[INTRODUCTION]
Hal: All right. Achieve Your Goals Podcast listeners, I hope you’re having the best day of your life and if you are not, you are about to. My guest today is a friend of mine from way, way back in the day, Tony Carlston, and Tony is the founder of the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE lifestyle company for people who want to promote and create gratitude, positivity, and happiness in their lives and the lives of people around them and I love that because I don’t know every single person that listens to the podcast personally but knowing just your vibe, your energy, and what we’re all about here I think that that probably resonates with you pretty well. And so, actually, I bought a few of the Best Day of My Life t-shirts. I love wearing them around and people always ask about them. Oh, what’s the best? What is that all about? Why is the best day of your life? And he gets to come up with an authentic answer for that. Anyway, we’ll get into here just in a sec. I’m going to bring Tony on but let’s just do that.
[INTERVIEW]
Hal: Tony, you there, buddy?
Tony: I am here. Hi, Hal.
Hal: Yeah. I wanted to actually – hi, my friend. It’s good to have you. I wanted to let our guest know if you’re comfortable with this and if you’re not, it’s too late because I’m going to do it. This is your first podcast interview. Is that right?
Tony: First podcast.
Hal: First podcast. Yeah. You’re kind of like a behind-the-scenes guy. You’re not on all the podcasts out there but I told you I said, “Hey, if you’re going to get this Best Day of My Life movement to reach millions and millions of people, this is going to be the first of many podcasts for you.” What do you think?
Tony: Absolutely. I already have another one later this week. You’re the first though, Hal.
Hal: Awesome, man. I’m honored, dude. I’m very honored. Cool, man. How are you doing? Are you having a best day of your life?
Tony: Every day. I have a best day. It’s a beautiful day here in Portland and excited to be here with you.
Hal: Beautiful, man. Well, let’s dive in. I want to know how did this come to be. How did the best day of my life, how did the first t-shirt come to be? How did you start this movement and now where are you guys going? Let’s start with the beginning. Go back to where best day of my life, where the phrase came from, where the t-shirt came from.
Tony: Great question. So, years ago one of my top reps in another business I’m involved with called me just out of the blue. We were talking and say, “Hey, how’s your day?” and I’m a pretty happy guy and out of nowhere I said, “Hey, best day of my life.” And like many phrases, he picked that up. He liked it. He started saying it around his friends and family then his girlfriend at the time actually said, “You know what, let’s put that on a t-shirt.” So, they put Best Day of My Life on a t-shirt for him and two of his buddies. He’s in Southern California and she gave it to them as kind of a fun like gag gift at the time and they had no idea at the time what it was going to turn into. They just thought it was a fun gift and they started wearing them around and they started getting such a great response, people asking about it, what it’s all about, why is today the best day? It really sparks conversation and it makes people smile.
So, after a while they see, “You know, maybe we should like do this as an apparel company,” and they applied and were granted the trademark, registered trademark from the government and they did it in the go-go and they sold $10,000 worth of product in five days. People loved it. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any background in manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, any of that. They had other careers, one is in grad school, one is a musician, one is involved in another company. So, they just kind of let it sit and I’ve been working on them one day at a time over the last four years to try to get this company back from them and they finally relented. They sold it to me and we just relaunched several months ago and it’s going extremely well. People loved the products and people loved the message but that’s where the saying came from and now we have it on thousands of shirts across the country and it keeps growing with more orders every single day.
Hal: That is cool. So, for me, I first heard the phrase “best day of my life” or it might have been “best day ever,” I don’t remember, but I think it was David Wolf. Again, it’s been so long. It’s been 10, 15 years ago but he had I think it was a blog where he talked about the best day of his life or the best day ever philosophy where every day when you just decide that it’s going to be the best day of your life because you are alive. I mean, it’s a conscious decision where it’s not based on the external factors. It’s not based on – it’s not where you decide at the end of the day looking back was this the best of my life. But it’s an intention, it’s a lens through which you live your day and he said something funny in the article. He goes, “When you have a really crappy day, you go, ‘Hey, at least this crappy thing is happening on the best day of my life otherwise it would be demoralizing if it wasn’t the best day of my life.’” And so, I started saying it. I would go I guess similar to you I’d be at the grocery store and that became my default to say, “Hey, how are you doing?” “Best day of my life,” and the follow-up question was always, “Why? What happened?” It was like, “What external circumstance could possibly – you must have won the lottery today. It’s the best day of your life.”
And I would kind of regurgitate what I have heard from the other gentlemen which is I said, “Ah, just every day I just decide that it’s going to be the best day of my life and it is,” and sometimes on the best day of my life really cool things happen. Sometimes not the best things happen but it doesn’t change my kind of decision for it to be the best day of my life. What’s funny is I had forgotten like I got away from saying it until the first shirt came out years back. I saw our buddies wearing shirts on. I was like, “Oh, I used to say that all the time.” What I love is now it’s this beautiful positive conversation starter just by wearing that shirt and I think you just sent me a few in the mail. We’ll be wearing these regularly. So, you just relaunched the company and I’ve seen it described as a lifestyle T-shirt brand, but I’ve also just seen it described as a lifestyle brand. What’s the vision right now? What are you guys doing right now?
Tony: It’s a great question. So, really, we found that Best Day of My Life really goes on one of two channels. The first channel is exactly what you just talked about. It’s just a better way to live. You put on a T-shirt, you put on a hoodie and you go out in your day. It’s really hard to have a bad day if you’re wearing something for the best day of my life. It’s challenging. The second is actually externally-based, events-based. Some people wear our products on certain days. Maybe the day they have a new baby, maybe the day they go skydiving, maybe they buy a motorcycle. Some people it’s an event. So, it really goes down two different channels.
And we also – I want to talk a little bit about social cause and what resonates around that. I know you’re heavily involved with Front Row Foundation and most of your listeners probably know what Front Row is, but Front Row takes critically ill people and puts them in the front row of an event of their choice whether it’s a concert or NASCAR or anything. And it’s an amazing charity started by a friend of both of ours named Jon Vroman and our social cause is 10% of all proceeds for the company go directly back to Front Row, directly back to help people have the best day of their life which is what that charity is all about. So, it feels great to push positivity forth on the world. It also feels great to do a great thing for people in need and that’s really important to us as a company.
Hal: Yeah. I can speak from like you said I’ve been involved with Front Row for a long time, the Front Row Foundation, and it is such a beautiful like organic connection between the two because that is literally what the Front Row is giving these critically ill people that are braving life-threatening illness. It’s, “Hey, if you could go front-row to any event, the event of your dreams, what would that be like? Or where would it be?” And then they make that come true. In fact, recently I was on the other side of it from being a supporter and a donor to actually I had become a recipient when I had cancer last year and Jon Vroman called and said, “Hey, you’re braving a life-threatening illness and you are now eligible to go to a front-row event,” and I went to Madison Square Garden and saw UFC event in I think October or something like that. But, yeah, so it’s beautiful because they are having the best day of their life and now the fact that that’s the charity you guys have chosen to support, I appreciate that. I’m glad you guys are doing that and to me, it couldn’t be a better fit.
Tony: Right. We also have a social media fit to us. The care instructions in every single product whether it’s one of our onesies or a hoodie or a t-shirt, whatever it is, even a tank top, they’re printed right in the shirt how to have the best day. So, it says step one wear shirt, step two have the best day of your life, step three take a picture, and step four share with us on social media. And just in the last two weeks, we’ve got over 1,500 people to our social media Instagram account because it perpetuates itself. It’s truly a movement. People love to share great things that are happening in their lives and it applies in so many different ways that it’s fun to see how it’s rolling out to different people because for different people it’s different things. And like I said before, some people that’s just how they want to live. They just want to get up every day because really today who knows? It’s all we have and that’s how they want to live and other people it’s tied to something they’re doing. Either way, it’s fun and it’s great to be involved with something that’s happy and fun too.
Hal: You know what, I just remembered, so I have written quotes for years and they’re all up on my website, HalElrod.com/quotes and whenever I think of a new quote I go on my site and just add it there but I have a quote and I just remembered this but we got to get this on a t-shirt. It says, “Make every day the best day of your life because there is simply no good reason not to.” And I love that. In fact, you mentioned the mindset shift that happens when you project positivity, right? It’s hard to have a bad when you’re wearing a Best Day of My Life shirt. I feel like if you have what would be considered a bad day, it almost becomes comical. If you’re wearing that shirt and you crash your car and granted everybody is safe, but you look in the mirror and you’re like, “Ah,” it almost the incident now becomes just funny and now you’re able to laugh it off kind of because you’re like, “How funny, I’m wearing the Best Day of My Life shirt when this crazy thing went wrong, or I lost my job or whatever I wasn’t expecting.” You almost find the humor. Anything else to say on that in terms of like the mindset shift that happens when you just put that shirt on and that’s what you’re – not only that’s what you’re looking at the mirror seeing yourself wearing but the way other people treat you and every single person that you interact with or engage with, see you wearing that shirt? Can you talk about any kind of shift that happens for people?
Tony: Absolutely. So, in my opinion, people are just not as outgoing and friendly as they were years ago. Everybody is looking at their phone. No one’s paying attention and what’s great is it stops them in their tracks. They’re like, “What does that mean? Why are you wearing that?” And they become curious and because they become curious, it starts conversation. Because it starts conversation, it connects people. And the people that tend to wear our products are pretty positive people. They want improvement in their lives. They want growth. They want things that are exciting, and they want to be that positive light in the world and some people just think it’s neat.
So, it really applies to a lot of different people and a lot of different mindsets, but we found that it’s once again you will have people ask you all the time when you’re wearing our products, “Hey, what’s that all about?” And just be able to say, “You know, it’s how we choose to live every day.” It’s such a positive thing you can put out into the world and not only is that good for people around you. It’s good for yourself because like you talked about earlier in the call, the lens where you look through is so important. You have two different people do your tax returns. You might get two different results because it goes through a different lens. It’s the same thing. People experience life. Why do you all know people that are super positive and can find the good in anything? I think, Hal, you’re probably the best of that I’ve ever seen.
Hal: Thank you.
Tony: You’re like a cat that can’t be killed no matter what happens to you. You keep finding the good, you keep injecting the positivity, and I think that’s one of the reasons you keep surviving to be quite frank. And the positivity in that mindset is so absolutely fundamental to living your best life. So, that’s what I have to say about that.
Hal: So, what I like about this is really for me I’m big into movement. The Miracle Morning, for example, has become this global movement and to me, I was interviewed about it at the film festival we just went to this last weekend and they were asking me some questions and I said, “The biggest story of the Miracle Morning isn’t the book. It’s not my success. It’s not the book’s success. It is the Miracle Morning Community which is this group of hundreds of thousands of people from roughly 100 countries give or take who wake up every day and dedicate time to becoming the best version of themselves, so they can be a better parent and a better spouse and a better leader and so on and so forth.” And I said, “Think how rare that is how many people wake up every day or dedicate time to fulfilling their potential and therefore the ripple effect of that it touches and improves every single person’s life who comes in contact with them that day.”
And what I love about your shirts, your brand, the lifestyle brand, Best Day of My Life is doing exactly that and it’s doing it in a different way where it’s this visual thing like you don’t have to even say anything or do anything other than put the T-shirt on and to me it’s almost impossible to not have a positive ripple effect unless you just stay at home all day and don’t look in the mirror and don’t talk to anybody but if you go out and you go to the grocery store, you go to the bank, you go pick up your kids from school, whatever, you can’t not. Just to me, it’s this inevitable positive impact and I really believe that you’re going to create a movement because it’s going to spread organically one person, one shirt at a time. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. What does this movement mean long-term?
Tony: Our hope is just like your hope was when you wrote your first book, to have as much impact as possible on people. One thing our world needs more of is positivity and optimism. Once they’re going to – people look at things through different lenses and as people continue to focus on good, more good tends to happen and as more good tends to happen it becomes easier to focus on good. It’s easier to contribute. It’s easier to share. And it just spreads and it’s just so exciting to watch what happens when a community of people out there whether it’s a bunch of people at a bachelorette party having the best day of their life or if you’re just walking on the boardwalk with a couple of your buddies and a couple of you have your shirt on. I mean, it’s just so neat to watch people react to the idea. Because people get so caught up and focused on whatever is directly in front of them in life and sometimes they need to take a step back and go, “God, I’m alive. I’m breathing. This is great. I got another day.”
Like, they need that shift in perspective and what’s great is we are a great conversation starter. We are great in that regard to get things moving in a positive direction and it makes people smile. One of the main reasons I got involved in this company and been trying to buy it is it’s so fulfilling to work on something that is holistically good. There’s nothing negative about the company at all. It does good for people. It does good for the people that wear it. The products are top quality so people like our products which is great, but it does great things for the charity and it’s just great to be working on something that in my opinion going to have a global impact long-term because what people focus on is what they get. And the more people we can get focusing on good just like with your community, now you have hundreds of thousands of people focusing on changing their lives with the Miracle Morning and your books, it just keeps moving that direction.
Hal: When you said that, you just made me think about Miracle Morning and kind of what the brand has become if you will and how I could see Best Day of My Life following suit which is, number one, all the foreign translations for the books. I can see the Best Day of My Life in every language, in every country around the world. In fact, I could see a Best Day of My Life event where you bring in some world-class speakers or volunteer to share their message on how to be more grateful and how to, yeah, man. I love it that those few words on the front of a T-shirt or a onesie. I’m on your website and I’m looking at this cute little baby wearing the Best Day of My Life onesie.
Tony: By default, in the day you’re born, best day of your life.
Hal: Yeah. Exactly. And you can celebrate that every year. So, awesome, man. Well, this is fantastic. I’m a big fan. Where do people go to check out the T-shirts and get their own T-shirt?
Tony: Great question. So, you can find us on social media @BestDayofMyLife, on the website BestDayOfMyLife.com. We have set up a special code for this podcast and for Hal and the Miracle Morning. The code is Hal so H-A-L and that will give you 10% off absolutely everything on the site. You can use as much as you like and share it as much as you like and that’s where you can find us at BestDayOfMyLife.com.
Hal: Beautiful. I know you and I talked recently throughout the day. We should do like a Best Day of My Life Miracle Morning shirt because similar to the Front Row. They’re just a very organic tie-in. Or Best Morning of My Life. I don’t know. We’ll figure that out. But anyway, dude. Well, Tony, man, I appreciate you. I’m so happy to see you move in this direction and that you got the company and back and you’re doing a lot of positive things and really launching this movement which I have no doubt is going to spread and create a lot of positivity in the world so thank you for that, my friend.
Tony: You bet. Thank you for having me today, Hal. I appreciate it.
Hal: Absolutely. All right. Well, in fact, we have our Best Year Ever Blueprint Event every December and I think it’d be cool we’ll get everybody in the audience come to Best Year Ever wearing their Best Day of My Life shirt because that’s the only way you create the best year ever is to make every day your best day ever best day of your life. So, well, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed talking to Tony as much as I did and, yeah, I just love this. I love all things positive and one thing that Tony, one thing that he mentioned that I really like is the point that people we don’t talk to each other nearly as much. It’s like everyone’s got their smart. I mean, you go to the airport. You look around the airport. I fly a lot and I look around the airport and almost everybody and myself included, I’m guilty too, but they’re looking at their phone. Where before we had phones what would you do? Maybe you’d read a book, but I think most people were actually talking to each other. So, I like that just the fact that this takes Facebook offline. You’re actually getting engaged in real time, real conversations with real human beings. I think that’s a really cool benefit too. So, anyway, check out BestDayOfMyLife.com. Use the code Hal, H-A-L if you want to get anything on the site and get 10% off and Tony, man. I appreciate you. Go have your best day of your life and I’ll talk to you soon, brother.
Tony: Thank you.
Hal: All right. Take care.
Tony: Bye.
[END]
