Her name's Maria.

My mom's name is Maria, yes.

Where to begin? I mean, if I begin around this photo, I had an am- I had a wonderful childhood.

Like pre-teen years, I write about it, I feel like so much was almost idyllic in a way.

Like, I was growing up in a suburb of DC.

My mom felt like super mom to me growing up.

She was doing everything.

And so sometimes I was harder than you to others because I really believed in you, believed that you could start your life over, that you had a lot more life to live." How tough was she? Set the scene for me and take me to some of those really tough moments.

So I'm curious, do you have a saying, Chris Olsen, that you live by or that you say out loud to your friends or kind of embody?

Ooh, it's actually what I try not to say to myself.

It's a follow-up phrase of we all have that dark inner voice sometimes in our heads that mine slips out occasionally.

And so it has just turned into if I think of an intrusive thought and then I end up saying something out loud like, "Shut the fuck up," because I will say it out loud, then I follow it up with is what I would say if I were being mean to myself today.

So I, I think I don't have a phrase, but I have a general idea of how to treat myself and talk to myself.

And do I wish I came up with something in the moment that really would've hit home? Yes.

But we're being nice to ourselves today.

I was gonna say TikTok, social.

Um, what is the most unexpected DM you've ever received?

Oh, unexpected DM? I mean, there have, there have been a lot over the years.

I'm always excited when there's a, a DM, period.

I mean, an unexpected one, like, recently was after I saw Ariana Grande's most recent show.

I had posted a bunch of stuff, and I s- she was in the DMs after.

And I was like, "This is... " You don't, you don't...

I'm like, "Save your time, Ariana." I'm like, "I, I'm so happy that we..." That, like, or she was so nice.

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What really went into planning those and how much was scripted versus unscripted?

There was no script to it, per se.

There were times that the celebrity would know I'm bringing coffee to them, but it was...

You're gonna...

Like, they're going...

They were reacting to me bringing them the coffee.

It was...

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So what do you think your family saw in you during that intervention that you didn't see in yourself?

I give a lot of credit to my mom Who got sober five years before that moment because had she not gone through what I went through I don't know if they would have been able to see a 19-year-old getting his shit together at that time.

I think it was very clear what path I was going down, but I wasn't far from who I had been before that.

It, it had been, like, two years of maybe heavier use at that point.

Like, 17 is when I really had more access to it, started doing it a lot.

19 was the pinnacle of it.

And I think there was still a strong enough memory of who I was and even who I was in high school and how motivated I used to be and how...

The institute, like, a psychiatric hospital

Well, can we just push this off a year or two? Like, is

everyone OK with that? When also it's like, Chris, you could be dead by then.

So, no, we're not going to do that.

But I I said my part and then everyone turned a page.

And when I've told this story, a lot of people online say that they're like that.

I don't know if that's right for your parents to like say that they're going to cut you off.

Like I would be so upset.

What brought you there? Um, to like, which like a psychiatric? Oh,

So interesting, yeah.

And then, uh, alcohol was always kind of what was most accessible.

I felt like I had tried ... things never to the extreme, but it really was I was an addict in the sense purely of, like, what I could get my hands on to not be sober, I wanted to.

And there's a, near the end of my, um, addiction, near the end of my act- active addiction-

Mm-hmm

...

I can, I can imagine that there will be certain ways, not only with him, there were m- members of my family who also, like, prob- aren't loving the way that they were, the s- the story is being told in my perspective.

And I think, I try to remind myself that, like, I had to tell the most honest version of the story, and that also includes including all of the parts where I was the villain as well.

So what's the thesis behind that?

I do.

I mean, look, the reality is that if you travel abroad, it's pretty obvious that the best opportunity on the planet, like the best economy in the world, it is America, like unequivocally.

Even when I visit places like China or look at other emerging economies in Europe, like there is no other place in the world that has this much opportunity.

We have the absolute best universities.

We have the largest economy.

And we have like this incredible amount of social mobility that it's not perfect, but it is, it is, you know, hands down better than any other place in the world.

So it all looks, oh, this is worth taking a meeting.

And I'm wondering, like, why you, why you do that and w- what, whether at times you question whether you're putting too much out there.

Um, I, yeah, I, I often, e- every day is, I have a different relationship with social media, but then there are also eras of different relationships with it, and that particular era was one of sharing quite a lot and just feeling the emotion and posting it in real time.

And I think I realized that maybe there's not much peace being protected in that, and that was also coincidentally around the time that I was in the middle of writing about many of the things I went through as a kid and as a teenager, and so it was just, there was so much emotion coursing through me at the time.

And I think now I still find it very important to be vulnerable, but you also need to know which parts of you you wanna protect for yourself or for the inner circle, and then what part may be important to share because someone else could wanna hear it and it could help them.

The live, yeah.

Yes.

Um, but in tho- in that moment specifically, I, you know, I felt, I, I think there is so much, I, I can track thera- therapeutically why I then eventually felt almost like I needed to share my s- sadness about what was going on in my life.

And I think it ha- it was a culmination of eventually getting to the point of I had been sharing so much about my life at that point and I felt like I, I was too open, but that it had been taken advantage of and, and, but at the same time I'm writing a book that feels very open and vulnerable.

Is she named specifically in

the book? Names are changed.

names are changed, but she has a copy of it.

No, I don't think she was, I think she giggled, she laughed.

We had a laugh together.

We're now close, at this point it feels like I know much more about her life, but she's still, it's still very therapy.

But her and I worked to undo some of the things that she had therapized me with at the treatment center because it was really like, you have ruined your life.

that, I think he's fun and something fun and refreshing for her, I think.

Mm-hmm

... or sitting in ChatGPT developing new strategies or writing out new procedures or doing things on the business when I have downtime.

So there is a little bit of overlap.

Um, and then as far as the consulting thing goes, that kind of happened organically, where I, I have been a client of a bunch of different coaching companies over the years.

I've had a few different business coaches, um, some that were awesome, some that weren't, and I really just love the impact that coaching was giving me.

Um, kind of initially I did a lot of what, what I realize now was consulting and coaching but for free.

I would just talk to people and help people out and jump on Zoom calls.

... really important to know.

So today we have Chris Olsen with us today, and Chris, tell me a little about what you do with the group.

You know, we, we basically, uh, you know, the wa- I guess the life cycle of, you know, what we would do on a, on a weekly basis is, uh, you know, we would have new guests booking, uh, paranormal experiences.

Uh, we would organize our gear and have that ready for that night, uh, meet the guests, give them kind of a, a basic 101 introduction into paranormal.

Uh, so all groups are different.

So sometimes we have folks that come here, and they've, they've already investigated other places.

They have their own equipment.

Uh, other times, the folks are brand-new, and they come from all over the country.

Do you have a history, a background somewhere in your life that led you to this sort of field?