[Transcript] – Secrets Of The Billion Dollar Meal, Peptides For Tanning & Erections, Holotropic

Podcast from: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/million-dollar-smoothie/

[0:00:00] Introduction

[0:01:00] Podcast Sponsors

[0:04:12] Guest Introduction

[0:07:31] How to Guarantee A Celebrity Won’t Want You Around Them

[0:15:13] The Story Behind The “Billion Dollar Meal” And The “Million Dollar Smoothie”

[0:21:41] How I Treated A Problematic Erection with Fermented Beet Juice

[0:25:51] The Story Behind the Book, “I Forgot to Die”

[0:31:30] Podcast Sponsors

[0:34:48]continuation of The Story Behind the Book

[0:37:53] Why Khalil’s Menu Is A Good Value

[0:45:02] Does Money Buy Happiness?

[0:53:28] Thoughts on Modern Methods of Addiction Recovery

[0:56:30] The Tucker Max Article

[1:00:00] Spiritual Disciplines

[1:06:05] Sober Living

[1:15:56] Closing the Podcast

[1:17:04] End of Podcast

Ben:  I have a master’s degree in physiology, biomechanics, and human nutrition. I’ve spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet from SEALFit Kokoro, Spartan Agoge, and the world’s toughest mudder, the 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science, search the globe for the world’s top experts and performance, fat loss, recovery, gut hormones, brain, beauty, and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful, and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.

Ho, ho, freaking ho. Time this recording is coming up. Christmas is like 10 days away, hence, my Santa Claus impersonation, which I obviously just nailed. This is Ben Greenfield and the reason that I’m talking like Santa Claus or at least laughing like Santa Claus is because we have our huge, huge holiday sale going on at Kion right now. Kion is where I design amazing supplement formulations that will literally change your life. Meaning that these are things that clear your head, that give you clean-burning energy, that I’ve got no fillers, no synthetics, no guilty pleasures in there, it’s all just super clean, guilt-free stuff, like my clean energy bar with cacao nibs and coconut flakes..

We have like the equivalent of a cup’s worth of bone broth, of gelatin in there, chia seeds, sesame seeds, the works, and it tastes amazing. I just basically took everything that I like to sprinkle on top of my smoothie in the morning in terms of superfoods and I thought, “Well, why not just put this into a wonderful little bar and give that to people as well?” It’s also really good frozen, sprinkle on top of ice cream. Just saying. I may or may not have been known to get some halo top ice cream that I keep in the freezer. And I take out a Kion bar, usually about half of one that I also keep in the freezer, and I chop it in little pieces and put on top of the ice cream. Holy cow. You could just stop listening to the podcast right now and go do that. Anyways, the bars are on sale. The coffee is on sale. Everything is on sale. You go to getkion.com, getK-I-O-N.com to take part in our amazing holiday sale.

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Hey, folks. It’s Ben Greenfield and I’m pretty excited because I have the mastermind behind one of my favorite culinary delights on today’s show. So, here’s the deal. When I go to L.A., where I’m going to be at this weekend, this wonderful kind of like a biohacking, health facility called Next Health, and when I go to Malibu, I always swing by this place called SunLife Organics. And I get this thing called the Billion Dollar Meal, the Billion Dollar Meal. The Billion Dollar Meal is just like everything, every superfood known to man, like Young Thai Coconut Meat and raw cashew butter and goat colostrum and buffered vitamin C, the out low, 10 different mushrooms like maitake and shiitake and lion’s mane, whole bunch of different grains, minerals, silica for the joints, everything, a little bit of hemp milk in there, and it’s just all blended together. And I usually have them throw a few extra cacao nibs and a little bit of extra coconut meat on there.

And my guest on today’s show is the mastermind, not only behind that but SunLife Organics in general from the Billion Dollar Meal to the Million Dollar Smoothie. To my son River, his favorite little concoction, the Dragon Bowl. His name is Khalil Rafati, and he actually, not only has an amazing assortment of superfood creations at the SunLife Organics juice and smoothie bars that are spread across California, but he also has an amazing story. He has this book called “I Forgot to Die.” And we’re going to talk a little bit about this book, which is mind-blowing because Khalil has this history of working with Hollywood movie stars and legendary rock musicians. And he did eventually hit rock bottom with drugs like heroin and cocaine.

He’s going to fill us in on that and his pretty amazing and compelling story about how he turned his life around and how he got into a lot of this kind of like superfoods, and also a lot of the bio hacks that he’s into now, cutting-edge health concepts, recovery for drug addicts and alcoholics. He’s up to a lot. We love to hang out when we’re together. And actually, Khalil and I–I think the last time we were together, Khalil, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we were in Las Vegas eating at that steakhouse, watching the Bellagio Fountains. I think that was the last place we ate like caviar and steak.

Khalil:  Yeah. And I’m going to say it wrong, but foie gras or foie gras or whatever.

Ben:  Foie gras. Should people think that all we eat is coconut meat, not true. We actually–

Khalil:  Not true. We had some amazing bone and grass-fed rebuys and caviar and everything.I think we ordered everything on the menu. That was really fun.

Ben:  There’s some carnivorey going on as well. I think when we were having that meal, you had just returned from this crazy trip where you were on these cruise ships. I think you were in Greece. And here’s the diff. For those of you listening in, I’ll link to Khalil’s Instagram page but it’s like the life of a total playboy if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/iforgottodie. That’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com/iforgottodie. I’ll link to his Instagram page and his book and everything else that we talk about in today’s show. But dude, how is it that you embark upon all these crazy adventures around the globe and still manage to run these wonderful smoothie bars??

Khalil:  Well, my ability to travel is due to the fact that I have an amazing business partner who is much, much smarter than me and much better at me at running a company. She also happens to be my ex-girlfriend. We dated for almost a decade and we built a brand together and our best friend gave us the money to start our first location. And so, here we are seven and a half years later. We broke up three years ago but here we are seven and a half years later after starting this brand and we’re all best friends and we travel together and we talk just about every day or see each other almost every day during the week.

So, my freedom comes from the fact that she’s just brilliant, and her name is Hayley Gorcey, and she’s brilliant and educated. She’s like the opposite of me. She was born great, was born sweet and kind and loving and never did drugs and didn’t drink and didn’t do anything, like the opposite. But anyways–

Ben:  Okay. You have a very responsible person making sure that that doesn’t go south when you’re gone in freaking Greece on a cruise ship.

Khalil:  Yeah. Actually, it was a mega yacht, if I could sound like a complete douchebag.

Ben:  Mega yacht.

Khalil:  Yeah. It was–

Ben:  You’re a douchebag.  Tell me about this mega yacht.

Khalil: It was almost 400 feet and we stayed mostly in the south of France but then we traveled by helicopter and by private jet all over Europe for about seven weeks. It was incredible. And I was the invited guest. None of this was my doing. I was the invited guest of some very, very, very fancy people, and I was making them some of our concoctions and just sort of living the life of Riley on the kindness and generosity of others.

Ben:  So, you’re saying that if I get really handy with the Vitamix and some superfoods, I could find myself on a mega yacht preparing juices and smoothie bowls for like princes of the United Arab Emirates?

Khalil:  Actually, you’re not too far off. I think so. I mean, I think in order to be around those people, because I’m certainly not one of them, I think you don’t have to be anything special, and I’m obviously speaking from personal experience, but you have to be transparent and you have to have something to offer. And the big mistake that most people make in places like Malibu or L.A. or whatever is when they meet someone like that, the first thing they do is they’re like, “Can I get a picture? Can I get an autograph?” Or I guess no one gets autographs anymore. But everyone wants a selfie. That’s like the number one guaranteed way to make sure you’re never going to be friends with that person.

Ben:  Right.

Khalil:  But let me get you the flipside of it. If they come in and you just don’t say anything and you serve them and you’re kind and you’re nice and you’re honest and you’re forthright, after a period of time, they become interested in you because ultimately, those people become very lonely because they have to be so guarded. And if you can just not be a taker and you can really just be a halfway decent human being, sooner or later, they want to take you to a UFC fight or they want to take you on tour with them or they want to take you to the movie set. I mean, that’s just been my experience and–

Ben:  That’s my experience too, especially with celebrities and I’ve had the chance to hang out with some relatively well-known people, and the last thing you do is treat them like a celebrity because that’s the last thing they want to be treated like. They want to get real good advice or they want to just be able to hang out and do something fun. I’m totally not a celebrity but I can tell you one of the things that I get a lot is people just walk up and start–first thing out of their mouth is, “Can I get a selfie?” I’d rather talk about the last amazing book that they read or find out about some new supplement or superfood or bio hack or gather something interesting, and I think a lot of people just kind of go into selfie mode or almost like a celebrity worship mode.

I think I got that from my mom though because when I was a kid, she took us to a concert. My mom was just like–she would never get like–what you call it, Twitter page or starstruck. Yeah. So, I remember at one point, I was with her and we’re at this–we’re into like Christian rap and we went to a DC Talk concert, this band called DC Talk. I remember that sounds like. I was enamored with these guys and one of the lead singers was walking through the arena and my mom recognized him and he was standing right in front of us and my mom just started chatting with him. She knew exactly who he was and she was just chatting with him about the city and where they were going to eat and just making conversation like a real person. I’m just hiding behind my mom, went totally starstruck and realizing that everybody is just a real person once you really get down to it.

Khalil:  Yeah. And not just that but fame comes along with such an incredible amount of pain and isolation. Many of my best friends now are, whether very, very famous rock stars or movie stars or super athletes and I’ve watched over the years how they’re just accosted at every corner. Everyone wants to take a picture with them or everyone wants to talk to them about being the best surfer or being the biggest rock star or being the biggest whatever. All those people want to do is the opposite, just like you said. They want to talk about what fatherhood is like and they want to talk about the UFC fight last night. They just want to be normal.

Ben:  Yeah. Absolutely. You look at guys like, may they rest in peace, Robin Williams or Anthony Bourdain. These people who seemed happy and successful and engaging and amazing on the outside, they in many cases were just like traveling the world by themselves and the camera goes on and you light up and you do your song and dance routine. But then once everything shuts down and you’re back home in your hotel room or on that next eight-hour plane flight, you’re just all totally freaking by yourself.

Khalil:  Yeah. And I think the thing that maybe appeals to these people that I’ve been so blessed to fly around the world with or whatever, go to their shows backstage, I think they really like the whole Cinderella story and they like the fact that I’m so open about my darkest, darkest, darkest moments of life, which most people don’t have darkness or stories or experiences that are anywhere near as bad as mine and they try to hide it and pretend like they’ve lived the perfect life.

I did the opposite. I did the anti-selfie. I took the worst picture ever taken of me when I was 109 pounds with scabs all over my face and teeth missing, and I put it on the cover of my book. And I did it intentionally and it freaked a lot of people out and I was told not to do it. And maybe it did scare a lot of potential readers away but I wanted to do it to make a statement that here I am at my absolute worst. I’m 109 pounds. I’ve got ringworm and scabies and I’m filthy and I’m dying, and here I am now. I look halfway decent now. I look like a pretty healthy dude who’s in his 40s.

Ben:  You’ve got some meat on your bones. I actually want to talk about your story but first of all, speaking of putting meat on your bones, I want to talk a little bit about these bowls too before we dive into your story in this book, “I Forgot to Die.” Whose idea was this Billion Dollar Bowl? Because you don’t walk into a coffee shop a lot of times and have like a–what is it, like 30 bucks?

Khalil:  Thirty-five.

Ben:  Yeah. So, you don’t have like a $35 bowl on the menu of most coffee shops, but whose idea was this Billion Dollar Meal?

Khalil:  Most of the recipes at SunLife Organics are mine. Hayley has come up with some of them, but the Billion Dollar Meal is just what I was eating every morning and people were asking about it so much and wanting to try it so much; and the same thing with the Billion Dollar Bowl, which I have most mornings now. It’s just what I eat. It’s basically everything that I learned from you. And by the way, as I was getting ready to do this, I didn’t realize what a disciple of Ben Greenfield I am. Like putting the diffuser on with whatever, that Blue Spruce oil that you talked a lot–

Ben:  It’s my fault that you probably spent too much money on your personal health.

Khalil:  Then your weird CBD vape thing and CBD capsules and then the chaga mushrooms in my coffee. There’s more like literally 20 things that I’ve learned from you and learned from your podcast over the last few years I did. And the only reason that I became cognizant of the fact that I learned it all from you was because we were about to jump on a podcast and I’m just like, “This is creepy. I’m like a stalker.”

Ben:  Yeah. That is a little creepy. But I love the bowl, and then also the smoothie, the Million Dollar Smoothie. Tell me about the Million Dollar Smoothie.

Khalil:  Million Dollar Smoothie is a vegan-based smoothie and made with coconut meat instead of banana. So, you cut down on the glycemic index or spike in the glycemic index or whatever. Lots of chia seeds to keep you full until your next meal; maca, royal jelly, raw cacao, just everything that’s amazing, but put into a so-called smoothie. And I hate calling them smoothies because they’re meals, they’re definitely meals. But put into a cup, pre-masticated, broken down so your body and your organs don’t have to do all that work, but delivering 40 grams of protein, and all these micronutrients, and all these amazing things that are going to fuel you and make you feel amazing. That’s really the idea behind all of SunLife Organics, not just the Million Dollar Smoothie and the Billion Dollar Bowl. But what can I put into my body that’s going to make me feel amazing versus getting up in the morning and having a bagel with cream cheese and orange juice, and then two hours later, I want to kill myself and I’m falling asleep as I’m driving.

Ben:  Yeah.  Short-term pleasure.

Khalil:  Yeah. Or what can I eat for lunch instead of a Reuben and a Coca-Cola and then by 2:00 p.m., I literally got such bad brain fog, I don’t know if I’m coming or going. What can I put into my body that’s going to make me feel amazing and energized and full of life? And not just that but from a vanity standpoint, because I’m vain and I want to look good, I don’t know if I’m that much different from anybody else, but putting all of this collagen and silica and chlorophyll and all these amazing things that I’ve learned about from you and from other people like you, mostly from you, is you start to look incredible. Like your hair gets thicker. Your erections are better. Your skin tone is more even. Your body fat begins to go away. You talking about the–what are those things called? The Brazil nuts. Like eating the Brazil nuts and getting your selenium levels high. Did I say that right?

Ben:  Yeah. Selenium, Brazil nuts, erections, you got that Alright.

Khalil:  Yeah. So, all of a sudden, you start to eat for a purpose versus eating for pleasure and then you just start to–I mean I don’t know, from my own personal experience, the moment I switched to eating with intention and eating real, awesome, amazing, organic foods and superfoods, my whole life changed. My depression and anxiety definitely dissipated. It didn’t go away but I mean it definitely lessened. And then if I throw in the sauna stuff that you talk about and the ice baths and all that stuff like–I was going to say you’ve been to my house but you haven’t. But I’ve got the same thing that Rubin has at his house. I’ve got the stainless-steel tub. I’ve got the Barrel Sauna.

Ben:  Yeah. That Rick Rubin has?

Khalil:  Yeah. I do all that stuff. I learned from him and I learned from you and he learns from you. And then Laird will come up with some stuff and I take a piece of that. It seemed weird and farfetched when I first started listening to you and being around these guys, like all the wild game talk and the–just boils and Brazil nuts. But here I am a decade later and I’m three times as productive as I used to be and I have such clarity and a lack of brain fog. Look, I’m not a purist. I had some pizza the other day. I’m probably going to go to hell for that.

But for the most part, when Rick Rubin was lecturing me about getting rid of gluten and not putting any gluten in my body or any type of wheat products in my body, I fought him on it and then I did it. And I found that anytime Rick Rubin tells you to do something, if you do it, your life becomes exponentially better. I did it and my belly disappeared and my face shrunk by about an inch and a half and all of a sudden, I looked 10, 15 years younger. And these tiny little changes–and I call them tiny now because it was brutal in the beginning, but these tiny little changes have turned me into a super version of myself. I am going to say it but like living my best life, but I really am. I’m living my best life and I become the best version of myself that I can be through all these weird little bio hacks that you’re teaching people. It’s incredible.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Well, I like that some of my ideas are creeping their way into–I was going to say overpriced smoothies but they’re actually–that was probably not to your business, any service. They’re spendy but amazingly tasty smoothies that are well worth every dollar.

By the way, when you said erections, I cringed. And this is a total rabbit hole but I actually–I got very little sleep last night because I had, what probably in medicine would be termed a priapism, which is basically an erection that will not go away and gets to the point where it actually becomes painful like for hours and hours at a time. I believe what happened is there’s this peptide. Very popular ones for anti-aging.

Epitalon is another. I’ve talked about BPC-157 and TB-500 for joints. These things all have names like Star Wars robots. And there’s this one called Melanotan, I think is the name of it. It’s very popular in the bodybuilding industry because it induces a very nice even tan on your skin when you inject this peptide subcutaneously, like next to the abs. But then it also, and it’s even been used as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, gives you massive boners. And I really had no interest in using this peptide but I do use another anti-aging peptide called Epitalon or Epithalon, some people call it. Actually, there’s a lot of research behind it. Have you heard of it before, this Epitalon?

Khalil:  You told me about it.

Ben:  Okay. I told you about it.

Khalil:  When we were in Vegas.

Ben:  Yeah. So, anyways, I order it from this peptides website and I think they sent me the wrong peptide because I injected the Epitalon yesterday and by about 10:00 p.m., I had this erection that would not go away and it’s stuck with me ’til like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and I just laid there awake.

Khalil:  Oh my God.

Ben:  Yeah. It was horrible. And I’ll probably get a nice tan as aside effect but just a word of warning for people who try that thing. It could be dangerous. And it probably did not help that I had like three–I drink this fermentedbeet juice that Dr. Mercola makes that he sent to me. And so, I had three cans of fermented beet juice and then supposedly some peptide for erectile dysfunction, and I certainly noticed the side effects of that.

Khalil:  Yeah. And I love that you mentioned Dr. Mercola because those are–I mean, you guys are like my three cats, my oracles or whatever, like Dr.Mercola and you and Rick Rubin. I just–whatever you guys–you know, look, when you first started talking about the GAINSwave thing, I was just like, “Okay. Ben has finally lost it. This is weird. What are they talking about? I’m not going to go electrocute my penis.” And then within 48 hours, I’m like texting you, “What’s the phone number? Does it hurt? blah,blah, blah.”

And I got to say, one of the most awkward experiences I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some really awkward experiences without saying a lot,like going to Beverly Hills and having some man in his 60s with the wispy ponytail pulling my pants down for him and having him essentially shock my numbed penis over and over again for–I don’t know. It seemed like an eternity but I think it was about 30 minutes.

Ben:  It’s about 20 minutes, yeah. It’s kind of like waving a jackhammer under your dick.

Khalil: Yeah. Sorry, I’m obsessing about dicks right now but here’s the weird thing. It really, really worked. I mean, I never had any issues before but to wind back the clock 15 years and have it stay–because I assume that it was going to be like a couple of weeks and then the effects would dissipate, it really didn’t. And so, even on some of the fringe stuff that you’re doing out there, I want to say like thanks for carrying the torch out front because I never, ever, ever in a million years would have done that had you not gone ahead of all of us and carry the torch. It’s pretty awesome.

Ben:  Yeah. Carried the torch, or in this case, the acoustic sound wave wand.

Khalil:  Yeah. Thank you for my actions.

Ben:  Yeah. You’re welcome. Alright. Well, I think we rabbit holed enough right there and I actually do want to get into your story, the idea behind this book, “I Forgot to Die.” You say–I think this might be on the back cover of the book or somewhere, that 33 years old. You’re 109 pounds. You were convicted felon. You’re a high school dropout. You’re a homeless junkie living on Skid Row in Downtown L.A. So, fill me in. What happened?

Khalil:  Yeah. So, I got sober and I became a millionaire.

Ben:  That’s it. Game over. Thanks for listening, folks.

Khalil:  : No. It’s so funny because that’s what everyone wants to obsess on. And if you look at any article that’s ever been written, it’s always like, “Millionaire juice, blah, blah, blah” or “This man became a multimillionaire.” I mean, it’s cool and it’s on paper and it’s real but it’s probably on a list of 20 things that are amazing about where I am right now versus where I was. It’s probably pretty near the end.

Ben:  Yeah. And you are, by the way, a millionaire?

Khalil:  Yes.

Ben:  Okay. My parents ran a coffee shop growing up that one could argue to a certain extent, did have a certain number of smoothies because I spent a long time in childhood making smoothies, which is probably why I get so many ideas for smoothies. Let me just say that they did not become millionaires running a freaking coffee shop. So, that’s pretty impressive..

Khalil:  Yeah. There are 10 locations now and we’ll do 14 million this year in sales. And so, we’ve had hedge funds. Vulture capitalists, I’d like to call them, come after us and try to offer us money to buy part of the company. We’ve had valuations as high as $60 million and we’ve said no every time and we have no exit strategy. I don’t want to exit. I don’t want to do anything other than I’m doing right now. I want to meet cool people like you. I want to have good friends and eat healthy and do exactly what I’m doing.

Yeah. And then technically, I mean in my bank account, I was lucky enough to sell a small piece of my company and technically become a millionaire, which allowed me to buy a nice little place and I’m remodeling it. It’s really good. But going back to the beginning of all this like–the other thing people want to know is how did you become a junkie? How did you wind up homeless?

Ben:  Yeah.

Khalil:  And just to paraphrase, both my parents were immigrants from different countries and neither of them knew how to be parents, and they had different religions, and they didn’t speak English that great, and we were living in a little town called Sweet Ohio in the Midwest. I suffered a lot as a kid. There’s a lot of neglect. There was some incest and violence that I went through as a child. Then going through the Catholic school system, I just was shaped into a ball of self-hatred and shame and pain and acted out because I was desperate for attention and love and I wasn’t getting it. I wound up, at a very young age, a criminal and getting arrested. I think by the time I was 16, I was arrested three times and then ultimately with dealing drugs and acting out sexually and all that stuff.

By the time I was 21, I was in big, big trouble and I left. I jumped in my car with less than $800. I keep going back and forth between $600 and $800. But it was less than $800. I jumped in my car and I drove to California because I wanted to get away from all the trouble that I was in. And the first few years, I did great. I mean, the first few years, I did just fine. I started a little detailing business and met a bunch of awesome people. And Axl, who is from Indiana, took a liking to me and he had me like detailing his cars and he introduced me to Slash, and I kind of watched over this warehouse full of cars for Slash. And then I started working for Elizabeth Taylor as a houseman.

I just kept going up and going up and going up. But what I was also really good at was scoring for people, meaning going and getting drugs. And not any of those people that I had just mentioned but other celebrities and other people in Los Angeles and in Malibu. I found that dealing drugs is a lot easier than washing cars or taking Elizabeth Taylor’s parrots to the vet to get their wings clipped. And so, I fell back into my old ways and wound up getting arrested multiple times, becoming a convicted felon, serving a little bit of time. And alcoholism was something that always was rearing its ugly head. From the time I was 11/12 years old, I had been drinking, blackout drinking, taking pills, smoking weed. But when I was in my 20s and I had the money and the connections, the drugs got heavier and heavier. And by the time I was in my mid-20s, the drugs became really heavy. And by the time I was going towards my late 20s, it was heroin and cocaine, crack sometimes but usually shooting heroin and cocaine together. That was my jam. And I very, very quickly lost everything and I wound up literally living under a bridge, completely lost my mind.

Ben:  Well, hello. I want to interrupt today’s show to tell you about Birdwell Beach Britches, which I can’t talk about without sounding like that with an annoying accent. I don’t know why. I just have to say Birdwell Beach Britches like Birdwell Beach Britches. Anyways, what they do is Birdwell Beach Britches makes pretty much unbreakable clothing but they’ve got new stuff now as well. Like summer is winding down. Maybe you’re not wanting to get like board shorts but they have like the Woolrich wool sportsman. They have layerable competition jackets. They have super soft corduroy breeches.

And these things have a lifetime guarantee because they are literally fashioned from a similar material to what they use in like sailboat sails. That’s what originally inspired these things, but it doesn’t look like you’re wearing a sail. They’re amazingly fashionable. If you see me at the beach and you see me wearing shorts, I actually do wear clothes at the beach. Believe it or not, I’m usually in my Birdwells. These things just look amazing. They call them the 501s of the beach, at least Outside Magazine does.

The cool thing is that they’ve got, like I mentioned, a lifetime guarantee. You can send them in and they will repair them for you. They will stitch them up for you. And they also now have a whole bunch of stuff that you can use in the fall and the winter as well, their competition jacket. Go to their website and check out their competition jacket. It’s sick. All their stuff is really cool though. It’s all 2-ply nylon fabric. It’s, like I mentioned, almost unbreakable. They call it SurfNyl fabric. Toughest in the business, lifetime guarantee, free shipping over 99 bucks, 10% off your first purchase, too. Here’s how to get it. You go to birdwell.com. That’s B-I-R-D-W-E-L-L, birdwell.com, and you use discount code Ben at checkout to pick up your fist pair of birdies.

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I knew you were in L.A. at that point.

Khalil:  I was in L.A. You know, I didn’t start out like that. I started out dating like B and C list actresses and running around with rock stars and I was in a rock and roll band and there’s all that part. But ultimately, I guess to get to the point, I wound up homeless and living under a bridge in 109 pounds and my teeth were falling out of my head. I was just a walking rotting corpse by the time I hit my 30s. When I was 33 years old, by the grace of God, and it’s a very long story, so I will spare your listeners but at 33 years old, I completely bottomed out for the 150th time and I went away.

There was a charity called Musicians’ Assistance Program, orin my case, Failed Music

There was a charity called Musicians’ Assistance Program, or in my case, Failed Musicians’ Assistance Program, and they put me into treatment in Pasadena, chuck me in a halfway house. And I just had to learn how to chop wood and carry water and work and become an active member of society, a taxpaying citizen, a man amongst men, and it was very, very, very challenging and there was no family to fall back on. To speed things up, I washed cars, I washed dogs, I walked dogs, I cleaned people’s apartments, I worked at two different rehabs, I saved every penny, and I started my own business being an interventionist in a sober companion. That was where the initial money came from.

I invested heavily in silver and gold because I was paranoid about the economy. This is 2004/2005. And then I opened up a place called Riviera Recovery on a shoestring and a prayer, and it did really, really well. And then I sold the silver and gold when it peaked around 1700, 1800 and that’s how I got the money for Riviera Recovery. And that’s when Hayley and I, we had been dating for a few years and I was dreaming about opening up my own little juice bar. There were all these vacancies here on Point Dume because it was 2011 at this time and the sky was falling like everyone was going out of business. And I convinced my buddy Rick to give us a couple of $100,000 and I had a–

Ben: Rick Rubin again?

Khalil: No. This is actually Rick Salomon. He’s a professional gambler. I convinced him to loan us a couple of $100,000 and we opened up our first little place. We were about $200,000 shy of having enough money to open it. We had no shelves. We had no table. We had like a few blenders and a juicer but I don’t know, man. We opened it and there was a line out the door. That was seven and a half years ago.

Ben:  Was this the one in Point Dume?

Khalil:  Yeah, yeah, the original one.

Ben:  Okay. And that’s still there, right? That didn’t burn down in the Malibu fires, did it?

Khalil:  No, no. I just left there. I just had the Billion Dollar Bowl and I’m sipping on my–

Ben:  I’m jealous.

Khalil:  Oh, dude. It was so good.

Ben:  I mean, I had ghee and cacao for breakfast, a little bit of salt and a little bit of–I actually put some royal jelly in there, which by the way is amazing. For those of you who don’t know what royal jelly is, that’s like the colostrum of the insect kingdom. It’s what the queen bee gets as her superfood. I believe it’s actually spat up by the worker bees after the royal jelly has had a chance to go through the enzymatic conversion in their mouths. And when you look at the research behind royal jelly, I mean it’s got hormones in it like testosterone and progesterone. It’s got more flavonoids in it and then most of the deepest, darkest purple and green plants you can get. That stuff alone is amazing. When you get that along with colostrum, so you’re getting like the best of the two superfoods that insects and animals respectively feed their babies. It’s a very, very powerful stuff.

Khalil:  Yeah. So, I had five scoops of goat colostrum in that bowl, as well as a teaspoon, teeming teaspoon of raw royal jelly. To go back to the cost, that meal that you and I had in Vegas was a couple of thousand bucks and there were four of us.

Ben:  Yeah. And I was in a dirty hoodie in shorts and the restaurant made me put on pants. I literally like–I hitchhiked in from a hike on the outskirts of Vegas with my wife. We literally stuck out our thumb, got to ride in from this rock climber. And I knew you were in town and we literally just got dropped off at Bellagio and wandered in there. And I remember the first thing that happened was we walked into this. You already had like a caviar spread there and you just came up to me and told me that I could put on pants or leave. And the restaurant actually came equipped. I think you put this on your Instagram channel. The restaurant came equipped with its own pants for people like me.

Khalil:  Yeah. I got videos of you putting the pants on, and more importantly, taking the pants off at the end.

Ben:  Yes.

Khalil:  But that meal, that was a couple of thousand bucks and you only had one glass of wine. No one else drank other than your one glass of wine. That was 2,000 bucks. We didn’t think twice about that and the reason we didn’t think twice about that is because my friend is a high roller and it didn’t cost us a penny. But if you put that in perspective, that was 2,000 bucks and we probably got a lot of nutrients because of the way that we ordered. But what’s in that Billion Dollar Bowl, I mean you would have to eat five meals to get the amount of nutrients that come into that bowl.

And here’s the other thing. I challenge anybody to go to Whole Foods. I’ll give you the list of ingredients. Go to Whole Foods or go to wherever you guys go in the Midwest and buy all those ingredients and try to recreate the bowl for less. Then you’re going to have a very, very difficult time because I know what my food cost is in that bowl and it’s around $21. But I’m buying stuff in pallets. So, I’m getting it way, way cheaper than anybody else could.

Ben:  Yeah. So, people are able to profit from your ability to be able to lever the superfoods.

Khalil:  Yes, exactly. But I mean, I talked to Kelly Slater about this and he was like, “Dude, I tried to make it at home and it was like ridiculous. It’s cheaper just to come in and get it.” It’s expensive. I’m not going to lie. You’re spending 16 bucks on a smoothie or 28 bucks on a smoothie or $35 on a bowl. It seems a little bit insane but yet I have no problem going to a restaurant dropping $30, $40 on myself for lunch and eating French fries and bread and catch up with corn syrup in it and sugar and all this poison that makes me feel like garbage afterwards.

So, anyway, I had the–I think we’re talking about what I had today. It was the Billion Dollar Bowl. This morning, I had Four Sigmatic that I learned about on your podcast. Tero’s company, Four Sigmatic. I had a packet of the chaga mushrooms with some heavy whipping cream and three shots of espresso and added some hot water to it. Absolutely incredible. Then I had the Billion Dollar Bowl, and I added that super expensive–what’s that coconut yogurt?

Ben:  Yeah. CocoYo I believe is the name of the brand. You can get it at some Whole Foods, for example. I think it’s CocoYo, is the name of the yogurt, fantastic coconut yogurt. But as a matter of fact, I keep a big–there are things when you open my fridge that always have a home in my fridge now. One is typically some kind of a chia seed slurry in a mason jar that I can just use as a quick meal or as a base for smoothies. One is Pau D’Arco bark tea, which is kind of like a precursor to these NAD supplements that people take. Bone broth, I usually have our own bone broth or some Kettle & Fire bone broth in there.

And then I have this yogurt that Dr. William Davis told me. He wrote this wonderful book called, “Undoctored.” And in that book, he discusses a certain type of yogurt that can shut down appetite, facilitate intermittent fasting, increase your skin collagen production, increase oxytocin levels like your trust and love hormone. The sugar has a lot going for in addition to its gut healing effects. And it’s like that CocoYo yogurt that you’re talking about but the bacterial content is times 10. I’ll put a link in the shownotes because my kids have a food podcast, taught people how to make this. They make it with me.

So, I’ll link to there their podcast where they make this coconut yogurt, but you just get what’s called an L. reuteri strain of probiotic from Amazon. You get a couple of cans of like an organic coconut milk or coconut cream. What you do is you mash up the probiotic tablets like 10 of them in a mortar and pestle because the probiotic tablets, they have a pretty high bacterial count but nowhere near what you can get in terms of the billion count of probiotics, speaking of a Billion Dollar Bowl, when you ferment them in coconut yogurt.

So, you mash them all up. You put them in with the coconut milk or the coconut cream in a good clean bowl. And then you put a little bit of prebiotics for the bacteria to feed on. I like to use acacia fiber. And you put a little bit of sugar in there. All you need is like a teaspoon to get the bacteria started munching on the sugar. And then I like to put some gelatin in there because it gets really thick and really–you know, sticks to your sides and coats the lining of your gut. And then all I do is I put it in a food dehydrator, or you could use an oven. It doesn’t matter. You just keep it 100 degrees for a day, for 24 hours. You pull that out. It is the most amazing fermented homemade c