John Petrelli | New Beginnings, Second Chances, & the Confessions of a Hollywood Trainer

“I should have died.” – John Petrelli

GUEST BIO:

John Petrelli is a certified professional fitness trainer. For nearly thirty years he has used his signature style of motivation and his unique program of physical exercise, nutrition, and martial arts training to positively impact the lives of countless people, from Grammy Award-winning recording artists to corporate executives to world-class athletes to film celebrities to busy moms and dads alike. He and his work have been featured in Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, GQ, and Vogue, and shown on national television networks including NBC, CBS, The USA Network, and FOX TV. He continues to train clients out of Five Star Fitness in Austin, TX, where he lives with his wife, Cheyenne, and their sons Hunter and Rocco.

SHOW NOTES:

• Website: JohnPetrelli.com
• Website: https://www.confessionsofahollywoodtrainer.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.petrelli.54/
• Instagram: John.Petrelli
  
  

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• Any first responders, veterans, active duty, teachers, doctors or health care workers are welcome to contact me for a free consultation. Simply use the code “COAHT”
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• Check out the new book, Scar Tissue by Danny Covey, John and my Remarkable friend.

“Nothing’s a better billboard than someone happy with your service.” – John Petrelli

Transcript

John Petrelli | New Beginnings, Second Chances, & the Confessions of a Hollywood Trainer

David Pasqualone: Hello, my Remarkable friends. Welcome to this week's episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the John Petre story. This week I had a great time with John. We met through a mutual friend of yours and mine, Danny Covey. Danny's been on the podcast. He's a great human. I've known him for over 25 years. You can check out his story in the link below in our show notes.

I believe he was in season one. Of the Remarkable People [00:01:00] Podcast. But he is still a friend of the podcast to this day, and he just launched his new book, scar Tissue that shares his life story in written form. So check it out. But Danny was kind enough to match up John and I, and when we hit it off, you're gonna hear this episode that John's gonna share so much life wisdom and just an inspirational story.

He talks about how he should have been in jail, he should have died. How he almost killed the guy with a kick to the head, but how God allowed him to get to California. And have a new start where he met people. He was at the right places at the right time. He ended up becoming a famous personal trainer.

He ended up being modeling on billboards with actresses and models like Gisele. He ended up being friends with world famous actors and comedians that you're about to hear. And he is just a Remarkable human, but on top of it all, he comes down [00:02:00] with a illness that either caused or was a catalyst for an underlying autoimmune disease, and it almost killed him and crippled him for life.

So you're not just gonna hear about what he was able to overachieve, I mean, overachieve, what he was about, what he was able to achieve. But what he was able to overcome and he shares with us the practical steps of how he did it. So you and I can too. So get out your pens and paper, your favorite beverage and enjoy this episode of the Remarkable People Podcast, the John Petrelli story.

And like always, don't just listen to this great content John brings you, but do it each day. The stuff you know, you need to repeat it over and over again. 'cause that consistency brings the the return. So you can have a great life in this world, and most importantly, an eternity to come. Share it with your friends and family.

Share it with strangers. We want this podcast to reach millions of people around the globe, not for our fortune and glory like Indiana [00:03:00] Jones talks about, but for God's glory and your fortune, and just good life for everybody. So I love you. I'm Dave Pasqualone, and welcome to this episode with our friend John Petre

David Pasqualone: Hey John, how are you today, brother? 

John Petrelli: I'm doing well. Yourself? I'm doing great. Oh, thank you for having me, man. I, I really appreciate being here. I know we talked a little bit off air beforehand today, and I'm so into what you're doing and helping people. We have a mutual friend that introduces Danny and I feel blessed to be here.

Look it, man, we all have a story, but if we don't have a platform to put that story together on and, and bring it out to the world, it, it will just die on its own. So I thank you for offering all of us a place to put the story out where we could possibly help one people or a million people, you know? It's 

David Pasqualone: beautiful.

Thank you, brother. Oh, you're very welcome. And for myself and our whole Remarkable community, man, we're thankful you're here today. [00:04:00] John, I just told our listeners a little bit about you, just the scratching the surface so they're already pumped to hear your episode. So at this time, what we'll do is we're gonna jump into the show.

Okay. We're gonna talk about, you know, like you said, you and I met through Danny Covey. Danny Covey was featured in an earlier episode of the podcast, amazing Human, amazing Friend, super inspirational story. So ladies and gentlemen, after you hear John's story today, If you want to be just, you know, double engaged with the podcast, listen to Danny's story next.

Amazing. But for today, when we're with you, John, I know just a touch of what Danny told me and you told me, and I'm super, super pumped. We're so pumped to hear this episode. We're doing a special recording on Saturday morning. Ladies and gentlemen, I never get up on Saturday mornings or rarely get up on Saturday mornings to do anything like this.

So, you know, John's got a special [00:05:00] story in life that God's given him and that he's gonna share with you today. So, John, at this time, you know, we don't want to dwell on the past, but we wanna learn from it. So let's go from your origins. Where were you born? What was your upbringing like? And then we'll just move chronologically along the way through your life.

We'll stop at times and break things down, so not just what you're able to overcome or achieve, but we'll try to reverse engineer it to get the practical steps of how you did it so the audience And I can too. Sound good 

John Petrelli: my friend? Yeah, it sounds awesome, man. I love that technique to do it that way.

And let me just even start off, before we start off to say anything that I say here today, I take full responsibility for all my actions. I take full responsibility for everything I've done in my life. People that I've been engaged with had the tools that they had at the point they had, and I don't blame them for anything they've done.

There's been people that have been in my situations that didn't act out and didn't do the nonsense that I did. [00:06:00] But my parents were born in Italy. I was born to my mom came from Naples, first generation marriage, came over in her twenties, and my dad is from Southern Italy. And I think I start off with the relationship with my father.

I love my dad. God bless him. He was born in 1921 during the Depression, and my dad served in three wars. He was in World War ii, Korea and Vietnam. So my dad got married later in life to my mom. My dad got married when he was 48 to my mom, who was in her twenties. Now, the reason I said ahead of time is I don't blame anything.

My dad had, the tools he had for his experiences. He grew up during depression. He, his father had another family that his family was not aware of until much later. So my dad really didn't even have a father. And the anger from that relationship with his father and the betrayal sent my dad into the military at 18 where he was basically [00:07:00] raised in the, in the military and the tools he gathered.

We're not necessarily that of fatherly love, but we're that of survival, of being a soldier, of being in war. And that's how he raised me. He raised me more of a soldier than he did as his son. And I don't blame him for that. He had the tools available to him that he was given. But at that point in my life, between his communication skills and my communication skills, there was a lot of conflict.

And I didn't have the ability to resolve the things that were going on in my head as I was becoming a growing man. So thank, and so I had that paired with my mom, who, God bless her, my mom's still alive. She's four foot 11, five foot of Italian energy. My man, if you come to my house, you are going to be showered with food.

You're gonna be showered with happiness. You're gonna eat way more than you ever thought. And my mom, and it doesn't 

David Pasqualone: matter if it's [00:08:00] two 30 in the afternoon, right? 

John Petrelli: It does it, brother and I have fond memories of it being two 30 in the morning, and my mom would be like, instead of me being out in the street, she felt much more comfortable of me being home.

So my friends and I would play cards two, three o'clock in the morning, and my mom would wake up and be like, Goodfellas. She'd make like 10 pounds of pasta, and we'd all be sitting around eating pasta two, three o'clock in the morning. But she felt, and rightfully so, that at least she knew where her son was, because I didn't have the greatest track record at that point.

So I grew up in that atmosphere, and as I'm growing up, I, I never felt like I could ever talk to my dad. Like I always felt fearful of my dad because of the way that I would be judged when I spoke. So I always felt in fear of my dad, and it was very difficult for me to ever express myself. I was afraid to fail to communicate.

And as I started getting older, [00:09:00] that started building that fear, started building anger, and that anger expounded itself in my life as violence. And so I never felt like I was good enough. I've never felt like I fit in. And it started medic manifesting itself as violence, as testosterone built in my body as I started getting in my teen years.

And that violence ended up spilling into the streets and really crafted my life as I started getting into altercations and really created some seminal, some pivotal points in my life that changed my whole life.

David Pasqualone: And as all this is happening, you know, it's a couple things to cover is thankfully our podcast goes all around the world and we have listeners from, I think I just looked, it's like 118 different countries, you know, thousands of cities. Even within the Italian culture, like I grew up, and correct me if I'm wrong, but normally men, you marry women about 10 [00:10:00] years younger.

Mm-hmm. So that's like a cultural norm, but 20 years even back then, that was, that was a good gap. Correct. 

John Petrelli: My dad was the original Hugh Hefner. Yeah, it was, it was a big gap and it was wild because sometimes kids, and I didn't know how to respond as a kid would go, is that your granddad or is that your dad?

Because my dad had was that much older and my dad had seen a lot of war, but he never talked about it. He had what we know now as P T S D, but. David, maybe it's, it's a cultural thing. Maybe it's a gender thing, but I'll think women are much more adept at expressing their emotions, especially what we may consider softer emotions like fear, like love.

And my dad never expressed any of that and he had it harbored inside. And as a kid, I didn't know how to process that. My dad would wake up in the middle of the night screaming with night terrors and he was reliving some, some wartime trauma, but [00:11:00] I didn't know what that was. I mean, we had never heard of P T S D.

And so, yeah, my dad being a little bit older, number one, being born in a different generation, being born to my mom who was much born, married, to my mom who was much younger, was pretty wild dynamics. 

David Pasqualone: And then growing up, did you have any brothers and sisters, or you only child? So 

John Petrelli: I have two sisters.

I'm the middle child. I have two sisters that are amazing. My sister, Gina and Roseanne, they're both educators. I am kind of the complete opposite in a lot of senses where they went and got their master's. I barely finished two years of community college. I literally got through high school because teachers did not wanna see me anymore.

I had dyslexia. I had no idea what dyslexia was. I just learned differently than other people that combined with behavioral issues. And man, after two years of college, I was out of there and my sisters went on to have, get their masters and their speech pathologists. [00:12:00] 

David Pasqualone: Okay. And then when you're growing up, did your mom and dad have a good relationship?

Was it just, we're married and that's how it is. That was the mindset. How was their relationship of interaction? 

John Petrelli: That's a great question. So unfortunately my dad. Was the general, like he left the military as a colonel and that's how he ran the household. My mother, my dad has passed away and I see my mother flourish in so many ways because she had to live in his shadow had so much to contribute, but wasn't really allowed to contribute a lot.

And she's so creative and bring so much to the table. And a lot of times my dad loved her without doubt. My dad was an awesome provider. He loved my mom, but it was his way or the highway. And so I did see conflict. You know, I saw that. And you start taking on these traits, right? As a kid, we learn what we see, [00:13:00] right?

We, you could be told one thing, but if somebody's doing something else, you really absorb and learn what you see. So I did see my dad kind of running a household as a tyrant. I did see my dad stifling other people when they had input and I. Even though I hated a lot of those traits and it built anger in me, man, I started seeing myself doing some of the same patterns and doing some of the same things and taking on these traits and had no way to control that or like manage any of that.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Yeah. That learned behavior is huge. That's why I was asking. 'cause most of the time, even if like you said conscious or not, we're gonna marry that behavior, even the stuff we hated. So that's why I was wondering, 'cause I know that might play into your story down the road. So now you're born, you got two sisters, you're, you know, bookends, you're right in the middle, but you're the only child with an Italian mom and two sisters.

So I'm guessing you were kind of doted on, right? And am I wrong? 

John Petrelli: Well, in a way I was by my mom for [00:14:00] sure. My mom probably overcompensated with love and everything, and my dad just, his mentality was, Hey man, girls are raised differently. He gave them, gave them a lot of leeway. And I was afforded pretty much zero to none leadway, I had to do a lot of things, man.

And I remember one time specifically which is crazy if I think about it in hindsight now that I have kids, my sister, my oldest sister's boyfriend had asked to borrow my dad's truck and my sister's two years older, and my dad at the dinner table said, no problem. Take the truck, do whatever. And I had asked to borrow my dad's truck a million times and I was never allowed.

And at that moment, it hit me internally that he sees me less than somebody else that is not even a member of our family. And it hurt me and I never couldn't say anything about it or anything, but I started, these things started compiling to me, right? I'm like, why, why would he look down on me so much that I can't even borrow the truck to, to go fishing or [00:15:00] take it the truck out and here's someone that's been dating my sister for a month.

And he is like, yeah, go ahead and take that. So I wasn't doted on in that sense. I brought a lot of discipline actions upon myself through my own actions. And then I had a super strict dad where dude, I had friends whose dads were known to be super strict, and my friends would go to me like, holy cow, man, your dad blows my dad out of the water in a way he talks to you and treats you.

It's 

David Pasqualone: crazy. Yeah. And I meant by, I should have been clear, I meant by your mother and your sisters. Now you said something, the truck scenario, I can see and I felt and experience things just like that. Super painful. And any listener right now hearing this, they're probably actually feeling something in their chest, right?

Did you ever talk to your dad about that? Were you ever able to speak to him about that? Because I'm thinking two things. Number one, as the son, I can feel the pain. [00:16:00] But then I'm thinking as a dad who's had children and a daughter, and I'm thinking Italian American here. So did you ever talk to him about that?

So 

John Petrelli: the only time I ever talked to him about that, or a lot of our conversations would end up where emotions would stack on top of each other and it would come to a boiling point. And it was no longer a conversation, it was an explosion of, of emotion. And it would be something where we would be angry or yelling.

And I know in fact that some point where I was getting disciplined over something that I brought that out verbally, you know, in a tirade. But we never sat down and hashed that out. We never sat down. And he never explained to me like, yeah man, this is why I'm doing this. I'm trying to make you into a man, or whatever his reasoning was.

So never, never. I wish I can go back in time, man. And I know that we can't. We learn from our experiences and word the fabric of what we, you know, our past. But I never had that conversation [00:17:00] with him. And maybe David, I go in the other direction too much and I overdo things with my kids probably. And I tell them I love them too much and I overexplain things, but I never want them to feel like they can't have a conversation with me.

I never want them to feel little. I always want them to feel like they have a voice and we may disagree, but I respect their input. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. Well one thing is, this is like, could be absolutely wrong, but thinking like a dad with a daughter, especially with that Italian American mm-hmm. Mentality. I'm thinking like, yeah, I'll be a nice guy.

You can borrow my truck. But then I'm thinking now, if I find you and beat you, I just tell the cops, I stole your truck. You stole my truck. So, I mean, I don't know if your dad was thinking like that. So, I mean, maybe on the it like hurt you, but he was totally on a different wavelength when he was loaning that truck out.

He just wanted to excuse to beat the guy. If he hurt his daughter, 

John Petrelli: he might've been double aging it. I don't know. I was definitely [00:18:00] working on a linear level and maybe he, he was sticking layers deeper. I dunno. Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: You know. How old are your, how old are your kids now? 

John Petrelli: My kids are 12 and nine. Yeah. 

David Pasqualone: Two boys.

Yeah. And you got a, say again. Two boys. Yeah, I'll tell you what, your mind starts rewiring as a dad, as the girls get older. Mm-hmm. And it is always like, oh yeah, you can borrow all my truck. Be like, yeah, there's a tracker on it. You're screwed. So, I mean, you never know. Maybe I'm trying to be best case scenario here.

Maybe your dad didn't know how to express love and that was his way of just kind like it wasn't, he trusted the other guy more than you. He just had ulterior motives. You know, if had a 

John Petrelli: baseball player, the way to look at it like that, it's much more useful to look at it in those terms. I'm gonna adopt that, whether it was true or not.

We don't wanna 

David Pasqualone: make stuff. We don't wanna make stuff up. But I'll tell you firsthand, as an Italian dad who loves his daughter, she didn't understand so much of what I did or why, and maybe I communicated badly, right? Mm-hmm. But the thing is, everything I did, I can say before God, I did it because I loved her and was in her [00:19:00] best interest, not mine.

Not trying to control my outcome, what I want, just sheerly to protect her. So, you know, you never know. You never know. But going back to your story, so now you're in this situation and you feel this way, you feel like you're not heard, you feel like you can't talk. The conversations end up blowing up into arguments, which you, Italians are known for being passionate anyways.

So now you're really digging in. Your dad's older than you and you're in high school at this point, right? Yeah. So between your birth and high school, is there anything we missed in your story? 

John Petrelli: You know, I, I, I've got a great work, work ethic early on. I've worked, we lived in a small town upstate New York, and people think New York, a lot of times they think city.

But I worked on a farm as a kid. I, I never stopped working from probably the time I was 12, 10 years old, cutting logs, delivering newspapers. I worked on a horse farm, shoveling horse manure bailing hay. And that for me built an insane work ethic. Like I always know that I [00:20:00] can turn back and grind harder if I need to.

And I look at those moments like working, I always go back to working and, and, and hey and doing that. There was a feeling of accomplishment I got and it went far beyond the $5 an hour I was receiving. You. You would start at the beginning of the day in the dark and you'd be bailing hay and filling up truckloads of hay.

And at the end of the day, man, you looked at the silo or you looked at the barn and you had a fulfillment of going, alright, we just filled 25% of that. Whole thing. And it gave me a sense of accomplishment. And so it built an amazing work ethic. And I was decent in sports early on. And I'm now, as a parent, I'm so involved in my kids' sports and their lives maybe to a point of fault.

But I look back and I think a thing that started building resentment and anger in me too as a child is my father. I can't ever remember him coming to one sporting event I ever had, and I'd always be looking and hoping he would [00:21:00] show up. Like as the game went on, I was a leading scorer in soccer in eighth grade, and we won the title and my parents never made it to one game.

So I never got that appreciation. I never got that satisfaction of them going, great job, or We've come to be involved in your life. I don't blame them for that. My mom was still working. She had a little grocery store and a pizzeria. I don't know what my dad's reasoning was. He never explained that to me.

I also remember specifically one time in my mom's pizzeria, kids asked my dad if he can come to their football game, and he went to their football game and I was thinking, oh my God, this, he never has come to any of my sporting events. He's never come to my soccer game, but he's going to see somebody else's football game.

And so once again, I couldn't verbalize it. I didn't have the capacity. And that just starts building up. And then as I go from middle [00:22:00] school to getting into high school, I lose direction. I lose, like that whole sporting thing I had, I lose, I lose my drive. And I, that drive that had gone into athletics, started going into the wrong areas.

And I felt like where I was receiving success in athletics now, I didn't have that fulfillment in my life. I didn't have great grades. I didn't have great. Home life with my father, my relationship. And so looking back, I understand this, but at the time I didn't know. And I just started harboring anger, harboring like I was never good enough.

I was a small kid, David, at freshman year in high school I was four foot 11, four foot 11. All these kids had gone through puberty. And I came back and I'm like, what happened to everybody? How are they all giants? And here I was still this kid, I didn't grow until like my sophomore to junior year. So you deal with bullies.

A lot of it I brought on [00:23:00] myself by having a big mouth, whatever you deal with, the anger being the relationship with my dad, never good enough anymore. And I started building this perfect storm of fear, resentment, and anger that now started coming to a culmination in the streets. And brother, I started getting into a lot of trouble.

David Pasqualone: Let's talk about that. And then again, I'm typing notes in my phone. This things that I just wanna make sure we put in the show notes. Again, I'm, we're here to hear your story and to bring as much of your life out. Mm-hmm. But ma'am, my heart, like at the same time, I don't know why your dad, when he went to that kid's game, that must have been crushing from the inside out.

But at the same time, like as a kid, you're not thinking about anything but your [00:24:00] your own world. That's how we're born. We don't have that emotional maturity and then we don't have, if we don't have parents and people around us to help guide us through, then that's the only way we see the world. But listening to your story, it's like, oh, your dad was like, you know, he's a businessman.

He wants a pizzeria to grow. He wants to have a good face in the community. I mean, maybe he was too far where it was just like he cared about other people's opinion more than within his home or more. He's like, oh, for us to have a successful business, I gotta keep the community happy. They asked me, I need to go.

Do you think it was, that that's the only reason he went just to keep the community happy? 

John Petrelli: One, never thought about that. You know, that's a great way to put a different light on it. I have to give that some thought and perspective. I never thought about it in that way. And you are very selfish as a child, right?

You're all about what is me and whatnot. So in those moments, I never thought about that as an adult. I never thought about that. I just think my dad maybe didn't have a much as much awareness. And I try to be so sympathetic [00:25:00] because I go, man, here's someone that went into war at 18 and never could ever verbalize to us what he saw.

And I can only imagine my dad's later years when he was, my dad ended up passing away a cancer he opened up in like his last couple years of life. And he showed me albums, photo albums of stuff that was documented. And me looking at it, not having the smell of what dead bodies are or not being there viscerally seeing this, it was horrific.

I saw pictures of documentations of bodies piled on top, hundreds of bodies piled on top of each other where they were being pushed with a bulldozer and there was farm animals mixed in there. And it, and that burned into my head and I'm like, this guy is trying to process all of this. They didn't have counselors in the military back then, you probably couldn't turn to your next guy and go and explain how that hurts you or how you had to kill somebody.

So I'm like, how did the, he process all that and [00:26:00] now has to shift gears, get married at 48 half kids and lose all of that, what he experienced, and now be a tender loving dad. So I don't know where his mind was at, but man, I can understand how there could be so many things that are impeding just your natural pulses as a human being to be caring, to show weakness, to do all of that because he, he's the only one that's lived that journey that he's lived.

And the little that he led in with me was horrific. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah. And what was his relationship like with his father? Well, his dad 

John Petrelli: left, his family, left him and had a whole nother family. And they found out through a third party. So my dad's relationship with my dad was, I think since his early teen years, he never told me this.

We found this out through other people. My dad had my dad, my grandfather had a whole nother family and had kids that ended up getting arrested and my dad ended up helping [00:27:00] them work their way through halfway houses and stuff. So he, his relationship with his dad I think was not great. And, you know, he turned to Surpr supporting his mom through his military paycheck.

So, you know, we are the product of what we see, learn, you know, our, our 

David Pasqualone: environment. And this is your story. And I mean it, there's just something in my heart, like I want to say this stuff that hopefully it's helping you and our listeners world. Yeah, brother. Interject. Well, like we talked about generational learning and learned behavior.

You know, your dad wasn't given the right tools and then he grew up and he's raising you. And we're gonna get into your story, how the tools you were lacking brings you to today, right? But then you were blessed and you learned them and grew. You made that conscious decision to change. But back then, man, even today, still for men, you know, we live in a snowflake world, man, and all these people are so weak and so complaining and so making [00:28:00] excuses and women are like men and men are like women.

It's so freaking screwed up. But if a man does start sharing his emotions, sometimes it's like, I. You know, what's wrong with you? Just toughen up, you know? Mm-hmm. Like, I actually overheard people the other day. The brothers like, I don't know these people. I, I know. It's like a, it's actually a business contact.

And I was listening to him and his friend talk about the friend's brother, right? And like, I don't know what the hell's wrong with him. Why doesn't he just snap out of it? And it's a gentleman who went to war, he's depressed and suicidal, and they're just like, what the hell is wrong with him? So even today, in 2023, people are still so insensitive about the stuff that's real, right?

But then if you call somebody, Hey, you're an idiot. Oh, that's offensive. You know what I mean? You used the wrong word. And that's like morally offensive. But yet someone like you, like your, your father, he sees these horrific things. Everyone's like, ah, just, [00:29:00] just walk it off. Right? So when it comes to your dad and the stuff you're saying, I can actually understand a lot of it.

Like I love my family and I want to do everything I can to help him. But he didn't know how to express it, right? So then he is like, I gotta provide, I need to have a successful business. I have to go see this kid's football games 'cause that if not he is gonna talk bad about me, I'm gonna lose business.

So I have to have a good business. So I'm just, I mean I'm, I'm speculating, but I can easily see that kind of thought process. Like, your dad loves you a lot, but he doesn't really know how to be a dad. He doesn't know what to do at times. So he just does his best. And at that time it's like, I love my family to support my family.

I go to this kid's football game. I mean, it really could have been that thought process. But on the flip side, you're like, my dad doesn't come to any of my games. He goes to a stranger's game. What the heck? And in your mind, you felt that complete devalue, right? So just things to pray about, man, to try to help.

John Petrelli: And you know, I think all of that can be solved if we take the time and communicate, right? Well, you gotta have the skills to communicate, number [00:30:00] one, and the confidence to do it. But when you have the skills to communicate now you can break down all sides of that coin and understand other people's perspectives.

And I feel like this is what's up with society today. I always try now as 51 year old John Petri, to understand the other side of the table and get some perspective. 'cause at the end of the day, honestly, David, I feel like we all want the same things. We all want love, we want to be loved, we want to give love, we want to contribute.

And these things get lost when people refuse to communicate or be empathetic about somebody else's perspective. So I come back and you have, 

David Pasqualone: you have zero respon. I'm not ever saying as a child you weren't. Right? Because no child has those tools. Those are tools we're taught and learned, right? Your dad was just denied that learning too.

So it's great that you have now and you're teaching people. So bring us in your story, John, like, yeah. So now you're, you're in high school. 

John Petrelli: I'm in high school. I have a growth spurt. It's a freaking nature. My, my dad's only five, eight. My [00:31:00] mom's five foot max. I, I go to six foot. I had all these years of being bullied on and everything, and I had this anger building.

So now I start hitting the weight room and I'm like, part of me is like, man, I'm gonna get revenge on these people that picked on me. Part of me is coming into my own with testosterone. Part of it's just stupid, you know, choices. And I start getting into confrontations in the street, physi, physical fights.

And what happens is crazy because now I start getting an identity of being someone that is known for fighting, that is known for being tough. And that brings me love and it brings me satisfaction and it's something that I've been missing and now it's, I start feeding upon that. So when I see people giving me accolades for, even if I lost a fight of being physical, it makes me want to do that again.

And I get into this vicious cycle where every weekend with my friends, we are getting into some type of fight. We're [00:32:00] getting into a confrontation. Sometimes we don't even know what it's about. Somebody who's like, Hey, can you help us out? And because I'm now building this identity and receiving love from that identity, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy man.

Here I am in the streets, people are getting injured, we have to go to court. Someone's got hurt. And it all leads to this culmination. And there are many, many incidents and I'm living in violence all the time to the point where in my stomach, in the pit of my soul brother, I have butterflies and anxiety all the time.

'cause I know in my heart what I should be doing and I know what my actions are and they don't correlate. I got into martial arts when I was 12 years old. We're supposed to be honorable. We're supposed to know how to protect other people. We're supposed to be righteous. And here I am getting in fights and now training to be someone that's good.

And I have this turmoil in my stomach. I also get love for my friends, for being in here. I get identity and [00:33:00] it all culminates. There are many, many confrontations and ridiculousness, but after our, my senior year when we all get outta school, there is, I grew up, the town I'm in is Utica, New York, and they have a thing called fireworks over Utica.

And it's right after we got outta school and there's hundreds of people in the street, there's a firework display. And at that time there was a thing going on, which was horrible. It was called wilding, where kids would just mob and attack innocent people. For no reason. If you Google that, you can look, it happened in the nineties wilding.

It was maybe a New York thing, and I never did that. But this was like the pulse of the area and the energy. And so we go to this thing fireworks over Utica. We're supposed to go and get drunk after everybody's getting ready to go to college. My friends have much better choices than I do. I'm going to the only two year college that will accept me, and we get into a [00:34:00] confrontation in the parking lot, a gas station, parking lot, and I make a pivotal choice in my life that changes the trajectory of my life for the rest of my life.

A guy squares up with my friend and without thinking they're gonna fight. I push my friend out of the way and I kick this individual square in the face and he crashes to the ground and the back of his head collides with the curb and he cracks his head open. And he's unconscious and his teeth are knocked out and he's bloody laying on the ground.

And for a brief moment, I'm proud of myself and I'm sitting there and my friends are cheering me on and all of a sudden I feel somebody grab me from behind. And he, at the time, had another individual with him and it turns out to be his brother. I didn't know until this whole thing went to court and everything shook out and I think his brother's grabbing me.

And I turn around to [00:35:00] basically, you know, defend myself, attack that individual. And it's a undercover police officer that saw me kick this guy in the face. And he is putting a handcuff on me. And I swing without even thinking. And here I am now striking, trying to strike a police officer. And so in a fraction of a second I go to possibly killing someone that you know.

It brings back a lot of shame and emotion for me, but I didn't in a split second. I go from potentially having a future to taking away someone's future. Selfishly, at my point in that life taking, all I could think about is taking my future away and then striking a cop. I get slammed to the ground. I have no idea.

I'm trying to process what's going on. I get handcuffed and I get thrown into a cop car, and now the person is on the ground, [00:36:00] knocked out, there's a pool of blood on the ground, and the police officers are doing the best they can to revive this individual. And now his brother comes on the scene and sees his brother, his younger brother, knocked out on the ground unconscious and freaks out and starts attacking my friends.

He gets arrested. They put us both in the same cop car. Imagine that, 

David Pasqualone: right? This is the nineties, right? This is the nineties or eighties. This is the 

John Petrelli: nineties. 19 90, 19 91. And so now this individual sees his brother who may be dead on the streets. The person who attacked him is in the car with him. I'm sitting there.

All I can think of my world is now down to these four walls of the police car. And all I can think about is I had been thinking and manifesting in my head that I was gonna end up in [00:37:00] jail or dead. And I had been processing that for the last several years with all this anger and these fights. And now what I had been thinking in my head is coming to fruition right in front of me.

All the thoughts. And I'm like, I knew I was gonna end up in jail. I knew I was gonna end up hurting someone. They end up taking me out of the cop car. They put us in a paddy wagon, which for lack of better word is a police fan, a big police fan. They have now riot police out there trying to clear the streets.

There's hundreds of people around. They're trying to revive this individual on the street. Unsuccessfully. The fire department comes, they're working on him. They can't revive him. And now the ambulance comes. They whisked me away, okay, with his brother in the back of a paddy wagon. And all I remember is this person is still unconscious on the streets.

I'm going to jail. And I wish I could tell you my focus at that point in my life was, I hope this person makes it. My focus at that point in my life [00:38:00] was what has happened to my life right now? I saw this happening and I brought it to reality, and so they bring me to jail. I have to get processed. Police officers do not take kindly to individuals, especially 20 year old punks, striking other police officers, and I have to work my way through the court system.

Everything that that entails. And now when my friends are going off to college, I have this cloud hanging over me of having to work this through. But it brought me to some great bottoms in my life. And I don't want people to think that you have to hit your bottom to make these decisions. But I started realizing, number one, I had to change my geography because I was gonna end up in jail or dead.

I'm already arrested and I had to change my peer group. And I'm not blaming my friends because a lot of people that maybe in this situation didn't do what I did. What I was not [00:39:00] strong enough as an individual to handle the dynamics of the relationships and not have it come out in a negative context. So I said, I gotta change my peer group and I gotta change my geography.

And I wish I could tell you, David, that at this point I changed my whole life. It took some more happening for me to hit absolute rock bottom. But for the first time in my life, I went to college while I was dealing with this and I finally got good grades, I started isolating myself. I buried myself in the weight room, and I started separating myself from my peer group and my friends who I love dearly.

And I had, I was torn between my loyalty to them and my future. And so I started studying. I started burying myself in the weight room. Hour upon hour, I started dedicating myself to bodybuilding and weight training. [00:40:00] And that was a pivotal point in my life. But there were several confrontations that happened after that, one of 'em involving a chainsaw, which is absolutely crazy.

And it's in my book. And makes me, I, I tell people we literally had a chainsaw in the streets with, in a confrontation. And whenever I hear a chainsaw, I go to two places in my life, the movie Scarface and outside of the network nightclub in December in upstate New York. And then my last confrontation I had, we got into a, a fight with a known street thug.

And at the end of that fight, he said, I'm going to kill you. And he was known for carrying a gun. And I said, what the am I doing? And after that confrontation happened, I called a friend of mine. It was the only options I had. A friend of mine lived in California and I had [00:41:00] $500 to my name. And I called my friend Darrell Hagen, who offered me a shed of light at that point in my life where I didn't have many options.

And I said, Darrell, my brother, I have. I'm gonna die out here and I need to change and move somewhere. And he didn't have any room where he was staying at his uncle's house, but he offered me to sleep on the floor. He said, I don't have any rooms out here. But my uncle Jimmy, who Jimmy Rine, changed my life, offered me to sleep on the floor of their house.

And in two weeks I packed my bags. I had $500 to my name, I bought an airline ticket and my parents took me to the airport not knowing, and never had conversation about chainsaws and never had conversation about someone pulling a gun. They knew I was in tr different trouble, but they didn't know the extent.

And bro, that is the first time when my dad took me to the airport at 20, 21 years old that my dad ever [00:42:00] told me he loved me and it crushed my soul. And that was the first time he ever called me son. And he wished me well at the airport. And gave me a hug and said, I love you son. And I, I packed my bags and I headed off to California to hopefully change my life and it did change my life.

I mean, from that point on, I could tell you that my, my trajectory of my life changed from harming people, from being selfish to bringing violence, to focusing on helping people to being outside of myself. I became a trainer when there was only one trainer test. I became a fitness trainer when there was only one test for a training in the whole United States.

I took that test on the hopes that I would help people, and what I found out was as I went on this journey, those people really helped me more than I helped them, and I [00:43:00] went on to being one of the most successful trainers in the nation. Working with a-list celebrities and going on international tours and doing things that I never would've thought were possible, were beyond the scope of my mental abilities, and I would've been ashamed and embarrassed to verbalize in my teen years because I would've afraid of what other people would've thought, but became possible because I came outside of myself and my selfish needs and started focusing on how do I help other people?

How do I make other people better? That is the longest day I've gone without ever taking a breath, and I'm glad you could be part of that. I know that's a big chunk, but that is literally my trajectory from my teen years to me becoming a trainer. 

David Pasqualone: Beautiful, and thank you for sharing that. Now, to tie up some loose ends in the listener's minds and mine, I.

The young [00:44:00] man that you kicked in the head, obviously you didn't go to prison, so I'm guessing he lived. What was the Yeah, the, how did that turn out? Yeah, 

John Petrelli: so

when I think about, we all have a history and we all have our reasons for doing or not doing something. And let me just say that after, as an adult, when I did investigation of who these guys really were, they had way more, way more excuse to act inappropriately than I did. They grew up in abusive households, they had addiction in their family, they had addiction in their life, and so, By the grace of God, I literally feel like God has been guiding my life.

And even the worst parts that I of my life that I believe, you know, were horrific, [00:45:00] have taught me the most, have helped me the most. So the two guys that we got into a fight with were brothers, and they had just gotten out of prison that night. They got out of jail and prison that night, and we ran into them, and it's hard for me to say this, but for the sake of 19 year old John Petrelli, I was lucky in that sense because the legal system had a hard on for them.

And in return for testifying against them, because there's a whole bunch that I didn't cover in details. This car, this kid kicked my car his brother kicked my car door in and there was a whole other, there's a chunk of it that I didn't get into. That happened right prior to me kicking him. And the police officers and the DA in response, in accordance with testifying against them, literally gave me the, the, [00:46:00] the easiest sentence ever.

I got released on R o r, which is called Released on your own recognizance. I didn't even have to post bail in return for testifying them. They dropped my charges to a conditional and a violation, and with the condition being, if I got arrested again within 12 months, that I, they could reenact all the initial charges.

So I was supposed to be good for a year, even though I wasn't, it was always in the back of my mind. And that individual recovered. And I've heard this is not firsthand knowledge, but I've heard through other parties that they ended up living a life in and out of jail. I believe one of the brothers has passed away.

Now, I could be wrong on that. And if we grew up in the same neighborhood, we would've probably been best friends. And like I say, they lived through that. He ended up living, I don't know all the physical trauma that he had end up going through. I don't know what medical [00:47:00] things he had ended up going through, but they had more reason to be a degenerate than I ever did.

And I, I'm sorry for what happened. I had shame and still do for many, many years about that. And I just asked for forgiveness and an apo, you know, I apologize. So that is the extent of what I know happened to 

David Pasqualone: them. And, and that brings up a good point, John. And if I ever go too deep, then you wanna stop, be like, Nope, just tell me.

But you know, you're, you're clearly. Emotional now in a good way. Like, you know, you, you don't like what you did, but you understand that's part of your past and you're sharing and you're talking about it. So I know you're connecting with a lot of people all over the world right now who have things in their past that they're not proud of or they're like, yeah, I wish I could do this differently, but we can't.

So to those people with you [00:48:00] right now that are struggling, how did you, and maybe you're still working through it, but what's a starting point for them to start working through? The pain to start getting free 

John Petrelli: for me, and it took many years, but I can say this now, is listen, I had given those guys, and this may seem so egotistical, but I had given them forgiveness many, many years ago for what they had done and their part in it, and obviously, but I had to be as kind to myself and give myself forgiveness.

Sometimes we are kinder to other people than we are to ourselves, and there's still obviously grains of shame in there. But I've come to realize through my journey that I can help other people that may be in a similar situation to know that you are not defined by one moment in your life. You are not defined by your failures, and you're not [00:49:00] defined by your successes.

When we look back at my life, I hope that people can look at the scope of my life and go, yes, here's an individual that made some mistakes. Yes, here's an individual that made some bad choices. But at the end of that, they grew from those choices and they made a better place. They made a society better.

They may became a better person. So all I can say is you are not defined by one moment unless you choose to be defined by that singular moment, and we can only project the present and the future. So, I've learned so much from that and I share it with you here in my healing, but also hopefully in the helps of helping someone else work through their 

David Pasqualone: healing process.

Thank you. That was excellent. And ladies and gentlemen, you know, in the show notes we always have our contact info, our guest contact info. John has a new book, which we'll talk about at the end, but continue the conversation, whether it's with John or whether it's [00:50:00] with a counselor, or whether it's, you know, someone to help you reach out to us.

We'll try to help you connect if you need help, because letting go and getting past that, just guilt and shame, God brings conviction that's healthy. Sin wants to keep guilt and shame on you to ruin any future you have. So John, I think that's beautiful. You said, you know, one moment, good or bad, doesn't define our life.

You know, it's not done till we take our last breath. So thank you for sharing that, brother. Thank you. But let's switch gears a little bit. Now you land in California, you know your dad says, I love you, son. Whether he knew something was going on, he was looking for closure. Whether it was a rite of passage like, man, you're going on your own.

I'm proud of you. You know, he has a hard time expressing himself. But you land in California and there's wisdom in separating ourselves from peers in bad situation. But most of the [00:51:00] time when people separate, it's almost like a form of running and their problems just follow them and get worse. Now, you took the right path and you made it happen, and you know with God, but what are the things you did take us through your story from when you landed in California to today, and what those forks in the road were, those choices, because you could have so easily fell back into the same life in California are worse.

But somehow you navigated through it. So what did your journey look like and what were those forks in the road choices that kept you on the good path? Yeah, 

John Petrelli: and I wish I could tell you that I always made the right choices, right? But I didn't, by the grace of God, I was guided through. So I still made mistakes.

I still make mistakes to this day, but I remember the flight, bro, just the flight of flying. There was a, a, a bag of bricks that I was able to drop just on flight to California [00:52:00] and heading there. And I didn't have to hold up this image anymore. I, I could start a new life. I didn't have to hold up this, this persona of being a tough guy and meeting other people's expectations of what they thought of me and always living on the edge and to the next fight that started dropping.

And I got picked up at the airport and I remember seeing California and I was like, my God, this is the land of opportunity. I went and I stayed. Man. Jimmy Train is a person. He's passed away now and thank God for him. It is the house I stayed at and he was working his way through AA and he was giving back to other individuals that were working their way through the process.

And even though I never had a drug addiction, I had a different, I had a violence addiction and so I would, we would have all these characters coming through the house of people he was helping. We had a guy that lived in our, underneath our dining room table for a while. His name was Curtis and we called it Curtis Corner.

And he had [00:53:00] gotten outta jail for manslaughter and had a meth addiction. And Jimmy saw amazing things in him and looked beyond the rough exterior and paid to have all his dental work done. Paid to have, give, got him a job. He was on the path of helping people and giving them a new future. And now, Instead of me seeing violence all the time, instead of me trying to hold up this persona, unbeknownst to me on a, on a different level, I start seeing love.

I start seeing caring. I start seeing compassion, and I, it takes a while, but I start absorbing these traits. So it wasn't easy. I get to California, I'm determined to be a success. I start working landscape jobs for, he had a a construction company. I would work in landscape jobs, digging dishes, going house to house.

I'm doing a bouncing job on the side while I study to be a trainer. And God tests me several times. Number one [00:54:00] is I get e coli poisoning and I hold, had only been in California a couple months, and I get e coli poisoning, and I almost die. I get infected from eating some bad meat. I go to the hospital it's a hor horrendous situation.

So I drain my bank account of the little money I had. I got medical bills, and that's a test. Then as soon as I get done with getting e coli poisoning, a water truck goes through an intersection and the only new car I've ever had in my life, life I have, and it gets totaled by a water truck and I'm laid up.

And I remember specifically, this is a pivotal moment for me where I crossed from boyhood to manhood because my mother, God bless her, and my sister Gina, both mail me checks for what is a huge amount at that point in my life. One was for 501 was for 300, and I still have those checks to this [00:55:00] day because I said at 21 years old, if I cannot make it out here on my own, I don't deserve to be here and I'm bidding, put through a test.

And even though that money was. Life changing for me. And maybe it was, I'm not saying everybody should do this. Maybe it was my ego, but I took those checks, I put 'em right back in the envelope, they came and I saved them. And so that was a huge test, getting hit by a water truck, getting e coli. And I just kept struggling forward, man.

I was working at night. I finally took a test to become a trainer. It's probably the first test I ever passed since sixth grade. But I passed that test and I start my own business. I literally start my own business and I have flyers made, and I pay kids in the neighborhood to pass out my flyer in, in grocery parking lots, in like park parking lots, business parking lots, and wrote my God [00:56:00] was watching over me because my phone starts ringing that day.

I don't even have the answers for people, like, how much do you charge where you trained? And I, I'm so embarrassed that I'm so young as a trainer that I disguise my voice and talk older when people are calling for training, because I don't want them to know that I'm 21 years old. It just started, so I, in my mind, my craziness, I'm like, if I talk deeper, yes.

How can I help you? And so my phone starts blowing up off the hook. I get my first client $12 an hour, an amazing girl that has her own incredible journey. I charge her $12 an hour, which is $5 more an hour than my last job in New York, which I was catching shoplifters in New York for Bradley's department store while I was in college.

And I had a gun pulled on me. I had to choke someone unconscious and enter my pearls and perils. I had a knife pulled on me and I was getting $7 and 25 cents an hour. So now I'm getting 12 bucks an hour. I couldn't be more excited. I'm [00:57:00] helping people. And that graduates to 15. It graduates to helping more people.

Somebody wants to be able to walk the aisle at their son's wedding and they have no mobility and they're 80 years old. I helped that person. Another person I helped get ready for this, another person I helped, you know, get ready for their high school reunion. And as I'm working with these people and helping these people, they are healing my mind, my body, and my soul.

And the more people I help, the better I feel. And I start shedding the BSS of who my identity was in New York, who I was supposed to be. And now I come into my real passion of helping people, my real passion of seeing people on their journey and coming into their life and going on this with them. And I mean, it starts all falling into place and it becomes not easy, but easy.

And 

John Petrelli: I still gotta put in long hours and I still gotta study and I still gotta work my butt off. Now I'm happy. I'm working in a [00:58:00] capacity where I'm happy and that becomes infectious and it becomes contagious. And now the people in my life that are coming into my wife life, either through work or new friendship or business, whatever it is, are happier.

And they have things to offer that I didn't have before, and I now have something to offer in return. And now you start becoming what you surround yourself with. And I start becoming this from this adolescent violent individual to a man that is focused on really listening to what people's needs are, to trying to solve the equation and craft a way to get them to their goals and to make them healthier.

And that's my path, brother for me, going into training. It's crazy. There's a million details in there. I go from that $12 an hour first client to working on movie sets and getting asked to travel internationally, and it's [00:59:00] bananas. But I literally tell people, and hopefully we'll cover this, that if I can do that, as an 18 year old, 20 year old degenerate with dyslexia and problems with the legal system and all these problems, imagine what you can do as an individual.

Imagine the greatness you can achieve. Imagine what you can do to help other people and the people's lives you can affect with positivity. If I can do that, you can clearly do more. 

David Pasqualone: Well said. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. Love breeds love. Negativity breeds negativity, but hope breeds hope. So. Very true, John.

Yeah. So let me, before we transition into today, I mean, that's amazing how God had you on that journey and how you were putting the work in. But going back to when you were in California mm-hmm. Two things. Number one, you said the gentleman you were staying with was in aa. Mm-hmm. And I've been through, I'm, I got a, [01:00:00] I'm not this, hold on, how do I say this?

I'm not saying this like, oh, I got a degree, but I had a, I got a degree, I got a master's degree. And part of the master's degree is we had to go to a bunch of different classes and group meetings to understand them. And man, I went through, About eight weeks of AA meetings and they were fantastic. And 'cause you know, growing up you heard some people say AAA's fantastic, some people's, oh, AAA's terrible.

You know, you have people who who either for it or against it. But I went through like eight weeks of the program only and it was great. I mean, I thought it was excellent content that everybody can use. You may not be addicted to alcohol, you may not be addicted to drugs, but we all have vices and it's the same principles for everything.

So I thought AA was a fantastic program. But when you were living with that gentleman and he knew you had a history of violence, did you say you became a bouncer in 

John Petrelli: California? I did. I worked when I first got there, I got a job on [01:01:00] weekends being a bouncer. Yeah. That's where I met my wife. 

David Pasqualone: Okay. So that like blows my mind.

That's like the, it's like saying if I'm an alcoholic, go be a bartender. Like what? How the hell did you get through that safely and not get addicted? 

John Petrelli: Yeah. I, it, I have, it's crazy man. It's, this is, maybe some people don't understand this. For me, there is a level of comfort and physical contact and physical confrontation.

That is so true. You have to be present. If you've ever done juujitsu or boxing or whatever, that you have to be present. You gotta be here, you gotta be now. And for me, the moments preceding it were the anxiety. Like, are we gonna do this? Am I gonna get into this fight? What's gonna go on here? And the relief, the release valve was actually the confrontation that I can handle, win, lose, or draw I can handle.

But it was the stuff preceding that. So I felt, you know, I'm still in this mindset [01:02:00] of. I haven't shed young John Petrell yet. I need to make a living. I feel very comfortable being in a physical confrontation and how do I get, you know, monetary compensation for that? How can I make a possible living? But I gave myself a timeline.

I said, I can do this while I'm studying to be a trainer, and I will give this six months max. And I knew there was an end game to it. So I utilized some of my stuff in the past. And for once I, I was just breaking up the fights. I wasn't usually the, the focus of the fight. There was a fight going on and now I'm trying to separate this.

You know, what it also did to me, it gave me such perspective on the things that we do when we are in a altered negative state. And that, for me was watching people had drank way too much. The things that they would do and regret later. And I can see shades of myself in the past if [01:03:00] I would drink and go out and do shit or, you know, and I'd be embarrassed about.

And so a lot of these people weren't even aware of their actions and I was the only sober eyes in the place, right? Everybody else is an altered state. They have, their focus is on picking something up or drinking more or whatever. So somehow, some way I made it through there. And I, I gave myself six months, I think I got out of there before six months.

And it also stamped the fact that that was something I didn't want to do anymore. It put a, a finishing stamp on that to be like, man, I don't want to be in bars. I don't want to be around people that are acting crazy. I don't want to be in this. It ignites a part of me that I'm not happy with. And so it was my final you know, no one's ever asked me that.

It was my final.

David Pasqualone: Yeah. 'cause there's some, so many people listening to this podcast and they're trying to get outta this situation. And in my mind that's like, [01:04:00] that would be, I would never give that advice. Yeah. Go be a bouncer at a club. You know? I mean, what? I would never give advice. Like even thinking now if you separate yourself and you're just talking to a 20 year old kid, he's on parole, he's got a history of violence, he's trying to start a new life.

Would you ever advise him to get a job as a bouncer? Hell no. No. Exactly. So that's why it's a miracle that it worked for you. Yeah, but I'm trying to, I'm, my mind is trying to process. And what you said is true. You saw the light, you saw, wow, that's dark. I can't believe I acted like that asshole. You know, you saw these things, but what made you the one out of the hundred that didn't fall back into it?

What made you that one? Like in your mind, you made a decision that I'm only gonna do it for this long. I don't want this anymore. And it's a means to a different end. You know? What, in your mind, in your heart, what did God put in your life that kept you on [01:05:00] that strain narrow? Because John, you and I know most people went back to that situ situation, they're just gonna go right back to a worse situation.

Right? So how did you navigate and come out different? 

John Petrelli: Yes. So I never forgot the feeling of what it was like to be ashamed. I never forgot what it was like when I look in the mirror and not like myself of who I am. I never forgot all the nonsense and violence I had done. And I, I didn't ever want to go back to that.

That's how I, I, I had a memory of that. So maybe that shame that I carried helped me through that and I wasn't, God wasn't ready for me to dump that right there and just go, Hey man, here's a reminder. I have, and I hadn't thought about this, but I had a thing happen to me in like my first week of bouncing.

I had never been, there was a Native American tribe that was in the town that I went to Temecula. It's called the Pachanga Indians. And I'd never been around Native American people, let alone [01:06:00] having a tribe right there. And there were two guys. That was the first fight I broke up, were both Native American guys.

And I had, once I broke them up, right, they were absolutely inebriated. And I said to 'em, I said, listen, why are you guys fighting each other? Think about this. There are such a small population of Native Americans left and you guys are fighting each other. Does this not seem crazy to you? And I probably never penetrated them and they probably never thought more about, but, but it penetrated my mind and go look at the ridiculousness of what we do, but we're in this altered negative state of mind.

Here's two Native Americans fighting each other. And meanwhile, as a, as a community, they've had so many struggles and fights. You don't need this fight. You should be helping each other. You should be bonding together. And somehow, some way that struck me. That was the first fight that I had to break up.

And man, it hit me in my soul to see these [01:07:00] guys. And I felt pain for them. I felt pain for them. And yeah, I was just blessed, man. I just feel like there is a, a larger power guiding my life because there's so many places I can look where I should have not lived. There's so many points in my life we go through and if you read my book, you'll see where I should have died.

And it doesn't end in the streets of New York. And it is crazy. Or I came out the way I did and I just feel like there's been a higher power guiding me to be able to go, man, no, you, you, you have more to do. You have a voice to help people. 

David Pasqualone: Amen. Yeah, and that is so true when you're talking about, like, I was laughing about Native Americans 'cause they're strong, like these guys, I mean, I don't know if you remember back then, but like, you know, Samoans, there's just a different level of strength.

Different breed, bro. Yeah, native. I remember like my friends in college and I, we play like tackle football and you get hit by even the [01:08:00] biggest guy, it's like, no big deal. My friends from American Samoa would hit me and I'm like, I got homework to do. Like it's just not worth it. I'm not getting a scholarship for this.

It's, it's like, not like you can't take it, but why take it? It's like you hit hard, but in American Indians are tough bastards too. So. Yep. Man, that's great. Yeah, there's just still like, and again, it can just be God gives us all free will. He loves every human on the planet. But he knows also that not everybody's gonna make the right choices.

And I'm just trying to, I don't wanna delay your story or stretch out the podcast and for you listening, maybe writing into me or John, but I'm just trying to figure out how you can walk into the worst possible scenario and still make good decisions. 'cause scene's gonna do everything. Seen has two objectives in life.

One is to keep us from trusting Christ. And two, once we've trusted Christ to ruin our life for him. So [01:09:00] we have a terrible testimony and nobody else is like, why should I listen to blank? Because his life's a mess, you know? So, huh. Okay. So, but you go through, you start handing out flyers and when you said your phone's ringing, this was before cell phones, right?

John Petrelli: Or did you have a cellphone answering machine? Yeah, yeah. I come home, I came home from my landscaping job and people are calling me for training on the answering machine. I almost fell over. And I didn't, I didn't even know, like the only people that had my number at that point were my family in New York.

And I was so poor at this point that this is before your time, but we had M c I, at and t it was all like you paid for local calling Nationwide. I used to have to call on nights and weekends when it was like 25 cents a minute. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, you had calling 

John Petrelli: cards and stuff. Calling card. I had an m c a calling card and I even learned one from the people that were in the house with me that were working their way through aa.

A lot of people would be [01:10:00] calling the house who were gonna get out of prison and hadn't gotten out of prison yet. And Jimmy would give them a place to live. And so they would call and and go, you have like 30 seconds to say something and say, do you accept a collect call from? And instead of saying their name, they would go, Hey, this is Randy.

I'm in jail right now. Can you please call me back at this number? So I'm like, how do I use that? To talk to my family. So I would make a collect call to my family and it goes, do you accept the collect call from? And I'm like, Hey, it's John. I'm in California. Can you call me right away? Ha. And then my family would call me back.

So I, I, I stole that idea from that. But yeah, that's what we were at that time I would get it a message on my answering machine and I was started calling people back and man, somebody took a shot on me and they met with me. And before you knew it, I was working three jobs. I had the landscaping, I still had the bouncing.

And then I had, I started doing training and then bouncing, phased out. And then before you know [01:11:00] it, within three months, I was training people full time. It just skyrocketed. I, I went from one to the next. I helped this person. They became a huge billboard for, for me, nothing's better advertisement than someone that is happy with your service.

Right. And now they're walking around telling everybody before you know it, I'm working full time as a trainer and my life is immersed in trying to find better ways to be a better trainer. Trainer and help people. And I stopped going door to door, doing sales for landscaping. I stopped digging ditches and my life is full-time 

David Pasqualone: training.

Beautiful. Now you met your wife, you said, while you're balancing. 

John Petrelli: Yeah. So unbeknownst to me, bro, whatever I do, I take seriously. My wife tried to come into the bar. She didn't have an id. I kicked her out of the bar and I didn't even know, and she knew this and I didn't know I was working the front door.

[01:12:00] So, and then on my birthday, the only guy I knew in town other than the people I was living with was another bouncer. His name's Rick Chad, great guy. And so he takes me out for my birthday. We have the night off from bouncing. And so what do we do when you bounce at a nightclub? What do you do on your day off?

You only day off You go to another nightclub in a town over next door. So I go there and there's a whole section, and we could get into this if you want, but I had aspirations of getting into acting and it, I know, understand it now because I wanted approval from my father. So they happened to be shooting a movie in that town and they're having auditions at this pub, like nightclub Irish pub.

And so I go to, I have the great idea that I'm gonna audition for the movie Now, the only acting experience I have, bro, is my third grade play where I played a groundhog on Days of the year, and I had two lines and I blew both of them. So I go and I audition [01:13:00] for this thing and one of my favorite movies of all time that I know every line to is the movie The Last Dragon.

Not Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee, but The Last Dragon with Bruce, Bruce Lee Roy, and show enough. And so they have this thing where we're gonna shoot this movie in this town and the auditions. And now having been through the entertainment industry, I understand how crazy this was now in hindsight. But they had the audition on the dance floor and they had you perform it in front of everybody in the bar.

So I wrote my buddy into doing this. He, I give him like two lines to pitch at me and I go on this tirade of doing the Schoff audition in front of all these people. And listen, they have a signup sheet in the bar. I go to the guy and I go, I'd like to sign up for the auditions. And he goes, okay, you have to do a monologue.

I don't know what a monologue is. I have no idea. He goes, does your monologue? I go, okay, I'm ready. [01:14:00] He goes, is your monologue comedic or dramatic? And I go, yes. And he goes, which one is it? And I don't even have an answer. I and I go both. And he goes, okay. So he puts me on the sheet. I get to see these couple people auditioning beforehand.

I got like 10 minutes to get my mind right, and I go up there and perform the scene from the last dragon. This pivotal scene was shown enough, and either my half of psychotic ability and whatever, but my wife sees this and somehow is swept off her feet and she's in that nightclub and comes over to talk to me after.

And. That's where I meet my wife. In fact, she had a friend that was way too aggressive and was into me, put her hand in my back pocket and my jean. And I told my one buddy, I know, I go, you gotta run some interference because I would like to talk to this other [01:15:00] girl and this girl has gotta get out of my face.

And that's where I met my wife. So maybe I went to the club to bounce because I was gonna have a night off. And that's how I meet my wife. I don't know, bro. But that's how I end up meeting my wife. And it actually sets me on a journey where I get into, down the road, I start studying acting in addition to being a trainer.

And I go to Hollywood to train and I put my hat into the ring of acting and become quite successful out the gate and end up being on soap operas. I ended up being on TV shows. I end up doing movies. There's a whole crazy part of my life where I'm training and acting and. Once again just goes that you can do anything literally if you put your mind to it.

You want me to get into that or, no? It's kind of crazy, but it's up to you, man. I can get no 

David Pasqualone: man share it like anything that we can learn and grow from. Absolutely. Because you know, you, you go to this au, you [01:16:00] go out one night, you go to an audition, you meet your what, who becomes your wife. Wife, and then you go start acting to pursue a dream you had and you never really expressed.

And then while you're there, I'm guessing it's probably feeding into your coaching business too. It's like you're, Hey, even if acting doesn't work out, I'm getting coaching jobs. And then, Hey, look at this. The acting is working out. So yeah, talk about it, brother. It's, it's 

John Petrelli: crazy, right? So I had, and I never could verbalize because I didn't have the confidence.

I, I'd always thought about getting into acting in hindsight. I know I was trying to get my dad's approval. I'm like, if I'm on tv, there's no way my dad might not be able to come to my soccer game, but if I'm on tv, he's gotta see me on tv. But I didn't have that consciousness to think of it then. So I never verbalized to any of my friends because here's a tough guy, why would you wanna act?

Right? It's ridiculous. Don't talk to me about that. Maybe they wouldn't have said that, but in my head, that's what I'm saying. So now I start training people. I get very successful in training. I have full-time. I start driving to San Diego after my work to [01:17:00] study acting, and I get an acting coach and I start putting in time to learn about the craft of it, to learn about all this.

And so I do six months a year of training, whatever. Then I finally go and, and submit to agencies, and I get a small agency that will take a shot on me and they take, start sending me on auditions. And listen, I am no Marlon Brando by any means, but I'm just good looking enough. Physical enough or what are a combination of enough things that can get me in the door, right?

Just a little bit enough talent, just a little bit good looking enough, just a little bit. Has a physical body, and I start blowing all these auditions and in, in the car on the way to the audition. I'm amazing. Like I, I, I can knock it out of the park. I'm practicing to the steering wheel, I'm practicing to the window, to people driving beside me.

I'm sure think I'm schizophrenic, but I can do the two lines in the car for patrol officer number two, like nobody's business. And then I get into the [01:18:00] casting director and I shit the bed and I'm nervous and everything. But eventually through perseverance, through training, I start landing little roles. I do a two lines on a TV show.

I start doing this modeling thing. I do two lines on a movie. I get into the Screen Actor's Guild. So I move from upstate from Southern California, near San Diego to Hollywood. To do my combination of dreams and in the daytime, I'm doing a job I love. I love training people. I love helping people. This is amazing.

I'm getting paid for it. And in the evening I'm studying acting, so I move to Hollywood. I get an agent that takes a shot on me out there. They submit my photos. Back in the day, they used to pass photos out. They had a courier that would bring it to the studio. A casting director would put out a notification.

I'm looking for an Italian guy for mobster, scene number three. And they would get a thousand pictures and they would whittle it down, call a hundred people in. Then they would have an audition and then narrow it down to 10 [01:19:00] and they'd go see producers. And then you're one out of a thousand. You make it.

So in my mind, I go, how do I become an asset to my agency and I offer them to deliver all their packages for free? I said, I'm gonna take your courier cost out. I know my picture is in that packet. I'm gonna go deliver that and all the other packets you have. And so now I start getting on the back, lots of paramount.

I start getting on all the movie studios and I start learning what's going on. I'm watching, this is before nine 11 where all you needed was a courier shirt to get through the gate. And so now I start learning. I get asked to do auditions on the spot 'cause they're casting someone that looks just like me.

I go and dress as the part and I start getting parts. I get on Days of our Lives. That's where I meet Sebastian Maniscalco, who ends up being a dear friend of mine for 20 years. He's one of the biggest comedians, a-list actor in the world [01:20:00] right now. We meet on Days of our Lives, I start doing all the different soap operas and I get to a point where I have a good amount of success, but I never was passionate about it like I thought I would be.

I never got fulfillment like I did from helping people. I was the Dolce Gana guy with Gisele. They hired me. I was international. On every billboard in the nation, you could, you look at it, you see, you go, oh, that guy. Yeah, he had dark hair then whatever. It's when I had dark hair, I was handsome. Whatever I end up doing all of that.

They pay me an extraordinary amount of money to do this stuff compared to the guy that was getting $7 and 25 cents catching shoplifters. But I never got the fulfillment I got from training. I never got the satisfaction. I describe it for me and I could be different for someone else, but as being like a, [01:21:00] a Easter bunny that you get on Easter, it's all shiny and chocolate on the outside, but on the inside it's hollow.

And that's how it started feeling for me. I g I ha end up having kids and I find myself in an audition and I look around and there's 25 guys that look just like me, and I'm like, man, I just don't have the passion for this anymore. Helping people and training is where my heart is. And right now I could be with my family and I make a decision after several years of doing acting that I want to dedicate myself and my life to training and helping people.

It's where I get the most fulfillment. And I make a, a decision in that audition. And on the way home, I call my agency and I say, thank you so much for taking a shot on me. You helped me when no one else would help me. We've had a good amount of success. I want to send the office over lunch for everybody.

I thank you so much for getting me in this world, but now [01:22:00] it's time for me to retire From there, I wanna focus wholeheartedly on training. And they say, are you sure? A hundred percent? We, I send them over lunch, my brother, within the next week, I get a call. I'm on the 4 0 5 freeway, stuck in traffic. This whole time I'm in entertainment business, I had to scratch and claw for everything I got.

I get a call from a director I work with twice. They call my agency and they offer me a part in a mini series with no audition, guaranteed months work shooting in San Diego, great pay. And I look up at the sky and I know God is testing me. He's going to, to me, he's going, you said that this is what you really wanted to only train people, but we're gonna find out.

And I've taken everything my agency is telling me, they're like, this is your day rate. This is how many days you're gonna work [01:23:00] you. All you have to do is show up to set. And I tell them, thank you so much for the opportunity. I know this is gonna be money outta your pocket, but I cannot accept this. If you had called me last week, I, there wouldn't have been better news.

I've made my decision and I've come to peace with it. And I have so much fulfillment from helping people that no amount of money you're gonna offer me right now is gonna change my mind. And I turn down the only role I was offered without auditioning. And I walk away from the entertainment industry with some fond memories, with a lot of life lessons, and really a definitive knowing of what my purpose is in helping people.

And that is my, there's a lot more details, but that is my broad brush stroke of me going from a farm town, mucking, hay stalls, mucking horse barns, bailing [01:24:00] hay, getting arrested, deciding to make a change in my life, and learning from my mistakes to helping people as a trainer to going through. Having this dream of trying Hollywood and doing it to coming back out the other side once again, if I can do that, imagine what you can do if you're willing to take a shot on yourself and put 

David Pasqualone: the work in.

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. And then knowing your passion, knowing what was fulfilling, knowing what you really, who you really were, that was the key to staying steadfast in your decision. Correct? Yes, it was correct. And you're kinda listening and hearing the voice of God and you're following him and your, what was your daily like?

Like obviously you came to that decision, but the hundreds of days up to that point, [01:25:00] was this rolling around in the back of your head? Were you too busy to realize it? Were you being like, God, what should I be doing? You know, was it building along 

John Petrelli: the way? It was building as my kids were born. My family to me is everything, man.

They're my why. They're right up there. God and my family are my whys. And, and I was missing out on time with them to be in an audition, to be on a set. And I'm like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? I don't need anybody's approval. I, I love my family dearly, and why am I not spending time with them?

And it just came to that culmination in that one audition where I was like, of course this answer's easy. I need to step away from this. I need to do what fills me, what fills my soul? And so it took a little bit of time, but once that permeated my mind, the decision was like that. It's like the decision when I decided to go to California, it was a culmination, but the decision was like that, you [01:26:00] know?

David Pasqualone: Yeah. So now you're in California. You have your whole life behind you and ahead of you. Yep. You made the decision to just train. Bring us from that point in your life, John, to today. 

John Petrelli: Yeah. So my, my training was already busy, but it skyrocketed once I made that decision. Once I feel like I learned more as an individual and as a trainer in the 10 years that, in 10 years than I did 20 prior.

And I just, my business skyrocketed. We, oh, I teamed up with four other trainers. We had a facility. It was amazing. And then as families always at the forefront of my life, I had an opportunity to move out of California and we, I started seeing California go sideways for me whenever my family feels like they may be in danger.

And I felt that way in California as the homeless population and property crimes went up. Look, [01:27:00] I have a absolute compassion for homeless people. But with that become comes a lot of different potential violence and I started looking at other opportunities and I got a offer my wife did to come to Austin, Texas, and we explored Austin and the outdoors and the family and the community and all that and bounds.

And we came out here and we're like, we're moving to Texas. And so on our third trip to Texas, we bought a house. And the same time my buddy Sebastian Maniscalco, who had been struggling as a comedian, goes to the next level. I mean, this guy is the epitome of work ethic. He was grinding it for years and he wanted to make me part of his team.

As he got saw more success, I had introduced him to his wife. He got married at that point was trying to have kids, and he asked me if I would go on tour with him. And so, [01:28:00] Now if I move to Texas, although I love my, my, all my clients and my friends in California, it's a better place for my family in Texas.

And all I have to do is board a plane and I can travel wherever he's traveling and we go on tour together and he starts selling out arenas. Madison Square Garden Radio City music call. I watch his career blossom and I'm traveling 120, 130 flights a year traveling around the world with him. And I do that for two years and have an amazing time.

And then I also have the realization while I'm doing that, that I need to work within my community in Texas and I need to be home for my family. And I don't wanna miss their soccer games. I don't want to miss their baseball games. And when it is time to re-up on Going back on tour and I had another job offer.

I'm watching one of my son's soccer games and I said, you [01:29:00] know what? I really appreciate the offer, but I'm gonna stay home and opt for less money and watch my kids grow up and be part of that. And that's how I landed Texas and takes me through, you know, 2020, 2021 before I become paralyzed and come down with a rare autoimmune disorder.

David Pasqualone: Man, there's so much in your story, brother. So priorities and anybody listening, sometimes everybody wants money, but money's just a tool. Yep. And I know everybody that I've ever met, well, I wouldn't say everybody, but most people that I've met that are truly successful, they're passionate about what they do, and then the money follows.

'cause they love what they do. Yep. So and just for our listeners too, Sebastian blew up not just in comedy, but he's a legit actor now. I mean, he's making movies, Al Pacino and [01:30:00] he's, you know, de Niro. De Niro. Yeah. I mean, these are some, I think he was in the Irishman and some other major films, and he does a fantastic job.

So you, you, you're Remarkable, he's Remarkable, your whole group is Remarkable. But when you're taking this journey, you have your God, you have your family, you have, you know, your purpose and the training bring us to the part where you get sick. Did you feel it coming on? Did it come on outta the blue? What happened there?

John Petrelli: Yes. So we go back to 2020. The world gets kind of turned upside down with Covid business. What's Covid? 

David Pasqualone: No. 

John Petrelli: If you wanna know. It's crazy. I actually had Covid last week. I got it. I never didn't even know it was around anymore. A client had it, they gave it to me. And I had a different journey this time than I did last time.

I kicked it in like four days. And got over it with some pretty easy tricks that worked for me. I'm not saying I didn't work for everybody, but worked for me for, [01:31:00] so we have covid and if I'm guilty of something and I'm always trying to find balance, I'm always trying to, to learn and be a better person is I can get inundated and immersed in my work too much and I'll work 10, 12, 14 hour days and it goes back to my childhood.

But I love what I do and it's easy to fall into. And I always working towards balance. So my kids get covid. I'm teaching juujitsu to kids. So I have a lot of exposure. My kids get covid to them. It's nothing more than a blip on the radar screen. They have sniffles and colds. My wife gets covid. Then I ultimately probably get it from them, maybe get it from teaching jiujitsu, whatever.

But if we go back, we had to quarantine for 10, 14 days, right? And so this is where my life was out of balance, is I cannot sit down. I get diagnosed with Covid. I'm on the assault like that day with no medication, doing an hour on the assault bike. I'm [01:32:00] working out, I'm, I'm making projects around the house that I gotta do.

Oh, we need to do this, do that. I got a brand new house. There's no projects, but I'm making shit up right till I run myself ragging. I spend no respect to Covid and I ended up getting way sicker than I should be. I get dehydrated. Covid hits me harder, so I recover from, I also get a bacterial infection where someone's toenail in juujitsu cuts my shin and I get a thing called cellulitis, and I bring these both up because we don't know where I got Guillain-Barre syndrome from, but the physicians are like, it could have come from Covid, it could have come from the cellulitis.

So I get through cellulitis, they gimme some antibiotics, and the next thing you know, at night, I start not being able to feel my feet. I stop the, my toes start going numb. I can't feel my toes, but I don't say anything to anybody because masculinity don't say anything. I just put my nose to the [01:33:00] grindstone.

I keep going. Now my feet from my toes get numb and my hands start getting numb, and I start losing my urine stream where I can't pee, although I have to pee and my vision starts getting blurry. So I have numbness in my feet. My hands are numb. I can't pee and my vision's getting blurred. And I finally break down after about a week of this and I go to my wife, I go, baby, I can't feel my feet.

I don't know what's going on in the middle of the night. I've been getting up and taking ice baths 'cause it's the only thing that's bringing relieving some pain and getting me some sensation back. I go, when I get home from work tonight, maybe we should go to the doctor and thank God for my wife Cheyenne, who's balanced me.

She's like, you're not going to work tonight. We're gonna go to the er, urgent care and we're gonna get checked out. So we go to urgent care urgent and they start doing these tests. Now, I'm not someone to faint from needles or anything like that, but I pass out in there, I go unconscious in, in [01:34:00] urgent care and they start running my, my vitals and they start running tests and they go, look it, we don't wanna scare you.

You could have a rare autoimmune disorder that we don't have the ability to test for, and it could be G B S, which stands for Gure syndrome. I've also heard Julian Bere syndrome, or you might have ms. So we recommend you go to the emergency room and the hospital a mile down the road. They will have to do a spinal tap on you, draw your spinal fluid out and look at the proteins in there to see what you have going on.

So I start getting weaker by the minute where it is now difficult for me to stand up. It's difficult for me to lift my legs up and now from my shin, from my kneecap down, I can't feel anymore. I got no feeling. I got no reflex in my knees, any of that. So we go to the hospital and [01:35:00] I'm like, I describe it as like a battery that's just being drained.

It's hard for me to shake hands. I'm getting weaker. My whole life is depo defined by my physicality, and now I can't even call upon it. So they take me into the room, they do a spinal tap, they draw fluid out outta my spine, and they said it's gonna be an hour before we can possibly find the results out.

You are welcome to stay here or you can because I live a half mile a mile from the the, the hospital. You can go home if you go home and these symptoms start progressing. If you start losing sensation and the rest of your body, you need to come back in here immediately because if you have what we think you have, it will ascend up your body and it will shut your lungs and heart down and that'll be it.

You'll be done. So I go home for an hour, I close my eyes for 20 minutes. I'm not a big fan at a hospital. For me, it's a better place to stay at home. I have bad [01:36:00] memories of being in a hospital. My dad was passing away. Although I love hospital workers and nurses and doctors and all that. So in 20 minutes, the next thing you know, I can't feel from my waist down and we have to go back to the hospital.

I have the symptoms they're talking about. So we get back to the hospital, they have to wheelchair me in to the er, and they bring me up to the I C U in a wheelchair because I can no longer stand. And as I'm going brother, through the I C U, I see people in all different states of despair. I know some of these people are not gonna make it out of the I C U.

And I say I made a definitive decision at that moment that no matter what I have, which I don't know, at this point, I am never going to complain. I'm never going to, for a second say, woe is me. And I am going to absolutely find a way out of this [01:37:00] situation. So they're wheeling me to my room. I can hardly stand anymore, and I make that decision, which ends up being a pivotal decision because I don't want any negativity permeating my mind.

So they put me in bed, they lay me down, I'm in isolation, and they start running all these tests on me to get a definitive answer. And I get so weak that I can no longer pick up my arms. I can no longer pick up my head. I can't. So the doctor comes in the room, I can hardly turn my head to see who's coming in the room.

And at one point, and it's from the, the extent that I'm in the I C U, I can only move my eyeballs. It's not a pretty picture. I end up soiling myself. I shit myself in there. I code out in, when they're taking me to get a CT scan, I code out and every doctor and and nurse in the hospital comes down to my, to my assistants.

I have to get Catheterized, [01:38:00] can't pee anymore, and it's not a great situation, but I make some decisions to, number one, I'm gonna surround myself with positive vibrations. Ziggy Marley was one of my clients for 20 years, and a dear friend, his dad's Bob Marley, and I start playing Bob Marley 24 7 in my room.

So I have something that is always bringing me to a positive place. I start praying and asking my body initially to stop eating itself because basically G B Ss is your body's own immune system eating the myelin of your nerves, and you start eating the sheath of your nerves and getting weaker and weaker.

So I start praying. 

David Pasqualone: I don't want to cut you off. Go for it. There's so much going on. I just wanna make sure it's clear. You are perfectly healthy athletic training, teaching juujitsu, and then you get C and then all of a sudden these other [01:39:00] things start happening. What's the time period from you're healthy to you're in this emergency room?

Sure, 

John Petrelli: sure. So I get, I'm perfectly healthy in November, I get Covid like second week of November. I get through Covid by the end of November, two weeks, and then December. All of a sudden this stuff starts happening where I cannot feel my hands anymore. Now. Go ahead. 

David Pasqualone: Okay. And g b s last question is that, did you ever see the movie Lorenzo's Oil?

John Petrelli: A long time ago? I don't think that's what they have in Lorenzo's Oil, but I could be wrong. No, no, 

David Pasqualone: no. I don't know. That's what I was asking because I'm just trying to connect dots here, and I didn't mean to interrupt your story, but I wanted to make sure I said this wasn't over six months. This was like, you're pretty, you're healthy.

Then you get covid, you know, pushed it too hard, and then a month later you're just like rapidly 

John Petrelli: falling apart. And when it started falling apart, it started falling apart. Like when I went back [01:40:00] into that emergency room, I went from that day being a guy thinking I was gonna go to work for 12 hours to I can't stand, and all of a sudden I can hardly move my head when I'm laying down.

It was happening at a rapid pace. 

David Pasqualone: And you're coding in, you're coding. That is no point coding, dude. 

John Petrelli: I passed out in the urgent care. There's another time I passed out at home that I didn't even get into where my wife called the fire department. I passed out in the hospital a couple times and it's, it's, it's embarrassing.

It's. It brings you down to what's important in grassroots, really quick, man, what is important in your life, right? We're worried as a kid about a pimple being on our face. All that shit goes away when you're crapping yourself in bed and you no longer control your bowel movements or even stand up to go pee or any of that stuff.

So it goes away pretty quick. And so I have the music, I'm praying, I'm meditating, I'm grateful. I'm focusing on that. I'm [01:41:00] focusing on my body healing itself. Now, I don't discredit western medicine at all, but I, I, I'm a firm believer in the mind having such power, and I start asking my body to start healing itself.

And then I start demanding my body, start healing itself all on a mental level. And then my wife, God bless her, makes a decision because I can no longer swallow. I have to have everything pureed. And this is not a knock on doctors or nurses, but the hospital food is garbage. I feel horrible that they have to nourish their self in the most time of need when we need them.

And they need nourishment. They have minimal to no choices. There's french fries, chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, garbage to nourish yourself on a cellular level. I don't mind if they have that stuff, but they should have healthy options if somebody wants them. Whether you're a patient and you're trying to heal or you're a doctor or nurse trying to heal people, we need you to be at the top of your game.

We need to put [01:42:00] everything we can behind you to help you be successful. So my wife, God bless her, she's so smart, she goes home and starts pureing Organic Foods 'cause it's the only thing I can swallow is or puree. And she starts bringing me that. So I'm working on a cellular level. I'm working on a spiritual level.

I'm working on a mental level with my music. And then over the course of 10 days, I go from at one point only being able to move my eyeballs to getting out of the I C U and getting wheelchaired out of there and sent home. To do start doing therapy, and I make a decision that I'm gonna do therapy seven days a week.

I go to the physical therapist five days a week, and I do two days a week on my own. And at some points that means picking up a pen. At some points that means just squeezing my hand. But I never, ever give myself an option to quit, and I keep working day in and day out until I get back in about three months to pretty much [01:43:00] 95% mobility.

And I get the inspiration while I'm in there that this doesn't happen to me, it's happening for me. And how do I do something positive with this? I'm listening to a audio book while I'm in this state and I make a decision to write my own book. And this would've never been written or put together if it wasn't for me being paralyzed with G b s.

And I put together a book. And it becomes a, a, a instant Amazon, number one, new release. Congratulations 

David Pasqualone: man. Thank you brother. And when did that, what's the name of the book and when did it release? 

John Petrelli: So, confessions of a Hollywood Trainer. My Life's Journeys in this, a lot of details we didn't go over, but it released in, we technically released it in February, but self-publishing it didn't really hit till March of this year.

And it was a huge success. I was [01:44:00] blessed to have great people surrounded. I had a great guy that started off as my editor and then I gave him co-author ship Scott Burr, who did an amazing job. Extremely talented guy. Another guy whose book I was inspired by, Richard Bressler helped me along the path and it came out worldwide on audio and regular paperback.

I would've never have done that. I would've never have done that unless I got became paralyzed. It would've never happened. I was too busy. I would've never put these things down. I would've probably not had the inspiration. And once again, if I can do this with dyslexia, I've never written anything. I'm so bad.

I think I mentioned to you this in the pre-interview, that when I type, I'm so bad that spell check is like, we have no idea what you're trying to do here. I can't help you. We have no suggestions. And if I can do that and put a book together and have this journey, that someone out there listening that thinks they may [01:45:00] be at the end of their rope, that there's no hope, that they're in a dark place, that they may not have the ability.

Trust me. Trust me, you do have faith in yourself. Put in the work. Surround yourself with positive people. Use the tools from your past in your tool belt to navigate these waters. Lose the shame and you can. Will do anything if you're willing to put in the time and the work.

David Pasqualone: Man, that's fantastic advice. I mean, the whole episode, ladies and gentlemen, is packed with value and packed with just wisdom. But if you just took that last 30 seconds, that kind of summarizes everything. Right? So to wrap up this phase of your life, John mm-hmm. The, was the final diagnosis g b s or what was the final diagnosis?

That's the final 

John Petrelli: diagnosis. Gure syndrome. G b S. [01:46:00] Yep. 

David Pasqualone: Okay. And then now is there, is it a hundred percent behind you? Is that something you'll have to deal with for life? What is, what is the future? 

John Petrelli: So, my fingertips, I can't feel them. My toes, I can't feel my big toes in my thing. My memory is nowhere near as good as it used to be.

And I'm wearing glasses for the first time and I didn't have this stuff ahead of time. So I look at it, if this is the price I have to pay to go through what I've had to do, I'm fine with it. I don't complain about it. Maybe it'll change one day, maybe it won't. Whatever. I'm not worried about it. I don't even think about it.

It's just who I am right now. And so if it gets better, fantastic. I'm working every day for it to get better. I do something physical every day. I meditate every day. I do gratitudes every day. I do breathing every day. And if this is how I have to live the rest of my life, dude, I'm blessed. 

David Pasqualone: I'm blessed.[01:47:00] 

Yeah. And g b s, it sounds similar, but it's not Gobert syndrome. How do you pronounce it 

John Petrelli: again? RE syndrome. I had some doctors also say Julian Barr. So I've heard it both ways. I think it sounds a little more exotic if you say Gure syndrome. 

David Pasqualone: Yeah, no, no, no. There's just something, there's something that's Gilbar syndrome is something that like people from Mediterranean descent have, but it's not dangerous at all.

You just have a high bilirubin level in your liver, your liver enzymes, no big deal. But what you're talking about, something totally different. I'll put links in the show notes. I'll have you spell it for me and you know, we'll put in the show notes. You can get 

John Petrelli: the description. You want me to spell it? You better put g b s.

Yeah, 

David Pasqualone: no, no, no. We'll look it up and I'll put it in the show notes for them, but, but we'll make sure you verify that spelled right. Okay. So cool. Well, John, this has been great hanging out today and getting to know you and hear your life journey and the wisdom. But between your birth and today, is there anything we missed on your journey [01:48:00] or is there any final thoughts you wanna leave our listeners with?

John Petrelli: You know, I think we'd have to go 10 hours and I'd bore everybody if we had to cover everything. There's a lot of stuff in the book. That I'm not proud of, but are part of me. Things that happened in Alaska. One thing that I think most people really enjoy is what happened at Burger King and my, my idiotic youth, how I called 9 1 1 on myself and all over a grilled chicken sandwich.

I was gonna kill people over a grilled chicken sandwich. You embarrassing stuff. But listen, my life is about helping as many people as possible. I said this on the last couple podcasts I've been in, and I do meet it wholeheartedly. I have an absolute, an absolute soft spot in my heart for veterans, for our first responders, for our teachers.

And I know not everybody can afford what I do. And I wanna offer people that I will do things pro bono. I will donate [01:49:00] some of my time to help you navigate through these waters to help your, your. Business to help your nonprofit. So if there's something I can do, I will gladly help our first responders, our teachers, our doctors, our nurses, and I'll donate my time to help them, whether that's in nutrition, in mindset, come to speak, whatever.

You have my information here. He, I'm sure David's gonna post my social stuff, reach out to me. If there's something I could do to help, I'd be honored to do it. And together we can achieve amazing 

David Pasqualone: things. Amen. Yeah. No man's an island, right? Yeah. So we do it together, so, all right, John. Well, I really appreciate you being here.

Thank you so much. Now, I, again, we're gonna put everything in the show notes, but is there, what's the best way for someone to reach you? 

John Petrelli: Sure. On [01:50:00] Instagram, it's John Pacelli. On Facebook, it's John Petre. You can go to my website, confessions of a hollywood trainer.com or john petrelli.com. The book is found on Amazon, it's on iTunes, it's on Audible.

Hope you enjoy it, man. My life's journey's in there. And if you think you've heard some crazy stuff here, there's even more embarrassing stuff in there that we 

David Pasqualone: haven't even covered. Awesome, my friend. Well, thank you so much, John. And any last thoughts, any final words to our audience before we close this episode?

Yeah, we're 

John Petrelli: all going to, we go through this life and this journey, and it's really so short. You should be able to look back and go, man, I have gone and tried everything I wanted to try. I've loved the people I wanted to love. I've expressed love to the people I wanted to. Don't leave any stone unturned.

Live in your passion. You let fear go. Don't worry about [01:51:00] making mistakes. Mistakes are beautiful things. Don't be live in fear. Surround yourself with people that are not only gonna support you, but they don't have to agree with everything you say and you can achieve anything. This is what I'd like you to understand, that you literally can go after and do anything if you're willing to put in the work.

I appreciate you all. I appreciate you for giving us this platform. Without you creating this, it doesn't happen. I appreciate people for sitting through this. Whatever part you listened to, I'm super grateful and I just couldn't be more, more 

David Pasqualone: appreciative, buddy. Oh man, it's been awesome, John, and ladies and gentlemen, all the world, we love you.

If you have any questions, reach out to John myself. We'll help you in any way we can. Again, veterans first responders, teachers, check out John's website and resources and he's gonna take extra special care of you. That was very generous of him. And with all the information in this [01:52:00] episode and every one of our episodes, like our slogan says, don't just listen to this great content, but do what you know you need to do.

Repeat it like John did in his life each day so you can have a great life in this world, but most importantly in eternity to come. So I'm David Pasqualone. This was our friend John, and we really appreciate you, John. Again. If there's anything we can do to help you, my friend, let me know, and if not, I look forward to getting together in person soon.

Catching up. Thank you, brother. Thank you, David. All right, ladies and gentlemen, have a great one. We'll see you in the next episode. 

Narrator: The Remarkable People Podcast, check it out.

The Remarkable People Podcast. [01:53:00] Listen, do repeat for life.

The Remarkable People Podcast.