Hello team and welcome to episode 499 of the Simply Fit Podcast. In today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Stuart Warren Dansby. Stuart is the protagonist of the documentary Taking the Fight, which follows Stuart as he decides to enter the ring for the first time at 56 years old and not only that, faces a 25 year old fighter. Stuart's story isn't about combat sports or fighting, it's about overcoming doubts, obstacles and fears and showing you that it's never too late to achieve your goals and dreams if you are willing to make them happen. In this episode you can expect to learn why Stuart decided to take his first fight at 56 and why he chose an opponent that was almost half of his age, what the most challenging part of Stuart's journey was, aside from getting his butt kicked of course, along with how Stuart managed to get his partner to believe in his vision even when she had major concerns about his well-being. So without further ado, Stuart Warren Dansby. I'm perfect Elliot, thank you so much, I'm grateful and appreciative to be here, very excited. I'm very excited to have you here as well, I'm excited to drive into this story, it's a pretty fascinating one if I do space for myself and before we do drive into it, can you give the listen to their content about who you are and what it is that you do? Sure, I think the first thing I am is a guy who's very very passionate about allowing folks to understand that they can achieve whatever they want in this life, that we can all get out of our own head and things that we can't think about, that we think we can't do the things that we are challenged to do, we think our obstacles are problems, I'm here to drive a message on how you can change your life and achieve the life that you really want and fulfill your dreams. So first and foremost, I'm that guy that that is my passion and mission in life. We do that through a couple of different ways, one is I'm an amateur kickboxer or Muay Thai fighter and I started a very late age, I started at the age, I take my first fight in a ring at 56 and so we've turned that journey, that six-year journey into my other passion, if you will, which is I'm a documentary filmmaker in conjunction with my partner, War Post Productions. So over the last nine years, we've followed my journey and made this documentary and it's a journey of really fighting is the metaphor and that's the metaphor, just like Rocky's not a boxing movie, it's really not, right? And in this real-life story, which isn't scripted, we allow people to understand how to get out of your own head, how to achieve your dreams, stop looking at its problems, stop looking at its obstacles, they're merely challenges and no matter what anybody says, if that's your dream, if that's your vision, you can achieve it. I love that and where did this mindset stem from? Was it something that you always carried with you or is it something you developed a little later in life? I think it's a probably, it's a good question man, it's probably a little bit of both. I've always been, I guess a little bit delusional on the things that I could do, right? And sometimes the realities slap me across the face with that. And in this case, when I started getting into kickboxing and Muay Thai training, I just fell in love with it. It was the most difficult thing that I've ever done. By far, more challenging than any business aspect that I've been through. And that was a lot of challenges that I've been through. But I think going through business challenges, and I have an expression in business, there's three things happen every day, excuses, apologies and results, only one matters. And I developed that mindset in business years ago. And so I kind of started applying that to kickboxing and fighting because it was so difficult. And within that fighting and kickboxing, and the team, the team that supports me, forged that mentality even deeper and wouldn't allow me to be anything except my very best. So fighting has changed me as a human being in a much better way, in every aspect of who I am, including my discipline and everything good in life comes from discipline, right? So I think it started early, but fighting in combat sports, because it's so black and white, it's so clear. You are either getting your ass kicked or you are not, right? There's no argument, there's no greater, you can say whatever you want, right? You win or you'll learn, it's that simple and anything in between is ego. Does that make sense? Definitely does. And that's what I love about sport in itself and especially combat sports. It's very, very easy to find the lines. It's very, very easy to analyze your performance and know whether you're doing the work and whether you're showing up or whether you're not. And it's so black and white in a world that's many times great at this moment in time, and that's why I love sport itself and also combat sport. I feel like epitomizes that even more as well. So one thing is to obviously get started on that journey. Another thing is to document the process. What led you to thinking, well, actually, maybe we're going to make a documentary about this. I know it's one of your other passions, but I don't know how many people would want to have filmed themselves getting their butt kicked, but here we are. Yeah, I often joke, you know, I don't know what you could do that's more narcissistic than say, you know what, I'm going to film my life story about me, right? And that was one of the, I guess, that, you know, we talk about our fears and in the back of my mind, I always always like, if this comes out just as this narcissistic journey of look at me, look at me, then I have completely missed the mark. But it's a great question because it started when I was training for my very, very first fight. It was in a mat in a tournament at the age of 55. And I just, I trained for three or four years. I didn't take it serious, but I finally decided my coach said some things to me when I was getting ready to test for my black belt. And so I decided to actually take a fight, right? And when I made that decision, I didn't think it was that big of a deal, because when I'm sparring against a 22 year old fighter, I don't think, well, he's 22. I think, man, that guy's got a great low kick. Guys got a great jab. What am I going to do about that? And that's all I think of is how do I overcome that challenge? So I never thought it was that big a deal, but I trained at a place called Freedom Fighters, mixed martial arts, and professional fighters were coming up when I said that, dude, this is big. Do you understand that? And other fighters started coming up telling me, you're inspiring me. And people were coming up telling me, you're inspiring me to get in shape, you're inspiring me to open a business. And I'm just like, I'm trying to knock a motherfucker out and not get knocked out. I don't really know what you're talking about, but that grassroots groundswell support kept happening. So I was blessed. I won my very first fight in that tournament. I made it to the finals. I fight this young man who's 20 years old, six foot two, and it was a brutal fight. He's talking trash the whole time. He wins the fight by decision. The moment the fight ends, the moment he looks at me as soon as the bell rings he goes, how old are you? I said, I'm 55. And he's like, no way, no way. And they hold up his hand, the ref holds up his hand to announce him as the winner of the tournament. He immediately grabs my hand, tears start coming out of his eyes. This is a true story. This is your champion. This is your fucking champion right here. And he's just crying both from the victory and from the battle that we went through. And that started all those steps of people saying that started me thinking, what an extraordinary journey I have. Immediately after that, guys, I didn't know grown men were coming out of the stands and coming up to me and holding me and telling me crazy things. My wife and I am going to flashback about 15 years ago. We had done a television show that we had produced called Little David and was Stalin Stewart through a company called War Post. We got a national syndication for three or four years. It was a great experience. It didn't make money, but it was amazing. My partner, Carlos LaRietta, who owns War Post said, if you ever want to do another project, let me know. So the idea started formulating as I'm doing that first training camp. But honestly, I couldn't even, I'm like, I got a focus on this. This is taking over everything in my mind. It's an obsession and training twice a day. All I care about his wing is fight. I can't get distracted. But at that moment, at the end of that fight, I remember walking off and saying, God bless me with an extraordinary journey. My two coaches are opposing coaches. One is a three-time world Muay Thai champion, WBC champion. The other one is in the MMA Hall of Fame. They're opposing coaches. They only see each other across the ring or the cage. They come together at one moment to coach me and to corner me. How does that happen? How do I get those high-level world-class coaches? How do I get a team of professional fighters to back me, to kick my ass with love, to push me? And I just said, God bless me with an extraordinary journey. And I want to pay it forward. I want to share it. And so that's after that first fight on a tournament on a mat is when I decided I'm like, OK, I've got to share this message. I have something here that can help change people's lives in a positive way. And for the last nine years, that has been, along with winning fights, that has been my mission. So I went, I met with Carlos. I said, I have an idea. And for probably 90 minutes, I poured my heart out of my journey. And he didn't know anything about fighting. He didn't really know, because we hadn't talked in a while, like what I was doing. And he's like, he looks at me and he goes, this is crazy. And I said, look, I'll fund this myself. I'll pay for this out of my pocket. And he goes, OK, you got a quarter million dollars in your pocket? And I mean, Carlos, I won't fund this myself. I said, I know you. You're a hardcore businessman. You're still talking to me. There's a reason why. And he said, yeah, there is. But first off, I got to tell you something. He said, this is not a story of fighting. And I kind of looked at him on a 20 minute. And he goes, this is a story of love. And we, I had an epiphany. I'm like, you're right. It's the love of a dream. It's the love of my teammates. It's the love of my coaches. It is, it is the love of sharing this message. And that's really what it's all about. And that's what I say. It's really not a fighting documentary. Fighting is the metaphor and I am the conduit. So what we agreed to do that day was to become partners and to do it over time as his team. And he had the availability, because it wasn't a funded project. And that's part of what took so long. And the other part was just understanding how you have to be the owner and driver of your dream and your vision, because no one else is going to be. You can, by putting that, I want it more than I want to breathe energy into this world. You will attract the people and the resources that you need. You will, because they're all around you. They're all around you, but you don't see it. You don't get it. And you don't know it until you take that initiative. And then when you started attracting those people, I gave my coaches more than they thought they were going to get. I worked harder than they thought I could. And every time I gave them more, they came back with more. They came back with, okay, we're going to raise it to another level. We're going to push even harder. And what happens to that process is the whole team rises. Yeah, absolutely. And something that I think that I held onto there is that you see so many younger people doing vlogs and documenting their lives and their stories and everything along those lines. So I don't see it as necessarily narcissistic as the world that we live in. And also, like you said, the story is not necessarily about his Stuart taking a fight. It's about everything that's true that goes through. And every single other thing that happens along the way to take you to that journey. And everyone getting behind you in the team effort and everything along those lines. But I also think the big part is obviously the age element as well, is that we're not going to be surprised to go on our YouTube home page and see a vlog from a 20 year old, a 30 year old, or maybe even, yeah, like 40 year old maybe. And that might be pushing it a little bit. But when we start to see someone doing it at 50 or 60, that's a completely different story. And I think that maybe there's a under tapped demographic there for people who have maybe the phone who may be thinking, well, you know, I've settled into life a little bit, maybe, you know, the best of my days behind me. The one that comes to my mind is Rich Roll, who obviously committed to being a triathlete a little bit later in his life. And that obviously inspired a lot of people as well. So I feel that age thing as well is going to really, really connect with a lot of people who have maybe left their dreams behind. Maybe they've thought, well, you know, I probably should have taken this up early, even me, like, you know, I'm only in my 30s now. And I sometimes think that I probably have left things a little bit too late in terms of athletic endeavors. So to have someone who's almost double my age do that is a completely different story. I don't think many of us would have come across before. Yeah, I think, thank you for that. I think there's, you know, when I'm, I'm going to quote some things that I organically talk about in the documentary, which is that we all have a fight. Every single one of us, you may not know it, you may be standing or working next to somebody that seems perfect. They have a fight, right? And we all have things that hold us back from what our dreams really are. We all think, can't be a CEO because I'm not as smart as that girl, can't be a good parent because I had lousy parents, can't open a business because I don't have financial resources, right? We all have that stuff that is sometimes that dream that vision is it stays in the back of our head because we're afraid to even bring it to life, right? And you can imagine how many people told me I was nuts, how many people question me, right? Outside of my circle, how many people are like, why are you doing this? Like, why would you get your ass kicked? Why would you get your head split open? What? And keep going, right? And the other challenge we couple this with is I have a right knee that has no ACL, gone. Grade four arthritis bone on bone, the last surgeon that was in there said, can't explain medically how you can walk on it. My left knee is a little bit better, surgically repaired ACL, but grade four arthritis, I had to generate the disc in my neck, I have asthma, I think I have a bad hang now. So you have all these reasons, excuses, if you will, why you shouldn't do it. And I'm by no means am I speaking about fighting or by no means am I exclusively speaking about sports, I'm speaking about anything, you know, you might think and I can never get in shape because I've always been heavy. I could never be good at this because I wasn't good at it in high school or college. And it's all bullshit because when you convict it, okay, I'm going to have the strength of character to bring my vision to life at any age, at any point in your life, you can do it. But it starts with that strength of, I'm going to convict to this, right? And then we live in a world that right now, unfortunately, probably wants more immediate gratification than any generations in our history, right? It doesn't happen now. If I don't get a immediate gratification that doesn't serve me well right now, then I quickly move on to something else. And you know, you and I were talking a little bit ago and I originally thought it would take six months to make this documentary and it took nine years to bring it to fruition now to where it's on four major platforms in countries across the world. My timeline was different than than gods, right? Because my story wasn't told yet after six months. It took five more years of fighting to really tell the story. But what I recognize through that again, I'm going to repeat myself a little bit is, okay, it's late, but I'm not giving up on it. I'm still moving forward. Did we progress a little bit more? How far have we come? We're halfway there. We filmed half of it. We're halfway here. We've got a little bit more. And I just measured the successes. And I knew because of the people around me that believed in this project and I'm just talking about fighters and coaches. I'm talking about editors, my partner, directors, music composers. I knew we would get there. And you mentioned your partner there. And obviously throughout the course of the documentary, she, well, especially towards the end, she expressed some concerns of you fighting. And I'm curious about this aspect as well, because a lot of people, maybe in their 40s, 50s or 60s, will want to take on those ventures. But they feel the risk that they're going to potentially put on their family and their partner. And maybe they feel that they're doing it from a selfish perspective and not for the well-being of their family. How did you get your partner to stay on board with you throughout the course of this, especially when in many times throughout the course of documentary, it seems like she definitely does something. She wants you at home. She wants you kind of not, not necessarily wrapped up, but she wants you at home. She wants you safe. She wants you healthy. So how did you continue to push through that even when the closest person next to you is telling you, well, maybe you shouldn't be considering this? Yeah, she thinks I'm dumb enough without getting kicked in the head even better. So I get her point of view. You know, there's, there's a part where she, she does definitively talk about that. She is, it became more and more in an integral part of the documentary, because as I told my, my business partner, Carlos, I'm like, she's the reason I do this. And what I mean by that, and it's a great question, because I get asked, especially by guys that are, say, 40 plus, the first question they say is, how did your wife possibly let you do this? Like my wife would never. And as much as Stella didn't ever want to see, nobody wants to see their spouse get their ass kicked. Nobody wants to see their other spouse just, I came home so many days. You know, we've got dinner plans on a Saturday night, and my knees are so swollen. Ellie, I can, I can barely walk up the stairs in my house. And I'm like, babe, doing, and she's like, nope, we'll stay home. We don't need to go to dinner. Right. I'm so beat up. I'm so exhausted. But she did it out of love, because she realized early on, he loves this, and it's important to him. And so how long have you been married? And literally a week, would you believe? A week. Yeah. Congratulations. All right. Well, congratulations. That's awesome. But as a married guy, you know, some of your best moments are when you don't speak, right? And I was getting ready for my first fight. And I remember Stella, she was standing behind me and she said, babe, can I be in your corner for the fight? And in my head, this is the good moment where I didn't speak. In my head, I said, what? I've got Greg Chaplin and Manolo Lopez in my corner. I've got two of the highest level striking coaches on the planet. What would you possibly tell me that could make me win that fight? Right. But I didn't say it. I shut up. But I turned and looked at her and she clearly saw it on my face that she owes. She says not to tell you how to fight. I think she might have added a dumbass on the end of that, but she didn't. But but I heard it right. She's like, I want to be there for your spiritual support. I want to be there to ground you. I want to be there in love so that you carry my energy into that right. And that's the most powerful support she could possibly give. And as I got ready for my last fight, and candidly, I didn't ask, I just told her I'm going I'm going to fight again. And I could see kind of the the stress on her because she wasn't she wasn't as involved in this training camp that she was in the past. She was a little bit benign about it. Right. And I didn't know because she held it back and she talks about it in the documentary. I didn't really know how she felt. She came up to me today of what's called press day. So we're going to go down and do interviews for to promote the fight with the promotion. And she walks up to me and she says, tell me why you want to do this. And I said, because everything about fighting makes me a better person. When I fight, I push myself to places emotionally, physically and spiritually that I've never done. I improve myself as a human being. And that rolls into every aspect of who I am. I'm a more patient husband. I'm a better father. I'm more self aware. I'm more in tune with my own spirituality because I understand what I'm capable of and I understand my mortality. And I went on for about 15 minutes and she looked at me and she said, okay, and she walked away and I was getting ready to walk out the door for that promotion day. And she said, may I go with you? And I knew at that moment, okay, she's there. And from that moment on, she was celebratory. And we have something that we do when I go to spar every week, first started off, she'd say, stay safe, babe, stay, don't get hurt, don't get hurt. And we don't, we don't say that. When I go to spar, she looks at me and she goes, she says, have fun and kick ass because we don't function in fear. We function with support of each other. If we understand each other as spouses, what's important to each other? You might not understand why they do it, but you understand why it's important to them, then you've got to support them. That's what love is, right? Think about it the opposite way. Many times, Stella's watching me spar and she's been there, then I'll come over to the corner and she'll be like, you're letting that guy kill you with his jab. What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your hands up. Why are you letting him kill you with his jab, right? And as much as that annoys me, I'll be like, God, you got to love that, right? You want to get in there and see if he kills you with his jab? Because I think he will. But that's the love that I want. Think about if she came to the fight or she said, okay, I can't, I can't come, I'll watch it online, but I can't, I can't be there because it's going to stress me out. Think about if she came to the fight and said, baby, don't get hurt, don't get hurt. Like, what kind of energy would that put in my body? On the contrary, the fact that I know she's there, that I know she's screaming, that I can hear her going, Bosch, Bosch, knock him out. I can hear her. That love carries me through there, right? The first moment before I, I was introduced for my first fight, I remember looking across the, the mat at my opponent and I looked over my shoulder and I saw Greg and Manolo, my coaches, I saw Stella and I saw an army of fighters that have come that I trained with, right? And I look back at my opponent and I remember in my head saying, I'm going to defeat you. I am going to steal your soul because every one of those people behind me, every one of them loves me and every single one of them is inside me and you can't beat us. I own you. You cannot beat us, right? And that was my pure in my heart conviction. And that's how vital that support is, right? So I kind of wandered and answered your question, but there's so much depth to that and it's so vital that we support our spouses in what they believe in that they're really committed to and that we do so without fear. Yeah, I think the big thing there that I heard is that your spouse was smart enough to ask the question, the important question of why do you do this and you are smart enough to give her a good enough answer. If you were just like, well, my ego is telling me that I need to fight or this is my identity because this is what I've always done or whatever it might have been, she might have been like, well, you know, it's kind of hard to support you when, you know, it's kind of an ego to store thing or it has a necessary thing. And there's nothing wrong with that from time to time, especially when we're younger, we don't have as many responsibilities and everything along those lines. But because you gave her such a reason that she was like, well, this makes him who he is. This makes him the strewer that I love. You know, ultimately, I think a lot of times when people have challenges in relationships because of each of the individual person is not doing the things that make them the best versions of themselves, right? So by her denying that or placing fear around it and impacting, you know, you feel guilty by going to practice because you know what she's kind of thinking behind, like in the back of her mind, like that's not support. That's actually going to be detrimental to you both individually and also from a relationship perspective as well. So I think that's a really, really big point. And then obviously what you added on there was the enormous support system you had behind you as well. And that's obviously very, very apparent throughout the entire course of the documentary as well. And I think it goes without saying that, you know, those who surround yourself with are going to make a difference. And also the energy that you give off because you give the same energy that the other people give. So it's reciprocal. And obviously it then has led you to having such a powerful team around you. What do you say to people who say that perhaps I don't have the most supportive wife? I don't have the most supportive support system. Where can you go about finding those people? Yeah, I mean, I think the spouse question you'd have to ask Stella because she is a counselor and she is a psychotherapist. So I don't know how deep I want to go down that road. But I think, you know, let's go back to what you said. If the spouses don't support each other. So if you're spouse, if you really want to do something and your spouse says, I don't want you to do it. I've seen this throughout my life. I spent a lot of years in the fitness industry and you'll have spouses say, well, I don't want you to go work out. And that person is there because they want to lose weight. They don't feel good about themselves. They don't feel healthy. So the spouse denies it. Well, guess where the resentment is now? You told me I can't be healthy. You told me I can't achieve my best self. That's probably not going to be overt. It's probably not going to be said, but that resentment builds up and we know relationships that build up resentments that we don't talk about are what allows those relationships to self-destruct, right? So I would only encourage people to authentically understand what your vision is. And it might be, I want to leave my corporate job because I want to open a business and this is, I always want to open a restaurant, right? And your spouse might be, are you crazy? We need that money. So I think the first thing you got to do is be really thoughtful and convicted of, okay? How are you going to get through that transition period in that example? And then secondly, do you really have a business plan? Have you thought it out? And how convicted you are? One of the things you have to probably demonstrate is that conviction and that thoughtfulness, right? Because we all, listen, we all are capable of, man, I'm going to go surf. I'm going to take up surfing, right? Buy a bunch of surf gear and you do it for a couple of times. You almost drown once. You're like, all right, I'm going to hang that up, right? You spend a couple thousand dollars on lessons and surfboard. So we all, we all, let's say we all do those silly things. That's okay. That's part of finding out what you want. You don't want in life. So I think in my case, the first time I decided to take a fight, I'd been training, I started training at about 48. So, but I wasn't, I wasn't living the life of a fighter. There's a difference between training, living the life of that Spartan life of complete commitment, diet, everything, and sparring at a higher level and doing everything, right? But when I started to do that, I started to go through my, my belt testing with another gentleman, a sensei. That's when it started to affect me. And that's when I think she'd seen he's put in this much work already. And I don't know that she bought in the minute I told her I'm going to take a fight. But the minute I told her, I started dieting, I started training at another level. Even my coach, Greg, at the time when I told him I wanted to fight, said, mmm, I'm not sure you want to do this, dude. This is going to be crazy. This is a lifestyle you don't want. He took off. He was out of the country for a couple of weeks. He came back and I dropped 15 pounds in two weeks. And he's like, okay, you're serious about this, right? So I think it's, it's how thoughtful and how convicted are you going to really be in this? And then like anything in a relationship, man, you got to be able to speak to each other. And sometimes it's not comfortable conversations. I think we as guys are a lot worse at that as a whole than women are. I think women are much better at having honest, candid conversations. And I think we're the ones that squirm and and don't want to sometimes express how we really feel or what's really important to us. But that's the things I would encourage. And it's a really compelling question. We can't fix relationships, but we know just honest communication is the key, right? Absolutely. And letting your actions speak as well. I love that conviction piece as well. I think that what you've got to recognize as well is that you've probably told your partner and we all have done about 50 to 100 other ideas that we've had that we haven't followed through on, right? So they might not be able to take you so seriously when you say that you want to take up something, especially when it seems pretty wild. They're like, well, it's just going to be like the other thing that he took up or the other thing that he took up. But if you do start to show it with your actions and maybe you go in with a little bit of grace and expect them not to be super understanding, especially if you've made kind of unheld promises in the past. And then just maybe think to yourself, well, maybe I need to prove to myself first. And then maybe they're going to start believing that this is for me as well. But I love that piece. I think it's an important part of your journey as well. Another thing that comes to my mind is that when I speak to you and when I saw the documentary, I know that obviously getting hit is not comfortable, but I don't get the feeling that that's your biggest pain point. That's not the biggest fear. It's not getting knocked out. It's not getting your head busted open. It's nothing like that. So I'm curious, what were I should say, something your biggest fears throughout the course of this documentary and going through these fights? What were you genuinely scared of? That's, again, a compelling question. And it's an interesting one. You know, I think the first time you really get blasted, right, you really get hit with a hard headshot where it's kind of like instantly like you smoked a joint. You're like, not that I would know, but I've heard. Or you get kicked with the liver shot, which just literally robs you of your soul. You drop to your knees. You're on the ground before you can even figure out what it is, right? Or you get just kicked hard in the ribs three or four times. The first couple of times you go through that, you decide, do I want to do this or not, right? I know a lot of guys who've tried martial arts, they've come into Muay Thai and kickboxing and they've gone, you know what? I love Jiu Jitsu. That's more cerebral for me. And I'm not, Jiu Jitsu is an amazing sport. And those guys are amazing high level athletes, but I have friends that have gone, no, getting punched in the face. I'm not doing this as a profession. I don't want to do that, but I love to learn how to defend myself with Jiu Jitsu and have become phenomenal Jiu Jitsu fighters and they're legitimately fighters. So I think the first thing you do is you figure out, okay, can I handle this? And at that moment, do I want to run out of the cage or the ring or do I want to stay and come back and think, okay, he landed that left hook. He's going to want it again. I'm going to make him think he's got it. Watch this, right? So you're right. That isn't, you get to a point where you've experienced all those things. One of the biggest fears you have taking a fight is not the fear of getting beat up, but the, and this is, this is mostly ego. You got to deal with this, right? It's the fear of dramatic failure. I remember when I was preparing for my first fight in a ring, the one that's in the documentary, I called my partner Carlos and I said, Hey, I'm going to take another fight. And I literally, I went, you don't want to film it, do you? That's how I worded it, brother, because I was like, I know I need to tell him to film it, but I really don't want that added layer of pressure, because here's what you know. I know from production, they're going to reach out to my, that fighter. They're going to say, we need an image release. Are you okay if we film this for a documentary? And I could just picture him. He's going to go, sure, I'll sign it, but I'm not giving you a happy ending, right? You're not getting the ending, you're not. So there was this huge added layer of pressure filming my own fights for the documentary. So what happens? And I call it a cancer. Doubt is a cancer. Any time it enters the building, it comes in like a little tumor like that. And if you don't crush it with positivity, it's going to grow every day. And it's going to consume you. And I remember thinking, what if he knocks me out in the first 30 seconds? Well, first off, the documentary is a failure. How can I, how can I document to people how to be successful? When I just, I just flop. What about all my friends? What about Stella? What about my coaches? Everybody's going to be embarrassed, right? And that is the fear. If you get right down to it, that's your ego. That's your ego trying to tell you take the easy way out that your ego based in fear, saying what if, what if it's going to be embarrassing, it's going to be embarrassing. So I think that was the biggest fear. Now, as I started contemplating it, I went the opposite route quickly. I said, no, no, because I recognized what it was, right? First off, tell your ego to shut the fuck up, have a coconut smile, and sit out. Secondly, how are you going to overcome that? And I am a big believer in meditation and positive affirmations and visualization. And any, I know you've had some athlete psychologist coaches on your podcast before I watch some of that, they'll all tell you specifically for athletes, the power of visualization is everything. But I believe that translates into business success, into every success, right? And I would visualize the worst moments of the fight. I would literally visualize my opponent kicking my ass, banging me up. I'm semi conscious. I'm out on my feet. And somehow there's still two minutes left in the round. And I would visualize, okay, you're in that moment right now, your hurt, you can't breathe, you're exhausted, you're overwhelmed. How do you want to think? How do you want to function? What do you want to achieve? And I would then visualize how I was going to come out of that moment, how I would regain my composure, how I would control my breathing, how I would think logically, okay, he's landing this and that not think about the pain, think about what he's doing. So I could counteract it and think about what I could do to beat him. So that fear is there. And you're right, it isn't the fear of pain. It's the fear of failure and the fear of embarrassment. And that's our ego. And we got to ego is great. You touched on it. You know, it's great. As long as you're aware of it and you can manage it, because you can use it to drive you to your goals, right? But if you're not aware of it, it's going to manage you every time. Yeah, I could not agree more with that. I think it could be even looked at as a little bit of a superpower, but I always tell people that your superpower doesn't control you, you control your superpower, you know, and if you end up letting control you, then it's going to not lead to any great places. But if you are aware of it and you're able to channel it and utilize it when the time is right, then it could be your greatest ally as well. So Stuart, I have to ask you, what is next for you? Interestingly, now that the documentary is on all these platforms, as you can imagine, everybody that knows me has said, congratulations, man, that's awesome. That's great. It's on the platform. Wow, that's incredible. And I candidly, 100% wholeheartedly, if gone, it's not. It's one step in the right direction. But my goal and my mission from day one has been to change lives, to affect people in a positive way. So what's next for me is definitively driving people to watch the documentary, because what I do know, we did some 25 film festivals over the last year. We were super blessed to be to garner 30 awards. And so what I do know is that when people watch the film, it affects lives. You don't win awards because it's not affecting lives, right? I do know because I went to a good 10 of these film festivals and people would come up to me after watching it. And we did some Q&As and the impact that it had on them. And I'm not talking about people that were athletes. We won the LA documentary film festival for the best feature. And the LA documentary film festival sent me a viewer's critique video because that's part of the process. They say, we're going to get feedback. So they sent it to me and they texted me a couple days later. They said, did you watch it? I said, no. And the girl was like, why did you watch it? I'm like, I don't want to know. She's like, what do you mean? And I said, if they said bad things, I can't change it. I put my heart and soul to it. I don't want to know. And she's like, Stewart, you won the film festival. Watch it, right? But it just shows you the neurosis that goes on, right? So I watched it. What was most remarkable was that I think there were six different people that reviewed a critique the film. None of them were fighters, none of them were athletes. The message resonated with every single human. Everyone had a little different take on how that affected them. But the message of how to overcome the odds and the commitment that it takes resonated. So what I know is that we can be successful, but now I'm driving people to watch it. And that's the most important thing. Within that, I'm writing a book, which are the life lessons that fighting has taught me that are applicable in everyday life. And I've also started a public speaking corporate public speaking tour to deliver these same messages through stories of how this affects you and how it really rolls into your corporate life and your business life and the same principles apply. So the work in a very blessed way is just beginning. I love it. I love it. And I have no doubt that we would have peaked a lot of curiosity today in this conversation. And I'm sure a lot of people will be heading over to watch the documentary. And they will not be disappointed by any means whatsoever. And as you said earlier, like Rocky is not a boxing movie like Rocky and of Creed, for example, to use the two very easy examples of boxing movies didn't accumulate millions and millions of people because they love boxing. There's a lot of boxing cards out there, but they weren't there for that. And I think that your documentary does the same. I think it connects with people on a human level. So I just want you to send everyone to it. So where is the best place for people to watch the documentary, sir? It's called taking the fight. You can always reference taking the fight.com to find out where, but it is now on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play and Voodoo. So any of those four Apple TV and iTunes are the same platform not everybody knows that. So any of those four platforms you can watch it on. Amazing. Well, I am sure that people won't have a hard time finding those considering they just can turn on their Apple Google TV and find that quite comfortably. But Stuart, thank you so much for your time today. I really, truly appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Absolutely. My privilege, my pleasure. We have an expression of Morse Lawrence. That means respect and appreciation. And I want to share that with you, Elliot, and it's simply us. Thank you, Stuart. I appreciate it. All right, brother. Have a powerful day. Thank you. And that was the Simply Fit Podcast. I hope you gained a huge amount of value from today's episode. I feel inspired to improve your health and wellbeing. Be sure to search for Simply Fit in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcast from. And go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Also, if you liked the episode, please don't forget to give it a five-star rating. I'd love to hear your feedback or any questions you have. So reach out to me on social media, you'll find me on Facebook and Instagram @ElliaHassoonie. Thank you so much for listening. And I look forward to talk with you all on the next one.
