BONUS #169: What 11 Years in Prison Taught Us About God And Money: Behind the scenes conversation with Kevin Trudeau

The Dylan Gemelli Podcast

In a raw behind-the-scenes conversation, Dylan Gemelli and Kevin Trudeau compare their respective prison sentences to explore the foundational role of personal accountability in rebuilding lives. They dissect how

Key takeaways

• Kevin Trudeau served two years of a fifteen-year state sentence for cocaine distribution in Iowa, noting the instant half-sentence reduction policy.
• Dylan Gemelli discusses his ten-year federal contempt of court sentence related to his book exposing pharmaceutical practices and government overreach.

Main topics

• environment & success frequency
• prison accountability & mindset

Notable quotes

"I didn't overcome shit. I caused it."

Conclusion

The episode delivers a raw, experience-driven framework for personal accountability,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) I got a 15-year prison sentence. Let's just say I got caught with a plethora of cocaine. Speaker 1 (0:04) Every saint has a past, and every sinner... A future. I Speaker 2 (0:07) was the most miserable I've ever been and I made a lot of money doing it. My good qualities were used in a bad way. People always ask me, how did you overcame prison? I said, I didn't overcome shit. I caused it. Speaker 1 (0:18) Knowledge is power, but only if it's remembered. Because if it's not remembered, it can't be used. You're a Christian and a spiritual person and there's a scripture that says, seek first the kingdom and everything else will be added on. Speaker 2 (0:29) People like us hurt feelings because we say what you need to hear and not what you want to hear. Your Speaker 1 (0:33) body will tell you, I'm tired. Your body will tell you, I... can't go anymore. Don't listen to your body. You tell your body what to do. What's some of the biggest lies do you think about that people are being taught about making money? Where do I start? Money, you're rich, I'm rich. Health, you're stupidly healthy. You're like 20 years old. But I'm really old. I'm 92. And I'm really healthy. And we're both really happy. I mean, we live amazing lives. But why should anybody listen to us when it comes to making money or being healthy or being happy? Like what? What credentials do we have? Speaker 2 (1:06) I'd say life credentials. I don't need 900 letters after my name of learning a bunch of garbage that doesn't relate to anything that we do back and forth. I want to talk to people that have lived it. You've lived it more than me, but we've both been in those trenches. We've both been around people, seen it all, done it all. I don't care about studies that are filtered and they're coaxed into being whatever they want it to be. I care about... going through and seeing what people are going through and living it, getting real feedback, being around it, experiencing it. I don't need somebody to tell me some facade that they create. I mean, if you're not living it and you're not a part of it, what are you doing? What are you doing? I don't see the point in any of it. I'm certainly not going to listen to somebody telling me what to do that's never done anything, that's pulling it off of a textbook or what they're told. Because a lot of the people, they're being told by somebody else. That's being told by somebody else that's never done anything. So I don't care about any of that. Speaker 1 (2:06) When it comes to making money, we were talking earlier, there's a lot of lies out there. Okay, what's some of the biggest lies do you think about that people are being taught about making money? Oh, Speaker 2 (2:15) where do I start? Everybody's got some sort of shortcut that leads to a longer road or somebody's got an excuse as to why they're not making money. Right. Everybody's got the next get rich quick scam. Do this. Take this shortcut. I mean, you've been around it now long enough. And I've been doing sales since I was born. Basically, I was born into it. So I've seen and been around everything. I mean, now everybody thinks like with a peptide, for example, something comes out, we're going to explode and everybody's going to get rich. Doesn't even know what it is. You know, and it's basically people that try to come into an industry, never been involved in it, don't know what they're doing, take advantage. Speaker 1 (2:55) What Speaker 2 (2:56) are you saying? Speaker 1 (2:56) Well, yeah, you know, there's one thing that people don't talk about. I mean, look, there's a lot of guys on the Internet, a lot of guys doing seminars, a lot of guys teaching courses, and they're making a fortune teaching courses and writing books or doing seminars on how to make money and how to get rich. No one really made any money before they started teaching courses. I mean, I did $20 billion in business before I ever gave a lecture on anything. Speaker 2 (3:19) I Speaker 1 (3:20) was always the guy behind the scenes. I never taught success. I just became ridiculously successful by applying some principles. But there's one thing, and this is why people out there know about success, but they really don't know it. They don't even know what they're really doing to succeed. They don't even know. But here's what it is. The brain is both a receiver and transmitter of frequency. Now, we know that, right? That's okay. You get all the frequency. You get gamma. You get beta. You get alpha, theta, and delta. So the brain vibrates or broadcasts frequencies, and it's picked up by other brains. Science knows that. So if I'm putting out a frequency, it's picked up by your brain. If you're putting out a frequency, which we both are. So we're both transmitting and receiving frequency. And if two people are together and they're on completely different frequencies, they have nothing in common. Speaker 2 (4:15) There's no connection. And Speaker 1 (4:16) then two people meet and they're on the same exact frequency and they're like best friends or instant lovers. And it's like, I met my soulmate or whatever, right? They connect. Okay. Wealthy people broadcast on a very specific frequency. As you know, right? It's right at the bottom of alpha and it's at the top of theta. So it's this wealth wave, this billionaire brain wave. So they're broadcasting. Poor people or broke people, people that struggle financially, who are always bitching, whining, and complaining about something, they broadcast on data. The poverty wave. Now, you go into a bar with all these losers. Who are all broadcast, right? Okay, that's what it is, right? They're all losers, okay? Yeah. They know everything about everything on their eighth beer, right? Right. And they just bitch, whine, and complain, and they're skeptical about everything. If you have a dream, they laugh at you. They try to steal your dream. They put rats in your head. But you go in and hang around with them. But if you go into that room, that bar, that nightclub. And you're surrounded with these people who are all broadcasting on the slave wave or the poverty wave. Speaker 1 (5:30) Your brain is like a tuning fork. So when you walk in, guess what happens to you? Your brain, even though you're all motivated and inspired when you walk in, changes. Because it's overwhelmed by the number of brains, physical brains in that room that are all vibrating on the slave wave. And so now you start vibrating on the slave or poverty wave as well, and you stay broke. Speaker 2 (5:54) Now, Speaker 1 (5:55) let's flip it. Speaker 1 (5:58) you're on that slave wave. You're struggling. And then you walk into a room. It's a fancy cocktail party. We're in Beverly Hills. You go down to Beverly Hills. You pull into a restaurant where there's a lounge there. And there's Ferraris and Rolls Royces and Lamborghinis and Bentleys and Porsches. And you go in and you just sit at the bar. And that whole restaurant is filled with people that are making a million dollars a year or more. they're all vibrating at the wealth wave, but you're not. So guess what happened? Your brain, like a tuning fork, begins to change. And it now begins to vibrate on that same wave. So this is one of the greatest, I think one of the best kept secrets of making money that nobody knows about, which is what Aristotle Onassis said. Your income is going to be the average of the five people you spend the most time with, listen to the most, and watch. Speaker 2 (6:55) Because you Speaker 1 (6:56) become like those people. Speaker 2 (6:57) You Speaker 1 (6:57) mimic their speech patterns. You mimic the way they think. You mimic their body movements and your brains are connecting and you're mimicking automatically. You don't have any control over this. You're mimicking their brainwave frequency. And therefore, if you are hanging around people that are at your income level, you cannot make more. It's virtually impossible. Speaker 2 (7:19) But if Speaker 1 (7:20) you're hanging around people or listening to people, podcasts, listening to you, listening to me, listening to other podcasts, listening to audios, reading books, autobiographies and biographies of super wealthy people, you now start. tapping into that energy if you're physically in that's why people join success clubs and they want to go to local chapter meetings or meet with people in a weekend event that are positive motivated inspired making money they want to hang around with people that make a lot more money than them and every wealthy person you look talk to any wealthy person or any successful sports person, or any successful musician, they all say the same thing. I had a mentor. Speaker 2 (7:57) Which Speaker 1 (7:58) means they hung around somebody that made more money than them, that was way more successful than them. They watched. They started mimicking their body movements, their language patterns, and their brain started syncing. That's the key. And that's one of the missing secrets of all time. One of my best friends is Mike Siegel. He's a 10-time world champion pool player, winningest pool player of all time. I watched him shoot pool, and I would just watch him and watch him and watch him and watch him and watch him. And then when I shot pool, a guy saw Mike on TV shooting pool, running 150 balls and out to win the championship. He sees me on the table. He goes. You stand and play exactly like Mike Siegel. Because you have the same mannerisms as him. I go, yeah, because I watched. That's who I watched. Speaker 2 (8:43) And Speaker 1 (8:43) I said, Mike Siegel did that to a world champion named Irving Crane, who was one of the greatest players of all time, if not one of the top five. And Mike, when he was a kid, he watched Irving play. So Mike picked up all of Irving's little twitches and little hand movements and little things like that. Because I watched Irving, and I go, that's Mike. And then I watch Mike and that's me. So you mimic and model that successful behavior. But the biggest thing is the brain's sink. Oh, yeah. And you know this, Speaker 2 (9:17) right? Well, it's like this. In the nutrition world, you are what you eat. Well, it's the same thing what you're talking about. You become what you surround yourself with, right? So exactly what you said. When I got into all the trouble I ever got in, I go back and I go. Look at the line of people of who I was hanging out with. What the hell was going to happen to me? Look at them. And I don't say that derogatory. I say it's just a fact. They were doing nothing. And then I became what I hated. I became exactly the polar opposite of how I was raised and who I really was. But you don't really have a choice when you put yourself in the environment you're in. And I hate that. One of the things I despise. And I don't care whose feelings this hurt because I'm a feeling herder. Because you know what? People like us hurt feelings because we say what you need to hear and not what you want to hear. When you live with built-in excuses, it's my gender, it's my race, it's this, it's this. No, no, fucker, it's not. It never was. Yeah, that stuff exists here and there, but that's not the reality. The reality is you have a built-in excuse for your inadequacy, for your failure, instead of... Going home and looking in the mirror and going, you know what? I just didn't have it today. Or I just don't have it right now. What do I have to do to fix it? Then you get around people like you said. You start to see success. You see behaviors. You see people that don't have excuses. They actually like to fail because it encourages them to win or teaches them how to win. I look back now. And all the things that I thought were, oh, you're so terrible. I beat myself up for. And now I said, why the hell would I ever beat myself up for taking a lick and then coming through it and learning from it? We need that. See, people don't want to be challenged. They don't. They want to skate through life. And those are the people, like you said, they don't make it. Speaker 1 (11:05) Well, it's losers or failures. We'll call them failures. Failures are always good at one thing, making excuses. Speaker 2 (11:12) I was just going to say, they have a problem for every solution. Right. And I can't stand that shit because in life, how the hell would you ever know success if you didn't know what failure was? You wouldn't really know what love is if there wasn't hatred. I mean, I hate that there's hate, but you wouldn't know the difference. If everything was like that, you would never know if we didn't get challenged. If I didn't push you, you didn't push me and we never got pushed. What would we be? I wouldn't want to hang out with you if you didn't push me. If you didn't push me to be better and say, Dylan, man, you fucking suck today. Thank you. See, I don't get hurt feelings. Speaker 1 (11:49) I Speaker 2 (11:49) get raged up to like, go be successful. If you point something out to me, I tell my wife every time we leave, if I look like shit, if I'm being annoying or something, you tell me. You tell me it's not going to hurt my feelings. It's going to hurt my feelings if you don't. But you have to be a person with emotions and not be emotional. You know what I mean? That over-emotional, Speaker 1 (12:12) all of that shit doesn't work, man. Not in the real world. You know that. Yeah, and dealing with adversity, right? Or challenges or... with failures or whatever you want to call it, it's really a mindset difference. I'll tell you an interesting story. I just flew in today from Dallas. I was at the U.S.