Constant Delusional Optimism + 1 Grammy Award + 1 Quantum Positivity Notebook + 1 Nike Commercial – 125 Pounds = Charlie “Rocket” Jabaley

Audio Transcription

we interviewed Grammy Award Winner Charlie Jabaley, how does one go about helping is unsigned musical artists to secure three top 20 billboard hit songs without previously securing them a record deal. How does one man win a grammy with rap and hip hop artists? And by the way, President Obama’s favorite hip hop and rap artists? Yes, we can chance the rapper. Two chainz, why does he carry a quantum positivity notebook? And what in the world is a quantum positivity notebook? And why does he believe that delusional optimism is the key to it all.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. On today’s show, we have an incredible opportunity to interview the man who was featured in the newest viral, just do it. Nike commercial featuring former NFL quarterback, Colin kaepernick before being featured at the commercial. Charlie overcame a brain tumor, became an Ironman, and biked across America. Trello has been able to truly accomplish some amazing things throughout this past year while pursuing his mission to transform the lives of a million people, and that includes you. Charlie Jabaley Welcome to the show my friend. How are you?

I’m doing pretty good, man. Thank you for having me on.

Now, Charlie. A lot of our listeners out there are going immediately google search your name, your last name isj a, b a l e y. can you educate the listeners how to correctly pronounce your last name

to live in these last night? My father is Lebanese.

Okay. Okay. Well, I want to hear if you have such a great story and I’d like to start kind of at the bottom. Um, what are, when you first found out that, that you had a, you were diagnosed as having a brain tumor. Could you describe what that moment felt like or where you were? I just, I just, I can’t relate to that.

No, it’s been a long journey. It’s had its ups and downs. I found out about my brain tumor was, I’m 16 years old. I was a part of the basketball team in high school. Basketball was my passion. I love basketball, but I was, I was always very overweight so the coach of the basketball team would allow me to be a part of the team even though I kind of play, so I was essentially like a manager. I’ll help out the basketball coach and I’ll sweep the floor and you know, get water for the players. And um, there was one game, it was an away game and I was sitting on the bench and I had the most excruciating migraine headache of my life and I’ve been suffering from these migraines for the past two years. And I went to a doctor and they just thought I had migraines and I got fed up the next morning over to my grandfather’s house, stayed home from school and we said we got to find a new doctor.

So we went to an eye doctor because my left, I hurt so bad that I, Dr. Lipton to my. I found the brain tumor and that’s when I was first diagnosed and it was under control for awhile. Up until about a year and a half ago, um, I was in the music industry, very successful. We had just won a grammy, a world tours, many platinum, platinum albums and singles, but I was over 305 pounds and my brain tumor started to get out of control, started growing again, was wrapped around my left optic nerve and, um, you know, it was really applying pressure in my head and I was very sick and that’s when I made the decision at that rock bottom moment that I needed to reinvent my entire life. So I walked away from our business in the music industry and I said, I’m going to chase my childhood dream. I want to be an athlete because I was always overweight as a kid and it’s the one thing that I love but I could never do. And I said, I’m going to do an Ironman New Zealand and a bike across America. I’m going to become a Nike athlete. And I dedicated this entire year to make an. All my dreams come true. And they all came true.

So you’ve seen the commercial, of course. Obviously the Commercial Charlie’s been very controversial. There’s people always think, everybody who has seen the commercial has an opinion, a strong opinion one way or the other, and we’ll put a link to it on the show notes. Everybody can can weigh in or, or view it. And if you haven’t seen it, you need to go see the commercial. Put It on today’s show notes that you can find at thrive time, show.com. But regardless of what people, whether they agree or disagree with the core message, how did Nike select you to be in this iconic? Uh, I think one the most successful commercials of all time. How, how, how, how did they choose you?

Well, the man who was responsible for pulling the trigger and making the decision on the commercial, he called me. He called me the day that he messaged me the day that commercial came out and he said, the film you made back in February inspired all of this and um, to, to educate the listening. Um, back in February I made a fan, made nike commercial because I wanted to get the attention of Nike. What I loved about Nike so much is that they were athletic company, but it was an inspiration in there and their motto, it says, if you have a body, you are an athlete. And I wanted to make a commercial that symbolize that. So I made it. Three days later, a Nike called me. They said, we don’t know who you are, but you have our entire campus in a frenzy and we want to meet you. So immediately, uh, flew up to Beaverton, Oregon and we, uh, we just started building a relationship and I continue to make, you know, these fan made Nike commercials and I made one called dream crazy and Nike even name the Colin Kaepernick commercial after my tagline. Just crazy. Crazy.

So this is a concept out there, what everybody listened to closely. So what’s you’re saying is without any money from Nike, without any direction from Nike, without any inspiration or acknowledgement from Nike, you went out there and first made a nike commercial and I just put it into the atmosphere around money.

Friend of mine who’s a videographer and a pvc pipe. And then we tied to my waist. And to his way, so the camera would always stay the same exact distance from my legs. And when you watch the commercials, I was our camera gag that the background would change. I’m running all throughout la, but the camera was always same, exact distance from my leg and we were just looking to inspire and be creative and it only cost us about, you know, $700 to make. And uh,

he got money out of your pocket though, right? I mean, you just took, you just took a flyer. You just said, I’m going to do this. I’m not sure what’s going to happen as a result, but I’m just going to do this, right?

Yes.

Yeah. It’s amazing. So many of the people that we talked to, her, part of our thrive nation, everybody’s waiting for you. Anybody wants to get in front of Nike and get the deal before they do the deal. And I just think that’s so inspiring that you said, you know what? No matter what happens from this, I think highly of his company. I mean, you didn’t do it to think, wow, this, this will lead to me being in their commercials. This will lead to me being on their campus. This will, maybe you may have thought we might, but there there’s no guarantees and you just stepped out in faith and you did it, and I think that is a, that is one of the takeaway messages of this whole thing that you’ve done is that you said, you know what, I’m going to do this and, and put out the atmosphere and see what happens. And so many people nuts. You know what? That’s, that’s entrepreneurship at its core. This is a, uh, there, there’s

so much we could unpack here. But when you, when you said you left your music career, I don’t think a lot of listeners know this. Can you explain what artists that you were working with and where your music career was, but before you decided to leave and pursue this because you aren’t just screwing around in the music industry, you were having massive success. I’d love to hear you share about where you were with your music career before you decided to drop it to pursue this new dream.

I’m from Atlanta. He’s from Atlanta for about 10 years. I had one of the biggest management firms and all of hip hop. We on the biggest studio in Atlanta and we had like six or seven clients I’ll do very well and it’s tough to walk away from, you know, we were making about $15 million a year and that was, that was like my life, you know, it was, it was all I knew ever since I was in the music industry ever since I was 18 years old. I started off at the cameraman, you know, doing film for an artist named Soulja boy, dropped out of college to go on tour with him and I got fired and I find a girl group and got them signed to interscope records and then they fired me for some big industry manager because I was only 19 at the time. So this was bumping my head a lot. And then I found this group called Travis Porter and I told her we’re not going to sign a record deal, we’re going to do an independent and I would drive from every radio station from Jackson, Mississippi, all the way to Washington DC. And we took three records, top 20 without a record deal. And then I discovered two chainz and uh, the rest of history, you know, many world tours and platinum records. So won a grammy,

z three top 20 records without a record deal. You won a grammy grammy for explain to listeners what your, what your grandma was for.

So being in hip hop, it is so hard to win a grammy. It is the most difficult thing ever because grammy’s are very, it’s like a, it’s a very musical, righteous organization. And uh, but hip hop has taken over the world. Um, hip hop is now the number one grossing genre in the world, the past, a rock, pop and country is the number one grossing genre in the world. And this year, 70 percent of all the top 10 records on the billboard charts for this entire year has been hip hop records and I’ve been a part of that. And the record that I won a grammy for was it a two chainz did with chance the rapper, who’s from Chicago, who’s a unsigned artists I believe it or not, and he’s one of the biggest ones here. He maybe is the biggest artists in the world and we. We did a feature with them and we did a collaboration and that record won a grammy.

Now you’ve moved on to, I don’t even know what you would call yourself or would you call yourself an inspirational content provider? Would you call yourself a former Grammy Award winning a fitness guy? I mean, what? What do you call yourself now?

I would like to call myself an athlete and I would also like to call myself a a inspirational figures because I’m out in the world doing things and then I go tell the world what I’m doing. So I’m not just one of those motivational speakers who just talks. I’m talking about things that are actually happening, so yeah, that’s I like to say athlete and an inspirational speaker.

So when your music career, what would you have called yourself? A producer or a manager? What did you call yourself then?

A manager.

Okay. So now you are are having traction in another. In Charlie Jabaleytwo point. Oh, what does the future look like you for the next year? What do you see yourself doing in the next 12 months?

Next 12 months is going to be exciting. I’m very excited to get out into the world and spread my message and speak at colleges and motivate people are gone through what I was going to when I was at my rock bottom point. I kind of wish I had a role model. You know, somebody who wasn’t, didn’t have like ulterior motive. Like a lot of the people in the health space where I’ve motivation, they’re just really trying to sell a protein shake or something. I just wanted somebody authentic like I looked up to and I told myself when I get out of this hole, I’m going to be that guy that I wish existed when I was in a bad place, so that’s what I’m doing for the world. I’m going on and inspiring because we need something positive and we need something positive. They’re not just trying to take, take your money.

Well, let me ask you this here. Are you doing speaking events these days?

I’m gearing them up, so we biked across America and we just did the marathon, so all the crazy feats are done. Me traveling all over the country doing these athletic feats, so now it’s all about the speaking engagements and that’s what I’m very excited about.

December seventh and eight, we’ve got a permit. We have these huge workshops at the thrive nation. Huge workshops and we have a kid. Schmidt, the guy who led the Harley Davidson touring around. Cool, dude. Yeah, he’s awesome. We have him coming. We have Michael Levine, the PR consultant for Nike, for Prince, for a Charlton Heston, for President Bush, for President Clinton. He speakingZ is going to be there, so if you’re in the area or you want to be December seventh and eighth, man, we’d love to. We’d love to have you. Are you working on a book right now or what are you working on?

So, so the book actually just was just completed 50,000 words and I had a call earlier today with a book agent and I’m going to New York to meet with another book agent, uh, tomorrow. The book is called the life and death of CEO.Charlie Jabaley is the autobiography of a version of myself that I had to. I had to kill off in order to, in order to save my own life. But it’s an amazing story about my entire life, the ambition, the music, the insecurities, the depressions, the brain, tumors and the entrepreneurism. It’s all these life lessons, but surrounded by the craziest stories you can ever imagine.

Well, Charlie, you’re such an interesting character or you talked about going away, uh, off off. Mike, you’re a little bit off off air about going away kind of visioning, you know, coming up with your, what your future, what does it look like when you’re visioning? Are you, are you, are you going out in the woods or are you’re writing things down? Do you go off on vacation? Do you go into a closet? What does it look like when you’re dreaming and goal setting.

So there’s two things that I do every morning I wake up, I pull out my notebook, I call it my quantum possibilities now book and I believe a lot in the law of attraction and I believe we’re all energy and we’re able to attract things into our lives is how I’ve been able to manifest all the crazy things that happened this year because they were bigger than me. It wasn’t just work that I put in. Um, I kind of send out a message from my heart and it comes back. So I do that every morning. But this past week I went down to Mexico and I sat on a beach by myself for a week and I just wanted clarity and I just wanted to tune my heart to what I wanted and, uh, anytime that I can tune it the right way, a blessing seemed to come done in my whole life. I’m fine tuning it now. More and more

the first four hours of a typical day. This is my final question, before the final, for the first four hours of a day, I think a lot of times people, um, they start today off weird. They start their day off with regret. They start off the day feeling overwhelmed and then it just becomes a self perpetuating, self defeating cycle of intentions and hope deferred. How, how do you start your first four hours of your day? You, you, you seem like you’ve been a very, very productive guy. I’m now you’re becoming a very healthy and productive guy. One of the first four hours of your typical day look like

waking up before everybody else wakes up. Because I’m able to focus on my energy. Then I get into my notebook and I visualize all the possibilities that I want in my life. Possibilities is my favorite word. Um, it’s like, it’s like when you think of possibilities, you just started smiling, like you can’t even look up. Like it’s like dream. So I write down all the possibilities that don’t want in my life and I’m, I spend 30, 45 minutes, sometimes an hour doing that. It’s really fun. And then I go to the gym and I get my day started right that way, you know, before I go to the gym, I’ll do, I’m lifting weights now, but when I was training for the iron man, I’ll be running, I’d be bike riding or swimming. Um, but now I’m focused on lifting weights because I want to, I want to gain muscle. I wanna, you know, physically, you know, shape my body a little bit better. So that’s the first boy was my day. Looks like

Z, Z. I am loving this interview my friend. Know what question do you have as you attempt to one up me as you often do

Charlie Jabaley. So I tell you what, uh, you know, you, you are so transparent and, and we love that everybody loves transparency and you know, you’ve had some realize rollercoaster ride, you’ve got some really high points and some really low points. And what are some practical things you can tell the thrive nation, I mean in your story, you, you went through and you kind of almost emphasized and I got fired and I got fired. So many people out there listening right now or in a or in a state of their life where they just got fired or they’ve been fired recently. What did you do to pick your, to pull your bootstraps back up and to get back out there because, you know, whenever you’re a young man, particularly like you were and you were trying to find your identity and you thought you found it, then all of a sudden you get whacked. Walk us through that process mentally and get maybe some practical things that you did to keep you from going to crazy town. Crazy bill, you know,

um, me myself up sometimes. I remember after I got five girl group first act that I got signed, I was in bed for a month. Wow. The first thing I did to really get out of it because I wanted to reinvent my life as far as I wanted to dress up as somebody else. I wanted to be somebody else, so I created a character for myself and I said, you know what? I’m going to put suits on and I’m going to go back to being CEO Charlie and I’m going to be focused and I’m going to wear my suit, my briefcase, and I would dress up with who I wanted to do to be. I wanted to be a successful businessman, so I literally dress up as him every day and I did the same thing when I was at rock bottom. Being overweight 305 pounds. I said, I to create a superhero that’s gonna, save me and I’m going to name him Charlie rocket, and that’s going to be my athlete name and he has his Bandana.

He has this, you know, a sunglasses and he wears these colorful, bright colors when he works out and I would dress up as Charlie rocket and I changed my name from CEO Charlie two Charlie rocket and I said, if I’m going to be an athlete, I’ve got to have an athlete name and I gotTa have my outfit and I dressed up as him every day and I became an athlete. So it was my was my law of attraction, like I want it to be him everyday. So it attracted it into my life. So that is the first thing I did. The second thing is I’m a delusional optimist and I would love to prescribe that to as many people

come on now,

a delusional optimist. Even when the ship is sinking, oh, we’re going to be good. It’s almost like a live in a fantasy land and it works. Because if I were to be realistic in my life, I would think about all the things that could go wrong. I would tell my mom, for example, I don’t manage wrappers. And she said, what do you know about managing rappers? You’re 18 years old, and I said, oh no, that doesn’t. It’s going to be easy. It’s going to be easy. When I said I’m going to do an Ironman, I said, oh, there’s going to be

for a couple of hours, a couple hours every day. I love it. This is so good, Zoe. One a bottle this up. This is your optimism. This, this quantum positivity notebook, this optimism. The world needs this and the world wants it. Where do you. Where do you want to direct our listeners? We have hundreds of thousands of folks that download every show. Where do you want him to go right now? Do you want him to go to your website? Your were working. They. Where do you where? Where? Where can we direct this energy?

I’m personally love instagram. That is my favorite place to put content, but I have content on every network. My instagram is at Charlie, so on instagram that gave me the first name Charlie. They saw all the positive things I was doing and they said, we want you to have this name. They were holding onto it, so on instagram it’s just Charlie and uh,

is okay. Just making sure

yes with yes, but I’m everywhere. Facebook, youtube, twitter. You can find my content everywhere or my website. Charlie [inaudible] dot com, but I personally recommend following me on instagram. I’m very personal, both personal and also vulnerable. On instagram I put, I put all the truth out there.

Now Charlie Jabaley would like to end every show with a boom, which is essentially a boom, stands for big, overwhelming optimistic momentum, which is what we believe everybody needs to bring the everyday big, overwhelming optimistic momentum. And now a. also you need to bring a quantum positivity notebook to every day. So

without any further ado, we’d like to end the show with the boom. Charlie Jabaley, are you prepared to, to bring up to bring us the boom. Here we go. Seriously. Want to grow your business, get the tools, the templates, the training videos, and the workshop you need to be successful at thrive time. Schools that come for only $228 per year and only 2,500 spots available. Don’t miss out and reserve your spot today at thrive time. School Dot Com.