Two Brothers Impart Practical Wisdom

All right, everybody, we're back to Brooklyn Brothers with over half a million social media followers are with us and their past experiences have kept them grounded as they are committed to bringing a down to earth perspective to everyday life. We want you to meet them now. Mike and Nick Fio, who are the hosts of Practical Wisdom. It's their podcast. Half a million people saying I need these two boys from Brooklyn to help me get my stuff together. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us back, Antoine. Tell me the inspiration for the podcast. The inspiration for the podcast is really we are just two brothers from Brooklyn who love learning together. We definitely don't have all the answers, but we try to interview some of the wisest people on earth to try to get the answers out of them to what really makes a good life. Life. That's what the podcast is really all about. We sit down with some of the brightest minds in the world and it's called Practical Wisdom because we really want to not just have conversations with them, but really try to extract as many practical takeaways, things we can actually apply to our everyday life as possible and then we share them with everyone. Now, life literally... has a way of making itself known like that and real life experience has led to a reset of thinking tell me what happened nick you know and say this is something i want to look into yeah in 2015 i was assaulted i was sucker punched in the face okay i was hit so hard i lost consciousness dropped down to the floor eventually i came to my senses ran my tongue across the bottom of my teeth and i realized there was a gap And my first thought was, damn, I think I got my tooth knocked out. I eventually picked up my phone, took a selfie, and realized my tooth wasn't missing. My jaw was just split in half. So I was eventually rushed to the hospital where the dental surgeon shared the news that I had my jaw broken and I would need my mouth wide shut for three months. And as you can imagine, a loudmouth kid from Brooklyn not speaking for three months is hard. But even harder is being an Italian kid who loves to eat and not being able to eat some solid meals. Every meal was drank through a straw, so that was not fun. One, but... The crazy part about this entire experience is that it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. And the reason is because for the first time in my life I had time, time to ask myself some of those big questions like, why am I here? What is my purpose? And through that reflection, I made some big decisions. One of those was quitting my job and starting to work together with my brother. Eventually that led us to starting a non-profit that teaches kids kindness that has now spread to 49 states across the country. And to go full circle here, that same broken jaw was eventually featured on millions of bags of Lay's potato chips as a smile. Your brother has this thing happen. Somebody sucker punched him. How did it impact you? Especially then when he's got time on his hands, he says, you know what? I'm thinking some things here. Yeah, Nick likes to say this was the best thing that ever happened to him, but I also say it's the best thing that ever happened to me because for three months, he finally shut up. I'm starting to speak now. I'm just playing around. It was really inspiring to see how he handled that. And, you know, shortly after we quit our jobs together, I was facing my own adversity where... We were failing miserably as entrepreneurs, so much so that we had a negative bank account balance and I'm dry heaving over the toilet with anxiety. But luckily together we found this ancient philosophy known as stoicism. It's 2,000 years old and it just made so much sense because they boiled all of life down to just one simple concept that they called the dichotomy of control. And basically they saw all of life split up into two buckets, two circles. Everything in one circle is what is in our control and everything in the other circle is what is outside of our control. And their whole philosophy was if you want to find peace in your life and in your mind, focus only on what is in your control. And that is what Nick did and showed me is possible. And that is what I tried to do when we were failing as entrepreneurs. And that's what we try to teach everyone is just make life as simple as focus on that circle of what's in your control and you will find peace. It's really that simple. We have to bring mom into the conversation because it's my understanding that resilience is something that started in the house with mom. Bring me up to speed, Nick. Yeah, Mike and I, we hit the parent jackpot. Both of our parents are incredible humans. But our mom, specifically, there was a moment when Mike and I were about, I think, 12 and 8 years old. Our mom was working in corporate America. She was at a company for 25 plus years. And, you know, we have these Italian values where every night at 6 p.m. you sit down at the dinner table. No matter what, everyone is there. My mom would come home from her job in the city and we'd be waiting there to have dinner together. And this one night she walks down the stairs and she looks at us and she shares the news that after 20 something years being at this company, they had laid her off. And I remember being a kid and being pretty scared of this news. Like, what is this going to mean for us? But I'll never forget how she responded. dead in the eyes. And she just said, it's all going to be okay. I'm going to make the best of this. I'm going to use this extra time I have to go back to Italy, connect with my family. And then when I get back, I'm going to find an even better job. And that is exactly what she did. And we like to say our parents did not talk a lot. They taught us by how they move their feet. And that moment has stuck with us all these years later. All right. So look, Mike, because he's got water in his eyes and I'm trying not to look at him because I'm reacting to that, thinking about my own mom. You tell me about the journal that you all have. Yeah. So we created a tool basically to help people to find the good in their everyday lives, because we think that no matter how bad the external world is going, if you train your mind, you can always find something to be grateful for something good in your life. So we created a journal called one good thing a day. It is the world's simplest gratitude journal, because all What's been the response to the journal? People are loving it. They're saying that it's the first journal that they're actually using every single day. It's the first journal that they bought and didn't just let dust get all over it because it's so simple that they can actually do it every single day. Nick, what is your message to someone who may not have had the same physical journey that you have walked, but maybe mentally can relate to the journey that you've walked? What is your message to someone who may not have had the same physical journey that you have walked, but maybe mentally can relate to the journey that you've walked? What is your message to someone who may not have had the same physical journey that you have walked, but maybe mentally can relate to the journey that you've walked? What is your message to someone who may not have had the same physical journey that you have walked, but maybe mentally can relate. to just some of the things that still have you still here, have you still being present to your wife and your family and just still being a solid human being. I think something I reflect on a lot is fault versus responsibility. So when I was assaulted, that wasn't my fault, but it is 100% my responsibility to do something with what happened to me. And I think that mindset right there, that responsibility of doing something with whatever life hands you and making the best of it, which is what we call the golden question, the golden question to ask yourself when life punches you in the mouth is how can I make the best of this? Because that forces you to put all of your attention on that term of responsibility. How can I make the best of this? What positive action can I take? to move forward in the right direction. All right. Stay right there. That is our show, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for Street Talk. For all of us here at Fox 5, I'm Antoine Lewis. We'll see you again for more Street Talk. But as always, thank you for the company.