I think, 40 years, at the University of Virginia. They say maybe Constantine might have taken reincarnation out of the Bible, with Rome. For me to think, hey, you know what? These bad things have happened, but I might not be getting, anybody listening to this, it may be that we chose to come into this life to experience some of the tough things. I may have set that up with my brother ahead of time. It can change our perspective on that, oh, you know, I’m just not screwed in this life and then I’m going to die. There might be more to the story. I can definitely tell you I’m 100% sure of that. The degree of things, I can definitely say, I couldn’t say this 10 years ago, there is a lot more going on for us than just this human body and just this lifetime.
David Brower: I talked to a person a while ago in another one of these podcast interviews, and she brought up an amazing question to me, which is so simple but yet so complicated for us to hang on to, I think. That is, what is possible?
Nicholas U.: Sure, that’s an amazing thought.
David Brower: What is possible? How do you wrap your brain around that? You have to become open to things that maybe you weren’t comfortable with five or 10 years ago. Maybe there’s old, I call them old tapes, triggers, things in there from previous experiences in your life that mask maybe some of the opportunities that are right there in front of your nose.
Nicholas U.: You’re very right, David. In fact, you look up multiverses at Princeton, multiverse and Princeton. There was a, in the ’50s, a professor proved multiverses, which could mean alternate universes happening at the same time, alternate versions of yourself happening all at the same time. Again, it’s Princeton, it’s not like – and it’s not publicized a lot, but anybody can look that up. Literally what you’re saying, and my answer to that, is everything is possible.
Nicholas U.: It all could be correct. When somebody’s like, well, what, well maybe everything. Then we have to make choices. I’m very much into reality as well. I have to pay for things, I have to – we’ve got to actually do things, but the answer could be everything. I say “could” to be a little bit open, but if you look at some things, multiverses, and you look at multiple lifetimes, and you look at Nassim Haramein, a physicist. Nassim, N-A-S-S-I-M, and then Haramein is something like H-A-R-A-M-E-I-N. Google will auto-correct it. He’s proven things that Einstein hasn’t. He’s been published in mainstream scientific journals, just about the number of universes. His work is absolutely amazing. I would definitely recommend people might check that out.
Nicholas U.: What it is going to do for you or me? It basically means that, first of all, we can have hope, that, basically, there’s a lot possible for us and our story. We’re not just a slave to our conditions, our personality, our brain right now, our tough times. There’s more to the story and it can take some of the pressure off, like of things needing to be perfect or people stressing themselves out.
Nicholas U.: I still think that thing that we all can do better, me included, do what we say we’re going to do, pay attention. Lloyd Carr, the national championship coach I played for at U of M, football, he would yell, “Be on time, pay attention.” Pay attention to all of the details about things and then just take action. Actually do what you say you’re going to do, and try to under-promise and over-deliver. Again, all of us can do that, me included, more, but under-promise and over-deliver versus the opposite. To be honest, I’ve dealt with hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re about to spend six figures with some company. They just haven’t gotten back to us. Honestly, we’ve emailed them three or four times.
David Brower: Oh, my gosh.
Nicholas U.: They’re losing hundreds of thousands, potentially, in ad spend because they simply aren’t following up. I’ve had this happen sometimes more in different things. Some people are really sharp and they follow up, but get on the ball. Do what you say. I can do that more, too, but that’s something that will make you stick out.
David Brower: Absolutely right, and integrity, what a concept.
Nicholas U.: Again, I have to do everything more and more. I’m definitely not perfect yet. Honesty, and the truth is, like for me saying I’m not perfect, you can hear it in my voice. I can be very zen, but right now I’m a little bit hyped up. You know what? I’m human.
Nicholas U.: One thing, David, I think is interesting, people can say one word and have completely different meanings. What does it come down to? Finding out what the other person’s definition of that word is and getting on the same page, whether it’s honesty or on-time payments, or when the job is going to be done, or the definition of when somebody says quality. What does that mean to both parties? Understanding the other person’s definition of one word and them understanding yours and getting on the same page, I think, could help everybody a lot.
David Brower: One of the words that I’ve had problems with, without paying attention to it, really, taking it too literally, is the word, “fear.” I throw that word, fear, out. Are you afraid of that? Do have you fear of this? As I think about it and have talked to other folks about it, because I honestly believe that fear is a big part of our lives, but as I think about it and talk to other people about it, my definition really needs to be more about anxiety than fear.
Nicholas U.: Sure.
David Brower: If you walk into an elevator and you’re afraid of that guy, it’s just a natural reaction for you to be afraid of somebody, the hair on your arms is going to stick up, you’re afraid, get the hell out of there. If you’re having some anxiety about dealing with a vendor who doesn’t want to take your six-figures of money, that’s a totally different thing.
Nicholas U.: There’s a couple of ways to look at it, you’re right. Fear is what keeps us alive, ultimately. Otherwise, if we knew this world was fake or a simulation or different things that people say – I don’t think it’s a mechanical simulation, by the way, like Westworld – then we just jump off, we do crazy things. Fear can be good. We can learn to love what we hate, and I think that’s what harmonizes things, but just at first, being aware.
Nicholas U.: That’s the first step, like I get excited when I have a 20 Minute Podcast to do, I talk fast. Okay, so I do that, that’s okay. I get anxiety for girls or whoever, when there’s a bunch of guys around or something. Okay, that’s okay. Maybe, in some cases, that would be actually smart. Then some people also say there’s love and there’s fear and those are the two emotions. I think there’s something to that as well. I think by loving the fear and becoming more aware of it, we might be able to work that out with ourselves and others. I know I have to do that more with my funny reactions.
Nicholas U.: There’s just a lot of elements going on. I don’t know that we could just become socialist and cooperate and that the entities or the things at the top might just give everybody everything initially. I think there’s some benefits to competition. Obviously, you can see the evolution over time. People used to be gladiators, now there’s a lot of talk about concussions but, ultimately, I think we’re all on the same team. I’m talking about countries, we can all be on the same team but I think there can be some tough elements at the top where people need to be aware of that. It sometimes might require a little bit more winter and a little bit of toughness at the top to kind of try to get everything fair. We’re going to have an International Love Congress. We’re going to invite people, hopefully government leaders, heads of religions, all the spiritual people that we can get, and try to have a big event here in Miami in the end of the year. We’ll see how that goes.
David Brower: What a project. Is it coming along for you?
Nicholas U.: We just starting it. There’s a lot to do. I’ve hired a few people that will work on that. There’s something called Conscious Life Expo in LA, which is really great, consciouslifeexpo.com. There’s nothing really like that on the East Coast, so we would love to do something similar but a little bit different. We’ll see, but I’m trying to reach out to the people we think are big and bad and the evil government, whether you’re Republican or Democrat or whatever. Then the people above the Republicans and Democrats, the corporations. It’s not that they’re evil, it’s just that we can also propose other ways, hopefully. We’ll see.
David Brower: So much of it, as you said earlier, comes down to the ability to be able to understand one another’s language.
Nicholas U.: You’re right. That’s really smart. Love, I think, is really understanding, David. I think I can understand people better and I think when people really, what connects somebody when they feel understood. In sales, it’s the same, and it’s about solving people’s problems. If somebody feels understood, you understand, a lot of people care about money and business so I go back to that sometimes. If they feel understood and you really genuinely care about them, they will trust you and you’ve got to do the right thing. You’ve got to actually deliver. Understanding is love, yeah.