2 Jan 2026 · 43 min
In this long‑form fireside interview on The Art of Accomplishment, host Brett Bocko and guest Joe Hudson trace a deeply personal evolution that moves from a childhood marked by trauma, self‑abusive inner dialogue, and a rebellious rejection of mainstream expectations to a life of embodied self‑development, non‑dual meditation, and ultimately a career that fuses consciousness work with venture capital and environmental impact. Hudson recounts early exposure to spiritual texts (Tao Te Ching, parables of Jesus), a pivotal eight‑second oneness experience at a meditation retreat at age 26, and the subsequent realization that his inner voice was a self‑critical narrative he could observe rather than obey. He describes years of embodied work—Reichian breathwork, Alexander Lowen‑inspired somatic therapy, and intense physical releases—that allowed him to surface and integrate childhood wounds such as abandonment, anger, and the need for external validation. The conversation then shifts to Hudson’s itinerant youth: hitchhiking across the United States, working in a fish cannery in Alaska, living in a rock‑and‑roll band, and immersing himself in diverse cultures (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Wales, Switzerland). These experiences fed a relentless curiosity about humanity and a desire to collect “data” on how people live. A turning point came when a wealthy patron, impressed by Hudson’s insights on gold and oil, offered capital for a venture that could marry his meditation‑derived desire to heal consciousness with environmental stewardship. Hudson spent twelve years building nonprofit programs for youth consciousness and another twelve years investing in sustainable agriculture, concluding that the core obstacle to ecological solutions is human ego. Realizing his own shortcomings as a venture investor—favoring founders who needed him rather than those who were self‑sufficient—led Hudson to develop a coaching practice that integrates somatic awareness, grief processing, and non‑dual insight into leadership development. He reflects on the paradox of growing influence: as public attention amplifies, the risk of losing empathy and becoming a focal point of collective energy increases. Hudson describes a recent shift from a dissolution of self toward a “permeability” of self, where personal grief and gratitude become essential to maintaining humility and presence in high‑impact roles. The interview weaves together themes of inner work, embodied practice, cultural exposure, entrepreneurial strategy, and the ethical dimensions of power.
Chapters
Man, I was so self-abusive. I was fucking brutal being in my head. I was emotionally shut down, doing whatever was not the acceptable thing. I ripped that open when I said, okay, I don't have to be who I think I am. Sitting quietly, watching the voice in my head and learning how to react differently to it. Not believe it, not buy into it.
How does one simply from the meditation cushion be like, I'm getting into venture capital?
You can evolve consciousness and make money. Money at the same time. The root of the problem that I wanted to work on was helping people understand themselves, to love themselves.
Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. Today we're doing a little bit different of an episode. I'm just going to have a fireside chat with Joe, and we're just going to learn more about him. And get really personal with it. So I hope you enjoy this episode. So Joe, there's a whole bunch of personal questions I've been wanting to ask you, and I'm sure a lot of other people are curious too. And I'd just love to do an episode where I just ask you questions about you.
Okay, cool. That sounds like I'm scared.
Excellent.
Great, great.
So just to start with, I'm, I'm curious, uh, you know, you, you often contrast your upbringing with kind of where you are now, and where you are now is you're clearly on some sort of path. You are very intentional about your self-development.
Yeah.
And at some point in the past, you presumably weren't. And I'm curious, like, what, what was that point of transition to where you recognized, oh, I'm on a path?
Yeah, wow, that's a good question. And I actually would— it doesn't resonate with me that I'm currently on a path, which is interesting. So there was this, the unconscious part right, where I was, where I was just living. I didn't particularly know there was a voice in my head. I was interested in things like the parables of Jesus and parables widely in different religions, and I was infatuated with, um, things like the Tao Te Ching. And I think it was like a Fritz Perls book where he talked about the underdog and the upper dog that like started letting me understand that I had a relationship with myself, which I think is really where the beginning of the path was. And then, if it was not fully understood that I was on a path, when I finished a meditation retreat where I had this experience of oneness for 8 seconds, then I was like, "I am on a path and I am there to get this thing." So there was some kind of awareness that I was into self-development once I understood that there was a self that I was interacting with. And then there was like, I am on a path to try to get to a place.
And how old were you around the time of that meditation retreat? How long?
26.
So from like college up to 26 was sort of this kind of— Yeah, I'm interested in this seeing through the self thing.
Yeah, yeah, I'm interested. Well, it started with I'm interested in like getting back to that state, and then it just became, oh, it's really self-exploration.
That state though was experienced when you were 26? Yes. So prior to that you were like, oh, I'm kind of exploring what it's like to be a self.
And then, yeah, you had that meditation retreat, and then there was like a very clear path. And yeah, and then there was the moment when that— oh, that thing that I'm trying to get back to is always here. And that kind of recognition that's so hard to describe happened. And then there was a way in which the path kind of fell apart.
Yeah. So you mentioned you had this experience of oneness, and then you were hung up for a while trying to get back to that experience of oneness. I'm curious if, like, for that one and then others, what are, what are some other hangups? What are the, what are some of the things that you've kept hitting on your turns on the corkscrew for your own development, your own self-exploration?
Yeah, I mean, they're all the, like, the core issues from, from childhood. They don't go away, you know. I feel like I can almost— everything that's causing me pain, I have been able to find some way in which it relates to my childhood, relates to something that I learned early on or an earlier trauma. Like, I can, I can find that. And big ones, um, have been, you know, uh, not being seen, abandonment, um, anger was a huge one for like 10 years, just I was accessing it or getting angry at people, like putting my anger out on other people.
Yeah.
Holding other people responsible for my stuff, like uncontrolled anger or very constricted anger. So I was just a dick. Those are all things. And the breakthroughs almost always came the same way, which is welcoming an emotional experience, bringing my attention to it, Having faith that it can change, like knowing that I— that this will be different over time. Grief is a big part of the process of all of those shifts. Like really being— there's a moment where you kind of see the whole thing and you're like, oh man, I didn't have to be living like this. And this grief comes. And if you don't feel that grief, there's a moment that usually comes in every one of them where you're like, who the hell will I be if that happens? If I let that in, nobody will be able to relate to me anymore. I'll never be like that moment. And at the beginning you're like, I don't wanna feel grief. I don't wanna feel like, I don't wanna dissolve and nobody can recognize me. And now, you know, as you go through it a couple of times, you're like, yeah, cool. There's that grief moment. There's that moment of who am I gonna be at the end of this thing?
Yeah, you've mentioned how it took you like 14 years to be able to cry. And I'm curious, so you got a degree in psychology, which, at the time you took those classes, psychology and academia looked a certain way.
Yeah, yeah.
And we could get into that.
Yeah.
And you were doing non-dual practices, meditation.
Yeah.
Which can look a certain way. You could have like a neck-up awakening and just be non-dual but not feel what's going on here. Yeah. But something that really strikes me about this work is how embodied it is. How about, you know, the emotional fluidity on the muscular and nervous system level it is. Yeah. And a lot of your work has been influenced by— like, we don't often mention a lot of the sources. Like Alexander Lowen, you mentioned sometimes. There's Reich. Like, you did some Reichian breathwork for 7 years. You've mentioned that a few times.
Yeah.
How did you get exposed to and really take and run with the really deeply embodied physical aspects of the work?
Yeah, well, the first thing that happened where I got really lucky was that after the the kind of the head awakening, I had the immediate recognition that I thought that that was going to be an end and it wasn't an end. It was just the beginning. Evolution doesn't end. The path ended because I didn't have anywhere to go anymore. The nonduality and meditation, that was, you know, I was very head-oriented. I was, my body was very unsafe because I was, you know, told, taught not to care about my body. Not to listen to my feelings, not to cry. So all that, my only access point really was my head. So, and I happened to live with a woman who was highly into the embodied emotional thing because she was an actress, Tara, and like, mm, so she like, she learned all that stuff. So I also was exposed to it. I knew there was something over in that corner, but the first thing that happened was I, was in downtown one day and this person walked by and I was like, what the fuck happened to you? Which is where I found most of the modalities was I saw a significant change in somebody and I went, what, whatever it is you're, you're doing, tell me what it is, I'm just gonna go do that thing. And then that person had done Reiki and breathwork with a woman who's now dead, um, Michelle, and Michelle was the person who taught it. And so I was just like, "Yep, sign me up." And so that was sitting in her room naked on a bed breathing, and she would push on me. She would literally just like, like I'd come out bruised often. And she would look at whatever my muscles were holding and she'd push. And I remember one time I was like 3 years in, 4 years, I did this for 7 years. 3 or 4 years in, I vomited. And she's like, "Good, you're almost releasing." I'm like, "I just vomited, Michelle, come on. Like, that's a release." She's like, "Listen." She had her own issues, but she was just like incredibly emotionally fluid. She had no, she said what she wanted to say. There was no filter in her world, you know? And so muscularly, it like very much changed because of that work. And a deep embodiment came in there, like feeling all the emotions was really important. Breathwork generally, there's breathworks that you can do lots of things, dissociate or increase your immune system. There's all sorts of things, but a lot of it will release emotions. And so if you can find one that, like fully releases emotion. So that, that's, that's one of the things that I did. I also, um, found a worker who did— was really into Lowen's work. And, and every therapy session, it was like a therapist, but it was— and every session was a physical release of some sort. And so that really helped me get embodied. So there was just— I had some great teachers who who really, but the calling was because of Tara. Because Tara, I saw that there was something that I was missing. And I also saw like, oh, I could access peace, but joy wasn't there. I was at peace, but I wasn't in love with the world.
So when you guys met, like tell me about what your lifestyles were at that time. You were in your 30s?
No, no, we were 20, 26, you know, right around that timeframe. In San Francisco, like Haight-Ashbury? Artist. I— Tara will tell you very quickly, I had a bowl cut and I looked like a complete nerd.
I had a bowl cut when I met you.
Yeah, that was a lot. Even, even a worse bowl cut. That was like kind of like, yeah, this is complete bowl cut. Um, I would—
somehow I stuck around.
I was in a rock and roll band. I was playing music and I was very much like, fuck the system, fuck money, fuck business. I had a chip on my shoulder. I had something to prove. I was emotionally shut down. I dressed in a way that I could be anywhere, you know, where I could just fit in in the corners of a business meeting or at an artist thing. So I was going through the world collecting as many experiences as I could. You know, I would drive, try to find that like weird bar in the middle of nowhere and talk to people who were like actual cowboys. I mean, I remember— I remember like, this would be a typical story in those days. I'm driving it home from LA and there's this guy with kind of dreadlocks hitchhiking. I pick him up. He's from Uruguay. We talk. About Uruguay. And then he's like, "I'm going to San Francisco." I'm like, "Cool, but we're not gonna go the direct way. We're just gonna—" I'm like, "This is a big valley, the Central Valley, so we don't— we can just take any road. Look, I'll show you." And so, like, we— and he got a little scared. But then we saw a trailer that said Cold Beer Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Walked in, all cowboys. Back in the day when they— you know, today it's like, "Oh, cowboys and some hippies getting together. It's, like, not a big thing." Back then it was like, enemies. And I'm looking as neutral as possible. Bowl cut Joe guy, t-shirt and like pants. And, and we walk in and the music— they're literally playing music and the music, they literally stop playing. And they look at this guy and they look at me and I'm okay. And I was like used to being— putting myself into these situations. So I just like—
it's like, hey, I was just hit—
I was just driving up from LA and this guy was hitchhiking. He's from Uruguay.
Do you all know where Uruguay is?
Next thing you know, we're drinking beers in this trailer. It was literally a mobile home trailer that we're having the bar in. And I'm talking to this guy who's a cowboy who literally only owns a car and a saddle. And he's telling me stories about what it's like to be out. He just goes like out in the open with some cows for multiple days on top at a time, weeks at a time, and then comes in. Stays with a woman, his girlfriend or not, sleeps on the side of the road, whatever he needs to do, drinks some beer, and then off he goes again. And we're talking about, like, how much whiskey the owner of the ranch gives him, you know, per day or whatever. But, like, that was, like, just a really— like, that was my experience. And I was constantly finding the most obscure people, places that I could and understanding them. Like, hanging out with homeless people or hanging out with billionaires. Like, I would find— these little niches. I literally— There's one time when we were digging holes to understand wetlands in Yuma, Arizona, and within one day, I hung out with a homeless person named Lucky, who had been living and jumping on rails and living homeless for 15 years. And the next day, I'm hanging out with one of the Waltons. And like hanging out with like, from Walmart and hanging out with billionaires. It was like, that was my reality. It was just, I was trying to find, I was trying to understand humanity in any way that I could. Yeah.
So you mentioned before on the podcast too that you don't like cooked fish. And I heard once a story that seems to be—
I used to not like fish at all.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and this seems related to the finding the weird nooks and crannies. Of experience and like, what made you not like this experience with fish for some time?
Oh, fish story. Um, okay, so I'm, I'm finished with college. I'm just out of college and I had just read a book called Black Elk Speaks, which was, um, a medicine man Lakota medicine man. And in it, he talks about the Sun Ritual, about how the endurance of pain and understanding the endurance of pain gives you an appreciation for life. And my buddy had said, "Hey, I'm going up to Alaska to butcher fish, work at a cannery. Do you want to come with me? And we'll hitchhike up there." And I was like, "That's my Sun Pain. That's my Sun Ritual." And— And so, and I needed some money, so I felt like this would be a great way to do it. And so my buddy and I hitchhiked up there. Great, like one story after another, meeting crazy individuals and learning about humanity on the way up. But when we were flying into, it's in the Bristol Bay, which is that big bay right before the Aleutian Islands. And we're Togiak, Not Kodiak, Togiak, Alaska, which is where we were. And so we're flying in and my buddy said, "You know, this work is like digging a ditch 16 hours a day, butchering these fish." I was like, "Okay." And we land and the guy's like, "The septic is gone, you're digging ditches." And we literally dug ditches 16 hours a day only to find out that they had a backhoe and all of that was crap. They were just warming us up. So that we could do the work. And when we did the work, it was—
It's like kicking you down the steps of the temple. Yeah, exactly, totally.
Only you find out that the work was a lot harder than digging the ditches. And so, and we would work, you know, we slept maybe 6 hours a night. When we finished, we literally slept for 36 hours straight. It was, I remember I got injured, so I had to go to a hospital and I came back and I had gotten a little bit of sleep. And I remember looking at my friend, talking to another one of my friends, One friend was drooling and the other friend wasn't noticing. Okay, it was like that level of fatigue that was going on. And so during that time, we had all sorts of parlor tricks that we would play, and one of them was gut tag, where how many fish guts could you pile into somebody else's, like, slickers without them noticing? So as it turns out, I didn't really like eating fish. After that. And it took me until Tara to get into sushi. And I— and now I can even eat mostly a lot of cooked fish, but it took me a while to get there. That's how— that's how it happened. But it was all that I wanted to collect as many experiences as I possibly could.
And what made— what turned on that bug in you for collecting experiences?
How did that get ignited? I think in retrospect, it was all about trying to understand humanity. For whatever, one of my passions has always been to understand people. And how did that interest get kicked off? I don't know. I don't know if it was born with that. I was told it at a young age. I remember being told at a really young age, oh, you'll be a psychologist when you grow up. Just because I always had this interest in humanity. I always had, yeah, so I don't know particularly, like I can't think of a story as to how that happened. It just was always there for me. And I think if I had to guess, it would be like trying to read my father when, like, part of survival is that when your father walks in the room, he's an alcoholic, you better understand that shit really quick or you're gonna get in trouble.
Also recognizing you grew up in various places, including Iran, and like you left Iran as the— as the revolution was happening.
I lived in Iran and Saudi Arabia and Wales and England and Switzerland. And yeah, and so that also probably had something because like seeing cultures completely differently, like, right? Yeah.
I mean, you've got, you've got to see this. Yeah. You go to another culture and you see how you learn so much more about your own culture by seeing it in contrast to another one. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
And you get to see, oh, all of this stuff That's all choice. That's all culture. Yeah. All of this stuff, that's humanity. I got to hang out with a lot of tribes during this time, and at least like 6 or 7 in America and at least 2 or 3 outside of America. And, and you got to see, wow, a lot of this is choice. A lot of what we think is right or wrong is actually just cultural. And then it just really fired me up as to like, well, what's, what's human? Right. Like, what is the essence of who we are? What are we essentially? What are we essentially? Yeah. And so that's, yeah. So that was my 20s was until my late 20s, like 27, 26. That was everything was just about gathering as many experiences as I could gather from like sailing in Tahiti to hanging out with homeless people for a week or whatever it was. I was just like doing whatever I could, going out into the middle of the woods and with nobody. I was just gathering experiences. And it was an investigation into myself and into humanity, but not in a way that was like any kind of path. It was— which is probably, probably really useful because I, I didn't have an agenda. Right.
You're just broadly exploring, collecting data. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Following. Yeah. What were you following? You were— sounds like you were following, collecting experiences.
Yeah, it's following my interests. I was following my wants, right? Before I had like a way that I had to be. Right. And then somewhere in that, that's the other thing that kicked in is like all of a sudden there was this way I had to be like that. That was as far as your question earlier about what was my pain and man, I was so self-abusive. I cannot tell you how self-abusive I was. I was fucking brutal being in my head. There was just like no win. I remember like the first time I'm in my— I think I'm like 25, I'm doing my first fast on my own. I just decided it was a good idea to go out and fast on my own in the woods in this old hermit's cabin that I had heard about. And I remember literally seeing that my brain would not— like there was no fucking winning. That I was just like, what the hell? This thing in my head makes it so I cannot fucking win. And even— and it was like— and I'd be like, okay, I can't I was like, "Yeah, you can't win. You gotta try harder." I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" Sounds like a bad acid trip. Oh my God. Oh my God. But that was my life. That was every day for me. That was— it was— yeah, it was brutal. I don't know— obviously, I can't know what other people's voice in their head is like, but mine was severe. It wasn't, "You should kill yourself," which we see people with that from time to time. It was definitely— there was no doing right. There was no way that I was not going to be told I was wrong or bad.
How is it that you had that incredibly self-abusive voice in the head, critical, no way to win, and yet you're following your wants, exploring the world with all this open curiosity and wonder for humanity? How do those juxtapose? I think—
I don't know exactly, but I think that the reason that that happened was because I was— I always think about this as I was so lucky to be born the black sheep, to be put in the role of the black sheep. So I was the rebel. I was the one who wasn't going to do the things that everybody was supposed to do. I wasn't going to get the job. I wasn't going to do what my parents thought. I wasn't going to— authority shouldn't be trusted. So I'm not doing that. I'm gonna go do my own thing. So I was going to the weird— like, the first thing was Taoist studies and Buddhist. I was going to the thing that you're not supposed to back then. Like, there wasn't a lot of Buddhism. There wasn't—
definitely, you're in America and there's a lot of Christianity, so the taboo thing is— yes, exactly— Buddhism, and you're going there.
I was just doing whatever was not the acceptable thing. That was, that was absolutely my modus operandi. It was just any way that I can look, feel like a rebel and be above and despise those people. Everything that was okay was like— Mainstream. Mainstream was evil. Yeah.
How do you go from, like, bucking the mainstream to being Mr. Be authentic in who you are? Happy, joy.
Yeah. All that. Yeah. I mean, it's like crazy. I literally, I will probably tear up thinking about You could call it learning how to love yourself, or you can call it self-discovery. You could call it— I mean, for me, because I had so much abuse, there was a lot of my time was literally just not reacting to the voice in my head, like bringing awareness to the voice in my head. It was a slow process. There's a lot of tools that can move you quicker. It's a necessary process. I think you can't not do that and and end up. But it's very much, it was the very first part of my journey that was a real part of the journey was sitting quietly, watching the voice in my head and learning how to react differently to it. Not believe it, not buy into it, not do the thing that it said to do, realize my reaction to it. I ripped that open when I said, okay, I don't have to be who I think I am. I can die or be, find out what's underneath this stuff. There's a lot of this freedom in it. And so it kind of was this reinforcing loop. And I think that's something that's, maybe the most powerful thing we can do for anybody in all of our courses is like, just let them see it's possible. Just let them— give them that experience of like, oh, some part of my ego— I don't like calling it that, I don't call it that very often— but letting some part of my identity drop away and the freedom on the other side of that.
And so I'm curious, how, how did that translate into doing what you do in business. How did you find the entry point into bringing that into such a high-pressure, high-achievement environment?
So I think there's a couple things. One of the few ways I felt connected with my father was talking about business. He would come and talk about business and I would learn from him. I have that same connection with Oona, not with Esme, but Oona and I like love talking about business together. So there was some sort of like problem-solving thing that I really liked about business. And I thought about it a lot. And so, and even when I was rebelling against stuff, I'd be like, how do I make money? And I'd be like, oh, then I'd do this complicated business thing to make enough money so I could meditate, you know? And so I wasn't trying to make money, I was just trying to buy time. And, um, and so, but so I always kind of had one thumb in business. I, you know, did international stock lending at a young age, and I did legal and compliance for a bank at at a young age. And so I just, I always have my hand in it. And then again, my family came along and it was time to have a family. Like, I was clear that it's time to have a kid and you got to make some money. And so I just was like, how do I make money? And that's when I like moved into venture capital. And, and so it was really for having a family that I made my— I would I had no interest in making money before that. I was 35 years old and I was—
How did you simply move into venture capital? Like, how does one simply from the meditation cushion be like, I'm getting into venture capital?
I was doing large-scale, um, yeah, even weirder, I was doing large-scale video art. And, uh, and there— and the only people buy large-scale video are really wealthy people. And so one of these very wealthy people So we were just talking about money, and I gave him a couple pieces of advice around gold at the time and oil at the time and what was going to happen, and it made him a lot of money. And this is just happening while I'm doing this art installation. I've been, I've been thinking a lot about what's happening with gold and oil, and, and this was at a time when both of those two things spiked. And, uh, he's like, well, come and work for me. And I said, 'Nah, I'm doing art. I'm good.' And he said, 'Well, if you could do anything, what would you want to do?' And so I went home and I thought about it for 3 months, and then I called him up and I said, 'Well, the change I want to see in the world is more like basically how do we as a— as humanity heal conscious— in a consciousness way.' Because I'd been meditating, like, how do I bring this into the world? And then the other thing I'm really interested in is how to help the environment. So he gave me some capital to do both of those two things. And so I spent 12 years starting organizations for helping kids with consciousness, and then I spent the same 12 years doing venture in, in environmental. And we specifically focused on agriculture because that's where nobody was playing and where most of the resources were being used.
How have both of those theses evolved? Like consciousness for nonprofits and environmental for venture capital?
I think there was something that, you know, what I saw in the environmental world was that people used to think in the '70s you could be an environmentalist or you could be a businessman and you couldn't be both. But somewhere in the '90s, people were like, oh yeah, you can be both. And still to this day, you can be both. And I was like, that same thing is gonna happen with consciousness, that you can become a conscious, like you can evolve consciousness and make money at the same time, or capitalism can be a force for helping humanity heal, become themselves, understand themselves. And so I would say that's how I also noticed, the other thing that happened was what I noticed is in the environmental space that the number one problem was human ego. It wasn't, there was plenty of technology. Technology that could— whatever environmental problems we have, we have the technology to solve them by far, easily. All we need is humanity to be human. Like, all we need is, like, egos to, to, to stop doing what egos do. And so I realized that the root of the problem that I wanted to work on was, was helping people understand themselves, to love themselves, because that was what's probably going to solve all the rest of the problems. That's, that's the core. All these problems came out of human consciousness. So human consciousness shifts. And there's actually like some pretty cool studies and theses that show like if you're trying to change a complex system that involves humans, the first thing you do is change the story, the thoughts of the human.
So how did that end up transitioning to working with leaders?
So I was a bad investor, as it turns out. What I didn't understand is what you're looking for is an entrepreneur who doesn't need you. That's what you're actually looking for. And my background was to be needed. You know, like that's what gave me some sense of validation. And I see this a lot in the business world today, being useful, showing that I can contribute was a really important part of my identity. And so I would pick things that needed me, which is a really bad way to invest venture money. What you really want to pick is people who don't fucking need you, who find you to be a nuisance. And so because of that, a lot of the investments we were making weren't working. And so the only thing I could do was to like coach them on changing consciousness. And so through that whole process, I just got into the coaching world of like, oh, here's all the stuff I've learned about myself, and here's how I see that apply to business, and here's how a business tool, if you put a tilt of self-awareness into it, actually becomes a more powerful business tool. I didn't know if it would, but I, I kept on doing the experiments because I knew I needed that. That's kind of self-development. Business had to be a form of self-development for me, or I was going to lose interest in it. And what happened was that enough people, enough people started knowing about me and then that other people, like, you gotta get coached by this person. And so next thing I know, I was in Silicon Valley. And so famous, you know, rich people were like, hey, will you coach me? And then there was just more people then to coach than I had time for. And then I started doing these small little groups, which you were part of the third one. And then at some point I was like, this is my calling. I remember, you know, people thinking, like saying to me, oh, you should become a teacher or something way earlier than that. And I remember constantly going, no. Like, one, I was really scared that I saw a lot of teachers get stuck. Like when they start teaching, they stopped evolving because they got cemented into this place. And there is like, I used to talk about it like they're on the side of a mountain holding onto a rope, helping everybody get to where they are, but they're not climbing still. So there was that. And also, I was just like, I have not discovered way— like, I don't understand myself enough to teach. Because I saw a whole bunch of people teaching that clearly didn't have the understanding, and I saw them doing damage. And but that— so I just didn't do it for years. And I'm— yeah, many people were like, oh, you should teach. I'm like, uh. And then it happened, literally happened because I needed to make my investments work. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way.
That's so good. So you did all this to get better at capitalism?
Exactly. Capitalism. Yes, exactly. So in short, capitalism has made me what I am today. Soundbite. Yeah, so that's how it happened. And I mean, and the journey just continues, right? It becomes more subtle. That's the interesting thing is it becomes more subtle. Like right now, there's just, there's a record, like the business is growing. All of a sudden now we have lots more people coming to us and there's a good chance that this is just the beginning of the beginning, right? Like, and I realize and I see how that has like a lot of destructive capacity, uh, if I hold that in a way that's— if I hold that too firmly or with too much identity. But more importantly, it's almost— I don't know how to say this, like, this is on the edge of my understanding, but there's I realize that somebody like a Donald Trump or a Sam Altman or a Bono or whatever, whoever the Bono is of today, they hold like a lot of people's energy. They hold— there's a lot of attention being directed at them. And it's pretty amazing. Like, it's pretty easy to feel what I'm talking about if you just imagine being on stage with like 150,000 people, like, yeah, cheering, you know, it's like, whoa, like, that's just got to be such an intense experience. But, you know, there's some version of that that happens when 10 million people watch you on YouTube or whatever that thing is. Like, there's this, like, this thing, and, and I see the way that a lot of people hold that really, like, doesn't work out for them in the long run.
Or are held by it. Or held by it. There's the term audience capture for, you know, to the extent that you're not aware of yourself, you don't notice how you're being influenced by the crowd, by the way you're seen, by the way, by the energy holding you. Yeah. As you ascend into a leadership position or descend into it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so that— and so the thing that I'm realizing is like, up until now, the way that the journey has been is it's become less me through dissolution, meaning the recognition that it— the teaching isn't mine, it's coming through me, that it's not personal, that it's um, that it's like a gift. And that's all— it's always kind of been how I've been able to see more clearly through the process and be a better conduit for what wants to move.
And when I hear you say that, it— I don't hear you say that in a way that's deflecting, like, responsibility. Like, oh, it's just happening through me. Whatever happens, it's just not my— No. There's some—
Though I don't hold responsibility the same way, but yes.
It feels like you're present in it. Yeah. How do you experience that? Like, just to flip the question from an observation to a question for you, how do you hold this reality, this way of seeing whatever's happening is moving through you without, uh, without bypassing, without using it as a way to avoid the, like, sense of gravity that it can have, like, that you are actually having an impact.
Yeah. Up until now, it has been— or, you know, about a year ago, up until a year ago, it was very much like, um, it allowed me to be more present because it wasn't about my ego, because it wasn't about personal. It was like— it's like oneness was kind of at the forefront. And what I'm getting to now is what I'm realizing is that actually the personal has to be reincorporated back into it for, for me to be able to be healthy if this thing continues to grow. And so what that looks like is on one level, it's like, yeah, it's me doing this. It's like, it's not not me. It's like, it's me doing this. And there's like, and, and, but the other way, the most profound way that I felt it recently is I was at a hot springs and two things happened at the hot springs. The first thing that happened at the hot springs is I woke up out of bed, I'm shirtless and I'm like wandering to the bathroom and I'm half awake and I'm like, uh, and somebody's like, Joe Hudson? And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I took your course. I was like, oh goodness. Like, it was like this moment. And there was like, and it was like 6 women and they were all, oh, the course. I heard about your course. And like this whole thing, I'm like, I just want to go to Vipassana alone. So there was that moment that happened. And then the other moment that happened in the hot springs was there was this guy and he was just hanging out. And we talked for a couple minutes and he just talked about this one moment in his life when he was at a Walmart and he helped somebody interpret one of their dreams and it made a difference in her life. And he just started weeping. And I'm like, you can't do that if it's not personal. Mm-hmm. Right? And— And so it's like taking it personal in that way also, right? Like, it's nowadays, it's at least daily now. It's maybe even getting twice a day that I get a DM or a handwritten note. The other day, typed notes of people not knowing me, showing gratitude, just needing to express gratitude for what the work has done in their lives. That's like constantly happening now. Like, I constantly am seeing and being told about somebody whose life has changed. And to be intimate with that experience is incredibly personal. To allow that to break my heart, I know that, that, that to allow that in on a personal level, on an intimate level, is gonna be required for me not to become dismissive of people, to not, there's this whole thing about power that like, as you have more power, you lose empathy. There's like a whole bunch of studies on it. For me not to lose that empathy, actually requires me to allow that to break my heart on a consistent basis, like this guy in this hot spring. And so there's, that's like, and that's, so now instead of the freedom coming from like a dissolution of self, it's almost more like a permeability of self. It's like, it's becoming so large that there's more space. And it's such an interesting thing. And I was talking to somebody who had like 6, on one of the podcasts I was doing, one of the, 6— had 6 million followers, and he's like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Like, like, the people who are in those places, they can feel— the ones who are going to survive it, like the ones who I'm like, I want to be like you when you're doing like I'm doing, 6 million people— like, they can feel— they like, they can tell you what it's like to have that, whatever you want to call it, energy directed at them, or to have that— I don't want to call it weight because it's not weight, but just to be— I think it's like a focal point. It's like being a focal point like that. It's just— and how to do that in a way that actually allows me to not compartmentalize myself, stay in myself, stay present. Yeah, it's a great life. I keep on thinking— I said it once, I think I was talking to Adya. Adyashanti. Adyashanti. Um, and he said, 'How's life?' I said, 'A dream come true that I never thought could happen. I never even imagined the possibility of it.' Thanks everybody for listening.
This was a different format than we typically do. If you really liked it, let us know. We'll do more of these little longer format fireside chats. If you want to hear more, check us out on YouTube at Art of Accomplishment, or you can find us on Spotify, all your other podcast platforms. The podcast is hosted by myself and Joe Hudson, and Munyi Kelly is our producer, and this episode is edited by Reasonable Volume.
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