Crystal O’Keefe: Welcome to the MetPro Method Podcast. I am your host, Crystal O’Keefe. And today I am joined by a very special guest. We have Charlie Rocket with us. And we have MetPro founder, Angelo Poli. And that is also Charlie’s coach. And I’m so excited to talk to Charlie and to Angelo. We are excited to introduce Charlie to you, all you listeners, and learn more about you. So welcome today, Charlie and Angelo.
Well, I kind of want to start with a little bit of background about who you are, Charlie. You are an amazing person who has done so much for so many people. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be? And Angelo, jump in if I’m going a different direction than you had envisioned.
Angelo Poli: Charlie, how did this all start? How did the dream become?
Charlie Rocket: Well, how it all started is… my mom and dad, they did this thing.
Crystal O’Keefe: He’s going back to the beginning. I got it.
Angelo Poli: Let me give everyone context. What Charlie does is he drives around this big old bus called the dream, the dream machine, right? The dream bus.
He’s got it all painted up and crazy colors. He finds people in need. And he basically makes dreams come true for them. He helps out people who are struggling. If you haven’t watched his videos, you need to go and watch Charlie Rocket, see what he’s doing. Bring your tissue with you. It is incredible.
So I want to know, does somebody just decide one day they want to spend all their money and just give to people and help others and just go on this crazy- I mean, you are a little crazy, Charlie. I know you well enough to say that you’re a little crazy, but-
Charlie Rocket: I take pride in being perfect. Oh, I also take pride in being a little delusional, as well, in a very optimistic way. But how this all started? I used to be in the music business and I was very, very successful and I managed really, really, really big hip-hop artists.
Angelo Poli: Who were some of the artists you managed?
Charlie Rocket: Who were a couple of the artists?
Two Chains, to be specific. Travis Porter, Young Dolph, R. I. P. Young Dolph, Bang Grow Fresh. I had one of the biggest hip-hop management companies in all of music. And, I got to the height of my career. To the point where we were nominated for Grammys and got to win a Grammy and world tours and had everything. I had my dream home, a dream car, my dream business, my dream, everything, except my health was really bad and suffering.
I was 300 pounds. So, I can never truly enjoy everything because my life was really just about success. And I didn’t have my real dream. My dream when I was a kid was I always wanted to be an athlete, but I was always overweight and I’ve always struggled with that and still do to this day.
And at the height of my career, when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, I got really scared and I kept thinking about my dream and I was like, if I’m going to die, I need to know what it’s like to experience my dream. And so I left everything. I left the music business. I left just everything. I left everything.
I left my city and I went to pursue my dream and that was to be an athlete. And, over the next year I had lost 130 pounds. And, I did five marathons and I did an Ironman in New Zealand and I rode my bicycle from L. A. to New York and I got to be on the cover of Runner’s World magazine and I got to be my dream come true moment.
It was being in the biggest Nike ad of all time and that-
Crystal O’Keefe: How did that happen? I saw the ad that you did, and that was incredible and inspirational. And I wanna know, how did that happen?
Charlie Rocket: Well, it was like, I believe in dreams so much, and people say if you see it, I believe it, and I can see things with my eyes closed and I would write down in my manifestation notebook every single day that I’m going to be a Nike athlete. Like I knew it was a thing. I just knew it. And I kept seeing this commercial with LeBron James and Serena Williams that I was in and I would write it down and my friends would think I’m a little crazy, but that’s okay.
I just really love, I love miracles and I believe that it was going to happen and I needed to make a fan-made Nike commercial in order to get Nike’s attention. But to make a fan-made Nike commercial is really expensive. And I was not about to pay 60 or 70,000 to make an actual Nike-grade commercial.
That’s ridiculous to me to spend that type of money. So what I did was. I was writing in my notebook. I was in Santa Monica. I was living with three roommates, saving money because I had no idea if I would ever make money again because I was chasing my dream of being an athlete. Like I completely ignored all responsibilities, but I was at least trying to be responsible about it.
But like, let me live with some roommates and I’m sitting there on the couch, and I wrote down in my notebook, “Today is the day I found the videographer that’s going to make my Nike commercial.” And I was getting rejected by everybody because they told me I needed a really big budget and I needed to hire sound people, scoring people, color grading people, you know, assistants and all this stuff.
And I was like, no, there’s somebody who can do it. And so as I’m writing in my notebook, my roommate walks in the front door, and behind him is a guy holding a camera and my roommate and he’s just like an accountant at a health food company that’s goji berries to whole foods. Like a cameraman should not be following this guy.
Like he’s not, he’s not a superstar. So, I asked the guy who was holding the camera. I said, do you do film work? He said. Yes, I do. But he was very gothic and kind of like a dark cloud. Like when he spoke, it was negative. He said, nobody ever hires me. And I’m like, I wonder why. And so I was like, can I? But let me see some of your work.
Cause I mean, to me, this is crazy. I was just writing in my notebook and somebody walked in the front door and I pulled up on his website. He had a short film and I said, did you shoot this? He said, yeah, I shot it. And I said, did you edit it? Because a lot of the time in filmmaking, the person who shoots does not edit.
And he said, yeah, I edited it. And I said, who did the music? Because film, like if I’m going to make a fan-made Nike commercial, it has to have Hans Zimmer strings. Hans Zimmer. Like, it has to be emotional.
Crystal O’Keefe: Yeah, you have to have that swell of inspiration. Yeah, you have to have the big moment. Right.
Charlie Rocket: I totally get it. And so you need somebody who can make music, but usually, the camera guy in the editor never makes music. So I asked him, Who scored this? He said, well, I used to be in a rock band and we were on the war tour 15 years ago and we had a record deal, but then the label dropped us.
I’m like, hold on, hold on. So you made all the music. He said, yeah, I made all the music. I said, who color-graded this? He said, well, I taught myself Da Vinci and I color-graded. I said, who did the scoring? Like with the sound effects? He said, well, I did that in my bedroom. I use flip flops and I made this and then I used the door.
I’m like, oh my God. I said, do you own all your own equipment? And he said, yeah, like I own the lenses, the lighting, the steady Rick Henry. I’m like, oh my God. He walked in my front door. I told him, I said, I have an idea. You manifested this. I really did. And it was a miracle. They say blessings won’t just walk in your front door. Yes, they can. They can. They absolutely can.
Crystal O’Keefe: Why was your roommate with this guy? Like, how did that happen?
Charlie Rocket: So, my roommate’s friend has an Airbnb business. And he called my roommate and said, can we film some stuff at your house? Just something they needed to film like a commercial. And so here we are, a camera guy in the front of my house.
And we ended up making a fan-made Nike commercial for 600. It was powerful. Nike saw it within three days, they called me and all my friends who were thinking I was a little crazy. Now they’re starting to believe in my kind of delusion. And so Nike flew me up to headquarters and what happened next was just shocking.
Like it went beyond my belief of what was possible. I was just happy to be seen by Nike and go to their headquarters. I thought they were going to give me some shoes and pat me on the back, take a picture, and be like, “Oh, we did our good deed of the day at Nike.” But instead, they walked me into this conference room and there were about 30 executives in the room.
And they said Charlie, your film that you made about chasing a dream. It has inspired us to change the direction of our company and we’re going to redo our entire marketing campaign.
Crystal O’Keefe: What is that moment like? What is that moment when someone tells you, Nike, not a small company, legendary in their own right, says to you, you inspired us.
What goes through your brain?
Charlie Rocket: Everything’s possible. Not just anything. There are so many times I say anything is possible. But at this point, I’m like, everything is possible. This is just magic. I’m in this like three-dimensional version of something I saw in my head. And it’s just like being in a dream.
There’s like, you can dream, but then you can be in a dream and it doesn’t have to be at nighttime. Your life can be a dream. It’s possible. And they wanted to create a campaign that they told me was going to be big. I didn’t know what they had planned but I ended up making a second fan-made Nike commercial after this because Nike gave me this astronaut backpack and I was like, I’m gonna make a commercial about this and I’m going to go to outer space. Shot it all in a basement. It was really cool. It looked like I really went to outer space.
Crystal O’Keefe: I thought you were going to say you did there for a minute.
Charlie Rocket: I called the film “Dream Crazy”. And it’s all about the crazy dreamers and the crazy believers and Nike morphed that film into what became the biggest Nike commercial of all time called “Dream Crazy”. And it was the Colin Kaepernick commercial. And something really crazy happened after the commercial came out, stock price went up 26 billion dollars.
It was a very controversial campaign because Nike stood with Kaepernick. But it was all about dreams and it’s all about people who have something wrong with them and how they did not let it stop them. So, Nike went on to sign over 200 other dreamer athletes like myself, like kids with cerebral palsy and, you know, just like all sorts of people who just have a disadvantage, but their disadvantage is their advantage.
And I got to experience my dream and in that moment of experiencing my dream, I decided to dedicate my life to making other people’s dreams come true. I felt like I had accomplished it all. I was successful in the music business and then I was successful as an athlete. And I said, what else is there left to do?
And it’s time to reach my hand back and lift other people up. And as rainbow and butterflies as that sounds, it’s been the most difficult thing and my health has suffered in the same way it did in the music business. I have gained 60 back and every day I’ve been making other people’s dreams come true.
And my dream has been challenging me and it was almost to the point where it felt like it was fully slipping away. But I’m not giving up. I still believe that I can do it and I got introduced to Angelo which is really crazy because in 2018, I posted a podcast clip of Angelo on my Instagram page on a podcast with him, and every day for the past three months, we’ve been trying to figure out why.
Well, I think Angelo knows why I’m still trying to figure out why I can’t lose weight. And I’m learning so much from him by working with him every single day. We’re experimenting and we’re adjusting because there are so many moving variables with my lifestyle of touring and traveling and the intensity of making dreams come true.
Just like two weeks ago, we made a dream come true for a little kid who was blind and we introduced him to Travis Barker, but we helped make this kid a worldwide sensation in a week. And in order to do that, it’s a very demanding thing, but I love it and I never ever want to stop making dreams come true.
But if you were to ask me how I lost 130 pounds before I walked away from my business, I had no stress. I had no cortisol. I had no reality. I got to live in this dream life of mine of being an athlete. But now that I have dedicated my life to serving others, there is stress. There are cortisol problems.
There are potential complications with the brain tumor I have and we’re running tests. And we’ll have some results soon, but I’m ready to get back to my dream. That’s what I want. I want to be able to experience it all.
Crystal O’Keefe: It sounds like your new challenge is to find balance. And that can be really hard for a person who’s so hard driving like you are.
It’s very clear you are an all-or-nothing, like you’re all in when you decide to do something. So, I’m sure that balance is really, really hard for you.
Charlie Rocket: I dunno what balance is then. When I hear the word balance, I hear mediocrity. That’s interesting. And if I were to create a life of balance, I would, you know, work my couple hours, few hours a day.
would not be ambitious. I would remove ambition from my life to find balance, and I want to know how to have it all. I’m not going to throw away my ambition.
Crystal O’Keefe: Go ahead, Angelo.
Angelo Poli: I’ll field that one. I’ll field that one. You know, and it’s true that this is…
You know what? You know, we work with so many executives and CEOs, people that are just running in a full-out sprint from morning to night, burning the candle on both ends. And that is the biggest challenge with getting on top of their health. And so, I’ll tell you, Charlie, what I tell every executive CEO that calls me, they tell me about themselves and I’m like, I got it.
I got it. So you want to lose 50 pounds. You want to run a sub-six minute mile. You want to squat your body weight. You want to lean out. You want to have more energy and you want to run your company and do everything over the moon. You can absolutely have it. Which one do you want to do first? That’s the challenge is identifying a priority hierarchy, checking the box on one, and then moving down the list on the next, on the next, on the next, and that’s how you do everything at the same time.
The challenge for Charlie is trying to do all this while in periods of sprints. And we haven’t yet, since I’ve known you, Charlie, gotten an actual chunk of time where you could rest and take a breather because you’ve just been going and making people’s lives better, which is awesome. But I want to tell you about my favorite Charlie moment. Okay.
Charlie Rocket: Here it is.
Angelo Poli: I looked at him and he’s manifesting this today. And I just look at Charlie like he’s crazy because he kind of is.
So we’re at the gym together, right? And he had driven from L. A., and he’s on the phone, he’s making deals happen. He’s talking with all of these celebrities and individuals and trying to arrange things to get magic to happen for some kid in need. And yet he shows up, he walks into the gym, I take one look at his face, and his face is kind of like sagging and melting off of his body.
You know, he is so exhausted and he has his eyes closed and he says, I’m here.
Charlie Rocket: I’m ready to exercise.
Angelo Poli: So he’s sitting in the gym. I heard his voice earlier in the day. I suspected Charlie was on E. So, I picked him up a turkey sandwich. I didn’t tell him I got him a turkey sandwich. I just picked it up. I kept it in the car. It was there as an emergency snack. He’s lying on the floor in the gym on the mat.
I hand him a turkey sandwich. He looks at it, and he starts laughing. I said, what’s so funny, Charlie? He goes-
Charlie Rocket: I manifested this turkey sandwich. I wanted to eat it at the gym.
Angelo Poli: That’s Charlie, in a nutshell, guys. Right there. It’s the real deal. When Charlie’s manifesting something, don’t question it.
Charlie Rocket: Just go with it.
Angelo Poli: Fun and games aside, as Charlie knows, we’ve talked about this, we evaluate metabolisms. That is how we get people where we’re going. Now, I have people tell me, Oh, I think I have a slow
metabolism. And they don’t have a slow metabolism. What they have is they’re eating the wrong foods.
Charlie, if I were to describe his metabolism, it would be like getting in an elevator on a 40-story building and going to the basement. That’s Charlie’s metabolism. He’s as slow as it gets when it comes to his metabolic pace. He has one issue that is the same as everyone who’s lost a considerable amount of weight and is trying to run a business and is trying to juggle a bunch of things.
And that is, to lose that weight, he of course had to restrict what he ate. His metabolic rate slowed, which is why large amounts of weight loss, as we all know, very hard to sustain. All the research, all the studies, all show that most people will gain 66 percent of it back. This is the exact reason your body and your metabolism acclimate that lower intake.
Then your metabolic rate is running slower than any level of reduced activity or increased eating. Even minor. The weight comes flying back on. So he dealt with what everyone who’s ever lost weight before has dealt with. And then you layer on the health consequences. This is hypothetical. I’m not a doctor, but the health consequences and the hormonal changes having a tumor on your pituitary gland has on your body.
And then we know we have some cortisol issues. We have inflammation, we have adrenal fatigue. We have a number of things going on that are unique to Charlie’s circumstance and we have to balance that all. And that all adds up to everybody. You know, wants to know, well, because I have this ailment or that issue or this scenario, you know, is there a magic superfood, you know, if I eat sardines and avocados, will that fix me?
No, it’s all the same strategy. It’s just even more critical to execute it properly. So for Charlie, what we need to do in step one is get his. energy through the roof so he can transform lives and he can operate at the level he needs. We need to reintroduce some calories and carbohydrate. We’ve done that twice now successfully.
Both times we’ve been able to put carbohydrates in without gaining weight because we’ve done it gradually. We’ve had one cutting cycle that failed. It got cut short, but We’re working on the time management and the schedule, so that way we’re going to be able to come back to it in the future and have success.
So, it’s not in your renal fatigue.
Charlie Rocket: What’s that? Renal fatigue and getting rid of the caffeine, lowering the caffeine intake.
Crystal O’Keefe: And I would say this, I’m not a doctor either. Angelo knows, but I believe that you can have the ambition and have it all but you have to still take time for yourself. You’re putting yourself on the back burner, Charlie, you got to put yourself on the front burner. At leas sometimes you have to.
Angelo Poli: He’s never heard that before. Nobody’s ever said that to him, right? I’m sure. I’m sure. Right here on the MetPro Method Podcast. First time ever.
Crystal O’Keefe: I just felt like I needed to say it to Angelo. I’m a mom. He needed to hear it from me.
Charlie Rocket: What I’m afraid of with that statement is I probably need to take six months of putting myself first because putting myself first for a week, we’re not going to get anything done and it’s not even realistic for any human to leave their business or leave their family or leave anything that causes stress for more than a week.
So, I do put myself first. I’ll do it for that week, but I get no results from that week. Because what I need to be able to heal is a very prolonged period of time. Because once I’m out of that week, I go right back and it’s undone. So, it’s very challenging when somebody tells me you need to put yourself first.
Because I do put myself first. It just doesn’t show because I look like this. If I were to take six months, you would be able to see that I put myself first. We just have no proof that I put myself first. But I do it all the time. It’s just not enough.
Crystal O’Keefe: Well, do you guys both feel like the times that you’ve added calories, you’ve added food, do you feel like your energy has improved to be able to support the lifestyle that you live?
Charlie Rocket: Game-changing. I would say the past month and a half. What Angelo prescribed me, food has allowed me to perform in what I do, which is like a sport. The way I run this nonprofit, it’s like a sport. I was able to perform higher than I’ve ever been able to perform without crashing.
Normally when I do these big dreams, it takes me completely out of the game and I’m just on my back dead. I came out of this last big dream we did with Travis Barker. And I had one day of recovery. And I was just off to the races. Like I had energy. It was unbelievable. I had never experienced that because I used to experience really bad, blood sugar crashes, also caffeine crashes.
Put all of that together. Usually blood sugar crash would happen. And then I would supplement with caffeine to just function to get through the blood sugar. And then my body would be overstimulated out of whack. I’m just running off of adrenaline for a couple of weeks. But Angelo actually solved that and is allowing me to build this movement in this foundation.
Because for the first time, my health has been stable in probably the past four or five years, as far as performance goes, so I’m very grateful for that. That is just game-changing for me.
Angelo Poli: Me too, I’m grateful for that. Excellent, I love hearing that.
Crystal O’Keefe: I also feel like it means very clearly you’re headed in the right direction because that’s a big piece of what you need, for your support to be able to continue to do all the things that you want to do.
So I feel like you’re really headed in the right direction. So that’s pretty cool. I’m kind of curious, with all the different dreams that you’ve made come true for people. Obviously,, they’re very personal because they take a lot out of you to make them come true. Do you have one? Or two that are kind of like the most special to you?
Charlie Rocket: Yes, absolutely. Alright, so this is one. Down in Florida, we went to this young lady’s house because she was paralyzed. She’s basically a vegetable. She was drug date raped. It turned her into a vegetable. Her mind is still there, but her body just can’t function. She can’t speak. And she’s been living in this house, but she can’t take a shower because she requires this really big wheelchair bed, you know?
So it’s like, you can’t get in the bathroom. She has to shower, for the past six years, outside with a water hose, so we go to her. And I’m like, this is terrible, but we’re going to find a solution. We’re going to raise some money so you can completely remodel the house. We raised 130 grand in two days.
That was one. But then as I was at the house meeting her for the first time, her brother has Down syndrome, something in this poor mother. She has a daughter, she’s paralyzed. Then her son has down syndrome and I asked him, what’s your name? He said, “My name’s Vincent.”
I said, what’s your dream? He said, “I’m going to be. A WWE wrestler so that I can help my sister.” I said, I said, “Really? You’re going to be a WWE wrestler.” He said, “Yeah.” And I was like, all right, dream team. Let’s go brainstorm how to actually make this happen because it’s very far-fetched, but I believe it’s possible.
So, I always start my dreaming process with how big can we go? And I said for WWE to see that he’s ready to be a WWE wrestler. One, we need to make him a superstar. He needs to have millions of people rooting for him. Two, we need to show WWE that he can actually wrestle. And I don’t mean like the little YouTube video.
I mean let’s sell out an arena in Orlando and literally get all the WWE wrestlers to come wrestle with him and let’s have him be the main event. And we called it “Dream Mania”. And over the next couple of weeks, we made him a wrestling sensation. We sold out an arena in Orlando, all the WWE wrestlers, the news, and everybody was there.
And he got millions and millions of views, maybe hundreds of millions of views. And when we took him to actual Wrestle Mania, every single person in the crowd knew who he was, he was signing autographs, he was taking pictures with people, he got signed to the biggest wrestling management company in all of sports and he started doing professional events. And he became the first person with down syndrome to become a professional wrestler.
So we made that happen in a couple of weeks, Flo Rida performed at dream mania as well. So when, when Vincent was coming out with the sparklers, Flo Rida was performing, it was crazy.
Angelo Poli: You look like you were going to say something. See these stories, Charlie?
Charlie Rocket: You can see them on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube if you just scroll through my Instagram over the past five years, you’ll see every single person we’ve helped.
Crystal O’Keefe: It’s all Charlie Rocket, right? Like all of your socials, they’re all Charlie Rocket.
People want to find you. It’s amazing stuff. For those of you out there listening, you absolutely should check out the amazing things that Charlie has done and been a part of. I’m also curious if either of you has anything that you wanted to share with the audience that we have not shared so far.
Charlie Rocket: Angelo, spill all the beans.
Angelo Poli: Stay tuned. Charlie is still doing big things. There’s no doubt. No, I just want to thank you for joining us, Charlie. This is, I mean, you honor us by coming and being here and if I could say anything, that is, what you see is what you get. That Charlie’s is real as it comes.
You see him on his Instagram and social and then you hang out with Charlie and he is exactly who you see, and it has been a blast getting to work with you. Being able to apply some science and some strategy around our approach. Even in a challenging circumstance.
We can be successful, and I’m glad that you are already starting to feel better. That is step one, my friend, so stay tuned. Let’s keep making things happen, keep doing what you do, and we’re gonna support you in every way that we can. Thanks for your friendship, man. This has been a blast.
Charlie Rocket: And thank you, I’m excited to do another podcast in the future and update everybody on how the health journey is going.
Crystal O’Keefe: Awesome. Well, I have no doubt, lots of big things to come, and you will hit all of your goals, Charlie, because you are clearly an overachiever and you’re going to manifest it. You’re going to manifest it. So I know you’re going to make it all happen. I have all the faith in you.
I want to thank both of you for doing this today. It’s very, very special to have the opportunity to be able to hear from somebody who’s made so many people’s dreams come true. Thank you sincerely for being here, but also for doing all the things you do, Charlie and Angelo. Thank you for taking up Your time to be here as well.
I really appreciate it. Listeners, that’s all for this week. You can find all the episodes of MetPro Method anywhere you get podcasts, or you can go to metpro.co/podcast. Please be sure to follow and rate. Lemme say that again. Please be sure to follow the show and rate and review. That lets other people know what they can expect from the show.
You can also learn more about Met pro@MetPro.co. I’m your host, Crystal O’Keefe, and I will be back next week. Until then, remember, consistency is key.
