1.Welcome and introducing Danny Morel

Roman today, I'm gonna speak with Danny Morrell. Let's cure that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chances? That is the question on this podcast, will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roman Podcast. Roman, welcome back to the Roman Cyclone Podcast. I'm super excited about this episode. Today I'm joined by Danny Morrell. Any of you who follow Danny on social media, he's huge. He's like 280 or 300,000 followers on social media. And this is a guy who's as authentic as they come. He spent the first half of his life and he built a real estate Emperors all he could really call it. He was the owner of a 1.1 billion a year in sales. He had the car He had the house. He had the watch. He was even on the fortune 500 list And then he realized that wasn't making him happy So he's devoted himself and now he helps others to have the same awakening that he had and he arrived at answering some of life's hard questions in a totally unique way He started asking them the questions that we all ask ourselves at some point in our life what's this all about? Is there more for me? Am I happy? With the way and the method he decided to answer them true, it's brilliant. I really enjoyed this interview. Before I jump into the full episode with Danny, just a quick reminder, we've just launched the Jirona training camp. That's going from the 17th to the 22nd of October in Jirona, Spain. The link to sign up for that is down below in the boil. It's going to be an epic training camp. We even have what we call the roadman challenge. It's to get up the fabled rocker kobak climb in your age plus 10 minutes. It's going to be epic epic hard. Roadman, I'm not going to push this off any further because this interview, it's just it needs to be listened. Pause it, listen to it, go back, listen to it again, go back, listen to it again. Sure with a friend, it's going to change lives. Roadman, I give you Danny Morrell. How are you my friend? I'm really good buddy, really good. I'm excited about this chat. I was listening to a podcast. I was out on a ride two days ago and I was listening to an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast. He was interviewing this girl. I'm not sure if you've heard it yet. Yimini Park is her name and she escaped from North Korea. It's a brilliant podcast, but why I thought it was super relevant to our conversation was she speaks about how food is weaponized in North Korea, how they use food to enslave the population because they keep them hungry. And when they keep them hungry and they're always worried about where the next meal is coming from, they can't think about political choices, they can't think about spirituality, they can't think about the meaning of life. And then I started drawing parallels on our society in the West, I'm thinking hunger isn't our method of enslavement, but materialism and commercialism is people are kept so busy working 50 year jobs to pay for houses. They don't need that big SUV is that they're never going to drive off road and watches that they just don't know the difference between a you know a 20,000 euro watch and a 50,000 euro watch. I feel like the early party your life looking into your backstory a little bit you maybe had that wrong focus or enslaved by materialism stuff I'd say? Yeah, but you know what it really is is, you know, when you go deep enough and you unravel everything, what it really is is a disconnection with yourself. Because when you're disconnected with yourself and you're disconnected with who you really are, then you're disconnected with your inner world. You're disconnected with your inner peace. and what starts to happen is you start to look for that outside of yourself. And sometimes it's materialism. Sometimes it's sex. Sometimes it's drugs. Sometimes it's alcohol. Sometimes it's entertainment. Whatever the case may be. But we tend to look for validation, love, appreciation, respect from something outside of ourselves. And for me, it was materialism because I grew up very, very poor. So once I finally built my business and I made some money, I could remember the very first thing I wanted to do. I remember I think I've got my first check, like a 7,000 bucks or something like that.

2.Childhood poverty and rejection training

I went to Hugo Boss and I won. You got like five suits or sachi ties, like you name it, right? And it like, it didn't stop. And it was literally from when I was 19 years old till like my mid 30s when I finally just said like I woke up and And that's when I started my healing process. But I could definitely relate to that experience. I've heard other speakers speak into this that they grew up very poor, were meals were scarce. And so then they over-age and over-endulged. And I know when I started getting my first paychecks, we never ate out. I think the Irish, I'm based in Dublin, Ireland and I feel our culture is maybe 15, 20 years behind the US. It definitely was in the 90s. So we didn't have Starbucks, four-star pizza, Domino's pizza, all these. So when they arrived and I started getting a little bit of money in my pocket, I definitely over indulged in that stuff because I never had it growing up. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's exactly what I did. And so, and it's interesting because, you know, my mother did her best. We were on welfare for quite some time, but like, you know, I don't remember not having food. Like we always had the basics, you know, what I didn't have was the true story. I can remember being in school and I can remember we were so poor that I had to stand in the line with the, with like the food, like, you know, like the poor kids. And I remember that instead of choosing to stand in the line with the poor kids, what I decided to do was, I guess this was just natural, not only sales person in me, but my natural desire to just not be like that, you know. you know, not that it was wrong, it's just what I didn't want in my life. And instead of standing in that line, I would go and I would ask everyone for five cents. Ever. Do you have a quarter? Do you have a quarter? Do you have five cents? Do you have it? This was my routine every single day for like three years of school. And it got me used to the answer. No, it got me used to rejection. It got me used to going out and talking to people. It was like the greatest gift I could have ever had because what ended up happening was I became resilient because I wanted to be able to buy myself the lunch that I wanted to buy. But it's interesting as well because it's how you view yourself. And this is common trends with athletes. I say, you've got to start viewing yourself as an athlete. We've all had an experience with a friend who's, they try to quit smoke in front of that 50 thousand time and they try to quit and you're like, oh, you're quitting. And they're like, yeah, I'm trying to quit. and their vocabulary is defeatist and they're like, well, you know what they say, like, once a smoker, always a smoker. And you're like, you see yourself as a smoker, your behavior is going to default to that. Exactly. So you went on this journey. And what was your business that you built initially where you made a good cash from it? So when I first started, it was just the real estate sales business, just as just as a real estate sales person. And then in 2010, I think it was, Yeah, 2010, 2009, I started my brokerage. And, you know, basically I built it in a way to where I can go back and teach all of the real estate salespeople what I did to become successful in real estate sales. And the company took off. They did really well. And then we sold it in November of last year. Yeah, I seen you guys were killing it. You were doing like 1.1 billion a year in sales at one point. Yeah. And, you know, and to think that I started it with like 2,000 bucks, you know, So it's resourceful, not resources, that's the key there. Yeah. There's a brilliant Jim Carrey quote, and he has this idea that everybody should be rich and famous at some point, as rich and famous as they ever dreamed. So they'd realize that just that isn't the answer. But so many of our listeners are on the road that you were on, but they never get to that destination you got to. So you got to the place where you could have any what you want, any house you want, any care you want and then you realized that it's not the answer.

3.Plant medicine versus alcohol culture

So I don't want to ask the question, what advice would you give those because I feel like that's quite choice and cliche. But if you could journey back to your younger self and whisper in that kid's ear, what would you tell him about the past? To find love, to find love, to find love within, you know, to love himself, to know that everything he ever wanted was inside of himself already. But sometimes to find love, you have to feel what unlove is. You know? And so that becomes a great gift. What 20-year-old Danny told you to get fucked? Was that a 20-year-old Danny say get fucked? No, he would have listened. He would have listened. He was always, he was very coachable. And he always wanted to like find the truth and find the best way. It's just no one was there with that message to be honest with you. You know, everybody was there with the message that the world gives you, to give to people, you know? And so, you know, it's interesting you say that, but if you think about it, like I'm a great proponent of plant medicine because plant medicine changed my life, changed my life. Ayahuasca changed my life, sitting with psilocybin mushrooms change my life. Can you imagine what the world would be like if at 21 years old, it was a graduation into self discovery versus like alcohol. We push alcohol and we push alcohol to help us, you know, mitigate the internal emotions and the pain that we're all dealing with, you know, it'd be a different world. I'm obsessed with storytelling and the story arc and story structures and any good quests, You think Lord of the Rings, the hero, Frodo, he needs to leave the Shire and he needs to go on this sort of intrepid adventure. Was there a moment like that where you're like, I need to go on a quest? This story needs a quest that needs me to leave the place I'm currently in, this brokerage job, real estate, and I need to go and find Danny 2.0. That's a good question. There wasn't a moment where I said I need to. There was a moment where it all just kind of started happening, to be honest. My mom passed away. And when my mom passed away, I just started to ask questions that I had never asked before. Quite frankly, that I was always afraid to ask because I didn't want the answer. I didn't want the answer. And when you start asking profound questions about some things that maybe you believe or you were told to believe or whatever the case may be, then all of a sudden it's like the right answers start showing up. So when you ask the right questions, you get the right answers. That's what happened to me. And so no, it wasn't like there was a moment where I said, this is what I'm going to do. It just kind of naturally happened because of the pain that I was in at the time. And was your mom passing a catalyst for you staring to ask these questions or was it on the life stage? It was. Yeah. It was the catalyst. It was the moment. It was the thing that kind of woke me up. two more questions, you just started asking. Oh boy. You know I started asking questions about God, I started asking questions about what I was doing, I started asking questions about my happiness, my happiness and my marriage at the time. I started asking questions about my relationship, I started asking questions about you know money and why do I want it, I mean I sort of asking questions, all kinds of questions, you know, And answers started showing up that I had to deal with. I'll give you an example. So, at the time I had been married for 10 years, 11 years, something like that. And always, and if you follow me, I'm very public on my divorce and that we're really happy together. We're like best friends, brother and sister now. But always, and I mean always throughout my marriage, I always knew I didn't want to be in that marriage. I always knew. Inside of me, there was a voice that said, like, man, one more year. Oh my God. Okay, well, I guess, you know, I guess this is it. This is the way it is forever type of deal. You know, because I was so conditioned to think the way that the world wants you to think. I didn't know I had free choice as crazy as that sounds. I thought, well, you know, until that do us part and you stay here no matter what.

4.Leaving marriage and finding ayahuasca

And when you get out of this thing, you're a bad person and whatever the case may be. Like, and for those of you that are mad, be like, stay, of course, if you're happily married, if you're happy, you know, but I never was, never, ever. And so, and so that's a question I had to ask myself. If you're not happy, then what is this all about? Then, then why are you doing this type of deal, you know, in a change by life? So many of our decisions, I feel are motivated by status. It's like you don't want to lose status in the eyes of your peers. And even positive decisions can be motivated like that. Like if I'm looking to buy, you know, say I want to buy a sports car at the moment, I'm not buying a sports car. But if I did want to buy a new Porsche, I'd go around to my mom and I'd say I'm buying a new Porsche. And she'd look at me and go, you're buying a new Porsche, you're a complete dickhead. Where are you buying a Porsche? My status to go down. So now I have to try and convince her, Oh, it's great miles for the gallon. Right, right, right, to try and get the to satisfy God. But it's interesting you say that. So take me back to the plant medicine because it's something I'm curious about, but I've never experimented with. How did that start? Yeah, so it started. So true story, I had heard about ayahuasca in particular 10 years prior to me to me doing it. And at the time, because of my religious beliefs, I just thought, no, that's that's the devil. It's the worst thing you can do. No way. I'm not touching it. It's a drug, whatever the case may be. And then here I am. I had separated from my wife. I was living in this little one bedroom apartment after leaving my big beautiful custom house that I had just built. And I was at the lowest of the low in my life, the lowest of the low. And I had made a decision, a very tough decision, because being there in that apartment all alone, I didn't like being alone. And so I wanted to turn to alcohol. I wanted to turn to women, which we as men, we do that. We turn to and we use women's bodies to help fulfill whatever's going on inside, you know? Anything to avoid being alone. And so that was the first step in my transformation was learning to be by myself and being okay with that, you know, and being good with that. Well, New Year's came along and I know a friend And he's another influencer. Well, I, part of me, I hate that word. He's a guy that, you know, he's on social media. He does well, so forth and so on. So I respect the guy, you know? And I saw him with the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen. And my mind thought, I know him. He doesn't smile like this. There's something different here, right? Like this is a different kind of smile. So anyway, so I hit him up and I asked him and I, or we end up talking and I go, hey, by the way, a month ago I saw you in New Year's, dude, you were smiling from ear to ear. What was that all about? You know, he's like, dude, I was at an Iowa school retreat. And the minute he said that, the words in my head were, I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. Sign me up. I didn't know what this cost. I remember thinking, I was like, well, if he went, it's probably expensive. Okay, no problem, it's probably like 30,000 bucks or whatever. a problem that's worth it. It's going to find me my happiness. I'll sign the check 30,000 bucks, whatever. I know how to be a three grand, four grand. I was like, I'll sign a five of these right now. And so sure enough, sure enough, I went to my first one and it changed my life forever, man. Changed my life forever because I realized how much control I wanted to have over every outcome. And she is just the most beautiful medicine. She really helps you to tap into your heart and helps you to heal your soul. And now I'm honored to say I lead them. So I lead these retreats. I do three or four of them a year and we take groups of 30 to 40. It's pretty beautiful. It's pretty awesome. Man, I'm there.

5.Cycling as meditation

I'm there for the next one. As long as I don't need that fat turkey tails and butter, check on there. So I was going to ask you, you sort of preempted it was you were started asking these difficult questions around your mom's passing. But the vehicle to get those answers, you know, we see all sorts of vehicles and I speak to my own ones. I use sensory deprivation tank, float tank, occasionally a journal and I just try and sit in the quiet and for me and especially I love our listeners the bike is very meditative for us. We had our for five, six, seven hours on our own into the mountains just unplugged and disconnected it's got a man and machine. Can I say something about that real fast? It's so interesting to bring that because when I moved here to Austin I I bought a bike. I bought it, it's my first one ever. I bought a specialized, what is this thing? A Komburge, it's like the robe slash diverge. Diverge, yeah. Nice bike. It's sick, I love it, it's sitting there, and it's like, and it's so true that you say that, it's like every time I get on it, not only does it do good for my body, but for my soul, it's like, it's just me and the bike, and I'm just going, and it's just, it's freaking awesome. So you feel like a kid again. You really do. You really do. There's not many things. I feel like skateboarding and bike riding. But skateboarding, you need a level of skill. And, you know, if you're a... Hey! Yeah! It can have bad on the skateboard. It really could. But so, was the Iowaska, was that one of those vehicles for finding the answers? Like I would use a diary or a bike or a float tank. Well, look. And I, you know... For... you know, I would say forgive me for this, but no, this is just who I am. I naturally am. When I find something that's incredible, I want to bring the planet to it. Picture this picture. I am wasque. Yeah. Yeah. To answer your question. For a little bit. It's like doing all of that times one million because you. Yeah. I can see because you're a super articulate guy and your repetition kind of gives me the sense that it's difficult to verbalize this experience. It's the most beautiful thing. It's the most beautiful thing you could ever, yeah, yeah. Across your social media, you have this great strands that I like. You see some people and they're super high achievers in one aspect of their life, but the rest are completely crumbling. And I always look at these people and, you know, I'd say a business person who's built this huge business, maybe into the billions, but his body, his air is in a shape, he's not happy substance abuse, whatever, family issues. That's enough for me, the role modeler, that's not the template. But when I look around and I look at you, I have these five areas that I like to work on and in no particular order, fitness and health, family and social, spirituality, finance. And then I have a another book that I just called, Progression. I like to be learning whether it's languages, whether it's books, whether it's reading, you know, I love that. Fuck TV. It's just, but those four baskets are kind of more areas. I like to move the needle on every day. Do you have something similar? It's like framework? You know, I'll tell you a story. I remember once going to a seminar. And the guy on the stage was on the seminar and he was giving the seminar and he was talking about abundance. And he had just been through his fourth divorce and he was overweight. And I remember in a non-judgmental way, I wasn't judging the guy. I was still a young man, but I remember very early on in my life thinking, that can't be what abundance is. Abundance is having it all, you know? Abundance is having it all. And so I just remember at a very a young age thinking like, I want to have it all. And yes, when I was younger, it was from ego, which is why you can never have it all when you come from ego. You could only have it all when you come from love, when you come from the power of your heart, because when you heal what's inside, then everything outside just kind of flows, you know? And if I'm honest with you, and this is the one thing that Ayahuasca did show me is that it became less of a mental thing for me and more of a energy thing for me, you know?

6.Self-love as the foundation

To where it's just an extension of who I am. Like when I love myself, I'm gonna take care of my body and I'm gonna eat well. When I love myself, I'm gonna love other people. So my relationships with other people are gonna be better. When I love myself, I'm gonna love my freedom. So I'm gonna wanna make at least some decent money so I could be free, you know? So it just kind of all falls from love for me. Really? And how much does finding your true purpose slot into that? Because I see people like, If we take one of those five areas as finance, most people are when you factor in commutes, they're like 50 plus hours a week. And when you do so many hours a week, we have available to do everything. I don't know, the maths on it, but 50 is a disproportionate chunk if you have five areas in your life, you're trying to prioritize. When you have your own purpose, it seems like you found your purpose of serving others. And when you have that clear defined purpose, the other areas almost say that magnetize flow towards you. Just, yeah, just at all attracts men. You know, we as human beings, we all truly are a magnet. We're an energetic magnet and you know, the only thing that keeps that magnet from vibrating and attracting at the highest level is fear. It's anger. It's pride, it's worry, it's doubt. And I will say this, what the medicine does help you do is it helps you to slowly remove all of the barriers that surround your heart, surround your mind so that the magnet that is you can shine and then it all just starts to flow. And don't get me wrong, it's deep work. And sometimes it's a little uncomfortable to say the least But at least for me, it's been very, very rewarding. Very rewarding. So to make it tangible for somebody listening right now, that's stuck in a job that they don't love. And they're just not loving their body. They're a few pounds of weight. And they feel like they've no time to do anything. And they're here and not that you're in a bragging way, but you're listening to somebody who has, it seems to have figured this puzzle out. And they're looking at a gun, I'm so fucking lost. What's like a tangible first step for these guys? Yeah, and I don't know any other way other than to get deep because this is deep stuff. It really is deep stuff, but step number one is to understand that you created it. And that's very difficult for some people. It's very difficult for some people, but we're either a be creator or a victim. And the thing is, is what's promulgated out there in the world is victimization. You know, case in point, there was this thing going on a couple of months ago where everyone was mad at Amazon because Amazon is rich and Amazon makes all this money and so forth and so on. And then what the TV and politicians do is they go out and they try to make you be mad at Amazon. Because Amazon has all this money and you don't have all this money. And Amazon has it all figured out and you don't have it all figured out. And Amazon doesn't pay taxes and you pay taxes. That's called separation. And what it's really doing and what they're really trying to get you to do is to separate you from your highest potential. Because what is Amazon? Amazon is simply an example of a company that you think of it as a person that gets things done, that does them on time, that doesn't take no for an answer, that doesn't see limitations, that only sees opportunities and goes out there and makes it happen. And we all as individuals, we have that same power within us. As a matter of fact, when we're pushed up against the wall, we find a way to fight back. We find a way to make it happen. So I would say the first thing that somebody needs to do if they want to start to change their life is understand that their life is a result of their creation. They're not a victim. Nothing is happening to them. They are actually attracting everything that they deeply feel about themselves. That's step number one. Sorry, getting them to dig in and unpack their habits to let that creation? Oh, not yet. Because it's not about habits. It's about being. You see habits is doing, right? What do I have to do? What's the discipline that I have to do whatever the case may be, right?

7.You are the one

Being is who are you? Who are you? Who do you really believe you are? Right? Because when you really believe that you're it, that you're the one, everything outside of that will stem in your outer life from that decision. See, if I believe that I'm it and I'm the one that I believe that I deserve to make great money, because I want to be free. If I believe that I'm it and I'm the one, I deserve them to find and attract my soul mate, because I want to be in love and I want to make love and I want to be in love. Because anything other than that, the one doesn't have. The one has it all. So I believe that I'm it and I'm the one I want to live in a healthy physical body. So it changes the food that I order in the restaurant. It changes the groceries that I go out and buy. It changes where I shop. It changes everything. It's the big domino. It really is. And it starts with that decision, right? I'm it. I'm the one. And then from there, you go and you take responsibility. And so if you're in a job, for example, that you're not happy with, just write it down. I don't want this job. Here's my dream job. My dream job has A, has B, step C, step D. And guess what? And you stick it in the folder somewhere. And once a day you read it and you feel and you meditate what it would feel like to be in that dream job and I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, I guarantee it. Guarantee it. As long as you're not attached to when it happens, it will happen. That's how powerful you are. Danny, this is fascinating stuff, and I know man of your stature is super busy as well. So before I finish up the conversation, I just want to see how does someone continue this conversation with you? How do they attend one of your camps, follow you on social media, book into one of your courses? Yeah, thank you for that. Instagram is a great place where I do a lot of my communicating with people. DannyMoral.com has all of our events coming up. We've got one coming up November 11th in San Diego, but you can catch it online for 97 bucks. And next year, we're really gonna start coming out with a series of events, really geared towards and catered towards helping people to connect to and discover themselves. So yeah. Danny, that was pure for my friends. Thanks for a chat. Thank you, my friend. Okay, stop what you're doing. It's Anthony again. I wanna talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight week challenge. So for eight weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. Whatever that is. For eight weeks, I wanna take you under my wing and I wanna personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is gonna be laser focused on your goal and I'm gonna navigate around your life, your work, your social commitment. So don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling, I went off and thought I was a really big business man. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling, but I knew after a bit, to train it alone, it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system. It needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I wanna share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like, I'm gonna give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used, and even the motivational audios listening to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.